Silly poetry meme
Oct. 12th, 2005 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaWhat makes a three-stanza poem written by a housewife in Peoria, Illinois, any less magnificent than a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?
Ask the proponents of the "It's all a matter of opinion, and there are no objective standards--meaning no way to rank any work as greater than another" school. I was taught that we do have criteria we can use to rank poems or songs or artwork or what-have-you. I believe that the "absoluteness" that we were taught was damaging, because how can you rank Van Gogh's "Starry Night" above Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and then rank the "Mona Lisa" third? You can't. You can only list the greatest in an unordered list. Many of the "best books of the 20th century" lists suffer from this, as do the lists of films. I would say that usually, the first ten to twenty could be ranked in any order and still be the "top ten/twenty." But on the other spaghetti-tentacle, I don't think there can be NO saying that "this is clunky prose" and "this is good writing" and "this is evocative imagery, while that is not." I mean, you can say that if you say it's ONLY YOUR OPINION. Although if many people share that opinion, especially people who study literature for a living, then you might well be right.
Anyway, what makes the Browning better is because the Browning DOESN'T read:
And so forth. (I just made that up. Most greeting card poems are nowhere near that bad. Susan Polis Schulz and especially Rod McKuen sometimes are actually good. Anyone else remember Rod McKuen? Surely you're old like me!)
There have been greeting-card poems that I've saved. I like an awful lot of the funny ones. And I like the artwork on many of them. Still, there's gotta be some yardstick to measure by. What with the new king and all, I realize the "yard" definition has changed along with the length of the king's foot. But are there not still some ways to tell what's great from what's just okay? If so, send them to me immediately. *grin*
Now that we aren't so concerned with meter and rhyme and scansion, I suppose we measure by imagery and resonance. All I know is, I know what I like. (*grin*)
Scansion. Just THINK--Shakespeare* wrote ALL HIS PLAYS in blank verse! *Unrhymed iambic pentameter* That is TOUGH, folks. And Milton with all of "Paradise Lost" and its companion works. It boggles the mind merely to think of writing a couple of sonnets in proper form. (Though![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pameladean can do them!) Good thing for me that poems don't necessarily have to follow a particular form now, eh?
* Whoever he turns out to be or not to be. (groan)
Anyone else written a silly poem lately?
Ask the proponents of the "It's all a matter of opinion, and there are no objective standards--meaning no way to rank any work as greater than another" school. I was taught that we do have criteria we can use to rank poems or songs or artwork or what-have-you. I believe that the "absoluteness" that we were taught was damaging, because how can you rank Van Gogh's "Starry Night" above Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and then rank the "Mona Lisa" third? You can't. You can only list the greatest in an unordered list. Many of the "best books of the 20th century" lists suffer from this, as do the lists of films. I would say that usually, the first ten to twenty could be ranked in any order and still be the "top ten/twenty." But on the other spaghetti-tentacle, I don't think there can be NO saying that "this is clunky prose" and "this is good writing" and "this is evocative imagery, while that is not." I mean, you can say that if you say it's ONLY YOUR OPINION. Although if many people share that opinion, especially people who study literature for a living, then you might well be right.
Anyway, what makes the Browning better is because the Browning DOESN'T read:
Mother, when I think of all
The stuff you did for me,
I know no other mother shall
Compare on land or sea.
I think you're sweet, I think you're great--
In short, I think you're nifty;
I bet you're thinkin', "Golly! Kate!
I can't believe I'm fifty!"
And so forth. (I just made that up. Most greeting card poems are nowhere near that bad. Susan Polis Schulz and especially Rod McKuen sometimes are actually good. Anyone else remember Rod McKuen? Surely you're old like me!)
There have been greeting-card poems that I've saved. I like an awful lot of the funny ones. And I like the artwork on many of them. Still, there's gotta be some yardstick to measure by. What with the new king and all, I realize the "yard" definition has changed along with the length of the king's foot. But are there not still some ways to tell what's great from what's just okay? If so, send them to me immediately. *grin*
Now that we aren't so concerned with meter and rhyme and scansion, I suppose we measure by imagery and resonance. All I know is, I know what I like. (*grin*)
Scansion. Just THINK--Shakespeare* wrote ALL HIS PLAYS in blank verse! *Unrhymed iambic pentameter* That is TOUGH, folks. And Milton with all of "Paradise Lost" and its companion works. It boggles the mind merely to think of writing a couple of sonnets in proper form. (Though
pameladean can do them!) Good thing for me that poems don't necessarily have to follow a particular form now, eh?* Whoever he turns out to be or not to be. (groan)
Anyone else written a silly poem lately?
