Art and artifice of Poetry
Youtube Link: The Art and Artifice of Poetry | Hamza Yusuf & Scott Crider
[Music]
Moderator: <> recently wrote an article for us for Renovatio and you make an arguments about poetry so maybe you could just give us a little summation of that
Scott Crider: Certainly, I'm very interested in the topic of "What makes a human being, a human being". And I wanted to identify language which I quite naturally rushed to as that which makes us human and ie we are the
we are the animal with language but then I was remembering encountering this remarkable text at the beginning of putnams art of posy. And in it, he clearly sees language as central to humanity that that really constitutes our humanity as such but he does not focus on the the rhetorical aspect as much as on the poetic which I found really interesting and so I wanted to explore a reading of his text and to just draw from what he says an argument about why it may be that it's poetry that actually makes us human a particular form of language which I think he does associate with rhetoric
but he tensed and continues to throughout it to emphasize poetry itself
and I decided after following his reasoning that he thinks this is the
case because poetry is particularly concentrated form of ordering language
metrically stands a eclis figuratively and I've begun to see that he thinks
that that ordering has a way of reordering the human soul of the one who
participates in poetry and then reorders the the soul of of others as well and so
it becomes a social order and I was really quite stunned to see
that Putnam thinks that poetry more or less makes us human by remaking us
through the poetic art itself one of the interesting things about human beings is
that I don't think there's a culture or civilization that doesn't have poetry
it's a it's really an argument for a universality of nature that there is a
human nature because and and the interesting thing is almost every
peoples and cultures certainly the ones
that all the ones that we know have the poetry is very similar it's about three
seconds for each line and it begins hundreds of years before I mean we have
recorded poetry from China in like I think 500 BC and a homer obviously and
in the in the Greek tradition is even earlier and another aspect that too
fascinates me personally is that arguably every single civilization
because we have Aboriginal peoples and then we have city people people that
create civilizations of very complex aggregates of people living together and
that all of those civilizations are prefaced with great poetry mmm
so for instance if you look at the Greeks I don't think I think it's
arguable that you know you cannot have Plato or Socrates without Homer and and
the number of times that they quote Homer that's right as a source book and
in in the in the Islamic tradition the very first book is the Quran but the
Quran is preceded in almost immediately
the the the the hundred years before the
Quran is the pinnacle of Arabic poetry
and right before the the Quran emerges
was considered they had reached
Acme of poetic prowess the famous ODEs
the seven ODEs that hung in the Kaaba
these were the great they call them
heceta and and then if you look at
European civilization I mean arguably
are in Norton's anthology because with
the Song of Roland you know our
literature begins with a song of Roland
and then the the English Shakespeare is
and Marlowe and all these great poets
Ben Jonson they precede the the King
James Bible I mean it's just amazing
that the King James Bible which is
arguably what created English civilized
in my trouser before that and be a wolf
even before that but arguably
the King James Bible does so much for
America without the King James out we
don't have Abraham Lincoln we don't have
so many of the rhetorical greatness that
the civilization produced yeah the point
about Homer is extremely interesting
because it immediately raises the
question what do we mean by poetry and
on the one hand we do mean measured
speech and so we are yeah we are talking
about dactylic hexameter verse so on the
one hand we recognize that Plato's own
understanding of music is itself arising
from Homeric poetry that is is musical
accompanied or not it's a lie exactly
because meter meter itself is a kind of
lyre within the language but then of
course Homer is also a memetic artist so
not just that it's verse but that it's
mimetic or representational of human of
human action and what I find
tremendously compelling about the
antagonistic relationship between Homer
and especially Plato and you're
absolutely right Socrates will quote
the Socrates the character will quote
Homeric verse regularly but what I find
so intriguing is that it's quite clear
that Plato arguably the first writer of
philosophical texts is clearly imitating
homer and not just topically but by
fashioning works that have been
influenced by Homeric fashion sure one
of things I like to point out to
students is that's why he wanted the
poets exiled so they wouldn't see yeah
that's right that he was stealing from
them but also that he's fashioning a new
form of poetry
it seems naive to me not to recognize
that when he critiques Homer as a poet
in the Republic he knows that his
audience realizes that the Republic
itself is a poem it's narrated my
Socrates that's the dramatized narrator
he says I went down to PI Reyes the
other day and you realized that if you
were to explore Greek literature and ask
where have we heard someone tell their
own tale before about going down it
becomes quite clear that he realizes
that his audience will know that he's
imitating he's imitating homers
representation of Odysseus telling his
own tale at the fire key in court and so
I think that Plato actually wants to
write a new form of poetry but the
condition of possibility for that is is
is clearly is clearly homer and it's
that that quality of making making music
of fabricating through this mimetic art
of representation worlds fictional
worlds in which we can participate and
observe and be moved by characters who
who are not people but resemble people
it draws us into a kind of
intelligibility of human action and our
our compassion so often in response to
the
to their suffering that that I think may
actually be central to humanity which
might indicate why it's universal well
why indeed storytelling in some form or
another is is there in every culture we
encounter and I think a lot of people
have pointed this out throughout the
ages that we speak rhythmically that
human languages by its very nature
rhythmic
a lot of people are completely unaware
that Shakespeare is actually in verse
it's true because it's so natural to be
or not to be that as the good version it
just it flows trippingly off the tape
does indeed and and you can scan parts
of Lincoln and Melville absolutely I
mean you can scan parts of what we're
saying no doubts it's just
especially iambic because this is the
the the meter of the English language
tends to fall into the iambic but the
the use of meter in conveying meaning
and before because I want to extend
about poetry extend it beyond verse
because certainly it you know the Greek
concept it comes from a word which is
basically about artifice to create
something to make something and and
certainly imaginative literature is all
if it's good if it's great it reaches a
level of poetry but the epic poem which
obviously homers our greatest in in
Western civilization the epic poem it's
there's so few people have been able to
do it and it's been tried many times the
last time we had we we actually had a
caracal character in early American
history Joel Barlow
do you do I don't know he's famous for a
poem called Hasty Pudding which is very
often anthology
he was part of the Connecticut wits he
was a friend of George Washington but he
had aspirations to be an epic he wanted
to be America's epic
and and he attempted but it's it's it
was a failed attempt and it's it's just
very interesting then what's called the
noble voice you know that that was one
of them Stringfellow bar I think wrote a
book called the noble voices Ono Van
Doren actually about the epic poem why
is the epic poem so difficult to to do
no that's a wonderful that's a wonderful
question at least in literary studies we
tend to assume that the epic poem took
up took up residence if you will in the
novel and so that the novel began to do
the work of the love of the epic poem
but what's interesting about that is
that the novel is really quite
essentially composed of prose it's its
body if you will is a prose ybody
right whereas the the epic poem is in is
in verse and so a lot of people will
suggest that that may be for example
Wordsworth's prelude was the last great
epic but we actually I think live in an
age of a great epic poem derek walcott
so marrows which is a magnificent
treatment of life in in the caribbean
and and takes up a number of questions
and does so by means of a central
character named - he'll clearly named
for achilles and is always running a
Homeric parallel along his own quite
distinct contemporary Caribbean culture
Dante - is quite influential in that in
that poem but I I think it's very
difficult to do of course in part
because readers are not accustomed to
reading verse as often as they used to
be and expect their stories to be in in
prose and so when people read literature
they tend to presume that means reading
novels imaginative
literature is I won't say it's reduced
to novels but that's that really is the
form of literature people most gravitate
toward in part because we haven't taught
enough people recently how drivers
needed to write no that's exactly right
one of these is an art that has to be
taught one of the things about well not
necessarily I mean there there are
people that do naturally the Arabs are
amazing at that I know some pretty
sophisticated Arabic poets that that
really don't know the prosody of and
it's it's like Greek it's not syllabic
so it's it it's not accentually it's
it's related to the actual duration of
the word so it's long short as opposed
to light heavy or heavy light or heavy
that doesn't surprise me though actually
because as you were saying it indicates
poetry itself indicates some natural
talent for it right which means that the
measure in language is natural to
language yeah exactly and some people
will have an extraordinarily whole
musician powerful natural gift with or
without training but but but art art
will improve it right so even those
without as much talent can have that an
element proved through art you often
hear about musicians that we would
recognize as clearly quite talented who
don't know music my first thought is
always what if they did how would it
change how would it how would it change
what would be the accomplishment if all
for the Beatles actually knew how to
read music well I'm used to the song Cat
Stevens
I heard him once say that he found it so
difficult to learn other people's music
so he just decided to write his own
and I thought that was really
interesting because one of the things
about classical musicians is that all
they loot they start from day one
learning not really how to make music
but how to imitate music and and this is
something that the pre-modern world was
obsessed with with mimesis with its
artifice with with actually one of the
things was very common they the idea of
creative writing would have been insane
to to anybody before the 20th century
that the idea that you could teach
people how to write what you could teach
them to do was how to imitate and and so
they would you know have a sentence like
when in the course of human events and
then they'd have to the student would
have to write a sentence with completely
different words but following the form
of that sentence and and so artifice was
not a negative thing whereas today it's
become a very negative thing and I think
one of the tragedies of a lot of modern
especially the young people i I actually
think it's it's really unfair to them to
encourage them to write poetry because
99.9 percent of it is is tripe and and
they're not because their self-esteem
has to be boosted we're not allowed to
actually say that's doggerel and it's
complete rubbish and we have to say gee
that's wonderful great you know a way to
go and instead of doing the traditional
way which would have they would have
memorized great poetry and and
internalize it I mean we talk about
learning something by heart it's such a
beautiful idiom the idea of
internalizing something and one of the
things that the Arabs say that if you
want to be a great poet memorize the
corpus of a great poet and then forget
it that's right and I think Dylan to me
who you know there's a lot of debate
about Dylan but III really do think he
he's he will be in the Canon that's my
do and and and and there there are
people like Rick ceteris prefer Riggs
and others I just read a book about him
why Dylan matters from a Harvard
professor making that argument and I
think the Dylan when he came to New York
I think he knew 200 Woody Guthrie songs
and he was basically I've got three
imitative using ramblin Jack Elliott s--
style and then the other major influence
on him was Hank Williams who is also a
really I mean I think quite an
extraordinary lyricist Rick said makes a
make Sakai heard mix make this case
actually in public that uh that he
thinks he's influenced as well by a
number of a number of poets including
including Elliott this this DynaMed I
mean he read Verlaine Rambo he was hero
definitely had a big this dynamic of
imitation up to a habit and then a habit
which is no longer consciously imitating
and then becomes innovative and I think
is actually the classical model for for
education for education itself it's
interesting that we're talking about
teaching people how to write but of
course we also want to make readers and
so I think because of a fear frequently
of the massive technical vocabulary
that's often involved improvident
prosody people will be worried if you
will about about introducing young
people to to poetry but I think it's a
mistake because for for one thing you
cannot suppress it right so so in fact
the desire for rhyme which is a
different kind of chord than then the
most most poetry globally is is in blank
verse
so rhyme is is Chinese poetry is
definitely the Arabs are obsessed with
Ryan yeah there's a great scene in Dead
Poets Society where the character that's
played by Robin Williams Robin Williams
rips out that you know that kind of
Cartesian analytic approach the X and
the y that's right and whether a poem is
great and
even though the message of that film I
didn't like but but that one scene I
really appreciate it because I remember
very clearly the first time a poem hit
me in the gut like I was in eighth grade
hmm and and and it was a literature
class I we I was actually at a
progressive school where they had four
quads and so based on your aptitude you
went like they had a quad for it was
actually pretty horrific now and I think
about it this social engineering but
they had a quad for math and science
they had a quad for arts and music and
things and then they had a quad for just
like vocation well these are like eight
so the students were divided by yeah and
so I was in the language arts down quad
but I remember clearly reading
Ozymandias and it was just it just
really affected me you know in such a
deep way and that was the first time a
poem had ever done that that's for me
and well I was just gonna say and I
don't think had it been explained to me
in that x/y that's ripe thing it
wouldn't it it was a gut reaction I
think the question is in whether but
when pedagogically I actually I actually
do think that we should bring the art to
the to the students on the other hand I
know we have to we have to do it in a
way that actually killed doesn't kill
the spirit that that that recognition
that you had in your heart like rhetoric
you know one of the things about
rhetoric that when you learn all the
tricks it can it can it can almost take
the magic okaylet but it but if if you
if you it can also have the opposite
effect where you really appreciate the
artifice where you really appreciate
what a master is doing
and when they're when they're true
masters there's a reason why somebody
like Frost will go from it I am to
anapest in in I mean he knows what he's
doing because to him the the the form
was actually sometimes he said that a
great poet for him the form is surpasses
the importance of the content and and I
think there's a lot of truth to that I
think I think Shakespeare I mean you can
see Shakespeare is having fun with
language you know he's you can see his
tongue in cheek you know a horse a horse
my kingdom for a horse I mean you can
hear the horse trot you know and it's
such a wonderful
so to understand what he's doing yeah
you know with like a kind of spondee
type of and you it's interesting they
said you can hear it which means that
that memorization is not enough actually
what we want to do I think as well is
that once a student has memorized a poem
we want them to deliver it but when we
want them to recite it and it's there I
think where the vocabulary comes in
right as a useful way to explain the the
recitation that they're that they're
doing I think we don't do enough with
delivery unfortunately it is very
important it's almost nixed from the
Canon no that's right we live we live in
a loud culture the volume may not have
ever been this high in human culture but
the discrimination of sound from sound
act yeah the last two cannons are really
they've been mixed and and they're it's
I mean all of it really very few people
learn the invention which is so central
I mean the the the you know the first
and the dominant you know definition but
then comparison and and and in the in
the in the in the topics of invention
comparison is is that's the bread
but ER of great poetry the conceit
finding two things that are so
dissimilar and yet bringing them
together in a way that's the aha moment
shall I compare thee to a summers day
like me in fact in the poetics Aristotle
says and this I think actually confirms
something you were saying before he says
that the power of of metaphor can't be
taught and I'm not convinced of that by
the way but it's a very interesting idea
that in indeed the ability to see
counterintuitive likenesses which then
become quite intuitive is is a real gift
but there's no doubt there's no doubt
about it a figuration figuration is
crucial and metaphor metaphor central
but I still think a lot about this need
to ask students to to stand and to
deliver to use another teacher movie
that that I enjoy and that is to ask
them to speak because what I office of
assertion no that's right more and more
what I find is that the that students
will that was a plug for your book thank
you I appreciate that the students more
and more actually have trouble
articulating them themselves and again
it's not because they don't have often
quite very intelligent and interesting
things to say but they're frequently
intimidated by public public discourse
they're exceptions no doubt it seems to
me that the that any number of young
people who are particularly naturally
gifted at it yeah but I think to to ask
them to memorize so that they don't have
to access their phone but to ask them to
memorize and to ask them to recite and
to recite artistically I think is is
itself a great gift because at that
point they're being given their own
voice but it's a voice that's being
educated by by poetry itself I I make
students memorize to their chagrin in
every class that I do they have to
memorize and I incorporate poetry and
all I had
when I taught astronomy I had a book on
all the the poetry to deal with the
Stars and when I taught ethics they read
The Merchant of Venice so I always I
always have poetry and bring it in and
corporated I think it's really important
I think one of the things about did you
use sonnet 116 for the for the astronomy
course I I can't remember I actually had
a book that was just poems about the
Stars but one of the things about poets
I think is they just have brilliant ears
because people are saying poetic things
all the time
there are children are saying poetic
things I was I was at the grocery store
the other day and there was this elderly
I think she was probably Filipino
American lady and she was a little plump
and and she was in front of me and her
and her husband or significant other
showed up she was about to buy things
and he showed up with a Ben & Jerry's
Cherry Garcia you know and she looked at
it and just her eyes lit up and she said
oh my favorite and she said but I've
gained so many pounds eating that but
happy pounds you know and I I think
that's what Dickens was able to do he
just listened to people's conversations
because one of the things that that's so
clear from great poets is their
characters are so different and when a
bad writers always you feel the same 'no
sits right in the characters whereas
great writers are clearly I I once saw
somebody he was reading Dostoyevsky's
the brother to cameras off at the
airport so I just said how's that book
going for you and he just he put it down
he looked up he said this is not fiction
[Laughter]
and that's what great poetry is not
fiction in that way it's like mythology
you know it's the mythos my father's
definition of mythology was too true to
be believable
and and and I think I Dylan you know
there's there's a there's an old skit
from a from a program where where they
have Dylan at would he got through his
bedside you ever see that know what were
you know they're actors and he says
how's things going woody and he's like
the answer is blowin in the wind and I
said I'm so sad to see you and this he
said don't think twice it's all right
he's like writing it down and you know
it's it's obviously making fun of
Ginsberg once asked him do you think
you'll ever be tried as a thief and and
but I think that's what Dylan had that
year you know I was so much older than
I'm younger than that now I can hear
somebody saying that in a conversation
definitely and and and he's got his
notebook out so it's I think that's the
in some ways the gift of the poet is
that they're showing us something about
the world that we we we might not have
thought about
it's like van Gogh because painting is a
type of poetry as well you know when Van
Gogh paints old shoes and you it forces
you to look at those shoes and you'll
never look at a pair of old shoes the
same way it's right and I a friend of
mine we were in West Africa he's a
brilliant photographer Peter Sanders and
he he took a picture of this old ladder
that that was literally two sticks with
other sticks tied together on a rope and
it was up against an Adobe house and
this was it was a primordial ladder
right really just it must have been the
first ladder must've looked like that
and I actually had seen that matter
several times but I never really looked
at it and his photograph forced me to
think about that that and I think you
know when Emily Dickinson says something
like there's a certain slant of light
winter afternoons that oppresses like
the heft of Cathedral to
that slant of light winter afternoons
will never be the same he's right we all
know it yeah know it in a new way in a
new way and that's the concern
you know the conceit thereof of death
and you know the declining day of a
winter afternoon but I think that's the
paradox of poetry that though it frees
itself from the real it ends up
revealing the real and so what I have
more and more come to believe is that
Aristotle is right that poetry is
actually more philosophical than history
yeah because it's not exactly Universal
it does it's not as bound to the actual
particulars and in that imaginative
transformation is a displaced
representation that we then can
encounter without the difficulty of
encountering ourselves directly and
that's the catharsis I mean that was the
whole event whatever was happening at
the amphitheater in Greece the
experience I mean these were really
religious experiences and and did the
the revelation that occurs not just in
the play but in the spectator the one
that's experiencing the play that
internal revelation the plays the thing
wherein I'll catch the conscience of the
king that that there's something that's
revealed in the play that that
corresponds to something being
potentially being revealed in in in the
south there's a great boar head story a
knight in Cordova have you ever read
that story not recently I don't he you
know he's got a very wheeze even
LaRoche's is reading the poetics and
he's having a really hard time
understanding you know what what
Aristotle is talking about
and because the Arab tradition did not
have theater hmm and so he has to go to
a dinner and he's not really happy about
it but he goes he goes to the dinner and
and they're having conversation about
whether or not jahaly poetry was still
relevant
this pre-islamic poetry at the 7th is
6th century and 7th century Arabia was
relevant to endow Lucien's who were
living in a completely different culture
and he quotes and you know Bohr has is
always mixing reality with him with his
own imagination but he quotes a famous
poet Zuhair from the the the seven ODEs
and about that that he saw death like a
blind camel that fate you know it was
like a blind camel it just it just
stumbles and did camels really have
anything to do with us here in Cordoba
or not and so they're debating this then
the the conversation turns to the this
character who's just come back from from
Persia and so they ask whoa what did you
what did you see in Persia so he starts
talking about how he saw play and
because the the Persians do have a
tradition of passion plays and and so
they're asking what's a play and he
begins to explain it's these people get
together on a stage and they and they
act out a story and they're all like
that's ridiculous like who would believe
something like that and he said well
that's just it you start believing it
the suspension of disbelief and then and
then a light goes off in in 'verily is
he he he realizes what Aristotle was
trying to convey and is it's a beautiful
story oh I'm definitely gonna have to
read it but that that displacement which
then allows us to recognize ourselves in
characters and their actions who who
resemble us but are not us I think is
extraordinarily liberating right more
and more realized how difficult it is
for any of us to understand ourselves
without without some way of doing it in
which we don't have to look directly at
ourselves and so the therapy of drama
the therapy of both tragedy
how many actually it seems to me is that
we are liberated from ourselves even as
we're seeing versions of ourselves in in
the mimetic in the mimetic world I think
Shakespeare is particularly good at that
indeed especially with respect to
getting his own play going and then
establishing a play within a play from
which characters will learn or not learn
about them about themselves it's an
obsessive technique of his well and I
think whether him to talk about and he's
forcing us to to see the play within our
own play I think he's you know he it's a
platonic idea that that this is that
there's something else going on
alongside this no that's right
this experience there's a whole
spiritual dimension I mean Midsummer's
Night's Dream is a good example of that
where he he's got all these dimensions
alongside this dimension and the kind of
sleepiness I'm that play huh and that's
another play that huge I mean arguably
when I was thinking about converting to
Islam I actually went and saw that play
and and in some ways that was the play
that convinced me to convert Islamic
history yeah because because I you know
I'd been in a head-on collision and and
I really felt like I had you know it was
a kind of wake up you know I was only 17
and and I really according to Highway
Patrol I should not have survived the
crash but I did and and it was very
strange experience like that I had after
that you know for several days I you
know I was like like am I here is this
meal and both spectral yeah a very very
strange experience and when it went when
I I really started studying religion
seriously at that point and I did that
for about a year and I went through I
mean my mother had always told me that
she raised us that
religion was largely an arbitrary thing
that most people just have the religion
they were brainwashed into and they get
entrenched in it and this is the truth
because I was born in in Sri Lanka and
therefore I'm a Buddhist or I'm a Hindu
or it's a mere convention yeah it's it's
there's there's it's a lot less solid
ground than a lot of people would like
to think so I decided just to look at
the different religions and what they
had to say what was it about the play it
summer nights it was actually the and
when pop comes out and kind of says you
know if we shadows have offended think
but this and all is mended yeah that you
just slumbered here there's just a dream
and it was I kind of felt like that car
crash was like it's time to wake up and
I three and I realize I could go back to
sleep and easily and and it was do I set
out to wake up and make a conscious go
of it with my life
to use my life as a a spiritual path of
awakening to actually awaken to our true
self whatever that is and and that's
that's that's what I I felt like I felt
I didn't have an option that I that I
that I couldn't just go back to sleep I
so by the way what's fascinating and it
was it was it was the it was a it was in
Santa Barbara and it was it was actually
the Royal Shakespearean they would say
our silver duck sure it was a production
from England and they were really great
yeah the interesting thing about that
about that play is that bottom is though
is the one character who can actually
pass from one order to another and he
actually he actually goes from the human
to the spirit world
you know then back again and has some
form of a relationship with a quasi a
quasi deity yeah and I'm fascinated by
that because he is the player well he's
the one who wants to play play all the
parts
says I can play no indeed indeed and so
he's he's the most theatrical yeah and
yet it might not be an accidental
relationship between his theatricality
and his and his spiritual distinctness
mm-hmm
that he actually can pass back and forth
and when he does pass back when he's D
metamorphosize right from ass to man
again he actually comes back revising
st. Paul he comes back with with indeed
a vision and although he's not allowed
to share that that vision by Theseus
once they do the play within a play in
act 5
he's also the one who can boss Decius
around at certain moments he actually
speaks back to her and I've more and
more begun to think that he's the
unacknowledged King if you will of of
that of that play and although at first
it startled me to hear you say that
that Midsummer Night's Dream played an
important role and not in your
conversion I actually think that that
play is seriously exploring exactly what
it is that makes it possible for us to
experience this order as not the only
order I totally agree and and to to pass
if you will back back and forth well
also you know my dad I I don't know
anybody that would even come close to
his knowledge of Shakespeare he was
convinced that bottom was Shakespeare
right that he that was his that it you
know I shall call it bottoms dream for
it hath no bottom that that that
Shakespeare was able to dream impossible
dreams and continue to dream throughout
his life and and that he the the
imagination no he certainly he certainly
identifies with in the play the play
adores him I've never seen a production
even bad productions during which the
mechanicals
bring down the house and bottom and
bottom in particular yeah but to take
him seriously as a seer or maybe even
some kind of prophet makes us realize
that the stakes of poetry may be much
higher than we realized that these mere
fictions are actually a form of
spiritual training
well the to catch on to catch the
impermanence the theatrical quality
actually of actual life well the the the
errors believe that the poet was yeah
was possessed by a genie you know that
there's actually a great they have a
group of Arab poets they're called the
outlaw poets outlaw boys and and they
really are they're they're they're
amazing care one was called Texeira
which means he had evil under his arm
you know the genies he's carrying them
around but the the outlaw poets were
they were like the the Dalits you know
they they were man Moody and they were
people that were expelled or had
rejected the tribal alliances and they
became a tribe for people without tribes
mmm and and some of their poets are
really really powerful but they they
definitely saw a relationship between
you know the spiritual realm and poetry
that a true poet was was somebody who
was inspired that there was something
and and undeniably the importance of
poetry is accentuated by the fact that
there is a entire chapter in the padang
called the poets and and and it's
recognized that
all of the chapter headings of the of
the Quran are momentous things it's only
momentous things get a chapter like the
Jews are there's a chapter called Benny
- Satya
because there are momentous people mmm
there's a chapter called the the the the
spider right at the ant and even Arabs
asked like why as adapters named after
these little creatures and it's like
because these are very very profound
little creatures that have great import
and and it's calling attention to those
things and and the the the verse about
the poets in the Quran because they
accused the Prophet Muhammad of being a
poet and one of the things that Emir out
the pod that gazetted he one of the
great scholars and a poet himself and
and he fought the French in Algeria and
was actually honored in this country
there's a city in Iowa named after him
out of cater Iowa because he saved
Christians that were being persecuted in
Syria but he he wrote a small book
called timbale - which in it he argues
that the reason prophets are accused of
being poets is because of the similarity
between prophecy and poetry the poet the
Arabs have a beautiful expression for
what a great poet does they call it a
sad and lieutenant which means the easy
impossible because it looks like I can
do that but then when you try to do it
you fall short and and there's something
about great poets and I think well
unfortunately for us lyric poetry our
poetry has been reduced to lyric poetry
and and most because of free verse and
the loss of prosody and and or you know
something like Mary Oliver is clearly
capable of writing in verse if she
wanted to and she certainly knows the
art but chooses to to write in in this
free verse and I find pre verse
extremely interesting it's undeniably
interesting but I think it's a third
category I think prose poetry and
and to call it versed for me as problem
at the Arabs had a third category which
is very similar to free verse which they
caught they had novum and nothi and said
yeah so they had prose poetry and then
they had a third category which is more
like rap today it's it's kind of has
internal rhymes a lot of assonance a lot
of alliteration but it's not metered and
it's not it's not rhymed in any
formalized I have a colleague who does
some very interesting work on Whitman a
poem i i i love and she she argues and I
think it's quite astute that we can
think of poetry as as as metre or we can
think of poetry as line so her argument
is that free-verse avails itself of an
any number of formal properties of
poetry note that what's significant is
the line is the line itself and Whitman
I think is really quite remarkable for
achieving his measure in in line as
opposed to meter
yeah and and that it has it has a rhythm
and in that sense it's like it's like
prose that has a rhythm but because of
the lineage the third category that
you're well I I mean I would argue that
see Whitman who really starts the ball
rolling Whitman for his is free verse
it's clearly versified but it's free
whereas a lot of what is called free
verse today that you can't if you look
at you know captain oh captain that's
clearly got strong meter in it it's just
not fixed to any you can't say oh this
is pentameter or tetrameter or dim it or
what what you can't fix it it's but it's
clearly metered he's got rhyme going
he's got it's and that's why I think
what happens later when when you have
people like Ezra Pound
because pound pound is like Picasso
Picasso could do the realist if he
wanted you know he was a trained painter
but he chose to do the abstract and and
it made sense because photography had
really replaced realist art but but he
could do that and and and pound could
could write in in meter what a lot of
people today are doing they don't know
how to write in in meter in traditional
forms and so they're just doing it's
like modern dancing where you just get
out and do whatever you want
whereas all traditional dancing you have
to learn how to dance the waltz is a
very specific set or the cha-cha or even
you know ballroom dancing all those
forms have and this is what I think this
would this is the demarcation of the the
modern and the pre-modern world is that
it it's there's a type of do what thou
wilt it's the abbey of Thelema you know
the the the rejection of law and order
and I'm going to be free and and
nobody's going to put constraints on me
and I think the problem with that and
this is why it's very interesting that
the great disciplines of our
civilization are called the liberal arts
they're the arts that free you because
if you if I get on a piano and just
start pounding away that's not music
I mean maybe George auntie all thought
it was but it's not music
you know but if I if I discipline myself
to master this thing then I'm free okay
to do whatever I want and that's where I
would personally I really feel that to
to to encourage people to do these
things without learning the rules then
you're free to break the rules it's like
if I know grammar and I choose like
Dickens to have a sentence with one word
in it
you know I don't the English teacher can
say that's not a sentence because
there's no subject and there's no
predicate but Dickens knows what a
sentence is
right and if he chooses to make a
sentence out of one word he has every
right to do that he can break the rules
because he knows the rules and I think
that's where I really I think free-verse
has has destroyed poetry personally yeah
I don't agree startled me when you came
back to the to to that to that to that
point because I don't think that it's
fully free I think again I think the the
line is still a discipline and what its
freed from is I think if they know what
they're doing X yeah no that's that's
right but most don't but I think that's
always always the case in the sense that
only those who have mastered an art can
transcend it and in that sense I am
traditionalist educationally without a
doubt but when you look and I'm
identifying Whitman in particular
because he ends up being proof of
something you said earlier when you were
talking about the influence of the
English Bible especially the King James
Version on on English and American
literary culture which is really hard to
overestimate I mean he was a great
reader of the Bible including the Psalms
and it's quite clear that he picks up a
lot of his phrasing and Clausing from
the English Psalms in in the King James
Version of the Bible and so in many ways
I think Whitman is actually a
traditionalist that he not only studied
the forms but he studied he studied the
great the great books if you if you will
but but that's always the case it seems
to me that the untrained tend to make
for less compelling revolutionaries than
the trained
they're the ones who are actually free
enough not only to choose when to obey
rules or not but to invent new rules my
father wrote a book on prosody and
really one of his life yeah one of his
lines in there was that he felt Robert
Frost Gordon ace when he said that
free-verse was like playing tennis
without a net I'm just saying there was
still lies I know I really that's my
point about Whitman I do and if you take
a poem like Kensington Gardens by Ezra
Pound I mean that's as good as poetry
gets as far as I'm concerned it's it's a
it's a poem of free verse it's an
incredibly powerful poem but again pound
knew what he was doing
yeah and and my argument is that people
are it's a default setting when when you
don't know how to do something and you
go to the default setting of just doing
whatever you can and and that's where I
think you lose artifice is very
important art and art is from ours you
know power we the word for army is a
cognate of art art is power and and and
and power comes about from discipline
it's it's it's it's a crewed by by
discipline exact a civilization that's
undisciplined will never become a
powerful civilization and and and a
writer who's undisciplined will never
become a powerful writer and that's why
I think great poetry is always there
there's definitely the discipline is
there you can feel it and somebody like
if you if you take somebody like Cormac
McCarthy is it is a good example of that
who
just from one point if you can drive you
crazy with his punctuation but he knows
exactly what he's doing and he has a
purpose behind that I'd like to ask him
if I ever met him
what about particular moments yeah like
what what he's trying to convey in that
usage but I really feel like we our
civilization has lost so much by the
abandonment of rules and one of the
interesting things and Nietzsche brings
out this this idea of the Apollonian and
Dionysian these two impulses we've
become such a Dionysian culture that
we've lost the importance of the
Apollonian that that there's a balance
between the two and wonderfully
portrayed in Sense and Sensibility
with these two Elinor and Marianne and
Austin does an incredible job at showing
us these two ways of being in the world
and and and how they're both in essence
flawed that you know the end where
there's a recognition of the other's
Worth and the beauty of the other that
need one of them they need one another
and and and I think we have an
interesting tradition in Islam in in
Sufism Tasso wolf which is that the
Sufis should be outwardly sober but
inwardly drunk or a static and and I
think that is is that incredible balance
of the Apollonian decorum the idea that
decorum is important I mean one of the
things that troubles me about modern
culture is the complete loss of decorum
mmm the importance of and Richard Weaver
I'm sure you're familiar with that the
ideas have consequences I think he was
really getting at the heart of the
crises that were suffering from in the
loss of a sense of hierarchy that all of
life has hierarchy and and to reduce and
level and I think that's one of the
things about free-verse to me it levels
it makes everybody a poet because
everybody can do it
and
and then you lose something in in in the
in in the discipline that that elevates
one over the other not in terms of a
kind of inherent superiority but in an
acquired superiority the the Confucian
idea of the superior man was a man who
had cultivated his character and his
being and and and that's I think we've
really lost that in our culture and and
and and i think i think that that loss
of meaningful life alive in a discipline
that actually accomplishments are are
something that are relished because they
were so hard-earned when everything
becomes easy when all information I mean
I can just look up the meaning of any
poem on the Internet I can find out what
meter it's in and what verse it's in and
I admitting Lee have done that before
well exactly but that something is
lauded when every well I share your
father's admiration for for Shakespeare
and the way that I would approach what
you're talking about which i think is
right and the loss of a sense of decorum
is a shame
unfortunately we think of decorum as
mere manners we don't think of it as an
ordering an ordering principle of some
of some kind but it's interesting that
one of the reasons that decorum got a
legitimately bad name is that it too
often was used to to support social
hierarchies but what's missed I think in
in decorum especially with respect to
how to train poets how to teach poets
how to write poetry how to teach people
how to read it is that the submission to
a superior artist is how unless her
artist becomes a greater artist and in
fact in in Shakespeare's own example
it's very easy to see that early in his
career he was heavily influenced by
Christopher Marlowe
and he took Marlo as an object of
imitation it's quite clear Marlowe in
great part because he died he died young
tends to have a verse less mature than
the most mature of Shakespearean verse
but I had had he lived we don't know
where he would have ended up that's
right and Shakespeare's own imitation of
Marlowe made it possible for him but to
begin to do things that Marlowe did
quite less quite less frequently so for
example a Shakespearean meter tends to
be much more regular in the early part
of his career and then he starts to
experiment with more and more
interesting metrical substitutions for
example the line changes so that
frequently he has end-stopped lines at
the beginning and relies much more
heavily on rhyme itself we think of him
always writing bankers when in fact
there's a great deal right
in the earlier frequently in the earlier
in the earlier work Romeo and Juliet for
example often has very interesting end
rhymes early early in the play and so
then you get this experiment with
enjambment that actually comes to define
the Shakespearean line which is really
quite distinct and so what I think we've
lost in in in the very loss of decorum
that Europe that you're talking about is
not the loss of submitting to
illegitimate social authority because
let it let it go but the submission to
legitimate artistic Authority in which
your training requires you to recognize
someone's artistic talent is so superior
to your own that you need to pay
attention to learn how to how to do that
and again intuitively we all we all know
this Aristotle says in the poetics that
the human being is the most mimetic of
animals right and he says something very
interesting that I've actually meditated
on my neurons we begin to actually
mirror the person we're sitting with
entrainment the hearts begin to beat in
in sync with the people we're standing
next
no exactly living together their their
their periods synchronized that's right
so that when young when young people are
actually trying to learn something of
course they imitate their heroes they
play their guitar like their favorite
hero does they hold the bat that way you
could always see a young person when
they're when they're imitates Dylan was
imitating James Dean Charlie Chaplin
that's exactly right
right but that is it so he became who he
was
yeah it wasn't just that he became that
but he became it by in a sense mastering
his master I once saw a documentary on
[Music]
one of my favorite there is this Hank
Williams and Hank Williams could imitate
these two singers and he said he
realized that he had to find his own
voice he said so I got right in between
their documentary they showed the two
singers and they blended their voice and
it was Hank Williams it's just amazing
remarkable so again mimesis like he was
a twin B goes in great detail about the
mimetic importance of mimesis in a
civilization that's that that I think is
the paradox of originality and of
finding ones there's not words you know
yeah
no that's right until one masters
another artist one is imitating and then
feels compelled to to innovate and at
that point I think newness is born the
truth of the matter is before
Shakespeare a Shakespearean line of
extraordinary metrical volatility and
varied pacing it jams right oh it's new
yeah it's new the language in languages
he invented words he constantly
inventing it was it was a new it was a
new language and then we think about
somebody like like Milton who's paying a
great deal of attention than to - to
Shakespeare much less so tomarlo
and he himself realizes that that
metrically volatile in jammed line is
something that he himself can do
in Paradise in Paradise Lost in his epic
poem but he there finds that the
Shakespearean syntax is not complicated
enough for the for the collections and
the actions that he wants to represent
and his own Latinate his own Latinate
training at university drives him to
then create a miltonic style that's
distinctly distinctly his own but I
agree the the liberal arts tradition is
a tradition that's ultimately liberated
but próxima discipline that's right
approximately it requires discipline and
and and submission and the submission
the submission to a discipline I think
is something that's a great gift to
young people whether it's the discipline
that music that's my pathetic sand
poetry because that kind of mastery
empowers them much more much more fully
than shall I put it less discipline for
sure forms of expression you know Frost
said life is a series of disciplines and
the first one is the acquisition of
language of words and even the nuances
of words and the means words and poets
great poets they know their words so
well and and and they and they and they
reveal that and you know Shakespeare
sister Mary and Joseph
I think compellingly shows the
indebtedness
of Shakespeare to artifice to to
mastering the the books of rhetoric of
his time and and Marshall McLuhan in his
book on the Trivium the listened
Elizabethan age which created the
greatest English literature that we have
was an age of rhetoric that's what they
were doing and and that's why I really
feel you know just to close this out I
think what you did with the office of
assertion because I'd been looking for a
book for freshmen because
there's a couple of things about our
college students today they don't know
English grammar because they didn't go
to grammar school which to me is a crime
against a young person and and two they
they really struggle with writing partly
because they don't know grammar but more
importantly because they don't know
topics of invention they don't know how
ideas are generated and the the
discipline of rhetoric and what you did
with that very short but incredibly rich
little book was to really give a student
in a very short and concise way the
essence of writing a good essay and I
think the essay in the end about
Telemachus and and from from the Odyssey
is proof in the pudding so I appreciate
that agree - yeah yeah no I mean that's
how we ended up connecting and and
you've now written for the journal and
hopefully it'll you know it'll continue
the dialogue so I want to really thank
you just for coming out or hear it at
the upper campus at Zaytuna College and
and I also for inviting me out to the
University of Dallas I really enjoyed it
your hospitality was wonderful and
meeting all those people and hopefully
we'll do that again here something
similar to that so we hope so and I
wanted to thank you and the community
had Zaytuna or for having me today it
was a delight yeah great all right
[Music]
you
[Music]
From <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vwze1G9y-A>