[lit-ideas] Re: The individual nature of "startle"
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 18:48:24 -0600
Perhaps, indeed. But then again, perhaps not. If poetry is a discussion
of the ineffable using ineluctable words. Then, yes, it certainly helps to
be a bit insane. But if poetry is believed to be definable, through such
things as rhyme, meter, subject matter, vocabulary, etc., then insanity is
a handicap. A more mathematical approach to poetry would seem to be called
for. I once thought that about the only things that can't be considered
poetry are grocery lists, cook books and instruction manuals. But even
those in the hands of a fascinated soul can waken the world to rapture. A
reenactment of the rapture when for the first time following
directions,what was supposed to happen happened!!! and life blossomed into
YES -- O frabjous day! Calloo, callay.
Defining "sanity" is the crux of the problem. Best to just accept poetry
as another border activity.
On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> "In a letter written in 1870, Emily Dickinson once defined poetry this
> way: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know
> that is poetry. ... Is there any other way?”
>
> I don't know, must poetry, or good poetry, always be associated with some
> sort of mental illness ?
>
> Okay, perhaps it must.
>
>
> O.K.
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 10:39 PM, <cblists@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 03 Dec 2014, Lawrence Helm wrote:
>>
>> > I did have a problem when Lowell’s “poetry” seemed little more than
>> “prose.” If you can do it in prose, why call it poetry?
>>
>> And then on 09 Dec 2014, Lawrence wrote:
>>
>> > I opened Mariani’s book this morning and read, “... I can still
>> remember standing in the stacks of the library one dreary rainy afternoon
>> soon afterwards and, as I read that poem, feeling as if the top of my head
>> were coming off.”
>>
>> Isn't it a little 'startling' to read in a book written about 20 years
>> ago a direct answer to a question that you posed just last week?
>>
>> Why call what Lowell writes 'poetry'? Mariani answers that question by
>> quoting Dickinson.
>>
>> In a letter written in 1870, Emily Dickinson once defined poetry this
>> way: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know
>> that is poetry. ... Is there any other way?”
>>
>> I'm really enjoying your poems and the discussion of poetry you've
>> initiated, Lawrence, and regret that constraints prohibit commenting a
>> little more fully. (Hopefully these will soon be lifted.) Thank you.
>>
>> Chris Bruce,
>> keeping an eye out for
>> the thing with feathers, in
>> Kiel, Germany
>>
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>
>
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