Why Is Poetry Important? Part Three

What It's like to Be Human

I wanted to say that poetry needs to be understood in order to have any sort of function in the modern world, but along the way I found that I'm not in complete agreement over this point. Instead, poetry needs to touch emotions of its readers.My main point with this is that I've found literature where I have no clue what is being said (James Joyce comes to mind for some peculiar reason), but it still strikes me as absolutely brilliant. I don't need to understand every single line or even half of the words that are used to recognise a good story or a brilliant usage of sound (The Waste Land comes to mind here). I might not even agree that it's any good when looking at the theme or tropes used, but the sound alone can strike me as particularly beautiful. I vividly remember a night at the university where there was a symposium on Arabic and Persian poetry and not understanding a single word of the poems, but I was completely enthralled by the sound of them. I was mostly trying to beg a free sandwich off of the guy outside the room, but it actually turned out that I stayed for the poor guy's reading from some of the works they where discussing. So to sum things up, I am in love with poetry and how it affects me.

My love for poetry is not the only thing that I think is important though. I may like the notion of poetic beauty and the aspiration to create something to marvel at, but the point of poetry should also be to engage the reader's mind and provoke thoughts. The central element of this style of poetry is to engage me and make me wonder about my present condition. I could possibly become someone else (If I hadn't been so damn lazy), but do I aspire to be anything other than a good person in my own eyes?
I'd say no and hopefully I'll continue thinking this sort of thing, but I also need to develop as a person in order to retain my sanity. This is where provoking known symbols becomes important and why the poetic voice is usually perverting, subverting or rebelling against the "known". I've mentioned Joyce and Eliot and how on earth these people made it through with their stuff is quite remarkable. It sure took some battles with authorities to get their works published and it's incredible that they are not viewed with horror today.

By addressing our emotions and engaging our sensibilities, poetry retains its relevance and as a consequence, poetry needs to be constantly reinvented to engage the reader, but it's constantly balancing between respecting or breaking away from tradition.

Another rant on Danish Politics

Apparently I'm not interested enough in world politics to believe that they are capable of being changed in the tempo that I would advocate. Therefore, I have decided to keep my political rants on Danish politics in Danish, mostly because they make more sense this way and because they are usually written in response to something that pisses me off and I'm far too emotional a being to actually get truly angry in English. So please bear with me and here's how I dislike the former candidate for mayor of my city: Søren Pind.

It all starts with a post in a Danish news paper and it can be found here.

"Jeg er i åndelig strid med islam. Islam medfører efter min opfattelse åndelig ørken og er en ideogisk fortsættelse af åndløsheden, hvad jeg i virkeligheden opfatter som den største fjende i disse år. Men enhver er salig i sin tro. Vi kan ikke overføre vores religiøse overbevisning om andres kætteri til myndighedernes sværd. Og ærlig talt: Sondringen burde ikke være svær for et menneske, der har baggrund i den tidehvervske kristendomsforståelse." - Søren Pind. 

     Straks føler jeg mig svært begejstret over at have religiøse mennesker placeret i magtfulde stillinger, rundt omkring i vores regering. Jeg synes helt klart, at Pinds budskab om at moderere vores ønsker og søge kompromisser er positiv, men jeg mener ikke, at bruge ord som kætteri eller lignende er passende. Jeg mener ikke, at der er noget andet galt med Islam, end at den er lidt fjollet, ligesom alle andre religioner, og hvis folk har lyst til at tilbede Gud, spaghettimonstret, julemanden eller påskeharen, så gør det mig ikke noget, så længe de holder det for sig selv. De her nemme svar, som Pind henviser til, er jo blevet opfundet af de selvsamme borgerlige, der sidder ved roret nu, og den ideologiske åndløshed, som Pind prøver at bekæmpe, er jo skabt af hans og hans frænders tilbedelse af guldkalven Mammon og de evige løfter om 2 procents vækst. 

     Stiller Pinds kronik spørgsmålstegn ved det politiske projekt EU, hvor vi kan se, at borgerne er så fjernt fra den demokratiske beslutningsproces, at vi knap nok kan genkende det, som repræsentativt demokrati? Nej, og derfor har Pind ikke forstået hvad kritikken går ud på. 

     Tror jeg, at England er bedre stillet, fordi de forlader EU i den nærmeste fremtid? Nej, i hvert fald ikke på den korte bane, men det kan være et af de nødvendige ofre, for at skabe frihed for egne borgere. 

     Jeg nedlagde med glæde nationalstaterne, for at få et ægte demokratisk Europa, men med udviklingen og splittelsen, der finder sted og den brutale retorik, der opfordrer til alt andet end samarbejde og solidaritet, så er det så voldsom en hæmsko, at indtil politikere taler pænt og ærligt til hinanden og deres borgere, så kan vi ikke få demokratiseret den Europæiske Union, men blot få udbygget et politikervælde, der mest af alt ligner et oligarki og ikke et demokrati. Jeg håber, at denne indsigt snart rammer Christiansborg.

Short Rant on Politics in Danish

TL:DR-version: Rige mennesker er nogle svin og nu prøver de at smide gylleartikler ud, som skal fjerne fokus fra de vigtige begivenheder. 

Det er pudsigt, hvordan vi kan se en række artikler (her og her), der skal fungere som røgslør for den egentlige historie, i denne uge. Blandt andet Nordea, har været medvirkende til en af de mest grundlæggende problematiske sager, som vi kan være vidner til. Hvis man ikke forstår, at disse to indlæg i "samfundsdebatten" er et forsøg på at forvirre og distrahere opmærksomheden fra hvor skævt samfundet er indrettet, så skal man formentlig undersøges af en professionel. 

Jeg mener, at enhver, der har været medvirkende til at sende penge uden om systemet, skal straffes efter terrorlovgivningen. Det er et bevidst forsøg på at undergrave danske værdier og det samfund, som vi prøver at skabe og vedligeholde. Jeg gider ikke engang bruge tid på at forklare, hvorfor de to artikler er fejlagtige og bunder i en misforstået anvendelse af biologi eller en utilsløret tilsvining af den næststørste religion i verdenen, og de er ikke værd at bruge kræfter på at dementere. 

Vi skal derimod huske at holde vores øjne rettet mod de mennesker, der systematisk prøver at bekæmpe frihed og demokrati, ved at skrabe mere og mere til sig. Endelig har vi et fornuftigt mål, som vi kan stå sammen om at nedkæmpe, og den samme vilje, som drev mig til at blive soldat og være medvirkende til at blive udsendt, for at bevare mit eget samfunds værdier og støtte andre i deres ønsker om at få sin egen stat, der understøtter deres frihed, driver mig nu til at ønske en mulighed for at bekæmpe griske kapitalister, som ønsker at vægte mulighederne i deres favør.

Jeg er ikke igang med at argumentere for, at vi skal slå dem ihjel, men min retfærdighedssans er helt sikkert indstillet på hævn, og der bør være en så massiv straf af de implicerede, at de aldrig kommer på fode igen. Dette er ikke et mord på et andet menneske, det er derimod ondsindet tilraning af magt, som har haft vidtrækkende konsekvenser for ufattelig mange mennesker. Jeg er villig til at skyde skylden for alle de, der er døde af fattidomsrelaterede sygdomme på deres kappe. Nu bør der starte en heksejagt for at finde ud af, hvem der har en aktie i Mossack Fonsecas suspekte handlinger.

Der findes brodne kar i denne verden, og jeg er også opmærksom på, at vi umulig kan få fat i dem alle, men der bør være adskillige mennesker, som kan sættes i fængsel for skatteunddragelse, som bør anses for den mest undergravende virksomhed, man er i stand til at udøve i et demokrati. Derfor nævnte jeg terrorlovene som en indgangsvinkel til straf. Om ikke andet, så har jeg da fået mig en undskyldning for at rase lidt ud.

Why Is Poetry Important? Part Two

Experiments

Creativity is often used as a basis for the justification of art. I don't particularly prescribe to any notion of creativity, since I think it often stems from knowledge. Knowledge is hard to acquire and it takes patience and reflection to actually learn something. The process where we understand new stuff is limited to our experiences and knowledge is used here as a catch-all phrase that is the sum of all our experiences. Poetry exists inside a framework that is pretty well-established and that framework is a useful tool to create a basis for understanding the world, but by recklessly accepting tradition we are also accepting our current understanding of the world as a truth.

Poetry is, by its very nature, experimental, for it seeks to provoke thought and it creates this effect through a variety of means. Recently, I have re-read some of Edgar Allan Poe's poems and I am inclined to see a provocative and sarcastic tone that permeates all of the macabre and perverted narratives in the poems. I find no evidence that his poems are satirical but at the same time Poe is mocking the "stupid commoner" who is searching for a scheme to become a successful writer in his "How to Write a Blackwood Article" that is still funny reading in this day and age. The experiment in poetry is not necessarily to be found in structure and style, although these are a quite sophisticated manner of showing the skill of the poet, but also in the subject matter and, for me, it must be a goal to actually have something to say. In this regard, I find Poe rather lacking, since most of his poems are too deliberately "showy" and seek to be provocative by going for something that polite society would frown upon, while also sating that need for base grotesquerie that taboos, such as, necrophilia, death and incest had become in the mid-19th century. In other words, he is far too vulgar, but this vulgarity is also a huge part of his appeal, since it seems that there is nothing that he won't do for money, even writing "base" literature.

In more modern times and with the victory of free verse over metric poetry, I believe that the process of distinguishing good poetry from bad poetry is a lot easier than earlier. Accentual-syllabic poetry has some qualities to it that I find intriguing but, at some point, we're just rehashing old ideas. I believe that the work of the modernists and the post-modern branches of poetry are creating a fascinating and original way of engaging the reader. I just think that a thorough understanding of what these forms of poetry are rebelling against is very important.

So, when I write experiments are vital to poetry, I do so with a conservative approach that I hope to lose somewhere in the process of becoming older and, hopefully, wiser.

If you're looking for a reading suggestion with experimental poetry, just visit a local poetry slam event. These things are wildly popular and for a good reason. It's poetry without all of the elitist and stuck-up opinions of online bloggers. Another personal favourite of mine has got to be Caroline Bergvall and how she treats language in a very musical manner, yet refuses to be constrained by something as trivial as rhyme and metre.

Anne Bradstreet, the American Puritans and their Poetry

Abandon all Hope, ye Sinners.

Never before have I read Anne Bradstreet or the other American Puritans, aside from a few quickly forgotten poems at some point in my education. I've never been interested in any of the poetry by these people and it probably comes down to a few simple facts:

1. I don't believe in a god.
2. I don't like the unadorned.
3. I don't like the manner in which she is attributed with being the first American poet that was published. 
4. The following meme didn't really make me believe that she was praised for her intricate and finely crafted metrical lines. It isn't even divided into the lines of the quatrain that they are taken from (JEEBUS CHRISSY!!!). At least, the "author" kept the capitalization at the start of the lines.

But I'm doing a class on American Poetry and we started the course by looking at several Puritan poems. For some strange reason, I began scanning the poem that we were dealing with (which was "To My Dear and Loving Husband") and it all started to make a bit more sense, than I had ever allowed Puritan poetry to give me.

For those of you who don't know where to find it, I'll present a version of it below:

To My Dear and Loving Husband

If ever two were one, then surely we. 

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; 

If ever wife was happy in a man, 

Compare with me ye women if you can. 

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, 

Or all the riches that the East doth hold. 

My love is such that rivers cannot quench, 

Nor ought but love from thee give recompense. 

Thy love is such I can no way repay; 

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. 

Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more we may live ever.

 The style of the poem is quite unique for a 17th century poem. I'm not talking about the meter although the poem starts with a perfect iambic pentameter. It's rather the manner in which love is described. "Compare with me ye women if you can" is a pretty dramatic stance that is taken by the speaker and the clarity that it presents to me is quite telling as to how I read poetry. Most likely, she is saying that she wants every other woman in the world to compare their love to hers. The line is metrically quite undramatic though, so any thoughts that could lead my interest to the line is thrown away, as it is once again in nice iambic pentameter.

Just below that line, however, we find a major shift in the poem. "I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold," resonates as a wonderful line in a prosodic manner and the spondee in the fourth foot (whole mines) is shown as being extraordinary because of the prosodic pattern of the poem. Bradstreet is highlighting the value of her husband's love simply through mixing up the metrics and, for some strange reason (surprise!!!), the words also make sense in discussing this metaphor. The alliteration in more and mines also give a sense of the importance that can be found in the line. It's exactly this type of discovery in the framework of a poem that makes me like it, even though it might be quite simple in its message. The care taken to place these little nuggets of tradition, makes me feel like a detective and the investigation is filled with thrills.

I would most likely divide the poem into three quatrains and the reason for this arbitrary editing would be that the tone and register of the speaker shifts. The first four lines are mentioning love between man and wife. The next four lines speak of the value of that love. The final four lines are a praise to God and a hope that the speaker and her husband are united again when their lives end.

The poem is quite simple, but the imagery is striking and compelling. It certainly doesn't feel like it's 350 years old, except for the ancient pronunciation of "persever" which is /pɜ:ˈsevɚ/ in IPA. Notice that the stress is on the second syllable. The same pronunciation can be found in Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, where the widow says the following in 3.7.37: "Instruct my daughter how she shall persever,". The line is found in section of  blank verse and lends credence to the interpretation that persever and ever rhyme in Bradstreet's poem.

I actually wanted to say something about the other puritans, but I'm not really in the mood for looking at the poems right now and, most likely, Anne Bradstreet is a good representation of what they actually did produce, when it was quite good poetry.

Why Is Poetry Important? Part One

The question that is posed above is probably one the most self-fulfilling questions that I have ever asked. It presumes that poetry is important and that we should actually spend some time reading it. I have an interest in poetry and because of that it becomes important to me. That's not a real answer to the question though and I won't convince anyone that poetry is sooo important, just because I like it.

In my latest update, I talked about why I even bother writing this blog and I want to stress that I'm not a poet. I enjoy poetry and writing, but the closest I've yet come to actually doing something with it has been reviewing concerts. Like many other people, I have written some horrible poems in my past and some have been downright awful, even though I appreciated them very much, as they were needed to express my emotions in one way or the other at the time. I also play the guitar and at some point, songwriting seemed like a particularly brilliant idea, since I could play music and create stuff on my own. It wasn't all that successful and I'm much better at playing other people's songs and stripping them down to something that I enjoy.

Here's a little song I wrote to my wife after I got back from Afghanistan (beware, it's in Danish):

I'm the guy on the left hidden by the microphone for the entire song.

I'd like to give you all a long list of how many ways, I didn't understand anything about poetics and that it was some sort of ignorance that drove me to abuse a long-established tradition, but I don't regret any of the decisions that I made with this foray into the world of lyricism.

The ability to fail is one of the best aspects of being human and if we don't learn from any of these mistakes, we won't get any meaningful experiences out of life.

1. Poetry should be about experimenting.
2. Poetry should attempt to capture what it feels like to be human
3. Poetry should deal with these emotions in a manner that can be understood by other people.

This is an incomplete manifesto of poetic notions and I will likely disagree with some of the elements later in life, but right now these three points seem to be what I think of as most important in poetry.

What on Earth Do I Want to Say With All of This?

Hi anyone who might stumble on to this site from wherever.

I've wanted to create a blog for some time that would be my outlet, so I could discuss whatever I felt like and whenever I felt like it. As can be seen from the name of the blog, I have some things I find more important than others and what better way to get it done than to publish it on the internet. No other place seems as suitable for cringing one's heart out than the internet and I've made the choice that I won't stay anonymous, so I hope this blog can give me the opportunity to stand up for what I like, dislike and find interesting.

I'm a 32 year-old man who lives with my wife in an apartment in Copenhagen. I have been studying English literature and language for the past 3½ years and recently got my bachelor's degree. For all of this time and since 2005, I've been employed by the Danish army. I'm a staff sergeant with a specialization in logistics and have been stationed in Afghanistan and Kosovo. I've always been proud of being a soldier, even though I might not have agreed on the mission I was performing, but after 7 years in the army, I started to become restless because of a lack of "personal development". I couldn't stand the fact that I might end up spending the next forty years as a soldier with limited opportunity for becoming a better person that could have a positive impact on my surroundings.

As can be seen from the paragraph above, I am extremely narcisistic. It's always me, me, me, but by sharing my thoughts with what I guess will be a very limited crowd (mostly me), I can perhaps change my self-perception into something that might be positive for other people and by extension, me.

I want to apologise for how the blog presents itself, but I have no intention of becoming proficient in using a computer for anything that is not strictly needed. I'm a user of the internet, not a profiteer and I will never use this blog for any commercial interests whatsoever.

My interest in politics is purely based on an amateurish interest in how we govern ourselves. In a distant past, I studied history at university and although I found the quantitative studies incredibly important, I couldn't stomach the effort that went into making them. The dull and mind-numbing repetitive task of gathering data is not one of my favourite pastimes, but the ideas that are provoked by historians interest me quite a lot. I don't subscribe to any particular political creed, but I sympathise mostly with socialist humanist ideals. My objection to capitalist society stems from the fact that we (people living in a capitalist world) are unwillingly participating in a culture, where we exploit and reduce humans to a commodity. This objectification of humanity is, in my opinion, the very real problem that the world faces.

Poetry is another of my main interests and that interest was awakened by my studies. I've always liked poetry and the way it presented difficult issues in a symbolic manner. I guess that I never fully realised how important it was to own the discourse to address issues in society and the most convoluted manner of saying stuff gives us a way to present the problems in a very human mode of expression. The inaccessibility of poetry is precisely the thing that makes poetry a necessary outlet for many people and the power of poetry lies in the obfuscation of meaning, which creates a paradox by being the most straightforward expression of thoughts. It's not an object to hide the emotion to create poetry. Poetry stems from emotion and is possibly the least manipulative mode of expression that humans have ever invented. It is constricted by massive amounts of tradition and every once in a while these traditions stymie the creativity and very emotions that the poet seeks to share with whoever is listening. I want to express myself as clearly as possible but in doing so, I often end up hiding my emotions, since I tend to value rationality and reason above an emotive response and while I think it's important to use reason to govern our emotions most of the time, I also believe that we must use our emotions to guide our reason. For this reason, emotion becomes the most important facet of being human.

My other insignificants are mainly given to say that I do not presently have an agenda that I want to push, but I get outraged at certain events in my society and I have a need to vent these emotions, so every once in a while, I will probably share something that is not related to poetry or politics, although I will have a hard time staying on topic for these things.

Thank you for reading this and I hope that you end up enjoying what I want to be my shared personal space on the internet.

Sincerely yours
Jonas.