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January 29, 2007
"Tradition and Individual Talent"
“ Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it.”
This spoke to me, because as a poet, I try to write things that will make people feel something and I really liked how Eliot explained that a poet is really only truly great if they can make even a person who hasn’t experienced what he or she is going through feel the same as the poet may have. When we look at a literary work, we may want to criticize it based on feelings, but we really do have to look at other critic’s and the genre of the work itself before we can make a strong criticism.
Posted by ErinWaite at January 29, 2007 10:51 AM
Comments
Eliot also says that poems can communicate experiences the poet has never actually had!
You might want to see what I posted on Sue's blog.
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/SueMyers/018924.html
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at January 29, 2007 2:48 PM
I will, thanks, Dr. J! I find I actually write better about things I don't know about because I'm not so attached and hung up.
Posted by: Erin at January 29, 2007 3:46 PM
Erin I have to say that I fall into the same trap. I tend to try and make my readers feel the same way that I feel while writing the poem, but I don't think that that is what Eliot is trying to say. I think that he is trying to get writers to realize that by just portraying emotions of the moment the truely great poets are able to detach themselves from an emotion and then write about it. The detaching of the emotion helps the writer to become very objective when writing a certain piece.
Posted by: Tiffany at January 31, 2007 8:44 PM
If it's objective, more people can relate to it, thanks Tiffany.
Posted by: Erin at February 2, 2007 10:54 AM