A Question-Driven Essay On American Poetry Now (original) (raw)

Emperors of Ice Cream: Sense, Non-Sense and Silliness in American Poetry

Does it matter what poems say, or only how they say it? American poetry workshops avoid such questions, focusing on whether poems "work" rather than on what they mean. But to judge by the claims American poets make in craft lectures, book blurbs and award acceptance speeches, most believe that what poems say matters quite a lot, that though, as William Carlos Williams claimed, "It is difficult / to get the news from poems / … men [and presumably women] die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there."

Some stylistic features of twentieth century American poems, with particular reference to ambiguity

1982

Bibliography ' jpoeT^);' o\a tbe otWv band, tUevc 'is 'breaking of laws', 'repentance', 'explanation' as apology; but it is also a discourse about the making of poetry: by emphasizing textual elements, the core of the experience is conveyed as pure images and pure perceptions, so that poetry is created. W.C.Williams has talked about the strategy of creating by creating. Language is what this poem is about, and I would go as far as stating that all poetry is about language. Should one agree, in fact, that there is a system of signs, underlying poetry, patterning itself upon, and in relationship with, the abstract linguistic system, one could share the idea that the nature of the relationship between the poetic sign and the linguistic sign is a condi.ti.0 si.ne_gua_.non for the rise of poetry. Poetry says, first of all, something about that relationship, the semiotic relationship between itself and the linguistic code (7). Through writing the poet uses different strategies to anticipate the reader's expectations, objections, or questions, to contextua I ize his subject matter in such a w^y as to make it accessible to his. reader, to realize meanings that provoke a pragmatic reading on the part of the addressee. He does so by attracting the reader's attention to the language itself, by foregrounding '-Ibidem : 88). And he continues: For example, it is relevant to interpretation (1) of a sentence (2a) Sha I_l_I_yut_the_sweater_on? to know whether 4 anyone has yet invented a sweater warmed by electric current. (gbgdem 180) But this competence including linguistic as well as extra-linguistic rules and categories is not accountable for out$ i the practical use that one makes of them. The role of intuition, then, must be recognized to account for this competence.