Russian main page << >>English main page

Q&A about Poetry
(unfinished)

Q1 A poem transfer something from writer to reader. What is the best word for this something?
A1 Previously I used words “Information” and “Energy” but now I prefer word “Impulse” and I tell you why. Imagine your TV-set you are watching in the evening. Energy goes through the TV-set as electric power and information goes through it as broadcasting signal. Both of them are flow when system is running. But when you switch the system from one channel to another you send an impulse and the system change the state. Poem is like the impulse that change the state of mind (and soul and body) of a reader.

Q2 What is the difference between poetry and non-poetry?
A2 If the short piece of text transfers the strong impulse it is the poetry. If the impulse is weak or there is no poetry. The threshold between “strong” and “weak” may be of your own or of some cultural community. But it is not absolute.

Q3 Usually poetry is defined by its elements such as rhyme, rhythm and so on. What are the relationships between the elements and the definition of poetry in A2?
A3 The elements are means or tools an author can use to build the impulse. But he/she has no obligation to use every one of it. Q4 How many poetic tools do you know and how they work?

A4 I classify the tools from my own point of view named “Levels’ theory”. The Levels’ theory introduces 10 different logics (0-9). Every time you consider something you consider it from one and only one of the logics. You can see every of the logic as one channel. I classify the poetic tools by the logics as follows:

0. Sense or meaning
1. Phonetics
2. Repeatability (including rhyme and rhythm)
3. Image
4. Formula
5. Dynamics
6. Rhetoric
7. Associations
8. Worldview
9. Style Lets’ look at this elements one by one.

0. Sense or meaning. The most of poetry is grammatically correct and easy to understand. But not all of it.

anyone lived in a pretty how town (e(dvard) e(stlin) cummings)

Why it is grammatically wrong? And what does it mean? We can transform the “bad” line into the “good” one. But the difference is something the author sends us. Don’t loose it! We can consider “good” line as “absolutely transparent” and “bad” line as “not so transparent” You can imagine text with zero transparency, “absolutely opaque”. It looks like theatric stage with spotlights. Some faces are in the light, but the rest is in the dark deep. IMHO e. e. cummings tells us here that the life is not so easy to understand and even if we understand many things we never understand all.

1. Phonetics Not only sentences or words can transfer information (or energy or impulse) but separate phonemes can. There are 3 ways to transfer by phonemes:

1) When we read the text our body (lips, tongue, and breath) follows the reading. Some of the phonemes make in our body more muscle tension (k, h, g). than another ones (l, v). On vowels (e, i) we can relax the more the wider it is (a, o),

2) Some phonemes sound like phenomena of our life. (And some word are imitation of the phenomenon they point as word “Wind”) So when we read the phonetics (W) we recall the event (wind).

3) Some phonetics from words in the line can recall the word that is not in the line (“vow” and “alone” recall “low”)

Examples:

If you can keep your head, when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
(R.Kipling. If)

Kh - bl - u (Tension, ready to fight)
………………..

Hither, hither, love -
'Tis a ahady mead -
Hither, hither, love!
Let us feed and feed!
(John Keats. Hither, hither, love)

I - th - f (Bees in the summer meadow)
…………………………………..

There let the wind sweep and the plover cry
But thou, go by.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Come not when I am dead)
W - p - l - ai (Wind and birds’ cry in the autumn) …………………………

2. Repeatability

meter

(to be continued)
Jacob Feldman

© 2001 Elena and Yakov Feldman