Monday, January 11, 2010
Poetry's Indirectness
As discussed in class, poetry chooses to describe experience indirectly. The reason for this is simple: Often exploring experience indirectly is more truthful than direct language – we live our lives through emotion, and emotion loses its meaning when approached through direct language.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
Poetry does not describe feelings and emotions in a direct way. They always use indirect language like a metaphor or similie to convey their meaning. I think that this is a very important part of poetry. There really are no words for strong emotions like love and anger. A poem is trying to connect with the person that is reading it. If they don't know what they are feeling and are confused, poetry can help them out.
Poetry not only describes emotions, it expands on them. It can show you what an emotion is like and how and why people experience it. Doing all of this in writing is impossible. So poets decided to use their own experiences to show them to others and help them understand the confusing emotions that we have. This is a wonderful part of poetry, and it isn't just something that the poets decided to do. I think that describing things indirectly is one of the definitions for poetry.
Poetry is more than words describing an emotion. It is similies and metaphors that are used explain an emotion. Feelings are easier to describe when using an experience or comparasin rather than the definition of the word. This makes the writing more vivid and real to the reader. This is an indirect way to express feelings or thoughts to a reader and make them get as close as possilbe to feeling it too. Trying to make a someone understand what anger feels like that has never experienced it before, is nearly imposossible using book definitions to explain it. Using metaphors or comparasins can get the reader to almost experience the anger for themselves.
In poetry, instad of saying, "i'm upset" you use describing words and hints to show that you are upset. You could say something like, "My eyes were wide and full of tears." Just this is enough to describe how you feel without giving it away too directly. Everyone feels emotion and know exactly what it is. When you are happy, you don't think about how you have a smile across your face, you think about how you're so happy. In poetry, like "MMiller" said, you expand your emotions in poetry. You go deep into thoughts and describe your feelings in ways you would not usually think of. Poetry can almost make you feel like you are in the exact same situation as the poet is writing about. It puts you inside your own story and makes you think into deeper thoughts. Poetry can almost inspire you to write your own poems.
When you include more detail into a poem, it makes it feel more real. When you give direct language, the poem doesn't feel as real. When you give indirect language, you know exactly how the writer is feeling and you almost think through your mind how good a poem is when it uses indirect language. I can relate to this feeling when I listen to a song. While I'm listening to a good song, I can relate it to my own life and it really puts me into thought. One artist I always listen to and really think about her music is Taylor Swift. Whenever you listen to a Taylor Swift song, you can't help but think about something or someone.
I agree with this statement completely. Our lives are lived through our emotions, and why make them more unclear by using direct language? We all know that it sounds funny saying something is more unclear by stating it directly, but the truth is that stating it indirectly is more clear and more truthful. Also, using the indirect language is more descriptive. For example, if you were to say i really like you, or saying i like you like peanut butter likes jelly is a lot more clear about how you feel. As we also discussed in class, the direct way is sometimes scientific and too complecated, where as the indirect way is more clear and to the point.
Exactly as this says, emotion loses its meaning when it is told through direct language. All emotions are too complex to simply right about them directly. For example, if you were to try to explain love, it would be almost impossible to do this with few words. To describe love you would need words that describe the joy and bliss of love, but also the pain and heartbreak you can feel. You need to show how love can feel from all different perspectives and certain times. And for someone who has never felt this, it would be extremely difficult to begin to explain it to them in simple direct words.
That’s why we use similes and metaphors. For example, you could now say love is like an emotional roller coaster, instead of saying that love is simply just joy and sadness. Using similes and metaphors, the writings become almost tangible because of the great detail and it becomes something we can feel. I believe that is when you know you have made your point in poetry.
Through the use of figurative language, such as metaphors, similies, personification, and imager, poetry shows the reader what is happening, not simply telling them. It gives a clear picture of what is going on in a way that other types of writing cannot. Also, it can help a person experience an emotion, without using the dictionary definition, which usually doesn't help very much anyway. Although it is sometimes over-the-top and "frivolous", poetry can express emotion like other writing cannot.
Poetry is definitely a more artful and indirect way of describing emotions. It expresses how you feel in so many different ways, and can be interpreted in many different ways as well. A poem can be 3 paragraphs long, when the only thing the author is trying to say is "i'm sad".
Along with describing emotions, poetry also expands them. When E.E. Cummings writes a love poem, he is not only saying "I love you", but he is also using metaphors and similes to express how much he really does love you. That is what poetry does, it takes emotions and makes them more meaningful, while also making them bigger.
Poetry is never direct and to the point it explains emotions and reactions by using metaphors and similes. Poetry is meant to be interpreted in different ways so the author doesn't want to give a direct answer to what he/she is feeling they want to make the reader think about what they are reading and so they have their own interpretations. When something is explained very directly a person never understands the deeper meaning. For example, if someone didn't know what love meant and I explained it as liking someone a lot the person might think that love can be used at any time. On the other hand if I explained it has having a connection with a person that you would care for no matter what the person would understand that love is strong word. In poetry when a poet uses many different similes and metaphors it gives the reader a better understating of what the author is feeling.
Poetry is normally not direct, but the reason the poet chose to do this varries. Just as authors of novels and stories, poets like to get their views out into the world without being persicuted for it. They use alegories to help hide their opinions and thoughts. This helps to prevent accusations of being anti-government or whatever the issue is against. They simply wrote a poem about the yooks and zooks (Dr. Suess The Butter Battle Book). This allows them to get the real truth according to them into the public's mind.
Another reason poets use insirect language is to hide their real emotions. People never really say how they really feel. They may use a vague term like sad to describe their feelings, but through indirect language, you can but thoughts to the unnamed feelings. It is simpler to put and idea into a readers head than it is a word that is linked to a more vague thought.
Poetry is a different style of writing where the words are not as literal as a story or a regular book. Poetry has so much emotion in it and the poets usually put this emotion in by using indirect language. This is like when people say that actions speak louder than words. In poetry using indirect language speaks louder than using direct language. It helps the reader to connect to different situations easily and it has a deeper meaning to it. It also lets people connect the feelings of two things. For example when someone says that “Love is like wildflowers; It's often found in the most unlikely places.” it will help someone understand where you find love. Wildflowers are grow in very random areas, and this will help relate to love because love can be found in some strange places with people you never would have thought. Most poets do use indirect language because it gives the words that they are writing a much deeper meaning that will help the reader to connect to the poem easily and actually take something away from reading it.
I agree with this comment. Poetry doesn't ever simply state the emotionless meaning of a word or phrase. It uses different techniques such as similies, metaphors, personification, etc. in order to capture the full emotions that this word or phrase results in. This emotion makes the word more relatable to people and easier to understand. Most everyone is not going to completely understand a scientic definition to a word, we learn through emotions and experience. What poetry captures is the human experience and emotions, making the word more meaningful than a simple scientific definition.
An example of this logic is found when a dictionary describes the emotion anger and when a poetry describes it. The definition for anger according to dictionary.com is "a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire.". In comparison, Maria Taylor describes anger in a more understandable and relatable aspect in her poem " So angry, so sad."
"Anger is a form of fear
Anger is a force that can never die
Anger building up
Anger is a virus
Anger is a like vicious circle it goes,
around and around
Anger,
The root of all evil
Anger is such a strong emotion
So angry,
So sad
Anger is bubbling away at me
I have good reason to be angry
No one understand,
No one cares
It tears out my heart"
As portrayed above, a poem captures an emotional apsect to words or phrases that could never be captured in a simple dictionary definition.
Poetry does not always describe events directly, and by indirectly describing them the poem is more truthful. An example of this is the poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen. This poem shows people alot more about the war then a write up of how many people died and were injuryed. In this poem, Owen describes just one person dying, but the detail of it shows how hard and sad the war really was.
Poetry describes feelings in an indirect way because, I think, they usually talk about things that are hard to decribe. The literal definition of most things would burst half the brain cells of a person trying to comprehend it, so poetry allows a reader to relate to the feelings in an easier way. Poetry can be a definition for many things, in an easily expressible way. Poetry doesn't say that love is the stimulating of certain parts of your brain when an unpronouncable chemical is released. Poetry says that love is running down the beach with your dog or something with emotional stuff in it. This is why poetry is a style of writing all its own, because of how it is presented.
Poetry does not describe things in a direct way. There are many reasons for this, including that sometimes saying things in a less direct way speaks more of the truth. For example, anyone can state the dictionary definition of love. But only those who have truly experianced the emotion can put it into words and metaphors, using indirect ways as a definition. Poetry is a great example of this, because it almost never states things directly. This is why poetry is generally described as more truthful than other written art forms.
I agree with all of comments made before my own that poetry is giving you the ability to say something without actually say something. You can be absolutely, desperately in love with someone, but fail in telling them. When things come to it, you may be better at writing it that saying it and it's okay. Poetry gives us the chance to use metaphors and similes because they give us a feeling, not just vague words with overused emphasis on the same ideas.
Also, as had been mentioned before, poetry has the ability to help you come up with the right ways to describe a chaos within the heart. Poetry can become a powerful tool to figure out the way someone may truly feel.
Poetry is made very interesting when it is written through indirect language. It gives the reader a different perspective to look at the way the author is telling it. For example, if the author wanted to say that the girl was happy, they could write, "The girl was happy," or they could write, "The girl was jumping up and down excitement filling in her eyes." It gives the writing more meaning and purpose. The emotion lost its meaning in the first quote which would have been the direct way of saying it. Whereas in the second quote or the indirect quote added so much to the meaning.
As many people have said you can escape direct writing by using techniques such as metaphors and similes. They give the reader something to compare what is actually going on to. For example, the author could say "The girls eyes were blue," or the author could say, "The girls eyes were as blue as a piece of china in the freshly cleaned china cabinet." It adds so much more meaning to what you are trying to say, instead of just saying it directly.
Post a Comment