I am not a realist.
That is one of those things you vaguely know about yourself but are rarely confronted with actually admitting such a label aloud, or here, through a blog. I do not like Ezra Pound's poetry, plain and simple. (At least the pieces we were required to read.) The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism states that Ezra Pound believed that poetry should "imitate spoken language rather than conventional meters and should contain 'nothing, nothing, that you couldn't, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say'" and that his slogan was "Make it New."
*Heavy sigh* That's like people who argue that "real movies" don't have happy endings because "life isn't full of happy endings." Yes, which is exactly why I don't want to pay $12 to see a movie end badly: there are enough bad endings in real life! I watch movies for the romantic notion that things do end happily ever after, that good triumphs evil, that the protagonist always gets his girl.
To me the very point of poetry is the beautiful, lyrical language employed by the poet, not to hear everyday language. Will contemporary poets soon be using texting slang in their poetry? Will they insert LOL after certain couplets? Shorten people to ppl? Insert brb instead of breath marks?
Label me a romantic, but I prefer my poetry to be poetic.
I agree and disagree with your post:
ReplyDeleteI do believe that poetry should have some sort of structure and not be there to mimic the spoken language. If I wanted to listen to modern language I would have a conversation with someone. Poetry is there to showcase what words, when used intelligently, can do. It is what language would ideally be if we cared enough to use it properly.
On the other hand: I love depressing movies. I find it refreshing when a movie does not end as you expect it to. I also love catharsis and tend to experience it to a higher degree when I watch something sad. There is also an aspect of the unknown and unanswered. I leave the movie theatre thinking and questioning and every time I watch the movie after that I find new questions and answers which I had not seen before. Sad movies allow me to experience them on many different levels. Although some happy films can do this as well, the majority of the latter tend to fulfill all of these aspects more often and with better results for me.
Hi Katie Rose, Thanks for your good post on Pound and modern poetry. By making it new Pound wanted to discard the overly romanticized, stylized, and conventionalized poetic language of the 18th and 19th centuries. He thought such language was over used and thus sterile. He wanted a new more vigorous form of language used in poetry. Pound was a great innovator, but I think other modern poets were perhaps more successful. dw
ReplyDeleteKatie,
ReplyDeleteI definitely can see where you are coming from. Modernism can be a very heavy burden when it comes to interpretation and I feel we would all love to continue reading the poetry of Elizabeth Browning or Shakespeare, but realism is unfortunately not a part of modernism. :( I share in your pain, believe me... for I too wish to indulge in the fantasies of romanticism (which is why I just read this kind of poetry for class) :)