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links to poetry criticism |
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Adnax Publications : Poetry Criticism : Alphabetical Index It is difficult to find good criticism: most of it is written for the benefit of the author rather than understanding, or poetry or the general public: the consequent idle charade of vanities simply serves to distract the serious pursuer of poetry from the main thing, which is poetic inspiration, which passes like a beautiful ghost from Homer to Ovid to Chaucer to Marlowe to Shakespeare to Keats, and sometimes appears elsewhere for a time. Downtrodden and ignored it may be, but extinguished, never. Consider the following example of modern criticism, chosen more or less at random: 'The play may thus serve as a sort of geological record of the old stark moralistic patterns of dramatic conflict metamorphosing into the subtler complexities of human ambivalence; in the process, the play similarly records the seismic collision of medieval and modern segments of Western spriritual history.' Robert N Watson A Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama writing about Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Newspeak. In reality, this could be said simply and clearly, but, in the context of writing a paper for a scholarly publication, it is impossible to do this without being thought stupid, so, like fawning courtiers, thoughts have to be dressed up to seem important. He is simply playing a language game, and the rules of the game relate more to the way Universities work and are funded, and perpetuate themselves, than to the question under consideration. It is true that understanding often proceeds by metaphor, but for this to work, the metaphor must be simpler than the thing to be understood. So an agricultural worker can understand the process of moral corruption by a metaphor based on a plant being strangled by weeds. But here the proper function of metaphor is undermined and made subordinate to the display of an empty wit. And compare: 'I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.’ William Blake, Letter to the Reverend John Trusler, August 13, 1799What largely distinguishes the two quotes is feeling: the one moves, because the author is moved and speaking of his own experience (and in beautifully simple terms which approach poetry in their own right), the other is purely self referencing in its feeling, begging to be considered clever. No doubt he is clever. But this is not poetry, nor does it serve to help us to understand what poetry is, nor does it give any clue as to where we might look. If there is a light, this text obscures it. If there is something worthwhile, this text conceals it. It is a sort of deformity: and we should not seek to regulate our proportions by it. Adnax Publications : Poetry Criticism : Alphabetical Index |
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