"Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is." ~James Branch Cabell
And what would that be, that man is, which causes such rebellious discourse? I agree with Cabell in principal that poetry wants to rebell. It wants desperately NOT to conform because that is too mundane. Is it that man has the capacity to always be unsettled no matter what his plight? The hungry want food, the King wants more territory.
Is poetry simply a more refined version of an animal instinct?
3 comments:
I tend to get uncomfortable with briefly stated summations of what poetry is, but it does seem at least to be the result of some persistent discontentment about one's self or one's environment, or both. Perhaps it is an attempt to gain some control over the self or the world through language, i.e. if we can define and describe a thing, state, or event, then we can understand it. Not that the attempt always works. We just feel compelled to try.
Amy:
Well put.
I understand the discomfort with brief summery statements that attempt to define poetry. My comment on the Cabell quotation was not intended to reflect up the totality of what poetry is, rather that I was able to see something in his words that struck home. It suddenly hit me that poetry seemed to me to be indicative of a nearly instinctive or internal automatic force at work. At least this seems true in my own personal experience. It also seems that a part of this force is about “reordering something” or putting it a different way. Therein lies the rebellious nature.
Clearly we would do the subject disservice to suggest that this is poetry in simplest terms.
Yes, it does seem that there might be something instinctive about it. I was at a reading last week with the most motley group of people, mostly people who write just because they want to, not to publish. I was struck by how they seemed to need poetry, especially in the way they read, or in some cases performed, their work. So much passion.
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