The poets are going to hate me...
Hay Cloudies,
I've just got in from my poetry lecture. Anyone who read my last blog may recall that these are my least favourite. I am very aware, as the title implies, that a fair few poets on the Cloud will not like me for saying this but, heck, I'm going to rant about it anyway.
So, we were discussing Villanelles today, a form I had never heard of before. I won't go into detail on them but basically you do some weird repeating with two lines throughout and you have two constant rhyming patterns. The lecturer read out a couple of examples and after each one my irritation grew and grew.
I was starting to notice something that really grated on me as an avid prose fan.
Poets have so much damn freedom to do whatever the hell they want! They can twist, turn, change, warp, alter, ruin or destroy an original form and get away with it scot-free.
Poets, I know what you're about to retaliate with - us Prose writers can do that too. We can change plot lines, we can add twists, we can alter POV. Yes, we can but there is no way that we can have as much freedom as you!
This one Villanelle altered the rhyming scheme which was 'disaster', 'faster', 'vaster' etc, but then she threw in 'gesture' and 'fluster'. These words don't rhyme and I was looking at the poem thinkning, it looks like she's used those words because she couldn't find anything else that meant 'gesture' but rhymed with the others.
I may not be making sense here, I'm in an irritated state!
I just feel like poets can totally jumble up their work and be applauded for it becuase it's "Creative", "New", "Innovative". They can slip in a word that doesn't rhyme and use 'creativity' as an excuse, yet I'm looking at it thinking, 'you weren't being creative, that was just the only word you could use.'
Us Prosers get so many guidlines - we're not even allowed a prologue if the agent/publisher doesn't like it! If a poet was to submit a collection do they get told that they can't use certain rhyming schemes or metres??
I do apologise if I've offended any poets here. (I'm not a total hater - I love Sonnet 130 soooooo much) I'm just sick of being told that my stories have to follow a certain pattern else I won't get published, when poets can get away without even using punctuation because it's "effective".
Feel free to rant your replies at me. I've stated my case, I'm ready for the poets to fight back.
I've just got in from my poetry lecture. Anyone who read my last blog may recall that these are my least favourite. I am very aware, as the title implies, that a fair few poets on the Cloud will not like me for saying this but, heck, I'm going to rant about it anyway.
So, we were discussing Villanelles today, a form I had never heard of before. I won't go into detail on them but basically you do some weird repeating with two lines throughout and you have two constant rhyming patterns. The lecturer read out a couple of examples and after each one my irritation grew and grew.
I was starting to notice something that really grated on me as an avid prose fan.
Poets have so much damn freedom to do whatever the hell they want! They can twist, turn, change, warp, alter, ruin or destroy an original form and get away with it scot-free.
Poets, I know what you're about to retaliate with - us Prose writers can do that too. We can change plot lines, we can add twists, we can alter POV. Yes, we can but there is no way that we can have as much freedom as you!
This one Villanelle altered the rhyming scheme which was 'disaster', 'faster', 'vaster' etc, but then she threw in 'gesture' and 'fluster'. These words don't rhyme and I was looking at the poem thinkning, it looks like she's used those words because she couldn't find anything else that meant 'gesture' but rhymed with the others.
I may not be making sense here, I'm in an irritated state!
I just feel like poets can totally jumble up their work and be applauded for it becuase it's "Creative", "New", "Innovative". They can slip in a word that doesn't rhyme and use 'creativity' as an excuse, yet I'm looking at it thinking, 'you weren't being creative, that was just the only word you could use.'
Us Prosers get so many guidlines - we're not even allowed a prologue if the agent/publisher doesn't like it! If a poet was to submit a collection do they get told that they can't use certain rhyming schemes or metres??
I do apologise if I've offended any poets here. (I'm not a total hater - I love Sonnet 130 soooooo much) I'm just sick of being told that my stories have to follow a certain pattern else I won't get published, when poets can get away without even using punctuation because it's "effective".
Feel free to rant your replies at me. I've stated my case, I'm ready for the poets to fight back.
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13 Comments
Take Armitage's poem 'Homecoming'. A lot of people try to avoid teaching it because it is so vague, but I had a particularly bright group one year, so I put them into groups of 3, gave them three lessons and told them to deconstruct the poem with a view to giving a presentation. Every single group came up with a different interpretation (and a couple of them just shrugged and said 'haven't a clue. It's nonsense'). When I discussed this with my colleagues in the staffroom, we all offered our own interpretations (again, all different and all valid), and in the end came to the conclusion that it was pretentious bullshit (and we love ourselves some Armitage). Good, thought provoking pretentious bullshit, but pretentious bullshit nevertheless!
It's like the difference between modern art and 'proper' art (you know, being able to draw things that look like things). If you're striving for realism (which, ironically, is a big thing in fantasy art... it's fantasy, but it has to be anatomically viable!), drawing hands that are too big is a big no-no. Do it in modern art, and all of a sudden, it's 'an interesting quirk', or some kind of social commentary on how we're all obsessed with material gain. So, not just because the artist can't draw hands, then?
Prose writers have so many hoops to jump through... maybe the poets have the right of it. Throw off the shackles of not being allowed to write prologues! Enjoy those adjectives! Roll around in the fresh, springy grass mad entirely of 'ing' word constructions! Yay!
(.... aaaaand not get published as a result. Balls to you, Establishment, spoiling my fun...)
I remember that Armitage poem from GCSE times. If I remember correctly we interpreted it as some sort of lost father figure, and an unfit mother or something like that. I don't know. As your class said, 'Nonsense'.
You know what Ely, the first thing I said after leaving my lecture was 'Poetry is like cheating. It's like Modern Art because it's not really "art" at all.' Poetry and MA go hand in hand. They're both far too open to interpretation and that is the safety net that encloses all poems. They're allowed to be adventurous and different.
To turn out some verse in his time,
I can see why you rant and you moan
When this ‘poetry’ does not even rhyme.
If the writer cannot take the trouble
To find the right word that will fit,
Then his efforts are ‘wood, hay and stubble’
Not worth the page where it’s writ.
Those who talk about creative freedom,
How expression must be unconfined:
For me – well I never heed ‘em,
Excretion bovine comes to mind.
So I’ll stick to my couplets and rhyme schemes
And strugglings to make things just right.
Unlike these pretentious ‘crime scenes’
Masquerading as verse, but not quite.
http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/members/profile/4693/blog-view/blog_4639.html
and said some sensible stuff.
Jess - we came to the conclusion that Homecoming was indeed about abuse, but probab;y from the PoV of a husband / partner finding out about it after the fact (the whole telephone booth bit) - and the hint that something horrible is continuing as a result of it. I do find it an infinitely fascinating - and very, very creepy.
Poetry can be very affecting, though - Clarke's poem 'A Difficult Birth' can reduce me to tears, because I've been there. I find that prose affects me by getting me to love the characters (I care about what happens to them), but poetry speaks on another level... it's more about experiences and relating to them. For that reason, I do like poetry... I can't *write* it for toffee, but I do like it!
Whose verse was groundbreaking and avant-garde
When asked "What is Art?"
He took his clockwork fungus-bracket to the Sideways Woods at some time shortly after or before the hour of Grunion-sweltering
And developed a whole new way of metriculating the hysteresis of peristaltic hypersiderial bathymetrics.
And Wrath - he's a bit good at it, too! (Wrathy poem makes Ely lol...)
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