I like Tankas. A Tanka is a short, originally Japanese form of poetry. It has five lines, usually with the syllable division of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. They are often very interesting to read because of their brevity. They can contain an entire world of ideas, condensed into 31 syllables. A mood, an idea, an atmosphere... Kind of like the essence of a novel in five short lines.
Above the ocean
a feeling of loneliness
carried by the wind
Lost by someone long ago
Does it feel unloved and sad?
This is an excerpt from Dylan Thomas's And death shall have no dominion, a classic in it's own right. Now compare these two with this one:
Life, love, sorrow, death... Universal themes of life, from quite different angles, don't you think? This last text is an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's Une Charogne, A Carcass, translated to English by William Aggeler. So what do these three poems have in common? What makes them good? Are they any good, really? I say three, the first tanka doesn't count since it's written by me. I wouldn't presume to compare myself with Shakespeare, Dylan and Baudelaire. Ha! What a joke... Anyways, think about it. I'm not here to give you any answers, only to provoke thoughts in you. Figure it out for yourselves!
Only thinking what others tell you to think is just as bad as not thinking at all. So start thinking! Have fun! ;)
a feeling of loneliness
carried by the wind
Lost by someone long ago
Does it feel unloved and sad?
The Tanka has been around for about 1300 years, and is considered the most important of Japanese poetry forms. Every man and woman of class was expected to know how to compose a good Tanka to conclude special occasions with. It wasn't actually called a Tanka until after the Meiji era, or 19th century, when it was given that name to distinguish it from Waka poetry.
Poetry is a peculiar thing. What is it? I dare you to give me a good answer to that. Why is poetry poetic? What is the purpose of poetry? What makes good poetry good?
I'm sure everybody has heard the famous 18th sonnet by Shakespeare:
How about this one:
Poetry is a peculiar thing. What is it? I dare you to give me a good answer to that. Why is poetry poetic? What is the purpose of poetry? What makes good poetry good?
I'm sure everybody has heard the famous 18th sonnet by Shakespeare:
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem is written in the form of a sonnet. A rather complex form, not so easy to write. Is this a good poem? I'm pretty sure most people would agree that it is. But why? Because it's beautiful? Well written? Thought provoking? Because it rhymes? Because it has some kind of emotional impact on the reader?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
How about this one:
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
This is an excerpt from Dylan Thomas's And death shall have no dominion, a classic in it's own right. Now compare these two with this one:
My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,
Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.
The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;
And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.
Life, love, sorrow, death... Universal themes of life, from quite different angles, don't you think? This last text is an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's Une Charogne, A Carcass, translated to English by William Aggeler. So what do these three poems have in common? What makes them good? Are they any good, really? I say three, the first tanka doesn't count since it's written by me. I wouldn't presume to compare myself with Shakespeare, Dylan and Baudelaire. Ha! What a joke... Anyways, think about it. I'm not here to give you any answers, only to provoke thoughts in you. Figure it out for yourselves!
Only thinking what others tell you to think is just as bad as not thinking at all. So start thinking! Have fun! ;)
Introduction to Poetry
ReplyDeleteI ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
-- Billy Collins
Poetry, from ποίησις - poezis, 'Creation', is nowadays believed to be 'creation of something with words in an aesthetic way'.
ReplyDeleteWhatever that means. Aesthetic, so making 'Art' , is obviously always a term which is different hence subjective. But some people started canonizing art, literature and so on by implementing 'rules' of some kind, also known as 'poetikas'. Those rules have changed a lot throughout time. First, the rules were very close to the ones which applied for art (like painting and sculpting)...like the aristotelian poetika, which demands a congruency of Form, and a purification of the viewer/listener...and which was mainly build up for drama, Tragedy to be precise.
Ok I'll make myself short: Poetry, is defined by If there's a sort of Art in it (you can discuss that) to which nearly objective rules can be applied, so that even if someone doesn't like that poem or drama or whatever, even that person can admit that it's art because it apllies to that bunch of rules. Depending on Century, Social influences and other stuff, those rules are very different. Like the corsett of the Form of the sonett, where the words are forced to be put in a certain order, or the 'Surrealistic' poetry, where every forcing is mainly forbidden...ah it's difficult to explain in english, since i miss out a lot of specific terms.
Well I liked them all, the poems in your entry....and by the way, just by producing poems, you ARE in fact in a row with Dylan, Shakespeare, beaudelaire...and all the others.
When I was analyzing extreme poetry like Haikus, one-line poems, one-word poems and sign language poetry, I came to the following conclusions:
ReplyDeleteAccording to linguist Geoffrey Leech, poems challenge language norms so that the deviation stands out from the background of normal, everyday language. In other words, we notice poetic language because it is odd and this foregrounding serves to increase the significance of the poem. Unpredictable poetic language forces us to concentrate on every word or sign, leading us to appreciate not only the word's meaning, but also its full significance in that context.
or shorter:
"Poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional [meaningful] and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose. It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear [or eye]."
But enough theory, let's have another poem:
Young Poets
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
-- Nicanor Parra
le sigh
ReplyDeletepoetry is
what angsty teenage girls fill spiral notebooks full of when they all feel misunderstood in the exact same way as each other
what academics labor over, trying to out do each other for sheer oddness and new creativity. Remember, nothing is accidental; take credit for everything anyone finds in any of your work. It's there on purpose.
There is a mythical subset of poetry that allegedly elevates the soul, comforts the heart, delights the ear, teases the mind and challenges comprehension.
It's not real. Either that or it's so real that no one sees it. Whichever way you end up with something about cattle-sized snot balls.
I won an award for cattle-sized snotballs.