Thanks, Eileen. I think you’re absolutely right. In mulling this subject, I think I’ve committed an error I seem to make quite often: over-conceptualizing and under-executing. Instead of pondering some grand theory of what a poetic drama might look like, I should focus on writing some, and then seeing what they do look like.

I’m obliged to you for the reality check. Yes, it is that simple.

I find that hard to believe.

Also, being provacative doesn’t necessarily mean you have anything insightful or interesting to say.

How do you follow the lead of Ibsen? That’s realism, not verse.

‘Mother, give me the sun’ is poetic, but Ibsen will always be thought of as a playwright; poets can’t claim him.

Shakespeare, however, is a poet, and is the elephant in this room because he’s verse and he’s wildly popular–no one else comes close. S. was such a genius that it’s not certain whether he’s dramatic (and successful) *because* of his verse, or in *spite* of his verse. The link between verse and drama seems to be the key question here.”

I got two responses to the comment. The first would be, and directed to all poetry critics, stop telling verse what it should be. Ya’ll almost always, damn near always, get it wrong

Second response. There are those who feed on Shakespeare because his language puts a barrier between them and the raw of experience, the majority of Shakespeare readers. And there are those who draw on, lean on, the existential truths his dramatic poetry expressed. I figure all the great dramatic poets since him have drawn on the latter.

I guess for some poetry should seduce. I guess for others poetry’s purpose is to reveal.

Terreson

How do you follow the lead of Ibsen? That’s realism, not verse.

“Mother, give me the sun” is poetic, but Ibsen will always be thought of as a playwright; poets can’t claim him.

Shakespeare, however, is a poet, and is the elephant in this room because he’s verse and he’s wildly popular–no one else comes close. S. was such a genius that it’s not certain whether he’s dramatic (and successful) *because* of his verse, or in *spite* of his verse. The link between verse and drama seems to be the key question here.

Thomas

That’d be nice.

I think The West Wing is the closest we have come to a verse television show. All the dialogue was written in iambicpentameter. (or was it just iambic?)

I’ve been following the discussion not sure if I have anything worth adding to it, which may likely still be the case. Just to be clear on the definitions employed by poetic drama what is meant strictly is verse drama, right? Or dramatic poetry written in verse, usually, but not always, rendered in blank verse form. I believe Brouwer’s point is to ask why more poets do not work in verse drama. And not a few contributors have pointed out examples of poets today still working in verse drama, again usually in blank verse form. So far so good.

This may be too much of the long view for the discussion but I too have been thinking about the question, whatever happened to the verse drama, for a couple of decades now. The answer I’ve come to, tentatively, is that the shapes of things morph through time. Through time shape-forms change and for a variety of reasons. This is as true geologically as it is true biologically, culturally and socially. In the case of verse drama the reasons for the morphing could be environmental, cultural, and especially linguistic.

Were I inclined today, this moment, to commit myself to dramatic poetry I would not follow the lead of Shakespeare, Yeats, or Eliot, all of whom worked mostly in blank verse. Instead I would follow the lead of Ibsen, O’Neil, Albee, Osborne, even and maybe especially the lead of Artaud. My reasoning is this: when it comes to impact the latter group is far more effective, far more affecting. As much as I may love the language Shakespeare employed it remains that he placed language between character and the dramatic moment. And it ran interference, drawing more attention to itself, less attention to either character or moment.

So what I am thinking tonight is this: if verse drama has been superceded by other forms of dramatic language, and it has, it is because a different sort of language has proved more effective, more affecting. Somebody upthread mentioned the poetic drama of Lorca. He might just have been the first when it comes to the grounding of verse drama in word impact.

Terreson

Sheesh. Long day at Stonecoast, time to get some sleep…

zzzzzzzzzzz
AF

(I got spoiled by being able to edit my comments on my own threads!)