what is the point of poetry??

Question

so if you want to say something, why not just say it? why bother couching it in gramatically incorrect and indirect vague phrases?

I guess I like some of the older more "classical" poets (eg Shakespeare and Yeats), but this New Yorker stuff just seems like random word association to me. comments?

Answer 1

Hey Justin,

Poems are use in many places. Song lyrics are one place. If you like many forms of music, you like poems to an extent. Having admited that - then maybe the words are what is important. Same with Shakespeare - I don't care for his works myself, but there is a place for him.

"However, at a place like MIT, governed as it is by results and products, the apparent "pointlessness" of poetry is a terrible stigma. In a sense, I share it - boarding a jetliner, I don't much care whether the designer has an informed knowledge of, say, the work of Robert Frost. But having spent my MIT career teaching undergraduate how to read poems with passion, attention, and informed analytic understanding, I cannot altogether avoid the question that is my title here.

It is an old question. Plato banned poets from his Republic because they concocted imagined worlds. Sir Philip Sidney was prompted to compose a renowned "Defense of Poesy" because some of his fundamentalist contemporaries converted that accusation to one of falsehood. By "poesy" Sidney meant more than just verse, but his effort remains relevant."


Check out this site

Answer 2

Look... poetry is art. And it follows a lot of the same rules as art.

An artist can make a piece purposefully obscure and hard to reach. Sometimes that is because confusion is what they're after, or because they are only trying to reach people who are trying to reach them. In that sense poetry is seldom like TV, where you can just sit passively and have thing wash over you.

But in a larger sense, including rhyme, meter, and other things can also create a message. I've read some excellent poets who write poems that DO read just like a block of text, but they contain meter and rhyme anyway. This can make you feel like there is an order to things, a rhythm and flow to life, which can be a compelling effect in itself! Frost, I think, is pretty good at this (which would be why his stuff is so popular). Link 1 below.

A lot of poems also specifically break up flow for emphasis. Line-breaks and non-rhymes can underscore a point in a way that it's almost otherwise impossible to do in writing (except perhaps by varying text a lot). e.e. cummings is famous for non-rhyming poems that make heavy use of spacing and invented words to get the point across. Link 2.

When I write a poem, I usually DO write it out as a prose paragraph first. Sometimes I decide that the paragraph says exactly what I want to say and stop there. But more often, I want to say MORE than just prose will allow me, and that's when I get to hammering the words into a less typical, but more descriptive shape.

As art, though, you don't really HAVE to like it. Some art is MEANT for you to not like it. But poetry is so diverse that I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sub-section of it that you would find enchanting (link 3). If you don't like the rest, then leave it be. That's okay too! ( :

Answer 3

I can sympathize, to some extent. I'm more of a fan of the "classics" myself (Yeats, Keats, Houseman, Coleridge, Dickinson, etc.), but I also like some fairly "new" ones very well (Frost, Auden, and yes - even T.S. Eliot.) Then there's the very grammatically incorrect (and indirect) e e cummings, who makes the reader work fairly hard, but whose poetry can offer some amazing delights. I've grown to love some other more contemporary poets as well: Roethke, Merwin, Stevens, Williams, etc. In fact, one of my favorite poems is by Theodore Roethke:

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Some of the "New Yorker" stuff may indeed be lightweight and use obscurity for the sake of obscurity. But much of the "newer" poetry really IS good. You probably do have to "work" a little (or a lot) harder to extract the meaning; however, that can become part of the pleasure. Also, I'm 63 years old, and I know that now I can appreciate some poetry that seemed pretty much gobbledygook to me when I was younger.
I've always liked this saying:
"In order to discover the gold of the Indies, you must take the gold of the Indies with you."
Now at first THAT may seem like gobbledygook, too, but what is means is pretty simple:
You can only get as much OUT of a work of art as you bring TO it.
This isn't to say that there's not a fair amount of crap
around, masquerading as "poetry." But please don't dismiss ALL the newer stuff as crap. It's really not - and time will separate the gold from the dross.

Answer 4

Poetry's purpose is self-expression, and everyone's style is different. Sometimes people are making a point by using incorrect grammar and vague phrases, and sometimes it may just be due to carelessness. The newer stuff does seem a lot more relaxed than the classical works...maybe it's because this culture/society is a lot more relaxed than the ones of the past. The restrictive style with certain meters and rhyming may reflect the people's oppression from those times. That's just my take on it....

Answer 5

Poetry is a way taking what you are feeling and putting it into words. It is basically creating a work of art. It is giving a person the description of what you are trying to say as opposed to saying it. It is designed so it touches people minds, hearts, and souls. A beautifully phrased passage say from Shakespeare is better than just saying I love you. Just like any art form you are going to have stuff that just makes no sense and is just crap.

Answer 6

I agree, poetry is art. Not all poetry follows the rules of rhyme and rhythm, much of what is produced today and called "poetry" is actually prose ... maybe people just don't know the difference. The best poetry is that which rolls off the tongue ... if it doesn't sound good when read aloud, then it is just a bunch of vague phrases.

Answer 7

Poetry captures feelings, sensations and emotions better (more closely) than prose. The down-side of this is that you must bring some skill to the table when you read poetry (you must "speak the language").

If someone shows you a picture of a sunset, you may say "Wow." But how does the other person feel? In a poem (if he is a good poet), he can describe his feelings in a way that touches you more deeply than if he said, "I like sunsets. It makes me feel good." In a sense, you feel how he feels.

Poetry is adds that dimension to words.

Answer 8

I have to admit, and agree with you as well, that some--no most of today's 'poetry' just doesn't make sense. But since when has poetry made sense? I guess what you don't like is amatures trying to take today's society and make into something worth reading and feeling. One man's junk is another's treasure...

Answer 9

i wouldn't in any respect discourage all of us from writing and expressing themselves by poetry. The passe suggestions-set in the direction of artwork in many situations, replaced into represented via the fact, "artwork for artwork's sake." Then, "artwork imitates existence." and a jiffy later, somebody suggested, "existence imitates artwork." And somebody asked, "who's that this artwork fellow? he's getting some stable press." while i began out to ask human beings to study my artwork, the reaction replaced into chilly, many of the time, with summarily dismissal to the effect, "Yeah, this is stable." And my abstractions have been questioned. And my poetry crammed a paper pc. It in no way claimed any territory. to work out many human beings, previous and youthful alike, inquiring for grievance and help right here on Y!A, properly this is only gravy. deliver it. we are able to cry once you cry, laugh and play and sing once you open your hearts, and die with each and each 2d of melancholy.

Answer 10

Art has no rules, Dumb ***!
Sorry, anyway, I agree a lot of people pass out crap. Art can be crappy by the way. Some people like some work, some don't. As for grammar their is no such thing. English is a free language and belongs to each speaker uniquely, unlike french. "Freestyle Slamming" can be up there with Shakespeare or as sleazy as Eminem (not that he's untalented, he just married his mother's clone).The Indirect phrases piss me off too. But some people like that ****. Here's my poem written the day before the war in Iraq started. I don't think it's too anti-grammatical or vague.
Athene

Wise Athene,
Tell me how
To fix the world,
Send Bobo, your Owl.

And I hope to see in his beak,
Your olive branch, your sign of peace,
But Great Goddess, All Wise,
Teacher of Athens’ Scribes,
I know, I know, life’s not always fair.
It’s wicked, and costly, and people die down here.

But look down from Olympus with pity please,
Look down at our Arabs, who die on their knees,
While praying to Mecca, the Ka’aba, to Allah,
Bombs burst in Baghdad’s buildings of his followers!
As I worry and Fear that a great Jihad draws near,

Please tell me, Dear,
Mistress of Answers,
Seeress of Sagesse,
What must we do next?
With Crazy George swinging evil axes,
And Infidel Sadaam lighting matches,
Our world ready to explode,
Will humanity drift into woe?

Guide us with your knowledge so bright!
Is it really time to fight?

O, Ancient Goddess in the Know,
How you’ve watched our world so,
You must know by now what misery war brings,
How the resources could be used to do better things.

So why do you wield a Golden lance?
How on your shield Medusa’s snakes dance.
Why must the Goddess of Wisdom also be a Goddess of War?
How art thou Ares’ kith and kin in our lore.

Is there wisdom in fighting fire with fire?
Fire on! We’ll all expire.
Even if we win, What right have we to cheers,
We’re confusing wine and blood,
And dowsing flames with a Mother’s tears.

O, My Loving Goddess of Reason,
Have you sprung forth from Zeus’ head to bring a wiser season?
I guess when the Rivers of Enlightenment run dry,
You water you garden in blood, singing,
“If only they’d learn”