Wriging

When you think of Dada (e.g. Schwitters and his Merz) you would say it's nothing but white noise. Yet I think even the most incomprehensible avant garde poetry says something about the age and place it was created.

So, perhaps poetry IS code, and poetic eras could be compared to, say, different programming languages, each developing out of their own needs, backgrounds and goals.

So yes, the meaning is coded and sometimes you can not only read a poem in different ways (Green Velvet Suit springs to mind here - great possibilities for punctuation!), but also from different historical perspectives. Betjeman's apparently simple Slough, for instance, reads a whole lot differently this day and age than it did back then.

Hm, sorry for the 'essay'; just stirring along here, you see ;-)

Cool response, Napfisk. Some poetry makes little sense to me if I try to understand it, but if I read it aloud, the rhythm and tones give something more. So, like music, the meaning is more than just the words.

A good poet will know the layers of meaning of any word, and will (hopefully) intend several in any good line. Rain as a metaphor for cleansing or change, for example.

Then there's John Ashbery:

we were warned about spiders, and the
occasional famine.
We drove downtown to see our
neighbors. None of them were home.
We nestled in yards the municipality had created,
reminisced about other, different places--
but were they? Hadn't we know it all
before?

A draft from an uncomplete poem. Despite not making much sense, a mood is clearly evident: impending doom, lonliness, deja vu. Not very good, to say the least.

Thanks for that heads-up on Ashbery. I'd never heard of him but I like what I found so far.

The unfinished bit made me think of the Depression somehow (don't ask me why – that's how poetic imagery works). The Dust Bowl that occured there, small towns, tracts and a general sense of misery. I was surprised to see his poetry is more recent than that.

Then again, he was born in 1927, so he must have picked up this feel for gloominess in his earliest childhood perhaps.

Btw, I think it would be interesting not to look at poetic eras in their own historical context, but to see whether the artists associated with a certain literary current have some common ground in their early years. It's prolly been done, of course, but I'd be excited to see the results.

There are a number of poets in the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry movement, which was at its height in the 1970s, who might consider poetry code. Certainly, they worked against the perceived rules of language at times and much of that poetry reads, to me at least, as mathematically precise. Free verse, too - for some unfathomable reason often referenced in French by English speakers, as vers libre - doesn't always follow grammatical constructs but in its freedom shows there's no apparent code, only flow of concepts and ideas.

Personally, I don't believe poetry is code any more or less than language is code, both verbal and non-verbal. Waxing philosophical and spiritual, the entirety of the universe is code. If scientifically and/or secular-minded, we can see the rules of physics and other disciplines as revealing a mathematical structure to everything; if spiritual, we can see the hand of a designer or designers plural in everything, which again implies a recipe, a plan, hardware running software.

We can look at the human body, or a tree, or a single cell, and see rules being followed. DNA is code. So yes, everything is code. But when it comes to poetry, I think there are so many different forms and ways of approaching it that I think to say 'poetry is code' would be vague and misleading.

When I write my poems, I am listening inside myself for rhythms which presumably come from the subconscious, from the heart; these flow like water in a stream, or jar, depending on the effect I would like to invoke in my readers. Sometimes, my prose has that quality of rhythm and I find myself rhyming at the most unlikely junctures, say when writing a political or social commentary.

The accessibility of any poem depends on the reader. A poem is nothing without a reader, and my own poems are validated in two ways: one, in writing them they fulfil a need I have. Two, if just one person let alone ten or more find connection, sympathy, empathy, some kind of emotional or deep response - whatever - then that gives the poem purpose.

You can write poetry to formula. It's never, in my experience, very good or impressive unless a person likes clever-clever poetry or art, and I don't. Computers can write poetry. Indeed, they have. They are programmed with the rules of any given form - say, a complex one like the sestina - and then told to go make a poem. They come back with verse which is akin to the foundational skeleton of a building but with nothing else in them: structurally spot-on, making the right sounds but hollow and empty.

Perhaps the one thing that isn't code in the entirety of existence is that disputed thing known as the soul. But without soul, whatever the type of poetry it falls flat on its face.

That's just my take. But it works for me. x

Poetry, like web design, has lost a lot of accessibility. It used to be that a daily poem was printed in the newspaper, read on the radio, etc. But poetry in America, while a very strong movement to the poets themselves, has never had the ability to pull in a national audience. Look at Robert Frost, the guy was like a prophet in his home town. Despite attempt after attempt, it wasn't until he moved to England and became a celebrity that he was respected in America.

Look at poets in South America. They are respected like any actor, or famous writer.

But I digress. Is poetry code? Let me say succinctly: it shouldn't be. There is a poet for everyone. A poet that is accessible and understood to various walks of life. Are you a blue-collar factory worker? Read Philip Levine. Do you question faith? Read Franz Wright. Are you an intellectual? Read Yusef Komunyakaa. Are you a Christian? Read Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman. Are you depressed? Read Randall Jarrell.

My point is, you have to know where to look. You have to want to look.

Poetry is one of those things that have been distanced from our lives as something that just "isn't for us" or it's only for seducing women or some other hogwash. But anyone who has run across the apropos poem will tell you that poetry changed their life. They will quote those lines over and over as a sort of personal mantra.

Now is poetry code in the way it is written? It can be in that his rules to follow. Like CSS has selectors, for the formulists, poetry is best written with good style, according to the rules, and can be validated by anyone, anywhere.

I'm a big fan of formulaic poetry. I feel that to consider one's self a poet, you have to be able to do all of it. At least try all of it. It just rounds out your education. And like anything else, you have to know the rules in order to break them tastefully--forging new and interesting ways of revamping poetry, the very ideas that might become standards in the future.

After writing all of this, I think I'm a nerd.

Spicey- I thought you might appear around here. When I noticed all the remodeling going on over at your site...

Wonderful point about the "code", the mystery of all existence, its poetic nature. Poetry does come from a place in us which is not totally ours, yet which we learn to harness and direct.

Salazar- Cool thoughts, even if a bit nerdy. How 'bout a poem on CSS and universal validation.

Nietzsche said Truth is a mobile army of metaphors. Maybe poetry is the acknowledgment of the word as metaphor because that's all it can be given there's no definitive truth...no definitive way to describe anything??? Words exist 'cause they have to for us to understand each other, but then we have to keep in mind (keep an open mind) that meaning is relative when we do communicate with each other. Maybe that's why the open-minded tend to understand poetry more than others?

Code helps to decode, ironically, I think. Creating universally agreed upon systems of understanding (code), we can better "read" things. The future world of CSS and universal validation will be a benefit to us all since, all things being relative, we all have different computers, programs, browsers, etc.

Just a thought...

"The maturity of man— that means, to have reacquired the seriousness one had as a child at play." F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Great comment bb16. I see words as having meaning go out in all directions with different values, like the rays of a star. The meaning changes with time, use, and culture. Poetry at its best is a collection of dense stars of meaning and sound, all competing and interacting. A great poem almost vibrates.

"Code helps to decode, ironically, I think." Excellent!

Speaking of CSS, your blog has great style. I'll be stopping by to discuss several favorite movies of mine.

GD, the blog template was changed over some months ago and remoulding it has been ongoing. You visited after some minor tweaking which wasn't in all honesty anything to do with 9rules but my desire to de-clutter my space! :-)

Salazar, I beg to differ on some things and think you're mistaking form for formula in other areas. First off, you made a rather sweeping statement that 'poetry, like web design, has lost a lot of accessibility'. Well I'm not going to comment on the web design front other than to say that's arguable; I am going to comment on poetry, obviously enough, and say that it is impossible to say ALL poetry has lost accessibility. There are simply too many forms, too much free verse, too many poetic movements past and present to be able to make that kind of statement and have it hold up.

There is a huge amount of accessible poetry available across the world - if by accessible you mean immediately comprehended, but accessibility is always going to vary from one person's perception to another's. I mean, if a person with a high IQ enjoys a poem loaded with Latin terminology and nods to obscure poets which they recognise, is that poem inaccessible? No. It is very accessible but to a limited readership. Your statement could be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as equating making poems accessible with being dumbed down. And they shouldn't be. Sure, there's nothing wrong with simple, clear, concise poetry - but there's nothing wrong with more complicated, non-linear, intellectually demanding poetry either.

Assuming that accessible=clear link, the work of Carol Ann Duffy or Simon Armitage bears mention. Both are enormously successful British poets - Duffy was considered for Poet Laureate when Hughes died in the late 90s, while both Duffy and Armitage are commercially and artistically successful and credible, having sold many copies of their works and won many awards. Only last year, Duffy won the TS Eliot prize for her latest collection, 'Rapture'. If we equate success with household names, then no poet today is going to qualify. Not in an era dominated by crass celebrity and fast-moving TV and film. I do agree that poetry has become distanced but it was never mainstream - the Romantic poets weren't read by ordinary folk, and remember even the Bible wasn't read by many people for centuries and that was for a time the only widely-available book. And it includes poetry, of course, in the Song of Solomon! The distance is, in part, both illusory - in that it has always been so - and real, in that the media today has the ability to push people into certain areas, engendering interest, and for the most part chooses to ignore poetry.

Media and academics make poetry a niche, exclusive interest. Not the people generally. Yet today we have more writers of poetry than readers. So poetry obviously fills a need, but remains undiscovered by most.

You talk of Robert Frost, then poets in South America who are respected for what they do. I can immediately think of the wonderful Sharon Olds in the US who has respect the world over for her writing and political courage. Here, where I live, just up the road from where Ted Hughes was born and Sylvia Plath was buried, I can testify to the fact that Hughes is held in wide esteem in his home village in West Yorkshire while Plath gets a steady stream of devotees calling to pay homage at her grave. Not all are fanatical feminists; many, like myself, owe that woman a specific debt in engaging our interest in poetry in the first place.

Plath's tutor, Robert Lowell, is widely revered in the US and elsewhere while another of the confessional poets, Anne Sexton, has great appreciation in her home country but has yet to become widely read outside it. I had a heck of a time getting a copy of her completed works here in the UK.

You say you're 'a big fan of formulaic poetry' and 'feel that to consider one's self a poet, you have to be able to do all of it'. I think you mistake form for formula here. Formulaic is as it usually implies: dull, unimaginative, concerned with the structure far more than the content. Form is very different, and while I would say poets should turn to form at least once in a while, I don't think we should be prescriptive in saying poets MUST be able to or willing to write in all forms. That is as nonsensical as suggesting a renowned artist using oil paints must be able to sculpt in clay if s/he is to be really considered an artist. All other creative and non-creative endeavours can involve both specialisms and special interest, so why deny poets the right to focus on what they are drawn to do? Many forms are self-limited; others can be used as a starting point, then in tweaking them comes a new artistry. I recently wrote a sestina, for example, then changed what I'd written to such an extent I call it a mutated sestina, because changes were organic and spirit-driven in a way slavish devotion to long-established forms cannot allow for.

I'm neither for nor against form; but it is a tool like any other. The big problem with free verse is the perception that you can write what you want, lay it out how you want, and then you've got a poem. Well, no. You don't necessarily. Free verse, like much today, is complex and murky and does not hold out the promise of any old rubbish being called poetry; rubbish will still be seen as rubbish. What free verse does allow for is individual intelligent structuring on any topic. In the hands of true poets, free verse can be spectacular and inventive. In the hands of the foolish and mistaken, free verse can be appalling. That's no argument for ditching free verse; rather, it is to be borne in mind. x

bluebloggin16, you wrote that 'creating universally agreed upon systems of understanding (code), we can better "read" things'. I disagree. It's been tried with language. Doesn't work because communication is organic, which is why open source software develops better over time and why the English language spread so effectively across the planet, through its adaptability not by enforcement but often unnoticed assimilation.

Melvin Bragg wrote an excellent book which was the biography of the English language through to the present day. After reading it, I realised any attempt to create a universal language is always doomed to failure. x

Code, too, I meant to add, is not universal in so far as it is intimately connected to established verbal and textual language. Note the US-centricity of HTML and CSS with 'color' and other US spellings. The Chinese government is looking into creating new code based on Chinese characters rather than American English, leading to accusations it will fracture the net even more than its censorship does. But the point is, the only code which is universal is mathematics. And, perversely, beyond simple addition and subtraction, mathematics is understood to varying degrees by onlly a relatively small number of people. Yet mathematical principles underline much of what we know as reality. x

I was so into the deep image poets. The Modernists- I guess that's why LANGAUGE poetry still remains a complete mystery to me. I think what happened in free verse is similar to what happened in the visual arts- there's a positive aspect to the democratization of the arts- free verse allowed people to express themselves without knowing a slant rhyme from a sonnet or an epigram from an epitaph. The same way people who couldn't squeeze glue in a straight line or size a canvas could "paint".

I can't really give my opinion on the original question because I am not sure where the line is- if a work is "coded" because it's full of erudite allusions, then it's nothing more than a CV. But if there's nothing more to a poem than what you can digest on the first reading, well, it's light verse, isn't it? Not literature with the big L.

(Hi- I'm new here- and now you probably all hate me. . . )