NationStates Jolt Archive

I was having this conversation with a fellow student yesterday. He was lamenting the popularity of poetry in blogs lately. Some of these poems are poorly written and difficult to understand. What does the poet mean?

That made me think. Is there any way to tell if a piece of creative writing is deep and profound, as opposed to a disorganized fuzzy crap? Just because something is incomprehensible, that it is "art"?

So is language primarily a tool of clear communications? Or at its deepest level used for expressing something completely subjective that nobody gets?

I was having this conversation with a fellow student yesterday. He was lamenting the popularity of poetry in blogs lately. Some of these poems are poorly written and difficult to understand. What does the poet mean?

That made me think. Is there any way to tell if a piece of creative writing is deep and profound, as opposed to a disorganized fuzzy crap? Just because something is incomprehensible, that it is "art"?

So is language primarily a tool of clear communications? Or at its deepest level used for expressing something completely subjective that nobody gets?

Poetry is like gluing a toddler to the side of a donkey; Even if somebody understands why you're doing it, that doesn't mean he thinks it's a good idea.

99% of poetry sucks. The rest is boring.

Poetry is like gluing a toddler to the side of a donkey; Even if somebody understands why you're doing it, that doesn't mean he thinks it's a good idea.

I am saying I don't even understand why you're gluing a toddler to the side of donkey. Or the poem is even clear enough to know what you are gluing to what.

Oh my Mod, what are grad students in the Arts Faculty actually doing?

99% of poetry sucks. The rest is boring.

Actually I do like a well written poem. If the poem has a good rhythm, a good pictoral description and witty prose, it's a joy to read. My main beef is that people can churn out stuttering incomprehensible agrammatic nonsense, and tell you its deep.

Huh??? :confused:

How to tell "deep" from "bullshit"? 'Cos they say so?

How to tell "deep" from "bullshit"? 'Cos they say so?
'Tis in the eye of the English Department. ;)

Actually the judge of good poetry is, like other literary works, is how well it communitcates what it's trying to do, message, vision, feeling, whatever. If what is it communicating is important/universal enough to apply to the majority of the readers (Shakespeare's sonnets speak of love, which is pretty universal. An emo's LiveJournal poetry entry usually speaks of how rotten the world is according to him, usually not applicable). It also looks at how well the damn thing is put together, rhyme, meter, work play, etc. And finally, how long does the damn thing last and what effect it has on other works.

But pretty much in the eye of the English Department.

99% of poetry sucks. The rest is boring.
I beg to differ. Poetry is a very romantic way of expressing your feelings for someone else, for example.

Of course, many people try their hand at poetry and fail utterly. Just because some poems are thrash doesn't mean there's isn't a great amount of beauty in some other poet's words.

Actually I do like a well written poem. If the poem has a good rhythm, a good pictoral description and witty prose, it's a joy to read. My main beef is that people can churn out stuttering incomprehensible agrammatic nonsense, and tell you its deep.

Huh??? :confused:

How to tell "deep" from "bullshit"? 'Cos they say so?
I think you have to judge for yourself.

Ultimately, even a "deep" poem has to be comprehensible. A good poet can use elaborate wordings and fancy words, but he still has to make sense, or his work is only a collection of words, and cannot be understood as a whole.

I beg to differ. Poetry is a very romantic way of expressing your feelings for someone else, for example.

Of course, many people try their hand at poetry and fail utterly. Just because some poems are thrash doesn't mean there's isn't a great amount of beauty in some other poet's words.

And your guidelines to separate the chaff from the wheat are... ?

And your guidelines to separate the chaff from the wheat are... ?
Simple aesthetics. If the words flow nicely, ring nicely, and the meaning of the author is well conveyed, then it's good work.

No need to be a "professionnal" poet to churn out a good poem: one just has to take his time and work on it enough.

If the words are jumbled, the rythm sloppy, and the poem as a whole is meaningless, then it's probably garbage from a poseur. Real poets try to make their poem have an obvious meaning easy for all to catch, and then work on nuances for the afficionado to find. Poseurs try to make their work inintelligible in order to pass as "deep" or intellectually superior to people who cannot understand their work(which is pretty much everyone, seeing as how they made it impossible to understand to begin with with that intention in head).

We must not forget, too, that some people just aren't good at poetry and don't really get it and how it's done, so it's possible a bad poem can also be 'cuz it was made by a sucky poet wannabe :p

If the words are jumbled, the rythm sloppy, and the poem as a whole is meaningless, then it's probably garbage from a poseur. Real poets try to make their poem have an obvious meaning easy for all to catch, and then work on nuances for the afficionado to find. Poseurs try to make their work inintelligible in order to pass as "deep" or intellectually superior to people who cannot understand their work(which is pretty much everyone, seeing as how they made it impossible to understand to begin with with that intention in head).
Not always, some really good stuff is as dense as a neutron star.

Poetry doesn't have to be romantic to be good. Poetry works in some cases the same way a catchy phrase works, or a song lyric.


"I will show you fear in a handful of dust" -T.S. Eliot

"Death is very scary"- Me

They both say the same thing. T.S. Eliot's is way cooler, however. And sometimes within a simple line, giant truth bigger then the words can come out. Not all of it will speak to everybody. But if it makes you think about things differently, or more completely, it's probably a good thing.
Sometime it can be playful

"Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me" -Emily Dickinson

"Everybody dies" -Me

Great quote. Dickinson does it way better. It's even kind of funny.

"Beware of poets who read there poetry in public. They may have other bad habits" R. Heinlein

Listen, writing poetry is good. It's theraputic. But if you don't read other poetry, don't inflict your poetry on the rest of society. Because you need to read other poetry to understand how poetry works (and "Footprints" does not count). I mean, don't write a sonnet unless you understand why a sonnet works and what you need to do. Even free form poetry has something that gives it structure. This is not a poem:

I look at the rain, and I feel sad
I never felt this bad
the rain is like the boy
who isn't anymore.
I am sad like the rain.

People who write that crap need to get the crap kicked out of them.

And your guidelines to separate the chaff from the wheat are... ?

It's impossible to create truly objective guidelines for something as subjective as poetry-as-a-whole. (Obviously, there are some objective guidelines as to what constitutes a good Petrarchan sonnet, a good sestina, and so on.) However, I don't believe many people have ever read, say, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and not recognized it as a good poem, even without knowing the objective rules for villanelles. In general, as with anything, really good work and really bad work are both fairly easy to recognize. No one is going to look at unlabeled poems by Eliot and a sixth grader and have a very hard time determining which is which.

Speaking as someone who's had poems in a couple of magazines, and who worked as an editor for another poetry/prose magazine for a couple of years, some of the few objective things that seem to be hallmarks of particularly bad poems to me include rhyming purely for the sake of rhyming (or, even worse, trying and failing to rhyme purely for the sake of rhyming); really inane and/or cliched similes and metaphors ("My heart is like a bird, trapped in the cage of loneliness..."); any attempt at a sonnet where the author has not bothered to learn what an iamb is; "thesaurus syndrome," wherein the author uses big words in an almost-but-not-quite correct fashion in an attempt to sound erudite, and, of course, any poem whatsoever about how terribly deep and tormented its author is (i.e. approximately 90% of all the poems we all wrote in high school). :p

Poetry doesn't have to be romantic to be good. Poetry works in some cases the same way a catchy phrase works, or a song lyric.


"I will show you fear in a handful of dust" -T.S. Eliot

"Death is very scary"- Me

They both say the same thing. T.S. Eliot's is way cooler, however. And sometimes within a simple line, giant truth bigger then the words can come out. Not all of it will speak to everybody. But if it makes you think about things differently, or more completely, it's probably a good thing.
Sometime it can be playful

"Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me" -Emily Dickinson

"Everybody dies" -Me

Great quote. Dickinson does it way better. It's even kind of funny.

"Beware of poets who read there poetry in public. They may have other bad habits" R. Heinlein

Listen, writing poetry is good. It's theraputic. But if you don't read other poetry, don't inflict your poetry on the rest of society. Because you need to read other poetry to understand how poetry works (and "Footprints" does not count). I mean, don't write a sonnet unless you understand why a sonnet works and what you need to do. Even free form poetry has something that gives it structure. This is not a poem:

I look at the rain, and I feel sad
I never felt this bad
the rain is like the boy
who isn't anymore.
I am sad like the rain.

People who write that crap need to get the crap kicked out of them.

Hmm let me try jack out something...

How's this:

Rain.
The dark clouds hover
A whiff of fresh breeze
A rustle in the trees
People running for cover yet
Getting wet.
Always rushing from place to place
Why the haste?
As I watch I wonder if
Life descends in torrents of
Rain.

Or how's this:

I look at rain, and I am pissed
At the world, on which I whizzed
A trickle, a stream, a Mod-damned fountain.
And dumped on it a massive mountain
of crap, monumental like the Pantheon in Rome,
Screw you guys, I'm going home.

Thank you, thank you. :D

I have a few friends who are poets, which is to say that they've had their poetry read and/or published outside of the self-publishing circle. They've done some cool stuff.

One of them did a series called "20 by 20" where he took polaroids of friends and people he ran into and then made up a "20 Something" fictional poet for them, gave them biographies and critical summaries and then wrote poems for each of them as if it where theirs. He was, of course, making fun of the 'blog' poetry and other such stuff that he was encountering. It was fantastic. One of these days I'm going to make a doc of those poets.

This is why: When you study film you have to watch a lot of student films(duh). At least a third of these films where people looking longingly in cut-frame while someone records a poem too close to the damn microphone. Usually next to the ocean, but that's probably because my college was next to some very beautiful ocean spots. It prompted one of my eventual complaints that would get repeated-We have a creative writing department, if you want to be a poet, be a poet. Frustrated poet as filmmaker is getting irratating. That was accompanied by "Just because El Mariachi was made with @$7 grand doesn't mean that your first film has to be action or horror...and your pimply faced 19 year old friend, no matter how good an actor (and he's not) will never be able to pull off grisled veteran cop." But that's beside the point.

My blind spot is dance, I don't know if someone is dancing well or if I should put a wallet in their mouth. And I've taken critical studies classes at the graduate level. Does that mean that dance is crap and everyone the Earth who gets dance is faking it to fuck with me? No. It's just a blind spot on my part. So I don't watch a lot of dance unless there is another related and more complelling and relevant reason.

That went all over the place....sorry about that.

In general, as with anything, really good work and really bad work are both fairly easy to recognize. No one is going to look at unlabeled poems by Eliot and a sixth grader and have a very hard time determining which is which. :p

Which is funny, because the same can't be said for visual art. 6th grader painting have been praised for there visionary genius before the critic is let in on the con.

Speaking of "emo" ... Ruffy'll hit this thread sooner or later.
*nods*

If i may - as i so often do in my style ... quote William S. Burroughs, to emphasize what believe to be a good point or two ...:

It's funny.
It's actual very funny what you just said.
Ran out.

They can either paint it, or draw it, or write
it down and then pass it on to somebody.

They read what you're saying,
and then they reexperience.
That's the only connection
you have with that, man.
So you can't rewrite...
'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie...
and you betray your own thoughts.
To rethink the flow and the rhythm
and the tumbling out of the words...
is a betrayal.
And it's a sin, Martin.
It's a sin.

I don't accept your, uh...
Catholic interpretation
of my compulsive, uh...
necessity to rewrite
every single word at least ( ) times.

Guilt is -Thanks.
Guilt is the key, not sin.

Guilt re not writing
the best that I can.

Guilt re not, uh, considering everything
from every possible angle.
Balancing everything.

Well, how about guilt
re censoring your best thoughts?
Your most honest,
primitive, real thoughts...
because that's what your laborious
rewriting amounts to, Martin.

Is rewriting really censorship, Bill?
Because I'm completely f*cked if it is.

Exterminate all rational thought.
That is the conclusion I have come to.

What is the man talking about?
I'm being serious.

So is he.

Speaking of "emo" ... Ruffy'll hit this thread sooner or later.
*nods*

If i may - as i so often do in my style ... quote William S. Burroughs, to emphasize what believe to be a good point or two ...:
Dammit Straugn, you're not quoting Burroughs, you're quoting Cronenberg alluding to the discusions that where had between Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. Ginsberg would agonize over the poems, Kerouac wrote On the Road on a continious roll of paper and Burroughs helped pioneer 'cut ups' where text was cut up, tossed and reassembled. He was recreating a conversation that never occoured to contrast the styles of the three Beat pioneers.

But that's Cronenberg, not Burroughs. And he's alluding a bit to Exterminator.

When you create something that you are proud of and put it on display, it is art no matter what.

Having others like it is a whole different thing..

If others don't like it, or even if they love it, they become critics of art.

Art is.. art..?

Am I making sense? Or should I just shut up?

Speaking of "emo" ... Ruffy'll hit this thread sooner or later.
*nods*
Damn you and your correctness.

When you create something that you are proud of and put it on display, it is art no matter what.

Having others like it is a whole different thing..

If others don't like it, or even if they love it, they become critics of art.

Art is.. art..?

Am I making sense? Or should I just shut up?

Fine. But at least people should give a warning. Something like "I haven't read a poem since "Where the Sidewalks ends" But here is a bunch of words that are strung together about how I am feeling right now." Otherwise, I might have to read it, vomit, and purposely choke on said vomit just so I never have to read that crap again. Bad poetry costs lives, Man!!! I think we could defeat all terrorists by airdropping the collected works of Mr. Patton's 11th grade creative writing class translated into Farsi over the Middle East. Or maybe that's the REAL reason they hate America! Hmm.

Dammit Straugn, you're not quoting Burroughs, you're quoting Cronenberg alluding to the discusions that where had between Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. Ginsberg would agonize over the poems, Kerouac wrote On the Road on a continious roll of paper and Burroughs helped pioneer 'cut ups' where text was cut up, tossed and reassembled. He was recreating a conversation that never occoured to contrast the styles of the three Beat pioneers.

But that's Cronenberg, not Burroughs. And he's alluding a bit to Exterminator.
You're right. My apologies. I didn't see Burroughs clarifying for that.
*cringes*
That quote's harder to google en masse than some other stuff.

BTW - Although i have "Exterminator", i haven't read it. I finished "On The Road" a long time ago - about ten years ago.

Fine. But at least people should give a warning. Something like "I haven't read a poem since "Where the Sidewalks ends" But here is a bunch of words that are strung together about how I am feeling right now."

For whatever reason, this reminds me of a saying some poetic friends of mine and I came up with a few years ago, back when I was working for the magazine I mentioned earlier in this thread: "There are three types of people in the world - poets, people who come up to poets at parties and tell them that their favorite poem is 'The Road Not Taken,' and people who come up to poets at parties and tell them that their favorite poem is 'The Road Less Travelled.'"

(We went on to conclude that the third group should probably be shot on sight, but then we were all feeling a little bitter that day.) :p

Am I making sense? Or should I just shut up?
You're making just as much sense as always, don't worry.

I'll add a Fourth. People who come up to a poet and say, "The Road not Taken" is overrated. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a better Frost poem, don't you thing.

And a fifth "I really like the poem that came with my Anne Geddes poster"

And a sixth "Have you ever read any of the New Jedi Order books?"

For whatever reason, this reminds me of a saying some poetic friends of mine and I came up with a few years ago, back when I was working for the magazine I mentioned earlier in this thread: "There are three types of people in the world - poets, people who come up to poets at parties and tell them that their favorite poem is 'The Road Not Taken,' and people who come up to poets at parties and tell them that their favorite poem is 'The Road Less Travelled.'"

(We went on to conclude that the third group should probably be shot on sight, but then we were all feeling a little bitter that day.) :p
Jazz musicians joke about people at small clubs who make requests thusly-
"Play some Mill-ess Dave-Ez!"

You're making just as much sense as always, don't worry.
You know, that doesn't mean much good.

And yay you sig'd me :D

Damn you and your correctness.
Well, this time i got lucky.
Not that luck is always my friend.

Well, this time i got lucky.
Not that luck is always my friend.
I think it was my emo senses telling me I was getting attention here.

You know us emos love attention!

As someone who writes poetry, I always try to make mine make sense. There always about something.

I can’t stand people who write random stuff that makes no sense, what's the point? Ok ok, so it doesn’t HAVE to make sense, and it doesn’t have to rhyme, but I choose not to read that style of writing.

I certainly don’t consider myself an 'artist'. I use it as an outlet, and I'm selective on what I let other people read. The only person who will ever truly understand their work is the person who wrote it. People will interpret things how ever they want to.

Jazz musicians joke about people at small clubs who make requests thusly-
"Play some Mill-ess Dave-Ez!"

Hee. :p One of the many good things about my particular brand of musical performance (classical singing, generally choral) is that one rarely has to take requests, or I'm sure I'd know stupid-people stories for that realm, too.

Hee. :p One of the many good things about my particular brand of musical performance (classical singing, generally choral) is that one rarely has to take requests, or I'm sure I'd know stupid-people stories for that realm, too.
"Play some Divorce-sick!"

I think it was my emo senses telling me I was getting attention here.

You know us emos love attention!
Mmmhmmm. :)

Mmmhmmm. :)
;)

"Play some Divorce-sick!"

Oh wow, until this moment I'd totally forgotten the story one of my orchestra friends told me years ago about his high school band teacher. This fellow, who apparently took himself very seriously, one day told the band that they were going to learn "Dov-ruck." The whole band had no idea what he was talking about until he handed out the music, at which point the smarter kids in the class spent the rest of the hour desperately struggling not to giggle as the teacher told them the story of Mr. Dovruck's life, repeating the name at least a dozen times. For weeks, it seems, they would be instructed to "take out your Dovruck," and "make sure to go over your parts in the Dovruck piece this weekend," until one day Dovruck magically became Dvorak with never an explanation offered. I always felt rather bad for that teacher, whose students are probably still laughing at him to this day... :p