New Outlook on Poetry!?!
How do we consider what we consider to be poetry? Of course another lonely Friday night that I have been surfing the lonely web. (I really need to find a life!) I just came across another new blogging spot that I have found very intriguing and it caught my eye immediately. Now What blog spot just caught my attention and said "Read Me!" I am not sure if I am just losing my mind or what, but I found some great "poetry" that just mad me say WOW! For the particular part that I thought was great was that of a Reading Review of the Mad Hatter's. They talked about what the organization was about and the actual people that read, then it posted some of the author's work.
That is when I began to ask myself the question, what is poetry, and where is the line drawn when it comes to the extreme? I have been exposed to so many different types of poems, prose and of course the fiction/non-fiction aspects of creative writing in the last year or so, I just think it is absolutely amazing. There are so many communities that exist out in this big world we live in today. But who sits out there and classifies what is actually poetry, or whatever the writing may be? I just think that this catagory is growing and when/if will it ever stop?
Anyway back to the blog. The Mad Hatters' reading seemed so interesting and the blog went on to give a background on the particular authors that are a part of the association. I really enjoyed the work that they posted to the blog site. Of the ones listed, Gunnar Benediktsson's Symbiotic Architectures was my favorite. The picture is of crosses some large and others are smaller, or in the background. I just think this artwork says so much without saying anything at all, at least with words. Many days I feel that our days consist of saying so much that is either irrelavant or just completely ridiculous. In many instances we could go days without saying anything that is of essence. With this poetry that was listed I feel that it is evermore saying to me that we don't need to speak words, we can just get by on actions and seeing things in broader occasions.
For me and many other people it seems that writing is an outlet from the "real world" and with so many different genres of creative writing out in this place we live anyone can seem to fit in. What we consider is poetry someone else may think it is crap, but from my experience, every symbol or word may contain the right message to catch my attention and say exactly what I am feeling. Too extreme may only come if you, personally don't connect with the piece, but someelse may so it obviously isn't too extreme for them. Until someone can pinpoint those limits I will enjoy so an excentric and collective options of poetry that is out in the world around.
3 comments:
You asked who defines what poetry is – I think it depends on the forum you’re talking about. What the largest audience considers “poetry” is what’s getting published in the lit magazines and books, and so is defined by the publishers and editors. It’s not the best situation, but what can you do? Then there’s the internet definition, which depending on who you ask could be anything including random combinations of letters (that is, if you ask poetry.com) or gibberish or alcoholic poets. Maybe the question is does anyone really have the right to define what is poetry or fiction or literature? I guess if we lose our hierarchy of who’s able to tell us what literature is we’ll be thrown into chaos or something, since humans are such hierarchical animals. Unless we manage to move past that. (Oh my, this sounds very literature-socialist.)
Anyway, the emergence of such free, majority user-created and non-content filtered spaces such as the Internet has let all sorts of people post whatever they want, and so naturally the category of poetry has expanded for some people (including you) since there’s so much available now and all instantly accessible. The Web and computers have created technological possibilities for all sorts of new art: flash, as well as digital combinations of poetry and art and music in ways I’m not really good at explaining since I can’t actually create such things myself. Then, more traditional media-wise, there are forms of writing that’d never reach such a large audience without the Internet, like web comics and fanfiction. The Internet takes the power of publishing out of the hands of those with financial resources and connections and puts it in the hands of everyone who can afford internet or can make a trip to the library – of course, other issues arise from that, like whether the few nonsensical lines people put up is poetry or not.
-babybird
What I wonder is what the true essence of poetry is--in a Platonic sense. What does poetry have to be in order to be a poem, and what makes it not poetry?
I would like to take a moment to assert that some things are NOT poetry. I get afraid that so many of our words are being lost to relativism and lack of ability to declare ANYTHING as necessarily true, even something like what a poem is or is not. I mean, really, it won't even hurt that many feelings to declare a little objective truth in this area.
The nominalist system I see functioning freaks me out, whereby people can call things as they please, according to their own definitions, and then the thing takes on that named identity as an individual entity. Nothing has any essential form. There is less of a sense that, in this case, a poem HAS to be certain things in order to simply BE a poem, regardless of what we feel like calling it.
Largely...I think it just cracks me up, and confuses me, that we, in the language field, don't think often enough about the ramifications of the terms we use, such as "IS" vs. "IS NOT", or "I think" vs. "it is true".
What I wonder is what the true essence of poetry is--in a Platonic sense. What does poetry have to be in order to be a poem, and what makes it not poetry?
I would like to take a moment to assert that some things are NOT poetry. I get afraid that so many of our words are being lost to relativism and lack of ability to declare ANYTHING as necessarily true, even something like what a poem is or is not. I mean, really, it won't even hurt that many feelings to declare a little objective truth in this area.
The nominalist system I see functioning freaks me out, whereby people can call things as they please, according to their own definitions, and then the thing takes on that named identity as an individual entity. Nothing has any essential form. There is less of a sense that, in this case, a poem HAS to be certain things in order to simply BE a poem, regardless of what we feel like calling it.
Largely...I think it just cracks me up, and confuses me, that we, in the language field, don't think often enough about the ramifications of the terms we use, such as "IS" vs. "IS NOT", or "I think" vs. "it is true".
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