Why Is Poetry Important? Part Four

Understanding and Relating to Other People

I can see a myriad of problems when dealing with anything written or spoken that can screw up communication. For some reason, poetry seems to be one of the few things that isn't particularly inflicted by this phenomenon. It's quite simple why: poetry's not supposed to give you a straight answer and the sort of coherence and clarity we usually seek out in 'real speech' is not needed.

In order to truly appreciate how this functions, we need to look at some rather simple concepts that might not be apparent to everyone at first glance. Any sort of metrically-based poetry functions at the same time on both a paradigmatic and a syntagmatic scale. This means a line of iambic pentameter eliminates certain words from certain positions, and can exclude some words altogether, simply based on their sound. 

 An example from Alexander Pope might be in order to illustrate my point:

When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line, too, labours and the words move slow.

This line is a brilliant example of poetic diction, with an inversion of the normal syntactic order of words in the first line. When Ajax is attempting to throw the big rock, the poetic line is also struggling under this massive weight and goes significantly slower. The inversion is a necessity in Pope's poetry, because he mainly wrote in heroic couplets, a sub-genre that I have been dealing with in some detail for the past many months. End-rhymes are a necessity in heroic couplets and can overwrite the need for following accepted valency patterns. To further illuminate my argument, if we were to exchange the final word 'throw' in the first line with something appropriate, we would be forced to look at a wide range of constraints. Any word that could be a synonym of throw would be suitable for replacing it, if we were to follow the paradigmatic approach first. This means that words such as bunt, lob and hurl would be fine, but in our specific context this approach seems to be rather untenable, since they would have a hard time rhyming with slow in the following line. Instead, we could look at using the syntagmatic approac where any one-syllable word would be fine, no matter the meaning. 

Of course, poetry only exists in the proper use of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic usages.

Wordsworth wrote in his wonderful preface to the (in)famous Lyrical Ballads that they wrote poetry in the language of real men, and real men apparently spoke an extremely eloquent and varied, flowery English in 1799. Woe betide us that we do not have this style of speech or writing anymore, or perhaps it is all for the better.

By now, language is mostly understood to carry little meaning in and of itself, but rather that it takes on meaning from context. Whether you ascribe value to Grice's maxims or some other sort of linguistic model of understanding communication matters very little to me, but the gist is that while language by itself holds little meaning, the speech acts, and particularly in a conversation, hold all the meaning in the world. All of our semiotics are constantly used to make a point to either ourselves or for others.

On that note, I will highlight a little piece of advice that I gave my students today: If you have to write poetry make sure that you break most, if not, all of the rules. 

But if you don't know the rules in the first place, it is very hard to know how to break them.

Outright Rebellion and Fifth Column Activity: A Short History of American Poetry

The United States of America is a quite unique experiment in nation-building. Everything American is something that is borrowed or taken from somewhere else. In this regard, American poetry developed its own voice a long time ago. Whether we are talking about Puritan poetry, Transcendentalism, American Romanticism, Modernism or Conceptualism, America is a giant in the playground. In this paper, I will attempt to give a brief account of how America's poetry evolved into a literature that did not simply mimic or copy the British styles, but became a force majeure in World literature. First, I will present the Puritans through Anne Bradstreet and move on to Transcendentalism and Romanticism, exemplified here by Whitman and Poe. Then, I will discuss how Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot used the platform that was created by these literary predecessors and how Modernist poetry was used to criticise the society that surrounded them. From there, I will present Kenneth Goldsmith and his work in Conceptual poetry and why this poetry can draw upon the lineage of the Modernists.

Beginnings of American Poetry

It seems almost impossible to ignore the importance of the Puritan poets and how they affected poetry in the English-speaking world. I will argue that the Puritans are foreshadowing events in Britain that will come to life with Romanticism through an example from Anne Bradstreet. “To my Dear and Loving Husband” is a perfect example of how poetry could be written in the 17^th century and while I would not characterise it as an independent voice that is separate from British poetry, it is still a good example of the words of common people that the Romantics would try to reproduce. Bradstreet has several lines that are both defiant and obedient at the same time and the revolutionary spirit which is found here can be followed through almost all of the great American writers and to contemporary literature. Bradstreet draws on a highly stylised version of iambic pentameter and the poem starts with three instances of anaphora, but the tone of the poem is so intensely personal that it is possible to imagine someone speaking these words at the time. The poem draws upon biblical references and a relation to the Orient as rich and exiting, but the speaker would rather have her husband's love than “all the riches that the East doth hold” (Bradstreet ll.6). Love as a central theme in poetry is hardly new, not even by 17^th century standards, but Bradstreet's register is so different from the English verse prevalent in Britain at the time. An approximate contemporary is Milton, whose style is so immaculate and his register is highly poetical, so something is up on the other side of the Atlantic. Milton constantly references classical myths and ideas, whereas we only find a glimmer of it in Bradstreet and her notion of poetry seems grounded in her experience and life, rather than being grounded in classical learning. This style can later be found in British Romantic poetry, where Wordsworth and Coleridge are rediscovering old myths and attempt to frame them in the speech of “real men”(Wordsworth 5).

American Style in Transcendentalism and Romanticism

A true American voice appears to develop around the beginning of the 19^th century with a great deal of influential writers and thinkers. It is not a coincidence that the US gains independence at this time and the development of an American language becomes a priority to the new statesmen of the Republic. Webster and other important authors were “actively concerned with

the construction of an American national identity through a shared culture of print” (Pelanda 434).

This concern is echoed by Emerson in his oft-anthologised essay “Self-reliance”, where he espouses: “Insist on yourself; never imitate” (Emerson 547). This statement is quite interesting to categorise as an integral element of American literature and poetry, especially when we turn our attention to later movements in poetry. It was seen as a necessity to develop an American literature that did not copy the sentiments and styles of Europe and to create this poetry, the topics move from the classical myths and towards experiences that are more easily identifiable as American. Walt Whitman is one of the most important figures in literature and his ground-breaking Leaves of Grass is one of the first large-scale forays into free verse. “Song of Myself” is devoid of a standard metre, but it has a very strong rhythmical “feel” to it, with anaphora scattered across many lines. As Kruse argues (with reference to another Whitman poem), Whitman follows a very special schema in his construction of verse and the criticism that it could be prose is denied by a reference to how his lines are not arranged purely by syntactic restraints (See Kruse 2012, 175-179, for a more thorough investigation of Whitman's verse). Whitman sought to become the great national bard and he has become one of the reference points in any informed discussion on the development of free verse and the impact that it has had on modern poetry.

At the same time as Whitman, another American voice emerges. Edgar Allan Poe uses a notably different style from Whitman and is hyper-metrical in his poems. Poe uses obscure words that the reader cannot be certain to know the origins of and his poetics are clearly defined in the two essays “The Poetic Principle” and “Philosophy of Composition”. Both of these essays have been subjected to harsh criticism and my interpretation is that the principles Poe sets forth in these are just as subversive as his poetry. On the surface, Poe and Whitman appear to be the extremes of how poetry can function, but the poets are quite similar in the effect that they want to produce. In another paper, I argued that Poe was using metrics to undermine the rhythm of the poem (Uri 3). This rebellion towards old styles of poetry are at the core of what I define as the American poetic voice. The best American poetry rebels against preconceived notions of what poetry is and attempts to break away from the traditions of old. In this regard, Poe and Whitman are using two methods of achieving the same end and they seem to break away from British poetry in a violent struggle; one through a fascination with the macabre, the other by transcending the boundaries of tradition. While Poe and Whitman broke with age-old traditions in their poetry, I will argue that the next development in American poetry is even more rebellious in its nature.

Modernist Poetry in Two Works

As I stated above, the American poetic voice is highly rebellious and attempts to flaunt the prejudices of its society. The highly controversial The Waste Land is no exception, but the stylistic choices that Eliot makes are unlike any seen before. The Waste Land is so full of references to literary sources that it is an almost insurmountable task to dissect the poem to clarify all of them. Several critics accused Eliot of merely copying his material from other sources and by picking the great works of other poets, he was merely producing meta-text that by the act of repetition would be mediocre poetry. I beg to differ. Eliot's wasteland is a very unique experience and it can be used as a shining example of how to write a story without giving in to the temptation of an easy way out. The poem ends with a blessing that comes from Eastern mysticism and invites an interpretation that all will be well if we adopt the spiritual teaching of the East. Although I am not entirely convinced that this reading is the correct one, I will concede that the reading is not forced. The reason that I do not agree with the reading is that The Waste Land creates meaning through perverting all that it touches. If the poem has a “happy ending”, I am unconvinced of why it goes through all of the trouble of representing the European literary canon as perverted and then argues that the Transcendentalists were right all along, with their acceptance of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads as spiritual rejuvenators to a dying civilization. Eliot was not convinced by Transcendentalist poetry and stated that he 'did not read Whitman until much later in life, and had to conquer an aversion to his form, as well as to his matter, in order to do so' (Eliot qtd. by Kruse 178). If the poem is unresolved and does not give any positive outlook, the blessing at the end becomes a piece of dark humour that has been inserted to mislead and subvert the remaining fragments of text that are presented in the poem. That amount of humour is quite hard to find one of the other great Modernists, Ezra Pound.

Pound was a notable editor and critic of poetry and his poetic notions are very interesting. He did not seek to produce free verse poetry for the sake of free verse but rather because his topic demanded it. He claimed that poetry should always hold 'a rhythm [....] which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed' (Pound qtd by Bittner 84). This notion of poetics seems very relaxed when it is compared to his style, which is far from laid back. Pound is probably most well-known for his epic Cantos, an account to write a world history with a poem. As an experiment, it is probably the most awe-inspiring Modernist poem, mostly because it failed so spectacularly. First of all, it is incomplete. Pound never finished the poem and the unfinished nature gives it a distinct feel. The reader is never presented with the ultimate punchline and I do not presume to know if Pound had one. The Cantos are also extremely experimental in their use of citations and references. Pound and Eliot shared this aspect but they used it for quite different effects. Eliot's references seem calculated to present a certain point of view and the reader should be constantly on guard, when he is reading Eliot. On the other hand, Pound seems to be very truthful in his readings of original texts. Although many of his allusions are quite obscure, they present the image that they are supposed to. In “Canto XLV”, Pound names a horde of artists and places himself in their midst as another innovator that needs to be recognised. The poem circles around usury and the problems that have arisen because of it. His historical figures are representatives of new artistic movements and the statement that these figures would not have been found in a world without usury is an angry rant against capitalism. I have discussed how Pound distorts historical images to fit with his “truth” in a previous paper, but the overall impression of Pound's writing is not one where he attempts to subvert society. Pound is an active revolutionary and fights with everything he has against the injustices he sees. This revolutionary approach can also be affirmed by his trial for treason after WWII.

These two Modernists represent two ends of another spectrum than Whitman and Poe, but they are no less incompatible. While they were good friends in real life and worked closely together in the early years of their careers, their styles are very dissimilar. They share a bleak outlook on the future in their best known works, but where Eliot represents society as morally and spiritually corrupt, Pound flames against the injustices that he finds in society and spews vitriolic statements that seek to create an uprising against the injustice. Pound is a true revolutionary, who sided with the losers and got defamed for it. However, his poetry is brilliant and incredibly intelligent. Eliot draws attention to the perversion that is found in society by flaunting the errors, but his solutions seem to be of a different character than Pound's. Eliot is not providing easy solutions, but he is undermining the foundations of the society he lives in and, therefore, he is also providing a comment on literature, society and all of the same elements that seem to preoccupy Pound.

When Intention Becomes Most Important

Like many other artistic genres, verse has undergone quite a transformation from its infancy and it is hard to recognise the similarities between the Homeric tradition and Modernist poetry. They are seen as similar because of the genre conventions, but the Modernists sought to break down the old traditions by applying new guiding principles to how we read poetry. There are many interesting new developments in poetry and it is outside the scope of this essay to categorise or even list these developments. American poetry entered a new phase around the turn of the millennium with the advent of Conceptual poetry. This movement was spearheaded by another American poet, Kenneth Goldsmith. One of Goldsmith's most recognised works is Day, a complete retyping of the New York Times from September 1, 2000 and is possibly the single most dreary reading anyone has ever done (I have only read excerpts from it). The idea behind the poem is exceptional though. In a blog post, Goldsmith explains that the idea of the poem is to stamp out all creativity from himself and create something that has value simply because he has put effort into creating the text (Goldsmith n.p.). The thing that can gain the most value is something which is utterly devoid of value and '[n]othing has less value than yesterday's news' (Goldsmith). Goldsmith has created a great idea and on the basis of this idea, the trivial becomes valuable. Conceptual poetry works by presenting great ideas in the least creative manner, such as retyping a newspaper and since the process is experimental, some of the ideas might turn out to be poor. 

 

A Work in Progress Is a Proper Ending

According to Place it is important in Conceptual poetry to '[n]ote the potential for excess in allegory. Note the premise of failure, of unutterability, of exhaustion before one’s begun' (Place 16). Place is highlighting the necessity of experiments in poetry and this experimentation is at the core of what I have attempted to show. All of the poets I have dealt with in this paper, with the exception of Bradstreet, have been big personalities that demanded recognition and staged a performance that gave an impression of greatness. I believe that this style of staging oneself is a very American notion and it serves to highlight the aspiration to excel. I also see a great deal of experimentation in the differing poetic styles. These styles have created a unique American voice that has become central to English language poetry and is distinct from other poetic traditions. What struck me in dealing with these poems is how subversive or revolutionary they are. The poems constantly challenge taboos and preconceived notions, and I could easily have included Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost or a plethora of other American poets to prove the same point. In today's society, there is a interconnection between people where geographical distance is less important but it is still possible to speak of a national identity in poetry and the American voice is going strong.

References

Bittner, Hansjörg. The Metrical Structure of Free Verse. Norwich: University of East Anglia. 1997.

Bradstreet, Anne. “To My Dear and Loving Husband”. The Norton Anthology of American

Literature. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 7th. ed. New York: Norton, 2012. 108.

Eliot, T.S. The Wasteland. Ed: Michael North. London: Norton, 2001.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance”. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Gen. ed. Nina Baym. 7th. ed. New York: Norton, 2012. 532-550.

Goldsmith, Kenneth. “Uncreativity as a Creative Practice”. Eletronic Poetry Central. Buffalo, NY: State University of New York. No publication date.

Kruse, Jesper. Free Verse and the Constraints of Metre in English Poetry. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen. 2012.

Pelanda, Brian Lee. “Declarations of Cultural Independence: The Nationalistic Imperative Behind the Passage of Early American Copyright Laws, 1783-1787”. Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 58. 431-454. 09 October 2011.

Place, Vanessa and Robert Fitterman. Notes on Conceptualism. New York: Ugly Duckling. 2009.

Uri, Jonas. “Breaking Away from Tradition: Subversion in 'The Raven'”. Unpublished. 06 May 2016.

Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”. Harvard Classics Vol.39: Prefaces and Prologues. New York: Bartleby.com, 2001.

Breaking Away from Tradition: Metrical Subversion in 'The Raven'

On the internet, there are a lot of student help pages concerning poetry and how to read it and we are often introduced to familiar concepts such as internal rhyme, metre and a wide variety of other poetic terms. When we regard the “cheatsheets” for Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven' most of these pages stress the structure of it, but end up accepting the fact that it is a trochaic octameter, without delving into the specifics of what that actually suggests for the reading. My reading of this poem is troubled by this acceptance, as the form and style of the poem attempts to subvert the metrics and rhythm of itself. I will present two different lines that stand in contrast with the highly stylised lines of trochaic octameter, to show how the poem's rhythm is constantly broken by the metrics of the poem.

'The Raven' can easily be described as rhythmically arranged, since it is possible to boil it down to a four-beat structure. Since 'The Raven' has become a cornerstone in almost any anthology concerning American poetry, there have been a movement towards a unified reading of the poem and the fact that it is probably the most famous poem composed in trochaic octameter, it is held as a shining beacon of this particular metre. The first line of the poem holds itself completely to this form, but already in the second line we find it straining against the confines of the chosen metre. Wikipedia has a scansion of the first stanza that I would argue is faulty for reasons that will be explained after introducing the scansion of the second line:

                                          | /  .   | /   .   .  | /           .  | /   . .    | /    .    | /    .  | /    .   | / | (Wikipedia)

                                          Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore (Poe ll. 2)

The heavy use of dactyls are not particularly problematic as many foot substitutions are allowed in different metres and I do not have a complete list of allowed substitutions in trochaic octameter, if such a list even exists. My main argument against this scansion is the manner in which of is analysed. It is almost unheard of to stress a function word and in this scansion, it seems as a particular interference with the reading. The rhythm of the reading does indeed give us the impression that of should be stressed, but the line would scan more easily if volume was a spondee and of for- would be a pyrrhic. In this way, there would not have to be stress on a function word.

The substitutions introduced in the second line are not a definite proof that the poem does not use trochaic octameter throughout, but we find that several lines have similar struggles with staying inside the metrical arrangement of the metre. I would argue that these lines are not a breach of metrics, but rather the poet remaining unrestrained by tradition and form. Instead, he is highlighting how metre can be subverted to serve a purpose of highlighting certain facts in a poem. The most obvious line to use for this is the opening line of stanza nine:

                                     | /        .   | /    .           .  | .    /   .    | /      .  | /      /   | /         .   | / . |

                                     Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

The line is extremely convoluted and the addition of a dactyl in the second foot and then the extremely rare amphibrach in the third. The stresses of the line highlight the words ungainly and fowl. These words hold semantic context to the complicated elements found in the metrics and, therefore, the metre gives an increased value to our understanding of the poem. The line is, of course, still acceptable in terms of metre, but it is an extreme example of how to use any sort of metrical line and it would most likely have been seen as a breach of “decorum” to use a line like this in most earlier poetry. The internal rhyme of the line is also off-centre as, ungainly and plainly are the rhyming constituents, but ungainly is the third foot and the rhyme should have been fowl with plainly. This non-rhyme is a pun on 'fowl-foul' and denotes that something has gone awry for our speaker. These subtle elements are what sets 'The Raven' apart from other poems of its age and these parcels of information that can be gleaned from paying attentive detail to the construction of the poem accentuate more diversity and poignancy in his poetic framing.

I have not shown that 'The Raven' is unmetrical, but I have attempted to highlight how subversive the use of metre has become by this point in time and I do believe that there is something uniquely rebellious and American in Poe's poetry. Poe adherence to metrics seems to be founded in something other than tradition, as we can find inventiveness in his attempt to break it away from a simple reading. His command of metrical poetry is not used to solidify form but rather to blur the meaning and the strict adherence in most of the lines of this poem suggests the very eeriness that the poet intended.

References

Poe, Edgar Allan. 'The Raven'. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York:

Barnes and Noble. 2006.

'Trochaic Octameter'. Wikipedia.

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.

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.