Objectivist poetry recommendations

[Philip Coates]

> Phil; I think the most important thing in a movie is the story. Is there an equivalent in poetry? [Chris]

No, because poetry is more readily suited to a wider range of purposes:

1. To tell a story ("The Highwayman")

2. To describe a physical place or scene or event ("Daffodils", "The Eagle")

3. To describe a situation ("My Last Duchess")

4. To convey a feeling or emotion ("How Do I Love Thee?") or mood

5. To persuade or give a viewpoint ("Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", "If")

6. Overlap or combinations of the preceding ("Sea Fever", "Gunga Din")

---And perhaps other types I'm forgetting at the moment.

[Barbara Branden]

I recently wrote a review for the Atlasphere -- entitled I Hate Poetry! -- of Walter Donway's fine book of poems, Touched By Its Rays. In his Atlasphere column, The Struggle for Poetry's Soul, Walter had written the following:

"“Like prose, poetry conveys meaning by using words to recreate reality, but what distinguishes poetry is that it establishes a meter, a consistent underlying beat, and then creates feeling, and meaning, by varying that meter in specific ways that have specific emotional effects. The possibilities are endless.

“To take an example from my own book, here is the opening of a poem “Red Rover”:

"O where you have gone, Red Rover?

And do you recall how we bent

To charge the ranks of old idols?

As to a trumpet’s cry, we went!

"We thought to topple every foe:

The labyrinth of faith, the spell

Of antique sin — all the prisons

Of humility where men dwell.

“I believe that, quite apart from the meaning of the words, the underlying meter, and the rhythm imposed on it, help to convey a sense of longing, and of appeal, in these lines.”

I agree with Walter. At its best, poetry is music, the special music of words. I wrote in my article:

"Don't just read the following excerpts...listen to their music. Let them sing to you.

"Hear the defiant lyricism of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

"'Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of Peace

Count many a year of strife well lost

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.'

"Listen to the vast, distant sound of church bells ringing through the Biblical cadence of Yeats’s melody:

"'Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.'"

Remove the music of the words, and whatever remains, it is no longer poetry.

Barbara

[Guyau]

Here's the beginning of a poem I wrote:

Buggy little lanterns,

Wafting through the air,

Sometimes you're not,

And sometimes you're there.

____On, flick, fly.

I like it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/search_author.html?query=5782

Pattiann Rogers (1994)

Rapture of the Deep:

The Pattern of Poseidon’s Love Song

. . .

____tumbled and tumbled

by the waves beneath which the frilled

shark a singular presence in a dimension

of lesser constellations suspended

mid-sea whips with a graceful pattern

of pitiful evil

____toward a nebula

of cephalopods undulating

below an arrangement of rain

shattering the evening suddenly

out of the linear into the million

falling moments

____of one moment

pebbling the open plain of the sea

. . .

of soaring dolphins breaching

with the contrapuntal rhythm of a passage

from Bach as over and within

this universe

____the hand of an ecstatic

wind its fingers spread wide

with blessing moves in a seizure

of joy through every trembling spray

and pulse and skeleton forming

the reality of this whole

prolonged consummation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: #55

I think you are right, Mindy.

Of course sometimes an existing poem is made into a beautiful song.

“Sure on this Shining Night” by James Agee

Sure on this shining night

Of starmade shadows round,

Kindness must watch for me

This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.

All is healed, all is health.

High summer holds the earth.

Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder

wand’ring far

alone

Of shadows on the stars.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/song8.html

Samuel Barber

Edited August 27, 2008 by Stephen Boydstun

[tjohnson]

I'm looking for suggestions on some excellent poetry to read that an Objectivist would appreciate. Preferably romantic and love poems, and poems that describe beautiful scenery or places.

Doesn't this seem like stereotyping?

Edited August 26, 2008 by general semanticist

[Mindy Newton]

I recently wrote a review for the Atlasphere -- entitled I Hate Poetry! -- of Walter Donway's fine book of poems, Touched By Its Rays. In his Atlasphere column, The Struggle for Poetry's Soul, Walter had written the following:

"“Like prose, poetry conveys meaning by using words to recreate reality, but what distinguishes poetry is that it establishes a meter, a consistent underlying beat, and then creates feeling, and meaning, by varying that meter in specific ways that have specific emotional effects. The possibilities are endless.

“To take an example from my own book, here is the opening of a poem “Red Rover”:

"O where you have gone, Red Rover?

And do you recall how we bent

To charge the ranks of old idols?

As to a trumpet’s cry, we went!

"We thought to topple every foe:

The labyrinth of faith, the spell

Of antique sin — all the prisons

Of humility where men dwell.

“I believe that, quite apart from the meaning of the words, the underlying meter, and the rhythm imposed on it, help to convey a sense of longing, and of appeal, in these lines.”

I agree with Walter. At its best, poetry is music, the special music of words. I wrote in my article:

"Don't just read the following excerpts...listen to their music. Let them sing to you.

"Hear the defiant lyricism of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

"'Spend all you have for loveliness,

Buy it and never count the cost;

For one white singing hour of Peace

Count many a year of strife well lost

And for a breath of ecstasy

Give all you have been, or could be.'

"Listen to the vast, distant sound of church bells ringing through the Biblical cadence of Yeats’s melody:

"'Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.'"

Remove the music of the words, and whatever remains, it is no longer poetry.

Barbara

Do you find that song lyrics make poor poetry? Lyrics that are beautiful in a song tend to fall flat when they are all on their own. It's as if the integrity that the music itself has binds the words, making unnecessary the rhythm, etc. that poetry otherwise requires.

--Mindy