Poetry

mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Benny B said:
You'd have to read the book, it's quite an involved argument he's making, but you're way off. If anything, 'illiterate' language, is closer to nature than us post-shakespeareans. More modern poets have a lot of work to do in creating true metaphors to get back to that more 'primitive' expression.

Homer hadn't read shakespeare but he's still seen as the poetic gold standard.
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Harold Bloom made the same sort of point as Barfield. It sort of makes sense: I spent most of my formative years being disgruntled and confused before reading the word disgruntled and thereafter being only disgruntled.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
"Men do not invent those mysterious relations between separate external objects, and between objects and feelings or ideas, which it is the function of poetry to reveal. These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thought, but of any individual thinker...

The language of primitive men reports them as direct perceptual experience. The speaker has observed a unity, and is not therefore himself conscious of relation. But we, in the development of consciousness, have lost the power to see this one as one. Our sophistication, like Odin's, has cost us an eye; and now it is the language of the poets, in so far as they create true metaphors, which must restore this unit conceptually, after it has been lost from perception."
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
Harold Bloom made the same sort of point as Barfield. It sort of makes sense: I spent most of my formative years being disgruntled and confused before reading the word disgruntled and thereafter being only disgruntled.
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Yes, I heard about the book through bloom recommending it. You should read it, it's brilliant.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Benny B said:
"Men do not invent those mysterious relations between separate external objects, and between objects and feelings or ideas, which it is the function of poetry to reveal. These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thought, but of any individual thinker...

The language of primitive men reports them as direct perceptual experience. The speaker has observed a unity, and is not therefore himself conscious of relation. But we, in the development of consciousness, have lost the power to see this one as one. Our sophistication, like Odin's, has cost us an eye; and now it is the language of the poets, in so far as they create true metaphors, which must restore this unit conceptually, after it has been lost from perception."
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This sounds like McGilchrist (The Matter with Things) describing the spoiling ascendancy of the hair-splitting left hemisphere.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've been reading some JH Prynne lately

Also read some shakespeare sonnets last night

I was thinking that yes the use of language is elegant (and sometimes thrilling virtuoso business) but I don't get stirred EMOTIONALLY by much of it. Perhaps because as Craner has said I've never been in love and never will be?
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
sus said:
www.poetryfoundation.org

"A"22 by Louis Zukofsky | Poetry Magazine

July 1973 | Patricia Goedicke, Marilyn Hacker, Ben Howard, Stewart Lindh, James McMichael, Sandra McPherson, Charles Molesworth, Tomaž Šalamun, Maura Stanton, Diane Wakoski, Louis Zukofsky, William Heyen, David Shapiro
www.poetryfoundation.org www.poetryfoundation.org

Real heads know.
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Have you read the whole thing? What do you make of it? I'm quite intrigued by the bits I've read, but I can't really make head nor tail of it. Some of it reminds me a bit of Prynne in his monosyllabic mode, stuff like

let me live here forever,
silence foison to
on top of the weather
it has said it before
why that was you that

Etc etc
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I've been stuck in the 16/17th century recently, read the first book of the Faerie Queene, read a few Shakespeares I hadn't read before and I've nearly finished Paradise Lost. I do think it's the best era of English language, how fluid it was, though you can see it really stiffening up by the time you get to Milton. Got the Chapman translations of Homer lined up for when I finish PL.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Benny B said:
I've been stuck in the 16/17th century recently, read the first book the Faerie Queene, read a few Shakespeares I hadn't read before and I've nearly finished Paradise Lost. I do think it's the best era of English language, how fluid it was, though you can see it really stiffening up by the time you get to Milton. Got the Chapman translations of Homer lined up for when I finish PL.
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Does anyone ever get past Book 1 of FQ? I thought you would be the one to do it, Benny.
 
Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I definitely will, I loved book 1. The first ones a nice self contained thing that stands alone apparently, so I thought I could come back to the next one whenever.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Benny B said:
Have you read the whole thing? What do you make of it? I'm quite intrigued by the bits I've read, but I can't really make head nor tail of it. Some of it reminds me a bit of Prynne in his monosyllabic mode, stuff like

let me live here forever,
silence foison to
on top of the weather
it has said it before
why that was you that

Etc etc
Click to expand...
I haven't read it all and I've had similar struggles. I've enjoyed the feel though and tried to not be bothered by the loose grip. A friend of mine is a Zukehead tho and he is gonna help me
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
The future is on the side of no one
but the future. The future is always,
only for itself. When I measure me
against the future, I am least.

The future is pre-eminent, as such
it may be my birth, threading me
to itself, arachnaean ending. And
look on me in light, light from the future,
a radiance diffuses me in it -
nihilated by brightness, pushing me
backwards from its side - from
the side of future times.

The future travels over past me, rays
bake stray dark hair - absorbing, pressing.

The future, sun and ungrasped guide:
loft, describing all, the future does not
suffer to be seen.

When I see from the side of the future,
I strain to see me through its eyes -
it steels my face. I watch unrecognised.

After night has lit on
night, and day chased after day, in time
I face the future and confess:
"For nothing in return,
I am on your side."
 
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