I don't really write poetry but do play around writing with a magnetic poetry kit — Jack Cummins
I used to illustrate a poetry magazine — Jack Cummins
Wittgenstein — Jack Cummins
playing with language is central to poetry — Jack Cummins
A man's maturity is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play. — Friedrich Nietzsche
if poetry contains an authentic metaphysics, how can it be evidenced?" — Gus Lamarch
Is God a mathematician?
Is God a poet?
Abstract
In order to better understand the worth of aesthetic experience in encountering poetry, fresh perspectives are helpful. This paper introduces the reader to modern stylistics: that is linguistic examinations of the 'speaker's meaning' in literature and notes such 'scientific' approaches to poetry do find common metaphysical ground with leading cultural figures such as theatre director Peter Brook, philosopher critic Martha C. Nussbaum and poet critic Seamus Heaney. — Stylistics and the Metaphysics of Poetry
Give me an example of "life is [both] ugly...good poets tell it like it is" — TheMadFool
You wouldn't be asking for examples if you had read much good poetry. — Janus
My only real experience with poetry from a significantly foreign time and place is the Tao Te Ching. I've received much more from that than I ever have from all but a very few modern poets who write in English. The minute I first read it it grabbed me. Since then, I've read parts of at least 15 translations. Each helps me build up a more complete experience. — T Clark
I'll ask you the same question I asked Gus Lamarch, do music and visual art have a metaphysics? If so, please explain. — T Clark
I'd call it a good poem if not a great one. I wouldn't say it romanticizes death; I'd say it describes the death of the young man and the indifference of the living dispassionately.
How about this poem by Robinson Jeffers:
SALMON-FISHING
The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now,
The south wind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Race up into the freshet.
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, you see the anglers,
Pitiful, cruel, primeval,
Like the priests of the people that built Stonehenge,
Dark silent forms, performing
Remote solemnities in the red shallows
Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn,
Drawing landward their live bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water. — Janus
I'm just not even sure it's the right question to be asking. I don't get it. As a composer of music, I think I have a personal, private musical metaphysic. But I think it would be hubristic to project that unto other artists and other musics. I'm not sure how, if at all, there can be any bridge from a personal to a universal musical metaphysic. — Noble Dust
Poems about the dark side of reality are oxymorons: they're good poems about bad stuff that happen to life. The question is, if poetry doesn't do what I said it does - beautify the ugly - why are poems good even though their contents may be explicit on the horrors of life? — TheMadFool
I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot. — Janus
At the risk of disagreeing with myself, I would suggest that those feelings are what constitute a musical metaphysic. This is something that bothers me a lot; why assume that emotions are inferior? The emotions you feel when listening to music are the real deal; those feelings constitute the metaphysic. — Noble Dust
I agree that metaphysical perspectives are not rationally, but affectively motivated. I also understand that it is pretty normal for people to entertain some metaphysics or other on account of their intuitions; and intuitions are certainly fed by aesthetic experience(s). — Janus
I'm not saying there are no dark poems; would anyone read them, though if there were no beauty in them? My point was that they do not conceal, by glossing over or sugar-coating, the ugly side of life; instead they reveal the beauty that hides in the darkness. — Janus
So why begin with the assumption that all of this is false? — Noble Dust
t's not a "spin" though, it is an aesthethic response. — Janus
If you don't like poetry if you see it as merely "spin" then that's your right. But if you don't like it, why talk about it? Surely if it is all spin for you, then it should have no interest for you? — Janus
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