Strand, Knox, and few poetic questions
I wasn't sure if we were supposed to post on anything in particular (or if we were even supposed to post), so I've just written about a few points that struck me.
I am interested in the way Strand uses language--he seems fairly spare with it, yet the content of many of his poems is strange, sometimes surreal. It is interesting that he is able to give us this material in a sort of straightforward, plainspoken way. Strand doesn't put the reader into a dreamlike scene with lush, verbose descriptions or extensive imagery, and I think it is for this very reason that the weird images he does give us stand out so much. That is, because we don't feel like we are in a dream sequence, because it seems like Strand is being plainly conversational, the weird stuff becomes more striking--we see (or at least I see it) more as a slight delusion or the speakers slip from reality than an imaginative scene. I think what I'm getting at is that Strand seems like a more "reliable" speaker, a speaker existing in the real world, so that when he gives us something that seems outside of this, we don't necessarily view it as the speaker's imaginative branching out. Rather, we are left with the impression that the speaker actually believes he has "been eating poetry." And this, I think, makes us view the speaker in an interesting way--we see him as reliable but perhaps a little delusional.
It's also interesting to me that Strand is able to create these odd scenes without extensive imagery. Rather than painting a picture for us, his poems seem to operate on a more psychological level; their effect seems to be more on the brain rather than the senses. I'm interested in comparing Knox and Strand because I think they both might be working using language in this similar way--i.e. their poems engage the mind more than the emotions. I think though that Knox is toying with language a bit more than Strand. I'm not suggesting that Strand is less skilled with language; rather, I think his poems have a different goal than Knox's do, and thus manage language in a particular way in order to achieve an end. Knox, I think, doesn't really pick one way of using language; part of her project, it seems to me, is exploring and manipulating the language itself.
The Mao article, it seems to me, looks at the various theories, arguments, etc. addressing the question of whether or not poetry should be considered within a historical context or as a separate entity. This was informative for me because I was only loosely familiar with these different schools of thinking. I'm interested in the question raised on page 10 in relation to how the critic is to consider the poet's intentionality. I guess I'm also interested in the question of how the critic decides what a "good" poem is. It seems like this is something variable and subjective that depends upon what criteria the critic uses as the basis for his judgment and, ultimately, his particular poetic tastes. I think that there are certain guides or methods for judging poetry that are more objective, but it seems there is an inherent element of subjectivity, of opinion.
In the Altieri article, I'm intrigued by the idea that the sincere self "is one poets are tempted to posit as always beyond language" (22). I wonder if in crafting a poem a level of sincerity is inevitably always lost--that the writer inherently must "create" a speaker and that this act of creation is something contrived, something that can't ever be entirely sincere (even if the speaker is not meant to be a character but to represent the writer himself).
I am interested in the way Strand uses language--he seems fairly spare with it, yet the content of many of his poems is strange, sometimes surreal. It is interesting that he is able to give us this material in a sort of straightforward, plainspoken way. Strand doesn't put the reader into a dreamlike scene with lush, verbose descriptions or extensive imagery, and I think it is for this very reason that the weird images he does give us stand out so much. That is, because we don't feel like we are in a dream sequence, because it seems like Strand is being plainly conversational, the weird stuff becomes more striking--we see (or at least I see it) more as a slight delusion or the speakers slip from reality than an imaginative scene. I think what I'm getting at is that Strand seems like a more "reliable" speaker, a speaker existing in the real world, so that when he gives us something that seems outside of this, we don't necessarily view it as the speaker's imaginative branching out. Rather, we are left with the impression that the speaker actually believes he has "been eating poetry." And this, I think, makes us view the speaker in an interesting way--we see him as reliable but perhaps a little delusional.
It's also interesting to me that Strand is able to create these odd scenes without extensive imagery. Rather than painting a picture for us, his poems seem to operate on a more psychological level; their effect seems to be more on the brain rather than the senses. I'm interested in comparing Knox and Strand because I think they both might be working using language in this similar way--i.e. their poems engage the mind more than the emotions. I think though that Knox is toying with language a bit more than Strand. I'm not suggesting that Strand is less skilled with language; rather, I think his poems have a different goal than Knox's do, and thus manage language in a particular way in order to achieve an end. Knox, I think, doesn't really pick one way of using language; part of her project, it seems to me, is exploring and manipulating the language itself.
The Mao article, it seems to me, looks at the various theories, arguments, etc. addressing the question of whether or not poetry should be considered within a historical context or as a separate entity. This was informative for me because I was only loosely familiar with these different schools of thinking. I'm interested in the question raised on page 10 in relation to how the critic is to consider the poet's intentionality. I guess I'm also interested in the question of how the critic decides what a "good" poem is. It seems like this is something variable and subjective that depends upon what criteria the critic uses as the basis for his judgment and, ultimately, his particular poetic tastes. I think that there are certain guides or methods for judging poetry that are more objective, but it seems there is an inherent element of subjectivity, of opinion.
In the Altieri article, I'm intrigued by the idea that the sincere self "is one poets are tempted to posit as always beyond language" (22). I wonder if in crafting a poem a level of sincerity is inevitably always lost--that the writer inherently must "create" a speaker and that this act of creation is something contrived, something that can't ever be entirely sincere (even if the speaker is not meant to be a character but to represent the writer himself).
posted by RMS at 10:55 AM
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