tom swann
04-23-2004, 08:00 AM
I'm so very sorry. I started to read this thread, and indeed to read it through, but I started to choke on all of the poetics being used as a part of peoples' definitions. (Poetics, or poetic devices, or techniques - the use of linguistic structures in ways that the responder deems creative) I am a subjectivist to the core, and so...
Poetry is :
Poetry is.
Whatever.
I could use the classification 'poetry', or 'non-poetry', to delineate my own aesthetic tastes, as it seems to me that most people here have done. I see these definitions as being normative theories of what the form of poetry should be. Of course, I have my own views about what makes up effective poetry. These views are based on my own meagre experience of other's responses to what i have created - their response being words, which are assumably based on their experience of my words - and on my memories of experiences of reading other's words. The more of both of these one has to draw on, the more 'experienced' the definition of the form will be. But it cannot be said to be more valid. The basic premises that anyone can use for creating a definition are their own subjective experience, and that alone.
Objectively grounded definitions such as the 'words with linebreaks' version perhaps overcome the subjective haze, but then these types of approaches are either completely arbitrary, or aesthetic and thus not objective. Why should poetry have linebreaks? The only answer one can bring to it is a subjective one - my own here would be "because it has seemed to facilitate what seems to be a patterns of causality in my experiences". Ie, it brings me pleasure. But I don't beleive that anyone can give any linguisticly based categorical definition.
An analogy:
Culture is like a slideruler. (Perhaps a multidimensional slideruler, just for fun). In my mind there are figures that have been constructed by an interplay of the initial starting conditions of my mind (DNA and the such) and my experiences. One of these figures, or perhaps parts of one great big one, dictate my own personal tastes about written language. Part of this may, and no doubt does, include some vague rules for categorisation of what poetry 'is' (it seems that for some people here these rules are not so vague, to their own judgement). This figure is the aggregate of all of the mindviruses that have attached themselves to my mind, and mutated therein.
Everyone has their own figure. The figures that others construct will influence my own - this website is set up to facilitate this to a level as much as is practically possible - but the parameters by which I judge and categorise ANYTHING will always be my own, and my own only. The same goes for every other person's conception.
Collective culture then, in the abstract, is one individual's subjective conception of what every individual in a group, including the concieving individual, concieves that collective culture to be. Leaving the word 'group', and even 'culture', to be included as subjective parameters in the definition. The wonders of skeptical relativism!
That is my meta-aesthetic perspective, applicable to all and anything, be it created by humans with intent to entertain or enrich, or be it created by humans for whatever other reason, or be it just being.
Apologies for the apparent wankery of all that, but that's how I see it. I hope sense was made. Actually, I hope it didn't seem like I was stating the glorious obvious, as the responses of others usually suggest to me.... My own response to my own words is that I lack clarity and over indulge in excessive and circular pontification. Still working on it!
- Tom
putting down the linguistic fiddle
Poetry is :
Poetry is.
Whatever.
I could use the classification 'poetry', or 'non-poetry', to delineate my own aesthetic tastes, as it seems to me that most people here have done. I see these definitions as being normative theories of what the form of poetry should be. Of course, I have my own views about what makes up effective poetry. These views are based on my own meagre experience of other's responses to what i have created - their response being words, which are assumably based on their experience of my words - and on my memories of experiences of reading other's words. The more of both of these one has to draw on, the more 'experienced' the definition of the form will be. But it cannot be said to be more valid. The basic premises that anyone can use for creating a definition are their own subjective experience, and that alone.
Objectively grounded definitions such as the 'words with linebreaks' version perhaps overcome the subjective haze, but then these types of approaches are either completely arbitrary, or aesthetic and thus not objective. Why should poetry have linebreaks? The only answer one can bring to it is a subjective one - my own here would be "because it has seemed to facilitate what seems to be a patterns of causality in my experiences". Ie, it brings me pleasure. But I don't beleive that anyone can give any linguisticly based categorical definition.
An analogy:
Culture is like a slideruler. (Perhaps a multidimensional slideruler, just for fun). In my mind there are figures that have been constructed by an interplay of the initial starting conditions of my mind (DNA and the such) and my experiences. One of these figures, or perhaps parts of one great big one, dictate my own personal tastes about written language. Part of this may, and no doubt does, include some vague rules for categorisation of what poetry 'is' (it seems that for some people here these rules are not so vague, to their own judgement). This figure is the aggregate of all of the mindviruses that have attached themselves to my mind, and mutated therein.
Everyone has their own figure. The figures that others construct will influence my own - this website is set up to facilitate this to a level as much as is practically possible - but the parameters by which I judge and categorise ANYTHING will always be my own, and my own only. The same goes for every other person's conception.
Collective culture then, in the abstract, is one individual's subjective conception of what every individual in a group, including the concieving individual, concieves that collective culture to be. Leaving the word 'group', and even 'culture', to be included as subjective parameters in the definition. The wonders of skeptical relativism!
That is my meta-aesthetic perspective, applicable to all and anything, be it created by humans with intent to entertain or enrich, or be it created by humans for whatever other reason, or be it just being.
Apologies for the apparent wankery of all that, but that's how I see it. I hope sense was made. Actually, I hope it didn't seem like I was stating the glorious obvious, as the responses of others usually suggest to me.... My own response to my own words is that I lack clarity and over indulge in excessive and circular pontification. Still working on it!
- Tom
putting down the linguistic fiddle