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At 9/24/05 11:02 PM, Maus wrote: Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Do keep in mind that a lot of the lyrics to songs have nothing to do with what they originally wrote about. It's what the listener attributes to it.

So the question becomes, is it more important to write something with deep and structured meaning, or is it more important to write something with such a emotional ambiguity that the meaning is completely up to the reader? Or is it the author is writting something of meaning but it is the lack of skill by the reader/listener to understand that causes the ambiguity? Or could it be yet another solution?

I actually have no clue so I'm just going to leave it out there.

At 9/24/05 11:32 PM, Maus wrote: Apples give me the shits. So ponder that. :P

Oh my. I believe I've just been PWNed. In the South, the "granny apple quicksteps" are another word for the shits.

The difference between poetry and prose is that the more subtext, ambiguity, and multiple meanings that a poem has the more it's a good poem. The fact that many "love" poems actually convey that they hate the person they're writing about, or that many things written about that seem mundane are made extraordinary in the context. Prose either tells a straight story, or is allegorical (which is a semi-poetic form). And most people hate allegory because they either don't catch onto it, or they don't understand it. Modern Prose is basically for people who want everything told to them and not think about what they're reading. Now, don't get me wrong, I love literary mush sometimes. It's entertaining and easy. But to say that it's a higher literary form simply because you don't like it is a bit... douche baggy. :D

What kind of ambigiuity is there in poetry?
Even prose writing, there can be a lot of ambiguity...

So unless you're talking about haiku,

other poems are very specific.

hell,
none of you would say this if you read John Ciardi's translation of Dante's Inferno...
Dante's Hell is one of the most vivid, and it's even more so because of the rhyming scheme.

I changed my name again.

I just didn't like the last one, I'm getting sick of the homstarrunner.com reference.

Shadowmind = ScrollButtons = Proletarian

I'm reading the Communist Manifesto right now so it's at least halfway relevant to me.

I dunno, I might change it again, I wanted to change it to Sal_Paradise but that's taken.

a cookie to the first person who knows where that name is from

Does anyone know how to ditch my profile pic or am I stuck with "wet the cheat" until I find something new?

My sister bought me Sin City and the first season of Thunder Cats as my gift...

I can't believe I will be watching Thunder Cats again very soon...
I never really saw a whole complete episode as a kid.

At 9/25/05 01:30 AM, fli wrote: What kind of ambigiuity is there in poetry?

Well... for example a line like "A will has brought me here back to the days of my youth". Now, is that the will of the individual? Or is it the will of someone who is deceased?

Even prose writing, there can be a lot of ambiguity...

Not denying that, but when prose is too ambiguous you lose your reader. Too much thought taken for too long leads the reader to get tired and bored and frustrated with a work.

So unless you're talking about haiku,

other poems are very specific.

How so?

hell,
none of you would say this if you read John Ciardi's translation of Dante's Inferno...
Dante's Hell is one of the most vivid, and it's even more so because of the rhyming scheme.

Dante's Inferno is actually an epic poem. ;)

At 9/25/05 01:35 AM, Proletarian wrote: Does anyone know how to ditch my profile pic or am I stuck with "wet the cheat" until I find something new?

Sign In > Public Profile

Or just click here. :)

With very ambigous poetry such as Haiku,
the fact that they leave so much to imagination makes them much more tantalizing them most forms of poetry.

For example,
"An arch, a circle
Blue and white high in the sky.
Who is singing it?"

Here's something I just made up on the spot.
And even though it's incredibly short, it's also tantalizing.
What is the arch? Is it rainbow? Is it the boughs of a willow tree?
What's the circle? The moon. The sun? Or is it a well? Or a round bird's nest.

Singing... but is it a choir of children singing? Or is it the music of birds.
What kind of birds... Etc.

But this is not all poetry.
Especially with Chaucer's stuff. This man wrote things like forplay. For example, in Book of the Duchess, he would describe the sunlight coming in as dapples for several long winded "paragraphs" (they aren't paragraphs, but hey... you know what I mean...)

At 9/25/05 02:54 AM, fli wrote: But this is not all poetry.
Especially with Chaucer's stuff. This man wrote things like forplay. For example, in Book of the Duchess, he would describe the sunlight coming in as dapples for several long winded "paragraphs" (they aren't paragraphs, but hey... you know what I mean...)

Yes, but the Book of the Dutchess was allegory. Why does he depict images in the stained glass of flawed love? Of love that does not conquer? What's the significance of the birds? Are they a representation of something more? The story, and the dream, it's an allegory for Prince Edward's loss of his wife, but it's not simply that. There's much more subtext. You can't limit it by saying "he talks a lot about this stuff." There's always a purpose. He talks a lot about that stuff, but when it gets to the really important stuff the "narrator" glosses over it. It's Chaucer's own literary device.

At 9/25/05 03:54 AM, mofomojo wrote: Do you guys even discuss politics in here?

How about you read the first post there, skippy?

At 9/25/05 03:54 AM, mofomojo wrote: Do you guys even discuss politics in here?

Let's do the time warp again!

At 3/12/03 10:31 PM, JMHX wrote: Basically, this is just a hang-out thread for people of intelligence and opinion that need a quick break from "debate" or have something non-political to discuss.

This is the chillax zone.

Well, all I have to say about prose and poetry is that I find them both have a unifying characteristic. If they're well written, I enjoy reading them.

At 9/25/05 03:55 AM, LadyGrace wrote: How about you read the first post there, skippy?

No, that will probably take too much effort for some people.

I'm freakin exhausted. Full-time Uni student, and I worked 35 hours at my job this week.
I... AM.... WIPED...

And one of my solices that help me unwind is down. I'm a geek, but InTheMafia is temporarily shut down and will be reset to what it was 5 days ago. There goes my LT position.

Oh well, my boys will be back from K-Town today, so we can head out and knock over mailboxes or something (I didn't get to go to the Kegger because of... you guessed it... my Jorb).

*kicks Costco in the nuts*

At 9/25/05 11:03 AM, night_watch_man18 wrote:

At 9/25/05 03:55 AM, LadyGrace wrote: How about you read the first post there, skippy?

No, that will probably take too much effort for some people.

I'm freakin exhausted. Full-time Uni student, and I worked 35 hours at my job this week.
I... AM.... WIPED...

OH WHATEVER MAN. You think you have it so hard. I had to sleep in today. Yeah, till 10:30, it was so exausting. And after that, I had to watch an hours worth of tv. And now I've gotta write on the bbs. Man your such a pansy, I've had soooooooo much work to do today.

At 9/24/05 09:27 PM, IllustriousPotentate wrote: Barring an unforseen, radical event, you've won the bet, Shrike. At least I got the category right--3 or 4. This $10 bill is now yours. Just e-mail me contact info.

And if anybody else wants free money, just click here for contact info.

Thanks.

At 9/25/05 12:15 AM, LadyGrace wrote: But to say that it's a higher literary form simply because you don't like it is a bit... douche baggy. :D

What I'm trying to say is that rhymed verse has it's place.... as the part of a greater musical body of work.

Poetry is like the dialogue of a script with no stage directions. There SHOULD be stage directions, but the author was just too lazy or too uneducated in stagecraft to put them in. True, some people might enjoy putting their own directions in there, but what you end up with is basically an artistic format of Madlibs. Now, Madlibs are pretty cool, and have their place, but their not to be taken seriously.

An example of what poetry is good for is limericks.

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose dick was so long he could suck it
He said with a grin as he wiped off his chin
If my ear were a cunt I would fuck it

Now, techncially I could read into that and get an allegory of the american consumer who buys things for short term pleasure as opposed to long term life enrichment and thus ends up wasting their prodigious endowments on debauchery and self-degradation. But if I did that, I'd just be tacking a lot of my own personal agenda onto a piece of work that only belongs written on the inside of a bathroom stall. However, if the writer had gotten up off his ass and scored a polka song to back that up, there'd be no question as to whether or not that poem was a serious allegory or just for shits and giggles. By the same token, if he scored it with classical or jazz music, we'd know to use the political interpretation. But by not scoring any music at all, he's merely left the work incomplete, and not to be compared with other complete mediums. The reader has to metally finish the work, like a plate of shrimp that's been steamed but still has it's shell and a streak of shrimp-turd running down it's digestive tract. Now, it's ok to like shrimp, just don't eat that streak of shit and then try to tell me it tastes better than if you cut the shell off and scrape the poo out of it.

/end anti-poetry rant

Well put, Funk, well put.

But LadyGrace, allegory is not restricted only to poetry. Allegory is found in prose writing all the time. Infact, any art form can use allegory.

And the allegory wasn't in the imagery of The Book of the Duchess. In fact, it is a very straight foward poem... it's nearly almost anti-allegory. The only ambiguity in the poem is just word play... Hunt of the "hart" could had also meant in Chaucer's dialect as the Hunt of the "heart". But after that, there isn't anymore ambiguiety that Funky says.

John of Gaunt (not Edward... that's his grandson, or something...) loses his wife.
Of course the Black Knight in the poem isn't called by that name, but let's assume it's him.

The Dreamer falls asleep after along insomia. He sees hunters. Then follows a puppy. It takes him to the knight who is sad. But the Dreamer is an idiot.

The Knight tries to say that his wife is dead, but he uses a whole bunch of euphemisms, allegorical poems, and just a bunch of symbolic language. The Dreamer, who is an idiot, can't understand, and this upsets the knight.

It gets to the point that knight loses his head and yells, "She's dead!" And after that, he just leaves, and the Dreamer wakes up. And that's that...

The allegory of the poem itself isn't about life, or anything big like that. Just about the sadness of John of Gaunt. That is pretty straightfoward there, and the "She's dead!" part... well, how anymore straightfoward could that be....

Now let me think about non-ambigious straight foward poetry...
Miguel Pinero's stuff.

This guy's poems is so vivid, it's nearly disgusting the way he's talking about the ghettos and Lower East Side. This guy wrote his last testimony as a poem "A Lower East Side Poem", and it's straightfoward stuff: spread my ashes in the in Lower East Side.

Anyways, a small part of the poem right here... (Very good stuff, the best poem from Pinero, I think...)

*cues techo/house music*

There once was a mod named FUNK
Others' poetry he tried to debunk
Then he wrote a long rant
where doubt he did plant
But no one listened, for he was a punk.

It's about penis.

At 9/25/05 04:46 PM, TheShrike wrote: *cues techo/house music*

But no one listened, for he was a punk.

It's about penis.

When it comes right down to it, noone's going to burn all their poetry books just because I think poetry is a goofy medium. That doesn't mean I won't keep a nice warm bed of coals ready for when it's time to get all interpretive on some REAL art with depth, though.

At 9/25/05 04:39 PM, fli wrote: But LadyGrace, allegory is not restricted only to poetry. Allegory is found in prose writing all the time. Infact, any art form can use allegory.

I never said that. In fact, I said otherwise.

And the allegory wasn't in the imagery of The Book of the Duchess. In fact, it is a very straight foward poem... it's nearly almost anti-allegory. The only ambiguity in the poem is just word play... Hunt of the "hart" could had also meant in Chaucer's dialect as the Hunt of the "heart". But after that, there isn't anymore ambiguiety that Funky says.

If you choose to read it that way, I guess that's how you choose it. But if you ask any Chaucer professor, they'll tell you it's allegory. Furthermore, you left out the entire part of the story of Alcyone and Seys, which supposedly inspires the dream of the hunt. Why does he choose that story? Why does he leave out some parts but elaborate on others? Why does he leave out the ending of the story where the two metamorphose into doves?

And I never said all poetry was ambiguous. I said the better stuff is more ambiguous. Showing and telling are different things.

Also, to FUNK, putting words to music doesn't necessarily make it better. That would be like saying since mmmbop is set to music it's a better "poem" then Shakespeare's sonnets. Language in itself is inherently musical. As for associating poems with musical styling so you can tell what they are referring to... well, like I said, just because you don't understand it, doesn't make it bad. It's just personal preference.

At 9/25/05 05:13 PM, LadyGrace wrote: That would be like saying since mmmbop is set to music it's a better "poem" then Shakespeare's sonnets.

Genius argument LadyGrace, wish I'd thought of it.

I think a lot of the poetry found in music is a lot worse than non-musical poetry in general. And no I'm not purely talking about mmmbob. Take Metallica songs for instance. Even if you don't like the band, or like metal, you can recognize that the lyrics for their songs are incredibly beautiful and poetic. We could say that Metallica's lyrics are among the best in music. Now let's compare Metallica's lyrics to the greats of poetry. Lack of music aside, which poems are written better?

What Funk was getting at, and I agree with the idea, is that poetry is all well and good, but it's like a musical composition without music. Tone and rhythm add a lot of subtle meanings to lyrics that they would not have had anyway. It's not that songs are better simply because they have music put to them, it's that poetry seems incomplete. That definately does not equate to "mmm-bop is better than Frost," to say that is totally twisting what Funk said.

However, I would say that not all poetry can be used for lyrics, and that's where Funk's argument falls short. Not all poems have rhythm and that's what differentiates them from lyrics. Poetry is simply a broad category that encompasses lyrics.

Homer knew what was what, though. The Illiad and the Odyssey were epic poems that he told by singing, talk about a guy who combined the best of all worlds. He must have had some major pipes to sing the entire story, though.

At 9/25/05 06:39 PM, Gunter45 wrote: What Funk was getting at...

But there are many poems that work much better as they are than if they were put to music. And song lyrics sound best when sung. I think that's where the comparison of music and poetry fails.

Just got off the bus,
Dublin's full of dirty drunks,
But I bear presents.

haikus, motherfuckers.

At 9/25/05 03:54 AM, mofomojo wrote: Do you guys even discuss politics in here?

No, that's the point, this thread is so you don't have to be serious and political all the time.

At 9/25/05 06:42 PM, DamienK wrote:

At 9/25/05 06:39 PM, Gunter45 wrote: What Funk was getting at...

But there are many poems that work much better as they are than if they were put to music. And song lyrics sound best when sung. I think that's where the comparison of music and poetry fails.

Even non-rhyming poems use rhythm. All verbal communication does, even pure prose, although considerably less than poetry or music. I think that's a major shortcoming of the way many people, particularly Americans, view music. You don't have to use any set classical scales or notation to be music. A poem's meter, even if it's a free-form poem, is a musical aspect. That musical aspect is what separates it from prose, even without accompaniment. Techically you could break every poem down into small enough chunks and notate it's rhythm, and in order to truly appreciate the poem, that has to be done internally by the reader.

However, there are emotions too complex for words. Poems use their musical aspects to help convey these emotions, but in the end they fall short because they are limited by their verbal format. However, interpreting tone and rhythm are just as difficult as learning to read text, if not moreso. All the music I've every really loved the first time I heard it has been in a language I couldn't understand. The utilitarian aspect of verbal communication seems as natural to me as chainmail lingerie (ie, it's not). If what you're trying to do is convey emotion, which is what I assume most poems are trying to do, they should rely more on rhythm and tone and less on text and verbage. In that way, poems are almost like trying to describe the mechanical operations of a car in baby talk: it's a wildy inappropriate medium for the task at hand.

Now, I understand that up until the past hundred years, text was the only way to record ANYTHING. Thus, by definition, there's going to be a much better body of written work on subjects of the heart or anything else for that matter. The great lyrical masters of the past had no choice but to rely on poetry. Cavemen made remarkable paintings with only mud and wet ashes, but they still pale in comparison to the Sistine Chaple or even Fantasia, for that matter. It's like the difference between mono an dolby surround sound. You can listen to great music in mono, but it's just better in dolby. You can percieve great meaning from poetry, but it's just going to be better if it's muscial aspect is enhanced, even if the musical and rhythmic action of it is purely embodied in the reader.

Which comes to this point: If poetry is so good, then why do poetry enthusiasts always do live readings? BECAUSE IT'S MORE MUSICAL THAT WAY. Poetry is a PART, not a WHOLE, and that imcompleteness makes it by nature imperfect. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't any real turds of songs in the music world, but have you ever read REALLY BAD poetry? It makes the Backstreet Boys seem like an Orchestra.

How bout we just agree to disagree?

At 9/25/05 07:51 PM, DamienK wrote: How bout we just agree to disagree?

But how are we supposed to bicker, then?