Comment:
While reading through the chapters, the Plath poems and more recently, the questions everyone has been asking about poets and their critical self-examination, I had a hard time removing the words of Wordsworth from my head:
"the poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater power in expressing such thoughts and feelings"
I think often this absence of immediate excitement can be interpreted by the poet as a miserable feeling or lack thereof. Plath was certainly fond of doing so. Actually it seems it was necessary for her to explore that numbness, but the inability to react emotionally and conventionally is almost paradoxical in her poetry. The tormenting emotional evocation in her work is undeniably present, which really complicates her purpose or reward from writing, with regards to her subject matter. I'm not sure I can appropriately explain the complexities her poetry and all poetry frequently stirs up.
I think whatever it is we to choose to examine as poets, without such immediate responsiveness, removes us from the present and dislocates us from the rest of humanity.
From a psychoanalytical approach, I'm sure somebody would argue that the things poets choose to write about often relates back to some sort of repression or inability to communicate things otherwise, but I think that is too general, which is why poetry can honor anything.
Question:
Do you think that a poet's self-criticism begins at their detachment from the present and forces them to examine their self before addressing their life experience? And does the order in which we scrutinize existence convey any importance in poetry?
Am I making sense? Is this meaningless?
This is a really interesting question, if I'm understanding it correctly. I always thought Wordworth's idea of "emotion recollected in tranquility" was a little disingenuous. Or, rather, it was his way of taming his radical statements about poetry in order to assure his readers, "oh no, but don't worry, I am writing about this wild, individual emotion in calm moments by the fireplace--I haven't completely ravaged poetry."
ReplyDeleteThat said, I do think many poets are detached from the present, or for that matter, anyone who is overly critical of themselves. Perhaps a person dwells too much in the past, or perhaps a person is so concerned with what the future hold that he/she can't fully experience the emotion of the immediate. I'm not sure where it begins or ends..but it must have some effect on our poetry, depending on who we are.