On poetry and self-expression

[ocoluphid]

Ok, now I am confused!
I go to the library and get three books on poetry. The general feeling I get from these authors is that poetry is NOT self-expression. If a poem comes from self-expression then it is self-absorbed, narcissistic crap whose only audience is yourself. This is where the confusion begins.

Every time I hear or see art defined the main meaning of it is SELF-EXPRESSION. Even my son’s art textbooks define it as such. So, if poetry is NOT self-expression then poetry is NOT art? But I thought poetry was art. If poetry is NOT self-expression then why are we all here trying to write, share, and improve???

This kind of thinking (snobbery????) is what originally turned me off to literature when I was young in the first place. I missed out on so much because of that. I am trying to rectify this problem with myself and I am trying to teach my kids not to follow my footsteps regarding reading and writing. This is discouraging to them. They are ready to throw in the towel.

Or is my problem simply that poetry is just a matter of interpretation depending on which university your degree came from? Do I need to be thicker skinned and keep learning the mechanics and keep trying? Or did I just get the wrong books whose authors are self-absorb with their degree and intelligence?

Can anyone shed a little light on this and set me straight. Thanks.

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"So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." - Deep Thought

[This message has been edited by ocoluphid (edited 07-21-2001).]

[Andrea345]

I don't understand what is so difficult about the idea that there is a craft to any art. One of the fallacies perpetrated in a lot of workshops & classes I attended was this “self-expression is all" idea. No one in their right mind would think that a ballet dancer should not have training. Training for that art begins early (usually around six) and by the time a dancer is in his or her teens, they're dancing five and six days a week in just warm-ups.

If you need to, think in terms of football. "Professional" need not be defined just in terms of money when you consider knowledge of the craft, understanding of the strategy & whatever things differentiate weekend touch games with the NFL.

In my opinion, the whole "self-expression" / craft thing was nicely summed up in the movie, Finding Forrester: "first draft from the heart, 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th, etc.) from the head." Every art has its craft, has its mechanics. What is so disillusioning about that? I find it interesting learning. Poetry is not just a few words thrown onto a page. The first time I realized Robert Frost was manipulating my emotions in a poem the light bulb went off in my head about what the craft of poetry means. Yet, to this day, I can’t describe what makes a poem effective. I can only describe what makes a piece of work ineffective as a poem.

For me, part of that process of learning has been to keep my first drafts close to my heart. I no longer post them here because I've learned what doesn't work and why. It hasn't stopped me writing first drafts. I've had to learn what abstractions are, why they're not good. Cliches are edited out and I have to search for fresher ideas and language. Inverted syntax and archiac language now cause me pain when I read them. These are just the beginner's rules. I’m forty and just now learning the beginner's rules of poetry. I still have bad habits: truly awful instances of repetition, my rhyme is forced and I have a difficult time controlling my meter. I have not learned how to use these tools effectively. There's a lot of reading and writing left for me to do before I will have the skill to revise some of my first drafts. Okay, no biggie, I'm not dead yet.

best wishes,
-a



[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 07-21-2001).]

[Scavella]

Hey ocoluphid, again.

Good start, getting the books out of the library. This is an interesting topic, and related to the discussion JB and Colin Clout are having further down this board.

Regarding art as self-expression: it seems to me that that is a rather narrow definition. After all, I might express myself when I'm particularly frustrated (with a computer, or with traffic, or when I can't find my keys) with a primal scream - but is that art? On the other hand, the iMac has been awarded some industry award for design, and has been placed in museums for modern art - but is that self-expression? It seems to me that talking about self-expression is just one of the ways in which to begin defining 'art'.

And now we come to poetry. Of all the arts, literature is possibly the most analytical, because whereas visual artists and musicians work in media whose impact is fairly immediate - a scene in a painting or a phrase in a piece of music can evoke a response pretty directly - writers work with specific, abstract symbols that have very little meaning of their own. I'm talking about letters here - the abcs from which we construct words. Writing itself is an analytical exercise, although the analysis that creates it is generally done subconsciously. A simplified idea of the process could be described like this:

1. Impulse - the thought or feeling that inspires the need to write

2. Translation - the conversion of that thought/feeling into words (sounds in our heads)

3. Inscription - the conversion of those sounds into letters, and writing the letters down

4. Arrangement - the recombination of those letters into visual patterns, otherwise known as words and sentences

As you can see, then, the act of writing is pretty far removed from self-expression!

Poetry is the most analytical of all writing, because it is so condensed. There is no room at all for inaccuracy of translation. In order to be good at poetry, you have to be very very familiar with the abstractions of the written language (the correct combinations of letters - spelling - the correct combinations of words - grammar), otherwise the arrangements of the words and letters will carry very little meaning at all.

I believe that journals are the forms of writing best reserved for self-expression, because they are private. These are the places where the initial translation of thoughts and feelings can and should take place. However, the more public a piece of work is, the more removed it has to be from the original raw translation of the impulse from which it sprang if it's to communicate.

The bottom line is, yes, I think you do need to be thicker skinned and keep learning the mechanics. Because here's the thing - the more you know the mechanics, the better you can express yourself in poetry. Funny how that works.

Hope this helps!

Scavella


[This message has been edited by Scavella1 (edited 07-21-2001).]

[ocoluphid]

Your reply is most appreciated!

I don't have a problem learning the mechanics. Why hasn't anyone put it in those basic terms before. I am more of a technician and that makes sense to me. http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/smile.gif

1st draft from the heart, the rest from the head.......That makes a hell of a lot of sense! I will start applying that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this.

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"So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." - Deep Thought

[Britomart]

Originally posted by ocoluphid:
Ok, now I am confused! http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/confused.gif

I go to the library and get three books on poetry. The general feeling I get from these authors is that poetry is NOT self-expression.

** I'm assuming that these authors are defining what constitutes good poetry. Good poetry is self-expression that isn't completely centered on self. Writers of good poetry express themselves in a way that is of interest to their readers. Good poets take their audience into account, not just themselves.

[ocoluphid]

Thank you Scavella for taking the time to give this hard-headed, thin-skinned newbie such a detailed answer.

It is slowly starting to sink in. All these years I may have been given a wrong impression of poetry. That may be what I get for not continuing my education.

Upon further reading of one book I got, it is on the more technical side, I probably will identify with this one better, and the others contain interesting exercises and info I had been looking for anyway. Not a total loss.

Thank all of you for your patience with me.



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"So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." - Deep Thought

[Harry Rutherford]

Originally posted by Scavella1:

And now we come to poetry. Of all the arts, literature is possibly the most analytical, because whereas visual artists and musicians work in media whose impact is fairly immediate - a scene in a painting or a phrase in a piece of music can evoke a response pretty directly - writers work with specific, abstract symbols that have very little meaning of their own. I'm talking about letters here - the abcs from which we construct words.

I agree with the general point- that 'self-expression' is simply not enough, because it is the reader, not the poet, who has to be affected by the poem.

I would disagree with the suggestion that poetry is especially abstract, since language is an essential, instinctive human attribute which we process at a very basic level.

Your analysis of the poetic process into 4 stages could be applied equally to the other arts, after all. And individual brushstrokes don't count for much in isolation.

Harry
just picking nits.

[Howard Miller]

Part of the problem is the fact that "self-expression" is not only a loaded term, it is a highly ambiguous term. "Self-expression" in fact covers a broad spectrum of possibilities, not all of which lead to art--specifically poetry.

Mediocre poets--or, being more honest, miserably bad journal-entry writers--believe that "self-expression" means that "I should write down exactly what my feelings are." The "Teen," "Depression," and "General" forums are filled with such self-expressions: "I'm lonely"; "I'm angry"; "I'm hurting"; "I'm in pain"; "Somebody please pity me." For these writers, it is the "self" in "self-expression" that takes precedence: "Poetry should be about me." While such writings may have therapeutic value to the writer, they offer absolutely nothing to the reader in almost all cases.

To create genuine art, the poet has to give expression to ideas and emotions that move the reader, that teach the reader and affect him in some fundamental way. Dante and Milton were both devoutly religious men, and their respective works--the Commedia and Paradise Lost--were expressions of each's mostly deeply-held beliefs. However, those works don't focus on their authors (even though each appears in his poem) but on the ideas that were the basis for each's individual beliefs, expressed in such a way as to show the reader why such ideas--in context of each's historical situation--can be beneficial to the reader. For such poets, it is the "expression"--especially "expression" as "communication"--of "self-expression" that is paramount.

All too often, creative writing classes fail to make the distinction, in part because it is enormously difficult to get many people to see beyond themselves. The genuine poet is the one who can.


Howard

[ocoluphid]

My God, why did I not ask this years ago? Oh, there was no internet back then.

THANK YOU ALL!!!! I have just read these post to myself and again to my oldest son, who is interested in writing, and this info is MOST encouraging to us!!!!

I am beginning to understand...

The discouraging part is I will probably write a lot of crap till I get something really worth working on and show that I really understand.

Thank you!

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"So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means." - Deep Thought

[Scavella]

I would disagree with the suggestion that poetry is especially abstract, since language is an essential, instinctive human attribute which we process at a very basic level.

Your analysis of the poetic process into 4 stages could be applied equally to the other arts, after all. And individual brushstrokes don't count for much in isolation.

Fair enough, Harry - but to clarify, I’m not talking just about the use of language - which we all do have, it’s true - but the creation of a written object, a poem. Not all humans have created written language, and not all written language is the same. I have heard it argued that a pictorial written language (e.g. Chinese/one form of Japanese) is less abstract than a language whose sounds are broken down into tiny, meaningless fragments (i.e. letters), as happens in most European languages. I’m half-convinced that there is some merit in that argument. It’s an interesting thought, at the very least.

As for your second point, that the process I outlined holds true for the other arts - well, natch. It just goes to prove our fundamental point: that art is not just self-expression.

Cheers.

[tbm]

"Expression" means literally a squeezing out. Thus, "self-expression" translates as (quite simply) a squeezing out of the self. This suggests to me either excrement or disembowelment, neither of which I feel is reflective of the nature of poetry.

Think of poetry (and all writing) as communication. Communication is composed of two equally constituent parts: a speaker and an audience. If the writer only considers herself, she is talking through a dead wire. If the writer only considers her audience, she forgets her voice entirely and thus will not be heard.

Most of those instructors "self-absorb[ed] with their degrees" are trying to communicate this point in one way or another. Unfortunately, most of them have too long been poets and thus are used to speaking from the sides of their mouths.

Best luck,
bates

[This message has been edited by tbm (edited 07-22-2001).]