On Mar 25, 7:34 pm, Karla
sbcNOSPAMglobal.net> wrote:> On 16 Mar 2007 06:53:44 -0700, "OB"
yahoo.com> wrote:
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>>>On Mar 16, 3:01 am, "Dennis M. Hammes"
arvig.net> wrote:>>> OB wrote:
>>>> On Mar 15, 2:16 am, "Dennis M. Hammes"
arvig.net> wrote:>
>>>>>OB wrote:
>
>>>>>>Um... I'd settle for some kid going up to one of my paintings and
>>>>>>saying: "Hey! I know what that's meant to be! It's a cow! Look,
>>>>>>there's the eyes..."
>
>>>>>This is a test. We repeat, this is only a test.
>>>>> When you pick up a pencil, do you doodle rhymes and phrases, or
>>>>>cow eyes?
>>>>> When you think of something, do you rummage phrases by which to
>>>>>say it, or do you make cow eyes at it?
>
>>>> You know what I mean. I write a poem about a guy in a car not doing
>>>> anything with a girl, and someone sees a girl in a car having
>>>> something done to her by a whole bunch of guys. I write a verse about
>>>> some airport lights being switched off, and someone sees the lights on
>>>> the wing of a departing plane. I write a poem about a guy writhing on
>>>> a bed, surrounded by expectant predators, and someone sees "hate-
>>>> disgust", rather than what matters to me, which is the picture
>>>> itself.
>
>>> Welcome to poetry.
>>> Newspapers write denotations.
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>>So do signs in hotels.
>
>>"THIS IS THE USSR. YOU ARE WELCOME TO IT."
>
>>(What I like about Vera's poems. About every two lines she manages to
>>connote something so bizarrely remote from what she wants to say that
>>the effect is surreal. It is probably perverse of me to find
>>entertainment in such things.)
>
>>> Poetry spins its yarns out of connotations, the fuzzy parts (the
>>> brush strokes), which does /not/ say that the denotations/substance
>>> can be wrong or absent; then you got nothing but the fuzz.
>>> No yarn, no fabric.
>
>>So far, this is all what I was telling my fourth-graders two years
>>ago.
>
>>> Connotations are the parts of words that nobody has to explain,
>>> either, but the /only/ way to learn whether yours will be so read by
>>> any/everybody else is to see how they've been used in the litarature,
>>> as them as got there first created the connotations the rest of us
>>> are stuck with.
>
>>> Unless you've some that are so strong as to explain themselves by
>>> letting the objects do their own stuff to each other.
>>> If you don't quite know, run it up the pole and see who salutes what.
>
>>What I've been doing on aapc lately, with depressing results. My cows
>>were saluted as crocodiles.
>
>>>> Missing referents. presumably - missed out what would be routine
>>>> filling-in of detail in a painting, but in a poem would look like
>>>> "explanation".
>
>>> A painter must select the objects that will tell the story; so must a
>>> poet. Don't explain; select the objects and let them do their stuff.
>>> Sometimes the object that reminds you of the stuff isn't the
>>> object that does it.
>>> Implication is everything, so which is a proper subset of what is
>>> crucial; contraimplication /always/ misses its target, as implication
>>> does /not/ work from the general to the specific.
>
>>Let's see if I understand this aright.
>
>>Teen Angst
>
>>Timid-edged gauze imploding into thighs
>>that splay from hitched-up skirt, astride the wheel
>>of her Fiesta, street-lamps posterize
>>to vanishing delta, bride-white to the steel
>>of framing monocoque; next door, past the years
>>and fumbling gear-shift, shiftily I linger,
>>still scowling at pedestrians and fears,
>>still helpless to drive home a hamstrung finger.
>>Near misses remain eternally the Styx
>>legending the unknown, where even grander
>>canyons can be spanned in single kicks;
>>on this side, twisted belts are worn as standard -
>>borne if only for a picture's sake,
>>glimpsed in reflection, one foot off the brake.
>
>>You will probably see the problem: I was trying to say too much at
>>once. Hence, instead of going for the precise word, I substitute a
>>more abstract one in the hope that it will allow me to carry forward
>>three or four strands of meaning simultaneously, all of which are
>>suggested to me by the scene described. The penultimate line, e.g.
>>wants to refer back to the "picture" set forth in 1-8 and engraved in
>>memory, to suggest the idea of someone deriving strength from
>>recollections; it also wants to suggest that we put up with our
>>failures and "near misses" by imagining ("picturing") successes in our
>>minds (imagination, not being subject to the Reality Principle, allows
>>us to jump canyons in single kicks); it also wants to suggest that
>>later in life, we become resigned to our failure and bear it for the
>>sake of our children (whom we see reflected in the car's rear-view
>>mirror, and for whose sake we don seatbelts) - these serving as a kind
>>of alibi for failure, as is well known. There is also the suggestion
>>that "near misses" (the women around us) are imbued by us with a sense
>>of mystery ("the unknown") and that there is something in us that
>>wants to preserve this attractive "picture", causing us to fail and
>>falter in our seduction attempts... and so on. I don't know if any of
>>these ideas will be picked up by the reader, and that's because
>>"picture" is a general word that doesn't imply specifics such as
>>children, recollections or imaginative reconstructions. In fact, it
>>doesn't imply anything - right? On Karla' advice I offered a "fix"
>>which substituted "children", but that narrows the interpretation so
>>much it makes me lose interest in the poem.
>
> Using your sonnet attempt, I've thought about sonnets for the past week or
> so. I read sonnets and read about sonnets too. I wonder if your sonnet
> might be saved by rewriting it with a different point of view, and also
> writing it to your failed conquest? Think about Shakespeare's sonnets for a
> minute. There's an immediacy present in most of them due to the pretense of
> conversation, I think. What makes its way to the top, the meaning of it
> all, is through the veil of the conversation. Maybe I'm trying to peel away
> something contemporary from sonnet writing by my suggestion. The voice of
> the speaker in your poem is sterile and unappealing. The frustrated memory
> is unappealing. The meaning coming through as a result is unappealing and
> causes me to want to dismiss the poem. Why write in a sonnet form at all?
> Why this incident and this premise in sonnet form? Dennis defines 'sonnet'
> as 'sound' elsewhere; I prefer 'little song'. Your poem makes a sound; I
> want it to make a little song. I want it to engage my ear, and not just
> beat away into meaninglessness which it tends to do right now. You may not
> want to rewrite this as I suggest because to do so would mean involving
> yourself in it again, making it less an intellectual exercise. However,
> engaging your object again might save the song.
>
> Karla
Thanks for the suggestion. I think the poem in question is quite
clearly unsalvageable - what's the point in trying to "save" something
that no one, including (at the last re-reading) me, can find a single
good line or good image in? but what you say about using "the
pretence of conversation" is interesting and useful. I'll be following
that up.
>
>
>
>>>> Some, allegedly, write poetry to communicate a range of very precise
>>>> emotions. For me, the process involves the creation of a mental
>>>> picture, usually a composite of an observed or remembered scene with
>>>> some imaginative elements added or rearranged. The picture, in turn,
>>>> may be associated with an emotion (often a sense of mystery, wonder,
>>>> awe) but seems to transcend it, in the sense that it can be seen from
>>>> a variety of angles, inspiring different emotions and interpretations
>>>> each time. If it has these properties, it seems good enough to make me
>>>> want to share it.
>
>>> It is. The method you describe is what Eliot called "objective
>>> correlative."
>>> I hold he got it from contemporaries' work on Chinese and Japanese
>>> poetry, esp. haiku, which latter is /purely/ letting the associated
>>> objects have at each other.
>>> There's a universe of object selection Harold G. Henderson's
>>> /Introduction to Haiku/. (It's also still the best treatise on haiku
>>> I know of; avoid the Blyth until you've had a few readings of the
>>> Henderson.) If it isn't still in print, try
>
>
>>Thanks.
>
>>>> I like paintings/poems that don't tell you what to think or feel. Like
>>>> Keats, I don't like those which have "a palpable design upon the
>>>> reader".
>
>>> Several things about preaching always obviate the claims of the preacher.
>
>>>> The poems I've written that I liked least (in that they tie up all
>>>> loose ends, "explain", tell you what you're supposed to think or feel)
>>>> are the ones others like the most.
>
>>> Others also like McHappy Meals, TV dinners, and Pablum.
>
>>>> This seems to be a problem worth addressing.
>
>>> Thus, poetry.
>>> (I.e., we all think so.)
>
>>>> Does any of this make sense?
>
>>> Perfectly. I think that with a little more reading, you wouldn't
>>> have had to ask.
>
>>Reading helps, but doesn't seem to alter the distance between brain
>>and thumb.
>
