I wouldn't say 'irrelavant' but I'd say most people are conditioned against it, thanks to the school curricula; Shakespeare is in Elizabethan English, which sounds quite odd to our ears, and other encounters with 'poetry' are often in commercial jingles or rap lyrics (in my high school literary magazine we had people submit poems but sounded tons more like the lyrics to $rap_song). And in the schools, it's a forced reading; someone tells you what it means, you go through the lines, you agree with the teacher, you pass that portion of the class.
The times in which poetry flourished, the classics were still being studied, there was an emphasis on culture and refinement and symmetry (think the prep schools/grammar school education, and before that with tutors and the Classics). Not to say that poetry has to be refined or symmetrical, but people were more apt to take poetry seriously and listen to it, rather than dismiss poetry as artsy-fartsy and not 'relevant to the real world'. Now education is skills and qualification focused, and
( ... )
ugh. yeah. the number of people who say they actively hate poetry drive me mad. "Really? you hate words conveying a meaning?" It's so close-minded... like, if they ever touch a poem, they'll somehow become less respected or something. I think that's more to do with reading in general, though, and the rise of video games, computers, and television. There are people that are actively proud of the fact that they don't read at all. And if what they're reading is more to express emotion than a plot, that just makes it even harder for those minds. Because remember -- movies have plots too. Movies are made from books all the time! So those things are okay. But you can never make a movie on a (non-epic) poem.
Although I think Sharp Teeth was a good step in the right direction for poetry, in terms of getting non-poetic-people interested in it.
To a lot of people, poetry falls into these categories:
+ "kiddie stuff" (as much as I love Dr Seuss), hence the emphasis on rhyme;
+ song lyrics (emphasis on rhyme again)
+ overpretentious shite that doesn't make any sense (everything else). I, for one, have a certain fondness for T.S. Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke, but go figure. (And many others.)
I'm not sure if this is due to education and reading in general, but I do usually get surprised reactions (especially from Mediterrenean/Middle Eastern/Indian cultures) when I mention I love poetry. (Mmm, Rumi...)
Part two:
"But you can never make a movie on a (non-epic) poem."
Oh, it's been done - Cats (the musical/movie) was from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. And arguably How the Grinch Stole Christmas is something similar.
look at a couple posts down (techiegoat's post) -- it's pretty much education to blame at least for some percentage of cases^^;
and I don't know if I can count Cats. ever. for anything. period. :O
(and, oddly, when I think of poetry -- I don't think of songs or Dr Seuss; when I think of rhyming poetry I think of E.B. White, not Seuss. Those things really feel distinct to me from "poetry". perhaps another topic worth exploring?)
Okay, I like some poetry (mostly the rhyming sort), but thanks to schooling I've been ruined for the rest. It seems pretentious and just. . . ugh. Obviously not every poem is like that, but that's just how my brain works now. Besides, when one of my creative writing teachers thought something like this:
"Buzz buzz the fly is zooming ever onwards to find the acid hits it needs"
was GOOD, when I actively tried to make it horrible and show why I dislike free-form poetry, just killed me. Killed me dead.
So, uh, that's why I don't like most poetry. Sorry!
If you take out the buzz-buzz and restructure it and singularize 'hits'... "zooming ever onwards to find the acid hit it needs" is pretty interesting...
the fly is zooming onwards to find the acid hit it needs
see? nice and clean now. it even has a better cadence.
Agh! Don't you start! (The whole line spacing thing was another gripe I had - you know, where it seems poets just randomly place words on different lines for reasons only they can imagine.)
Just give me some nice prose and I'll be happy. Or Dr. Seuss. I like Dr. Seuss. ^_^
well, no, mostly the people who do that (myself included) do it to put emphasis on the words -- the brain tends to "catch" on the first/last words in a line. the problem is that people tend to do it without regard for the actual cadence of human speaking, and it ends up being physically difficult to read.
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The times in which poetry flourished, the classics were still being studied, there was an emphasis on culture and refinement and symmetry (think the prep schools/grammar school education, and before that with tutors and the Classics). Not to say that poetry has to be refined or symmetrical, but people were more apt to take poetry seriously and listen to it, rather than dismiss poetry as artsy-fartsy and not 'relevant to the real world'. Now education is skills and qualification focused, and ( ... )
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Although I think Sharp Teeth was a good step in the right direction for poetry, in terms of getting non-poetic-people interested in it.
Reply
To a lot of people, poetry falls into these categories:
+ "kiddie stuff" (as much as I love Dr Seuss), hence the emphasis on rhyme;
+ song lyrics (emphasis on rhyme again)
+ overpretentious shite that doesn't make any sense (everything else). I, for one, have a certain fondness for T.S. Eliot and Rainer Maria Rilke, but go figure. (And many others.)
I'm not sure if this is due to education and reading in general, but I do usually get surprised reactions (especially from Mediterrenean/Middle Eastern/Indian cultures) when I mention I love poetry. (Mmm, Rumi...)
Part two:
"But you can never make a movie on a (non-epic) poem."
Oh, it's been done - Cats (the musical/movie) was from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. And arguably How the Grinch Stole Christmas is something similar.
Reply
and I don't know if I can count Cats. ever. for anything. period. :O
(and, oddly, when I think of poetry -- I don't think of songs or Dr Seuss; when I think of rhyming poetry I think of E.B. White, not Seuss. Those things really feel distinct to me from "poetry". perhaps another topic worth exploring?)
Reply
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"Buzz buzz the
fly is zooming
ever
onwards to find
the acid hits
it needs"
was GOOD, when I actively tried to make it horrible and show why I dislike free-form poetry, just killed me. Killed me dead.
So, uh, that's why I don't like most poetry. Sorry!
Reply
the fly is zooming onwards
to find the acid hit it needs
see? nice and clean now. it even has a better cadence.
Reply
Just give me some nice prose and I'll be happy. Or Dr. Seuss. I like Dr. Seuss. ^_^
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