I know my last post of 2500 some words on the intricacies of poetic theory repelled the average reader, though I doubt any of my readers are average. Yet the more I write for purpose, either publication or pay or both, the less I blog. Thus the frequency of my blogging, as my mood continues to be improved, must either fall or its matter more compress. I prefer the latter.
I don't like toilet paper so I use baby wipes for my business. But the title of the latest box I bought was too much to take: "Little Kisses." (I hope candy kisses are not implied, though they are at least hidden by tin foil, not visible through the translucent wipe.)
Kenyon the dog won't go out in the rain unless he really has to go. But in concert with the falling moisture, he will only go number one and not number two. If rain continues I'm confident that constipation will eventually be an adequate motivator, but he shall surely pay for the dereliction with increased straining and consequent pain to his hips. Hey, once you start potty talk it's hard to stop.
I hate brandy because I drink too much of it, while wine, which I like less, is more manageable. Samuel Johnson said, "No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." That doesn't mean being honest about your pleasures makes you feel any better.
I'm going to undertake finishing the second half of my airport novel (thriller) in hopes of making money again. Sydney Sheldon recently died and needs a replacement, so I've heard from the angels.
I'm sorry I haven't visited more blogs lately. Reciprocity is good and good for one's narcissism. I'll get around to it. And if you have a blog you want me to check out, please write.
The art of writing is so outmoded by text communication and grammarless, breathless e-mail messages, know that in even reading my fairly literate blog that you are part of a diminishing minority. Fahrenheit 451.
I've been reading Walden Pond. Thoreau, in his way, is very funny, especially when satirizing the unnecessary "getting and spending" of the rich, or even modestly successful.
At 1 Kilobunny,
CE
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Selected Poems and Love Poems 1998-2008 ON SALE NOW!
Well, I'm thinking hard on your mandala. I get the distinction between open and closed (tho obviously there's some grey), but I'm not completely sure about inductive/deductive. Does it depend mostly on the _order_ in which the poet presents elements-- ie. in the Jeffers poem, if the last two lines came first, would that make it deductive? (Besides making it a much weaker poem.) What about a longer poem, which might alternate between experiential and interpretive elements?
ReplyDelete"Poetry has always been about what is derived from experience, not just experience itself"-- This is one of my pet peeves with a lot of modern poetry: the idea that direct experience is the only thing worth writing about. It rather devalues imagination and imaginative empathy.
Since you offered, I'd be happy if you'd stop by my blog-- it's linked from my sig.
People seem to stumble over this distinction, which, of course, the blind author thought clear. An inductive poem begins with reality; a deductive poem begins with an interpretation of reality or at least, poetic reality. The two may mix and match but in the end, it's fairly clear where the poem came from--from the head or from external experience...
ReplyDeleteI'm still confused.
ReplyDeleteHow do you separate the head experience from the external experience?
How do you write reality?
The instant it's written down, it isn't real anymore.
No matter how much I want you to hear the chickadees I heard this morning chatting in the cherry tree just outside my bedroom window, I can't do that experience, the head experience and the external experience justice.
Sure, I can describe it. I can convince you, if I'm good enough, that it was real, that I really did hear those chickadees and that it really did sound like they were chatting.
But it isn't real.
Isn't all writing merely an interpretation of reality?
I've been wanting to ask what tiel asked ever since you first began posting about inductive versus deductive.
There are fleeting moments when I think I "get" the difference between the two, but then that moment slips away.
Does the difference have to do with resisting metaphor? Or diving headlong into it?
I see the problem, I think. Discard "reality" and think "immediate experience" as opposed to "emotion recollected tranquility."
ReplyDeleteI
The golden poppy swayed
in the West Wind.
II
When I see your blonde hair on your slender neck,
I think of a golden poppy.
And metaphor, as long as it's used to approximate immediate experience because of the limits of language, need not be deductive, though more often it is. Think of "The Red Wheelbarrow" as an absolutely inductive poem, "The Second Coming" as deductive.
Of course, writing something down is a second order experience, whereas writing about the thing you wrote down--a real, external thing, not an internal thought or emotion--is at least a third order experience.
No need to split hairs. I can post a million examples if it will help more than the four I posted in the essay.
CE