(1) Setting it to music made it more memorable.
(2) The music commingled to reinforce the content.

After a while, lyric poetry was no longer set to the lyre and relied
on the internal pacing of the language to set the music. This requires
effort from the reader to reconstitute.

Poems which continued to be set to music were called lays or ballads.
We call them songs now. Modern song lyrics are close in quality to old
ballads.

To make a good lyric poem you have to be a good craftisan, blending
sense with sound. Ezra Pound called the sense logopoeia and the sound
melopoeia. He also added phanopoeia which means imagery, though we may
add smells and actions and so on.

All western poetry including the lyric had been Homeric since Homer,
until Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, Coleridge's notebooks, and John
Keats and Emily Dickinson's letters.

DW, STC, Keats, and ED found what was essential amongst the feelings
we call lyric, and set them free from melopoeia. What was interesting
about this was not so much the setting free, but their conception of
what was essential.

Some of their spirit may be found earlier in Fox's Journal and
Boswell's Life of Johnson.

What treble credit course reading material would I give?

The Odyssey, Sappho's poems compared amongst two translations. Nashe
and Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage. Nashe's Terrors of the Night. A
Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. The Poetical Essays on the
Phoenix and Turtle. The Masque of Queens by Jonson. L'Allegro and Il
Penseroso. Holmes's biographies of Coleridge. Dorothy Wordsworth's
journals, and Perry's abridgement of the STC notebooks. Dickinson's
Wild Nights fascicle. The Celtic Twilight by Yeats, Chesterton's
Tremendous Trifles.

T.S. Eliot said there can be page fright as well as stage fright. This
is when a reader is too tense to get the import of poetry.

To beat page fright, you have to love the poetry and desire to know
everything about every aspect of it that you can find. This is as true
of Van Gogh's paintings and Robert Johnson's songs as it is of
Shakespeare's Sonnets. To read wild poems is more than just the act of
saying each of their words in your head.

The reader must be compeer to the poet, a very strange relationship.

On 27 Jun 2010, at 12:50, Sean B. Palmer wrote:

> To beat page fright, you have to love the poetry and desire to know
> everything about every aspect of it that you can find. This is as true
> of Van Gogh's paintings and Robert Johnson's songs as it is of
> Shakespeare's Sonnets. To read wild poems is more than just the act of
> saying each of their words in your head.
>
> The reader must be compeer to the poet, a very strange relationship.

It strikes me that different forms of expression are different in regards to how much effort and perseverance you need to understand or appreciate them. Some things are instantly enjoyable, and some other things feel tough or laborious to get any enjoyment out of.

If i am talking with a friend, they can say or do something very beautiful and I might appreciate it instantaneously. But how much of that is because we have so much shared context? It feels effortless, but only because the ground work has been put in already.

But then again, sometimes, some forms of expression touch us instantly. We don't need to tune in, we don't need to think about it. It tunes US in. It grabs us, and forces us to pay attention.

A good picture can do this instantaneously. I've found bits of poetry, or literature, that grabs me in a similar way. There's no conscious effort on my part to appreciate these things. They just work, or stick, on some level.

Are you suggesting that with poetry or literature, there is some difference here? That to truely appreciate a poem, we have to be an equal with the poet? If that is the case, do you think it applies to poetry where it does not apply to other areas?

You're far more familiar with poetry than I am, but there are counter examples. I could, for instance, point to really good film. I could start listing the reasons why Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction are such good films, by pointing out all the allusions, references, and techniques the director is using.

I could similarly argue that even then, I am missing huge collections of things because I am not a director of Tarantino's skill. And that to properly appreciate them, I would have to be on his level. Maybe this is the same with lots of things?

But there's something about poetry and literature that strikes me as quite hard. I don't know why this is. It might be to do with my dyslexia or my ADHD, or it might be that the whole thing is a less direct experience. There is something inherently abstract about writing.

But i find that providing myself with the context, or putting in the effort to appreciate these types of things seems to take a disproportionately long time given the reward I usually find at the end of it.

There are some notible exceptions. but maybe that's just me finding good things, as opposed to finding medicore things. Even in that case, the cost on my part in finding out the difference between the two seems to high

With something like film, or music — the process of delving into the context, and learning to understand and appreciate a work can feel very fun. In fact, for me, it forms part of the experience, you know? I love learning new bits about why something works the way it does.

I am tempted to liken this to an onion. With each layer being a new level of understanding. When you're first introduced to the work, you have the outer layer only, and as you peel back each layer you get deeper and deeper into the work. To reach the core of it, you'd probably have to be the creator. And even then, ... perhaps not.

This process of unravelling with, of getting to grips with, of becomming familiar with – when applied to a genre as a whole, or a collection of works - is really just the process of good connoisseurship.

But this makes me wonder about the distribution of effort verses the enjoyment of the process. Some things can be beautiful right on the outer layer. And some things seem opaque and impenetrable. The beauty only really starting to show once you've dug deep enough under the surface.

I'd like to think that a good work would distribute the enjoyment throughout. So that casual observers can really get a good feel for it, and enjoy it, without having to put much effort in. But that further work is equally rewarded.

I don't know if it's just me, and the problems that I have with literature, but it seems that a lot of the stuff I have found tends to be quite bottom heavy in this regard. I get stuck not being able to enjoy the outer layers.

This is one of the reason i love Coleridge and Chesterton so much. Even on the outer surfaces, this stuff really dazzles you. And even though I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest I've got farther than a few layers deep, they seem to get better and better the more you penetrate them.

So you might say that to really appreciate a work, you have to be on the same level as the artest or poet. But i would counter that a good poet or a good artist can produce things that manage captivate the novice, as well as reward the connoisseur.

Without that, what hope is there of people finding the good stuff?

On 28 Jun 2010, at 00:55, Noah Slater wrote:

> So you might say that to really appreciate a work, you have to be on the same level as the artest or poet. But i would counter that a good poet or a good artist can produce things that manage captivate the novice, as well as reward the connoisseur.

Roger Ebert linked to this today:

"Proof again that artists have no business judging their own material: "There are a few better than others, half a dozen, but it’s a surprising paucity of worthwhile celluloid," says Woody Allen of his own movies in a delightfully depressing London Times interview today. His six favorites: Purple Rose of Cairo, Match Point, Bullets Over Broadway, Zelig, Husbands and Wives, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Feel free to identify the dozen or so better Woody films in the comments."

— http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/06/woody_allens_six_favorite_wood.html

Which got me thinking about your email.

If you have to be on the same level as the artist to appreciate the art, then what is going on here? If it was just Ebert saying this, then it might not be an issue. But it seems everyone disagrees with Allen about what his best works are. Would you argue with Shakespeare about his best plays? And if so, what does that say about you both being compeer?

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:55 AM, Noah Slater wrote:

> So you might say that to really appreciate a work, you have to be on
> the same level as the artest or poet. But i would counter that a good
> poet or a good artist can produce things that manage captivate the
> novice, as well as reward the connoisseur.
>
> Without that, what hope is there of people finding the good stuff?

I think almost the opposite, that the continual desire for works that
we can appreciate on all levels is a modern phenomenon developed
because we have such short attention spans. "If it's not good when I
first see it, I'm not giving it the time of day" is not a point of
view that I like.

But you phrased the question differently, to your credit. You said,
can't the best authors make things good at all levels? I think
Shakespeare was good at this, but even he didn't succeed at that, in
my opinion, in the Sonnets. Perhaps he didn't want to in those. I
don't think authors should be obligated to do that though.

Take Wittgenstein for example. Man, you need to do a lot of work to
get what Wittgenstein is even broadly going on about. Wittgenstein is
dangerous when only partially understood. Heck, he's dangerous even
when well understood. But you wouldn't just idly dismiss him as not
worth bothering about because you have to study him so deeply, surely?

I would submit that some of the best works are the best only *because*
they have their stuff locked up so far within them. But though I use
that internalised metaphor, I actually think a lot of it is more due
to context. You start with the work and move outwards, and then that
enhances your view of the centre.

I do think that what I said about lyric poetry in terms of the Bell
problem applies to movies too, yeah. This is why I mentioned painting,
music, and sonnets. Could easily have added various other art forms.

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 10:20 AM, Noah Slater wrote:

> Would you argue with Shakespeare about his best plays?

Almost certainly.

> And if so, what does that say about you both being compeer?

Good bands disagree on what their best songs and albums were.

What does that say about them being bands?

On 28 June 2010 11:57, Sean B. Palmer <s...@miscoranda.com> wrote:

> I think almost the opposite, that the continual desire for works that
> we can appreciate on all levels is a modern phenomenon developed
> because we have such short attention spans. "If it's not good when I
> first see it, I'm not giving it the time of day" is not a point of
> view that I like.

IMHO it's a statement of fact though.

> I would submit that some of the best works are the best only *because*
> they have their stuff locked up so far within them.

Best for what/whom?

Two people read the same poem. One is thrilled by it after skimming it.
The other thinks it trite.

Just perspective?

Reading a poem or studying it with pages of annotations. If the end result
is pleasure or gratification or an increase in knowledge or ... something
else sought from the poem then that's surely a win for that person?

regards

--
Dave Pawson
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