The New Criterion - What Auden believed

The New Criterion - What Auden believed

I'll give credit to Jilly for finding this interesting piece on W. H. Auden.



Tog: poets

Back to the Hughes Quote

I've thought about this. I've even posed the question to my wife and one of my daughters. The question being that of my personalities- assuming I have more than one, what are they? The consensus from the family was that yes I have more than one. It was pointed out to me that I would likely act one way around say "x" but another if I was not in there presence. I certainly see their point, and I suspect we all have similar situations we could point to, but is that a different personality altogether or simply make up a part of our overall personality? I don't have the answer to that question as of yet.

This morning, it occurred to me that personality testing could give me some outside quantitative basis for examining my specific personality. So I went back to the last time I took such a test That would be July of last year. I blogged briefly on it here.

So accordingly, I find myself based upon this too be a EIFP. That designation would make me am extroverted Intuition person with Introverted Feelings. So perhaps this is a clue to what I am exploring. I present extroverted, but deep down inside I am really an emotionally introverted kind of guy? This, I suppose could account for two different personality types.

Hughes talks about writers of verse ideally finding a style that is inclusive of all our personalities.
I'm thinking that unless we are trying to force into words what we are writing, this would seem a natural occurrence of the act of writing itself. Am I mistaken? I would really be interested in the thoughts of others on this topic.

My Several Personalities

"Most writers of verse have several different personalities. The ideal is to find a style or a method that includes them all." ~Ted Hughes

I'm going to have to think about this "several personalizes" thing a bit. Yes, I've written from a variety of personas, but that is not what Hughes is saying here. This may require outside counsel in order to arrive at objectivity. Hence, I need a day or two or three on this one. But I will be back!

the substratum of our beings...

Todays quote from the mouth of a poet comes from T. S. Eliot ~

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves. "

Yesterday's mailbag ~ My 2006 National Poetry Month Poster arrived. You can see it pictured here to the right - really cool this year!

Contest - Eileen Tabios plugs Marsh Hawk Press contest [here]

Tag: Poetry

"This is what a poet does..."

It strikes me humorously how radical Allen Ginsberg was thought, by many people back when he was alive and writing poetry. The times themselves, or the churning and turning that was taking place in the American culture at that time I suppose seemed radical to most. Ginsberg I suppose only embodied a part of what was happening behind the everyday America that was sort of like in this giant vat being slowly mixed and turned into something that would one day resemble a quite different America. But Ginsberg verbalized what was happening slowly.

For a long time, we had been moving away from a stricter model of poetry subject matter. The romanticism that so often we equate with poetry was not the only relevant voice and in fact, to many, its relevance even seemed questionable. Perhaps it is the awakening of America that was truly more radical then the singular notion. There are things that quietly occupied the minds of people that turned into reality were quite radical, but they stayed there, quietly, kept to themselves.

Ginsberg was not alone. He was not a sole practitioner in radical thought. Indeed, it was a transformation that preceded him altogether. I think he simply realized what a powerful vehicle we each had at our disposal if we simply unleashed it. And the timing was right. There were others- people who were transforming the world with words. Ginsberg became a very powerful public personification of the thought process of a whole generation of Americans.
He said,

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in
bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's
what the poet does."

This is what Allen Ginsberg showed us, and I believe it has dramatically changed us as people.

Out of a poets mouth ~ Today's quote

Bitterness is like cancer.

It eats upon the host.

But anger is like fire.

It burns it all clean.

~Maya Angelou

WebWatch : World Poetry Day

pembrokeshiretv.com - News, Sport, Information and Entertainment

Believed to have its origins in the 1930s, World Poetry Day honours poets and their craft. It was specifically declared as such by UNESCO in 1999, in order to "give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements". The aim is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world.