Can Someone Tell me Where the Deep End Is?

[Sandra Piche]

This may be a stale topic/question I'm about to broach, however, being a naive beginner I'll toss it out there anyway, in the hope that someone will take a bite and enlighten my enquiring mind -- I looked, but haven't come across any recent threads on the subject -- or perhaps I'm not looking in the right place.

Recently I've noticed a similarity of posts (and have received some)in which the person critting felt the poem was successful as far as imagery and other poetic devices go, however, the piece lacked meaning and/or depth. Now, I realize that a poem has to hold the interest of the reader, but my question(s) is(are) this:

Isn't it enough to just read a poem that is pleasing to the ear, full of figurative language and loaded with imagery, without it having to hold some deeper or universal message? Isn't "deeper meaning" in and of itself, an abstraction and how does one determine whether the message/theme of a poem is meaningful enough to write about?

As I said, I understand that a poem has to engage the reader -- if not, it's useless unless the poet planned to only read it to themself -- and I have no problem receiving such a crit. As a matter of fact, I've often said the same thing to others when posting comments. I just wonder, how deep is deep enough? And is it possible to gauge something like that? Sometimes I have ideas to write about a particular theme or subject but wonder whether they would be significant enough to base a poem on. It sure would save me a lot of time if I could figure this concept out.

LW,
wondering where the pool drops off to the deep end.

[This message has been edited by LittleWing (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Scotty]

Hi LittleWing,

just my two bob's worth...

Isn't it enough to just read a poem that is pleasing to the ear, full of figurative language and loaded with imagery, without it having to hold some deeper or universal message?

My initial response to your question is a resounding yes ! If the overall and immediate imagery is self evident, if it rolls off the tongue when read aloud, with nice sonics (or maybe even a good metre) and leaves me, the reader, with a feeling of, "hey, that's great", then the piece has worked, or should I say, the writer has been successful in giving me an enjoyable read.

If the piece also contains some 'deeper meaning', then so be it. Some writers have such consumate skill that even the 'deeper meaning' is self evident when read but it's not the be-all and end-all of what makes good poetry for me.

You know as well as I do, that sometimes we can read a piece once and think it's wonderful (for varying reasons) and others might take us a couple of passes and we still end up thinking it's wonderful (for varying reasons.

We're all different, and we will all look at a poem differently to decide what it is about it that appeals to us - I think it depends a lot on our varying skill levels, our varying appreciation/understanding of the technicalities and/or techniques that are applicable to the poem.

While I realise now that writing good poetry is an art form that requires a certain level of skill and dedication by the author, I still also believe that we complicate our lives sometimes by reading too much into something or looking for meanings that don't necessarily exist.

Why do I like tulips? Because they're a pretty flower and I know the effect they have on a certain woman. Nothing deeper than that.

Poetry has certainly changed since my early days of writing at school and don't get me wrong, I'm having fun learning about how little I actually know but it reminds me of an saying...

progress is Man's ability to complicate simplicity... - why make reading/writing a poem more complicated than it needs to be?

I read and write poetry for the simple pleasure it gives me and I doubt that I'll ever be good enough to be published. If I read something that really grabs me (at whatever level), I add it to my collection/notes for future reference and if, one of these days, I stun the literary world with a poetic masterpiece of superlative sonics, magnificent metre and delightful depth of meaning, then so be it. (I'll probably still be writing limericks about farting and bodily functions the next day). hehe!

Sorry, my two bob's worth isn't overly 'technical' but perhaps other critters can expound on the subject for you.

Take care.

Scotty



[This message has been edited by xenomorph (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Clive2]

For my money "this has no deeper meaning" is a load-of-old-bollocks crit. I can read almost any poem to have almost any meaning I want it to - deep, shallow or inbetween. I mean - "Ring O Roses" was a commentary on the Great Plague and you could stretch that out to be a commentary on man's mortality and so on and so forth and yadda yadda.

Forget "deeper meaning", concentrate on making working poems with good sonics and good imagery. Tell the deeper meaning people to go look for it up their own fundaments.

Clive
too much coffee

[This message has been edited by Clive2 (edited 09-15-2002).]

[MSPav]

Think of it like conversation. Sometimes you ponder deep things, other times you banter; then there's small talk, etc. Whichever is satisfying for you depends on what you are looking for at the time.

Mark
(too little coffee)

[Etain Homme]

Hi LittleWing:

I agree with the Clive2 & xenomorph. It had been my thought to list several 'great' poems that are simply the poets rendition of a moment or a glimpse of nature / beauty, but no doubt most people here can already produce such a list. On further thought I wish to say only this. Poetry is the art of words and art must first, and always, engage the senses. No one that I know of has ever looked upon the statue of 'David' and said "Yea, but it's got no deeper meaning." Just as I can listen to Italian Opera (not understanding a single word) and be overcome by the beauty of the music. Beauty simply is. Can some of that beauty manifest itself by also engaging the mind / logic / philosophy of the reader, of course, but it does not need to.

Lastly, I think most of those here who have read / critiqued a few hundred poems will agree that the word abstraction is most often applied to those works where someone makes a great effort to be "deep". There are times when I like to be challenged to think, but most of the time I just want to see, hear, smell, taste, or experience a moment or story. If I wanted "depth" all the time I would Scuba dive every day. http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/smile.gif


Etain

[Rachel Lindley]

If I were forced to choose a poem I must read every day for the rest of my life from two possibles -- a pretty pretty poem without any real intent or subtext, and a poem with a strong, unique message and all sorts of deeper meanings that sounds as if it were written by a tone-deaf dying yak -- I'd take the former.

Since I'm not forced to choose, and since I have a great many poems by a great many writers that I can read, I'll choose a poem with both, thanks.

Rachel

[LVJuicyFruit]

The question you've posed is an interesting one that I've seen asked many times before. I don't think there is a clear answer and moreoever, I think the 'deeper meaning' of a poem can be many things to many people.

I've been of a similar mind as you, thought about writing/have written poems that employ good imagery and sonics, but were perceived as 'pretty' and 'pointless'.

Writing good poetry, to me, is like a ripple in a pond. As your ability/skill in using poetic devices (imagery, sound, similie, metaphor) improves, more ripples layer/expand from the original.

I think Rachel makes a good point, any reader given a choice, will not only read, but also re-read poems that are multi-layered and possibly draw more enjoyment and experience more from a poem that carries a 'deeper meaning'. That's not to say a reader can't simply 'enjoy' a poem, then move onto the next.

Judy

[Snuffy]

You know what? Anything you want to write about could potentially strike anyone as deep. Depth is a perception. Hah. Depth Perception. Anyhoo. Everyone thinks differently and has had different experiences. You may hit someone with some simple thought that anyone in this forum would poo poo. Sometimes simplicity can be the actual catalyst for feelings, emotions, etc. In poetry, at least, it is hard to find the words running through your head on paper. Poets tend to look for the deeper meaning and ignore the everyday life. And sometimes it is just a relief to find them written down. And that can be the most meaningful, or Deepest, thing of all.
Thanks
Snuffy

[This message has been edited by Snuffy (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Harry Rutherford]

I'm not necessarily looking for a profound insight into the human condition, but there are some poems that just leave me thinking '... and your point is?'

It may not be intellectual or philosophical depth. Perhaps emotional depth is what's missing; some poignancy or humour - something to just make it stick with the reader and resonate a little. Just a thought.

Harry

[Howard Miller]

If one is looking for a poetry dipstick, there is perhaps none better than Sir Philip Sidney's statement that the purpose of poetry is "to delight and to instruct." Sidney is of course simply translating Horace who in turn took the idea (though not the formal expression) from Aristotle. In short, this concept traces back through 2,500 years of the history of poetry, almost to its recognized Western beginnings, and it is the basic idea that almost all recognized poets have accepted and followed--Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Whitman, Eliot, Auden, and most others.

So how can it serve as a poetic dipstick?

First, we need to recognize that the two phrases "to delight" and "to instruct" are not two separate goals. Aristotle himself makes the point that the poet is the best teacher precisely because the poem delights and entertains us, and that puts us into a more receptive frame of mind for being instructed. Work that "delights" alone is work that is doing only half the job.

Second, what does "instruct" mean? For me, at least, it means that a successful poem should provide me with some insight, some understanding, either intellectual or emotional, that I lacked before. That doesn't mean that I'm going to understand differential geometry or Keynesian economics after reading a poem; it does mean that I should come away with some new perspective, a way of looking at something that I didn't have before. That understanding doesn't have to be intellectually profound or complex (although it may be in some cases); it can be as simple as the recognition in Frost's "A Dust of Snow" that a trivial occurence can effect my emotional state, or that in Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" that something seen every day and ignored as insignificant can become the focus of my attention when for some reason it acquires an importance it previously had lacked. Are these recognitions "deep"? That will depend on the individual, of course.

On the other hand, Sidney's Dipstick helps us to identify work that fails to live up to the purpose of poetry. Greeting card verse and most song lyrics, for instance, fail because they simply rehash the same old superficial observations that everyone is already familiar with over and over again, with no real addition or further exploration added. They state what we already know (most of us, anyway; that does help explain why teenagers often find certain song lyrics important, because they're encountering those ideas for the first time and are initially content with a superficial representation of those ideas, something most of us outgrow with adolescence). That also explains why "journal entry" pieces don't succeed as poems, either; the writer is not only self-absorbed but is usually stating the obvious in obvious langauge (i. e., clichés and abstractions).

Sidney's Dipstick can also help us to understand why another class of poems is sometimes dismissed as "pretty but pointless." Generally, such poems are descriptive poems, whether what's described is a scene from nature, a person, or an event. All too often, such pieces focus entirely on describing what's seen; the result may well be a poem that is in a superficial sense attractive but may also result in a poem that fails to go beyond pure description for its own sake. Poems of this sort I tend to call "Decorative." They're like wallpaper: they're there, but there's not much to attract or hold our interest. Description used well, of course, leads the reader beyond the mere appearance of things and can open new insights; "decorative" verse, however, fails to do that, being content with only the surface appearance. "Decorative" poems are pleasant to read, perhaps, but there's nothing of substantive emotional or intellectual nutrition in them; they're all empty calories.

On the other hand, there's work which aims at meeting only the "to instruct" portion of Sidney's Dipstick. We see these all the time on the board: poems that aim at utter profoundity. Frequently, these take the form of pieces that draw heavily from Eliot--especially the Eliot of the "Four Quartets" because his style there is very obvious and very easy to imitate, at least superficially. (Bukowski often figures heavily in "profound" pieces, as well.) Such pieces ram supposed "profundity" down our throats; I say "supposed" because very rarely is there much substance to most of them, either, but heaven knows the writer is convinced of what he/she views as the ponderous significance of his/her insight. Such work is ultimately of as little real value as greeting cards and journal entries.

Ultimately, the real test of Sidney's Dipstick is "Have I carried away from this piece something something worth knowing, feeling, and remembering?" If you have, then I'd say the poem registers in the "Successful" range on the dipstick because what you've gotten from that piece is what poetry is all about.


Howard

[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 09-15-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 09-15-2002).]

[LVJuicyFruit]

I think Howard's comments in this thread (i.e. "Sidney's Dipstick") would be a great addition to the Blurbs of Wisdom, possibly in 'The Nature of Poetry' thread.

Judy

[Ted]

You could have just as well emailed me about the crit and I would've been happy to elaborate. I don't think a critical forum is the appropriate place for a discussion on "What makes poetry enjoyable" or some such thing, which is why I didn't go into it at the time.

In an effort to answer your question simply, I'll say the poem didn't resonate with me at all emotionally or intellectually. None. Zippo. Zilch. Nada. It didn't put me into the scene, it didn't make me care about either character and, quite honestly, it felt more like an exercise in poetic devices than a poem.

That isn't to say it's a Bad Poem and should be banished to the round file, it's just an observation from someone who had an opinion. I don't want to get to the end of a poem and ask myself why I just spent time reading it two or three times and not have a satisfactory answer. I hope this makes sense and the answers by those above have eased your concerns.

Ted

[This message has been edited by Tedward (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Ted]

*double post*

[This message has been edited by Tedward (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Harry Rutherford]

Hmmm... well, Howard, that sounds plausible, but I'm not sure it reflects my experience of reading poetry.

Asked the question 'what did you carry away worth knowing from Title?', I'm not at all sure I could answer it.

Let's take a f'rinstance. Donne's The Flea (http://www.nth-dimension.co.uk/vl/poem.asp?id=362). It's witty, it's ingenious, it plays with the reader's expectations of what a love poem ought to be; reading the notes tells me something about C17th society, but that's just to enable me to understand the poem, really.

But has it told me anything I didn't know? Well... I don't think so.

I'm uncomfortable with any kind of definition of what poetry is that relies on educational or moral utility; or the old chestnut that 'just as science proffers theories about how the world works, so does art'. It just doesn't seem to relate to my own experience. I've enjoyed the arts a great deal, and cumulatively they've taught me a lot; most obviously, a book like The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon teaches me about C11th Japan. But I'm not convinced that, work by work, their success can be closely correlated to their instructiveness.

Instruction, of any kind, is certainly something that poetry can do; but is it something it must do to be successful? What about Pope's 'True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.'? Again, I'm not convinced that it's a sufficient definition of what poetry does, but it's something poetry can do, and I think a different thing to 'instructing'.

Harry

[Rachel Lindley]

Ah, but Harry, you just said it: it plays with the reader's expectations of what a love poem ought to be.

I think perhaps the word "instruct" is too easily interpreted as dry and scholarly. A poem which instructs doesn't necessarily "teach" you something intellectual or moral. But if when reading The Flea you are delighted and also find that it expands your perspective, even slightly, by playing with your expectations of what a love poem ought to be, then you have found a poem that both delights and instructs.

I think this thread may be heading the direction of the "What is Poetry?" thread, in that how we each define poetry and what we each look for in a poem is going to be vastly different from person to person. Pretty hard to nail down, in that case.

Rachel

[Harry Rutherford]

And I think you are stretching the word 'instruct' so wide and so thin that it loses any real utility.

For a poem to be pleasing, it needs to bring something new with it. But that might be a turn of phrase, a neat comparison, a striking image, a good joke; I don't see any of those as 'instruction'.

Surely it's enough to say 'poems have to be interesting, or entertaining, or in some other way give the reader a reason to be glad they read them' and then judge individual poems on a case-by-case basis?

Harry

[Scavella]

Well now Harry, if you're taking issue with the word instruct I'm not gonna quibble with you; I think it's a tomato-tomahto thing myself. But are you quibbling with the underlying principle? I happen to agree with Rachel, and to say that if a poem stretches one's appreciation of the world (and that can include the world of language, of poetry), then it's done its job. I don't know what one calls it, but surely poetry is more than simply verse, which is what I call the application of poetic principles to expected subjects to create the expected result — the Hallmark syndrome. Many Hallmark "poems" are technically pleasing — metrically sound, nicely rhymed, etc; but I certainly wouldn't want to read them for the rest of my life. Given Rachel's choice I'd probably shoot myself. The Flea, on the other hand, is a most unexpected take on love, and it certainly instructed me by showing me that one could think about the joy of sex/love without either sentimentality or heavy breathing.

LW, for me the answer to your question falls somewhere between Clive's and Howard's, with a little bit of Rachel's in for good measure. Just as my understanding of "instruct" differs from Harry's, I would say my understanding of "the deep end" is pretty different from yours. For me, the words "deeper or universal message" suggest simply that a poem ought, in some way, to be able to transcend the writer's own experience and speak to a reader who is considerably different from him or her.

Perhaps it's as simple as the writer's looking so closely at an image/theme/topic that she sees what is fresh and new about it, and transfers that to the page? I don't know. I do know that I don't look at fleas in quite the same way after reading Donne. And if that's what's meant by "deeper meaning", then I think that it's a pretty fair crit.

[Rachel Lindley]

Harry, for me instruction moves beyond the intellectual and the moral and encompasses the social as much as anything. How that thins its meaning and causes the word to lose its real utility is beyond me. However, I suspect that's simply going to be a point where we agree to disagree.

As for the rest, I agree with you. The only problem I have is that some of these readers are also writers of poetry. I'm getting sick and tired of people who carry around the placard of "universality" and "entertainment" as a reason to keep writing flimsy, mediocre poems; those same people then turn around and profess how much they want to learn in order to improve themselves as writers.

3 years ago, I couldn't stand poetry, any of it. It was useless as far as I was concerned. 2 years ago, I liked a handful of poems that entertained or moved me, and still found the rest to be junk. A year ago I realised that the same handful of poems I found entertaining 2 years ago were simplistic and had little shelf life, and some of that "junk" was starting to look mighty appealing. Then I began to find entertainment -- and instruction -- in the poems for which I had no patience just a short time previous to that. Funnily enough, my skill at writing poetry showed substantial improvement shortly after each of these steps. Well what do you know?

If a writer of poetry wants to improve how s/he writes, then that same writer better throw out the self-limitations and definitions of "universality" and "entertainment" to see if s/he can learn how to enjoy and be entertained by poetry s/he would have nothing to do with in the past. Otherwise, s/he'll continue to write flimsy, mediocre poems that may entertain -- for the first couple of reads -- but do little else.

Rachel

[Harry Rutherford]

Originally posted by Scavella1:
But are you quibbling with the underlying principle?

I'm not sure. What is the underlying principle?

I'm being serious here. I think if a poem genuinely had nothing new to it, it would be a wash-out. Hell, that's pretty much what 'cliché' means. But I think it's a mistake trying to pick just one word for the different somethings that make different poems work. Let alone something as loaded as 'instruct'.

Different poems work for different reasons. Is there anything that unites them all, more specific than 'the skilled use of language'?

I don't see why there should be, and I can't think of anything that will stand up to examination.

All of which is intended mainly as philosophical logic-chopping, rather than useful advice for would-be poets.

Rachel - I didn't mean, with either of my comments, to disagree with your comment about wanting both 'depth' and prettiness. I think the best poetry (and art generally) is produced with a real seriousness of intention, and a belief in the real possibilities of poetry to do big things.
Too much of it, otherwise, ends up reading like what it is - five-finger exercises in poetic technique.

Harry

[gecian]

I've got the same reservations as Harry about "instructive poetry" -- what about, say, Gray's Elegy?

[Howard Miller]

Heh. I just knew "instruct" would probably push a few buttons. However, my intention was to use the term in the broadest conceivable sense rather than to refer to work that is specifically "didactic" or that necessarily has "educational or moral utility." Certainly Dyer's "The Fleece" is didactic, particularly if you want to know all about sheepherding, but I don't think that fact makes it a good poem. Rather, I intended to use the term to refer to any poem that communicates an idea or an emotion in such a way as to make it important to the reader--perhaps too much license for the term to bear, admittedly.

However, as Harry observes, we could chop logic and pick nits over any definition or criterion. My reason for attempting it is simply to provide one criterion, one which has proven useful in the past. I wouldn't disagree with Harry's 'the skilled use of language' at all except to say that it does tend to beg the question a bit because it doesn't in and of itself provide a clear sense of what "skilled use" means, so using it becomes a bit tricky. My attempt--and it should be regarded as nothing more than that--simply aims at being somewhat more specific and hopefully useful, and nothing more.


Howard

[Howard Miller]

gecian--

Gray's "Elegy" is actually a heavily didactic poem: sophisticated, literate, urban society corrupts individuals through offering them the temptations of ambition, while rural, simple, unsophisticated society is "naturally" moral and good because those temptations aren't present. Not a good choice if you're looking for a poem that doesn't illustrate the idea of "instruction" in its strictest form.


Howard

[gecian]

Originally posted by Howard Miller:
gecian--

Gray's "Elegy" is actually a heavily didactic poem: sophisticated, literate, urban society corrupts individuals through offering them the temptations of ambition, while rural, simple, unsophisticated society is "naturally" moral and good because those temptations aren't present. Not a good choice if you're looking for a poem that doesn't illustrate the idea of "instruction" in its strictest form.


Howard

Was that a new idea, though, even in 17--?

[Harry Rutherford]

Originally posted by gecian:
Was that a new idea, though, even in 17--?

Fairly new, as a serious suggestion rather than a romanticised Arcadian 'Come live with me and be my love' thing. Especially in England; the Europeans got there first with Rousseau's noble savage and what-not. Generally though, the C18th assumption was that culture and civilisation were better than ignorance and poverty. Gray was pretty cutting-edge for his time.

[This message has been edited by Harry Rutherford (edited 09-15-2002).]

[Howard Miller]

Furthermore, the notion of absolute originality is a 19th & 20th century innovation. The attitude of previous periods towards "originality" is best exemplified by the Pope couplet Harry cited earlier:

'True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.'


Howard

[Sandra Piche]

Wow,

Hi all!

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to express your opinions. I certainly wasn't expecting quite a turn-out, but am pleased to see so many responses. Unfortunately, I can't respond or thank you all individually, so I'll take this time to re-read your posts and absorb all your comments.

Tedward, one very important note - this has absolutely nothing to do with the recent poem I posted in High or your response to it for that matter, however it may seem. That poem has it obvious faults and yes, I'd like to know how to go about fixing them. Besides, you weren't alone in your opinion of that piece. Nevertheless, I've noticed similar responses all around the board lately and it's something I've been wondering about for some time now. I understand your point of view (then, and now) and I apologize if you felt this was directed towards you. It certainly was not. However, I thank you for taking the extra time to go into more detail about your explanation (though it wasn't necessary). As I said when I originally posted my question to this thread, there are times I've written something but hesitated posting for the mere fact that I'd be afraid to receive that exact response -- so what? And my concern is the same as yours -- why have people read through a poem that won't be well received? It's just a waste of the authors time, and the people critiquing. Perhaps one will never know what works until it's posted and the feedback starts to pour in. Until then, it's just a guessing game and for those of us who enjoy writing, it just drives us to be more creative and original. That's not a bad thing afterall.

I broached the topic merely to understand what makes good poetry and how I, personally, can improve my work or make it more interesting for the reading -- in other words, I just want to learn more! My apologies if I've stepped on any toes, that certainly wasn't my intention.

Sincerely,
LW

[This message has been edited by LittleWing (edited 09-16-2002).]

[River Not]

This thread reminded me of a poem that sent me sifting, to find, from the book, A. Watts, p.89 (though I think the poem is unanimously anonymous) :


Little fields have big feilds
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And big feilds have bigger feilds
And so ad infinitum.

"Deep" ?

Shortly after adding this post, I'll be off to work, where I'll spend the day doing something, and listening to someone else's shit.

It really could be about nothing though.

[Howard Miller]

Actually, it's "fleas," not "fields," and it's from a poem by Jonathan Swift.

"So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum. . . ."
--"On Poetry: A Rhapsody," ll. 337-340


Howard

[This message has been edited by Howard Miller (edited 09-16-2002).]

[Gabe1]

...my question(s) is(are) this:

Isn't it enough to just read a poem that is pleasing to the ear, full of figurative language and loaded with imagery, without it having to hold some deeper or universal message? Isn't "deeper meaning" in and of itself, an abstraction and how does one determine whether the message/theme of a poem is meaningful enough to write about?


Well, we've got ourselves a bit of a trap here, because we are likely to get into semantics. You ask "Isn't it enough to just read a poem that is pleasing to the ear, full of figurative language and loaded with imagery, without it having to hold some deeper or universal message?" well, short answer, no. Long answer, kinda. "Enough" becomes a tricky word in your question, as it is tied to the intentions of both the author and the reader. If the purpose of my reading is for simple amusement, then I might be more pleased with a light and aurally playful poem than I would with a poem that relies of on "meaning" to produce in me a visceral response. Add inevitable conclusion _____here_____.

On to your even trickier question, because I think it's more interesting.

"Isn't [/i]"deeper meaning" in and of itself, an abstraction and how does one determine whether the message/theme of a poem is meaningful enough to write about?"

Well, there are all sorts of ways to approach this question but I'll start with two. The first would be to ask, well, what are we talking about when we say "meaning"?
My first inclination was to scamper to my dictionary, which I did, though that wasn't necessarily helpful.

mean·ing Pronunciation Key (mnng)
n.
Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance.

Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language: The writer's meaning was obscured by his convoluted prose.

An interpreted goal, intent, or end: “The central meaning of his pontificate is to restore papal authority” (Conor Cruise O'Brien).

Inner significance: “But who can comprehend the meaning of the voice of the city?” (O. Henry).


Right, so, the meaning of something is an abstract concept. Fair enough. Does this detract from its value? I don't think so. Does the possession of it add to its value?
I tend to think so. For example, if my reply to your question sounded pretty but meant nothing, I think we could safely say that it has less value than a response that conveyed "inner significance."

Moving on to topic selection "...how does one determine whether the message/theme of a poem is meaningful enough to write about?"

First, let's remove the question from its assumptions. One of the assumptions above is that a message is capable of begin unworthy of meaning. This is not to say that it is meaningless in itself, it may possess meaning, but is it meaningful "enough"? The next assumption is that act of writing is somehow important enough to warrant a discussion of the meaning of the topics being written about. i.e. writing is valuable in itself and to use material which is not sufficiently meaningful would cheapen the means by which that meaning is conveyed. Hmmm, this could get tricky. We would have to compare the different mediums of communication and then look at the form in which the meaning, or the meaninglessness, is being conveyed. Hmm, instead of winding away down this road for a stretch, lets take a practical approach, despite the really really dull nature of most practical approaches.

If only some things are meaningful enough to write about, then the writer has less things to choose to write about.

If there is no "meaning requirement", the writer is able to write about whatever he or she might fancy.

I like being able to write about whatever, so, I'll pick that one.


"As I said, I understand that a poem has to engage the reader -- if not, it's useless unless the poet planned to only read it to themself -- and I have no problem receiving such a crit. As a matter of fact, I've often said the same thing to others when posting comments. I just wonder, how deep is deep enough?

At least 8 inches. Though breadth is important as well.


And is it possible to gauge something like that?

You may be able to get by with a ring-sizer, but a flexible tape measure tends to be the most convenient.

[Ted]

Originally posted by LittleWing:

Tedward, one very important note - this has absolutely nothing to do with the recent poem I posted in High or your response to it for that matter, however it may seem.

Damn. I really must do something about my Tedcentric view of the universe. *sigh*

Ted
baaaa

[This message has been edited by Tedward (edited 09-16-2002).]

[River Not]

Originally posted by Howard Miller:
Actually, it's "fleas," not "fields," and it's from a poem by Jonathan Swift.

thanks Howard.

The version that I posted really is in a book (that being the book by A. Watts), though, too, and I wrote it 'here' just like it is 'there'.

oh. whoops. the spelling errors are my own thing. It was really early on the late end this morning.

I hope it applied just the same!

[This message has been edited by crowbowsow (edited 09-16-2002).]

[Urizen]

Originally posted by TheBroad:

I'm getting sick and tired of people who carry around the placard of "universality" and "entertainment" as a reason to keep writing flimsy, mediocre poems; those same people then turn around and profess how much they want to learn in order to improve themselves as writers.



Well, I'm either being perceptive, paranoid, or exeedingly vain, or maybe a touch of all three, but since I've recently talked about poetry as "entertainment" in a recent post, I feel like some of that is aimed me-wards a bit. I also can see how some of the things I've said about critique and poetry have come across as a tad contradictory.

Even if your words, Rachel, have nothing whatsoever to do with my recent posts, I'll say a few things anyway.

I certainly don't see the view of poetry being entertainment as a reason or an excuse for writing flimsy, mediocre poetry. If I could write earth-shattering poetry, I'd be writing it. I like to think that I've learned a great deal from this site, and I think my writing has improved noticeably since I joined up; but we can only go on the talent we have, which, sadly, for some of us, is fairly limited. I consciously apply just about everything I've learned here everytime I sit to work on a poem. I also think about those things when I read poetry, and I think I see what you're saying about how your tastes will inevitably change as your knowledge increases.

The fact that you had no use for poetry three years ago and are now producing such high-caliber work is astounding, but I think that that rate of development is also quite rare. I recently met someone through email who at one time was one of the most prominent posters here. I was amazed to discover that this person is only twenty one year old. Talk about humbling. Sheeesh.

When I get my printer back up and running, I plan on printing out your recent crits in Merciless and studying them, as well as some other detailed crits and some of the Blurbs. Who knows, maybe by the time I'm Oh, seventy or so, I'll be able to get something into the Picks forum. One can always hope.

Bill