compare, contrast

[novapsyche]

To those who ask "What is poetry?": you might as well be asking, "What is a woman?"

Comments

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

There's a fairly clear answer for poetry, though, isn't there? It's writing with as much emphasis on form as content, and that form may not be standard grammar.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't see how that couldn't also be a definition of some forms of prose. That also doesn't distinguish poetry from song.

I think one can only identify poetry by its behavior and by contrasting it against what it is not. But that isn't itself defining poetry.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Prose was why I said form and not style. And song lyrics are poetry, aren't they?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Songs may be verse, but not all poetry is verse.

Someone in poetryslamming recently mentioned an author who wrote a novel in blank verse.

And then you get into gray areas like prose poetry.

And the difference and similarities between lyric and narrative poetry. And the contrast against prose.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Would prose poetry be something like H.P. Lovecraft?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I hate to say this, but even at this late date I have not read any Lovecraft. I know, I know: stone me.

"The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche is probably the most striking prose poem I've ever encountered.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

I've only ever managed to force myself through a paragraph or two of Lovecraft here and there. It's structured like prose, but it has the usual poetry quality of having to read it several times to fight through the imagery and figure out what it's actually saying.

As for "The Colonel", it just strikes me as very poor prose.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Tough audience!

[blackwinterbyrd.livejournal.com]

Mervyn Peake?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of Peake. I'd be very interested in his Rhyme Without Reason.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

A member of the Homo sapiens sapiens species with XX chromosomal structure. Typically the female of the species is designated a woman when she reaches reproductive age.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

A member of the Homo sapiens sapiens species with XX chromosomal structure.

That's a female, not a woman. Surely you're already aware of this and do not need someone who's sociologically minded to remind you of this. (Or are you simply being facetious?)

Typically the female of the species is designated a woman when she reaches reproductive age.

You need to look up an article written in the early '80s called "Doing Gender." And freshen up on your de Bouvoir.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling you're going beyound the standard model of science. Always making things more complicated than you need to. ;)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Science really has nothing to say about what a woman is, only what a female is. To get into what constitutes womanhood, one naturally must go outside "standard science" into sociology, philosophy, and (yes, even your field of study) psychology.

To go back to the original analogy, there is no such thing as "poetic science".