S.HAMlyn blurb from front page...

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Fri, 2002-02-08 14:09

Susan Hamlyn: People like to remember and quote poetry
Me: Well I don't. That sounds boring as !@£$. I like to read it and to speak it. Poetry has to be kept alive and that kind of dull quoting is one of the most heinous crimes against any half-decent text.
Hamlyn: The tradition which has preserved great poems from medieval ballads to the de la Mare and Kipling favourites has added little to its store in the last 50 years.
Me: What a backward view of poetry you have, madam. By all means, if you want to evoke the spirit of medieval ballads or Kipling, if you want to deny that the rest of the twentieth century happened and that realism is now a wee bit more important than it used to, that globalisation is now well underway and it's harder to play to ignorant masses than ever before, then go stick your head in a pig.
Hamlyn: This tradition is aural.
Me: No love, it's ORAL. Stop being so flaming passive and get active with it. Sheesh. People didn't just listen, they said it out loud. How else do you have a TRADITION if no-one is carrying it on? !@£$!
Hamlyn: Few of today’s poets take into account those qualities which aid the memory – regular rhythms, clever rhyming, terse phrases, skilful use of poetic rhetoric…..We are now the masters of the nuance, the subtle allusion and the monochrome landscape of self-analysis.
ME: That's what happens when you move with the times, you know? Modernism happened about a hundred years ago, dear, in case you hadn't noticed. Have you ever seen a council house at all, or stood in line at the brew?
Hamlyn: Few poets care about speaking to more than their own ear.
ME: Crap poets you mean, or fictional theoretical poets whom you cite because they suit your argument. Name them, go on! Name all these terrible poets who are speaking only to their OWN ears. I'm waiting....
Hamlyn: Potential readers, however, are still there.
ME: Stuff potential. I came back from the bookshop last Saturday with about half a dozen quality Scottish lit magazines featuring !@£$ing good new poetry. Do you get out much, love? You're welcome to come along to Borders tonight, Queen Street, Glasgow. I'll show you CUTTING TEETH, NERVE, CENCRASTUS, CHAPMAN, NORTHWORDS, and so on. It's jazz night tonight too, so come with some cool vibes. You might have to look cool up in the dictionary though, because it was given a new modern slant in the last century...
Hamlyn: Who writing today has Eliot’s rhythmic mastery and his capacity to universalise the personal?"
ME: Eliot hardly evokes the universal. Just because you pilfer from every pre-existing text doesn't mean you stand as ambassador for every context of those literatures. He's more like some old cadger who failed miserably in the attempt to eradicate the poet from the poetry. The very fact that you quote someone else citing him as a source is proof enough of that. The other very obvious fact is that he reduced himself to a very dull and individual middle-class voice that fails to communicate with me for one, which denies any notion of the universal. Anyway, who wants to be truly universal? Who wants to appeal to people that are different? Revel in yir diffrunces, cookie is whit Ah say. Yoor dead gorgeous by the way.

Fri, 2002-02-08 14:32

Ralph Dartford

Yes Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good cakes as well... Mr Dogstar we all love you. Have you drunk too much coffee today? 'If I gave you a fresh carnation, you would only crush its tender petels' Ralph

Fri, 2002-02-08 14:32

fish

*takes up knitting*

Fri, 2002-02-08 14:39

Vicky

"...be a man my son." *happily stirrs pot with long handled spoon" Sorry....you make some good points dog, and I even agree with some of them (shock), but I still enjoy reading traditional poetry too. Boewulf(can't spell it)....bloody good And I love Coleridge's 'phantom' too.

Fri, 2002-02-08 18:16

fey

Still can't help feeling the "death" of poetry you chant is because of recorded music.

Fri, 2002-02-08 19:15

Mykle

The real trouble with modern poetry is the lack of a half-decent video to go with it;-) Nobody wants to read - just listen while somebody else reads (or sings) and watch the half-naked ladies and the flashing lights. If you need to think about it then it's old fashioned and boring - where's the instant fix? I mean rhyming poetry - it's not cool unless it's a love song - is it:-)

Fri, 2002-02-08 20:27

funky_seagull

I would disagree with you there Myckle - rhyming poetry is pretty damn cool sometimes. I mean you read something like - ' The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner ' by Coleridge. and it jus blows you away, I would say that piece of poetry is pretty damn cool. William Blake, he wrote some of his poetry in rhyme. sometimes rhyme and rhythm can be used to great effect. Equally free-flowing forms of poetry can be effective. I like both types of poetry - rhyming and free-verse. They're both effective - it would be a bit dull if there was only one way of writing poetry. So thank God we have many varied styles and ways of writing it. Though to me it seems a bit daft when writers turn their noses up at each others styles, and say that this is the correct way to do it, or that is the correct way to do it. Instead of just learning to appreciate one anothers styles. Man never close your mind to any genre or style of writing - or you might be missing out on something.

Fri, 2002-02-08 21:04

Barenib

A lot of the disinterest with poetry springs from the fact that many of the poets who are 'successful' are deemed to be so by the so called poetry establishment. They then join that establishment and so the process continues, the circle is unbroken. It's a bit like the practitioners of modern art; unless you have enough time or inclination to learn about the merits (or not) of formalism you're never going to appreciate Damien Hirst - or most of what's in the Tate modern, it all seems like a big con to your average bod. Too many of the poems that you read in the establishment magazines are deliberately oblique - I've lost count of how many make references, for example, to obscure bits of Greek mythology. Most of the 'modern' (last 40 years) poets who have had popular success have done so largely with humour - John Cooper Clarke. Wendy Cope, Roger McGough, Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and even Spike Milligan. This seems to have been the main way of getting into the public consciousness. I believe that structure and rhyme (even if you don't use them in public) are the basic tools of the poet - learning these are an essential apprenticeship for whatever may come later. It's like an artist doing endless still life and human form sketches, you have to learn your craft. So I suppose I agree a bit with Dogstar (yes there are a lot of great poets out there) and a bit with Hamlyn (it's the self interested establishment who have put people off with their own agenda). Hopefully websites like this will help build up the interest again.

Fri, 2002-02-08 22:09

Mykle

I was kidding Funky - half my stuff is in rhyme (shows you've never read it). I just enjoy playing the 'devil's advocate' sometimes.

Fri, 2002-02-08 23:16

#10

the right rev L...

"if a man wrote a book on the significance of poetry, and it actually proved the significance of poetry, then this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world." an appropriation from wittgenstein but one i feel should have some bearing on the whole issue. i think i shall write a book on it, or perhaps at the very least a pamphlet. no, wait, i shall expunge the whole of my thesis on a discussion board on abctales.. yes all very good points, this death of poetry business has been going on for centuries, in some of Plato's dialogues you can even find great Nihilist poet and philocrat Callicles moaning on about it. the point of poetry, and poets, is to be a reprocessor of culture, continuing it in the process (be that for bad or good) in an endless recursive thread. this is not an accepted definition but it serves as well as any other. if poetry is not interesting to people any more, how can you blame poets and not culture? i agree with dog about overrating of eliot. he was great for his time and as a cultural waypoint in poetic readings today, since in his youth there was no vers libre apart from what was being liberated from France. remember baudelaire? the point is, the impetus for modernist writing was that even in the "victorian" period (arbitrarily between the reform act, 1832 and 1900) the trend was Romantic poetry. you know, the stuff with rhythm, rhyme &c as well as cleverness. "lets kill our dads"*, said ezra pound, and the great oedipal struggle of western writing begins. eliot and madox ford all very good writers, writing stuff that is deliberately oblique and logically impenetrable (because every literary gentleman despises science - the great leveller). now, one hundred years later, we are still writing this free verse. is anyone thinking what im thinking? l. ron hubbard, esq. *= substitute any paternal figure, ie. your mum

Sat, 2002-02-09 00:15

#11

round tonsil to...

who qualifies this ruth hamlym/s paddock as a poet/s? why is it felt that there is a need to cast them as such? not much to do with the thread, but it's something i've been puzzled over. with engineering etc you are not an engineer until you have gained the qualifications on your exams. i get insulted when called that, i'd rather be known as something *respectable* like a philosopher :) what qualification makes you a poet? any person can write poetry but are they all poets? new thread?

Sat, 2002-02-09 01:28

#12

stormy

what you all should really be worrying about is why 98% of the general public think of poetry as what they read in greetings cards. until you/we? can get your/our? ideas to the mass population then poetry is doomed for discussion in obscure books, once a year on bbc and in this thread. publishers of slim volumes think of sales in terms of 1000 to 10,000, which is why poets are poor unless they hold down a better paying job - toilet cleaning for instance. so, in my mind, you can ramble on as long as you wish about the merits of quoting poetry but until you/we can reach the masses then it is all rather like a late night programme on (name your obscure channel here). the protagonists greatly enjoy it but no one else listens.

Sat, 2002-02-09 01:51

#13

Vicky

Phantom All look and likeness caught from earth All accident of kin and birth, Had pass'd away. There was no trace Of aught on that illumined face, Uprais'd beneath the rifted stone But of one spirit all her own;- She, she herself, and only she, Shone through her body visibly. S.T.Coleridge (1805) Don't think I'll quote the whole of the Rhyme of the AM for you but check out the last stanza....definately worth waiting for.

Sat, 2002-02-09 11:17

#14

dopestar

SAMMY COLERIDGE! WAKE UP & GET OUT HERE THIS INSTANT, BOY! EXPLAIN... "She, she herself, and only she?" Q. How many times do we really NEED to repeat the subject of 'she'? A. As many as it takes to fill out the syllable count and comply with the metre? Very poor Sammy. Very VERY POOR. Stay behind after class and clean the urinals. And YOU! Yes YOU, WILLY WORDSWORTH! You can clean that "SAMMY SUCKS WET FARTS OUT OF DEAD PIGEONS" off the blackboard right now!

Sat, 2002-02-09 11:57

#15

Sammy Coleridge

Please Sir! I'm sorry Sir. I was trying to emphasise the point, I'll try not to let it happen again, perhaps if you looked at tonight's homework, I called it Kubla Khan, I don't know why I was High at the time...actually it doesn't make much sense to me this morning but me mam loves it. And PLEASE Sir, don't make me work with Willy he nicked my girlfriend, I hate him!

Sat, 2002-02-09 13:24

#16

kubla khant

awrite sammy ma man? whit the frig wur ye playin at cookin up sum hauf-baked so callt po-yum aboot us whin ye kidnae evun finish whit ye startet? whit a legacy ye left behind ye, no mistake... why did ye gie it up jist when ye wur lernin how tae dae it proper? sheesh...

Sat, 2002-02-09 15:00

#17

Sammy

Whe...where..am....I? I NEED some smoke man, where's that dodgy opium geezer?

Tue, 2002-02-12 00:16

#18

fey

:0)

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