What constitutes a poem?

I think it is not poetry.

@absalom more answer please!

In spite of the creative shape, this is prose and not poetry. There is no form, meter, metaphor, unifying theme and (forgive me) not much clarity. (And never use the passive voice, please.)

It does have the feeling of being assembled by AT.

Here’s a poem about astronomy, by Walt Whitman.

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

It reminds me of the style of the obscure prophesies of Nostradamus. Poetry should mean something and these words don’t mean anything.

@gailcalled Why should s/he never use the passive voice? What if it best conveys what s/he is trying to say?

@the_state_of_wisconsin I don’t know enough about the “rules” of poetry to say whether that’s what it is or not, but it provoked some intriguing imagery. I stumbled over the two lines beginning “spacious facts” – they don’t seem to go with the rest and sound very much like something you generated by overdubbing an online translator.

With those removed, I’d respectfully disagree with @gailcalled that there’s no unifying theme. It sounds like an impressionist portrait of a dangerous man (your definition of “dangerous” may vary) and his effect on who and what he comes in contact with. The punctuation could use some more work.

@the_state_of_wisconsin, I see it as an entertaining experiment. I have done the same thing several times, just for fun—taken a passage I found or a statement I wrote and run it through the Google translator: Italian, Finnish, Mandarin, Urdu, German, Swahili, Korean, Portuguese, Arabic, and on and on, and finally back to English. It was the high-tech equivalent of the old “telephone” or “gossip” game, and the result was indeed something like poetry.

However, I’m afraid there is a bit of a gap between “something like” and “poetry.” I don’t think we’re ready to call this poetry per se, although it does have a certain je ne sais quois, and I like this line:

Death must be based on the essence of energy.

Now that you’ve played around with this some, perhaps you can mold it into a real poem.

—-

I too must respectfully disagree with @gailcalled. I am an ardent defender of the passive voice as a legitimate English construction that has its own best uses. In general the passive voice will weaken your poem, it’s true; yet at a quick skim through an anthology, I can find plentiful counterexamples, from “When I consider how my light is spent” to “With rue my heart is laden” and on up through “There shall be / In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.” Well employed, it can be an effective device. But perhaps we should consider that an advanced technique.

It doesn’t resonate with me.

It’s not poetry in the sense that it lacks form, among other things as @gailcalled mentioned.
It appears to me to be a number of disconnected statements. I don’t mean this in an offensive manner.

@gailcalled . . . Jetzt sind wir eine Poesie Faschist?

It is not poetry. It is definitely post modern language, but it is not poetry.
I you want free form poetry, try this
http://www.online-literature.com/donne/780/

@gailcalled

i don’t know if i really agree with you here…does a poem need these things to be a poem?

clarity seems the most subjective of the terms you are using…maybe i just need your definition of prose.

@flutherother what do you want this to “mean”?

i don’t think it has to be easily digestible…thats just one way for it to exist.

no offense, but i think that says more about you than it does about the piece.

@perg i am a male

@Jeruba i would consider this both an experiment, a poem, and “something like” a poem.

i think the process of coming to this (to me at least) deals with poetry, and creative writing/process as a medium.

the process is essentially reapropriation (how do you spell that?) , and addition.

basically, the process is as important as the finished piece.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir not enough info…i’d prefer critical thought/responses…

@josie and everyone else….

please define what a poem is then.

the same thing has been said against new types of “painting” or drawing…these definitions are now expanded. do you get what i mean?

i.e. for something to be a drawing, it doesn’t have to be done with a pen/ink. it could be something like walking back and forth in a field 100 times until the ground where you have traveled has been depressed.

it could also be a blank sheet of paper that someone stared at for 1000 hours.

i’m arguing that you should either expand, or disregard your definitions, and then critically analyze this piece. THAT is the type of discussion i’m interested in here.

(i guess i should have been more clear in my initial statement…)

that said, thanks to everyone for their responses thus far, but please don’t leave it at “this isn’t a poem”.

i think that is boring.

@the_state_of_wisconsin

This ‘poem’ is boring. If you receive shallow responses it is because there is little to respond to. What are we supposed to say about this? One can call it a poem or one call it something else; it will regardless comprise words that have been generated by an algorithm and arranged by an only slightly more thougtful human being.

What do you think it means? You ‘wrote’ it, after all.

If you would like me to flatter you and draw some interpretive conclusions from it, I can say any number of things. I can say it speaks to the death or dissolution of authorship across the Internet. I can say it speaks to the constructive and often reconstructive process of making meaning in a ‘postmodern world’. I can say it speaks to the pomo-babble (or Babel) that, in its cryptic quality, seems to say something without actually saying anything. I can say it speaks to a noise—signal dichotomy that characterizes the experience of the Internet. I can say it speaks to the hysterical manner by which we come to assign meaning to the mundane and the banal, a hysteria highly dependent on subjective and fallacious interpretations and, yes, translations. I can say it speaks to the arbitrary nature of language, the construction of or identification with certain semiospheres, or the means by which we are made the subjects of ideological conventions by the power of texts and, especially, the Image.

But it would just be so dishonest.

This is more than it deserves, but perhaps it could be useful:

A man crouches,
Right thumb on his face
(This fools his competitors).
This means death.

Right here you raise several questions which, if the poem is to be successful, must be answered before the end. Why does a right thumb on his face fool his competitors? Who are his competitors? Why does it mean death and whose death does it mean?

(There is a possibility of explosion or fire.)

Again, why are there these possibilities?

Meditation: he sees himself.
(However great the intensity, the reflection is lost)
Refusal of the energy may be fatal.

Here we switch away from the previous set of lines. We are introduced to yet more questions. Why is it a meditation? Whose meditation is it? The man’s or the author’s? And where is this energy from; what kind of energy is it; and why does refusing it create the possibility of a fatality, and whose fatality would it be? (Are you beginning to see the problem with your use of passive voice here? You are raising lots and lots of questions, and I am beginning to fear you will never answer them. There simply isn’t enough time in a poem as short as this.

And yet another new section

Spacious facts:

Ok. Nice little pun. Instead of saying specious you say spacious. At least, this is what I assume since so far you have thrown me in direction after direction without giving me any reason to let myself be thrown around. At this point I distrust the poet completely and feel like they are wasting my time. So it’s nice that the poet realizes these facts are specious and irrelevant (nothing is relevant any more—kind of an anti-poem) and attempts a pun because after all:

“I found an article on the surface of Mars”

Still more questions. What article? Why is it important? And what does Mars have to do with it? At this point I know I’m being jerked around. You may not realize this, but that is what you have done. The author, it seems, has no idea what he wants to say. Maybe that’s the point. To fuck readers over?

Death must be based on the essence of energy.
And is perhaps the only effective weapon
And to this,
Very few are immune.

Oh boy. Philosophy now. As suspected, no questions are answered. There is no story here. Even if there is any wisdom in these phrases, I have no urge to try to parse them out because I have just been raped, literarily speaking. However, even though two wrongs don’t make a right, I am angry now, and want to stick it to you.

Death must be based on the essence of energy.

Ok, maybe. We’re talking about death. Is that related to anything above? Not going to look. I’ve forgotten that, blessedly enough. Still, “essence of energy?” Sounds like it might mean something. But what? Still, who are you to say what death must be?

And is perhaps the only effective weapon

Weapon for what? Life? Duh!

And to this,
Very few are immune.

Double duh. No. Quintuple duh. No. The duhs here can’t be said in a lifetime. (Get it?)

You can’t fix this poem. Your message is banal and it is surrounded by irrelevant half-images that go nowhere. Honestly. Poetry is not about trying to trick the reader or throwing up a bunch of images on a wall and seeing if they stick. Speaking of throwing up…. oh never mind.

Poetry is about being clear, showing things with the clearest images you can come up with and described in the most concise way possible. You can’t make poetry from google translator. At least, not this way.

What you could do, is look at these images, and see if they speak to you in any way, and then use that as the basis for a poem. But you have to talk to us about what you care about and what is important to you, not throw experimental vomit at us. For one thing, I didn’t bring my raincoat, and for another, I really hate having vomit spewed on me.

I’m sorry. But this really, really irks me. What are you? Fifteen? Eighteen? Am I being too generous in my age guesses? I’ll say it again. Poetry is not a game and readers should be respected, not toyed with.

I can’t believe I spent so much time with this. I hope somebody somewhere learns something from this diatribe. Wow. I can’t believe how pissed I am.

@absalom such a heated response…ok here we go

please note: i mean no disrespect here.

i am not looking for flattery. i am looking for critical discussion. (that means not being overly dismissive…)

i know what i think it means, i am interested in others interpretation, and critique of both how it cam out, and its process. is that an unfair request?

please continue to be honest. i appreciate that. but you don’t need to make a stink about all the things you want to say its “not” just to over-elaboratly call it garbage.

if that is you aim, then but out!

@wundayatta “m sorry. But this really, really irks me. What are you? Fifteen? Eighteen? Am I being too generous in my age guesses? I’ll say it again. Poetry is not a game and readers should be respected, not toyed with.
I can’t believe I spent so much time with this. I hope somebody somewhere learns something from this diatribe. Wow. I can’t believe how pissed I am.”

i’m definitly older than 18, thanks.

i think its funny how mad you get. consider that critiquing the type of thing you are looking for in this is my aim.

basically what i’m saying is, if you don’t like this because its not the type of thing you like, than thats not a critique.

i.e. i don’t like mushrooms, that doesn’t make mushrooms bad.

poetry is about answers? says who!

to say that makes me surprised people don’t do this more…

p.s. to all

keep it coming! (maybe less angry though)

this is the type of discussion that i have been wanting to have.

i do appreciate the responses thus far, thanks for analyzing (even if it apparently makes you crazy angry!)

The responses are pretty interesting, especially for their vehemence. This isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison by any means, but didn’t Stravinsky piss some folks off with that little dance number he presented in 1913? And then there’s Body Worlds. The point is that one person’s icky preserved guts is another’s masterpiece.

Anyway, I didn’t find it boring, as @absalom did, nor did it make me angry as it did @wundayatta. Nor, as @wundayatta feels, do I think “poetry is about being clear, showing things with the clearest images you can come up with and described in the most concise way possible.” If that’s true, what’s haiku?

I don’t think it’s particularly good and I’m not in a position to argue with people who say it’s not strictly poetry, but it did stir up some clear images in my mind. I kind of enjoyed that.

Nothing.

Anything can be a poem and anyone can write one.

i’ve proven this numerous times on this site

@mods whooo thanks!

I’m with @wundayatta on this one. Although, I’m not angry. Just disappointed in the “modern” world. I’m tired of the constant “anything goes” attitude that drowns out authentic creativity.

What makes a poem? I’m not an expert ..I just know what a poem is when I see it. And this is not it ..sorry. I don’t know what to call what you wrote. It seems like it was randomly cut and pasted ..making no sense nor carrying any real message.

After reading your words, I felt like I’d just googled something that took me everywhere but where I wanted to be.

This is taken from a definition of what a poem is:

1. A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, metaphor, and rhyme.
2. A composition in verse rather than in prose.
3. A literary composition written with an intensity or beauty of language more characteristic of poetry than of prose.
4. A creation, object, or experience having beauty suggestive of poetry.

Citation

To focus on one issue only; Jeruba is, as always, correct. But if nothing else, look at the lack of meter in the first example and the lack of meaning as well. Who is refusing, what is the energy, and fatal to whom?

“Refusal of the energy may be fatal.”

And notice that the line below is written in two initial iambs and the tricky meter of “is laden.” That is not an accident. Note also that the stress falls on the important words…rue, heart and laden.

“With rue my heart is laden.”

A memorable and enduring piece of poetry is not just a group of pretty or sentimental ideas. It is crafted very carefully and holds up to various sorts of analyses.

The Whitman I cited (which I chose carefully) has no end rhymes but is clearly a poem. Why?

@PluckyDog thanks for the addition to the thread, though i don’t think you define something like that through a dictionary…(i.e. the dictionary’s definition of painting is hardly all inclusive.)

that said, i’d argue it fits #4…maybe #3

i guess it would be prose poetry if that helps…

@gailcalled

i see your argument here. this is good, i agree things should be crafted…
but this is hardly throwing paint.
(IMO)

so, assume then that this is crafted…
the issue then becomes that this is open to a process inclusive of things which i don’t control.

i would argue, that does not invalidate it…rather, it calls the process into question.

Poetry, like art, isn’t really something that should have a definitive definition, in my opinion. It should be fluid.

@the_state_of_wisconsin:

To define what a poem is will take more than some quick responses and reactions here. Read Paul Fussell’s definitive book, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. This is a book I keep on hand and use several times a week.

“This densely packed tome is not for the uninitiated and definitely not absorbed in just one reading. On and off, over the last 20 years, I have come back to this book to refresh my memory and, usually, to astonish myself. The book’s real strength, besides Professor Fussell’s obvious command of his subject, and his ability to convey that command, is in the sprinkling of dozens of anecdotes by and about poets about other poets and poetry. Even at this late date in my life, I can’t pretend to understand the entire book but what I do understand I admire and respect. “Poetic Meter and Poetic Form” is not recommended to anyone studying poetry; it is urgently required.

Have you considered trying to write a poem without the artificial translator? If I had to use one defining term for a good poem, it is “control.” Lack of control generates only a train wreck.

And whatever people thought about Stravinsky, he was not writing aleatory music.

@Blondesjon: Essen meine leiderhosen

@gailcalled poetry is just a medium.

people used to say the same thing about abstract expressionist, impressionist, and basically every new type of painting that came along after modernism…

it does not need to be controlled…i think thats just 1 way to write.

i could say…
“lack of control can generate beauty”

It’s a poem because you say it is. There’s nothing more to it in that sense.

But I will say that it needs some serious retooling in order to be considered a good poem by me.

@kenmc i agree with the first part of what you said…and the second to some degree.

being a poem doesn’t make it good (this is true)

it not being directly related to your taste does not make it bad either…
“good” is a subjective state, a political statement. not a fact.

@the_state_of_wisconsin: Have fun writing what pleases you. You have had a sampling of responses here. Do with them what you will.

@gailcalled pretty unhelpful…i do have fun writing what pleases me. I also enjoy eating food that pleases me!

i am quite appreciative of the responses thus far, and am anxious to hear more thoughts from flutherers.

if you would like to keep contributing, then great! if you want to not hear about this anymore, than kindly “un-follow” this thread…

(honestly,there really isn’t anything wrong with discussing this here?)

Critical analysis definitely has a place in instruction, however, it can be taken too seriously and rip the fun right out of creative processes.

Now, granted, this piece doesn’t come across as a personal expression, probably wouldn’t make it past a journal review and I don’t think the OP meant for it to do either.

I see it more as a discussion of the method of writing, and in that case, I see it as creative and valid.

it is suggestive, and evocative but doesn’t seem to lead anywhere, each line leaves you dangling.

I saw this post a while ago and I’ve been trying to figure out what bothers me so much about the “poem,” so I waited, saw responses, and agreed with the ones that said it’s not poetry. But it’s not because of what was written, it’s how it was written, that bothers me.

”-wikipedia search “ultraman”
-copy article on “spacium ray”
-feed into google.translate
-change language…(again and again)
-alter structure/some wording
-translate again and again
-decide its finished.”

Since you want critique, here’s mine: that’s a good way to kill time, but sorry, it’s not poetry; it’s just taking a text that wasn’t written by you and chopping it up until it’s practically unrecognizable. If poetry was that easy, we’d all be poets. And we’re just not.

And I can see why people would get upset. Because poetry is hard, and many (most?) serious poets will work and work a poem for months to get every word singing out the exact notes they want it to…

A poem is a piece of art, and art is supposed to be an outward expression of the inner thoughts of the artist, yeah? These aren’t your thoughts, not really. So it’s not art. So it’s not poetry.

@DancingMind i see your point here…

but what role does the process play in writing? like in painting (or visual art), the process is intrinsic to the “value” of a work or art (in my opinion…)

my argument is that the process here is important, and is what makes it art.
(this is a considered process)

i don’t agree with the “supposed to be an outward expression of thoughts and feelings” bit…
thats like saying “painting is about your feelings…blah”

i think that is the least interesting type of painting.

lastly, i get your issue with the ownership of the content, but this is “my” content. (though it may be re-appropriated)...artists (musicians would be a good example) do this all the time.

i’d consider it more like collage, you dig?

that said, this urge to define poetry seems to be difficult to overcome…

my question then turns to everyone, is it that it simply doesn’t scratch the itch that poetry traditionally does? or is it that the work is conceptually ineffective?

(i find it hard to believe that this argument is totally over the semantics of the word “poem”...that seems kind of silly ya? but then again, if it is tell me.)

@mammal i’d like to hear more about your read here, care to elaborate?

The angry reactions are really over the top. I don’t read this question as a fuck you to “serious poets” or “serious readers” of poetry.
Some people prefer a style and masterful technique that gives them a result they recognize and find relevant. They tend to buy Kincaid paintings. Nothing wrong with that.
Some find stimulation through challenging established boundaries. They might find beauty in a human turd encased in lucite.

The process of the (ok, let’s not say poem) here takes something established, changes it, generates some new mental images and maybe it feels “unfinished” but personally, I’m intrigued by some of what I read here.
I don’t agree that art has a duty to answer questions. Sometimes it’s more interesting to raise questions and leave the interpretation to the viewer/reader.

@the_state_of_wisconsin You told us how you wrote the poem and this tells us that it is not a genuine poem. What you have is a random collection of words and phrases. With a genuine poem every word and thought is considered with scrupulous care in order to convey an idea or a feeling in the poet’s mind.

Someone examining what you have written might be able to extract some meaning from the words as a fortune teller will see a pattern in tea leaves or an animal in the shape of the clouds. This is not what is meant by poetry however. The meaning in poetry may be subtle and difficult but it has to be there in the words or it is not poetry.

@flutherother again, i see your point here, but i have to disagree.
(please don’t read this as me being defensive! that seems to be happening a lot here…)

you are setting up a double standard based on difficulty. how difficult is too difficult? how “random” is too random? how subtle is too subtle?

also, i think you are negating the process as entirely random, but i see intention. maybe its unfair to say this, but i think based on the presentation you sort of have to assume intent is present. (its not like i just said, w.e comes up is fine…as i stated in the question, there were several rounds of refinement and editing.)

it seems your criteria for writing poetry then is that you start with a blank page…i don’t agree with that process. a painter may use collage, a musician may appropriate other songs, no?

that said, i’m quite interested in the viewers active creation of meaning (as a production of viewing), and in my work, (not necessarily this work), i try to explore that.

i could pull the whole “ready-made” thing into the discussion here, but to cut it short, i think that your argument is simply an advocation for modernist aesthetic/ideals.

my counter would be that modernism was getting old in the 60’s, and frankly, post-modern work was like 90’s…so i don’t think contemporary anything should necessarily be a direct reflection of either of those systems.

essentially, this is an exploration, so i guess i’d hope people have an open mind to it. but i don’t have any delusions about this works “grandeur”, but i do find it interesting.

thats why i like where this thread has gone, (minus the “angry reactions”), because it has become a question about the nature of poetry in contemporary art and life.

that is a relevant debate!

(sorry for the over-elaborate answer…suffice to say, lets keep arguing this one!)

@the_state_of_wisconsin Thanks for the reply. If you edited or arranged the material then it will be more of a poem than something Google simply translated. Poetry is poetry and has been for thousands of years. I am a bit suspicious of attempts to ‘modernise’ it or treat it like some kind of collage of words. There is a vast amount of poetry produced and most of it is pretty awful and wont last. It has to be sincere and it and it has to resonate with the reader in a deep and meaningful way to stand the test of time.

A poem begins with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and that is all that is required. You are right in that poets learn from other poets and previous writings but they assimilate this material in more profound and subtle ways than merely cutting and pasting lines or running words through the mincer of Google translate.

If you haven’t said anything in your poem that is not deeply meaningful to you you cannot expect it to be meaningful to your readers. Experiment by all means but what a reader gets out of a poem is proportionate with what the poet puts in.

hmm…ok. how bout this then?

semiotics – language is a “collage” of signifiers…one could argue that semantically, any string of words meets those criteria. (practically, i understand the difference between sentences and gibberish, but this is not an argument of practicality!)

also, i would say that i am starting with a blank canvas here. all decisions about content and form are channeled through me right?

i get that the content may be sketchy, that is something that does need addressing…i’ll say that personally i look at the final content as something that is somewhat secondary to the process of its creation…(a la eva hesse or something like that…)

there are a lot of artists who work in that way…what do you think of that though?

maybe its about separating the craft of poetry with the art of poetry…

i.e. painting landscapes/portraits on comission as craft, vs painting as contemporary art…

do you get what i mean? not that one is better than the other or anything, its just that they have different criteria.

(a crafts-man chair-maker must be concerned with stability, an artist chair-maker might not be…) does that work?

Well I think poetry is poetry is poetry but if you are having fun carry on. You might come up with something worthwhile.

@the_state_of_wisconsin: And, if nothing else, your question did generate thoughtful responses, most of which were dispassionate.

For a short time, some performance artists painted themselves with chocolate or played the cello while nude. Musicians like John Cage did interesting things, but he started within the framework of traditional Western music theory and then deviated.

The perfomance artists of the eighties are now only an historic footnote. Cage’s works will possibly last. 4’33

The prevailing view is that an artist, in any medium needs to know the historic forms before he breaks them. Picasso was able to draw a bicycle, human hands or a zebra before he chose to be innovative.

Prokofiev tossed off a charming and enduring work called The Classical Symphony just to show he knew how. He was able to switch from traditional music like “Peter and the Wolf” and “Romeo and Juliet” to exotic tonalities and dissonant. which have a very small fan club.

Edit; “dissonance.”

@gailcalled i agree with the whole“learn the rules before you break them” thing to an extent…

its not like you have to paint the figure for 4 years before you can critically deal with or analyze it in a work…i think that references an older school of thought about art-making.

i.e. to make abstract work today, i don’t think you need to be able to paint realistically…its more about understanding a concept. (isn’t it?)

i think john cage is a poignant reference here. it’d be interesting to get into him more…4’33 especially. that work, among others of his, are still questioned as pieces of “music” today, but the debate about the medium was one of the most critical aspects to his pieces…to me, at least, this stands out more than actually listening to 4’33” of silence.

that said, it sure does pay to have an understanding of the medium…i just think that certain technical aspects are really only relevant in terms of a more traditional “craft” based philosophy.

(to me, this is the core of the disagreement here…)

I am willing to consider your word collage as art, but not as poetry. Poetry is an interplay between form and meaning. There are many cases of art works that incorporate text to a lesser or greater degree, but they are not considered poetry.