Re: Kafka and rilke and Perplexity State University

John -- if you were to read the entire Melville piece, out loud, as
poetry, you would it differently than you would as prose. The line
breaks wouldn't be as apparent.

I've heard Ferlinghetti read once, btw -- even shook his limp, dry hand.
  He was speaking at Rollins College in the late 1990s. The college had
purchased a house Kerouac lived in and was devoting it to be used for
poets. LF showed up for the dedication and did a poetry reading that
night at the college. The place was packed -- people filled (literally)
the aisles and were sitting on the floor up front and in back.
Honestly, I wasn't terribly impressed with his poetry, probably because
  it didn't seem very distinguishable from prose.

But asking about poetry being read out loud is really a bit of a red
herring. Most poetry these days isn't heard, it's read, and much of the
effect can't be communicated any way but visually. e.e. cummings is a
good example, so is some of Eliot. I wonder if "reading" was what was
desired for "unheard melodies" in your quotation below...

I'm sure you've heard professional storytellers and professional poets
read their works. Most of the time the diction is completely different.

Thanks much for posting the "eat me" piece. To me, it's unquestionably
dramatic prose and not poetry at all, very Joycean and pretty well done.
  People probably call it poetry for the reasons I gave in my previous
post, and because the word is becoming meaningless in many circles.

And you know, of course, I could cite thousands of pages of
counterexamples. It may be a matter of the exception being substituted
for the rule. The existence of exceptions doesn't always invalidate the
rule, you know.

I think, of course, that Scottie has the real last word in this
discussion :).

Jim

Omlor@aol.com wrote:
> Jim,
>
> You write:
>
> "The difference is in the arrangement of the words, and the effects that
> the arrangement produces. This, I think, is the primary distinction
> between poetry and prose: that the arrangement of the words contributes
> to the effect and meaning in poetry, and that it does not to nearly the
> same extent in most prose."
>
> Then what about heard words? How does one then determine whether they
> are poetry or prose; whether it's the Ferlinghetti pieces I cited
> earlier (offering them from listed web pages) or the Melville (typed
> twice in my last post)? The Ferlinghetti -- "See, it was like this..."
> -- reads quite prosaically out loud, although it is deliberately laid
> out on the page as a poem. And it was a piece meant to be read aloud
> and the author did so numerous times. The Melville sounds like poetry
> when read out loud, although it was originally laid out in prose. So,
> what to do?
>
> What is it the poet said?
>
> "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
> Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
> Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd,
> Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone."
>
> Of course, he also said,
>
> "And no birds sing."
>
> But then again, so did Ferlinghetti, in a "poem" of his "own," didn't he?
>
> Still doing an Aztec two-step,
>
> --John

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Received on Tue Jul 1 09:58:57 2003