Poetry

One of the most underrated things that I learned from studying poetry -- from Mr. McConnell's Practical Criticism in JC to Bill Cook's class on Modernism at college -- was how to write good prose. I still don't "get" most poetry that I read, but close reading New Critical-style, with all its attendant technical terms, forced me to hear how my own sentences unfolded on the page -- their structure, length, and rhythm. It forced me to contend with the implications of my words. Why this one and not that? Doesn't this expression just sound horribly cliched? Can't this be expressed more succinctly -- more poetically? The "best words in their best order," as Coleridge said about poetry, and Mr. McConnell said to us the first time we did it for PC. (It's strange how I remember such things.)
Posted by kungfuzi at 7:37 pm |