Every band ever has covered Edgar Allen Poe. I do a whole lesson on it.
Summary: Poems should have one goal, and be neither too short, nor too long.
Commentary: Poe's birthday is today. I appreciate Eliot lining up things like that. I like including "The Poetic Principle" but not "The Philosophy of Composition" a lot less. They cover a fair amount of the same ground, but "Philosophy" does so much more cleanly than "Principle." While I think both are worth at least one read for most artists, I'd flip them if I had to pick only one. (Sometimes I Frankenstein them both together when teaching. I'm sure that's unthinkable to some purists, but here we are.)
"Principle" takes a lot more words to say mostly the same things, and the excerpts from other authors' poems that Poe chose have never really resonated with me. "Composition" simply uses "The Raven" as its core example, with very minimal excerpts. This does have the minor disadvantage that it more or less requires you to have a copy of "The Raven" open while reading, so you can flip to the sections he's referencing. I think (for the purposes of a single short essay) studying a single poem is much more instructive than the scattershot approach in "Principle." It has the added advantages of Poe's first hand knowledge of his own poem, and much more focused examples. The "Principle" there's a lot of, "look at this poem, see how it's so X", while "Composition" will specifically pull out a single verse to analyze.
Poe is big on "unity of effect" and pieces finding their ideal length, and talks about them in each. "Philosophy" is more focused on unity of effect, while "Principle" spends more time on length. It surprises me that "Philosophy" is the older of the two, since it's much more refined in its treatment of the same topics. While "Principle" spends a considerable amount of time trying to narrow down the difference between too long and too short, "Philosophy" mentions it relatively briefly. If all of a piece is building towards a single central effect, I think it's fair to assume that it will probably find something approximating the right length naturally. In my experience, too long pieces are usually caused primarily by failing to identify the topic, theme, etc. and meandering around without saying anything useful. Too short pieces (rarer) tend to have the same cause. If you don't know that something is the focus of a piece, you're not likely to put enough detail/emphasis on it.
I will give "Principle" credit for one thing that is absent in "Composition", a strong rejection of Didacticism. I spent some time thinking about how this might square with his "unity of effect" and I decided thus: First, Poe never comes out against Didacticism, per se. Rather, he talks about the value of art for art's sake and the futility of attempting to communicate Truth (capital T!) via art. Truth is best stated clearly and plainly. Trying to compose a whole work around it will compromise the work and the Truth, since it's not always pretty, interesting, etc. Truth is a matter of the rational intellect. Duty is a matter of morals. Poetry (and I assume he wouldn't mind extending this to other arts) is simply a matter of taste.
Something that I thought a lot about during my Master's is the politics of art. The statement, "All Art is political" has been bandied for years. In my program, this was accepted as a Truth. In fact, I think it would be less accurate to say that the position was "art is political" and closer to, "if it's not political, it's not art!" (With the ever fun corollary: if it's not political, it is, you're just too privileged to see it.)
For myself, I think it's more accurate to say, "all art is political.*" With the asterisk representing the fact that an artist's worldview will almost inevitably seep into their art. This isn't necessarily conscious or profound. Something as simple as the existence (or lack) of characters in a story can will be political to someone. The level of detail (is it vulgar to describe sex/violence more than passingly) or basic functions of the world (do characters need to struggle to have their basic needs met?) all reveal things about an artist's politics. That doesn't mean they're the point of the story, or that the work is explicitly "political." Otherwise, every act is political. While a person choosing to smoke a cigar may be a political statement, it's more likely that a cigar is just a cigar. On the other hand, explicitly political work is liable to descend into propaganda. As Poe points out, such work will almost certainly fail as art, and has a good chance of also failing to properly illustrate whatever Truth or Duty it's advocating. Chick Tracts have never actually converted anyone. Probably.
No comments:
Post a Comment