Geekin' out on poetry (and Romanticism)—my study thread

"Affirming our humanity is one of the gifts of poetry, and in Sedakova's terms that means a refusal of the world's many pressures toward mediocrity." —Quote from the book In Praise of Poetry

Looking up some info on Rainer Maria Rilke:

• From You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin

In part it recounts sections of the story told in a book I bought some time ago called Letters to a Young Poet, but it also includes a lot of info on his meeting with the sculptor August Rodin and writing a monograph about him. I really like the idea of "inseeing" Rilke learned from Rodin—a way of understanding someone (or an animal, or even an object) by imagining what it percieves, rather than giving a description of its physical characteristics or its actions. Really putting yourself imaginatively into the subject—becoming it in a sense.

​

I found this video, and I've watched ten minutes or so of it (from where I started it). Olga struggles a lot to find words, but the man is fascinating. This seems to be on a level with the long video I posted back on page 5, where I first started talking about Lyric poetry.

​

Here's another lengthy video featuring the same guy—one Rowan Williams, who has been the Archbishop of Canterbury (!) as well as a renouned scholar and poet.

I like what he said about not wanting to be called a Religious Poet, because that sounds like a subgenre or subcategory. Instead—what did he call himself? A poet who writes on religious subject matter (or something close, trying to remember what I saw last night). It has to do with one of his big concepts—slowing down the metabolism of readers (as well as writers). That means rather than accepting cliches or convenient phrases, we find just the right ones, however long that may take. A quick easy label that's almost right will tip you off track, and if you keep doing that you slide off farther and farther.

He also said he never writes theology or any other religious material in poetic form. Instead he writes poetry that's about those things, which is a very different matter. A small but vital difference. He's very in touch with the idea of poetry (poiesis) as a fresh creation, a startling and original idea, or at least a startling and original expression of one. And of course, what applies to poetry can also apply to literature if it's poetic enough.

I think I'mma start a new thread—Poetry 2.0 or something, for a number of reasons. To post in this one I need to go back to page 2 of my blog and scroll all the way to the bottom, plus I feel like I'm on round 2 now. I got a decent start in the first thread toward understanding the basics (though far from comprehensive), in general poetry, Lyric poetry, and then Romanticism. Now I'm rotating back to general poetry, but hitting a deeper level, more on the intermediate stage. I'm sure I'll still be hitting a lot of the beginner level stuff (still need a lot of it), but I'm ready to launch on the next level for some aspects of it.

I considered transferring all my recent posts to the new thread, but I don't think I will. I'll just leave them here and link to the new thread.

I've just about finished watching the last video above. The other guy says poetry is about indwelling, and that, contrary to what many students want, a good poem can't be nailed down—

it's an invitation to dwell in possibility.​

I've been reading over earlier parts of this thread, brushing up on things that have faded a bit (or a lot) in my memory since I started it (about a year ago). Three quarters of the way down page 5 I re-discovered this link:

• Supernovae and Dark Stars: Some Notes on Universality in the Lyric Poem

This is really great stuff! It goes into detail about what it means that lyric poetry moves from the particular to the universal, or from the personal to the archetypal (or vise versa). And to get a real taste of how it's done by a great poet, I dug out Leaves of Grass and am reading through Song of Myself, one of the poems mentioned in the article. It's a long one, I'm taking it in chunks.

This is exactly the kind of more intermediate stuff I want to be concentrating on now.

Bruce Springsteen on Bob Dylan, from Springsteen's autobiography:

"Bob Dylan is the father of my country. Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home were not only great records, but they were the first time I can remember being exposed to a truthful vision of the place I lived. The darkness and light were all there, the veil of illusion and deception ripped aside. He put his boot on the stultifying politeness and daily routine that covered corruption and decay. The world he described was all on view, in my little town, and spread out over the television that beamed into our isolated homes, but it went uncommented on and silently tolerated. He inspired me and gave me hope. He asked the questions everyone else was too frightened to ask, especially to a fifteen-year-old: “How does it feel… to be on your own?” A seismic gap had opened up between generations and you suddenly felt orphaned, abandoned amid the flow of history, your compass spinning, internally homeless. Bob pointed true north and served as a beacon to assist you in making your way through the new wilderness America had become. He planted a flag, wrote the songs, sang the words that were essential to the times, to the emotional and spiritual survival of so many young Americans at that moment.

"I had the opportunity to sing “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” for Bob when he received the Kennedy Center Honors. We were alone together for a brief moment walking down a back stairwell when he thanked me for being there and said, “If there’s anything I can ever do for you…” I thought, “Are you kidding me?” and answered, “It’s already been done.” "​

Both are considered important poets as well as songwriters.

• Yes, Bruce Springsteen Counts as Poetry
• The Dark Dreams of The Doors, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud

I suppose what I'm doing with these recent posts is bringing poetry down to earth, from the lofty literary heights and the academic ivory towers to the streets. Also this music is a lot more familiar to me than most poetry.

I'm also starting a move into free verse/prose poetry. Morrison's poetry has a great cadence and rhythym to it, better than what I've run across elsewhere.

I have a few books on the French symbolists—Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine. They were the rock stars of their day, just as Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley were of theirs. I also have a book linking Morrison specifically with Rimbaud. These books were 90's acquisitions, when I was making a big move into studying some intellectual-type subjects.

• 10 of the Best Free Verse Poems Everyone Should Read
• 48 of the Best Free Verse Poems From Contemporary Poets
• The Best Prose Poetry

I went a-searching and could only find a small book by Baudelaire, one brief poem called "Invitation to the Voyage." It's a thing of beauty, with gorgeous sepia photographs and only a few lines of poetry on each page, surrounded by lots of space. And the poetry is very nice. But I no longer seem to have the rest of the books I remember by the French symbolists. I think I'll re-acquire Rimbaud's Illuminations, said to be the launching-point of the prose poem and some of the best examples of it. Prose poetry uses strong imagery and a lot of rhetorical/literary/poetic devices. For many of the writers (of both free verse and prose poetry I think) the King James Bible is a major source.

My ultimate aim is to write a lyric novella.

I've ordered paperbacks of The Flowers of Evil (Le Fleurs du Mal) by Baudelaire, and a book containing A Season in Hell, The Drunken Boat, and Illuminations by Rimbaud. Whenever I've bought Kindle books of poetry I always regret it, because there's no way to mark pages so you can open right to a favorite. Kindle is good for simply reading something, but not for poetry or research books, where you need to be able to quickly flip through and find what you want.

Unfortunately I got the Jim Morrison book in Kindle version. And once past the beginning there's been a lot of stuff I don't like, with mostly one or two words per line, occasionally three. Much of what's included seem to be poetic doodles or early sketches of ideas, sometimes just single words or a line that he wanted to remember for a possible future poem. And there are photographs of journal pages that, in the Kindle, are tiny and impossible to read. If I open it on the computer I'll be able to read those. So far I'm not very pleased with the book, though I expect some parts to be much better. I only wish I could flip through it to quickly find those parts, rather than needing to read through it all page by page, which is the curse of the Kindle.

All this new activity is me preparing to launch into my new area of study—free verse and the prose poem. Once I really get going I'll start a new Poetry blog entry. No way will I keep scrolling back a couple of pages every time I want to make a post.

At Thundair's urging (and endorsed by Socks Fox) I dug out Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook and am reading through it. It covers much of the very familiar territory, but also some really excellent stuff I haven't seen mentioned in other books. And I decided I wanted a nice book covering lots of poets, so I ordered one called 150 Most Famous Poems.

• Jim Morrison—A "Serious" Poet? @ Literary Kicks

The beginning of this article confirms what I thought I remembered—that the book connecting Morrison and Rimbaud was pretty pedestrian, especially in its exploration of Morrison. But yeah, maybe it got me interested in Rimbaud, and the rest of the French Symbolists.

And damn! The article is intense, and excellent. And long! I'm not quite halfway through it. Powerful stuff!