In our estimation, there is no more expressive genre of fine art comparable to poetry in its effective transmission of aesthetic emotion. Our conception of the creation of such rarefied art is analogous to the painstaking process of extracting and distilling precious from the earthly soil of human experience. The refined riches of human emotion, singularly expressed by poetics, are painstakingly extracted from the conglomerate “soil” of Man’s empirical experience, yielding the aesthetic expression of intimately reactive feelings.. As such, the essence and contextual legitimacy of the contextual art form are matters of literary significance. We might, if warranted, avoid the potentially critical charge of presumption by the revelation that our conception and thematic criteria for” poetry” are fundamentally based upon our understanding of its conception by the revered English poet, Samuel Baker Coleridge.
We are regular subscribers to such journals and magazines, which, as perceived are ubiquitously considered to be “literary” and aesthetic journals.”The American Scholar” (Phi Beta Kappa), “Smithsonian Magazine”, “The Atlantic,” and The “New Criterion” have personally been sources of aesthetic pleasure and, at times, an expansion of consciousness by their respective inclusion of contributors of well-written and thought-provoking essays on a universe of thought-provoking matters philisophical and ethical, as well as the issues of the day.
Such established and recognizably excellent journals, nevertheless, seem to have a mutual affinity for the mutual publication of works of “poetry”; the latter provoking the conceivably radical but hopefully non-presumptuous context of this perturbed writing. Stated simply, we would, thematically, inquire as to the legitimacy of these regularly presented offerings, in fact, as “poetry,” in the ultimate analysis? We do not maintain that the ubiquitous offerings are not worthwhile reading;, we merely question their inclusion in the authentic genre of “Poetry.”
We would reprise our declaration that in the creation of “poetry,” we are adherents to the definition of the contextually esoteric art, declared by the classic British poet, Samuel Taylor Breckinridge, viz., that poetry fundamentally consists of ” word imagery and economy of speech.”. As an illustration, we might construe a poetic description of a beautiful young girl as ” a fresh rosebud on a newly fallen drift of snow.” The poetics reside in the economy of the analogical visual description.
In addition to the painstaking obligation to select the words most expressive of the poet’s emotional intent, poetics also involves other aesthetically communicative considerations in its creation, inclusive of, their sylabic arrangement in such a manner that the poet creates a tempo conducive to the desired context of the work. The most accessible example of this expressive technique is best illustrated in Longfellow’s rhythmic work, “Hiawatha,” in which the metric tempo replicates the relevant sound of indian drumbeats. Further impactful considerations are found in the choice of the length of the work’s lines (“stanzas”) as well as the poem itself.
Our illustrative (and favorite) illustrations of truly aesthetic and soul-accessing works of poetry, offered in historical order, are: William Shakespeare’s Sonnet “On Love,” William Wordsworth’s magnificent “Intimations of Immortality,’ and Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric.” The experienced, eclectic combination of analogical metaphor, tempo, and depth of meaning, in our estimation, is irrefutably illustrative of truly artistic and legitimate poetics.
The “poetry” ubiquitously appearing in the estimable journals cited rarely contains the above-stated ingredients mandatorily encompassing our perception of the creation of the singular art of poetry. Instead, we are presented with offerings, albeit at times aesthetically worded, purporting to qualify as poetry, by the intentional use of obscure or archaic vocabulary, unorthodox phrasing, and/or length of line with sophomorically suggestive, albeit unattained, (faux) depth. Some of these troubling entries indicate that they are chosen excerpts from entire volumes of “poetry” produced by the dubious “poet.”
We are disappointed and, expressed prosaically, “discombobulated.”
-p.
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