On Mar 16, 12:15 am, Karla
sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote:>>On Mar 12, 3:45 pm, "OB"
yahoo.com> wrote:>>> On Mar 12, 6:17 am, "Dennis M. Hammes"
arvig.net> wrote:>
>>>> George Dance wrote:
>
>>>>> Here's one of Teasdale's more philosophical
>>>>> poems:
>
>>>>> There Will Come Soft Rains
>
>>>>> There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
>>>>> And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
>
>>>>> And frogs in the pools singing at night,
>>>>> And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
>
>>>>> Robins will wear their feathery fire,
>>>>> Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
>
>>>>> And not one will know of the war, not one
>>>>> Will care at last when it is done.
>
>>>>> Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
>>>>> If mankind perished utterly;
>
>>>>> And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
>>>>> Would scarcely know that we were gone.
>
>>>>> -- Sara Teasdale
>
>>>> Exercise for poets: point out a half dozen places (even without
>>>> reasons, or saying which bad technique was substituted for a good
>>>> one) that this is a not-very-good poem, and at least one thing that
>>>> makes it not very good philosophy.
>
>>>> Exercise for editors: point out why it sold to its readership.
>
>>>> Exercise for teachers: point out why it sold to babies subsequently.
>
>>> The poem uses a weasel technique of suggesting while denying:
>
>>> "I'm not saying Bush is the greatest President we've ever had, but..."
>>> "I'm not saying Nature is cuddly and caring, but..."
>
>>> ... "but", the frogs sing joyfully, the robins "wear" their colour
>>> proudly, the trees display bridal modesty, and "Nature", whoever "she"
>>> is, can be guaranteed to be still around even after humanity has
>>> liquidated itself.
>
>>Except, of course, that none of that happens in the poem - the frogs
>>do nothing "joyfully", the birds do nothing "proudly", the trees do
>>not exhibit "modesty", and "Nature" does not even appear (though
>>"Spring" does, but obviously only in the poet's thoughts).
>
>>OB's article is a fine example of what I've previously called 'Kantian
>>literary criticism' (though it usually goes by the name 'Post
>>Modern'): the critic decides /a priori/ what the text says, and only
>>then reads the text - and finds exactly what he's determined to find,
>>whether it's there or not.
>
>>Which, IMV, makes OB's effort a paradigm example of bad literary
>>criticism. It does nothing but oppose the author's allegeded biases
>>to those of the critic. Readers who share the critic's biases will
>>love it; those who do not will hate it; but no one is any bit the
>>wiser after reading reams of it.
>
> Keep in mind that what was popular then isn't popular now. And I'm not even sure
> if the first part of my statement is true. I just know that we are cozy with our
> current chatter. It happens all the time.
Indeed it does, and that's the key
Literature needs empathy.
Pah! - I've been writing iambic tetrameter so much these past few
days, that I can't stop thinking in it. But I'll try to stick to
prose this time, since you've raised the key point that this whole
discussion has been about, in my mind; and since it's probably the end
- I see nothing left to do, but repeat what's already been said - this
is probably a good time to summarize and then get out.
> Jazz singers are judged on their scat.
> It's always changing. Cool scat isn't old scat. So the contemporary poetry
> reader may judge a poem written in the early twentieth century by today's
> standards. How do we wash that stuff right out of our hair?
And will we even try? That's the problem. Not just reading, and
criticism, but literature itself, requires empathy -- the ability to
imagine a different mindset, some other thoughts and feelings than
one's own, to see through another's eyes (to use another phrase that's
become cliche. But that's so seldom done.
Take, first, the writer. In order to learn his craft, he's taught to
write about his thoughts, his feelings, the events in his life; but he
neer learns that that is only the first step. The paradigm example of
that is the 'diary poet', of which poor Mr. Dockery on this list seems
a prime example - the man who drones on giving all the minutiae of his
life, with never a sign that he cares a whit for anything else. That
lack of caring - that comfortable numbness, as Waters called it -
comes through loud and clear, and keeps both reader and critic from
caring about him.
Then the critic and reader (which I'll lump together, as both are
really doing the same thing; the only difference being that the one
does it privately, while the other does it publicly). If he is
incapable of empathy, then, no matter how good the poem is, he will
'get it' only accidentally if at all. It doesn't matter what another
tells him (even if the other has your patience, which as you might
have noticed I do not), because he'll
be similarly incapable of 'getting' what the other is saying,
either.
Which is of course what happened here with Sara's (and my) two
critics. Not only did they bother with what the poem was saying, but
focussed only on what images they'd like, and what kind of poem I'd
written. That's bad enough, I suppose; hence my initial criticisms of
their criticisms.
But then, when I pointed out what I thought the poet was doing -
showing the reader a pretty picture, and pulling up a corner to show
the Abyss - they immediately thought that I was talking about an Abyss
of my own. They were incapable of seeing the difference between
recognizing that someone else feels a lack of transcendental meaning
in life, and deciding for oneself that life is
transcendentally meaningless. Not only an inability to empathize, an
inability to pay attention to anyone but their own thoughts and
feelings, but the inability to recognize that anyone could do anything
but be similarly self-absorbed.
So ends the rant. But it had to be pointed out; it's something here
for anyone who actually cares about literature to think about, and if
it gets through to one person, these three days have been worth it.
> What's impressed me
> alway about Dover Beach is how modern its diction is, even if its sentiment
> isn't.
Oh, yes. That may be because, as I think, Arnold is using a young man
as his protagonist. He's gives him a blunt, direct speech that works
as well now as then. Which is probably why, when I first read it, I
felt the poem's awful sadness immediately, though it took me several
readings and much thinking to try to figure out, for myself, just why
those feelings were there.
> Teasdale's light touch of fairly simple rhymes and images in the midst of
> a very dark time (perhaps so dark that it ever after affected her) to
> contemplate the unthinkable. Should we be clubbed over the head to consider
> something like that? Teasdale didn't think so.
Superficially, Teasdale's poems look quite naive; but there is much
art buried below the surface. (Whether that's just natural talent, or
a skill she worked on, is another story that I don't know at all.) In
the case of TWCSR, I think that she knew exactly the reader she was
communicating with: the Victorian matron settled down with her tea,
reading a pretty poem about robins afire, white trees trembling
softly, etc.. And her intent, as I read it, was to raise that
reader's consciousness a jot; to make her think, just for a minute,
about the paradigm shift, the loss of the sense of one's place in the
universe (so clear to me in DB, for example) that the world was
undergoing. That's a reader, BTW, that probably never would have
picked up either /Prufrock/ or the /Cantos/ - but, if she ever did in
the future, would now have a point of sympathy
from which she could understand those as well.
> You know, now that I think of it,
> both poets in their own way, can't consider the unthinkable without bringing to
> it the beauty of the external world or the high-minded call to true love.
Beuaty and love are constants, which (one can only hope) everyone will
feel for himself at some time. As such, they provide grounds for
empathy, a way into the work. (BTW, I used to hate the fact that
every novel I read, no matter its theme, always had a love story;
until I finally understood that that was the reason.) The key, as I
said, is empathy.
But now, as I feared, I'm starting to repeat myself; so I'll bow out
here and get my philosophy. I hope that you got something from my
comments on the poems, and that some of others enjoyed both those and
some of my poetry/'dog'gerel. I hope that even OB got something from
my criticism of his work (at least, a better way to criticize). And
I'm sure that even Dennis, though he strikes me as incapable of
learning anything from anyone, will get something too - the last word
in all the exchanges - which will please him no end.
And so I'll bid you adieu, leaving behind one last bit of doggerel
that fits the theme of this post:
Literature's a window
On many other minds.
Some of us prefer to look
And some to draw the blinds.
> Karla
>
>
>
>
>
>>> By personifying Nature, Teasdale avoids addressing what she pretends
>>> to address, the indifference of the universe to the fate of man (which
>>> Arnold /does/ address, as you point out), while pushing a subtext
>>> along the lines of "hey, folks, what's the point in fighting wars, it
>>> makes no darn difference to anything, let's all go hug trees
>>> instead" ("Not one" is suspiciously suggestive of "no one"). The
>>> "Nature" she presents is impossibly fluffy (an Eden without serpents)
>>> and consists entirely of cliches from other poems, and her assertion
>>> that it can get along fine without humans is disingenuous, insofar as
>>> any landscape offering swallows, robins and plum trees will almost
>>> certainly be highly artificial (she avoids mentioning the ploughed
>>> fields and hedgerows, but they're still there in the reader's
>>> visualisation - the selection and the cliches guarantee that).
>
>>> The poem, then, says nothing about the real world, and would
>>> presumably therefore appeal to people who don't want to know about the
>>> real world, i.e. babies. QED?
>
>>> Once I was visited by some JWs who left me a Watchtower depicting,
>>> full-page, an Edenic scene in which a lioness disported herself with a
>>> lamb, and three humans dressed in smocks had a picnic nearby. On their
>>> next visit, I asked them how God intended to modify the digestive
>>> system of carnivores so that they could become vegetarians, and
>>> whether such a gung-ho orgy of genetic modification didn't seem a bit
>>> rich coming from a Higher Being who has forbidden even compatible
>>> blood transfusions among members of a single species. I never saw them
>>> again.
>
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