Justice to poetry?
Poetry is form. Meaning cannot be reduced to words or their use in language, but must include form in order to complete the formula. Poetry rests on the idea that expression comes also from indeterminacy and interpretation. The significance of an idea cannot be encapsulated into authorial intent or any other authoritative structure, but instead lingers in interpretation and re-transmission. The ‘use value’ of a word intrinsically requires at least two people to become marginally intelligible- but even determination of the use value between two people involves a third to make-intelligible to. So, poetry: poetry involves non-linguistic meaning – the double usages, pauses, breaks and gaps that fill language and because they exist just beyond the grasp of words and specific intelligibility, at best reveal themselves when words assemble as form along with content.
Duncan
Duncan
posted by Duncan at 11:36 AM
3 Comments:
What sense of the word "form" are you using? Is "form" the formation of the words on a page? Is "form" the form of medium through which the poetry is received? What changes about poetry in a written form and spoken form?
I considered your post and decided it was both the form on the page and the medium through which people receive poetry. The distinction I find tenuous because the layout acts as a medium, and poetry acts as a specific form of expression.
What changes between spoken and written troubled me earlier today. I think written poetry holds my interest because of the relationship you can take to it- one that is slower and allows repitition, which suits the way I like to experience it. The spoken form can have similar impacts, but certain charachteristics change reception: the person speaking (their expressions, tone, pitch, movement), setting (smokey bar? Coffee shop? Some house?) and the 'once off' singular form come to mind. These all can add different meaning and expression to the peice that make it more powerful in certain ways. It's just not as much my thing I suppose.
I considered your post and decided it was both the form on the page and the medium through which people receive poetry. The distinction I find tenuous because the layout acts as a medium, and poetry acts as a specific form of expression.
What changes between spoken and written troubled me earlier today. I think written poetry holds my interest because of the relationship you can take to it- one that is slower and allows repitition, which suits the way I like to experience it. The spoken form can have similar impacts, but certain charachteristics change reception: the person speaking (their expressions, tone, pitch, movement), setting (smokey bar? Coffee shop? Some house?) and the 'once off' singular form come to mind. These all can add different meaning and expression to the peice that make it more powerful in certain ways. It's just not as much my thing I suppose.
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