Thanks to alpha0 for the article that helped inspire this post.
humanodon, your interview will be up next, maybe a week or two.
Shout-out to thenewgreen and lil for their unintentional help with writing this article as well. Also, guys, I finally put something up with a personal tag so you can follow it, should you wish.
I think that finding and defining the threshold is a tricky thing and that's why whenever one generation thinks it has it nailed down, there is always another group coming up or coming alongside to say 'nope! it's here!' I suppose a question from the other side could be, "when does poetry stop being poetic?" because it's so fundamental and so "duh". I guess people forget poems long before that could happen though.
To put it another way, when is a poem so cliched, due to the passage of time or prevailing taste that it no longer really works as a poem for the people in existence? For example, I once read a translation of a Sumerian or Egyptian poem fragment found on a piece of a tablet or something that went: You make me happy even without beer. Obviously it's a love poem, but since so much time has come between us and the writer as to the significance and contexts of a romantic "you" and the experience and understanding of what "beer" is, the poem could be seen as simply a statement and not a poem at all. Of course, that is not a great example, since it deals with only a fragment of a poem and even then, written in a writing system and language for which I have no context, but only an at best, second-hand interpretation, but do you see what I'm getting at?
I think so. As times and cultures change, what we value changes. So, a poem that could be about a very meaningful topic (let's say beer) in one culture could have much less meaning for a culture that came much later afterwards when beer was a common commodity. I think it comes down at least partially to taste though. For instance I'm not fond of the aggressive meter and rhyme in this poem Gather Ye Rosebuds but I acknowledge that it's good writing and for the time was probably pretty great. Or what about these poems by Porchia - they're basically aphorisms, one line each. What makes them poems and not statements? (Besides the opinion of the old white guys running Poetry Magazine, of course.) Is it a poem because the artist defines it as a poem? That ties back into what thenewgreen was saying about blank pieces of paper and intention, I think. I don't know if it is possible for something to lose a state of existence that it used to have. Certainly not if you are looking at it from an anthropological perspective (she says, having never taken an Anthro class). (And again, we're talking about art here, not like radioactive isotopes with half-lives and decay, etc.) Cave paintings are still art, right, even if they're not exactly in vogue anymore? When there is no more paint on that cave wall, then it ceases to become a painting...but until then that's what it is, regardless of quality, prevailing taste, etc. I would like to draw a parallel and say that I imagine writing and poetry is similar. But if you disagree I would love to hear your side.
Right, but what I'm saying is not "when is a poem no longer a poem?" but "when is a poem no longer recognized as a poem at first glance by contemporary eyes?" No, this is exactly what I'm talking about: potency and decay in relation to art. In this case, I don't think that painting works to talk about poetry, because cave paintings are tangible first and evoke the intangible. Poems on the other hand, are both tangible and intangible. The physical page does not need to exist in order for the poem to exist, though if people are unaware of its existence then it may as well not exist, though in some sense it still does, as long as someone holds it in their mind. This cannot be said of paintings. Furthermore, while it's possible for the interpretation of the significance of artistic techniques used in painting of respective movements and eras to be lost or misunderstood, that doesn't matter as much, as at the very least, the painting can succeed on a visual level. The same cannot be said of all poems. Yes, one can look at a painting and recognize it as an object created with representational intent, but can the same thing be said of poems? I don't think so. If we look at the history of language, for a long time it was simple language for accounting for stuff, until one day it began to become more expressive. Somewhere in that time period are the first written poems. But would we recognize them as such? I think it's quite possible that we would not. Of course, this does not mean that such an object could not become a poem again in contemporary eyes. Either way, the potency of a poem and therefore it's potential and possible impact on a given population are inherently tied to whatever period or era the poem is read in. The potency of a poem cannot remain constant, because people are variable in taste, knowledge and awareness and the million other things that make us human.(And again, we're talking about art here, not like radioactive isotopes with half-lives and decay, etc.)
I really like your idea regarding the tangible/intangible focal point of certain art forms. Never really thought of it that way before. On the other hand, I gotta disagree with your main point, however nuanced, in regards to the inherent potency of a dated work of art. Might come down to a fundamental disagreement about what art is. Not sure. But I'm of the impression that it's not so easy to conflate cultural norms/public opinion with the impact of a work. It'd be really easy to apply cultural relativism to art, say something along the lines of "this is beautiful to you at this time and that's fine, but it's not beautiful to me and thus not inherently beautiful, only culturally so." But that's kind of a cop out, isn't it? Each culture in each era uses its own language, in both a linguistic and cultural sense, to describe the world it interacts with. Just because I refuse to learn that culture's language doesn't sap the inherent beauty from its native art. At some point, that Sumerian or whatever love poem struck at a fundamental aspect of love/happiness/material wealth that might just be inherent to the human condition and the way we classify the world, no matter what era we live in. So the onus falls on us to learn the language and parse the inherent beauty from an artwork, it doesn't fall on the artwork to make eternally apparent the beauty behind that first generative idea. Or maybe that poem was a joke, or doggerel or something. "You make me happy even without beer" still sounds pretty close to the mark. Is there anything to suggest it was an important work, or is it just momentous because it's really old and still legible?
The fact that it was put on a tablet at a time when only important things were put on tablets, indicates that it was not a joke. As to its quality, I have no idea. As for the other part, the problem I see is that if you imply that certain objects have inherent beauty, then why wouldn't all objects have inherent beauty? If all objects are beautiful, then what is art and what isn't art? Is everything art? Is nothing art? If all art is inherently beautiful, is all art equally potent? If the viewer is unable to perceive the inherent beauty, should the artist try something new or simply try again? Should the viewer try again? Should the viewer have to try at all? Anyway, I don't think 'beauty' is requisite of art, which is why I used the term potency. Furthermore, art objects don't "do" anything without the viewer and so cannot be said to make "apparent the beauty behind that first generative idea" since it cannot be known what that generative idea was; instead, meaning must be inferred (unless the artist explicitly states intention to set the piece up or something). Potency must be relative, since it can't be absolute. Also, art is culture and culture is more than language and since language is imperfect as is understanding, already we can see that there is decay in the potency of ideas, even in attempting to communicate them. And no, I don't think it's a cop out. Sure, we might be able to feel the potency of a work of art from another time, for any number of reasons but language poses a problem. Allow me a quick illustration. Let's take a color word, for example: blue. Already, you as an English speaker are aware that this word has more than one meaning and that it evokes things on the level of cultural experience as well as social memes. Blue can mean a wide range of colors, evoking the navy, royalty, midnight, the sky, eyes, water, blueberries, bruises. These evocations exist in two places as well. We have the visual or physical recall of these things which are colored blue, but also in our language they are described as blue or often used in conjunction with blue: navy blue, royal blue, blue-blood(ed), midnight blue, sky blue, blue sky, blue eyes, clear blue water, blueberries, black and blue. It can also mean "sad" or "down" or "sexually frustrated". In English, it just so happens that "blue" is a homophone of "blew" which has a variety of meanings as well. Every language has these kinds of connections that are unique and which shape a speaker's ideas of the world. Nothing colors your experience like your mother tongue does. Learning another language to the same degree of intimacy as one's mother tongue is incredibly difficult and of course, does not shape experience in the same way that the mother tongue does, as our understanding of it grows as we grow physically and mentally in a way that feels "natural" to us, even though there is very little about it that is natural at all. And why should there be? Language is technology. So, that poem. In English it is rendered "You make me happy even without beer." In Sumerian? Who knows? What we do know is that 'beer' in the Sumerian sense is not beer in the contemporary American sense. Beer was a necessity, a supplement to the diet in the form of safe calories and a way of safely ingesting water as well as a way of unwinding. The "you" is even less certain. We do not know the sex of the person being referred to, or if it is a person at all. For all we know, "you" could be the translation of any number of possible pronouns, each with their own, specific meanings. So the inherent beauty is what? A comparison? Are comparisons inherently beautiful? I suppose some may be, but certainly not all. To contemporary eyes, this poem would be an insult, or a joke. In the past? It could have been an incredible feat of finely nuanced poetry, but personally I have no way of knowing or more importantly, experiencing it. If I had read that poem without any context, I don't think that I would have recognized it as such, if I were able to read it at all.Or maybe that poem was a joke, or doggerel or something. "You make me happy even without beer" still sounds pretty close to the mark. Is there anything to suggest it was an important work, or is it just momentous because it's really old and still legible?
Holy fucking shit. I just wrote 30 min worth of response to this and then lost it when I changed tabs to make sure I had the spelling of "hwaet" down. I am the shell of a man right now. To whit: language is imperfect, and not the best way of getting at beauty, but it's still effective and we can still use current cultural tools to interpret past tools and in turn re-draw the beauty behind past works. I don't, however, ultimately believe that art requires an audience to be art, it simply requires a creator. those paintings in the caves in France, they were just as beautiful when they were buried behind slag as they are now. And no, we can't always divine artistic intent, but the most effective art exhibits its fundamental attributes independently of authorial intent. Has a life of its own. On that note, yes, I do believe that everything is inherently beautiful, and that all art gets at that, although not all art gets at it effectively. But that potency relies less on our current understanding of a work and more on the craftsman's ability to convey beauty DESPITE cultural rifts, not BECAUSE of them. That's why there are still works from many disparate cultures that we still agree upon as "beautiful" today, even if the cultural division is vast. For that matter, Homer got through all of The Odyssey without using the descriptor "blue". Still a great work despite his inability to draw upon a relatively new word to describe a concept that wasn't yet in his cultural/physical lexicon. Goddamn, the first response really was more elegant than that, but this'll have to do, since I have to leave for work. Art it ain't.
Ouch, I know that experience. "Hwaet" huh? Were you going to Beowulf me? Canterbury Tales? I do. The artist is the first witness, after all. In regard to language, I don't think that all art can be conveyed in terms of language, which is why my initial post was about poetry. I disagree to an extent, especially in conjunction with this: This is like saying, "if I kiss a woman and you kiss the same woman, we know how she kisses" instead of "if I kiss a woman and you kiss the same woman, I know how she and I kiss and you know how you and she kiss." The first one (due to limitations of language) implies that if either of us kisses her, the kiss is the same. In the second one, clearly it allows for differences in experience, as there are different agents involved. Of course. And life has cycles. It also flourishes under some circumstances and not under others. It does not proliferate in the same way regardless of environmental conditions. Cheap shot. You're better than that. Homer is a good example though. First, there is doubt that he existed. Second, The Odyssey was, (at best guess) composed orally and spread orally and so is fundamentally different from the poetry today, which exists on the page, in the ear and in the mind. The fact that The Odyssey was part of an oral tradition and existed in its amorphous form until someone wrote it down makes suggests that its potency was sustained by people's continued interest in it, which likely meant that the orator would do things to sustain interest. Furthermore, by the time it did get written down, who is to say that Homer was indeed the author? Weren't all the people performing The Odyssey, also the authors? I'd argue that much of what is considered beautiful, in considered so because of what the viewer brings to the piece upon viewing, as much as the creator does by creating the piece. Some potency is imparted by the creator, the rest by the viewers. But art does not "do". Art evokes and through evocation, changes a small part of the viewer's reality. To what extent, cannot be known, measured or compared in any real way. However, if a piece affects a number of people, then yes, I think it can rightly be called "potent". If no one is viewing it as an access point to "beauty", then I don't think it's potent. If no one is looking at it, then what does the creator's skill matter? It's not as if ability is the only factor in popularizing a work, or making it accessible.I don't, however, ultimately believe that art requires an audience to be art
That's why there are still works from many disparate cultures that we still agree upon as "beautiful" today, even if the cultural division is vast
we can still use current cultural tools to interpret past tools and in turn re-draw the beauty behind past works.
And no, we can't always divine artistic intent, but the most effective art exhibits its fundamental attributes independently of authorial intent. Has a life of its own.
For that matter, Homer got through all of The Odyssey without using the descriptor "blue"
I'll grant that all art, insofar as it needs a creator, needs at least an audience of one. But: We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this note. The reason that the old tree/forest/sound adage sticks around is that it's not so easily answered. You think the tree doesn't make a sound, I think it does. Not sure how to reconcile that. However: even if I granted you that an artwork needs an audience to be considered art (Was Emily Dickinson's poetry art before it came out of her drawer, by the way? Is it any less impressive for using such delineated and now-overused meter?), it doesn't at all necessarily follow that the audience's regard or understanding is what dictates potency. In fact, there's plenty of art whose value is hotly contested- painting of the Madonna made out of elephant shit comes to mind, as does Warhol's soup can, as does anything Norman Rockwell ever made. People can't agree on the value or power of these pieces, but they'll argue to the ends of the earth about them. In this case, isn't the fact that a work evokes any kind of strong, sustained response at all a testament to its power? And if an audience can't exactly pinpoint the source of a piece's power, but recognizes that it's there- what does that mean for your assertion that we have to understand a work completely (i.e. in the mother language) before it's truly powerful? Which gets to your kissing analogy. I agree- we can't, after kissing the same girl, assert that we had the same kiss. But in kissing her, and in having that conversation, we're still agreeing on a fair number of premises- what a kiss is, what, generally, the emotional context of a kiss might be, why we'd be talking about it in the first place. If it seems like now I'm just building semantic sandcastles, consider: the Old Testament, right? Incredible work of art, if nothing else. And that "if nothing else" is the point- people have been arguing about the specifics of the Old Testament since, what, its conception? What each verse means, how it ought to be applied, who wrote which line, how many times has it been revised and in how many languages. Whether it's true or imagined or what have you. But despite all the authors and all the revisions and all the translations- despite not being able to agree on whether or not we had the same kiss- the CORE of the Old Testament remains intact- a conversation about spirituality, ethics, politics, a struggle to find higher meaning. These basic values are what help make the Old Testament so powerful, alongside all of the linguistic tricks. Despite the linguistic tricks. Good art is potent on a much more fundamental level than you're asserting for the sake of this argument. We don't have to have exactly the same kiss. We just need to go out and kiss, and then talk about how great, or how unsatisfying, kissing might be. And lastly, regarding The Odyssey- I agree! Homer is a good example. But it wasn't a cheap shot. In fact, it was a great example exactly because of the way The Odyssey came about. The Odyssey isn't just a great work because of its driving concepts and their continued validity in modern times. The Odyssey is also a great piece of craftwork. It anticipates, pre-empts cultural change, so that the further it gets kicked forward, the more its shape adapts to modern convention. It's survived millennia, countless re-tellings and adaptations. It's jumped across media, and still, people appreciate it. That mutability is written into its form, just as important and impressive as the messages it conveys. How does this apply to your argument? Well, I'd say that when you insist on either perfect cultural translation or else inevitable decay in potency, you're taking an incredibly narrow view of what makes an artwork, any artwork, painted or spoken or sung, "potent." It's not just the words. It's not even necessarily a clearly-delineated perfect idea at the core of the words (although that, I'd argue, is a lot of what makes a lot of art great). It can be as simple as the format that those words are put into. An oral tradition that allows the edges of a piece to soften with time and in so doing adapt perfectly to future cultures. Does it matter that we have every word down perfectly? No. It's enough that the form survives intact and vibrant as ever. So no, I just can't agree that the audience is what gives a work of art its power, and that true appreciation requires perfect cultural translation, and that as soon as an audience deems a work trite or simple, then the work's power is gone. Much more likely that the audience is just too lazy or too assured in their cultural supremacy to look deeply enough into the work.If no one is viewing it as an access point to "beauty", then I don't think it's potent. If no one is looking at it, then what does the creator's skill matter? It's not as if ability is the only factor in popularizing a work, or making it accessible.
No no, I'm not talking koans. I'm saying, "what does it matter if it makes a sound, if no one is around to hear it?" Also, at this point, it's well understood that we're agreeing to disagree since in my understanding, this is how the conversation started. No, I never asserted that full understanding was necessary. In fact, I argue that it's not possible. At all. I really think that the spark of your argument is that you don't understand what I'm talking about. For example, the way this conversation has bloomed into an umbrella of all art when I was talking about poetry. Poetry is an art made of fine strokes, subtleties and nuance. Otherwise, it's just language and language on its own isn't poetry. Interesting that you bring up the Old Testament. Hebrew was not a spoken language until very recently. Instead, it was a temple language. One of the chief ways in which it differs from English, is that English is full of static verbs, for example: "is", which implies no end to existence and no change. Hebrew does not use this system. Instead, it makes heavy use of progressive tenses. Things are always "becoming" in Hebrew. So yeah, the precise words and precise order definitely make a huge difference, especially if one is to translate a language whose very letters have individual meanings. Yes, the core is important, but I don't believe that the core is the most important thing, but rather the core as presented by the execution. If this were not so, then why is Romeo and Juliet considered great? Hang on, let me re-write it to illustrate: "There's this dude that likes this chick, but she's like, 14? And like, their families have been bitching like, forever? And, um, y'know it's like, about time that Romeo started fucking some babies into some bitch because like, the times demanded it of him? But he totally loves Juliet, because that one time they met? Was the fuckin' bomb. But then there was trickery and shit and crossed stars and then they fuckin died. Ro. Man. Tic. As. Fuck." Uh, so the core is the same but let's be honest: that execution sucked balls and in fact, it will likely prevent some from getting the full-impact of the story it describes, which is nuanced, which is particular and which is undeniably Shakespeare. To me, translations are at their very best, very good descriptions. I mean, forgive my dramatization, as it is beyond the realm of worst case scenario, but not out of the realm of possibility. To put it another way, "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" can of course be translated as a version of, "what is that light coming through that window over there?" but it lacks the quality that makes it Shakespeare. I would consider that to be less potent. Not to mention, the sounds would be completely different and I think that those particular sounds have their particular drama. I didn't mean that The Odyssey was a cheap shot, I meant the crack about "not using blue". And to me, The Odyssey is worthy of respect and admiration, but I don't find it beautiful. Certainly, it has its power but am I sure that I understand its power as well as I can? No. For you to demand that I should find it beautiful, is ludicrous. Again, I don't believe that we have been speaking about beauty in the same way, which I am fine with, but am curious about. Of course beauty is in the blah blah of the blah blah, but even so, I don't think it's the same for everyone. I do not mean to imply that people have greater or lesser capacities for understanding or experiencing beauty, but I do mean to say that what constitutes the beautiful can be fundamentally different to the point of mutual unintelligibility as seems to be the case here. Then again, you seem to be talking about all art, whereas I was talking of poetry and to a limited extent, painting. As for your closing, it seems like you are saying that pearls before swine are still pearls and what I am saying is that pearls before swine makes no difference to the swine. While you disagree with me, I don't necessarily disagree with the thrust of what you are saying, but it doesn't ring true for me and obviously, my perspective doesn't ring true for you. I don't know for certain whether or not what you've espoused in this thread have solidified into belief for you, or are ideas that you would like to have challenged and are willing to change. As for my perspectives in this thread, they are my ideas as they are today. I welcome the inevitable change that will come to my conception of what poetry and art are and it may be that I will someday feel as you do, but at the time of writing I do not. I'm glad to get a look inside someone else's mind though and I do genuinely appreciate the conversation.We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this note. The reason that the old tree/forest/sound adage sticks around is that it's not so easily answered. You think the tree doesn't make a sound, I think it does. Not sure how to reconcile that.
And if an audience can't exactly pinpoint the source of a piece's power, but recognizes that it's there- what does that mean for your assertion that we have to understand a work completely (i.e. in the mother language) before it's truly powerful?
And lastly, regarding The Odyssey- I agree! Homer is a good example. But it wasn't a cheap shot.
When is music, music? Does it take sound? As Olive Watson so poignantly said in our video-cast on "silence", "we privilege the sound and we forget to take the rests." Poetry has to be similar, right? Can't there be a blank page and it be a poem? It's all in the intention. If the poetry is the silence, then that blank poem is evoking... something.
(Beethoven mainly composed on paper.) I think these distinctions boils down to the induced patterns of consciousness in author/readers. Formal boundaries of the expression are clearly very fuzzy and can even cross disciplines. [1] - [1] For example, I can see at least a few people getting a musical high from reviewing a source code for a distributed 'improving value' process.
Larry Levis, in "Linnets," writes:
And edit: thenewgreen now what I am having fun pondering is, if you did have a blank-page poem, what would you title it? The title would, in a way, direct the silence. Also, I'm thinking from a submission sort of angle: Duchamp named his Fountain; a blank page named "Page" would be a different poem than a blank page titled "Relationships." (A heavy-handed title but I am just attempting to exemplify.) 12.
This is a good page.
It is blank,
and getting blanker.
My mother and father
are falling asleep over it.
My brother is finishing a cigarette;
he looks at the blank moon.
My sisters walk gravely in circles.
My wife sees through it, through blankness.
My friends stop laughing, they listen
to the wind in a room in Fresno, to the wind
of this page, which is theirs,
which is blank.