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Saturday, December 18, 2010

What good are the arts?

Learn a poem by heart, and you have it forever.

Comments on and quotes from John Carey's "What Good Are the Arts?", a 2005 book mentioned in my previous post.

What is a work of art?
Carey begins with a very interesting chapter how how we define a work of art and gives his own definition - that is "A work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person." Here his balloon-pricking is hilarious - what things cannot be works of art? Excrement, perhaps? Empty space? An unmade bed? Unfortunately not, according to the activities of artists and acceptance by museums and galleries.

My favourite story was Aaron Barschak, who was charged with criminal damage for splashing red paint on a work of art in an art gallery, the gallery walls and the artists in 2003. His defence was that he was creating his own artwork, just as the artists had done by using etchings by Goya, and that he "intended to enter his work for the Turner Prize".

Other interesting points - "high art" vs "low art" as "what I feel (in response to high art) is more important, special & interesting than what you feel (in response to low art)." But the point Carey hammers in all the way through the book is that we can't know what other people feel, only guess. Sometimes, in some ways, that guess is pretty good. But it's never complete because we can't literally feel what they feel, only what we imagine they might feel based on what we know about them. Relativity is all. Which makes his focus on literature in the second half of the book very interesting, though he admits it's a personal bias in just this way, to prefer one kind of art over another.

Debunking some pro-art arguments
Art as religion : "Artists, as Jacques Barzun has observed, are popularly credited with the divine powers formerly attributed to religious figures. They are expected to be 'demanding' and obscure, like ancient oracles. They are always 'ahead of their time' like Biblical prophets."

Art in the community, not imposed on them but part of all our lives. Art as a part of the usual tasks we do - decorating our homes, for example, tatooing, and other times when by making something special we are creating : "Arts research needs to change direction, to look outwards, and - following the example of Laski and Bourdieu - investigate the audience not the texts."

Literature & self-criticism
"Literature is not just the only art that can criticize itself, it is the only art, I would argue, that can criticize anything, because it is the only art capable of reasoning."

You could argue that self-criticism is present in an ironic installation piece taking the piss out of an artistic theory. Carey says : "Pieces of music can parody other pieces, and paintings can caricature paintings. But this does not amount to a total rejection of music or painting. Literature, however, can totally reject literature, and in this it shows itself more powerful and self-aware than any other art." And goes on to name a number of pieces in literature that reject writing and reading. That the coherent argument against something can only be present in literature (or words borrowed by opera and film). Music is empty of meaning, consisting of sensations that may or may not be interpreted similarly by different listeners.

Literature & indistinctness
The vital element in literature, indistinctness, which forces the reader to use their imagination and effectively create the story in their heads. As in Blake's Sick Rose:

O rose, thou art sick:
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

What or who is the worm, why is it invisible, and since a worm does not fly in the night, what does it mean? Carey argues that this indistinct imagery forces us to create the story for ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Most interesting here is that he traces the flowering of indistinctness in literature to Shakespeare.


Friday, December 17, 2010

More books on reading and writing poetry

After a long hiatus (study commitments..) I needed some poetry back in my life. Blackmail Press #28 came out recently in which I modestly appear; a kind gift by a family member means I'm attending a 2-day poetry course over the summer - so I picked up a few books. Okay, that's not always necessary, but who could resist?

When considering buying books (not just on poetry), I always think in terms of what I would want to refer to again and again. A short term read is better coming from the public library rather than a bookstore, unless I plan to pass it on in some way, or want to support the author.

There are some recommended books by the course tutor which I bought, not because you have to have them but because my poetry collection is looking a bit sparse at the moment. I've weeded my books twice in the last year or two and try to borrow rather than buy, as I've just said. I also picked up a few others that looked intriguing...

The distinction between books on poetry and books of poetry isn't clear-cut, in my mind. If you want to learn more about writing poetry you need to read poetry. If you're not reading poetry, why on earth would you bother trying to write it?

So here are the books sitting on my desk at the moment, waiting to be read properly, and later joined by a couple of others I'm waiting on from Fishpond.

Strand, Mark. & Boland, Eavan (eds). The Making of a Poem : A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York / London : W. W. Norton & Co., 2000
"If example is the best teacher..." I'd never heard of this book before I came across it in Borders yesterday. But I'm always interested in learning more about forms, and when I opened it I realised it was chockful of poems arranged by form, and not just sonnets, villanelles, heroic couplets etc, but also the elegy, the ode, the pastoral, and a section on open forms. Less technical perhaps than other books but all the basics are here and then some.

Fry, Stephen. The Ode Less Travelled : Unlocking the Poet Within. London : Arrow Books, 2005
I'd knocked around buying this one for a while but was always put off by the author. Why would I want to learn about poetry from Stephen Fry, despite his perfect performance as Jeeves? But looking through it again in Unity Books recently, I realised how unpretentious and downright funny he was about poetry - and we all need that. I certainly do. How about his 3 Golden Rules for reading his book?
1. Take your time
2. Don't be afraid
3. Always have a notebook with you.
Rules for life, in fact. And he isn't afraid to talk technically. So a breath of fresh air.

Harvey, Siobhan (ed). Our Own Kind : 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals. Auckland : Godwit, 2009
Recommended reading for the poetry course, whose tutor incidentally is Harvey herself. I do come at this book from a strong animal rights perspective, being a vegan for ethical reasons. On the whole I thought I couldn't pass this one up, and when browsing it I came across several poems that prompted me to bring out my notebook and pen - a sure sign of success. In particular the strong bitter ending of Brian Turner's Pig, Fleur Adcock's Crab which talks about eating the "permitted parts of the crab" (I doubt the crab permitted it), and Our Cow by Cilla McQueen, which after reading a couple of times unfastened itself for me and began to spread in lots of possible directions, including a respect for the cow itself. Plus the book has lots of cute black & white pictures of animals (and people interacting with them) by Mark Smith.

Green, Paula. & Ricketts, Harry. 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry : over 85 key poems plus 25 poets talk about their work. Auckland : Vintage, 2010
Recommended reading again. Anthologies about New Zealand poetry are frequently published, with different slants (spirituality, animals, Auckland, Wellington etc) but this book intends, according to the preface, to open up rather than fix, celebrate rather than criticise, and introduce rather than assume. When looking through it I'm struck by how little I know about the poetry scene in New Zealand. This book covers the usual suspects like form and effects, but also has significant sections looking at the history of poetry in NZ, and other ways to look at poetry by "identities" - ethnic identities, New Zealandish, women, children. These aspects are what most interest me at first glance.

Carey, John. What Good are the Arts? London: Faber & Faber, 2005.
This is a question I ask myself often. Carey also had some controversial reactions to this book, and when I began to read I found out why. He does prick the balloon of pretentiousness that exists around (seems chiefly the visual) arts. Claims of spiritual eminence and elitism etc. He also has a great sense of humour, particularly when talking about what a work of art is. I want to write about this more in a later post, and I'm only half-way through, so all I'll say here is that he starts by asking what a work of art is, then examining the usual arguments around the arts (high art vs low art, scientific work on arts, do arts make us better, art as religion), and then talks specifically about literature (including poetry), and why he thinks literature is better than all the other arts. A couple of interesting concepts here are - literature's ability to criticise itself, and the idea of indistinctness (see my comment on Cilla McQueen's poem from the animals anthology).
Not specifically poetry, but very relevant.



Saturday, September 11, 2010

The scholar of one candle

I have been thinking about readers of poetry, and a phrase by Wallace Stevens keeps occuring to me - "the scholar of one candle" in The Auroras of Autumn. Various writers have interpreted this as Stevens himself, the poet, and the reader...

.......He opens the door of his house
On flames. The scholar of one candle sees
An Arctic effulgence flaring on the frame
Of everything he is. And he feels afraid.

(Auroras of Autumn, section VI.)
The scholar, here most identifiable as Stevens/the poet, only has one candle, a meager source of light (truth), energy, force, beauty, transformation, power. As a late poem this naturally seems to reflect on Stevens' sense of approaching death as well as the power of nature (the aurora borealis) over the puny skill of individual humans. This isn't a summary of the poem, however - not only is it 10 sections long, but Stevens can skilfully compress ideas into powerful symbols that mean more than he states.

Nevertheless I have often come across this poem, and the short lines I have quoted above, discussed as key aspects of Stevens' work, and when thinking about the idea of "the reader of poetry" (in which I include myself, of course), as someone overwhelmed with a light that they also possess in part - someone who is afraid of, but recognises and loves, this light. For me the idea of a reader is not a distant, passive, objective function, but immediate, passionate, and active - the poem is not complete unless the text is read or listened to and responded to. The poem is not just words on a page or in the air, but the creator, creation and recipient interacting together.

This is not an original idea; I have found it in many guises, including in poets and poems. One of these is another Stevens poem, The House was Quiet and the World was Calm. The word scholar is used for the reader, who blurs into the book which blurs into the house and the world. The activity of reading becomes or makes a quiet, calm space in which everything, including the reader, is indistinguishable from everything else:

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
Reading this poem, I recognise that special space I have often felt when reading, especially poetry.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Representation and resistance

The September issue of Poetry is now out. There's an interesting article by Tony Hoagland comparing two types of poetry - designated by him as perspective and entanglement. Two kinds of poetic meaning, value systems, "tribes". Hoagland makes the important consideration that both of these functions are important, and then goes on to talk about the second, "entanglement", also called resistance, derangement, disorientation, as the most recent, and less well-known. An intimate struggle between the poem and the reader that resists the mind, and a way to talk about "collective dizziness" as a "fundamental symptom of modern life".

To me this construct of meaning is interesting in the opposite way I personally react to it. With communication overload, a hyperawareness of the subjectivities and imperfections of language and culture, the time-pressured and ephemeral conditions of our existence, is poetry to work with this by using fractured sentences, phrases, words, constructions? Undercut assumptions of narrative, meaning, hierachy, place? So many poems I've read have this uncertain play going on, either in the text itself as in many LANGUAGE-influenced poems, or in the concepts put together. I find it bewildering, exhausting, and not, in the end, useful to me - which puts me firmly in the first, more conservative tribe, of perspective, I assume. Especially with the concept of a poem as a made thing, an artifice, a work.

What I'm not sure of, and which haunts me as I read and reread this article, is the idea of a poem as an experience. When I write, I am trying to induce an experience of a certain kind in the reader (the reader being usually me but hopefully others too). The vertigo Hoagland talks about fits as an experience, but so does the blossoming of emotional recognition, surprise, elation, transcendance which many historical poems evoke in me (I'm thinking of a poem such as the lone and level sands of Ozymandias, for example, or more recently, Anthony Hecht's Peripeteia.)

So a poem must create an effect (or why read it), whether emotional, and/or intellectual. But must it represent the times? I.e. induce a state in the reader that is intended to replicate, maybe at an accelerated or focused way, conditions we already live in? Or could it, instead, create a slow place, a safe place, where those emotions, truths, and facts, that we often forget or miss in our hectic lives, can surface, and be considered? Where we can love at a depth not expressed in any other way, where we can remember death, or those quiet voices telling us we have forgotten to take a breath, change course, speak up, listen?

Hoagland's excerpts of Lyn Hejinian's The Fatalist as an example of incorporating both "tribes" are interesting, however, and as I've never read the book, warrant some investigation.

I re-read my post, and wonder if these comments attempt to make a complex thing too simple. Probably. This is the sort of issue that should never be resolved, but considered, argued about, and struggled with, by anyone interested in reading or writing poetry.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Good books on poetry

Looking at my bookshelf, I have a number of books I'd highly recommend to anyone on writing or reading poetry, as well as a few books I don't own but can also recommend.

So here is the beginnings of a list of good books on poetry. These are listed in order of preference and will be expanded over time:

Shaw, Robert. (2007). Blank Verse : a guide to its history and use. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press
A detailed, ambitious focus solely on iambic pentameter since its origins in the sixteenth century, and particularly valuable for covering 20th and 21st century poets that have written in blank verse, such as Howard Nemerov and Rachel Hadas. Essential if you want to understand the form.

Fussell, Paul. (1979). Poetic Meter & Poetic Form. Revised Ed. McGraw-Hill.
Informative book on meter, and yes, form, that's well-written and actually shows how meter and form create meaning as well as the rest of the poem. A useful reference book for readers and every poet or would-be poet should have read this or a similar book.

Keats, John. (2001). Selected Letters 1817-1820. In Complete Poems and Selected letters of John Keats. New York: The Modern Library.
This edition is only one of many published. These letters show the development of Keats' poetic career, knowledge, maturity, and understanding of poetry itself. It's in these letters he discusses the famous concept of "Negative Capability".

Rilke, Rainer Maria. (2004). Letters to a Young Poet. Translation by Herter Norton, M.D. Revised Ed. New York / London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Again one of many publications. Letters written by Rilke to a would-be poet from 1903-1908. Rilke has a sensitive way of describing sensibility, and poetic and life choices, and is unabashedly emotional about it. If you feel jaded and too intellectual about your poetry, this could be an inspiring read.

Hirsch, Edward. (1999). How to Read a Poem : and Fall in Love with Poetry. Houghton Miffler Harcourt.
In my mind I always add "..all over again." to the end of the title. Another wonderful book for fresh enthusiasm and reading poetry you might not otherwise read. Also informative. The first chapter can be read on the Poetry Foundation website.

Kowit, Steve. (2003). In the Palm of Your Hand : the Poet's Portable Workshop. Atlantic Books.
The cover calls this "lively", and it is. Kowit aims to reach both new and experienced poets, covering just about everything you could imagine in a small volume. Because it's a general guide I would suggest it to inexperienced poets first, readers second, and everyone else when they feel the need to do some general reading again.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Favourite poets

My biases will be obvious from this list of my favourite poets. I don't tend to read a lot of contemporary poetry.

My love of poetry began with a small brown book, with the cover text faded completely off and the spine starting to disintegrate. Inside this book I found selections from two Romantic poets who have formed my ideas of what poetry is and my tastes.

John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. I've long lost this little book, but I now own the complete works of both poets, along with the selected letters of Keats, a useful poetics text. Favourite poems include Keats' Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, La Belle Dame sans Merci; Shelley's The Cloud, The Sensitive Plant, Ozymandias...and others that don't immediately come to mind.

Next Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens (I seem to group my poets in pairs). These two modernist poets offer the same thing, to me, from slightly different angles. Crane and Stevens both use an oblique, difficult kind of language to convey the idea or emotion they are writing about. Stevens tends to be more about the concept than Crane, who tends to go for the feeling. Favourite poems? Include Crane's Voyages, To Brooklyn Bridge (from The Bridge); Stevens' Le Monocle de Mon Oncle, The Idea of Order at Key West, and the famous Sunday Morning...

Other (minor) poetic mentions include Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Walt Whitman... and the only woman on my list, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Aurora Leigh)...

More on this topic to come, however.

N.B. The title of this blog comes from Edgar Bowers' moving and skillful poem Autumn Shade.

"For there he is,
In a steel helmet, raging, fearing his death,
Carrying bread and water to a quiet,
Placing ten sounds together in one sound:
Confirming his election, or merely still,
Sleeping, or in a colloquy with the sun."

Reading poetry

Every poem is personal; every poet feels like they belong to you and no-one else. I know very little about famous poets' lives; have read very few biographies or even searched Wikipedia for many of them. But it doesn't matter. The poem is more important than the poet (numerous quotes could be inserted here). Reading something like Hart Crane's Voyages, for example.. "permit me voyage, love, into your hands", his last, major poem The Broken Tower, I don't have to think about Crane's love of his life, a sailor for whom the sex was casual, or his one heterosexual love Peggy, on the boat with him when he died. This aspect of the poem (it's background, conception and personal context for the poet) is interesting, sometimes useful even, if you want to know how the poem was intended to be read. But if you are just reading from your personal situation, which I would argue any emotional reading would be, you take the words and interpret them in the light of your own experience, and if they're good, they might alter how you see aspects of your own life or people in it.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Another potential discovery - Katherine Liddy

Katherine Liddy was one of the poets in "AUP New Poets 3" put out in 2008. The book was reviewed by Tim Jones in his blog.

Liddy caught my eye when browsing this book in Unity High Street as iambic pentameter stands out as a certain shape of text chunks on the white page (a quick and dirty way to locate it, provided there aren't too many breaks). Again haven't read properly, just noted here to follow up later.

Tim Jones notes most poems in this book were end-rhymed, so not actually blank verse, though I'm sure she could write blank verse without much change of stride. I wonder if she has...

David Beach's prose sonnets

David Beach calls his works "prose sonnets"... an example published in Trout 15. Other poems can be viewed via his NZETC page.

They appear to be, from a brief scan, rough and dirty iambic pentameter (with plenty of elisions, additional syllables, and substitutions). Perhaps too many variations to qualify strictly, but definitely an interesting read.

He has a couple of collections out - "Abandoned Novel" (2006) and "The End of Atlantic City" (2008).

I haven't read either of these, just a couple of individual poems here and there, so not offering an opinion. This is a placemarker - one to come back to later with greater attention.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Purpose of this blog

The purpose of this blog is to discuss all things poetic - poets, poetry, meter, rhythm and form, with an emphasis on blank verse (iambic pentameter), and New Zealand poetry. To store useful links in context with my own notes and quotes. To think about, make coherent, and publish my own thoughts on poetry.