First Base

One of the problems with being a self-proclaimed "poet" (and this is true of any self-proclamation) is that you can get together with other self-proclaimed poets and proclaim each other poets.

That is OK in itself. It's basically an informal club, at that point. Unfortunately -- after decades of cultural neglect, abuse or just uncertainty re: poetry -- these kind of "clubs" can become the baseline for what a poet is. That's when you've got a problem.

The problem gets worse when an otherwise good linguistic theory -- the one propounded by I.A. Richards that I mentioned in a previous post ("Ug! Fire!") -- is so open-ended that it lends a false vitality to this impoverished situation.

I recently made a comment on a NY Times blog post about poets and the end of summer (or something like that), and my comment was in verse. The blog wistfully quoted some contemporary poets on the seasonal subject, but one commenter found the whole thing wanting.

My verse comment followed his comment, as a response in agreement. Here it is (tidied up some):

To One Tired of the Tiring

"Mannered and obsolete," I can hear them now,
Smirking over words that form ocean drops
In stale modernist theories, which stops
Any effort past bland themes they allow.
Are there words with secret lives of their own,
Huddled, shrinking from a meek dread of love
In a cold, dripping cave? They cannot move
Beyond the clapping hand of Elite's koan.
Pure faith in the sweet pull of longing's ache
Reveals the lore each limbed harp holds within
Her sweet cascade of lissome Summer's chime.
There, I'd give more than I could dream to take,
In soft dalliance with firm rules' ken:
Every human touch pours out rhyme and time.

"Them" in line one refer to those poets, however sincere, who may be operating from this clubby "baseline," and who don't appear to realize that their work is suffering as a result, while "they" in line four refers to the "modernist theories" that have become a de facto standard.

Frankly, I don't think my effort at a Petrarchan sonnet (with a cheat) is a whole lot better. But it's what I felt at the time, as best I could put it in then, however mannered and obsolete the form may appear.

My cheat is that a true Petrarchan sonnet's octave usually rhymes ABBA ABBA, not ABBA CDDC. Oh well.

Petrarchan sonnets (as I mentioned a year or more ago) are much harder to write in English than their Shakespearean cousins because our language does not contain nearly as many usable rhyme words as Italian does. Sticking with traditional English rhyme patterns works far better.

However, I've tried a couple other ones, and maybe I'll go into some interesting facets of the Petrarchan structure someday. Some people really like them better. An English writer who was good at them (I've mentioned her before, also) is Christina Rossetti. Her brother's translation of Dante's "La Vita Nuova" may also be a good guide for them, if you're interested. I'm not a fan of his original ones.

Maybe I'll even fix the rhyme scheme on this one, if it can be fixed.

With All Due Respect

I hope there is never a baseline skill for being named "poet."

In other words, there should never be something external to the poem that makes your work "poetry" or not.

If being able to write a "formal" haiku or a limerick successfully, say, were the baseline skill -- Jack Kerouac would never have made the grade. As best I can recall, his many haikus did not fit any formal scheme -- they were what they were (and are). That's all that's ever needed.

There are lots of self-described "poets" out there. Like any similar self-description, they are made to give the describers a sense of self-importance they usually have not earned.

I like the definition I heard in Poetry 101 back in college: if someone whose opinion others respect calls something you wrote a poem, then you're a poet.

What that means, in effect, is that the work is what matters -- to you and to them. The label given to you for having written it is simply a means of identification -- a sonnet by Donne, an elegy by Tennyson, a haiku by Kerouac.

Your ability to write three balanced sentences in iambic pentameter that rhyme ABAB followed by a heroic couplet, for instance, does not necessarily make you a poet. It's something intrinsic, something at the core of such a work, that makes a given poem a sonnet. The form just reflects that essential fact. (And reflections can be very important!)

When you write one, someone else who loves sonnets (or elegies or haikus or whatever) is bound to notice, someday. If that person then calls you a poet, I think you can consider your dues paid.

P.S.: This post doesn't sound much like what I promised "next time" -- have patience. It serves as some necessary background. IMHO, baselines are vital -- just not in determining who's a poet! Or maybe, I just set one ... ?

Ug! Fire!

I'm not an academic.

While I've made that clear many times in the strict sense of the word (in that I don't have an advanced degree or a job in academe), what I mean by that now is, even if I read an academic work, I have no way to interpret it through the lens of academic discipline. I read it just as anyone else would, and I apply it as I see it amid the general hubbub of the street.

This is a proviso to what follows: that is, you agree to read this, knowing I'm not qualified academically in this (or any other) subject.

And the subject today is language philosophy. Last spring, I dove into a series of lectures given by I.A. Richards at Bryn Mawr College in the 1930s. The collection is called, appropriately enough, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (OUP, naturally, and pricey). The book massaged some brain muscles that hadn't been rubbed in some time, so I guess I can say (adjusting my pince-nez), "I found the book stimulating."

But in it, I really didn't find much I agreed with, which is an odd feeling: "I respect you tremendously, Dr. Richards, but I don't agree with you at all."

Richards taught that (and here's where I get unsteady) words themselves have no meaning other than what we choose to give them, but that "meaning" itself exists in something he referred to as an "ocean" or "sea." Of course, that latter reference is metaphorical, which provides a link to the heart of his "meaning of meaning" -- it's in metaphor. As far as Richards was concerned, all words are metaphoric in some way. The importance of this theory to poetry is obvious.

Clearly, you should read this book for yourself and not depend on my half-witted summary. I'm just trying to point out where the book went for me, personally. In a basic sense, Richards's theory just didn't "take." What did was a book I'd read a few years ago -- Language and Myth by Ernst Cassirer. I read the eight-dollar Dover edition with the English translation by Suzanne Langer.

Cassirer taught that (again, the previous proviso remains intact) language comes from myth -- not myths as we know them from "dead" religions, but from their root experiences.

In other words (this is my summary, not his, specifically): Unname the Caveman is out hunter-gathering one day as a storm brews up, and lightning hits a tree right in front of him. He runs off, as any other scared animal would, but he comes back later to watch the tree burn, fascinated.

Unname brings back to his cave the memory, and three things get invented in that cave: a (mostly sign-language) story, a particular grunt that means "fire," and a name for himself.

Unname is now Ug, the Fire Seer. From that, this Promethean experience eventually brings warmth (a sacred feeling), cooking (a sacred act), a sense of family (a sacred cultural essence) and, as the experience spreads from cave to cave, a tribe (the sanctity of shared experience -- the essence of "myth"). By then, it also makes Ug the Fire Priest. With great power ... .

Do I need to point out how firmly that book "took?" Perhaps equally obvious is the need to read that book for yourself, too.

I can just about guarantee that both books will benefit you. But one of them benefitted me more than the other one did.

And that (apparently) puts me at odds with the majority.

More next time.

Could it be ... ?

I've made some corrections and edits to my previous post. (I ought to know better by now than to write solely from memory, but ... !)

One thing from the back-cover blurb to my copy of The Portable Milton is a statement that claims the notion of Satan as a "radiant usurper" is more due to "Paradise Lost" than either the Old or New Testament, says the blurb.

That got me to thinking. The "backstory" of Satan's battle with God over Adam's creation is clearly related in the Koran.

So I checked. Yes, the first (slanted, I'm told) translation of the Koran in the West was in 1143. This same Latin translation was published in Switzerland thirty years before Milton was born in three editions, each with a preface by no less than Martin Luther!

Milton toured Europe, staying a while in Italy, as a young man, impressing all with his skill at Latin. He surely would have seen this translation in some form. Whether it influenced him as a poet is another matter.