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Post by Cela on Feb 26, 2009 22:50:52 GMT -5
Awww Skeet Skeet Muthaf***a
Thats technically poetry, so if it can be, then anything can.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2009 3:09:13 GMT -5
I'm an English major and I have studied poetry extensively for the past, I'd say, eight years. Personally, I feel that there are limits to what can be considered poetry. Those limits can be challenged and, in time, can expand but, IMO, it can only occur through the innovation of a particular poet that is then reinforced, either through imitation or challenge, by other poets.
I believe in the literary canon and I feel that quality poetry engages in a dialogue with other poetry, be it poetry that precedes it or poetry that comes after it. Walt Whitman's poetry gains importance not only due to the influence exerted upon it by texts like the King James Bible but also the influence it has on people like D.H. Lawrence and Pablo Neruda; I consider Whitman's poetry to be poetry not only for the merits it possesses but the inspiration it holds for other poets.
As for form... I feel its subjective. Poetry has such an incredible diversity to it, be it a Keatsian ode, a Langston Hughes jazz riff, a Gertrude Stein exercise in repetition, a Robert Browning dramatic monologue, Emily Dickinson's take on the ballad, or a Petrarchan sonnet. Free verse, terza rima, the In Memoriam quatrain, sestina... is the form more "poetic" than the subject? I'm not sure, though I'm not a Formalist, so I don't think I'm as enamored with forms as some others.
Too subjective, IMO. There are things, like the one word poems, that I wouldn't consider poetry, but I'm not everyone.
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Post by Ultimo Chocula on Feb 27, 2009 3:14:41 GMT -5
According to the stuff my ex wrote, no.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2009 3:27:19 GMT -5
Terry Eagleton has an essay on Literature where he claims that there isn't an inherent quality that a text can possess that makes it Literature, believing that the relationships the text has with readers determines its status as Literature. I'm not sure if I believe all that he writes, especially considering his Marxist leanings, but, its a stance that many may find attractive.
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Post by tap on Feb 27, 2009 17:34:34 GMT -5
TO make a silly example: If I decide I want to play basketball with 4 players per team instead of 5, with a smaller ball and a bigger basket, and the game will now be of 2 halves of 30 minutes, continuous, and with no foul limits and no shooting clock... would it still be Basketball? Basket + ball= basketball. It depends if you define basketball by its form or its content. If by content, then either you define it by intent, action, or result. The same can be said about poetry. Is it poetic because it was intended to be as such? Is it poetic through the actual writing process, the *doing* of poetry? Or does it stem from a completed result, the poem in the final form? Even then, this is dependent on a strict definition of content. Moreover, if you define form *as* content, then, yes, the structure, rhyme, metre, language, literary devices, etc., determine what qualifies as poetry.
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