Listen to my Thousand Virgils
Apparently Robert Frost said of poetry, "Look after the sound and the sense will take care of itself."
Everyone has read Bob's old "Walking home in the snow" poem:
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I think it's a great poem to use for freshman and highschoolers, because it makes a bridge between their childish archaic notions of how poetry should sound, and what poetry can actually dowhen it's made with brilliance and brilliance. This is the kind of poetry I was exposed to as I started out in highschool. It has perfect rhyme, and perfect assonance, and consonance, just like they tell you in Poetry School for Babies. But when you read it again and again, you start to notice that the only hard repetitive sound is the s, which zips through the soft letters and becomes like the sound of the wind in the trees at night, right there in the words. The sound isn't just fun and pretty. It's not just pretty, and thus "artistic." It's something where the sound turns into the scene - the sound is part of the image.
The important distinction is between "looking after the sound" and FORCED RHYME.
For example, Keith Urban among other cheezy country stars:
And take your cap and leave my sweater
'Cause we have nothing left to weather
In fact I'll feel a whole lot better
This is forced rhyme. It is an example of get off my fucking radio.
I think the importance of the Robert Frost quote is to tell people to knock it off with the forced rhyme, and to give more respect to the linguistic sound of their verses, rhyming or not, than cheap lyricists will try to sell you. This song would be a thousand times better if he just didn't bother trying to rhyme, or came up with almost anything else. I mean please.
Anyways the point of all this was to say that today skimming half of an article about John Ashbury in which the guy quotes some people semi-related has made me feel a lot better about my own poetry process, because I feel like I spend a lot more time nitpicking the sound and line-breakey-type details than getting into the logos of my poetry.
Though I do get there eventually.
So thanks again Virgil.
Everyone has read Bob's old "Walking home in the snow" poem:
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I think it's a great poem to use for freshman and highschoolers, because it makes a bridge between their childish archaic notions of how poetry should sound, and what poetry can actually dowhen it's made with brilliance and brilliance. This is the kind of poetry I was exposed to as I started out in highschool. It has perfect rhyme, and perfect assonance, and consonance, just like they tell you in Poetry School for Babies. But when you read it again and again, you start to notice that the only hard repetitive sound is the s, which zips through the soft letters and becomes like the sound of the wind in the trees at night, right there in the words. The sound isn't just fun and pretty. It's not just pretty, and thus "artistic." It's something where the sound turns into the scene - the sound is part of the image.
The important distinction is between "looking after the sound" and FORCED RHYME.
For example, Keith Urban among other cheezy country stars:
And take your cap and leave my sweater
'Cause we have nothing left to weather
In fact I'll feel a whole lot better
This is forced rhyme. It is an example of get off my fucking radio.
I think the importance of the Robert Frost quote is to tell people to knock it off with the forced rhyme, and to give more respect to the linguistic sound of their verses, rhyming or not, than cheap lyricists will try to sell you. This song would be a thousand times better if he just didn't bother trying to rhyme, or came up with almost anything else. I mean please.
Anyways the point of all this was to say that today skimming half of an article about John Ashbury in which the guy quotes some people semi-related has made me feel a lot better about my own poetry process, because I feel like I spend a lot more time nitpicking the sound and line-breakey-type details than getting into the logos of my poetry.
Though I do get there eventually.
So thanks again Virgil.