Poem meaning
I pulled the following from Brian Bilston's Laboetry:
I chose Brian Bilston because he's contemporary, accessible, and writes in a style that is easily recognizable as poetry.
Philosophically speaking I want to contrast this with truth-conditions as a means for bringing out what else there is in meaning, especially in discussing meaning.
One of the things I'd note is that in order to state the meaning of the poem we'll need words not found in the poem. So in one sense meaning is assumed. But in another it isn't -- because we're only assuming that we can speak English, and as long as we're comfortable with that assumption then we can leave the meaning of the poem unknown, and the interpretation is supposed to... well, that's just what one might contend. What does an interpretation do?
In one sense an interpretation of a poem will set out what it means, why it's significant, the feelings that might arise, the reason why the author chooses a certain rhyme scheme or word -- in fact interpretation is not algorithmic, so potentially we could give many interpretations to a poem. But usually there's a handful of meanings which, given that possibility space, are relatively small in comparison.
One of the things that's unsaid in the poem above is the context in which it's written -- the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much information is surely a new kind of malady. Brian prays for less, and that longing for a day without news is what gives the poem coherence. I say longing because of the repetition of the same in two stanzas. However, due to the form of the stanzas -- which resemble of limerick, and which is common for Brian -- you can tell the poem is also invoking a sense of humor about it all, in spite of the longing.
I'll call the above an interpretation. It brings something not in the poem, explicitly, to make sense of what is explicitly there. An interpretation is meant to bring out hidden meanings or share with other readers meanings that aren't immediately apparent. It's a wholly different side of meaning from truth-conditions that references phonic relationships, the meanings of other words and sentences, and the world all into one.
So, while I don't think there are going to be a set of rules for this kind of meaning -- I wonder, what's up with poetic meaning?
It seems, at the very least, that poetic meaning is open -- there's no problem with having multiple interpretations, in fact that's what you'd expect. Further, that poetic meaning need not be conventional -- it can create new words wholesale, and in fact must do so at times in order to convey the proper feelings. Finally, I'd like to remark that poetic meaning is memorable. It's easier to remember poems because of the phonic structures they employ. In fact, those same phonic structures effect how we feel, often times being purposefully used to invoke particular emotions or modes of reading (like the Limerick).
I chose Brian Bilston because he's contemporary, accessible, and writes in a style that is easily recognizable as poetry.
Philosophically speaking I want to contrast this with truth-conditions as a means for bringing out what else there is in meaning, especially in discussing meaning.
One of the things I'd note is that in order to state the meaning of the poem we'll need words not found in the poem. So in one sense meaning is assumed. But in another it isn't -- because we're only assuming that we can speak English, and as long as we're comfortable with that assumption then we can leave the meaning of the poem unknown, and the interpretation is supposed to... well, that's just what one might contend. What does an interpretation do?
In one sense an interpretation of a poem will set out what it means, why it's significant, the feelings that might arise, the reason why the author chooses a certain rhyme scheme or word -- in fact interpretation is not algorithmic, so potentially we could give many interpretations to a poem. But usually there's a handful of meanings which, given that possibility space, are relatively small in comparison.
One of the things that's unsaid in the poem above is the context in which it's written -- the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much information is surely a new kind of malady. Brian prays for less, and that longing for a day without news is what gives the poem coherence. I say longing because of the repetition of the same in two stanzas. However, due to the form of the stanzas -- which resemble of limerick, and which is common for Brian -- you can tell the poem is also invoking a sense of humor about it all, in spite of the longing.
I'll call the above an interpretation. It brings something not in the poem, explicitly, to make sense of what is explicitly there. An interpretation is meant to bring out hidden meanings or share with other readers meanings that aren't immediately apparent. It's a wholly different side of meaning from truth-conditions that references phonic relationships, the meanings of other words and sentences, and the world all into one.
So, while I don't think there are going to be a set of rules for this kind of meaning -- I wonder, what's up with poetic meaning?
It seems, at the very least, that poetic meaning is open -- there's no problem with having multiple interpretations, in fact that's what you'd expect. Further, that poetic meaning need not be conventional -- it can create new words wholesale, and in fact must do so at times in order to convey the proper feelings. Finally, I'd like to remark that poetic meaning is memorable. It's easier to remember poems because of the phonic structures they employ. In fact, those same phonic structures effect how we feel, often times being purposefully used to invoke particular emotions or modes of reading (like the Limerick).
Comments (233)
At the same time as you rightly pointed out new meaning can be added depending on the readers previous experience or preconception.
The same pretty much applies to most forms of artistic expression
:up: :100:
Poems are an artistic representation of ourselves through words. I enjoyed reading the poem of the picture of your OP. I interpret it as the beautiful essence of a normal day. Where everything happens as is used to be. Fortunately, there is nothing what can disturb our serene day.
Verses make different emotions on people. I am against all of those who are rigid towards interpreting a poem. There isnt anyone clever than other in terms of experiencing poetry. I want share another poem with you:
[[i]He] said:
the sea used to come here
And and [he] put more wood on the fire.[/i] Ozaki H?sai.
This haiku poem gives me nostalgia because the author is missing something that is no longer with him: the sea.
[b]Here goes nothing says the sea as splashes crashes against the siren.
The mermaid utters this cannot be for if I was a man
Id destroy the boat the ship and land on the moat.
The sailor by boat reaching to wide casts his net for the final time though the boat bursting at seams finally gives way and now all the fish despite being dead give sharks something deeper than ocean can contemplate[/b]
It brings it, but where was it, what did we put it in, and how was it transported? How can something be "in" the poem when the poem is sounds? How do we "make" sense? Do we build it?
You seem to be speaking in metaphor, comparing abstract thoughts to physical objects and the movement of tangible things.
I see what you're saying, but not really visually as seeing would entail.
My point is that all is metaphor and poetry.
Would it not also follow that different types of poems work differently?
An aspect of poetry is the concentrated, careful word selection to intensify meaning. They also have to sound good when read aloud. I think it was jounro-poet Clive James who said if a poem doesn't captivate when heard, it will collapse and not be remembered. Or something like that.
I've come to see that art, including poetry, doesn't mean anything beyond the audience's experience in seeing, reading, or hearing it. Art is an artists way of expressing an experience which makes it possible for them to share it with others.
"No news is good news"
I would have said a more poetic way, but I find the above proverb poetic in it's own right.
Mind you, the beauty of "No news is good news" is it can be interpreted in that way as well!
I agree. I will note that I actually aesthetically enjoy rigid readings of poems, in the sense of applying some kind of aesthetic criterion(s) to interpretation -- but not when they're dogmatic. That seems anti-poetic, to me.
Quoting javi2541997
I love haiku. I read a small book that introduced me to how to read haiku and two of the features of haiku that I remember are there were fixed symbols with meanings (I forget which symbols were what, but I remember the kingfisher was one symbol with a few meanings that were fixed to it), but for the whole genre rather than by author. This allowed people to play with those as a kind of agreed upon beginning to make their own variations. So while poetry doesn't have to have conventions, it does have conventional meanings too.
The other thing I remember from that book was that haiku was meant more for friends, rather than high art. So you wrote haiku to share among family or in letters and such, to express feelings in the moment. This is how I relate to poetry, so I thought that was neat. (It's also how I get along with philosophy, for the most part: it's a social activity more than an institutional one, for me)
Quoting Hanover
This is good.
I want to begin with this notion that all is metaphor and poetry -- itself a metaphor! :D
Now, in reference to truth-conditions, I think that metaphor would be seen as parasitic upon the world, as you read me in the above -- "in" meaning a cabinet rather than a sentence. And metaphoric meaning does exactly this! It's poly-amorous.
I wonder, though, to take a line from Kant, just because we begin with truth-conditions in our thinking about meaning doesn't mean that meaning starts with truth-conditions. I think it could at least be made coherent that we begin with, as you say, metaphor and poetry and, from that, craft truth-conditions.
(Side note: I don't think that either case would count for/against anti/realism -- i.e., as usual, I'm putting that to the side, insofar that we can believe that's an innocent maneuver, at least)
**
I was tempted, though, to also directly answer your question with Shakespeare -- famous wordsmith. My guess is he was actually listening to the vernacular at the time and recording it, with a few poetic flares thrown in for art. But those poetic flares are, I'd say, one source of how we craft meaning. We have a poem with a rhythm-rhyme scheme, and we need it to rhyme -- so we craft a new word that fits phonetically, but has a new meaning.
Now, that's one way we do this. And I'd posit that the process is, from "our side" of phenomonology, more or less ex nihilo -- we are the Gods of the meaning-verse, creating its meaning as an intellectual intuition would a world. (But, being a good naturalist, I do suspect there's an underlying explanation, if we wish to look)
Quoting Tom Storm
Absolutely! In fact, that's part of what's interesting to me about poetry -- something as simple as a rhythm-rhyme scheme can evoke emotion, thought, and action all at once.
I agree with this aesthetic direction, on the whole. I love poems written in the phonic script, and usually write my own that way. But sometimes I've come across poems that manage to establish another aesthetic. The Psalms is a good example of this kind of poetry -- it's considered to be written in ideas which are either repeated, contrasted, or act as a kind of resolution. The poems are separate and yet not separate too, and can be grouped by genre even within the Psalms to give an added dimension of interpretation.
Quoting T Clark
I agree with this, too. This whole approach is why both poetry and theatre are of philosophic interest to me (they also happen to be interesting unto themselves to me, too :D -- else I wouldn't have the sustained interest to continue gathering examples) -- they necessitate dialogue, an other, a community, a group. The poem comes alive in the collective witnessing of the poem -- before that, it's just a script.
What distinguishes an artistic expression from your expression quoted above? What would a non-artistic expression be? If there is no distinction, then all is art.
I don't consider myself a very artistic person. I've done a little fiction and poetry writing. I enjoy the process and I like some of the results, but it's not really my thing. I don't draw or paint, but I sometimes think in very vivid imagery. For me, that kind of thinking is exhilarating. I have had the thought that the distinction between art and non-art communication is artificial. All of it is about taking something from my mind and putting it in yours. But that's not a very interesting argument to make and I think there are some important distinctions.
I guess the difference for me is that non-fiction, including the kind of stuff here on the forum, is about sharing knowledge, ideas, or skills. With art, it's about sharing the actual direct non-verbal experience. As I said, the argument can be made that is an artificial distinction.
In Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking Douglas Hofstadter claims that all human thought is analogical. I've read similar views in other places too.
To continue in the Kantian line of thinking, truth would be noumenal, so it would be unknowable. Applying this to statements, the best we can say of statements is the best we can say of perceptions, and that is that they belong to us, are our interpretations, and are influenced by who we are. We see the cat, but whether it is as it appears to us is the unknowable. When we speak of the cat, we speak in terms of our other phenomena and compare, analogize, and use as metaphor what we interpret. It's all a matter of interpretation, which is consistent with an indirect realist view of the world.
The direct realist states the cat is just what the cat appears to be. I find that equivalent to the literalist who says the sentence says just what the words say it says.
The indirect realist states the cat is whatever it is, mediated by the person's perceptions and sensory faculties. I find that equivalent to the non-literalist who says the sentence is an interpretative description influenced by worldview and comparative analysis to other perceptions.
And, if accepted, it would make your distinction between art and reality, as you've acknowledged, ultimately artificial. When you draw me a picture of your room, sketching out lines and dimensions, that is as much interpretative as an elaborate oil painting of your room. That is the consequence of not starting with a set reality, but instead starting with only a subjective perception of reality.
Oh... I thought we were disagreeing.
Quoting Moliere
I agree with this. There are worthwhile things to say about poetry, but I don't think meaning is one of them except in the fairly trivial sense of knowing what the poet is referring to. Example - In "Wild Grapes" by Robert Frost, it's good to know that "Leif the Lucky's German" refers to Leif Erickson's German foster father.
I like to talk about what I experience when I read a poem. As I see it, that's different from it's meaning. From my point of view, most of the poem interpretations I've read are baloney. I do also like to talk about technical aspects of the poem - meter, rhyme, metaphor - and how they help me share the poet's experience. I don't think that's the same thing as meaning either.
Thanks for the introduction. Most enjoyable :up:
Quoting Moliere
Indeed. Brian is sharing his feelings and hits the nail on the head. We get it, immediately.
Quoting Tom Storm
I laughed at that bit. I binge-watched Murder She Wrote for a while as a way to mindlessness.
With Brian's 'consumption of wine', it conjures up a cosy, warm, numbing.
Currently, watching American slushy Christmassy films for the same reason!
What's with all the cookies?
The rhythm of the first two lines in each verse reminds me of something heard before.
Possibly a pop song or an advert...
Something along the lines of 'This is not just food. This is M&S food'.
No, it's a jingly kind of pop.
Ah, got it!
The Bangles...
It's just another manic Monday (Woah, woah)
I wish it was Sunday (Woah, woah)
'Cause that's my fun day (Woah, woah, woah, woah)
My I don't have to run day (Woah, woah)
It's just another manic Monday
Only if we wanted it to be noumenal, though. If we wanted it to be phenomenal, then as the Gods of the meaning-verse we could make it phenomenal, and then truth would just be about empirical reality as opposed to the questions which reason posits and wants answers to but would require a different sort of mind to be able to answer in the mode of scientific knowledge.
Quoting Hanover
Here I think we're diving too deep into literal meaning rather than poetic meaning -- the idea here being possibly shaking up the conversation on the usual delineations, since there's no reasonable way to determine which is better or worse. So I think I'd prefer to say, for an anti-realist, what you say is about right, but a realist would take this line of thinking and still commit to there being a cat on the mat, it being real, and all that.
On either way, though, we can make a distinction between the poetic and the literal, right? Here we are, right now, where meaning has already been bootstrapped to our capacities -- and so with our ability to make the intelligible ex nihilo, we make a distinction between different uses of language, one of which is in the modality of truth-telling, and one of which is in the modality of metaphor.
I'm thinking, given the notion of metaphor as a relationship between named entities, that this actually has something to do with substitution. The phonetic "Chair" stands for a chair I'm sitting on. In a way it is the most basic metaphor -- to treat a sound as a differentiated object of meaning.
This "switching out" between metaphorical pairs sounds a lot like correspondence, at least.
But this is hand-wavey. I think there's more to say about how poetry works before being able to tie metaphor to truth-conditions. Probably won't get that far in this thread, because making a reduction of truth to metaphor sounds like a titanic project :D -- but it is the kind of notion that I'm playing with in the background of my thoughts, at least.
Quoting T Clark
Well, we're not!
So there!
:D
I did focus on the relationship angle of your post. It's in the relationship that I think meaning comes about, from the call-and-response of a speaker and an audience which flips back and forth.
Here I think you're right we disagree:
Quoting T Clark
So you would claim that "poetic meaning" in reference to "meaning" is more or less an equivocation, that these are actually separate things. Do I have you right?
That is fine by me, because I'm also actually interested in the aesthetics of poetry unto itself -- and actually put this in aesthetics with the idea of exploring that more than the usual reductions, with the idea of it generating more shared thoughts to build from.
And, even more than that, while I have this odd suspicion, it is just an odd suspicion. And it's a lot easier to talk about how poems work and how it is they mean or what it is they mean.
Quoting Amity
Of course! He's tons of fun.
Quoting Amity
Hah! I didn't pick up on that, but I see it!
Used in AA meetings, I believe. Perhaps, Brian and others, like myself, have been addicted to the news and now it's become painfully overwhelming. We need a break. A retreat.
I will copy this poem and, hopefully, memorise it.
I think that is the beauty of a short poem, like this. It can act as a mantra.
Well, good. I guess. But then when I read your ideas it does seem like we're disagreeing.
Quoting Moliere
I'm confused. You keep talking about poetic meaning, but I said poems, art in general, don't mean anything. How can we be agreeing.
Maybe I've misunderstood. I wasn't discussing the distinction between art and reality. I was talking about the distinction between fictional, poetic, or artistic communication on the one hand and purely descriptive, technical, or explanatory communication on the other.
Well, that's entirely my fault, looking back. Let me try again, straight faced --
I think when you say:
Quoting T Clark
I took that to mean "a poems meaning is an audience's experience in perceiving the poem",
rather than
"poetry has no meaning. what poetry is is an audience's experience in perceiving the poem"
So I was reading you as restricting poetic meaning to the experience, rather than making a distinction between meaning and experience.
I looked it up for a read to compare, and apparently there's different versions. So, in a way -- rather than a rift, this is more like variations on a theme. From ye olde wiki, though, just for a side-by-side:
Reading it aloud, definitely makes me feel the "giggliness" of the Limerick form, though, in comparison.
You're right. In discussions like this, sometimes I say "art has no meaning" and sometimes I say "art has no meaning beyond the audience's experience." Those are similar but different statements, but I mixed them all up together in my posts here.
I think that poetry doesnt mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. As an illustration, Ill provide a description of my experience of a poem I really like. Dust of Snow, as always, Robert Frost.
[i]The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.[/i]
I really like this poem. First off - its really short. It was easy to memorize and when I quote it, people think Im erudite. I tried to memorize Two Tramps in Mud Time once - nine stanzas, 72 lines. That didnt turn out well. Also, its funny and Frost uses one of my favorite animals, no surprise, a crow. Not everyone sees the humor in the poem and I get that. I dont know how idiosyncratic my reading is.
First stanza. Light, amusing. Very visual. I can see the man walking through the woods after a snow. Thats something that happens regularly in Frost poems. The snow is deep. Hes wearing boots. I can see the tree with the crow sitting at the top. Hemlocks are dark green with short needles ranked on many short branchlets. If that's a word. Ive seen crows in the tops of trees plenty of times. Sometimes one, sometimes five, sometimes more. Theyre usually noisy. Rambunctious. Very social. Theyre really smart. It was clear to me the first time I read this poem that the crow shook the snow down on the man on purpose. That image always makes me smile. Having snow fall down on me from a tree branch has happened to me plenty of times. I can feel it going down my neck. Annoying.
Second stanza - More serious. Darker. It also makes me look back at the first stanza and think more about it. It seems like something has happened that the man regrets. So, he feels unhappy, sad, maybe guilty. Its later in the day. Maybe hes walking home afterwards or maybe hes walking in the woods to think things over, brood, head down, not paying attention to where hes going. And then the crow. He looks up. He sees the crow. He can see the crow looking down at him. He smiles. Maybe he laughs a little.
Why does this change his mood. I can think of a couple of reasons. First, it makes him break out of his introspection and look around at the day, the woods. Thats happened to me plenty of times. You just shake your head and get on with things. Theres another way to think about it that I really like. I like to think that at the moment the crow and the man are looking at each other, theres a recognition. The crow made a joke. They both know its funny. Maybe the crow would cackle a little. I guess not. Frost would have mentioned that. The crow should have cackled. Its hard to brood when your dignity has been tweaked. When someone has seen you for what you are.
As I said, this is not what the poem means. It is how it makes me feel. What it makes me see, think, feel. I don't expect anyone else to get the same things as I did or see it the same way.
And it was lovely to read. I wouldn't have found all that in the poem, which is why it's great to share.
I think I did find the basic experience you described -- the experience of being awoken from a gloomy day-dream. That clicked for me. And then upon reading what you shared I could see how the bird was playing a kind of joke -- and to set up a contrast between that joke and the sadness of gloomy daydreams. I liked you highlighting that for me because I could see it there on a second reading when I didn't on the first.
Depends on what you mean by "poetic". I just improvised a four line poem with no metaphors in it whatsoever:
I bought a cat today
She came to me to play
And play we did and it was fun
She went away when she was done
So what's the poems poetic meaning as opposed to its literal meaning? Since I didn't have anything in mind but just to assemble lines without figurative meaning in them, I didn't make a figurative meaning for the poem as a whole, either. Which is to say I didn't put it in consciously. If I look at the lines I notice that the poet's initiative opens the poem, the cat's initiative continues the poem, then there's joint activity, and the cat's initiative ends the poem. Then there are cultural associations with "bought" that might have implications on agency (you buy a human, it's slavery - you buy a pet, it's...?). And I can go on like that, and get some sort of gestalt of the poem in my mind as a result. But that just leaves... stuff unsaid, implied. In what way is this different from being literal? Couldn't I pretend any old literal text is a poem and give it that sort of questioning?
What makes the above seem like a poem in the first place is: linebreaks, no punctuiation, rhythm and rhyme. Formal language characteristics not primarily about meaning. So what if "poetic meaning" is dependent on what you do with a text once you decide it's a poem, and not on what's actually in the text? Savouring rather than resolving ambiguity, for examples, might be one of the things that gives rise to "poetic meaning". In such a context, what would "literal" mean?
Quoting Moliere
No, mere substitution doesn't make a metaphor. Metaphor implies a comparison between two things. But the sound or written body of "chair" doesn't have anything to do with the thing, other than marking the concept. It's, as linguists say, an arbitrary symbol.
The literal meaning is, reducing the poem to P
"P" is false
The poetic meaning --
in the context of the thread the poem is clearly about the superfluous nature of poetic meaning, how it's an amorphous concept and so it depends upon what we mean when we mean poetic meaning.
Did you buy a cat today?
Quoting Dawnstorm
I think I'd say substitution is more complicated than metaphor and that synonymy is more basic, at least to keep the partisan dialectic going -- but I wouldn't define metaphor like you do. In fact, I wouldn't define it at all. I'm willing to accept whatever comes from our use of "metaphor". (So, in this case, substitution is out -- good by me, as I think it's more complicated anyway)
Keeping in mind that this is my idiosyncratic experience. I think other people would get different feelings.
In a way I can think of your restriction on poems as rule 1 -- whatever we might, down the line, generalize for the purposes of aesthetic philosophy, rule 1 trumps all theorizing. The original experience of poetry is the reason we might be wondering these things in the first place, so it'd be silly if we ruled out other readings when that's exactly where we actually begin.
I like the poem. It's simple, descriptive. Maybe a little sad. When I read it, I wanted to do this. Forgive me.
I bought a cat [s]today[/s]
She came [s]to me[/s] to play
And play we did
And it was fun
She went away
When she was done.
The monotonous repetition of short declarative statements, the choppiness, changes the tone for me. Maybe less sad and more resigned.
I'm not sure I can follow what you're saying.
No, I didn't buy a cat today, and it follows that none of the other lines are true either. Is that what you mean by "'P' is false"? If so, yes "P" is false. If not, what are you saying isntead?
I'm not sure why a paragraph of contextual meaning is sandwhiched between two references to truth. As you probably guessed, I didn't buy cat today. I don't quite see why this important. If I did, you might arrive at a different poetic meaning, or you might not, depending on your approach. Does the literal meaning change at all? I'd say no.
What's "P"? The words of the poem? P for proposition?
As for metaphor, I find it interesting that you provide a hierarchy of complicated that goes from basic to more complicated like this: synonymy -> metaphor -> substitution. A similar hierarchy I would have thought of is: simily -> metaphor -> conceit.
I'll probably have to read you more carefully before I understand what you're saying.
Quoting T Clark
Thanks, and no need for forgiveness. I find edits interesting. They point towards a different take. And I generally like this version, but I find the "And it was fun," line jarring. Not sure why. Something in the sound of it? Not sure.
My side still hurts from all that laughter.
Up to that point I found it to be a mildly whiney poem (in British English, my granddaughter informs me, whindgy, or winghy poem) that complained that there is too much complaining going on in the world. In a way, a fractal that was suddenly abrupted after the first iteration.
I didn't edit your poem, I shanghaied it.
For comparison, I think the short (pocket-size) version is better to read aloud and remember.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Quoting Moliere
'It' being the long, tedious and passive version. After that, anything would be 'light'!
However, Brian's poem is far from a giggly Limerick - I think you know that, right?!
He does have a talent for inserting a slice of humour into the dry, daily bread.
Intrigued by this 'new' poet, I discovered the inspiration for the poem, posted in Oct 18, 2019:
Quoting CBC Radio - There's Poetry for Any Occasion
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-october-20-2019-1.5325821/there-s-poetry-for-any-occasion-even-a-pandemic-just-ask-twitter-s-unofficial-poet-laureate-1.5325832
The pandemic affected us all. I wish I'd found Brian Bilston (a poet with a pseudonym) back then.
Better late than never. The poem remains relevant. Easy on the eye and ear.
[quote=Chinese curse]May you live in interesting times.[/quote]
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
Heh, yeh I figured it out. It's the ending of each stanza that has that Limerick-y quality that had me going to that form (thinking in terms of form not being definitionally defined):
say something really old-timey
bah-dah-tah-dah-dah
bah-dah-tah-dah-dah
and now its longer and rhymy
This thread might provide a better opportunity for discussing the subjective and objective than this vague thread. The interpretation of a work of art is a good test case in part because, as I think @Dawnstorm suggested, there's stuff in there the artist didn't put in deliberately. But it is, objectively, there. Some stuff you find only if you bring it with you, so subjective.
There's also the peculiarity that what's not there, might not be there on purpose, which happens with expression not intended as art too, but plays out differently with art. There are various ways this is done for various purposes with various effects. Always cases. Since it's not there, but the place for it is, this is particularly interesting spot for addressing the objectivity and subjectivity of interpretation.
I have been really enjoying this discussion and I don't want it to end, so I thought I'd toss another fairly short poem into the blender. "For Anne Gregory" by W.B Yeats.
[i]Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.'
"But I can get a hair-dye
And set such colour there,
Brown, or black, or carrot,
That young men in despair
May love me for myself alone
And not my yellow hair."
I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair[/i]
As I said, I like this poem, even if he does spell "color" wrong. It's funny and it gets to its humor with evocative language. I think of it when I see a woman with beautiful blond hair and find myself saying the last three lines under my breath.
Does anyone have thoughts before I give you my own?
In a similar way, I sing the chorus of a song I like by Steve Earl - "Galway Girl" when I see a woman with, appropriately, dark hair and blue eyes:
[i]And I ask you now, tell me what would you do
If her hair was black and her eyes were blue
I've traveled around I've been all over this world
Boys I ain't never seen nothin' like a Galway girl[/i]
Not surprisingly I guess, this is a very popular song in Galway, Ireland. I posted a great rendition by the people of Galway in the "What are you listening to right now" thread in the Lounge. Here's a link to the post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/694/t-clark
It is very difficult to interpret a poem based on Irish/Galway culture. Whenever I read the poem I understand what it said but not what was the meaning so I had to translate it into my mother tongue.
As far as I understand the poem, I would say that the main subject is the blonde hair of a woman. I guess that would be a characteristic of beautiness. When the woman claims that she can get a hair-dryer and set the colour brown, black or carrot, she wonders if she would get love with a different colour anyway.
But the poem ends warning: "only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair".
Conclusion: the blonde hair is a symbol of status and perfection of beauty. So, a blonde hair woman is what the poets considered as "aesthetic"
Quoting T Clark
Part of me wonders who the speaker of the poem is. Not a young man, I imagine -- because a young man would be thrown into despair swearing their love, rather than informing the listener that their beauty draws in more people than actually loves them.
The old religious man is something I keep returning to, though. Is that meant to give credibility or undermine the view? Looking at Yeats' wiki page, I have a hard time deciding. Is the old religious man a speaker of truth, or attached to old texts that wouldn't likely matter for a young couple?
Yup, that's exactly what I was saying. So literal meaning is whether or not a statement is true or false. (note how this won't work for interrogatives or imperatives, so perhaps "literal" isn't the right word either -- since questions have a literal meaning, but I'm talking about statements here)
Poetic meaning is . . . what's being asked after. But one method we've been using is the notion of sharing our experience of a poem. It has the virtue of being open-ended, and for thems of us who just like poems too it's pleasurable :D I've gone so far as to call this sharing an "interpretation", but others have noted discomfort with that term, instead opting to say it's really just our experience of the poem that we're talking about.
Quoting Dawnstorm
The meaning of the poem would change from false to true, in that case. So I'd say it does change. Or, at least, this is what I'm setting out as literal meaning, for now, given what I said above. I can see what you mean that "literal" isn't right -- let's just say truth-conditional meaning?
Quoting Dawnstorm
There I was using P for "Poem" :D -- so the whole string, including indentations.
So I think it's a bit obvious that no one would be interested -- except we curious ones philosophizing about poetry -- in the truth-conditional meaning of a poem. In a way what I'm asking is "OK, so let's just allow truth-conditional semantics to do its thing. Poetry can even be interpreted like that, but no one would do so. So what is left of meaning when we're not applying truth-conditional semantics?"
Quoting Dawnstorm
I'm not sure what the pathway to substitution is, but I think that's what I'd have to maintain, at least. Something along those lines. I'm uncertain if this is true, but for now I'm just going for consistency.
I had always pictured the speaker as perhaps an older brother or uncle of the woman and her as a young adult. I spent some time on Wikipedia too. Turns out Anne Gregory was the granddaughter of Lady Gregory, one of Yeats' good friends. That would make him maybe Anne's grandfather's age. I got the feeling Anne might have been younger than I pictured too - maybe an older teenager. Not sure.
I can imagine him giving her the poem after talking about her boyfriend problems. I like the wry, ironic but lighthearted and sympathetic tone very much. I imagine them laughing about it together, perhaps with her rolling her eyes. That also makes the poem more personal than I had seen it. That makes me pull back from any broader ideas about it being a reflection on humanities inability to see beyond appearances. I never had any inclination to see it from a modern perspective as an example of the objectivization of women.
I think the old religious man is completely ironic and intended to be funny and silly. It makes me smile whenever I read it.
I think the way you've interpreted the poem makes sense, although I see it as much more ironic and lighthearted than you seem to. I don't see it as a serious statement about human nature or social expectations.
OK, that helps me. I was thinking how depending upon the old man the poem could be read as affirming the speaker, but that makes more sense for the rest of the poem which, I agree, feels lighthearted. So the speaker can be read as giving some warm advice to a filial woman much younger than the author -- so the speaker actually is Yeats.
Quoting T Clark
Ahh, I didn't see the more universal reading at all, on first glance. So the appearances are just what we humans see, and only God himself could possibly love that person.
I liked the use of "Ramparts" as a metaphor for her beauty.
I didn't really either, but since we are taking these examinations seriously, I thought I should try to think deeper. That's probably silly in this case.
I like to read interpretations of poems on line sometimes. Most of them are terrible - smug in their certainty. After I wrote the posts above, I went and looked at some. I was surprised to see how many take the more serious, and even religious, view with no note of the irony.
I'm often surprised by what others say of a poem. I think it's part of the pleasure: in some way we enrich our understanding or experience or reading by hearing what others have to say. I think the more we do it the less silly different thoughts sound. And, after all, it's just a poem -- so it's ok to have a bit of fun with it.
I think I'm getting better now, where you come from. I don't much care about real-world truth, when I read a poem. I was tempted to say I don't care at all, but if I know a poem is autobiographic and I know the poet, I do think it'd shade my experience. I think it's true to say of myself that real-world truth is never a priority to me. For example, if I came across a four-liner scribbled on a napkin (like my cat thingy), it wouldn't even occur to me to wonder if that really happened. I'd just take the words for what they are (and default to intra-poem true until I'm given hints that the lyrical self [equivalent to the narrator in prose] might be unreliable).
Also, I noticed I typed "simily" when it's "simile". Ah, well...I'm not sure about the role of "substitution" in metaphor; I haven't thought about it too much. At some level a lot of metaphors just substitute one word for another that's linked through some sort of commonality. But there are other types of figurative language that's often referred to as metaphor (in cognitive linguistics, for example), where you think of one domain in terms of another. Feelings, for example, are hard to talk about without referencing some other domain. "I'm feeling down (=direction), blue (=colour), etc.". If you go down the cognitive route it feels more like... borrowing than substitution. Unsure...
***
I've read the Yeats poem as a three parter:
- Your beauty's always going to distract these young men; you have to live with that.
- But what if I down-play it?
- You can't, my dear, you can't. (Too beautiful.)
Just with a lot more wit.
One thing about the poem I wasn't sure how to read was "yellow hair". "Honey coloured" is familiar. "blond(e)" would have been, too. Golden, flaxen, wheat... I'm not sure I've ever come across the simple "yellow" before. (And this is one of the areas where I would go back to the context of creation. How common is reference to "yellow hair" in 20s/30s Ireland? What's the register? Tone? Considering that "ramparts" aren't exactly an obvious comparison to hair, and ramparts aren't exactly renowned for their beauty, it's possible that we have a tongue-in-cheek downplaying of the beauty, perhaps for the poet to bring some distnace between himself and the despairing youth. I'm thinking "yellow" might be deliberately mundane. Works for a personal reading, but too unsure to accept this sort of interpretation at that stage, if were to, say, tranlsate the poem into German.
Btw, the old religious man feels like a good-natured fib to me. It's far to specific a thing to get from a scholarly text; I doubt the girl's supposed to belief that.
You made me realize I really like the "yellow hair." It just feels right. Now I'm trying to figure out why. I wonder if it's just the way it sounds, flows. Or maybe it's your idea about its mundanity - you can overlook yellow but not gold. I don't know.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Now I also realize I should have thought more about "ramparts" too. What does it mean here. Ramparts are fortifications. Meant to keep people out. Does that mean that the hair, her beauty, is something to be fought for? That it's daunting? Does it mean the hair is piled up on top of her head? Maybe it's a rampart because nobody can get past it. I actually like that a bit.
Yes, it took me by surprise when I read his opening words:
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
I thought that doesn't sound like him ( from the little I know).
'Chancers and scroungers. Layabouts and loungers' - a Tory rant if ever there was one. They don't look in the mirror much...the lounging of arrogant Rees-Mogg...
Quoting The Guardian - 'Sit up'
***
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
The depiction of refugees as a danger to us, to be sent back or further afield is one still running its course. Even as we see the plight of multitudes running from war, famine or more.
What is the truth? What do we feel when we read the words? I think 'hate-filled Tories' but perhaps I'm wrong...
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
Why not? Is it fear that our resources are not enough, even for us? Who sets the boundaries of plenty and famine? God? What are the causes of want and scarcity that we must flee or fight over land to survive? What might be the solutions...?
So far, this poem throws out difficult political and philosophical questions...
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
'Build a wall'. The answer to everything, huh? We can think of so many walls separating people, even families within the same country. Berlin 1961-1989.
The promise is a vote-winner, the becoming of President Trump.
Israel's Wall: Quoting Al Jazeera - Israel's illegal separation wall still divides
The poem tells us that we are stupid if we look at the world another way.
Is that true? 'A place should only belong to those who are born there'?
What a narrow and self-limiting space to be.
Quoting Brian Bilston - Refugees
And then, the surprising flip.
To look again and find the opposite word view. Benevolence and compassion to fellow human beings.
The poem is a wonderful construction.
Two sides of the wall. Two sides to every question. Can dialectics change the way we think?
Can poetry? Art means awareness. The art of @Moliere's reversing of negative mind worms. :up:
Some Tories still dream of sending migrants to Rwanda...other parties are appalled.
Quoting Huffington Post - UK Politics
We all have our dreams...or nightmares...
Refugees. Turn them around. To see 'these haggard faces could belong to you or me, should life have dealt a different hand'.
A quick first read and thoughts:
Who is Anne Gregory? Someone Yeats cares for. He speaks to her and there is a conversation about love and its conditions.
Young men are attracted by the visual. They fall in love with appearance. Culture dependent.
The Englishness of a fair maiden. Long hair tumbling from the turrets of a castle, waiting for her hero to save her and they all live happily ever after.
'Great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear'.
A mass of sweet seduction.
'Ramparts' suggest an external barrier, defence or gateway.
'At your ear' - a veil hanging down or styled as Princess Leia in 'Star Wars'?
The outer beauty - another wall - not hearing or heeding the internal aspects of a person.
Anne wants to be loved for herself. Changing hair colour or style not to please the current male gaze but to suit herself. A challenge or test set. Or it could be her defence against love or lust.
Next up, the view of traditional religion. Only God loves you for who you are. The Bible tells us so.
Is this an effort at converting the young woman? Will she become a nun?
Will she in turn be 'in despair', seduced to holiness?
Another kind of sense. Spiritual. Non-physical.
Another kind of wall to hide behind. A golden cage...
Thanks for reminding me of haiku; how it is expressed and felt.
Yes, there is a sense of loss and nostalgia for how things used to be. Loneliness.
But also a weary acceptance of life as it is. Finding small comfort in the warmth of the fire.
No direct mention of the chopping of the wood...'Chop wood, carry water'...but it's there.
Perceptions of everyday life.
'He said:' - to himself? Perhaps, and yet the poem reaches out to others...
I looked up a few of the masters and topics of Love and Cats. Just for fun:
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/2021/02/best-love-haiku/
Kobayashi Issa
One of the four great haiku masters of Japan, along with Basho, Buson and Shiki, Kobayashi Issa was a poet and a Buddhist priest living and writing in the late 18 and early 19 centuries. He is one of the most humorous haiku poets of the times, punctuating the classical haiku musings with witty remarks. No wonder he wrote about lover cats, snails climbing Mount Fuji, or just deadpan not caring about the New Year. He wrote more than 20.000 haiku poems, half of which are translated by David G. Lanoue and available online. Here are two of his cat love haikus:
??????????????
(kogare neko koi kichigai to miyuru nari)
The pining cat
is smitten with love madness
most probably
(translation: Zoria P. K. )
???????????
(ariake ya ie nashi neko mo koi wo naku)
at dawn
the homeless cat, too
cries for love
(translation: David G. Lanoue)
And a spring haiku that signifies friendship and community, the beauty of shared joys, as well as a possible budding romance:
?????????????
(hana no kage aka no tanin wa nakari keri)
Under the cherry blossoms
strangers are not
really strangers
(translation: Zoria P. K.)
If there aren't any, then you could make one up, non?
There's a section, here:
https://brianbilston.com/category/poems-about-poems/
I'm not sure I like this one. It's almost saying that poets are useless and can't do anything else other than write and theorise about poetry...or that firemen would rather pick up a hose and have no nose for anything else.
I must be missing something...a rant against poets from academia?
Hmm. The title is 'Poets' Corner'.
Perhaps a poetic drift to 'Speakers' Corner' ?
https://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/hyde-park/things-to-see-and-do/speakers-corner
Poets' Corner: a lot of dead poets. See wiki.
These worthies had their moments in the sun.
A POEM WITH NO M
A poem
With no m
Is just called a poe,
Dont you knoe.
- Bilston
:up:
Turns out she is the granddaughter of a good friend of Yeat's, so I think it's likely he does care for her and knows her fairly well.
Quoting Amity
Irish, if that makes any difference.
Quoting Amity
I wondered about this too.
Quoting Amity
I see this last, religious, section of the poem as ironic. I see the whole poem as lighthearted.
Poetic licence.
This is a fascinating 2003 interview with 'Anne Gregory', then Anne de Winton in her mid-80's, living in Devon:
Quoting The Irish Times - Yeats's girl with the yellow hair
A dual identity. Anglo-Irish. Fair enough?
Wonderful. Thank you.
A real pleasure. I thank you for the introduction :sparkle:
I read this poem as ironic and self-deprecatory. I hear it as the imagined voice of a country resident complaining about the influx of all those useless artsy types from the city. That includes Bilson who, after all, is a poet.
This Be The Verse
By Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one anothers throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And dont have any kids yourself.
This shares the sour distaste for humanity that all anti-natalist polemics do. Added to that is the smug, self-congratulatory, vulgar language. The author clearly thinks it's funny. Lord, maybe he thinks it's witty.
As for the poetry, why? I see no poetic purpose in these verses. Nothing beyond than that the person spouting off happens to be a poet. Perhaps it's the old hammer seeing everything as a nail thing. Perhaps he thinks his renown as a poet will add heft to his argument.
Thinking more, I kind of liked, but ignored this image - misery depositing on top of misery like sediment on the continental shelf. Then as I thought about it I changed my mind. The continental shelf is part of the continent. It doesn't form from sediment. Perhaps it should have read:
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a delta deposit.
Sure, anti-natalism always makes me bare my teeth. But this is a poetry discussion. As I noted, there is no reason for Larkin's thoughts to be a poem.
I don't intend any of this as a criticism of you.
Didn't take it that way. I first encountered this poem 30 years ago and it enlarged my thinking. I am not an anti-natalist or a pessimist. I'm not even a Larkin fan. But I think it's vivid and it encapsulates a way of thinking.
[i]Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.[/i]
Gives me chills. I think of Larkin as a poor, sad bastard.
Day in Autum
BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
TRANSLATED BY MARY KINZIE
[i]After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.
As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.
Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.[/i]
@Bitter Crank - I hope you don't mind me stealing your post for this different thread.
I do like this poem. I'm thinking about my response.
This hits hard for me. It encapsulates my own mixed feelings about autumn. The third stanza expresses the feeling that it's now too late for projects, for any positive change. The year's production is done and all you can do is fitfully wander as life is gradually drained away around you.
Thank you. It's not off-topic at all.
I enjoyed the poem very much.
The blank page like a blanket of snow, you know you want to make your mark.
The foxy writer typing or writing in the snow...hopefully not with yellow fluid.
The creative process. The increasing awareness of something about to come into focus.
Wow. Is this what it is like for you and other authors?
What an amazing experience.
It reminds me of midwifery and Socrates. Creative and productive philosophy in art.
The chatter of resignation, "They don't mean to but they do", always plays to me to the tune of Stardust: google tells me the line is "and I am once again with you".
As I wrote previously, I like this poem. The first two stanzas are lush and evocative... sensual, especially the second. There is particular light in the fall, the long shadows. There are wild grapes in my front yard that give off a very strong sweet smell in fall, so "the last few drops of sweetness through the wine" means something specific to me. It's funny, although there is this sensuality, I also get a feeling of rushing. Let's go, let's go. Snap it up. Closing time.
The third stanza feels like it could be a separate poem. The first two lines are dark, bleak. I guess the whole stanza is supposed to be, but I got a different feeling. "Waking up to read a little, draft long letters..." doesn't sound so bad to me. My posts here are my long letters. I don't mind being alone. I like winter, even "fitfully wandering." I picture a small apartment, warm, lit by a single lamp next to a comfortable chair. I'm sure that wasn't what the poet had in mind.
There are quite a few things I'd have translated differently. The translation is very loose on structure. For example, the poem opens with: "Herr: es ist Zeit." Basically, "Lord: it is time." And then, in the same line, "Der Sommer war sehr groß." (The article is hard to translate; you either remove it or say "this". It means, literally, "This summer was very great.") The language is declarative and simple, here. (I'd probably use "quite" instead of "very" for rhythm reason, but it'd make the language more casual, less solemn, so I'd actually be on the lookout for a better word.)
"After the summer's yield, lord, it is time..." is a lead-in that flows into the next line. There's no grand declaration, no "it is time." From the outset, the mood differs, for me. The wine, in the original, is "heavy"; sugesting both sweet and sluggish, to me. It's at that point, that I get a sense of aging in the German version (blood thickens, the juices don't flow as they used to...) that I didn't get in the translation.
[edit: Warning, this paragraph is incorrect. I misread. The translation is correct.]Finally, the opening of the third paragraph "Who builds no house now, will build no more." There's a sense of agency. Basically, I get the opposite feeling: "Whoever's homeless now will build no shelter" in the translation, vs. "Whoever's not building a shelter now, will be homeless..." The poem doesn't predict what people will do; it predicts what will happen if they don't.
The translation is quite a nice poem in its own right, and I'd recognise the original in it, but I get different things out of both of them.
It has always struck me that when I read a translation, I'm reading something new, not the original. It seems like translating a novel, story, or poem would be harder than writing it in the first place.
I never expect translations to be the same as an original. They are their own thing.
Quoting Dawnstorm
It felt right to the translator but it is clearly a contemporisation.
Quoting Tom Storm
I tend to agree when reading. Interestingly, when translating, I feel a sort of responsibility to get as close to the poem as I possibly can (even if the only judgement I have is mine, and even if I know the poet wouldn't care). It's a weird doubling.
I've translated poems from English to German at university in a workshop. I took the workshop each semester (beyond need for the degree), because it was just so fun. I published two translations with an accompanying article in the course of that workshop. The article was bad and is best forgotten (I cringe remembering it), but one of the translations must have been at least decent, since it got reprinted in a local mag.
Translating is hard; and I never once felt I did the poem justice. In the translation that got reprinted I chose to focus on atmosphere, because I simply couldn't reproduce the wit. So whatever I said about the translation above wasn't actually meant to denigrate the translation. It's just the sort of thing I would have said in that workshop (with the difference that the translaters would have been present to respond).
What I said about the translation is also marred by my rather embarrassing misreading of "hat" for "baut". Well, a "b" and an "h" do look sort of similar, but I do seem to have smuggled in an extra "u". So I basically can't even trust my initial take anymore.
The issue is that this is based upon personal perspectives and choices about language, intent, mood, culture. Translators do not always agree on how things should be reconstructed and all they can point to is our personal preferences and justification.
How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching?
I thought your comments were interesting. I didn't think you were denigrating the the translation. It's something I've often wondered about.
I've read lots of translations. When I'm fiddling around with a verse I'll usually read four or five. I see each one as looking at the text from a slightly different angle. I try to look at them all impressionistically to try to build up an understanding.
Also, I come at it from the other side. I think Lao Tzu is trying to describe an experience, help us share it with him. If I start with an idea of what that experience is like, I can try to work back to the meaning of the text. For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard.
I was looking at my previous response to your question:
Quoting T Clark
I'm afraid I somehow gave the impression I have some deep insight into the Tao Te Ching. I don't believe that at all. Lao Tzu was clear that knowledge was not the way to follow the Tao. Maybe that's why I like Taoism so much - it's a lazy man's philosophy. I doubt many would agree with that.
I've reread what you wrote about your translation. I don't think I expressed my enthusiasm enough in my first response. I would love to hear any more you have to offer if we have any more German poems.
Quoting T Clark
There's an imaginative poetic subtlety involved in Taoism that can't be readily described - hence the The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao I think that's what you've been getting at.
It's true that I tend to talk about the Tao Te Ching with the same kind of language I do about poetry. I think that's why Lao Tzu's poetic language works so well. For me, both poetry and the Tao Te Ching are about the experience.
As @Amity already said, but just in case anyone else is holding back out of a sense of topicality, the more poems and interpretations of poems the better.
Ahhh!
This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after.
I took one year of German more than 50 years ago. Back in 2014, my brother and I went to Europe and I refreshed my memory so I could use it when we went over. I love the language. I feel at home in it, even though I am very far from fluent. The gutturals just feel right in the back of my throat, like a mildly bitter IPA.
[i]What is meant by saying that the painter records in his picture the experience which he had in painting it? With this question we come to the subject of the audience, for the audience consists of anybody and everybody to whom such records are significant.
It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectators consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectators does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well.[/i]
I'm enough of a relativist (intuitively) to feel this keenly, and I'm also aware of different philosophies in translation. A big topic is "How much culural localisation?" The idea behind localisation is that if you're unfamiliar with the source culture, you'll not have the same experience as a native speaker. So someone versed in both, creates a similar experience for such readers via localisation. And that could be "getting closer to the poem" (a phrasing I used). However, you also accept differences and avoid... contact. That which is untranslatable disappears without a trace. If you use less localisation, there's a certain strangeness to the poem that isn't there for the native speaker; but there's an opportunity to learn, because your ignorance isn't glossed over. Very few translators keep to extremes, but the debate is often "how much localisation".
So, yeah, definitely. Whatever path you take, whatever words you choose: preference is inevitable. There's no neutral ground, for example, on the localisation line. Maybe a little more? Maybe a little less?
At some point you just fix the text and move on, or there's nothing at all to read.
Quoting Moliere
Glad to hear this. I often feel like I'm rambling on and say nothing much at all.
I think @T Clark mentioned another poetry discussion with a different slant. I'd forgotten about it but searched there for a memorable poem posted by @tim wood':
Quoting tim wood
[Unfortunately, tim seems to have taken a lengthy break...for whatever reason. Hope all is well.]
Many other fantastic and helpful contributions and connections made. Worth a read,
Leaves fall
Leaves pile up;
Rain ... beats on rain.[/quote]
For example: this book:
Quoting Amity
Thanks for:
[i][/i]
***
Simply sums up the spirit of Autumn.
I searched and guess where I found it?...
(worth repeating)
Some 'Mad Fool' responding to @javi2541997
Yet another thread: Philosophical Poems! Thanks again to @T Clark.
Quoting Mad Fool Agent Smith
Love it :fire:
'Poem Meaning' started by @Moliere :fire:
Poems mean a lot. To some. Others are open to persuasion. Perhaps even to inspiration...
Good thinking. It can be overwhelming.
Yes. Thanks to @Moliere for starting it.
Quoting Amity
Tim told me he is bowing out of the forum. There's always a chance he will rejoin us.
Quoting tim wood
I just reread "Home Burial." It had been a long time. I love the way Frost writes about men and women. I think of "West Running Brook" and "The Death of the Hired Hand." I don't know anyone who does it better.
I like poems with vivid visual imagery, and this one certainly has that. I also really like foxes. We had a pair in our back yard. They kept the groundhogs away and their kits rolled and play-fought back by our garden.
I also like the poets self-awareness about his writing process. Watching his ideas sneaking closer and closer. It's a different way of thinking than mine. Especially now that I'm retired I can wait for inspiration. I don't have to work to coax my words out into the open.
https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288
The poem is capital "R" Romantic - it tells the legend of a hero in the golden age of his People - and small "r" romantic - it tells the story of the love between a man and a woman. The meter is trochaic tetrameter - four metric feet of two syllables with emphasis on the first.
[i]By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.[/i]
It's a very long poem and I guess that sing-songy rhythm could be tiresome to some, but I like the way it pushes the story along and draws me into the poem. My favorite section is the verse "Picture Writing" about how Hiawatha invented writing.
[i]"Face to face we speak together,
But we cannot speak when absent,
Cannot send our voices from us
To the friends that dwell afar off;
Cannot send a secret message,
But the bearer learns our secret,
May pervert it, may betray it,
May reveal it unto others."
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.
From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.[/i]
My favorite part of this verse:
[i]Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.
First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, "My painting
Makes me powerful over others."
Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, "Listen!
'T is my voice you hear, my singing!"
Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
"I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!"
Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, "I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!"
Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, "Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me!"
Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, "Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you!"
And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle;
And the image had this meaning:
"Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper![/i]
Quoting Moliere
I found this very long article about 'Poetry and Truth' while looking for Goethe and his poetry.
It reminds me of a previous discussion where I highlighted the use of poetry as communicating first-hand War experience, when some truths were blocked from the public.
I didn't see it as a 'moral' dimension as described below, but yes, something to consider:
Quoting Poetry and Truth by David Jezzi - The New Criterion
[emphasis added]
--------
[*] Hecht. A snippet from later in the article:
Quoting Poetry and Truth
It makes me wonder about any poems coming out of current conflicts, like Ukraine.
Or even Russia, or other places where the truth might be censored @Jamal, anyone?
Perhaps too soon for that...too busy experiencing the raw first-hand...
Three Poems by Iya Kiva, Translated by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
Interesting translation notes re phonetic associaton. Also, a new understanding of identity:
[quote=""No freedom in these ruins" - Marianna Kiyanovska;https://lithub.com/no-freedom-in-these-ruins-four-poems-of-war-by-marianna-kiyanovska/"]Kiyanovska has recently written ekphrastic poems based on Khrystyna Valkos digital graphic poster art. One poem accompanies a portrait of a heart, trapped in a brick wall, an homage to Mariupol:
????? ???????? ? ???? ?????
??? ??????????? ???? ?????
??? ????? ? ???????
????????????? ??????
?-??? ???????? ????????????
the heart trapped in guilt-pain
wars hundred fifteenth day
between soul and stranger
Mariupols weeds
sprouted from the asphalt
This Mariupol is a violated, animate being. It is a body with blood, tears, and veins, dismembered and profaned by the atrocities of war. These lines open with the phonetic association between guilt (vyna) and war (viina). The string of painful images, lacking any punctuation, approximates the emotional pace of perceiving the citys unfathomable losses. Another recent poem accompanies Valkos poster to encourage blood donation. Kiyanovska reduces language to its simplest connections, using the verbal associations of blood and love to redraw the meaning of a Ukrainian community, one connected through the act of giving blood: donor can translate to love.
The multilevel I that Kiyanovska attempted to articulate with her Babyn Yar cycle in 2017 has become a way of understanding kinship among linguistically, geographically, and ethnically diverse Ukrainians in a time of war. Kiyanovskas ongoing poetics describes a radically new understanding of identity: today, she asserts, Ukrainians should not be bound by ethnic blood-lines, but rather (tragically, heroically) by spilled blood. This is part ten in a series on contemporary poetry from Ukraine.
[...]
the heart trapped in guilt-pain
wars hundred fifteenth day
between soul and stranger
Mariupols weeds
sprouted from the asphalt
hung from the veins
Azovstal dead suburbs up
to the horizon oxygen
in crematoria just-baked
blackened teeth and fingers
dead human and stork-nests
the silence of a sharp shrill sound
shatters the walls today
the walls are writhing blood flows
from acacia blossoms
rising like a mustering of storks
a homeless windowpane broken
infinite black holes
they wanted to live in this city
and of course to love
and now theres only air water
salty from the tears
no freedom in these ruins
just the carcasses of suitcases
(2022)
[/quote]
OK. That's enough I think. Kinda makes Brian Bilston's 'Serenity Prayer' look small...
we fall and rise
in foreign fields
sown and planted
with blood, sweat and tears. Boom.
meaningless mines metred
lie still unexplored
til the sign, the sound
of pop, high tones groan. Bang!
what do we find
as we plough the fields
and scatter the good
hoarded coins, discarded cans. Bank.
life near dead, decomposing
from hunger and greed
pathways stolen
seeds stamped not growing. Blank.
demining the demeaning
we dig for victory
what fellow-kind do we find
in the rise and fall of foreign fields...
Just "Grow your own veg, Frank!"
--------
[*]
Quoting Guardian
What do you feel now when you read that poem?
Would you really want to re-experience the original moment in time?
Or can you see it both from the past and in the present as something special?
I ask because I think I was a bit insensitive when I said I loved your poem in response.
The negative feelings compared to the positive connection...isn't what I loved, just the way you expressed yourself.
[quote="Amity;748298"]...there was a connection there between the poem, the poet, and me but it's lost now. Too bad, I wish I could go back about 30 years ago and re-read the poem and re-experience those emotions again.
Numinous,
Back then it was,
Now,
Like a spent candle,
Nothing!
Mad Fool/Agent Smith
:snicker:
I've lost touch with my poetic side it seems. :sad:
No nay, nivver! You can play the wild rover for many a year...or drama queen, whatever...
Your profile shows some good quotes:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Philip K. Dick
If you can't sing, then lip-synch :wink:
Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings
The six o'clock alarm would never ring
But it rings, and I rise
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes
My shavin' razor's cold and it stings
Cheer up, sleepy Jean
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen?
You once thought of me
As a white knight on his steed
Now, you know how happy I can be
Oh, and our good times start and end
Without dollar one to spend
But how much, baby, do we really need
However, one technique Elliot uses I want to highlight in this thread, because it's a good example of poetic meaning - and it's from the first lines of the first stanza! :D
Here the line-breaks give the lines a double meaning, a really common poetic technique. Whereas truth-condition type meaning attempts to set out a meaning, poetic meaning frequently attempts to employ multiple meanings to give a kind of resonance or mood or theme, or to compare ideas and moods and feelings at the same time with the exact same set of words as they are spoken or read.
So as I read it the first line "April is the cruellest month, breeding" -- clearly "breeding" forms a phrase with "Lilicas out of the dead land", but also April itself is breeding (what is it breeding? Well, the rest of the poem fills that out, somewhat, but only through images and sounds and feelings)
In Elliot we get something personal, something purposefully undefined -- but a definite mood, I'd say. The essay I read wanted me to read The Wasteland like it would change me, even -- like it was a spiritual experience. With Shakespeare we get a classic form, well executed, on a classic subject -- love and aging. Something familiar re-addressed, re-spoken, and re-assessed.
One of the parts of the sonnet that is like The Psalms is the relationship between the first and second stanza -- it can be put to multiple uses, but usually the 2nd stanza either repeats the first stanza, or it states something which develops the first stanza, or it states something which is in some kind of opposition or contrasting stance to the first stanza. The Psalms use this method to develop meaning -- repetition, development, or opposition.
Something that's different about the sonnet is the couplet which puts a bow on it -- though sometimes that's put to the opposite effect too.
Oh, geez. Now you're going to make me read "The Wasteland." It may take me a while. I did have an experience perhaps similar to the one you describe at the beginning of your post. I remember reading and hating Elliot in high school, in particular "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." About six months ago I decided to take another look and I was surprised to find I really enjoyed it. I'll try to keep that in mind as I read "The Wasteland."
That's generally how I approach poems when I read them. If they get to me enough, I'll put more effort into subsequent reads. That's why I'm enjoying this thread. It gives me motivation to dig deeper.
Would it be possible to develop a logic of phrases? (heh, probably anathema to the two camps who'd usually ponder one side or the other of that question)
I dont think this would help in interpreting a poem. Mostly still just looking at that "what's left, if we are able to conceptually "take away" truth-conditions?" question.
In particular, it'd be interesting to simply answer the question "what constitutes a phrase?" when we take a string -- is it possible to devise a relationship between a string and how many phrases are in a string?
One thing that should be obvious from my approach is that I don't think there'd be a general answer for all languages, given that poetic meaning -- as I've been rendering it thus far at least -- includes phonic structure. So the question would be about, first, what is a reasonable delimitation on generality such that it's still interesting, and not just a set of rules for interpreting a sonnet?
That's what form does for us, in a way -- it tells us exactly how many phrases a poem will have, and some of its internal structure. In a way poetic form is a logic for answering the question "What constitutes a phrase?" -- and the modern poets basically assert that such formalities are not necessary to convey meaning (thus making it much harder to answer the original question, but taking us back to the original impetus -- the feeling of poetry)
EDIT: Just as an example using the first four indentations of The Wasteland -- you could count 4 phrases, based on indentation, or any number of phrases based upon how you interpret them (like I noted how April itself was also breeding, adding another phrase). But this procedure, right now, isn't even as robust as "guess and check", since there's no necessary answer to the question. Hence, not quite a logic with respect to modern poetry, but possibly a very weak and un-interesting one in the case of defined forms -- still, the focus on counting phrases is interesting for compare/contrast, i think -- perhaps this could count as showing a difference in approaches to meaning.
What kind of a phrase?
https://natureofwriting.com/courses/sentence-structure/lessons/phrases/topic/phrases/
What kind of a string? Examples?
Quoting Moliere
What is a 'logic of phrases'?
Quoting Moliere
What is left where... in a poem? What is a 'truth-condition'? Why would a poem need one?
I struggle to understand what is at issue. Even after I read the following:
Quoting Philosophy 202 - Meaning and Truth Conditions
***
Another kind of logic question, grammatical:
Quoting The Grammatical Logic of Emphatic Phrases
***
Quoting Moliere
Nothing is obvious to me, perhaps I missed it. If you could explain again, I'd be grateful.
Quoting Moliere
Again, I lack understanding of what it is you are asking. What do you mean by 'reasonable delimitation on generality'? What are the 'rules for interpreting a sonnet'?
Quoting Moliere
I am not sure what you are getting at. Perhaps if you could provide a complete and simple poem, an example to show how poetic form is a logic for answering the question 'What constitutes a phrase'?'
What is the importance of this question, in any case, when it comes to understanding meaning?
Wouldn't looking at the content be just as helpful?
Content + Form = Meaning
Content = title, subject matter, theme, word choices and order, imagery...
Again, do you have a source for your claim about 'modern poets' - who are they and where do they assert that 'formalities are not necessary to convey meaning?
A poem might initially be 'felt' by a simple read; not fully engaging the mental faculties.
However, to reach any obscure or symbolic meaning requires us to go beyond.
To read again. With care. To connect, compare and contrast with our own 'truths'. To relate.
The 'truth' of poetry I discussed earlier:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13562/poem-meaning/p4
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2015/4/poetry-truth
Hopefully any of those, and more, given that poems tend to invent their own phrase kinds.
Well, for now, I just mean a set of characters with some kind of single-dimensional direction that has a place where it begins and a place where it ends -- speaking more formally, basically. When I'm speaking as abstractly at the level of "strings" I'm kind of coming at the question "from the other side" of feeling -- attempting to put down abstract theories that provide clarity.
Quoting Amity
A poem would certainly not need one -- that's why I thought it a good topic! :D I'll try to explain responding to this:
Quoting Amity
I suppose I'd say that truth-conditions do not exhaust the meaning of even sentences in the form of a statement. The meaning of a statement may include truth-conditions, but my impression is that something is left out, that there is some remainder of meaning not included in such a definition of meaning. I don't think I'm even at a point where anything is quite at issue -- I'm still forming nascent thoughts.
But one of the things I'm trying to do is focus on the bits of language that truth-conditional semantics doesn't. So poetry, and its evaluation, as @SrapTasmaner pointed out earlier, is a concrete topic under which we might come up with distinctions to figure out what this "left over" is -- if we think there's more to meaning that the truth of statements at least. While I don't think that (EDIT, for clarity: I don't think that the meaning of a statement can be reduced to truth-conditions), if someone does then they'd likely see this endeavor as "following from" truth-conditional theories of meaning, where poetry is parasitic upon the truth embedded withing language.
Or the opposite, if someone is more given over to this notion of sentences simply meaning (like myself) and not needing a theory of meaning, though I'm obviously not satisfied else I wouldn't be creating threads like this -- then it would seem all the logical constructions are extraneous, superflous, unhelpful. (but they are interesting!)
Quoting Amity
Perfect! That's exactly the sort of question I'm asking after. What does "do" do? Here we're asking about the meaning of the word within a sentence rather than the conditions under which it would be true. What is up with that?
Quoting Amity
heh, fair.
I think that the approach which prefers to talk about meaning in terms of a Language "L", such that we're speaking about language in the abstract rather than a particular natural language (like German or English or..), would say that the actual sound of a given unit of meaning is not important. But the phonic structure of a poem is part and parcell to poetry, even when it's not one of the forms.
A linguist would say that you could say--
"Snow is white" is true iff Schnee ist weiß
Has the same meaning because the conditions under which either sentence is spoken are the same. So the phonic structure is "accidental", or could be any other phonic structure insofar that the truth-conditions are somehow "attached" to this phonic bit or plank.
A poet wouldn't. Poets frequently complain about the impossibility of translating poetry. And one of the main complaints in translating poetry is exactly the phonic structure of the poem, and the relations that invokes within the spoken language.
That is -- it's not just the truth conditions that brings about the total meaning of a phrase, it's also all the relationships it holds with the other meaning-bits or meaning-planks (mostly making a distinction here based upon whether one might prefer analytic or holistic "units" of meaning -- the "unit" being undefined at this point because poems don't define things in terms of a sentence, for instance)
Quoting Amity
I mean the domain under consideration. So rather than all languages, I'd at least limit myself to a particular, natural language. But I wouldn't make a theory so specific such that it could only interpret the 108's sonnet of Shakespeare.
Iambic pentameter, 3 stanzas. Rhymes as follows: ABAB, CDCD, EE
And then with respect to the question "how many phrases are in a sonnet?" I think we could propose something like 10 phrases. Though there are constructions which would require us to look at the content, as opposed to the form -- so that's not quite a steadfast rule either, only the closest thing to a formal answer to the question. (also itself not necessary for providing an actual interpretation of a poem, which I've agreed is more about feeling and sharing and connecting than this attempt at making something formal)
Quoting Amity
Heh, I'm sort of looking at meaning from two sides -- but with respect to poetry I think you're right to say that looking at the content is even more helpful than these questions I'm asking. I guess I'm starting to dip into the philosophy side of the question here, more than the poetic feeling side (though I also want to keep the poetic feeling side going -- rule 1 holds for me still)
Quoting Amity
Mostly just using T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland as a standin for the category, since the essay I read pretty much treated it as a sort of revolutionary moment in poetry, where I thought it was clear he was inventing his own form and following it -- and certainly I felt the meaning that was there, the mood, the imagery... assertion isn't the right word, but I'm claiming that T.S. Elliot shows with this poem that we don't need the classical forms to convey meaning, (though maybe that's controversial! Others might say that it's clearly meaningless because it doesn't follow the forms....)
(EDIT: Just to be clear, the essay wasn't anything fancy -- literally just the introduction to a collected works I own, written by someone who works in the academy in New York at the time in the 80's, from the sound of it. It was a good essay on poetry in general, I thought, though... might type it up to share. Doubt I could find the exact one online)
Quoting Amity
True. So we can't just say, what Davidson calls a "first reading", is the true reading -- the real meaning. And I completely agree that this is part of the interpretive process for poems. We connect to it with our own 'truths', as you say.
Do you see why, then, poetry serves as a good contrast case for truth-conditions to explore the nature of meaning?
Boy, you really lost me here. No need to go into a longer explanation. Sorry I can't respond more helpfully.
No need to be sorry. I've been reading everything here and I'll read if you post more on this, but I won't likely be able to respond intelligently.
Given that, why pose the question of 'what constitutes a phrase?' and the follow-up:
Quoting Moliere
If there are a number of phrases in a 'string', I would have thought any 'string' would be the sentence or more. But this doesn't seem to be the case:
Quoting Moliere
So again, a clear-cut example of what your first sentence means would be helpful.
Clarity is necessary for understanding. How will unclear abstract theories provide this?
Quoting Moliere
Thanks. A pity that this was skipped over:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Interesting to consider the possibly purposeful missing pieces of the poetic puzzle.
A message hidden from plain sight for whatever reason. We see that in philosophy where the anti-religious had to hide their views from the status-quo for health and safety reasons.
The reader then must figure out any clues that might lead to a new unspoken 'truth'.
So yes, of course, there is always a combination of subjectivity and objectivity in any text; poem or art.
The 'subjective' is not 'left over'.
Quoting Moliere
Thanks for clarifying. It shows what most readers would know. The sound is the pound.
And yes, I now see that the absence or silence within can create or disturb a rhythm, as in music.
Also how reading aloud, or listening, can provide the musicality and a more meaningful experience.
I found help, here: (included for my own recall !)
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Sound-Devices-in-Poetry
Quoting Moliere
Those are structural rules, no? How do they help in interpretation? Ah, reading on:
Quoting Moliere
Got it :up:
Quoting Moliere
Yes, I don't envy the translator's task. I've read more here:
Quoting Creative Translation
[my bolds]
I appreciate all the time and energy spent in responding to my queries.
Quoting Moliere
I understand a whole lot more now than I did before, thanks :sparkle:
That's the Shakespearean sonnet, with the volta coming rather abruptly at the start of line 13. The older form (petrarchan I think) has a group of 8 and then 6, so there's more time after the volta to develop the counterpoint to the first 8.
Trying to make it obvious here how the structure of a poem shapes its meaning.
Ah! I'm lifting the term from computer science.
So, as the wiki shows, "This is a string!" is a string.
[s]And if it is a sequence then, to make things more abstract, any set of characters with members greater than 1 would count as a string, I think.[/s] <-- Keeping it here cuz I started here, but re-reading I think this is a tangeant.
So in positing the question "How many phrases are in a string?" I'm asking is for a rule that would allow a computer to compute some number given any string -- so it couldn't be infinite, but it could be any combination of characters, including spaces and indentations and dashes and every bit that we'd consider in reading a string (as these themselves were added later).
Also, I added the information about direction of reading because we're dealing with poetry which is itself not necessarily digital. It's written on an open page, and the notions of space aren't as easy to define when we have a whole page to write on vs. some line that might include "paragraph break" as a character in its alphabet, which means "new plank of meaning", or something like that -- time to consider something else.
So one rule I could propose in counting phrases would be "every time there is a paragraph break, add one" -- and with the sonnet we'd get a definite number of "10" this way. However, in looking at the content, we'd probably contend this derivation in some poems. Thinking here of lines that invoke two contrasting ideas or feelings or meanings within the same line -- we'd likely, as humans, count those as two phrases instead of 1. Actually I should highlight here just how odd my line of questioning is, because as humans reading a poem we wouldn't usually ask "How many phrases are in this poem?" -- such a question seems to entirely miss the point!
Quoting Amity
Yes, very true. This is by way of trying to delineate what I'm attempting to get at. I agree that it's not actually left over -- hence why I could see how someone would call into question my little thought experiment, claiming that it is not as innocent as I'm proposing.
But I'm not sure how else to get at what I mean other than by contrasting...
Quoting Amity
Heh, I'm just glad there's enough interest here that I'm able to think through my wacky thoughts. :)
I just accepted that as true. Unfortunately, you didn't provide a source so that I could check.
Do you have one?
I found this interesting. Again, not sure if it's correct:
Quoting Sonnet Rules and Rhyme Scheme
Do you have an easy-to-understand example of a sonnet?
But surely you see what I mean by form now, though? The rhythm-rhyme scheme, at a minimum, defines a poetic form.
WCW :chin:
Woman Crush Wednesday or World Championship Wrestling.
'All donnets day the dame thing' :cool:
Funny but not the point, if you're trying to be serious - don't dismiss with carelessness :naughty:
It's bad form, old boy :smirk:
Well, I have my limits. And I think I've reached them. I might leave the rest to others. Thanks anyway :up:
You're forgiven but only because I'm an :halo: with a :naughty: streak.
Take care :sparkle:
Thank you. I much prefer the feeling/meaning but form is good for me too. I've learned a lot about how it contributes. It took a lot of questions to get there... :flower:
Have placed your last explanatory post on my back-burner...
Love him.
I went to look at his page on Poetry Foundation and didn't like any of the poems they had on offer as much as This is Just To Say:
One of my favorite gems.
No worries. I don't do 'bad blood'...much. Certainly not in this kind of discussion :sparkle:
Hadn't heard of @Srap Tasmaner's 'WCM' but now I have.
William Carlos Williams: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-williams
I like it too, and I it made me ask myself something. If I wrote "I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so cold."
Is that still a poem? If not, what made Williams' version one? The pauses at the end of each line? The way it flowed differently? The way it looks? What about the stanzas? Were the breaks between them just for visual purposes.
My initial thought - Williams' version is definitely a poem but my edited version is not. I haven't read much of his work. I should.
Music to my ears. The exact sort of thing I'm asking after.
Next: metre is more something you approach assymptotically than keep to slavishly. Strict regularity is more a feature of poems that are supposed to entertain. A Limerick or a doggerel is going to be more regular metre-wise than a sonnet, on avarage. Regularity creates a sing-song feeling that many poem types (especially the more serious forms) wish to avoid.
Next, semantics. I've never liked truth-conditional semantics too much. My hunch is that meaning needs to be there before you ever get too truth, and truth itself needs to be a meaningful concept. I think that meaning is pre-linguistic even. For that reason, I'm not too fond of a simple reference semantic either. I tend towards cognitive semantics. But I've never looked into semantics too much, so I'm not an expert what they actually say. If you go by the usual semantic triangle, of sign - thing - concept (whatever the different versions might conceptualise the points of the triangle as), I'd say that the concept is central, and both the sign and the thing evoke the concept, but in different concepts. Truth is irrelevant until rather late in the game. A poem, especially a long one as the Wasteland, will have its own meaning, both while reading, and after reading as a memory trace, which then influences a consequitive reading, and so on. You can never read the same poem twice.
The term phrase is rather precise in linguistics (but doesn't only have one meaning, since there are different theories). Language is compositional. Basically morphemes make words make phrases make clauses, and after that you get into text analysis and leave the realm of syntax. A phrase can be composes of words and other phrases and even clauses. For example, one way to count phrases, could be the follwoing: "the red apple":
1. Determiner Phrase: "the red apple"
2. Noun phrase: "red apple"
3. a) adjective phrase: "red"
3. b) noun phrase: "apple".
Not all ways of counting recognise determiner phrases. The numbering shows compositional levels, and goes inwards. If 3. a) were "red and yellow" (as in "the red and yellow apple"), for example, you'd have to decide (by your theory) if it's meaningful to count "red" and "yellow" as their own phrases. I could say that at that point we just have a co-ordination of adjectives. It's not that easy, though, since you could have "the mostly red and somewhat yellow apple", which then would make you decide what to do with the adverbs. In that case, I'd count "mostly red" and "somewhat yellow" as adjective phrases, since while the adjectives are co-ordinated, the adverbs are not co-ordinated, which means the co-ordination is on the phrase level. If all it takes to get phrases is a modification of the adjectives, though, there's no good reason to not also see the unmodified version as co-ordination of phrases rather than words.
Next, "phrase" is also a word used in music theory: a phrase is built from lower level stuff, too, like, say, motifs, but I'm not that knowledgable here. In any case, if you riff of this term, you might consider a phrase a compositional unit that somehow completes a rhythm. A phrase might co-incide with a line, with half a line, with a couplet... depending on the poem. You can then compare the rhythmic units with units of meaning: Do they co-incide? Do they overlap? And so on.
Meaning tends to influence rhythm as much as the other way round, and different people might emphasise different words. A short Poem:
Danielle Hope, "The Mist at Night" (from The Poet's Voice, 1994):
Perhaps it's the trees, look -
on sentry parade by the lake,
October weighting their branches,
a flotilla of shadows
casting nets over the water.
Perhaps it's the black-out under the trees -
terse chestnuts crack underfoot.
The water-rat snores from dumb roots,
the hawthorn racked red with doubt.
Perhaps it's the mist - wide awake
like a child before Christmas -
or that you think the air weeps
and you don't want it to stop.
So you tug up a tough ugly stump
to wake the lynx that sleeps
just under your heart.
To chase the sleepy lynx out of its lair.
To run wild in the mist in the night.
You get two ten-line stanzas, both subdivided into lines of five. The most striking means of subdivision is the repetition of "Perhaps it's the...", which gives the poem its structure, until the final five lines are introduced with "So," initiating a conclusion (which is what the word "so" often does). On the semantic level, the "perhaps" refuses to make a definite statement, and the "it" is indeterminate, never telling you what it's talking about. So you have a sort of vague, dreamy feel just from non-sensual words.
The mist from the title doesn't come in until the start of the second stanza. The first stanza gives the setting, but does smuggle in impressionistic figurative language. What strikes me are the adjectives that sort of hint at communication, but with inanimate nouns: "terse chestnuts", "dumb roots" - until the stanza ends with "doubt" attributed to... hawthorn?
Phonetically, the first stanza starts out with frictatives and long vowels (the first line ends with a plosive; so does the second one, the same one, "k", but this time with a diphtong, which sounds more relaxed). The other three lines end in unstressed syllaber. All in all, I read this in a quite relaxed, tone - with "look" standing out as an exclamation of excitement. The next five lines start out in a similar vein: this time it ends on "trees", a long-vowel word. But then you get the terse chest-nuts: the line has lots of plosive and darker vowel sounds. It's a change in the mood (and the "blackout" foreshadows this, actually). Semantically, the chestnuts being terse fit well with a "crack", but the word is a little odd. The water-rat line feels a little more relaxed again, but not quite as much as the trees-line, and the hawthorn line ends on the plosive of "doubt".
Then we get to the mist, and here we have a intra-line break, like the first line before "look", but we're now fully in the poet's projection space: it's not the mist that's wide awake, it's... the poet? the reader? the adressee? To me, the lines that follow have the strongest run-on quality so far in the poem: it's a consecutive idea that mixes the outer world with the inner world, and then it gets explicit with the next three lines.
Phonetically the so-line is one I hurry through. Very dark vowals, and a very interesting phonetic construction in "tug up a tough ug..." You're almost repating the sounds with switched letters: tug and ugly - and up and tough (not quite perfect, but both unvoiced vowel sounds. The line ends with another "p", and then the poem slows down again (or at least I do when I read it). The seciton ends with lynx sleeping explicitly under "your heart", now. The mix-up between the inner and outer world is out in the open. And we get a full-stop here. That slows the poem down even further. You could co-ordinate the following to-lines with commas (the poem's used commas before), but it doesn't. The lines slow down, until the last line has internal repetion of "in" - which to me creates a three-part rhythm in a single line. I tend to svaour this, reading the line. I end the poem at its slowest (even though semantically, the poem's adressee is supposed to run wild).
There's a very clear mood to the poem for me, and a great sense of progression, but there's no clear meaning that's explicable. The phonetics, the punctuation, everything guides the reading. I'm not reading this poem at a constant speed; I can't. And that wraps into content of the metaphors, too. Oddly, I calm down when the poem invites you to run wild, but that sort of gives me a perfect sense of catharsis. Natural stops and run-on lines are very well placed to that effect. You (or, well, I) don't just get that effect from the meaning of the words. There's the vivid imagery, and the mix up of inner and outer world. (For example, if you tug up a tough ugly stump to wake the lynx that sleeps just under your heart, where was the stump, and did it hurt? It's not like I ever thought about it explicitly like that before I typed those lines, but that's sort of the... mulch of what's going on in my mind when I read that poem.)
It's one of my favourite poems.
PS: I distinctly recognise the plum poem, but the poet's name doesn't ring a bell. This is rare. Normally, when I remember a poem, I remember the name, and if I forget it, it'd at least sound familiar. I might be getting old.
I'm guessing it's that linebreaks slow you down, and you pay more attention to the words in themselves. We're conditioned to read prose for meaning first. (Though some prose can override that for me, like the final paragraph of James Joyce' "The Dead".)
I like the poem a lot and I really like your explication. Is what you've written intended to be about meaning? It doesn't seem so to me. I wrote earlier in this thread and elsewhere that I don't think poems mean anything beyond the experience of the person reading or listening to it. Your post seems more like an explanation of how the poet has used language to help us share that experience.
I'm not sure I could do the kind of explication you have, but you've made me want to try.
That's definitely part of it. I try to pay a lot of intention to different kinds of pauses when I write. They can be very expressive. Commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, ellipses, line breaks, line spaces, paragraph breaks - each provide a different kind of pause. They allow for a lot of distinctness and subtlety. Even in my version of the Williams' poem, the short phrases and sentences and the punctuation brought me to a sharp stop in some places. If I had read the sentence first, maybe I would have edited it to change the rhythmic structure like I did with your poem about a cat earlier in this thread to make it a poem. Or maybe I was wrong and my edit to the Williams poem was a poem after all.
I think the visual layout is significant too, even if only as a sign that says "Look, poem here." Once I received an email with four short lines with line breaks after each. No rhyme. No particular meter. The email program gave me the choice of three prepackaged responses I could send just by pushing a button - "Beautiful poem", "Love it!", "I like it!". So, my email program thought it was a poem, even though it wasn't.
Also, a beautiful poem. I'm clearly colored by your reading ;), but nothing wrong with that -- I can feel that tension between how the poem reads, slower and contemplative, savoring the ideas, and then a conclusion drawn in the same way that stands in stark contrast to the way the poem reads. Very cool affect on me.
***
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
***
First time I came across this poem was at a poetry reading we used to do back in college for fun -- gather round a circle at someone's home with some poetry books and go round-robin sharing poems. It was also my introduction to Williams Carlos Williams.
It was so short, in relation to all the poems we were reading, it immediately made me laugh. Ever since I've returned to read it I don't even know how many times now, and it still makes me smile.
For me the breaks serve as one beat pauses, and the breaks between stanzas serve as two beat pauses -- though reading it again I think I actually give a three beat pause for the second break. When I read it like this, it's like the way the speaker would have said it, had they been there -- sheepish, slow, guilty -- but not so guilty, because the prize really was just that nice. The first two stanzas read like that slow admission of guilt, but then right after asking forgiveness, by way of explaining himself, the speaker relishes in the memory of the stolen plums, and finishes with that memory.
It makes me think of a close relationship you have with someone, and you know them so well that you know their favorite things -- and somehow along the way they kind of became your favorite things, too. So it sort of serves as a poem of familiarity and friendship, even though it's highlighting that part of familiarity where people are maybe too familiar.
Pretty much guaranteed to make me smile every time.
Heh, it's hard for me to separate the two -- I read poems like that, but sloppier than @Dawnstorm -- the figure is as important as the content.
However, this here -- this is what interests me. When I read @Dawnstorm's interpretation of the poem, I found myself able to re-read the poem and feel that interpretation there. In a sense, because of the interpretation, I was able to share in the meaning created.
So I think I'd like to say that the experience of the person reading or listening to a poem is where meaning starts, but there might be more to it than that. There's this element of meaning that can be shared, and is not related to sharing the world, but rather sharing the meaning of the poem together.
One way to think about poetry is that it foregrounds elements bedsides the words that shape our understanding of an utterance.
Tiny example. Hugh Kenner tells a story about Eliot, that returning to England on the ferry, someone called his attention to the white cliffs of Dover and remarked that they didn't look real, to which Eliot responded, "Oh they're real enough," a sentence Kenner takes to have four different meanings depending on which of its four words you emphasize.
Prosody matters enormously to the meaning of a poem.
How does that apply to this poem in particular?
To the Danielle Hope poem?
Not sure. I don't have any feel for how she writes.
Perhaps I shouldn't have made my remark about prosody sound so universal. Hebrew poetry, for example, is structured semantically, so there's a sort of rhythm of thoughts, rather than sounds. Or so I understand.
Williams I have some feel for, but the rhythm is the hardest part to analyze or explain. Reading "This is just to say" is like unfolding a bit of origami. He's very tricky about how the syntax is broken up over the lines; you unfold the next bit and it's satisfying but then you're not sure where to tug next and suddenly pop the next fold has come open. By the time you get to the very end and it's all laid out, you're not quite sure how you did it. Some of these little poems of his sound like they're sentences, sound urgently and insistently like sentences, but turn out not to be if you look carefully. Some of that is a commitment to spoken vernacular American, in which syntax can be a bit malleable, but some of it is the way lineation offers a competing structure, and that structure is in part rhythmic.
Thank you.
Your whole post is a pleasure to read. I've saved it for later.
I appreciate you taking a short poem to show how analysis can work to improve understanding.
Yours is what I would call high-level +++ :100:
Your writing clear and confident. Your approach to answering the questions :clap:
I looked up Danielle Hope and found more. So good.
This discussion has been thought-provoking and, for me, a wonderful learning experience.
Eventually, I hope to re-read this short poem and try to understand it better:
Quoting Poetry Foundation
I love this. I get the gist and the feel but...there's more...
There's a free 4-week course on FutureLearn:
Poetry: How to read a poem - University of York
Quoting Amity
The title and the first two lines of each stanza set us up for feeling slow and reflective. The last four lines run in the rhythm and rhyme of a limerick (minus the first line). The serene mood is undermined to make it, well, funny. If we had been asked to guess the author I would have said Wendy Cope.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=49670
Ah, you're talking about 'Serenity Prayer' by Brian Bilston. The thoughts just spilled out as I was racking my brain as to what the rhythm reminded me of. Strange the associations... [*]
[*]
Quoting Amity
***
Wendy Cope, I've actually heard of but can't recall a single poem?!
More to do with my memory. I could relate to her 'Written Rules' very easily. Women of a certain age.
Almost like my post-it reminders...stuck around the house.
'Don't fall for an amusing hunk'. If only...
'Don't live with thirty years of junk -
Those precious things you'll never find.
Stop, if the car is going "clunk".'
Yep. I've not only got my own years but those of my forebears. Sifting through forever and a day.
I enjoyed the bitter-sweet taste. The '-unkiness' of it all. :sparkle:
Then perhaps you will enjoy:
[quote=Wendy Cope]Two Cures for Love
1. Dont see him. Dont phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.[/quote]
And many more....
And my little tribute:
Two ways to read a poem
1. Study hard and analyze it.
2. The easy way: learn it by heart and let it live there.
I like this a lot. Sheepish guilt. Sheepish smirky guilt. In the end maybe a bit too smirky. That is what makes it amusing to me.
Quoting Moliere
I like this too. I see the situation as a man writing a note to a woman, but it could be read differently. They are in an intimate domestic relationship. Man and wife? There may even be a bit of nastiness, competitiveness, in it, as you write "maybe too familiar," but I don't want to oversell that. Maybe more like a brother and sister. The poem is a note he left on the counter. Or maybe stuck on the refrigerator with a magnet.
As I mentioned to @Dawnstorm, this is the kind of explication I'd like to be able to do.
Which is why I like short poems. I tried to memorize "Two Tramps in Mud Time," but finally gave up.
Moi aussi :cool:
I like every which way it turns.
Quoting 3 Short French Poems for Language Learning
I'm sure there must be a third way. There always is. Goldilocks tells me so...
Where are you finding them? The short form suits me well :flower:
So, a simple couplet. Clever; reflecting title and theme.
What do you think/feel when you read it?
1. I think nothing is that simple. Silence is not golden.
And there is a bit of a :joke: in 2.
Definitely easy to remember, as if that was all there is to it :broken: :heart:
But I guess it can be seen as one of those bitter-sweet reminders...
She seems to like her Written Rules. What is it about her?
Are triplets rare? In poetry...
Is that really how it is written?
Not like this:
Dont see him.
Dont phone or write a letter.
The easy way: get to know him better.
:chin:
I'm slow on the uptake. Love the Cope and Cuthbert couplet comparisons 1. and 2. :up:
Listen as you read the poem below:
Il lampo (The Lightning)
by Giovanni Pascoli
[i]E cielo e terra si mostrò qual era:
la terra ansante, livida, in sussulto;
il cielo ingombro, tragico, disfatto:
bianca bianca nel tacito tumulto
una casa apparì sparì dun tratto;
come un occhio, che, largo, esterrefatto,
saprì si chiuse, nella notte nera.[/i]
***
How does the English compare?
[i]And sky and earth showed what they were like:
the earth panting, livid, in a jolt;
the sky burdened, tragic, exhausted:
white white in the silent tumult
a house appeared disappeared in the blink of an eye;
like an eyeball, that, enlarged, horrified,
opened and closed itself, in the pitch-black night.[/i]
***
5 more here:
https://talkinitalian.com/italian-poems/
I'm sorry I passed this by.
Thank you for the link. I didn't know much about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (HWL).
Turns out he was quite the traveller and loved languages.
Quoting hwlongfellow
HWL - The Theologians Tale, Part IV, Verse 1
Quoting HWL - The Theologian's Tale, Part IV
I hadn't even thought of podcasts. There are [s]1,000's[/s] millions of them!
https://podcastreview.org/list/best-poetry-podcasts/
Here's one on Emily Dickinson:
Quoting Planet Radio
https://planetradio.co.uk/podcasts/frank-skinner-poetry-podcast/id-2087857/
And from Scotland but not only Scottish poets:
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcasts/
For example:
If I heard right, she prefers descriptions to meaning. Doesn't believe in meaning. About 5mins in.
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/beverley-bie-brahic/
I haven't read The Wasteland, have to admit I'd never even heard of it.
I'm interested in 'the sound of the poem', so I searched Librivox:
There are quite a few readings but this one sounds good to my ears. It is last in a selection of 60.
(I was delighted to find 'The Owl and the Pussycat', a childhood favourite, easy to remember and recite.)
https://librivox.org/poetic-duets-by-various/
Well, I'm not sure that you can make a general claim about 'modern poets' from a single, stand out example of 'Modernism':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land
But I don't really understand what point you are trying to make.
Meaning is there, no matter the form.
As for TSE, I've just been reading about him and others on the FutureLearn course.
There's a range of writing on tradition: what it is, the different forms it can take, and how writers may or may not feel they belong in a given tradition. There are perspectives, including feminist innovation, but it starts off with this:
'Tradition and the Individual Talent - T. S. Eliot
We can ask questions about 'tradition' and whether it is true that 'if you want it you must obtain it by great labour'. There seems to be a contradiction...
TSE seems to appreciate tradition as involving a perception, a historical sense.
Recognising the past as part of the present.
It isn't clear to me that any 'inventions of new forms' show that 'we don't need classical forms to convey meaning'. Meaning is where we find it in any shape or form.
Again, I'm probably not fully understanding the issue at hand.
I see poetry like any other kind of art as different strands evolving. 'Revolutionary'...it makes it seem like there's a war between different factions. Even if there is push-back, then isn't it the case that the 'new' then becomes another 'tradition'? A rich tapestry of many colours.
There are different 'traditions' (and forms) - some more open and inclusive than others.
Previously, I posted poetry about current Ukranian war by female poets. Who read or responded?
I was trying to move beyond English male-dominated, traditional poems.
It's difficult even to think of 'foreign' WWI poetry.
Quoting Italian Poems
***
Soldati - Ungaretti: paraphrase, analysis and commentary:
https://www.scuolissima.com/2018/10/soldati-ungaretti.html
To be honest, I find this hard to answer. First the last sentence: my post is more about how I read the poem than about the what the poem did. I've experienced time and again that the same words can be read differently. For example, key to my reaction is that I slow down while reading the last line, but there's nothing in the poem that forces me to do so. A poem, read aloud, is always already an interpretation (though not necessarily consciously so). And I don't think the differences in reading are random.
Some readings may fit the formal characteristics of a poem better than other readings. I remember thinking (not only once), well, that's awkwardly phrased, until I heard someone else read this. For example, speeding through two consecutive syllables might allow to linger on a different one that would be an "unemphasised slot" otherwise. I wish I still had an example, but it's been at least 20 years ago, now. I remember the feeling of the dropping penny, but not the specifics of the poem(s).
Quoting Dawnstorm
Thank you. Your post has given me plenty to think about meaning; how it is made and infuenced.
As you and Srap point out, it is shaped by words; their emphasis, rhythm, sound and symbolism.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Here are my thoughts, inspired by your post:
The Title: 'The Mist at Night' suggests a myst-erious dream. It sets the stage.
'Perhaps it's the...' - the writer is asking questions as she dreams. There is some confusion; the mist of uncertainty. The psychological mindset tries to understand the dream contents.
Time and place: October. Autumn. Trees whose bare branches overhang a lake. Love the lightness of 'the flotilla of shadows casting nets over the water' contrasting with the gloomy shade at the roots.
As you say:
Quoting Dawnstorm
I wonder why you say the word 'crack' is odd. Perhaps you are thinking of horse chestnuts in the form of conkers. They would be hard to crack. However, it might be that it is the cracking open of the spiny husks, the protective burrs where the seed comes from. A renewal.
There is a repetition of the '-ack' sound in ''black-out' and 'racked'.
'The water-rat snores' - is this about hibernation? Not in real life they don't. So, this is symbolism.
Apparently, a water rat is associated with the Chinese Zodiac - the Earthly Branch and the midnight hours. Also, linked to personality: smart, deep-thinker with spiritual inclinations. Perhaps.
If it is snoring, then like the writer it sleeps. The inner spirit is dormant, ready for an awakening.
'The hawthorn racked red with doubt' - symbolism of fertility. Hmm. Racks of small, round berries.
Also with protective, small thorns. Doubt about the way forward? To open up or shut down.
Is the writer wracked with physical or mental pain?
Quoting Dawnstorm
Again, the curiosity. The exciting sense of a gift or a surprise. Rubbing the eyes, half-awake but eager to go, discover, unwrap. Remove the veil...
[i]So you tug up a tough ugly stump
to wake the lynx that sleeps
just under your heart.[/i]
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes. If the writer is still dreaming, still in that uncertain place by the lake, she needs to continue.
The ugly stump of a chestnut tree - what would cause it? Disease or withering of the body requiring it to be sawn down? Now lifeless with no spirit.
To release the lynx, to progress means to remove the obstacle and any shame of not being perfect.
The lynx: also known as the 'ghost cat' is associated with secrecy; the need to keep thoughts to yourself.
But also the ability to live freely without fear of worry. They don't have predators where they hang out.
They have a camouflaged coat.
Like the 'water-rat', it sleeps. This time under the heart. Is that silent place the same as 'dumb roots'?
But now, action is being taken; the protective cover and doubt removed:
[i]To chase the sleepy lynx out of its lair.
To run wild in the mist in the night[/i]
Quoting Dawnstorm
Yes, there's probably a name for that. To run wild, I think, is her excitement at the prospect of living free without any internal or external constraints. It is a resolution. The calming of doubt.
The transition from a deadened and dispirited body to a renewed life and spirit. Freedom!!
To follow the dream...
***
Your thoughts...anyone?
Interesting. I hadn't thought of audio versions as being interpretations.
But you are right. It is why I choose readers with a good voice suited to my ears. Also, those who know and understand the meaning of the story. And what the author is trying to convey to the readers.
They can express the highs and lows, the humour and the tragedy by changing tone, rhythm and so on.
I know for a fact that I wouldn't have read the Italian poem ' Il Lampo' ( The Lightening) in the same way.
Not even in the English version:
Quoting Amity
The sound snapped me to attention like a lightning strike.
Oh, sorry. I meant the word "terse" is odd: I associate it with speech, behaviour of people. It's the first conspicuous time I noticed that nature was being personified. It's odd for a chest nut to be terse. I mean, it was right there with the sentry parade of trees, but at that point that was just imagery to me. They stand around like guards.
I should have put quotation marks around "terse", too, maybe rephrase that bit.
Ah yes, I see that now.
Still, I think it's clever. It surprises and makes us think.
'Terse' as applied to humans can be compact, and concise.
Smoothly elegant and polished. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terse
Like the brown, glossy seeds of the chestnut tree; conkers.
The tree grown to fruition compared to the now 'ugly stump' no longer fertile...perhaps dry and wizened like the writer in the autumn of her life. With questions like: "Is that all there is?"
Thanks for sharing the poem.
I've been thinking about this poem in the context of some previous posts about translation with @Dawnstorm. I think this one is a good example. The translator made some decisions that seem odd to me. My French is not good, but the translation of the first verse seems very different from my understanding. The English version seems to have a lot more going on than the French. I checked on Google translate. I think I like the English version better, but they seem really different. Obviously the translator brings much more understanding and nuance to the translation than Google and I do.
Moving "La rose dit à la tombe :"/"The Rose said to the Grave" to the end of the stanza in the English version also seems odd. It changes the tone and flow of the poem in a way I don't really like.
All in all, I think I like the English version better. Part of that is that I like the way English sounds better than I do French. I like harder, squared off edges better than the rounding over.
This all just reinforces my impression that translations are really distinct things compared to the original poem. Almost something completely new.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am unfortunately in the mood for gallous humor more often than not, so I laughed -- but it's kind of a mirthless laugh (that's still funny for all that, but dark)
While I'm no anti-natalist, I'd be surprised if there weren't people these days that haven't had these thoughts. And sometimes it's better to belt them out than ignore them, even if I know, deep down, I'd not follow through.
Quoting Dawnstorm
:D -- I feel this sentence. But I think that's OK, too. It's not so bad to be wrong, as long as we understand ourselves fallible, and are willing to change -- then it's actually not bad at all. It's just a part of being human.
(Trust me, I even looked about to figure out why I thought the 10-line form was a sonnet, and according to the internet it was an invention of my own mind ;) )
Quoting Amity
I was planning on listening to this this morning (Monday's at work tend to be slow) -- but it was blocked. I"ll have to settle for listening at home. (Maybe when I mark out time to type out that essay to share...)
Quoting Amity
I may be making a point to no one at all, at least in this discussion. And, definitely -- I'm over-generalizing. All the bad habits of someone trying to figure something out. I think I'd get along well enough with "Meaning is there, no matter the form" though. In fact I think that's what I'm getting at. The form isn't a necessity for meaning. (though I'd say it's a part, or something. Form seems to be a place where meaning can get generated)
But yes, one couldn't make a general claim from a single example. I agree with that. I'm just trying to start from somewhere.... (I'll try and type out the essay from my book to share... it's probably a lot of where this is coming from)
Sorry, while this pursuit is noble, I found them really hard to read is all. The Ukrainian war being so... now. And USians cheering on the whole affair like it's a football match... it's just hard for me to comment on stuff like that. (there's a reason I avoid the Ukraine thread)
Footnote: My friend would say to her baby daughter, who objected sometimes to being put to bed, as babies do, "They tuck you up, your mum and dad, and they mean to, yes they do."
Wendy Cope suffered in the early days of the internet (perhaps still does) from having invented meme verse before memes. Her poems went everywhere and she got nothing. She fought for copyright but I think it was a losing battle. Her book "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis" is a treasure. Her selection of "Funny Poems" is beautiful. "Two cures for love" is about romantic obsession. We can either preserve our fantasies at a distance and feel deprived or turn them into reality and feel equally or even more deprived. It is a satirical poem: the target is not the inadequacy of men or of lovers but the emptiness of fantasy. In two lines. She is great at putting loose conversational speech into strict traditional verse form - here's another one, rules mentioned again, rules of prosody:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1031860-nine-line-triolet-here-s-a-fine-mess-we-got-ourselves-into
Thanks. You've paid more attention to the poem than I did. It's made me look again and I have still more to see...
I wondered about the translator and if there were any notes to explain the choices made.
I found this translator, without explanatory notes: Florence Earle Coates
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Coates_1916)/Volume_II/The_Tomb_Said_to_the_Rose
Quoting Wikisource
***
Another version but unclear who the translator is, possibly Andrew Lang:
The Grave And The Rose
Quoting All Poetry
https://allpoetry.com/La-Tombe-Dit--La-Rose-(The-Grave-And-The-Rose)
***
More here:
https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=26009
Quoting T Clark
I enjoy both. For me, the original poem by Victor Hugo is simple and clear-cut; the dialogue easier to follow. It rolls better.
The rose challenges the tomb with a question before giving her response in stanza 2.
The tomb has the final say.
I would like to hear this poem rather than just read it. And delve below the surface...
Life's sensuality v the hard religious aspect. The tug of war...between the natural and supernatural.
La tombe dit à la rose :
- Des pleurs dont l'aube t'arrose
Que fais-tu, fleur des amours ?
La rose dit à la tombe :
- Que fais-tu de ce qui tombe
Dans ton gouffre ouvert toujours ?
La rose dit : - Tombeau sombre,
De ces pleurs je fais dans l'ombre
Un parfum d'ambre et de miel.
La tombe dit : - Fleur plaintive,
De chaque âme qui m'arrive
Je fais un ange du ciel !
Thanks for your response.
The 'pursuit' is nothing more than giving examples of other traditions and outlooks. There is nothing particularly 'noble' about it. I think it is worth looking at other contexts and circumstances other than those we find 'comfortable'.
I'm glad you attempted a read and appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I understand.
This discussion has helped in articulating how poetry makes us feel; what meaning we can find, if any.
All good :flower:
Also, this:
Quoting Cuthbert
Yes, I feel the same thing. I keep thinking something really bad is going to happen that will affect the whole world.
This feeling of dread and anxiety is perfectly natural and understandable. It's one of the reasons I have been attracted to this thread; a most welcome distraction from the overwhelming feeling that things just keep getting worse...
Not sure that anxiety is a place I want to dwell, but perhaps it is worth exploring poems with this theme:
'[i]Anxiety can affect us in different ways, so it should come as little surprise that poets have represented, expressed, and depicted anxiety and anxious states in a myriad fashions.
In the following pick of the best poems about suffering from anxiety, we find modernists using the dramatic monologue form to give voice to the outsiders fear of social interaction and political poets writing about anxiety over the future.[/i]'
https://interestingliterature.com/2021/10/best-poems-about-anxiety/
Well, why not listen to Liszt!
Liszt, La tombe et la rose, S. 285 (1844) - with score and subtitles
As well as English subtitles, there's a German translation in the score.
Calling @Dawnstorm - would you agree?
It also reminds me of your:
Quoting Dawnstorm
I'd be interested to hear how well the music, song and singer interpret the poem and the phrasing.
Any ideas?
I'm not sure with what?
Quoting Amity
I don't speak much French, but turning a poem into song lyrics... changes things. To different degrees, depending on how it works.
What I notice about the sheet music is that it doesn't only have German lyrics (my mother tongue, by the way), it has two different versions of the melody to account for extra notes. "Tom-be", two syllables, for example is accounted for by a half-note and a quarter note (with the half-note going to the stressed syllable), while the German "Grab" is accounted for by a dotted half-note. And so on.
In general, music tends to emphasise duration over pitch and volume in a melody. And then you have chord quality, which is rather interesting here. Right from the start we get Gminor --> G7 --> Am7 --> Bb --> Cm7/Bb (?) and so on. There's a lot of modulation here, before we even establish a clear key. The key signature suggests either G-minor or Bb-major. Songs about graves tend to be in minor, and sure enough, we start with a Gm chord, but then we immediately go into a major seventh chord, which is - obviously - not in the key of G-minor. Seventh chords are often used to modulate - and so I'd have expected to get a either C-major or C-minor, and for a while I thought I got C-major, until I noticed that the bass was playing an A, so what I really got was Am7 (which you could also interpret as C/A, especially after G7). And then it goes up a half-step and switches from block-chords to arpeggios... And from there, then, you'd need to figure out where the melody creates dissonance that "wants to resolve"...
That's a lot of work, just to have the bare facts of both syllable count and music. And then you'd need to analyse how this connects... And you'd need some sort of theory to do so, because this type of singing has little in common with speech. My hunch is I'd have to start with relative duration of syllables (within the song), since the most obvious difference is that when speaking the poem, you're done with a line much sooner. Beyond that I have little intuition, and part of it is that I'm not as familiar with French as I'd need to be. I don't feel confident to say much here.
To clarify: I meant the German translation of the poem.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Wow. Thank you.
You've written more than I hoped for and more than I can understand... about the key changes.
I will have to look again tomorrow. Tired now.
With your inspiration, I just read "The Wasteland" too. To paraphrase Charles Montgomery Burns - I don't know poetry, but I know what I hate, and I don't hate that. I started out using Kindle to look up references and foreign phrases, but I quit after a couple of stanzas. I figured I would just plow through without trying too hard. If I read it again I'll dig in more.
I have an association with the first stanza:
[i]April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.[/i]
This is from "Two Tramps in Mud Time" by Robert Frost, one of my favorite poems:
[i]The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.[/i]
They share a theme in a sense, but with different tones and frames of mind.
As for the poem as a whole, it doesn't seem tricky, at least on the surface. It's clear there's depth there, but I'm not sure I think it's worth the trouble to go deeper. Frost is more accessible without sacrificing complexity. That's more my style. The main story has a similar tone and outlook with Prufrock. Passive, unsatisfied people stuck in the tarpits of stifling middle class social expectations. I don't find that very attractive, but I recognize it's not supposed to be. Maybe I'll read some interpretations if I can find some that are worth it.
YouTube has some good recordings of people like Alec Guinness reading it out. For me it helped get into the rhythm of Eliot.
Thanks. I'll take a look.
:smile: :cool:
Absolutely brilliant, thanks! His voice clear, resounding, rich and unique. Exactly what I was looking for.
Much better than any Librivox reading. Why wouldn't it be? It's Sir Alec Guinness aka Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Quoting T Clark
I remember you enjoyed him as le Carré's George Smiley in 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'.
His interpretation brings the poem to life; listening to the rhythm increased my appreciation :100: :sparkle:
The Waste Land (TS Eliot) read by Alec Guinness
( includes times for each of the 5 parts)
I agree with a first reading, of anything, simply to enjoy the overall sense and experience; an intuitive guessing at the meaning of the words without worrying if you 'get it'.
It's a useful approach when learning a foreign language and poetry can be a bit like that.
A second reading allows you to pause at words; to discover and reflect on their meaning.
And I now appreciate that in poetry, listening can enhance this process of learning...what's it all about...
Back to the OP, listen out for 'That Shakespearherian rag' in The Wasteland. It's so elegant. So intelligent. Not the Bangles, but Cole Porter, for example.
Quoting Cuthbert
And for the scene in the pub. "Hurry up, please, it's time."
Eliot provided his own notes, which are not always published in full text online versions but here they are:
https://wasteland.windingway.org/endnotes
Unfortunately the notes themselves assume a knowledge of Italian, German and Latin. So for what it's worth.
Good find.
Here's something else I haven't yet had time to read:
https://poemanalysis.com/t-s-eliot/the-waste-land/
Again, thanks for all the pointers. Will definitely look later. I do love this discussion :love:
Yes, the version I have has the notes, although I haven't read them. I will. Thanks.
I intended my comment to be complimentary, even if my characterization of your post was inaccurate. I found it very helpful.
That was a pleasure to listen to -- there are parts of the poem that I couldn't quite sound out right, and Alec Guinness is great, of course :)
His choices throughout really add a depth I didn't get through a first read. I think I was mostly drifting along the level of images and the emotions which various sounds would invoke.
In particular I loved his rendition of the bar room conversation -- I could read the words and knew what it was, but Alec breathed the life into it that I was having a hard time doing. His reading really did sound like a bar room conversation!
***
Something I am wondering about, from your article and others across the interwebs, is the moral dimension of poetry being emphasized. I think I can get along with a spiritual dimension to poetry -- the experience itself seems ethereal, given to sensitivities and feelings that are often hard to describe. That's an understandable word to me, at least.
But I wonder about poetry's supposed moral educational propensities. It seems to beg the question, on its face -- those with a poetic feeling will say there's a moral to be learned from poetry, and those without it will say there's nothing there but sweet sounding words that need to be relegated to the topics of proper morals so as not to mislead people, and neither poets nor Socrates will see one another's viewpoint.
And I would say -- if poetry could teach morals, then people would be a lot better than they are, given how long it's been about. So while I understand that the feelings evoked by poetry are semi-mystical... I can't say that I'd equate it with moral.
Thanks. To be honest, I'm not sure if you're characterisation of my post was inaccurate; what I think I write isn't always what ends up on the page, even before possible interpretations of others are taken in account. If you could see me produce the posts in realtime, you'd see me type, backspace, retype, delete a paragraph, delete everything, try again, go away, come back later, and try again. I confuse myself writing my own posts, and I often write myself not into a corner but into a wide open space with no direction clearly being forward (corners are comfy, actually, by comparison.) I didn't mean to correct you so much as find my bearings.
I find the question interesting, actually. I feel like formal aspects of poems are a type of meaning, too (the main anchor of nonsense verse like the first stanza of Jabberwocky, for example). There's a back and forth, and in poetry, where the importance of those formal aspects is institutionally raised, the word meaning and sound meaning give rise to each other in a chicken-egg relationship, only more chaotic.
Also, I think of language as something meaningful along a lot of other meaningful things, and meaning is how consciousness connects to the world. We engage differently with a text if we think it's a shopping list than if we think it's a poem. (I've heard of a teacher providing a shopping list as an example of a poem, encouraging analysis. It's not something I've come up with. I wish I still had the reference, but it's just something I heard in a course a long time ago.)
Have you seen the meme - Shakespeare Quote of the Day: "An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made."
I like to nail things down before I make a foray out into the playground of philosophical discussion. I've been noticing recently that sometimes makes me rigid in my need to characterize and make distinctions and unwilling to make changes. In the case of your posts, I think I'm trying to force you to classify things the same way I do, which is not reasonable. There's not need for you to try to put your ideas in the boxes I've set out, especially given your greater experience.
Quoting Dawnstorm
Forgive a bit of self-indulgence, but here is my shopping list poem:
Sixteen Fortune Cookies
[i]You have wasted your life.
Brush your teeth three times a day.
I am not Chinese.
You are going to die.
You are a fool.
Jump. Now.
Never buy Chinese food from a restaurant where the waiters are not Chinese.
Know yourself.
You will make love to an overweight, 67-year-old civil engineer.
You will never be happy.
Drink eight glasses of water every day.
I am closer to enlightenment than you are.
Listen to your heart.
Pay me back the money you owe me.
I love you very much.
Dont eat the cookie.[/i]
I didn't manage a close listen to all of it but look forward to doing that when I have more time.
Thanks, again, to @Tom Storm for the find on YouTube.
Grateful if you could point me to the article in question and any others you found where the moral dimension is emphasised. My memory isn't as good as it was and I've posted so much on here.
Quoting Moliere
As do I. There's a lot more to poetry than meets the eye. I can't remember if we discussed the function of poetry but a quick search throws up this:
https://englishliterature.net/notes/s-t-coleridge-function-of-poetry
I'm taking some time out now to pursue other interests/projects/distractions!
However, will still follow this most intriguing discussion. Thanks for starting and maintaining it so well. :sparkle:
Last night we ended up on the couch
trying to remember
all of the friends who had died so far,
and this morning I wrote them down
in alphabetical order
on the flip side of a shopping list
you had left on the kitchen table.
So many of them had been swept away
as if by a hand from the sky,
it was good to recall them,
I was thinking
under the cold lights of a supermarket
as I guided a cart with a wobbly wheel
up and down the long strident aisles.
I was on the lookout for blueberries,
English muffins, linguini, heavy cream,
light bulbs, apples, Canadian bacon,
and whatever else was on the list,
which I managed to keep grocery side up,
until I had passed through the electric doors,
where I stopped to realize,
as I turned the list over,
that I had forgotten Terry OShea
as well as the bananas and the bread.
It was pouring by then,
spilling, as they say in Ireland,
people splashing across the lot to their cars.
And that is when I set out,
walking slowly and precisely,
a soaking-wet man
bearing bags of groceries,
walking as if in a procession honoring the dead.
I felt I owed this to Terry,
who was such a strong painter,
for almost forgetting him
and to all the others who had formed
a circle around him on the screen in my head.
I was walking more slowly now
in the presence of the compassion
the dead were extending to a comrade,
plus I was in no hurry to return
to the kitchen, where I would have to tell you
all about Terry and the bananas and the bread.
I don't know if the recent tv programme about the poem to mark its 100th anniversary is available beyond the United Kingdom. Here it's on the BBC iplayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d1yy/ts-eliot-into-the-waste-land
It focuses rather heavily on the biographical elements of the poem that have been recently (2 years ago) amplified by the publication of Eliot's letters to Emily Hale, but is still an excellent outline of possible interpretations.
Well, today I need to do a bit of shopping.
Bagels
Cream Cheese
cleaning rags
I may add more later. But what makes this not a poem, may be an interesting question too?
The curiosity being if we treated it like a poem then it'd be hard to really mark a distinction between it and poetry. They certainly look similar, even though we think of them as not.
I think there may be a fear here in that we don't want to limit poetry, too. I believe it likely that people have already published shopping lists on more than one occasion to claim it as poetry. So it may be of no interest to delimit poetry, on that basis. Just worth noting that it didn't occur to me as a reader, or to note that I'm not sure what I'm getting out of treating a shopping list like a poem or why I'd want to other than the play with the notion of poem -- which just seems a bit unsatisfying to my mind.
Quoting mcdoodle
I can feel myself slowing down before going home as I read it, from everything before.
First thought - a different poem if it ended at:
[i]until I had passed through the electric doors,
where I stopped to realize,
as I turned the list over,
that I had forgotten Terry OShea
as well as the bananas and the bread.[/i]
I'll think about it and have more to say.
[i]Sesame bagels
Cream cheese with chives and onions
Cleaning rags and soap[/i]
See, now it's a haiku.
One of the things I like about the Billy Collins poem @mcdoodle posted is its everydayness. Low key, straightforward, not trying too hard, but with depth. I am attracted to poems like that. One of my favorite poets is Carl Dennis for that very reason. Example:
As If
[i]Before dawn, while you're still sleeping,
Playing the part of a dreamer whose house is an ark
Tossed about by a flood that will never subside,
Its dove doomed to return with no twig,
Your neighbor's already up, pulling his boots on,
Playing the part of a fisherman,
Gathering gear and loading his truck
And driving to the river and wading in
As if fishing is all he's ever wanted.
Three trout by the time you get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you're first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she's first on yours.
Then you're off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun's standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn't a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.
And while you're speaking as if everyone's listening,
A mile from school, at the city hall,
The mayor is behaving as if it matters
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he's budgeted,
That the architects don't transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it's a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare.
The strollers out on the street today
Don't have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
As if they believe the country will be better off
If more people do likewise, that acting this way
May help their fellow Americans better pursue
The happiness your housemate believes she's pursuing
Sharing her house with you, that the fisherman
Wants to believe he's found in fishing.
Now while you're thinking you can make her happy
As long as she's willing to behave as if you can
The fisherman keeps so still on his log
As he munches a biscuit that the fish
Rise to the surface to share his crumbs.
And the heron stands on the sandbank silently staring
As if it's wondering what the man is thinking,
Its gray eyes glinting like tin or glass.[/i]
I tried to google "shopping list" and "poem" to maybe find some hint as to what I remember. Instead I found a whole host of shoppinglist-poems. Seems to be a popular topic.
Quoting Cuthbert
I haven't. Heh. It's perfect.
Quoting Moliere
Definite rhythm: dam-da dam-da dam-da-dam
Also: line 1 and 2 = food; line 3 =/= food.
Also very nearly an alphabetic progression of the first letters of each line. Definitely so far no line starts with a letter that comes earlier in the alphabet.
Quoting Moliere
I think what this episode shows is that what institutionalises poetry might be part of every-day language, just not emphasised in either production or exception.
Take for example Roman Jakobson's Functions of Language. Jakobson identifies 6 factors involved in language: Context, addresser, addressee, contact, code and message, and assigns functions to language according to those factors. "Meaning", as most people usually think of it, would probably fall under "reference" which is the function of context, "expression", which is the function of the addresser, and the "conative function", which is the function with respect to the addressee. The "poetic function" is concerned with the message itself (how it reads, sounds, what words are used - all the formal stuff).
If you think of the poetic function of language as a subtype of "fun with pattern recognition" (alongside seeing bunnies in clouds and such), that might even have contributed to the creation of language in the first place. Shared social grunt-play. Would make sense to me.
A scene from the anime Yuyushiki that may or may not demonstrate what I mean (depending on how much sense I make):
"An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow"
The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.
The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man
and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly - yet the dignity of his weeping
holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow.
Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us
trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.
Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit -
and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it
and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body
not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea -
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.
Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.
Les Murray
This was an excellent resource for me, so thank you. Just the sort of terms I'm looking for to think through my thoughts.
I've already assigned myself other homework, but in the spirit of continuing bad habits I'll assign myself more. ;)
But I have the desire to take some of the theories from that website and make it mesh with the question from earlier about counting phrases, but after I have your terms here down better:
Quoting Dawnstorm
Then, apply it to one of the shorter poems we have here.
(in addition I'm still working through The Wasteland in order to provide an interpretation, but I don't have enough to share as of yet -- it's all impressionistic)
Just a short note: in that post about phrases I used the term "Determiner Phrase". I'd advise you to ignore it. It's a minority theory and might be more confusing. Also, even under the DP-theory, I forgot to account for the determiner on level 2. And finally, it's important that this is only one way of looking at things.
I like immediate-constituancy-analysis, which this is supposed to be, but IC-analysis doesn't usually use determiner-phrase theory. All of this is probably beyond what people in this thread need, but... well, it's best to ignore the term "determiner phrase", as if you look up phrases you're not likely to encounter it (or at least not as used here).
This is what IC-analysis looks like: within square brackets, there's a phrase: [the [[red] [apple]]] Note that I didn't put a square bracket around "the"; it's not clear to me at the moment whether I sould have.
The next step would be naming the phrases:
NP[the NP[AP[red]NP[apple]]]
Whether you call the whole thing a NP or a DP phrase isn't all that important until you understand the theory thoroughly (which I'm not sure I do, actually), and it's probably best not to default to a minority position.
(Note that Constituency grammars order phrases differently than, say, dependency grammars.)
My mistake here can be summarised as: too much theory, too unsystematically presented.
For me, all language is play and poetry is particularly playful. Metaphors are jokes. Pronunciation, rhyming, rhythm, and alliteration are music. I liked the video.
I just remembered something I hadn't thought about in a long time. In my Boy Scout troop, we played games after our weekly meeting. One of my favorites was Gab Fest. Two people stand close and look each other in the eye. When someone says "start" they have to start talking fast without stop or pause. The first one to run out of things to say loses. The words don't have to be meaningful, but you can't just repeat the same thing over and over.
I was good at it.