Random thoughts today because I want to get this entry out of the way and work on my dissertation on the evolution of intelligence, or try to do so, since I’m still not out of my null zone, unless I’m slightly out but having trouble keeping from falling back into it.
First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.” The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful. By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with, “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.
“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.” From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”
I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them: “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all. “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death! He must be major! “ I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”
James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects. I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people. What I would call a wisdom poem. I’m biased against them. I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it. Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know. In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems. But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”
I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.
I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.