Week 2: What is Poetry?
GROUP 1: Britney Burgess, Owen Edson, Ryan Kennedy
Group Discussion
Week of 9/8-9/12
9/10/97
When my group and I got together to listen to the tape, we decided that, among other things, something that is "poetry" has a rhythm, a unified idea, and a relationship with the audience. As far as classifying the works on the tape is concerned, we had the following results: We decided that the first work is poetry. It has a central metaphor, a rhythm, and the audience is lead to experience the journey along with the narrator. We decided that the second piece is prose. There does not seem to be a rhythm or a unifying image. Rather than an experience which the audience shares with the speaker, we are simply told about it. It is a narrative. We decided that the third work is in the "other" category. If anything it is a game or vocal exercise as words are played with in the mouth, not in the mind. Not only does it lack a shared experience between the audience and the speaker, it lacks an event (or story) completely. And finally, we also put the last work into the "other" category. Obviously it has rhythm, but it sounds like the same word (or sound) is repeated over and over, though this may have been a language barrier, and thus there was little communication between the audience and the speaker(s). Rather than calling it poetry, we decided it is a chant. While there is certainly room for overlap between the category poetry and that of a chant, we had to decide between the two words and the work leans more heavily towards chant.
GROUP 2: Rachel Bengtson, Jesse Bontecou, Sarah Winfield, Robert Semrau
#1: We thought it was poetry because of its form, repetition, rhythm & figurative language. The repetition was the decicive factor for us. He also made some historical allusions that were neat, but we didn't think it was the world's greatest poem.
#2: We knew it was T.S. Elliot & therefore poetry, but we might not have thought so otherwise, because of the seemingly chronological series of events. The form, however, seemed poetic & not necessarily grammatically correct.
#3: What is this incoherent babble? It failed to evoke emotion, but if it must be classified as a work of literary art, poetry is the only genre that could take it.
#4: This was obviously a Native American Drum Song. As we could not comprehend the language or the meaning of the text, we really don't know if it is poetry, or even words for that matter. Thanks!
From: Matthew Dennis Smith
Reply-To: Matthew.Dennis.Smith@directory.reed.edu
Subject: Group Meeting #1
GROUP #3: Matt, Scott, Seppi, Keet
Our Collective Definition of Poetry:
an artist who creates an emotional, verbal or written communication. This is obviously not a strict definition of poetry, as it can also be applied to prose. To diferentiate between poetry and prose, one must look to the structure, rythm and content.
1) This is definately poetry, we believe it was written by Langston Huges. There is no distinct plot or narrative, but a consistant topic.
2) Prose. there was a constant narrative with distinct direction, though the author may have made use of some metaphores,the structure of the piece long with the lack of images and symbolism.
3) It was a poem if a poem with a poem it was poem.
it repeated and it beated if it beated is was poem....
napoleon...
4) Though we cannot be certain because we do not understand the language, it seemed much like poetry. There was a intrinic rythmic poetry that preceeded the music.
GROUP 4: Veronica, Erica, Stephen and Gabriele
First we listened to the tape:
1. We've decided that this piece has poetic qualities, like similes, expansiveness, and jumps in time and place. It could work, in context, as a piece of prose, but it also works as a piece of poetry.
2. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. "Burial of the Dead." We decided this is poetry, not only because we recognized it, but because of the way it jumps from image to image without transitions.
3. Gertrude Stein? This may or may not officially be called poetry, but we decided that because of its use of repetition, sound, etc., it should be called poetry.
4. This last recording, we decided, was music, a litany, or a chant, but not precisely poetry.
After that we discussed Cervantes' poem, "Poem for the Young Man Who Asked Me. . ." We discussed what she meant by, "In my land/ people write poems about love. . .", and concluded that she was saying, "I do have hope, hope is important, but. . ." We talked about how people want to think, or pretend, "it's over now, sexism is gone, racism is gone," and yet that attitude, a hopeful attitude, often only serves to make it unsafe for people to speak out against the subtle acts of racism or sexism that still go on in academic or other settings.
GROUP 5: Darcey Maurer, Michelles, Devon
We didn't really have a formulated definition of poetry at the onset of listening to the selections, but that seemed to us an even more convincing hypothesis after hearing the tape. We all thought that all of the selections were poetry, albeit different styles. We decided that poetry is really up to the author to determine if he or she considers his or her work as a poem. The first selection we all agreed sounded the most like a poem. The second was more prose-like in parts, but ultimately we thought it was more poetic. The final selection sounded like a song, but the lyrics to a song can certainly be poetry, especially without the music. All in all we agreed that poetry is quite arbitrary, like all forms of art and expression.
GROUP 6: Meaghan Pierce-Delaney, Maya Kini, Tracy Uba, Megan Barrett
After listening to the selected works on the tapes, and analyzing the similarities and differences between the two, our discussion group concluded that the most essential element that makes a piece a poem is the fact that a message or an understanding can be conveyed that goes beyond comprehension of a language. If a work is understood at an emotional level, then it doesn't matter what form or language it is in. Poetry's dependence on rhythm and lyric were also discussed--both of these making a contribution to the emotional impact of a poem.
Another essential element to the formation of poetry is the fact that poetry is written with a specific purpose or message, with an intended audience in mind, whereas literature is written less in terms of its audience and its own particular message. Because of this, we were also able to notice that poetry is often less logistic and sequential than prose, focusing more on direct emotions and scenarios, thus enabling it to make an impact with less said. And, because of this fact, poetry is necessarily multi-leveled, whereas prose can be simply a story.
After listening several times to the spoken works we determined that the first, third, and fourth readings were poems, while the second was prose.
WHAT WERE THEY ANYWAY??