On what is poetry (the word comes from the Greek “poiema,” meaning something made or created), I find that invaluable work, J. A. Cuddon’s “Literary Terms and Literary Theory” both concise and always helpful. We read: “In the final analysis what makes a poem different from any other kind of composition is a species of magic, the secret to which lies in the way the words lean upon each other, are linked and interlocked in sense and rhythm, and thus elicit from each other’s syllables a kind of tune whose beat and melody varies subtly and which is different from that of prose—‘the other harmony.’” (Shades of Gascoyne’s “the words stick together”).
Poetry seems to me to be a manner of speech in which sound and sense interpenetrate one another. We know it when we hear it. And when we look at it, we are immediately aware that it has a clear shape from first to last. Any number of devices may be employed in its service — rhyme, meter, couplets, stanzas, sonnets — both to a greater or a lesser degree. The essential note is accuracy and precision in observation and sentiment.
Poetry may be difficult to define, but if we recall that the earliest poetry was orally transmitted, then we come closer to the keys: sounds, rhythms, patterns, images, and memory.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that is sufficient for defining poetry. I would rather think it defines a "genre" of poetry that practitioners would like to think defines all of poetry. It can create an extraordinarily prejudicial elitism.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I definitely, absolutely appreciate, the rhythm and sound or so much poetry, I love more the epiphanies in the well-turned "communications that are poetry, especially the shamanistic nature of what poetry at heart is. To let go of that, is political, not artful. It is to buy into a mere biological and species-centered version of what poetry is.
To ignore the spiritual turns of thought and plot that go into poetry, is to enter poetry with a judgmental attitude. One may come out of such a judgmental prejudice with a set of fine poetry. But too much, and probably the best poetry, gets thrown away in such a process. It would be a gross kind of censorship if this were to be allow in a society. In fact, it is a sort of grace that the non-shamanistic "poetry" may be included in the higher Poetry.
Here is part of a conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth:
Campbell: The mythmakers of the earlier days were the counterparts of our artists.
Moyers: They do the paintings on the walls, they perform the rituals.
Campbell: Yes. There's an old romantic idea in German das Volk dichtet, which says that the ideas and poetry of the traditional cultures come out of the folk. They do not. They come out of an elite experience, the experience of people particularly gifted, whose ears are open to the song of the universe. These people speak to the folk, and there is an answer from the folk, which is then received as an interaction. But the first impulse in the shaping of a folk tradition comes from above, not from below.
Moyers: In these early elementary cultures, as you call them, who would have been the equivalent of the poets today?
Campbell: The shamans. The shaman is the person, male or female, who in his late childhood or early youth has an overwhelming psychological experience that turns him totally inward. It's a kind of schizophrenic crack-up. The whole unconscious opens up, and the shaman falls into it. This shaman experience has been described many, many times. It occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego.
Moyers: And ecstasy is a part of it.
Campbell: It is.
Hi Rus,
ReplyDeleteI don't think the two views are at odds. The devices referred to — stanzas, meter, and the like — are themselves ancient and quite possibly of shamanistic origin. The problem arises of you think of poetry strictly in terms of those devices. They are a means to an end, and if the get in the way end, must be discarded. As Basho said of haiku, if you need an extra syllable, use an extra syllable. But of course you have be a Basho to be sure about that. Verse, however, is not necessarily poetry.