catsmeat potter-pirbright ([info]fileg) wrote,
@ 2004-09-02 03:38:00
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one frustrated verse remark
It hasn't been the best week of my life. Recent events and those who made them as hard as possible to deal with (led by neighbor Dave) have left me feeling alternately frustrated, furious and fragile. I have been taking things said in passing too personally, and I am thoroughly disgusted with myself for letting the thoughtless remarks of others keep me from what I need.

Well, anyway - tonight I fell a short step into a place I did not mean to go.

I have avoided the Mithril contentiousness, but someone decided I needed to know about an exchange and emailed me a link.

Now, as I said, I *promised* myself I wasn't going there, and I should have left the moment I realized where the link had taken me. What is it about the way my brain works, that I, who won't break a promise to someone else, cannot keep them for my own good?

I didn't stay long, and I managed not to say anything while I was there. But I have to point to this as one of the biggest frustrations of the week.

from this thread severely edited because I am only trying to make a single point. This is a discussion of the poetry category from last year-


marigold, re llinos: What I would like answered is, how did something that met all of the criteria not make the cut last year? Because honestly, it was a great poem. It has won awards elsewhere, received rave reviews, has no technical flaws or misspellings or any grammatical errors. llinos is a paid poet when she wants to be, and anyone who has had the pleasure of receiving a birthday poem from her can attest to her skill. She mentors poets in the fandom. Some winners in this category actually had technical flaws, in what you think would have been a carefully judged category. There are none in hers. Yet it was not even short listed.


when called out to point to these flaws, llinos responded:

I am not about to name individual's poems here and I have not read them all in great depth, I don't have time. But my main issue would be with imperfect rhymes, in particular, rhyming a singular noun with a plural.



Since there was only a single winner in the category, I think "winners" might include the runner up and two commended poems. That runner up was Home By Morning, and yes, I am in the frame of mind to think it is the unnammed offender.

But those of you who spent any time in the V&A with me know that, in spite of what Home means to me, that's not why I am so frustrated I want to **SCREAM**

It's the juxtaposition of "She mentors poets in the fandom" with the idea that poetry, of all things, gets it's wings from "technical" perfection, and the horrifying deal-breaking criteria rhyming a singular noun with a plural....





AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!


I'm done. I need chocolate and bed.

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[info]tehta
2004-09-02 01:24 am UTC (link)
I really want to comment, but everything I can think of to say is very, very wanky. Still:

My personal opinion, which I am well aware is my personal opinion and not necessarily an objective truth, is this: I like your poem. It works very well for me. But I find Llinos' poem hard to read because I cannot figure out a consistent meter.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 11:18 am UTC (link)
Thanks for the kind words, but I am not fishing for compliments, honestly.

It's that I spent the better part of several months at HASA working in the Verse and Adversity forum to convince people (who, almost universally told me they could not and would not ever write poetry, because it is technical, boring and complicated) that *poetry* is what happens every day in the heart, and can be as simple as the word "Look!" if it reaches the right spot at the right moment.

It it a personal crusade that people who were taught to hate poetry focus *not* on counting syllables on their fingers, but on feeling.

I received for my birthday from a friend who happens to be 10 years old, an illustrated haiku about an inchworm - and it was all I could do not to cry.

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[info]tehta
2004-09-02 11:35 am UTC (link)
I know you weren't. That was just the least wanky thing I came up with in reaction to your post.

I agree that inspiration is the most important thing. But I feel like technique is important, too, because if the reader is going, "Huh?" because of poor/odd technique, she will not be able to appreciate the inspiration behind a piece.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:11 pm UTC (link)
I don't disagree - technique and polish are *not* dismissable to me. But I think I finally got it down to a sharp thought further down this thread -

Nothing frustrates me more than the assertion that value can be determined *solely* by its disectable parts.

(And it's not just poetry that I feel that way about, adds the woman with an engagement ring made in the toaster oven out of sculpy by a man who did not want to miss his moment...)

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[info]tehta
2004-09-02 12:25 pm UTC (link)
Nothing frustrates me more than the assertion that value can be determined *solely* by its disectable parts.

I'm not arguing with you, just trying to get things clear in my head. In my own writing, I tend to get more paranoid about technique than anything--but that is probably because I secretly think that I have the inspiration.

But enough about me.

I love your engagement ring story.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 04:31 pm UTC (link)
not meaning to be argumentative, myself. As my RL friends can tell you, when I get something stuck in my sights, I tend to repeat myself endlessly until I

a) actually convince myself I'm not crazy

or

b) get my wrist smacked and told to stop.

I am aiming for A here. Sorry.

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[info]stultiloquentia
2004-09-02 01:36 am UTC (link)
"Stupidity is a bad quality," said Montaigne. "But to be vexed and fretted by it, to be unable to bear it, as is the case with me, is a malady hardly less troublesome."

I feel your pain.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:14 pm UTC (link)
I will never understand people who feel that joy (spirt, soul, spark...) weighs nothing, so can be dismissed from the equation.

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[info]kortirion
2004-09-02 04:21 am UTC (link)
If it wouldn't melt in the post I'd send you my favorite Thornton's chocolates, dark and bitter-sweet.

You know it, I know it, the vast majority of the artistically talented world knows it - confusing the ability to produce technical excellence with the power to generate creative inspiration is the mark of the aspiring artist of mediocre talent. They may leap but they'll never fly.

Soar like the eagle, sweetie - you have the wings

...And just ignore the silly trollop!

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:21 pm UTC (link)
They *might* fly, if they could put those stones down...


I know you have recently been in a similar place about this, this idea that something *technically* good is somehow superior than something that balances good technique and spirit...

...goes to look for a two of swords for the deck

It was *so* frustrating for me not to be able to address this because I knew that Home would allow anything I wanted to say to be dismissed.

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[info]faramir_boromir
2004-09-02 06:41 am UTC (link)
Perfection of this sort in rhymes is so out of date. If this is mentoring, please, save me.

Two words to this sort of critique: fuck off. Sour grapes have a really, really unappealing taste.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:47 pm UTC (link)
It was so frustrating I wanted to howl - not to be able to speak out about something I have been defending at HASA since I got there - because I already knew everything I said would be chalked up to not being objective, because of Home.

(As though I needed anyone with such a butt-headed attitude to validate Home for me!)

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[info]gladio
2004-09-02 07:56 am UTC (link)
Aristotle said meter didn´t make poetry, as you could have long didactic/philosophical treatises composed in technically flawless meter that still fail to be poetry. I am also mildly shocked that 2500 years afterwards there are still persons stumbling in that stone.

I would have assumed someone who purports to be a mentor to other poets would have been aware of the difference between a poet and a versifier. If only because, you know, it is taught in writing courses.

Anyway, I did warn you not to touch this M.A. bruhaha with a ten feet pole. I´m so sorry you´ve had to suffer this on top of everything else. I can only send you virtual hugs, and a link to the birthday present [info]scribal1 made for you alone, with all her love.

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[info]lindelea1
2004-09-02 08:43 am UTC (link)
So what is the difference between a poet and a versifier?

I never took a writing course.

Just curious,
Lin

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[info]gladio
2004-09-02 08:55 am UTC (link)
Object of mimesis.

"There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse- which verse, again, may either combine different meters or consist of but one kind- but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar meter. People do, indeed, add the word 'maker' or 'poet' to the name of the meter, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all to the name. Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter, so that it would be right to call the one poet, the other physicist rather than poet. On the same principle, even if a writer in his poetic imitation were to combine all meters, as Chaeremon did in his Centaur, which is a medley composed of meters of all kinds, we should bring him too under the general term poet".

For your curiosity.

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[info]lindelea1
2004-09-02 09:28 am UTC (link)
I'm sorry to be so thick, but the explanation doesn't make any sense to me. I even went to the link you gave and read what was there. Very elegant, but quite complicated-sounding. My poor caffeine-deprived brain could not quite fit itself around all the convolutions.

Can you express it in simpler terms? Pretty please?

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[info]gladio
2004-09-02 10:16 am UTC (link)
Briefly. Poet and versifier share the same mode of imitation, but differ as to the object of imitation.
More here. The whole site is relatively decent.

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p.s.
[info]lindelea1
2004-09-02 09:32 am UTC (link)
Thank you for taking the time to answer my curiosity!

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[info]gladio
2004-09-02 10:18 am UTC (link)
Honest curiosity, I don´t mind.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:35 pm UTC (link)
It's the way they have set this discussion up that makes me seethe with frustration. I wanted to defend, as I *always* have, the balance between technique and wings - not my work, or the awards.

But they have now set up a system where anyone who speaks out at all can be dismissed because

a) you won, so you are just being defensive
(good lord, does anything look worse than a bad winner?)

OR

b) if you didn't win - who the hell are you, what do you know and why should your opinion matter


Seems to me they have closed that up pretty neatly....

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:38 pm UTC (link)
I would have assumed someone who purports to be a mentor to other poets would have been aware of the difference between a poet and a versifier. If only because, you know, it is taught in writing courses.

Ah, you made me laugh so hard I spilled my coffee.

That's just the sort of thing I would love to have said, but in the long run, I will be happier to have kept silent, as I do not wish to be involved with anyone in that argument.

Still, it tickles me to see you say it.
*hugs*
off to find hidden brithday present...

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[info]lindelea1
2004-09-02 08:36 am UTC (link)
Qualifier: I know nothing of the technicalities of poetry. I only write the stuff, in blissful ignorance, and read it (sometimes).

I *do* like "Home by Morning". My memory is tricky at best, but I think I may have been one of the reviewers when it was up for review, and I told you there that while I don't know anything about judging poetry, I liked the poem. It has a nice strong rhythm, very straightforward, as of a steadily galloping horse, and it fits the category of children's song or lullaby nicely with that definite sense of rhythm and the repetition. (Having read 100s of little "poems" and songs aloud to my little ones, probably 100s of times for the ones more in demand, I feel safe saying this.)

But I like llinos' poem too, intricately constructed as it is. I don't know what technical flaws it might contain, that would have it miss the shortlist. I do know there seems to be an awful lot of bad feeling in this topic you've been so wise to avoid up until now, and attacks that seem having more to do with personal feelings than any sort of reality or fact.

I hear/read jokes about "awful poetry" all the time, and one of the things that makes me hesitant to judge poetry is that some things I like are dismissed as "doggerel" and others that make me scratch my head are praised to the skies with oodles of critical acclaim.

So my liking your poem may not be a good thing... but I like it anyhow.

Sorry to hear you've been pulled in. Hope you can manage to pull out again, quickly, wipe the mud off your feet and put it behind.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:41 pm UTC (link)
Thanks. I do love hearing that people like Home.

But in this case, what frustrated me was that I could not speak out on an *issue* that infuriates me, because I knew I would have been dismissed as not being objective.

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confused
[info]ae_emlyn
2004-09-02 09:29 am UTC (link)
...ok, if prose isn't required to be technically error-free to win a Mithril, why should verse? Besides, aren't the technical rules for poetry as acceptably disregardable as those of fiction? Meaning, one isn't technically supposed to begin sentences with a preposition, and teachers would discourage as much. But LOTR fanfic does it all the time. And so did Tolkien.

Like I said, confused...

Boromir! Behave!

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Re: confused
[info]fileg
2004-09-02 12:00 pm UTC (link)
Bad!Boromir icon participation

And so did Tolkien. and so does life...

I wish this had come up in a thread where I could have responded, without it looking like I was offended/irate because I was involved.

I am *not* involved - Home's value to me is personal, and always has been. That anyone else liked it is a separate gift to me.

But nothing frustrates me more, as a student, a teacher or a person than the idea that value can be reduced *solely* to disectable parts.

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Re: confused
[info]ae_emlyn
2004-09-02 02:47 pm UTC (link)
I wish this had come up in a thread where I could have responded, without it looking like I was offended/irate because I was involved.

I'm not sure any thread in that particular journal would have been suitable, honestly. :-/

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Re: confused
[info]fileg
2004-09-02 04:36 pm UTC (link)
Sad that - and worse when I think how much better it makes me feel.

Sometimes I think I just don't want to think I'm crazy, that these things are visible to others. it helps me shut up and sit down.

I have sympathies and complaints on both sides of the Mithril argument, but I heartily disapprove of the argument itself - meaning the way it's being fought.

Thanks.

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Re: confused
[info]ae_emlyn
2004-09-02 11:13 pm UTC (link)
Sometimes I think I just don't want to think I'm crazy, that these things are visible to others. it helps me shut up and sit down.

Ah yes, the desire to not feel crazy. I'm due for a checkup myself.

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[info]lindelea1
2004-09-02 09:58 am UTC (link)
But those of you who spent any time in the V&A with me know that, in spite of what Home means to me, that's not why I am so frustrated I want to **SCREAM**


Ah, I see now that I answered the wrong point in your post. Sorry about that.

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 11:37 am UTC (link)
Indeed. I said constantly back in the V&A that there were better poets and better talents out there than me.

When I was (briefly) teaching, I always knew there were teachers who could have given those kids more facts, more technical polish, more hard grounding in a subject. I consideredd myself a good teacher because what I tried to give them was an interest in their subject, and the joy of persuing it. I made them feel is was good to try, and that falling on your face was a step, not a fail.

I don't look at my kids splashing in the poetry pool and delude myself that they are about to win the olympics. But I would rather see them splashing happily about, laughing and sharing, than huddled on a blanket because they have been taught to be afraid of the water. No one becomes great at something they never try.

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[info]forodwaith
2004-09-02 10:33 am UTC (link)
Sorry to hear about RL and fandom co-operating to drive you crazy. I hope the chocolate helps.

The people (aka Spocks) who say "My work has no grammar/spelling errors, therefore it must be good" are equally as annoying as the people who say "OMG dun tell me I kant spell you elitist beeyotch! LOL". Both insist on setting up a false dichotomy between technical and aesthetic values that drives me insane. < sigh >

... anyways. Am getting seriously OT. [And just to make it perfectly clear, I know you don't fall into either of the categories above!]

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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 11:47 am UTC (link)
It's amazing how much sugar free chocolate still helps.

*Spocks* <-- snort. I'll be stealing that.

And you have the balance exactly right in that analogy.

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[info]edrys
2004-09-02 10:52 am UTC (link)
It's the juxtaposition of "She mentors poets in the fandom" with the idea that poetry, of all things, gets it's wings from "technical" perfection...
Shall we line her up with all our old English lit. teachers?

Something else to consider: one can be technically perfect as an artist, a writer, a poet, a singer or other musician. But without that added spark that we sometimes refer to as soul, the end result is flat, lifeless. Technique is but the foundation on which the artist builds.

My ha'penny, for whatever it's worth.


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[info]fileg
2004-09-02 11:42 am UTC (link)
*hugs*

It's even more basic than that to me - I heartily approve of good tecnique, but you get that later, by practice and/or finding a mentor that suits *you.*

I feel like I have been encouraging baby birds to flap their way out of the nest, only to find someone at the edge, handing them each a stone before they take off.

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[info]semyaza
2004-09-02 12:09 pm UTC (link)
It's interesting to me that no matter how one tries to avoid controversy there are always people who are willing to drag one into it.

As I'm not a competitive person, it distresses me when others bring their competitiveness into fandom--any fandom. I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but I'm here for the joy of the thing itself--the love of the book, of the stories, of people's creativity, of seeing individuals try something they've never tried before and never thought to try. It all needs to be encouraged, if it has heart, and 'technical perfection', whatever that is, is somewhat of a side issue.

Oh dear--rhyming a singular noun with a plural--heaven protect us!

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[info]avon7
2004-09-02 01:52 pm UTC (link)
*shudder* Your first idea was right - just stay the heck away from any of the MA stuff. I was foolish enough to go there, was miserable for days and right now don't feel like I'm ever going to want to get back involved with LOTR fanfic/fandom. So much ugliness and so much hate... talk about the dark forces of entropy. ;-) I just keep looking at my class of little 11 and 12 year olds and wondering if I am totally unreasonable in expecting higher standards of behaviour from them than it seems adults are capable of.

To be briefly more on topic - I do like technical perfection; spelling and grammar matters a great deal to me but in the end sometimes what matters is does the bummblebee fly? And this doesn't even just apply to feeling things. Kieran Perkins was one of the world's greatest swimmers - he shattered world records and redefined 1500m swimming - and his stroke has a significant technical flaw in it. At least if you or I did it that is how it would be described: commentators are more prone to speak of his 'idniosyncratic stroke'. Bottom line was he swam well and he swam beautifully. I don't care if Home has technical flaws because it tells a story and it reaches out to people's souls. After all Tolkien would never have won anything on pure technical grounds; he was far to fond of bending the rules of English composition.

Avon

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[info]ithilwen
2004-09-02 10:57 pm UTC (link)
Don't let the MA feuding drive you away from the fandom! Even if the fandom eventually becomes as festooned with awards as a Christmas tree is with garlands, it will always be possible to just write stories and post them for other people to enjoy, and chat with other folks whose works you enjoy. No one should feel pressured to compete if they don't wish too, (especially not in a hobby activity!), and likewise no one has to pay attention to the feuding surrounding those competitions, either. The award wankery will die down eventually.

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[info]zillah975
2004-09-02 05:33 pm UTC (link)
*cuddles you like mad*

You know how I feel about your poetry, and Home By Morning especially -- it still gives me shivers and makes me weepy, and I still sometimes get parts of it stuck in my head like a song, and I'm glad when it does.

Haven't read all the comments here, and Christ knows I've not read the comments there, but anyone who thinks that technical perfection should indicate which poem is better than another has my sympathies, for they've lost the heart of poetry.

And if they get all the way down to "but it rhymed a singular noun with a plural!" my sympathy is crushed under the weight of my baffled incredulity. Poor little walnut-souled creature.

*snugs you 'til you squeak*

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[info]ithilwen
2004-09-02 11:11 pm UTC (link)
This cuts to the heart of the Mithril controversy: what exactly constitutes a technical flaw? How many technical flaws can a piece have and still be considered good? And when judging two artistic works, should the one which does nothing wrong technically (but also does nothing "right" artistically) be placed ahead of a work which has a few minor flaws but also great artistic virtues?

The fact that there will always be disagreement about these issues means that wankery over awards will be ever-flowing, unfortunately. All you can do is try to steer clear of it as best you can, write the best poetry you know how to write, and do what you can to encourage others to do the same. (You're no slouch at mentoring poets in the fandom yourself, you know.)

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[info]redfiona99
2004-09-03 12:50 pm UTC (link)
>>I am not about to name individual's poems here and I have not read them all in great depth, I don't have time. But my main issue would be with imperfect rhymes, in particular, rhyming a singular noun with a plural.<<

May I do the loud stamping dance of 'poetry doesn't have to rhyme'. Okay I realise I'm completely the wrong person to talk about this what with my dislike of poetry but that's one thing I remember clearly from school, especially when there was one especially cool poem from the 'Beat' school of poetry that used half rhymes and fragmented phrases but it worked.

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