Thread
| the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 3:36PM | Thread Closed |
this site attracts a lot of zeen'ers, but most of them haven't a clue about how a poet approaches writing a critique. the poet wants to ask why the piece in question is a poem at all, and who and who wrote the poem and, most importantly, how. the little corrections people make, after "this is nice", are just meant to clarify the text for the critic -- not to "make the poem better". the critic wants to know exactly what the poet had in mind.
a current dialog on poetry is going on in "Forgetfulness -- to Billy Collins". the poem is pretty good, and could be entitled anything at all -- the collins thing is redundant if the author was simply "inspired" by collins -- certainly "forgetfulness" is better than collins writing. someone is challenging my assessment of collins, as they should, and that's mostly the debate -- or would have been, if the author hadn't tried to turn the dialog back to the poem -- he didn't realize that we were talking about the parent of that poem -- "poetry" -- and setting up a way of talking about that kind of poem so that we could return to talking about "forgetfulness" -- or, at least i was. reading the dialog yourself, you might get a different picture of what's going on.
but, people who don't understand that a dialog about poetry is about setting ideas out and sharing and critiquing the ideas, and that ideas don't die just because the author -- me for instance -- is a 'retard'. the idea has no body.
a worthy critique for a site called poetry critical would have to be, ultimately, about what we think a poem really is and how it gets written. any, "there is no meaning" and "a poem cannot be talked about" is a poem, only, though not a very well written one. poetry is better than prose, but prose helps us get a handle on writing -- it's a tool. but, people like to talk about what they really like, and most people here don't like talking about poetry. do the math.
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| re: the crit trip jenakajoffer 29 Apr 08 3:49PM | Thread Closed |
mike,
what exactly is a zeen'er?
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| re: the crit trip Isabelle5 29 Apr 08 3:58PM | Thread Closed |
Joey, you make it all so complicated. Poetry, like most other kinds of reading, is perceived by the reader the way they are able to grasp it. I would guess it's the same with a math equation - many people can read the easy stuff, adding, subtracting but only a certain segment can understand Witten's theory of Everything. (That's not the exact name of Witten's ideas of string theory but you get the idea).
You can't force people to read and comment on things. That might work in a philosophy class or a critical thinking class but this site is neither. Instead of trying to teach everyone your way, how about just enjoying the fact that there is a lot of participation on all levels? Some we can laugh at, some we can take offense at, some is helpful, some make no sense.
Trying too hard isn't fun, many of us have no time to sit around at PC all day, pondering, we're out in the trenches getting fodder for our next poem.
I appreciate your almost painful wish for us to be better at everything poetic but don't hurt yourself over the fact that this isn't the site for that, this is about all the poets and all the ways to read/comment.
Even yours, which is appreciated, too.
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| re: the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 4:04PM | Thread Closed |
someone knowing poetry only from the "zeens", the magazines and poetry books we publish outside the commercial press. when i publish someone, i treat that writer as the only writer in the world, and only publish his or her works in the "zine". if someone were to find one of these publications -- and this has happened -- and reading the magazine was their first exposure to "poetry" -- and some of the readers don't even know that what's printed is called "poetry", because it's so different from the "by the shores..." and "it's all in the fact that my lawn died when you left me..." writing they read in school and defined as "poetry" -- then they'd maybe come to a site like pc. with a very different attitude than someone like me -- reading poetry on my own and in school for about 55 years. that attitude is a very nice thing -- look at moogle :), or it can be a difficult thing, when nothing on the site looks as cool as "sk8 ur face-OFF rail, fuck".
"ziners" would be correct, but its script pronunciation got in the way.
> mike,
> what exactly is a zeen'er?
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| re: the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 4:07PM | Thread Closed |
i make it seem complicated to you, child of nature, but recite as much of billy collins as you are able and rest your mind... or joan collins. :)
it's ok if i do this trip here -- it's plastic enough here and, really, most writers here really want to know why they write the way they do and if it's real "poetry".
> Joey, you make it all so complicated. Poetry, like most other kinds
> of reading, is perceived by the reader the way they are able to grasp
> it. I would guess it's the same with a math equation - many people
> can read the easy stuff, adding, subtracting but only a certain
> segment can understand Witten's theory of Everything. (That's not
> the exact name of Witten's ideas of string theory but you get the
> idea).
>
> You can't force people to read and comment on things. That might
> work in a philosophy class or a critical thinking class but this site
> is neither. Instead of trying to teach everyone your way, how about
> just enjoying the fact that there is a lot of participation on all
> levels? Some we can laugh at, some we can take offense at, some is
> helpful, some make no sense.
>
> Trying too hard isn't fun, many of us have no time to sit around at
> PC all day, pondering, we're out in the trenches getting fodder for
> our next poem.
>
> I appreciate your almost painful wish for us to be better at
> everything poetic but don't hurt yourself over the fact that this
> isn't the site for that, this is about all the poets and all the ways
> to read/comment.
>
> Even yours, which is appreciated, too.
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| re: the crit trip Isabelle5 29 Apr 08 4:23PM | Thread Closed |
No, we don't. I dare say that we write because we have to write and if it comes out poetry, literature or something else, we are content to have it read and made better, if possible. I don't care at all if I write what others consider poetry because I know what I need to write. It's when I try to 'write poetry' that I fail miserably.
It's the same as trying to write the great American novel. You can't do it if you sit down to write that, the story has to come from the depths, whatever depths you have.
You should have come walking with me and Derek, with or without your clothes on!
haha
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| re: the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 4:41PM | Thread Closed |
i doubt it. where did you learn that what you've written is "poetry" and not "jellyfish"? it's a school thing, and we write only after other poets -- we all do -- and we play poet and sometimes we outdo yourselves. you know very well that you've been very pissed when someone -- whoo.... oh, humm.... -- says something you've written "isn't poetry".
you know what it isn't and you know what it is. "the great american novel" is a crit's idea -- a concept used to measure novels. same with my idea of the "poem" -- it's my measurement. it works for me.
> No, we don't. I dare say that we write because we have to write and
> if it comes out poetry, literature or something else, we are content
> to have it read and made better, if possible. I don't care at all if
> I write what others consider poetry because I know what I need to
> write. It's when I try to 'write poetry' that I fail miserably.
>
> It's the same as trying to write the great American novel. You
> can't do it if you sit down to write that, the story has to come from
> the depths, whatever depths you have.
>
> You should have come walking with me and Derek, with or without your
> clothes on!
>
> haha
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| re: the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 4:54PM | Thread Closed |
isabelle, you think i'm so "unpoetic", but even my prose works to build images and take you away and sometimes really sings. just, "walk a mile in my shoes and hear how a poet talks..." isn't poetic.
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| re: the crit trip DeformedLion 29 Apr 08 7:43PM | Thread Closed |
Its kind of about having a higher ideal-- for life, an expectation that becomes surreal when in life, but as poetry we can achieve that idea and possibly more. that words aren't words, but the language of creation (and all its opposites); that our apotheoses is immediate yet limited to when in the "zone" or something.
I think maybe that's why we get so depressed, that the two realities we exist for are so far apart...that we must suffer the more mundane one for so long. but, of course, it is a necessary part in the development of that other reality-- the poem reality.
each, i guess, is a corollary of the other. they are not self-defined-- for the poet that is. meaning that perhaps the higher ideal is just life, that we exist for it more than any scientist or religious guy.
maybe.
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| re: the crit trip joey 29 Apr 08 8:53PM | Thread Closed |
i knew that if i kept hammering out my invented-prose blog trip that the good writers rise to it and start writing in a much better way about these ideas and situations. thanks, d.f., this is beautiful.
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