6.05.2014

Pontificating at the Sphere; crit and critters phase 1 where Doris gets her oats; as Williamb


Many in this thread have already given expression to most of the things I think and feel about poetry, but there are some things I'd like to say about the relationship between poet and reader, or poet and critter.

 There are always people in workshops who take a hard, aggressive approach to critique, and this, by and large, with proper moderation and attention to board etiquette, is a good and productive thing.

 Knowing that, and knowing that aggression is not a big part of my nature, and that I always regret any instance when I become aggressive, and that I feel better after I have behaved passively and not belligerently, I go about critiquing in a more passive manner. I, as the reader, am the passive vessel, into which the poet pours her words. These words, in the arrangement she has made, are intended to affect me, and as a reasonable reader, I know that she wants me to be affected by the words in the same way that the words affected her, so I try to do that, to share her experience. I don't go into it with the feeling that she owes me something, or that she will be responsible for my disappointment if her poems fails to make an impression on me, or is simply poorly made: I let the disappointment fall on her by virtue of my having failed in sharing her experience. 

 There is no reason whatsoever for me to be angry or indignant towards her. And the worst thing to do is act offended by a poorly made poem. I've seen that kind of thing happen a million times: a critter acting like a shrinking violet, so in accord and at one with the benevolent power of good poetry that bad poetry is odious, even harmful to them. Bad poetry cannot possibly harm or offend a competent poet; on the contrary, it should arouse pity and compassion. Without bad poetry, no-one would know what good poetry was, and if all poetry was good poetry, there would be no need for poetry, no reason to write it. 

 I take a subordinate position to the poet. The poet has made something that she thinks might work, and wants to try it out on like minded people. I voluntarily take the time to read what she has made, and voluntarily agree to think and think and think and think about what she has made. The poet has not coerced or forced me to read her poem by the mere act of posting it for critique. 

 There are those who argue the contrary, but those arguments are not valid . Even in a workshop, any critique done by a member is done voluntarily, of their own choice. No-one is forced to critique a poem in an online workshop. No-one. I've seen many poems slide down the board at another site with a big goose egg in the reply column. I've had one or two of my poems slide down the board with nothing but a goose egg to bid it farewell. That, when all is said and done, is probably the harshest critique a poet can receive. We all have egos. No comment is worse than no comment.

 Now, some of the more aggressive critters like to say things like this to the poet:

commentexample_one says > I can't believe I wasted three minutes reading this. I wish I had those three minutes back! Will you please read the guidlelines, and post in a forum appropriate to your level of ability and experience, so that other people [meaning we really smart people] will not have to waste their time reading a poem written by someone who obviously doesn't know anything about the craft of writing poetry? We value our time as much as you value yours. 

The above comment, to my mind, is an example of someone with an ego on overdrive. Something similar to the above has been typed, or copy-pasted, millions of times, at other sites, and at one site in particular. The best response, even if the poem is execrable, as far as I'm concerned, is this:

poetreplyexample_88 says > Thank you, commentexample_one. I appreciate your taking the time to write this response. However, I'm afraid I cannot feel responsible or guilty about how you manage your time. I can only manage my time. Thanks again! 

At which point, due to the critter being wounded by the poet, much nastiness ensues, until a moderator steps in. In the real world, it sometimes happens that a Colley Cibber actually can hurt an Alexander Pope, though for most people the joke is always on Cibber. Ha-ha-ha. 

 It's obvious to anyone who knows about poetry that Pope was better at it than Cibber. It is glaringly obvious, hence the tragedy (to my mind) of Pope spending so much time wasting his gift, his remarkable skills, on laughing at and mocking writers who everyone knew could not hold a candle to him. Who knows what amazing works he could have penned had he been able to value a great poem over a good joke? 

 Luckily, for readers of poetry, along came poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, who spent their time writing with an effort aimed at exalting the human experience, of finding value in human life and human beings, in reverencing the natural world and the cosmos, rather than focusing on putting mankind to shame. Our religion, our faith, if we understand and practice it to the best of our ability, provides us with shame proportional to our deserving of it as individuals, and history gives us an abundance of reasons to be ashamed of ourselves collectively. 

 I prefer to use poetry, the artform that I love the most, even above my great love for music, to make an impression of that passion, that love that I feel, in the minds of a few other people. I don't wish to use poetry to make myself feel better or bigger than others, to softsoap or coddle myself, a purpose for which certain authors of satire have used it. I'd rather use it as a means of helping a reader to empathize with another human being, no matter who that human being is, just to take a severe example: a violent criminal undergoing capital punishment, or an innocent wrongly undergoing the same; how would, or could, that feel to the father and mother of the former, or the latter? How must that feel, as a human being? That's a big part the experiment of poetry for me, to explore situations in which I haven't been involved, to wonder how I would react, how I would feel, in such scenarios.

 In the end, I'd rather praise than blame as a critter, I'd rather reward than punish: knowing that there are plenty of harder, more aggressive critters out there doing what they do, keeping things balanced. I can't act in contradiction to my nature, nor, I think, can anyone else. Our job is to understand this and to enslave the emotions to reason, as best we can, even if, in reality, that goal is most likely impossible.

5.18.2014

"...It's an Orangy sky..."


As a father, I've encouraged my sons to look up Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Rape of Nanking, I've discussed the atrocities of the Holocaust, the evils of war, the evils that occurred in POW camps, the evils of religious, ethnic, and political persecution; as well as to bear in mind the evils of child and spousal abuse, sexual abuse, especially in times when people had no recourse to the law, nowhere to turn, no-one to go to for help. I've talked to them about poverty, disease, natural catastrophes, horrible accidents, etc. I want them to know the dark side of nature and the dark side of humanity, as well as the dark half of happenstance.  Anything can happen, at any time, to remove their comforts and destroy their lives. That's not to say I want them to dwell on such things inordinately, only to bear in mind their relative good fortune, and to be grateful, and to be compassionate to those who are not as fortunate, and to be reverent to our ancestors, who in general had far more difficulties and challenges to face in life than we do now.

And I'd rather they watched an extremely violent film like Kiss of the Dragon, a Jet Li vehicle, than the artsy fartsy A Clockwork Orange, for the simple fact that the former has a redemptive moral meaning and purpose while the latter does not. I can already hear the slings and arrows of contempt that might come my way for saying such a thing. I said as much on another forum and was pelted with rancor and indignation, so I won't be surprised.

4.22.2014

Cosmotheological diddlings from Eratosphere; as Williamb


I'll be 50 in two months, and until Feb. 2011, when I was 46, I was an atheist the whole time, just like my pop, who as it happens, turned 70 back in January.

 Either I'm insane or I was touched by God. Or something extremely powerful, benevolent, and amazing. I have been an outspoken God-believer ever since, despite the fact that my life is falling apart around me and each day brings new difficulties. I go to bed every night and see images of the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking, The Inquisition, the bombing of Hiroshima, Pompey, tsunamis, human suffering on a terribly grand scale. But it's the daily catastrophes, accidents, atrocities, the day-in day-out round of human suffering that I don't hear or know about, that troubles me even more.

 I say, Hey God, why the hell is all this happening? When am I or my loved ones gonna be tossed into the grinder? Why am I safe and sound? Why don't I have physical pain? Why are my loved ones not dying? Why am I not suffering? I conclude that my suffering is still to come. In a universe where balance is all, it seems only correct and proper that I should get my share of the pain, after 50 years of relative ease and comfort.

 I think this is how Christ works in me. I've had it too easy. I let the years go by. Now comes the rough stuff. Every day is harder and harder. No wife, see kids rarely, no friends, low-wage job, future looks dismal.

 And we haven't even started. I expect things to become worse. After a certain amount of time, I won't be able to handle the stress, that harsh gnawing in the belly, the fear. A time will come when I can't keep a job, or do a job properly. A lifelong Tull fan, that Aqualung character has always haunted me, since I was about 14. I saw myself in him.

 Back in Cowper's day (I think I'm a lot like he was) there were patrons who helped crazy poets along. Those days are long gone. Nobody gives a tinker's damn about poetry, because everyone's a poet. Mishmash splishsplash = word salad: poem.

 Listen to what Roger said. This needs to be tightened up, much of it deleted or re-written. The final couplet, I'd do without the summing up. There's good material here, and something fine can be made of it I'm sure. The F-bomb is too fucking much in the first bit.


1.11.2014

'Splainin' @ FRDB; response to D; as WilliamB


D. wrote: The question was not about art, or the role of art, but the descriptive efficacy of ordinary language/folk psychology.

Fair enough. The best way I can answer this accurate rebuttle is to try and address the exact terms you have used in my own way. I hope this eases things along and that our interactions can improve.

First: I would have to say that "folk psychology", at face value, is an oxymoron. Psychology is a science, and "folk", generally speaking, does not refer to scientists and what they do. So I have never cared for that phrase, which is why you won't catch me saying, "we need more folk psychology, people!", while it may appear that I actually am endorsing such a thing.

Now here is the important part: while "folk psychology" doesn't really make much sense with respect to the medical, and/or scientific disciplines (at least so I believe), that does not therefore mean that "folk", meaning people who are not scientists or psychologists, are without relevant insights into the things which professional people conduct research about, or without intelligence, scrutiny, the capacity to reason, or the ability to understand the way the world is. See? That's all I'm actually saying, in a nutshell. I am not dissing science—that would be ludicrous! I am defending us regular "folk" in a world where regular "folk" desperately need defending against increasing whackiness in government and academia.

My apologies to those in and from places of higher learning. I am not judging individuals when I make these comments, but things in general, from the standpoint of an avid reader and observer who is basically self-educated and has been since I got out of High School knowing absolutely nothing. You don't have to attend universities or colleges nowadays to get a fair handle on what is being taught to people. The major institutions of higher learning have vast websites, libraries, and data-bases which can be accessed by people who aren't students, and YouTube and many other sites are choked with videorecorded classes, lectures, debates, pdf documents of papers, etc. Not that this is equal (of course not!) to being a student, or anywhere near it, but an intelligent person can get an idea. And to be honest, I've read some things being taught by professors to impressionable young people that I find embarrassing, shameful, and utterly absurd as an intelligent human being. I hope I don't have to go into detail, but if I absolutely must, I suppose I can dredge up some examples of what I'm talking about.

An easy example off the top of my head would be courses given with a patently militant-feminist bent that suggest that Beethoven's music was about rape. That isn't to say that one shouldn't be able to have a theory that Beethoven's music contains aggressive elements that could potentially correlate to masculine aggression against women, etc, but to actually teach it to students and grade them on their response to such a theory, from a decidedly biased and totally subjective proffessorial perspective, is not good education, but something entirely different.

Next: let me address the phrases "descriptive efficacy" and "ordinary language", and what "Art", my one-word answer to the post I quoted from you, could possibly mean in relation to those terms:

I'll grant, straight off the bat, that a novel, or a poem, does not have "descriptive efficacy", at least not in the way you, J. or f. might understand the term (I say "might" because I don't want to come off as a mind-reader or what have you. I'm only guessing at your respective viewpoints and perspectives based on our interactions here); but, if you really want my honest opinion, I would venture to suggest that a novel like Adam Bede, by George Eliot, or The Hero, by Somerset Maugham, or any number of great novels one would care to mention, have truckloads of "descriptive efficacy" with respect to the human experience from my personal perspective: meaning, necessarily, what it means to be a conscious, intelligent being in society co-existing with other similar beings. A great film can work even better on the average person, on people who either don't like to read or need things delineated in a more immediate, sensual, and relatively brief fashion. Millions of people across the planet exit movie theatres with their brains in overdrive, pondering ideas and concepts, having been oftentimes deeply moved, even changed, by the simple experience of watching a great flick. This is nothing new or controversial. Smart, and highly educated people around the globe, including academic philosophers (like Deleuze, just as one example) have recognized the important psychological impact of film on the social animal.

To go out on a limb here, I'll say something that is controversial, and which I realize is just my personal opinion, which you can take or leave at will: I think classic and contemporary film-makers, particularly the Chinese masters (and yes, many in the mainstream blockbuster camp as well), have just as much—and very often far more— useful and important things to say about the human experience than the average college or university course. <<< there, that's just one of my wholly subjective, emotional, and hopelessly passionate, romantic opinion on things. Y'all may tear it apart like hyenas if you like, but I'm stickin' to it until convinced otherwise!