Verse and prose.
The discussion about poetry in verse and prose was moved here from off topic in other thread.
Knygatin wrote:
I prefer poetry in prose, to verse. I don't devalue verse, but I personally find verse more awkward to get through, and also less detailed on its canvas than prose (many argue that verse does not need to be as descriptively detailed, because it is more "exact", and that this exactness obliquely stirs up those untold images not directly painted; although from my reading experience I find it hard to agree. And also, a poet does not automatically become more exact, or a greater artist, only because he/she writes in verse form, as if that be a contracted guarantee by itself; although many in today's society seem to naively think so of themselves in a hurry of self aggrandizement.) I generally prefer the profusely nuanced subtleties in a painting or etching by Rembrandt, to the perfected economic brush strokes in a Chinese ink sheet. But some particular thoughts I agree may lend themselves better to verse; a specific insight or relative observation that is so central and important that one wants to savor it alone. I have fine permanent memories from verse poems, but since my sensibilities are mainly visual, I prefer the more painterly qualities of prose. Admitted, I am rarely if ever completely satisfied with stories, finding in them too much filler and too many stale bridges, and thinking that the prose could always potentially be so much more refined, to the point, existentially essential, and never in a single sentence relaxing from the artistically ecstatic; but that is very seldom completely so in a story - but, it could be.
Sawfish wrote:
Knygatin Wrote:
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> I prefer poetry
> in prose, to verse. I don't devalue verse, but
> I personally find verse more awkward to get
> through, and also less detailed on its canvas than
> prose (many argue that verse does not need to be
> as descriptively detailed, because it is more
> "exact", and that this exactness obliquely stirs
> up those untold images not directly painted;
> although from my reading experience I find it hard
> to agree. And also, a poet does not automatically
> become more exact, or a greater artist, only
> because he/she writes in verse form, as if that be
> a contracted guarantee by itself; although many in
> today's society seem to naively think so of
> themselves in a hurry of self aggrandizement.)
Quick observation here re poetry
I, too, prefer to read prose, but I'll now venture a comparison...
Poetry is ***less*** accessible to the ear/mind of he reader in the same sense that hard bop jazz, as by someone like John Coltrane, is less accessible than Bert Bacharach.
I think the world of both, but I can see why many, many more music lovers might well prefer Bacharach.
You make some very interesting and intriguing points about the relative precision of poetry and prose. I'm going to have to defer my thinking on that a bit (on a sort of road tour after having picked up my daughter after her college graduation--making a sort of sweep of the Rockies/Southwest right now), but my initial thought, subject to change, of course, is that at its finest, poetry taps an emotional, non-verbal response, in much the same way that instrumental music does. I think that pure prose (none of yer "prose-poem" shennanigans, here, bub!) has a really tough time doing this, it being more reliant on rational and *concrete* interpretation than poetry. You can get away with over-blown wording much more acceptably in poetry than in prose, which then bears the epithet "purple prose".
For examples of short evocative poetry, Shelley's "Ozymandias" is good. Similarly, and using CAS, I personally really liked the one about the submerged god who rose again from the sea bottom at the onset of a nuclear Armageddon--can't recall the name right now, and the hotel wifi is so slow that I don't want to look it up, but I'll find it later, if you want.
> I
> generally prefer the profusely nuanced subtleties
> in a painting or etching by Rembrandt, to the
> perfected economic brush strokes in a Chinese ink
> sheet. But some particular thoughts I agree may
> lend themselves better to verse; a specific
> insight or relative observation that is so central
> and important that one wants to savor it alone. I
> have fine permanent memories from verse poems, but
> since my sensibilities are mainly visual, I prefer
> the more painterly qualities of prose. Admitted, I
> am rarely if ever completely satisfied with
> stories, finding in them too much filler and too
> many stale bridges, and thinking that the prose
> could always potentially be so much more refined,
> to the point, existentially essential, and never
> in a single sentence relaxing from the
> artistically ecstatic; but that is very seldom
> completely so in a story - but, it could be.
> (See, I couldn't help myself from commentating on
> it anyhow. It is ingrained in me. :/)
Those are excellent observations, K! You're likening much of prose to an indifferently edited film. That's another thing I'll have to think through some more.
Knygatin wrote:
Thank you Sawfish. Good luck on your continued travel back to California, and drive carefully. Oh, what beautiful vistas must be there along the way!
Sawfish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> my initial
> thought, subject to change, of course, is that at
> its finest, poetry taps an emotional, non-verbal
> response, in much the same way that instrumental
> music does. I think that pure prose (none of yer
> "prose-poem" shennanigans, here, bub!) has a
> really tough time doing this, it being more
> reliant on rational and *concrete* interpretation
> than poetry. You can get away with over-blown
> wording much more acceptably in poetry than in
> prose, which then bears the epithet "purple
> prose".
I must let that simmer for a while, to consider whether prose not also can tap that kind of musical effect. Hmm ... Thinking right now of some of Arthur Machen's prose for example, or Walter de la Mare's, or (I'll be damned if I don't!) some of Lovecraft's most exalted passages. By the way, I like purple prose, like in much of Abraham Merritt's work. Purple prose may be a bit hysterical, but I still prefer overly emotional intensity to coolness. (But I don't think C. A. Smith's prose is purple, in spite of all the exotic words. He is a very precise artist!)
Dale Nelson wrote:
My 2c for now: I'm not sure how useful it is to generalize about "poetry," since almost anything one might say about "poetry" might be false of some poems, and not just poems that fail as poems because they are badly written.
I'll venture a cautious generalizations, though.
It seems to me that, for most of history, poetic composition has been addressed to the public or at least to an audience of multiple hearers and/or readers, while prose was often addressed to private persons. (I exclude from the latter statement non-literary prose such as inventories, legal documents such as contracts, public announcements from government, etc.) Poetry was intended, in some way or other, to be performed: to be recited (e.g. Beowulf), or enacted on stage (Shakespeare), or read at various other types of public occasions. The "public" might be a special one, e.g. epigrams circulated amongst a coterie. But the poet wrote for a public. Prose, however, was (with such important exceptions as I've mentioned, and others) more "intimate," e.g. letters, diaries.
People today are apt to criticize "poetry" for being "flowery." But they often misunderstand. My favorite example is Shakespeare's plays. Perhaps everyone here has been a bit bored by watching some TV or movie version of a Shakespeare play in which a character stands there, going on and on, with the other characters standing around listening with fixed expressions on their faces, etc. The camera zooms in on the actor's face so as to help to convey the deep feeling with which the character is speaking. But how tiresome, really, this is for the viewer.
The conventions of cinema and TV work against Shakespearean drama. Shakespeare was not writing for our modern media, with their conventions of close-ups of the faces of actors. He wrote for the Elizabethan-Jacobean stage, whose audiences could not see the actor's faces from close up. Those stages had fairly minimal props, and the performance was likely to be in the afternoon under the sky. This all meant, then, that the poetry had to do most of the work of evoking emotion, intention, atmospheric conditions, the appearance of a forest or of castle ramparts, and so on.
In other words, the "flowery" quality of much poetry is actually a reflection of the confidence of a poet and his or her audience in the ability of words to convey serious thought, historical gravity, the experience of the soul. But for us to enjoy it, we need to put aside our habits that have been shaped by TV and movies, and, before them by the way, by the approach of the naturalistic theater. (Shakespeare wrote for the "theater-in-the-round" such as the Globe. Someone like Ibsen wrote for the modern "picture-frame" theater in which there is an attempt at creating the illusion that we are watching "real life" going on, as it were looking into someone's house with the wall removed.)
Much poetry, then, may be hard for us until we stop wanting it to fit into the conventions we are used to.
If any of this is of interest, S. L. Bethell's Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition may be warmly recommended.
There's one other element regarding poetry that I haven't mentioned yet, and that's the difficulty of much modern poetry. Perhaps sometimes in part in reaction to the emergence of popular media such as radio/wireless, much poetry did become, in the 20th century rather "private" and even hermetic. But the problem with Eliot's "Waste Land," for example, was not that of "floweriness." In fact, well before the advent of radio, but still in modern times, you had the development of the novel. Here was something written in prose that attracted a wide audience. It might be read privately, but often novels were read in the family group. Note that this factor can help us to understand what Dickens was up to. He often wrote "theatrically," and some readers (not this one) object to what they think they would find in his prose -- though often they haven't read very much of it.
Even the hearthside folktale can show a poetic quality, not just in the story, but in the repetitions that may sometimes put off people who see them on the printed page to be read privately. But originally these stories were likely to be "performed," and therefore it is not surprising that they show poetic qualities, such as repetitions -- "And he walked far, and farther than far, until he came to..."
Dale Nelson
Sawfish wrote:
This will be a fun discussion, K!
I'm going to let it sit on the back burner for a while--at the Grand Canyon right now--but am a fan of de la Mar, and I want to leave you with this refinement of my statement on prose vs poetry: it is not an exclusionary case, where one cannot have a rationally communicative poem, nor an evocative piece of prose, but I am saying that should one wish to do pure evocative creation, it might well be done best as poetry, since, as I say, when you get to expressing something like Keats' "The Second Coming"
en.wikipedia.org
prose gets downright silly-sounding.
CAS does prose poems. I'll try to find one and we can see why it's referred to as a prose poem and not an other type of short prose.
But, as always, I could be wrong... ;^)
Hi, Dale.
As regards modern long form narrative poetry that is aimed at Shakespeare's intended "popular market", have you ever read Vikram Seth's "The Golden Gate"?
en.wikipedia.org
This is a very playful and absorbing read. A lot of the subject seems dated (early expansion of the Silicon Valley tech world as the means of living, and the subsequent romantic foibles of the central characters.
Very playful! Like watching an Eric Roemer film.
Sawfish
Dale Nelson wrote:
I've heard of Seth's book, never read it. In turn, I'll ask if you have heard of Martyn Skinner: The Return of Arthur, etc.?
apilgriminnarnia.com
As you can see from the article I've linked above, I quite liked that.
Skinner also wrote a mock-heroic tiny-fairies poem, Sir Elfadore and Mabyna, kind of a curiosity:
apilgriminnarnia.com