The Alfred Lord Tennyson Fan Club

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by inked

RG, you whet my appetite for greater experience of Tennyson. Thank you for your descriptions.

No problem- I could go on forever. Call me Rosie.

When my sister was first learning how to drive, my mother quoted Tennyson a lot. Mostly going around corners; she would suddenly come out with "Break! Break! Break!"

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by Rosie Gamgee

When my sister was first learning how to drive, my mother quoted Tennyson a lot. Mostly going around corners; she would suddenly come out with "Break! Break! Break!"

LOL Very funny!

Originally Posted by Rosie Gamgee

Anyone read Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue (I think that's it's full title)? I love the part where T makes up a history for the headwaiter and the rooster. It's very funny.

I've read it. I don't quite understand it but the image of the Muse dipping the laurel in the wine and touching Tennyson's lips with it...it blows me away!

[inked]

Hey, Beren3000, what about #17 in the thread?

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

Hey, Beren3000, what about #17 in the thread?

Originally Posted by inked

So, the imagery of God conquering chaos or Chaos is literary and dramatic shorthand, not heresy

Now you put it that way, I see what you mean and agree with you.
Btw, why do you keep calling me Beren3000? Everyone around here calls me just Beren. Save yourself a few keystrokes

[inked]

Sure, Beren. I just figured the 3000 was significant for you. But as Fen Branklin is falsely reputed to have said, a keystroke saved is a keystroke not done.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by inked

I just figured the 3000 was significant for you.

Not really, I just put a random number because the name "Beren" was already taken.

Originally Posted by inked

But as Fen Branklin is falsely reputed to have said, a keystroke saved is a keystroke not done.

[sun-star]

How about this one...

The Poet’s Mind

I.

Vex not thou the poet’s mind
With thy shallow wit;
Vex not thou the poet’s mind,
For thou canst not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,
Flowing like a crystal river,
Bright as light, and clear as wind.

II.

Dark-brow’d sophist, come not anear;
All the place is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.
In your eye there is death,
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
Where you stand you cannot hear
From the groves within
The wild-bird’s din.
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants.
It would fall to the ground if you came in.
In the middle leaps a fountain
Like sheet lightning,
Ever brightening
With a low melodious thunder;
All day and all night it is ever drawn
From the brain of the purple mountain
Which stands in the distance yonder.
It springs on a level of bowery lawn,
And the mountain draws it from heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love;
And yet, tho’ its voice be so clear and full,
You never would hear it, your ears are so dull;
So keep where you are; you are foul with sin;
It would shrink to the earth if you came in.


Do you agree with him? Do we ruin poetry by analysing it?

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by sun-star

Do you agree with him? Do we ruin poetry by analysing it?

I do not think we ruin poetry by analysing it at all. But the thing to keep in mind is exactly what he said- "Vex not thou the poet's mind.. thou canst not fathom it.." Even we who write poetry can still not guess all that a poet has in mind when he writes. We may look at a piece and think it pure trash, but we do not know the thought behind it. If we did, we might say that the poet nailed the feeling on the head. Poetry is such a form of expression that to try to dissect it is to try to dissect a single thought of the human brain- it's impossible unless you were actually in that brain at the time of the thought- and even then you might have difficulty. A poem is like a mirror. You can stand in front of it and study it forever, but the next person to stand in front of it will invariably see something entirely different. Oh, sure, both images have noses, both have eyes and mouths, but the placement is different, the thought when veiwing it is is different, and thus the impression is different to each person.
I think his warnings not to enter the garden of the poet's mind convey well the feeling one gets when one's writing is dissected. Take Tolkien, for example, with LotR. Many people have attempted to 'figure out' his work- was it allegory? does any of it have a hidden meaning? was he attacking the society of the day? was he prediciting the future?- but what those people do not realize is that he wrote a book. It was a bit imaginative, being set in a different world and all that, but it was, pure and simple, a book. To analyse and compare and dissect is to make a living thing dead. The minute you say you have figured out all that a poem means is the minute you are furthest from what it means. And so it is well for us, the reader, to stand aside and let the poet say what he wishes, to appreciate it for the impression it leaves on us, and to not think that our impression is the only one the poet meant to give.

[Beren3000]

Originally Posted by sun-star

Do you agree with him? Do we ruin poetry by analysing it?

No, I disagree with him and for the exact reasons that RG just stated! I agree with you, RG, that it's almost impossible to figure out what the poet really means by a poem, but to me, that's the beauty of it. The deeper you dig into a poem to find its meaning the more you get, and not all of your impressions have to be the right ones, but you'll certainly enjoy the process.

[Beren3000]

Hey, RG, what about Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue? How do you interpret it? I couldn't understand it. Is it about how destructive criticism smohters artists in general (or poets in particular)? What is your interpretation?

[Rosie Gamgee]

Well, I believe that T states at the beginning of the poem (WWLM) that he was sitting in a pub as he wrote it. And the whole thing strikes me as random thoughts strung together on that theme (pub). I've not read the whole thing for sometime now- I suppose I'll find a copy and then give a more detailed report.

[inked]

If we cannot figure out what a poet meant by a poem, why bother reading it?

[Rosie Gamgee]

It's not nessicarily about figuring out what the poet meant. Sometimes that is obvious, other times it isn't. It is good to try and figure out what a poem means, but if you think too highly of your own interpretation, you are practically plagerizing the poem (ooo, that would make a good tongue-twister- if only I could spell 'plagerize'). Not to say that you can't have an opinion- everyone's entitled to one of those. But- especially if the poet is unavailable for comment- I think that keeping an open mind about the original intent of the work is a healthy thing.

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by inked

If we cannot figure out what a poet meant by a poem, why bother reading it?

Because to travel hopefully is better than to arrive You can have more fun speculating and guessing and trying to prove your contention, turning every bit of the poem inside out to work out what it might mean, than you can have by seeing instantly what the poem is 'meant' to be about. One of my favourite poets wrote in almost unintelligibly complex language, but there is a meaning there, and the fact that you have to examine every word makes you appreciate his artistry (and his meaning when you get to it) a lot more.

That said, I can't make head nor tale of Will Waterproof. I don't think it was meant to be taken that seriously, as Rosie said...

[inked]

I disavow completely the non sequiter that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. In fact, there is no better statement of bovine feces by another name in the English language save that which attributes such drivel to male members of the species! If your own experience has not yet taught you this, take an international flight of 19 hours or so and then evaluate it.

If we cannot discern a poet's meaning, there is not reason to invest the most precious commodity we have on the process. This view of poetry is untenable. The mere mellifluity and harmony of sound is known as music. The words are intended to convey meaning. If they do not, or if all they convey is the receptive interpretation of the reader with no basis in objective experience between the poet and reader, bash cymbals and clang gongs. It will mean as much.

Did RG's poem communicate about the nature of words under the emblem of cutlery or not?

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by inked

If we cannot discern a poet's meaning, there is not reason to invest the most precious commodity we have on the process. This view of poetry is untenable. The mere mellifluity and harmony of sound is known as music. The words are intended to convey meaning. If they do not, or if all they convey is the receptive interpretation of the reader with no basis in objective experience between the poet and reader, bash cymbals and clang gongs. It will mean as much.

That's irrelevant. Your question was "if we can't figure out what a poet means, why bother reading the poem?" You began by talking about authorial intention, and now you're talking about finding meaning of any kind. My reply was to your first point - that it's nearly impossible to discern exactly what a poet 'meant' by a poem. Sometimes poets don't 'mean' anything by a poem, but that doesn't suggest that the poem has no meaning. Poetry is not glass through which the poet's intention is completely clear - the best poetry is that which doesn't just tell you its meaning upfront, but uses language to elaborate on and consider different aspects of meaning. Can you read Shakespeare's mind? There are places in Shakespeare (and even more so in older writers) where the meaning is almost entirely obscure to us, but this tells us nothing about whether the meaning is worth finding. The clarity of 'meaning' does not determine literary value.

But if you don't find the process of analysing poetry enjoyable, I can see how this would be a foreign concept to you.

Did RG's poem communicate about the nature of words under the emblem of cutlery or not?

What?

[inked]

Sun-star,

Clearly we share a joint understanding of the concept of bovine feces which is delineated by series of letters in sequence to which meaning is attributed. That joint conceptualization allows us to communicate. It may be that our particular "accidents" of association differ when the term is used but the "substance" is understood between us. I for instance have a childhood farm memory of barefooting it through the feces blissfully unaware that it was poop UNTIL the odour and ordure became unbearable. Your experience may be similar or not. But it is NOT the lens of personal adumbration of the concept that allows us to communicate, it is the concept. And my contention is that the author of a poem intends to convey an experience which is delineable and discoverable by the reader. It may be true that the nuances of the concept conveyed is coloured by the individual's personal adumbration of the concept, BUT THE POET CAN CONVEY THE CONCEPT (the meaning) and the reader grasp it. This is an intellectual feat. Once that concept has been communicated it is true that there may nuances which escape us due in part to personal adumbrations of the concept, but if the poet is effective in communication, we may add his adumbrations to ours and enlarge the concept.

I find the process of analyzing poetry very useful and enjoyable BUT that is because there is discernable communication and meaning.

Now, "Did RG's poem communicate about the nature of words under the emblem of cutlery or not?"

[sun-star]

Originally Posted by inked

Now, "Did RG's poem communicate about the nature of words under the emblem of cutlery or not?"

Let me take this quote to illustrate my point. Now, I have no idea what you're saying here. The words make sense to me individually, but you're obviously referring to something which I don't have the requisite information to understand. If we follow your line of reasoning, there is no point in me trying to understand this question, because it's not possible for me to work out what the writer (you) 'means' by it. However, this does not suggest that it doesn't mean anything, because clearly you understood it when you wrote it (and perhaps Rosie understands it). Should I say "it is not possible for me to discern what this writer is saying; clearly he is a bad writer, since he has failed to communicate; therefore I will give up trying"? That seems to me a short-sighted and limited way of looking at communication - and at poetry in particular.

So, because I choose not to give up, despite your failure to 'convey the concept' in a way the reader can grasp, I assume you're talking about something RG posted in another thread. I don't know this for sure, and if you were dead (like Tennyson) I couldn't ask you. Your meaning is almost entirely obscure, and it is not possible for me ever to say definitively what that meaning is. That does not suggest that what you said has no meaning or value.

[inked]

Sun-star,

I beg your pardon for not realizing that Rosie's poem was elsewhere on the site. It is at:http://www.entmoot.com/showthread.ph...2&page=3&pp=20 and the post number is 55, IIRC. That shall perhaps make sense of what I wrote earlier since you will have the reference.

[Rosie Gamgee]

Originally Posted by inked

Sun-star,

Clearly we share a joint understanding of the concept of bovine feces which is delineated by series of letters in sequence to which meaning is attributed. That joint conceptualization allows us to communicate. It may be that our particular "accidents" of association differ when the term is used but the "substance" is understood between us. I for instance have a childhood farm memory...

Wow, now that's a post. Talk about having to discern meaning!

Well, I went back and read WWLM. It seems to me that the first part deals almost exclusively with the exultation of liquor and its effects on the brain. The second part, concocted, it would seem, largely under the influence of said drink, is a fantastical monolouge concerning the origins of the headwaiter. The last part seems to me to be a series of thoughts on the lamentable state of the hangover. The final stanza is a blessing on the headwaiter, made in gratitude for the hour of happiness and inspiration his beverage effected upon the poet. The poem seems then, in short, to be a series of thoughts had while sitting in a public house put down in verse and rhyme for the purpose of killing a few spare moments that would have otherwise been spent in boredom.