1. What is Poetry?
a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does
ordinary language
2. What is Poetry? (Cont.)
• Poetry is universal: it has been a part of all ages, all civilizations.
Why?
1. It gives us pleasure; but it is more than mere amusement.
2. It is central to existence, having unique value to the fully realized
life; we are better off for having it and are spiritually impoverished
without it.
3. Provisional Definition
First we must have a provisional understanding (it will change)--it is
easier to appreciate than to define.
1. Poetry says more than ordinary language and says it more intensely
2. But what does it say?
4. Different Uses of Language
• practical Use: common language for the business of everyday life
• Argumentative: attempts to get someone to change his mind or to
take action
• Literary Use: concerned primarily with experience.
5. Experience as a primary concern of poetry
1. it provides us a sense and a perception of life, a wider contact with
existence
2. it creates significant new experiences in which the reader can
participate in life, have a greater awareness and understanding
3. Poetry steps up the intensity and increases the range of our
experiences; it clarifies our focus on life.
8. TWO APPROACHES THAT LIMIT OUR
UNDERSTANDING/APPRECIATION OF POETRY
1. Always a lesson or moral instruction
2. Always beautiful
9. What is the difference between poetry and
other literature?
• Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature.
• It is language whose individual lines, either because of their own
brilliance or because they focus so powerfully on what has gone
before, have a higher voltage than most language.
• It is language that grows frequently incandescent, giving off both light
and heat.
10. How can a poetry be recognized?
• poetry can be recognized only by the response made to it by a
practiced reader, someone who has acquired some sensitivity to
poetry
• When a person reads a poem and no experience is received, either
the poem is not a good poem or the reader is not properly tuned.
With new poetry, we cannot always be sure which is at fault.
11. Poetry is a multidimensional language
• Ordinary language—the kind that we use to communicate
information—is one-dimensional. Its one dimension is intellectual.
• Poetry, which is language used to communicate experience, has at
least four dimensions: Intellectual dimension, sensuous dimension,
an emotional dimension, and an imaginative dimension.
12. Simple Verse
• It does not imply that the poems you will be reading deal with trivial
matters.
• It means that the language used is not complicated.
13. Fire and Ice ( A simple Verse)
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Taste: short experience
Hold with: agree with, approve of
Favor: like
Perish: be destroyed
Destruction: damage
Suffice: to be enough
14. Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves ( A poem with complicated
Language)
• Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, ' vaulty, voluminous, . . . stupendous
Evening strains to be time's vást, ' womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all
night.
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west, ' her wild hollow hoarlight
hung to the height
Waste; her earliest stars, earl-stars, ' stárs principal, overbend us,
Fíre-féaturing heaven. For earth ' her being as unbound, her dapple is at an
end, as-
tray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; ' self ín self steepèd and páshed
– quite
Disremembering, dísmémbering, ' áll now. Heart, you round me right
With: Óur évening is over us; óur night ' whélms, whélms, ánd will end us.
15. Line 1-2
Literally, there is a debate between two groups of
scientists discussing the end of world; some of them
believe the earth will end in ice due to the loss of the
warmth of the sun and another Ice Age while the other
group believes the destruction of this earth is as the
result of an explosion of the earth and fire originated
from its fiery core.
16. However, “fire” and “ice” are symbols of human sensations: “fire”
stands for love, desire, passion, and sensual trends whereas “ice”
stands for hatred and dislike.
So, the poem is not only about the physical world or the eventual
and natural fate of the world, but also is about man and the world
of relations.
There is metaphor in the first line where world is compared to the
world of relationships which may be destroyed for too much love
and desire or hostility and hatred.
17. Line 3-4
Based on my little experience of desire, I agree with those who are interested in fire
and sensual trends.
Line 5- 9
But if the world, i.e. the world of personal relations, is to be destroyed twice, I
suppose I have enough command on hatred too to say that ice (hostility) is also a
powerful cause and even this can be enough. (understatement)
18. Nursery Rhymes ( A suitable form of simple
verse)
• Songs we learn when very small that taught us both some useful
lessons and the pleasure of language.
A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?
