Comments on: Easy listening

By: J Frank Parnell

J Frank Parnell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:16:09 +0000

Sebald makes a fantastic example of what’s truly poetic, rather than prosaic evocations of fuzziness or sympathetic urges. His books work like wonderful nonfiction machines. German engineering gone literature? Sometimes, fiction is beauty, and beauty, fiction.

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:18:57 +0000

“Poets . . . are not only the authors of language & of music, of the dance & architecture & statuary & painting: they are the institutors of laws & the founders of civil society & the inventors of the arts of life & the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful & the true that partial apprehension of all the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion….
“Language, colour, form, & religious & civil habits of action are all the instruments & materials of poetry; they may be called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonime of the cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, & especially metrical language which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man.”

By: Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:36:00 +0000

That’s all very familiar, Forrest. It’s also a word people turn to as a last resort, when they are nervous and embarrassed but feel obliged to say something. “You’re a poet! How …. poetic!”

By: Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:56:06 +0000

On this side of the Atlantic, we run into the same sort of thing. The newspaper– The New York Times, for instance– is daily chocked with references to poetry, a dance is “pure poetry,” a baseball player moves “like poetry,” a novel is poetic. The source word– poetry– has no meaning of its own; there are no reviews or discussions or citations of poetry. But the corollary and metaphorical meanings proliferate. Everyone knows something that is like poetry, but no one has any idea what poetry is.

By: Jane

Jane — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:50:55 +0000

I grew up in Buffalo- land ‘o snow…sort of like growing up in the butt of the joke, which ironically is on those who have never experienced all four seasons so acutely. That experience makes poetry.

By: BPO

BPO — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:32:31 +0000

beautiful! thank you for posting this.