Well, I have finally found something that I despise learning even more than music theory (my chosen major). It's called “prosody”. I don't even care for the word. It takes poetry and turns it into a formaldehyde soaked, spread eagle, frog in science class. The instructor stands in front of us with his literary scalpels, pins, and magnifying glass and doesn't even bother to ask if we abhor the idea of this ghastly dissection. What's the gag? Can't we just let the little rhetorical buggers loose in the swamp of incomprehension where they belong? Why subject them and us to the horror?.... or bore? What could we possibly get out of peering into the inner-workings of these egregious, lifeless, specimens?I'm going to answer my own question. It seems that as my initial distaste for prosody wore off, my curiosity did kick in. I found myself gingerly taking the scalpel and doubtfully cutting into the thick, pulpous material. After the first incision (and once I wiped off the formaldehyde and other fluids that sprayed me when I started cutting... blick...), I began to marvel at the inner working of these tiny bits of prose. Poems are not just filled with a jumbled mess of random words, there is design, order, meaning, meanings and intelligence. After dissecting a few, my brain and eyes have found a new connection. I now find myself looking out at the poetry all around me. I even found the freedom to enjoy poetry that lacks rhyming and balanced rhythms! It's amazing how much more I enjoy the outside now that I've seen the inside.
No, you probably won't find me pouring over a book of poems intermittently oohing and awing over the intricacies of them (Probably... heck... no, there isn't a chance!), but, I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of trauma I sustained and the wealth of appreciation I have amassed. While I still think there should be a warning label placed at the beginning of any study of poetry, it's not nearly as horrible as its academic title (prosody) implies.
To mark this moment in history, I give you my “ebenezer” (chew on that). It's a poem that popped out when I was looking at the unfortunate painting “Two Chained Monkeys” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. My goal was to prove that my poem was better than the poem matched with it, but after thoroughly studying the poem by Wislawa Szymborska I just appreciated it too darn much to even give that thesis a try.
Trapped in a machine
with a view
The cog takes, holds,
despises
They see every day
what
People pay dearly to
own
After a while there's
no
Reason to even
look.
Here's to you Wislawa and all your fellow wordsmiths!
3 comments:
You're hooked, Robin! And we don't even have to reel you in; you reeled yourself in! I'm confident I will see you lurking around campus, swooning over perfectly placed caesurae. And as my old poetry professor Jim Bertolino is fond of saying, "Where's the harm in that?"
Boy Robin, you can sure weave quit the tune with words. I felt the same way about poetry, they should have warning lables before reading, because I thought the same as you did: that it was just a jumble of words put together which made me think harder then necessary. I have always enjoyed the rhythm part and actually understood most of those (for the low brow people).
I also must say, that since Jared has dissected the poems (because I could not see for myself the inner workings) I too, have more of an appreciation for the amount of work and time that each poem represent. I now have a broader gratitude for the written form of art.
wow, didnt expect such an in depth analysis of peotry, but it's true. Thanks to Jared, I really do have a much better aprreciation for Poetry.
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