Showing posts with label Lewis Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lewis Black. Show all posts

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Sidney's Defence

I located a nice copy of Sir Philip Sidney's A Defence of Poetry (1595) at a used bookstore this week; it's the Oxford University paperback edited by J.A. Van Dorsten.

I hadn't read the long essay/short book in ages, and I'd forgotten how pleasurable it is. Yes, the language is a bit ornate, as over 400 years of language-change stand between us and Sir Philip. And the structure of the argument is based on a classical model of rhetoric: exordium, narration, proposition, divisions [types of poetry], refutation [of charges against poetry], digression, and peroration.

Phil, as I like to call him, argues that poetry "precedes all other learning." He looks at different cultures and asks, rhetorically, what came first (in terms of what we might call "texts")? Answer: Poems! He then discusses the poet as prophet and the poet as "maker"--as artist. That is, the poet (at his or her best) says important things with words and makes beautiful, represented things out of words. He goes on to talk about divine poetry and philosophical poetry and "poetry strictly speaking," or the real stuff, which he associates with 8 specific kinds of poetry, such as the lyric, the ode, and the epic, among others. We might call them sub-genres nowadays.

Perhaps my favorite section is where he places poetry between philosophy and history. Like historical texts, poetry concerns itself with particulars, but like philosophy, it also concerns itself--indirectly, at least--with precepts, values, and ways of looking at things & people.

Poets are not liars, he claims--at least not in their roles as poets, even if (this is my example) they might cheat at cards. Poems represent nature, but they don't misrepresent things the way a deliberate lie does. Phil says poor Plato was simply misguided when he booted poets out of his utopia. He also denies that poems are "sinful fancies"; they're not icons that people worship, only artifacts (artifices?) that people enjoy and from which people gain learning. Poetry is not a bad habit.

Nowadays, poetry is alive and well, in many venues and variations. But it's difficult--for me, at least--to claim that it is central to the culture. That's partly why Phil's Defence (yes, with the British spelling) is so pleasurable and refreshing. Sir Phil clearly and boldly articulates the centrality of poetry. To him, it's "the best." I agree with him. What a surprise! The peroration--or "knock-out punch"--is hilarious. It's composed of one long sentence stretching over a page and riveted together with semi-colons, and it's a great riff. Phil had a little bit of Chris Rock and Lewis Black in him. It's a rant!

Against whom was he defending poetry? Some elements of the Church, probably. Some Neo-Platonists, probably--who favored philosophy over poetry. Some who thought poetry was merely decorative, or recreational, or precious. And probably an imagined rhetorical audience of anyone past, present, or future with bad things to say about his friend, Poetry, which he also calls Poesy sometimes. He also insists that the English language is perfectly suited to poetry--a claim that may strike modern readers as simply Anglo-centric but that may have been a parry of the thrust implying that either classical poetry (Greek, Latin) or Continental poetry (French, Spanish) was the real stuff.

It really is a great read for poets and for readers of poetry, IF you can take just a moment and get accustomed to his Renaissance vocabulary and style. It's composed of about 75 pages of very readable, nicely paced prose by a smart guy with a lively mind.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Faux Fall Rant

One of the great "rant" poems in American literature announces itself, with its title, as a rant-poem: Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which harnesses the power of counter-cultural, anti-Establishiment outrage to a kind of Old Testament prophetic oratory. Amiri Baraka's "A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie" (1972) is a durable poem in this "genre," too. Langston Hughes, who is not customarily associated with "rant" poems, actually wrote many of them, especially in the 1930s. They were often connected to labor-issues and to opposing imperialism and racism.

Faux rants are an interesting form of expression, too. The ones politicians, shock-jocks, and talk-show hosts go on are frequently too predictable, fallacious, and grotesque to enjoy. I much prefer the ones delivered by the real professionals, stand-up comedians. Don Rickles had a good "rant" act, but the part where he insulted people in the audience or on the set made me uncomfortable. Lewis Black has perfected the faux rant or "angry act." He never attacks anybody in the audience, and he peforms a clever, cathartic outrage directed at things going wrong in the culture-at-large. When he's not doing the act and (for example) just being interviewed, he's quite reserved, generous, unpretentious, and smart.

Here's a faux-rant against Autumn. One problem Autumn poses for poets is that it's Autumn and not just Fall. Another problem is that at least 5 billion poems have been written about Autumn, most of them including images of leaves, of course.

Like everybody else, I rather like Fall, so the poem is obviously a schtick, and it masks the real frustration, which almost all poets feel when they sit down (or stand up) to write an Autumn poem. So to all those fans of Autumn out there: remember that this is a faux rant.

Against Autumn

I don't like Autumn or Fall, and nobody even knows
what "Autumn" means. Enough with the colorful leaves already!
They're dead. That's why they fell, not because they're colorful
or symbolize anything, okay? Scientists should turn deciduous
trees and shrubs into evergreens--or ever-oranges or ever-
browns. Even ever-pinks would be fine, as long as the leaves
stayed glued to branches. Fall is a tedious road
from Summer to Winter. It's loaded with work
and school, and there's almost no place to pull over
and rest. Its holidays--Halloween and Thanksgiving--
have become ludicrous, taken over by the sugar
industry, the Hollywood horror-sequel factory,
Pilgrim coloring-books, stupid TV decorating-shows,
turkeys on steroids, and dysfunctional airports.
People shoot lots of animals,
and sometimes each other, in Autumn, out there on
private hunting-ranches and in groomed forests.
How would you like to be a pheasant, a deer,
a duck, a quail, or the Vice President's friend
in Autumn, huh? Concussions occur in football
games on Autumn's Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
This is a fact. In fact, the n would fall like a dead leaf off
autumn if it weren't for the word autumnal, so
couldn't we get used to saying awtoomal or
awtoomistic or even fallish (but not fallic)?!
I'm sick of the silent n in Autumn, and I've
had it with Fall. Harvests don't happen
in Autumn anymore anyway. I see squash, spuds,
and apples in the store year-round. This
is called proof. So I say
Shut it down! Shut down autumn! Winter,
Spring, and Summer would each stretch more than
a week longer, and how could anybody
be opposed to that? I oppose Autumn.

Copyright 2007 Hans Ostrom