Can somebody honestly, without being a pretentious cuck about it, explain the objective value of poetry? I've done a research and I still don't get it, at all. The value of prose is easy to see, for it concerns itself with narrative structures, precise, cerebral ideas, and setting the scene. Sure, some poetry does it too, but 99% of it is about feels, abstract ideas, short, meaningless tidbits, or whatever it's author had for breakfast that morning. I've read the analysis of the most celebrated poems and the arguments for its value boil down to
>look at that beautifully constructed rhythm/meter/alliteration/something equally asinine, isn't it amazing! The way the author breaks the line here and not there blows my mind!
>wanking over metaphors/similes/metonyms/critics own brain aneurysm, all the things done much better in a strong prose
So this is it? I'm just supposed to appreciate a poetic stanza for being written kinda neatly? There isn't much to it, no memorable, deep characters, no heartbreaking stories, or metaphysical implications, just a bunch of words about nothing in particular, sewn together in a somewhat cool fashion. The apotheosis of this shit is so called 'pattern poetry', in which you're meant to enjoy a SHAPE of a poem. Fucking hell.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against words being strung in a neat way if that rubs your fancy, but isn't it kind of childish, and unnecessary?
Can somebody honestly, without being a pretentious cuck about it, explain the objective value of poetry...
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I think there are a lot of things in human life and emotion that are exceedingly hard to articulate, and I've always assumed that poetry was an attempt to articulate such things in an indirect way. The chicken-clucking that usually happens AROUND poetry is a mystery to me though.
The best poems for me, personally, are the ones that manage to convey ideas without stating them overtly, and communicating the most information in the smallest space. The first poem that comes to mind here is Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias.
>objective value
>without being a pretentious cuck about it.
You first.
>Can somebody honestly, without being a pretentious cuck about it, explain the objective value of poetry?
The objective value is that it doesn't have objective value. It is pure beauty and art. Utilitarians need not apply.
>objective value in art
>>>reddit
L'art pour l'art, bitch.
You could, by the way, rewrite the op but talk about music or visual arts instead. (Poetry in fact can be appreciated similarly to music, but you reduced all of its musical elements to a sarcastic two-sentence greentext.) If you can't approach different art forms differently, the problem is entirely in your head and can only be fixed by reading poetry with good will and open mind. Poetry isn't going to change to accommodate you, you are the one who has to change, and you personally have to want that. External arguments are highly unlikely to affect your opinion.
>value
utilitlets, when will they learn?
I don't think you understood what I meant. 'Objective' doesn't mean provable by science. I've made an example of objective value present in fiction prose, and why the same values lack in poetry.
>narrative structures, precise, cerebral ideas, and setting the scene
Why are these things "objective values" in prose? What even is objective value in literature/art? Honest question.
>objective value
stopped reading there
Thats a strange question. Their value is obvious and accepted by most people for it's tremendous quality for cultural growth or plain entertainment. I don't see any such things in neatly arranged lines that don't say anything in particular, sorry
And when I say obvious I mean it, even children love reading books, but for reason it takes 40 years in academic circles to appreciate Keats and his writing about love n' shit
>objective value
spooky
Roland Barthes has written about all the things you are looking for (or rather perhaps you are looking but don't want to find) but if you want to learn from him you are going to have to work for it, it isn't compressed into one text.
You can read the essay "Literature According to Minou Drouet" to get a glimpse of what's being discussed - available here at page 113.
This is very interesting user, and I'll make sure to read it all at some point (althrough after scanning a few pages I get a feeling that it's mostly an exercise in philosophical justifications for poesy's function, which is depressing), but don't you think it's a bit strange that an extensive study is required to appreciate poetry, while none to appreciate prose? Surely not all anons on this board studied Roland Barthes, right?
Please stop making these kinds of threads.
yeah...
If the question concerns you that much, OP, look into the branch of linguistics devoted to Poetics.
>Their value is obvious and accepted by most people
Appeal to popularity. Come on, surely you can do better than this.
>it's tremendous quality for cultural growth or plain entertainment.
Entertainment is rooted in a sort of subjective hedonism, it isn't an objective value. I am entertained by poetry, therefore it has value. You aren't entertained, therefore it doesn't have value. So it has and doesn't have value. This of course is not an objective truth.
>cultural growth
I don't understand what this is supposed to be and why contributing to it through prose art is a good thing. Please explain.
>even children love reading books, but for reason it takes 40 years in academic circles to appreciate Keats
I don't even know where to start here. You appeal to the fact that children love reading books. As if they are careful, thoughtful readers whose opinion should be highly regarded. As if they read good books and not Harry Potter-tier shit. As if they somehow can't appreciate poetry. (Notice how you said that children can read some "books" but they can't read Keats, because a 19th century romantic poet can represent a whole art form.) As if that statement isn't in fact bullshit and kids don't generally view reading books as a chore. As if ease of understanding means objective quality. As if there are no extremely difficult novels that academics have to analyze.
Only you here seem to need an essay to enjoy it.
Read it, I think you will be surprised in what you will find because he will not be disproving you he will be in agreement with a lot of what you said and at the same time demonstrate the value. The reason it will require an extensive amout of time is because he will not do it using your model of prose vs poetry he will do it using semiology and the mythic image.
You don't need anything to appreciate anything it will just provide you with a language to describe why you like it.
You can enjoy poetry without knowledge just as you can enjoy music without it.
In our generation prose has been more [easily] enjoyed but that is an expression of our culture not objective truth. This hasn't always been the case in history.
>objective value of poetry
There's no objective value to anything, least of all art or aesthetics.
Your question is logically absurd.
OPpie here again. For example, I would like to get the opinions of anons of supposedly the greatest poem of the 20th centry, "The Waste Land". Questions are
>What moments (be specific) or elements do you find so amazing, memorable and beautiful in this poem. Give me YOUR opinion
>Why were these things important to be expressed in poetic form and not, say, in a short story, full of characters and clearer descriptions. Before you throw in 'it's concise', please note that in literary community it's a common knowledge that poems take longer to write, and take longer to read than prose works of the same volume
If prose is text similar to the way people speak normally, then poetry is text similar to any and all non-normal forms of speech.
Also keep in mind that, historically, poetry was the mode for telling stories in beautiful/interesting ways.
You could honestly argue that modern written-strictly-for-the-page poetry is quite odd, since it has none of the high-minded speaking aims of old poetry (from the Greek epics to even Shakespeare) nor the musicality aims that lyrical songs have.
So, you're left with words on a page, and you wonder why people care. And, I think, you have to remember it being non-normal or specialized speech. Thus the rhythmic form necessarily has importance.
The Waste Land is about texture, weight of allusion and changes in register. He is capturing the feeling of both time and place and between them history, I suppose (in other words, its textbook modernism).
It isn't especially concise.
This is essentially unwinnable because you've attributed value to a mere description of prose, you've not defined value or non-value but its an interesting question I suppose.
So what you're saying is that beauty is meaningless to you. Okay.
When you listen to a piece of music, does it have "memorable, deep characters, heartbreaking stories or metaphysical implications"? If not, what value does it give which makes you like it?
Oh, and in general, poetry is far more metaphysical/philosophical than prose. Far more.
>So what you're saying is that beauty is meaningless to you.
I didn't say. I see the beauty of prose but I don't see the beauty of well-strung lines. Your comparison with music is meaningless and perhaps works against your argument, music affects humans in entirely different ways than language, and musical lyrics often, if not most of the time completely disregard poetic meter or structure.
>Oh, and in general, poetry is far more metaphysical/philosophical than prose. Far more.
I agree on that, but poetry almost HAS to be like that, for the lack of everything else. It's a metaphor for the sake of metaphor
try reading The Poetic Principle and The Philosophy of Composition. I think they both illustrate the value of poetry. It also provides a justification for its brevity and relative simplicity compared to prose.
>music affects humans in entirely different ways than language
You don't hear language? The word 'crack' sounds exactly the same to you as 'sweet' does?
>and musical lyrics often, if not most of the time completely disregard poetic meter or structure.
Because they're following the metre of a tune. The metre of poetry in English is stress. The concept is the same.
>It's a metaphor for the sake of metaphor
Good because metaphor is beautiful and incredibly satisfying:
In me, thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west
or
Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled melancholy has her sovereign shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose tongue
Has burst joy's grape against his palate fine.
or Homer's "wine-dark sea".
>value
Sorry, I was typing from memory and got the second quote wrong:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
it feels nice