Sunday, October 4, 2015

Comprehensive Vision of Poetry

Comprehensive Vision of Poetry

Poetry that requires showmanship will vanish with the showman.

Poetry that relies on the quality of the vision presented in the elegance of well-crafted text will last millennia.

Homer has lasted almost 3 millennia so far.

Many other poems were being written at the time of Homer, yet his lasted because he created a comprehensive view of human life with interacting characters.

Reading this article about Kenneth Goldsmith helped clarify in my mind what makes poetry a failure or a success.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/05/something-borrowed-wilkinson

Kenneth Goldsmith​ has so far been defeated by the anxiety of influence because there is so much information these days he cannot figure out how to distill it all into key dramatic interactions that present a comprehensive view of human life, so he thinks just copying it all is "poetry", but it is not. Poetry is designing and "making" a comprehensive view of life.

The argument of modernism is that life is fragmented and too complex, and thus such a comprehensive view is impossible to create.

Life has always been chaotic and complicated, and artists always discover salient threads to weave into a tapestry of life and create dramatic stories that appeal to our narrative sense of love for the beauty of life.

Through my composition of the Hermead of Surazeus​ I am attempting to construct a comprehensive view of the development of philosophy and science by writing biographic epic poems about the lives of philosophers and scientists. It is but one small way of weaving the tapestry of life.

Whitman presented himself as an American Adam.

I see the foundations of American culture in ancient Greek philosophers, so I am writing an epic about their lives. I find it thrilling and enlightening to put on the mask of each philosopher and explore their life and ideas through a narrative of their quest for truth.

http://tinyurl.com/HermeadEditions

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