Salomé
meh
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2008
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..how do you FEEL?
That truly is poetry for extroverts.
..how do you FEEL?
You are either being deliberately dense, or else you simply can't help it. The sonnet is about poetry itself and the timelessness of the WRITTEN word.
Either way, it's clear to me that you fail to understand the power of poetry, if you think it's all in the performance. You certainly fail to understand Shakespeare's genius.
A pitfall of unbalanced extroversion, perhaps.
I disagree. Esoteric definitely means bad. There may be a few people who like that, but this method intentionally alienates most people. That is why it is bad. This type of poetry intentionally wants to be stuck in a niche.
That's why it sucks. A good poem is inviting at the very beginning. I dare say all good art is this way. It is accessible to the common person immediately, but it also has more depth on further observation. Too many artists get caught up on the depth. It's good to be deep, but it's also lazy if that is all you are doing. Well crafted art of all kind is both accessible and deep. Hard to do? Yes definitely. Good art is not easy.
Not exactly. I think that art is not good if the creator requires the audience to do a lot of work. I think the artist should do the work instead of the audience doing the work. On the other hand often with good art if you dig deeper you find there is more there then you would find at first glance.
If its all about accessibility, I don't know how you differentiate between art and kitsch. Or art and any mass media made for our consumer culture. Any kind of pandering poetry is going to ring hollow.It is the poets that are bad. They are satisfied writing poetry for a tiny (and often elitist) niche. If they wanted to be good they might actually try to make their poetry accessible. But the poetry culture has told them that it is good to be elitist and mediocre. Poetry culture encourages poets to suck. Poetry could actually be a vitally alive artform if the poets worked on making their poems accessible.
Maybe the key is not pandering to the elitist crowd nor trying to create something accessible, but instead to create something authentic that comes from images in the artist's mind and once given life manages on its own to resonate with others. Maybe these works of art transcended class and time because they come from and speak to a human experience that can only be shared in images or sound. There is an aliveness that transports. Its different than demographically targeted marketing (so accessible to 18-34 year old females!) or programmed, engineered flat utility. I'm in favor of expression and artists being true to their vision, not feeling constrained to approach things in only one way, up or down someone else's measurement scale of what is worthwhile. For every Margaret Mitchell there is someone else who put down their pen because they felt they were wasting their time because art is best left to professionals AND/OR their art wouldn't be well-liked. The twin torments of feeling inadequate and feeling dissatisfied with the art you create in order to please others - they find everyone. Most people give up.I am quite sure this is not a modern phenomena. Like I said Shakespeare was uneducated and made his plays appealing to the common person. Gone With the Wind was written by a newspaper journalist who had no background in writing novels. She was not trying to appeal to an elitist crowd. She was just an ordinary person writing for ordinary people, but the book sold like crazy and the movie is the greatest selling movie of all time. Once Mozart was on his own his operas and symphonies played to huge crowds, much larger than was conventional at the time. Mark Twain stood out at his time for using a language that was much more accessible to the common American compared to his peers. Michaelangelo is so accessible that he is still enjoyed by many people today. I could actually go on and on there are so many examples.
Its why I'm less concerned about prescriptive shoulds and more about fostering people to create independently.I think we both agree that poetry shouldn't be too pandering or too obscure.
If its all about accessibility, I don't know how you differentiate between art and kitsch. Or art and any mass media made for our consumer culture. Any kind of pandering poetry is going to ring hollow.
Maybe the key is not pandering to the elitist crowd nor trying to create something accessible, but instead to create something authentic that comes from images in the artist's mind and once given life manages on its own to resonate with others. Maybe these works of art transcended class and time because they come from and speak to a human experience that can only be shared in images or sound. There is an aliveness that transports. Its different than demographically targeted marketing (so accessible to 18-34 year old females!) or programmed, engineered flat utility. I'm in favor of expression and artists being true to their vision, not feeling constrained to approach things in only one way, up or down someone else's measurement scale of what is worthwhile. For every Margaret Mitchell there is someone else who put down their pen because they felt they were wasting their time because art is best left to professionals AND/OR their art wouldn't be well-liked. The twin torments of feeling inadequate and feeling dissatisfied with the art you create in order to please others - they find everyone. Most people give up.
Its why I'm less concerned about prescriptive shoulds and more about fostering people to create independently.
I'll grant you that the unwashed masses of Elizabethan England were a lot smarter than most modern audiences.
The rest is bullshit and does nothing to support your claim that "Shakespeare is not literature".
(I have answered this before, but I will answer it again.) Never have I said it is all about accessibility. Accessibility is a necessary but insufficient condition. The actual content of the art has to be good regardless of how accessible it is.
Everyone disagreeing with me seems to think we live in a black and white world where either art is accessible or it has meaningful content. Why can't it have both? I am saying good art has both.
(Referring to bold) you may not realize this, but you are talking about accessibility. If a work transcends class and time, then it has high accessibility.
This is your criteria, not mine. I am not talking about accessibility, I am talking about authenticity in creation. I don't anticipate we will agree, but we can at least be clear. You may value the artist who speaks to numbers and I may value the artist who speaks in the authentic way that is accessible to him or herself. The ultimate niche, but the only source of genuine creativity.