My poetry is often criticised for being 'cold' or lacking an 'emotional element'. I am generally regarded as a reasonably competent poet, I know one end of a stanza from another, and yet I rarely feel the need to elicit an emotional response from the reader/listener. Sometimes I do, like when a poetic theme is very 'human', or I deliberately set out to make people laugh. But I just feel that poetry is, or can be, about the whole world, and to try to always see the world through human emotions is pandering to a kind of insidious anthropomorphism. Much of this started in the late eighteenth century, with the emergence of the Romantics. Enlightenment, or neo-classical, poetry tended to exclude the self, being the central literary form (those were the days), it was more akin to journalism. A measure of objectivity was expected.

I write a lot of nature poetry. Kestrels, cherry trees and flowers could not give two hoots about human emotions, and it is debatable whether they feel any emotions themselves. If I am writing about them why should this be through a film of feeling which can only be arbitrary? I know that my poems are for human consumption but can we not sometimes be entertained/educated by description, insight, metaphor etc? These qualities do not necessarily need humans emoting over them in order to have meaning. I do not preclude emotional poetry, I merely suggest that it is not always necessary.

I would ask any of you out there who disagree with me on this one (and I know there are many) to look over your works, and try and identify a poem of yours which has no emotional engagement. Am I really such a freak?

i just wrote a really long reply and it didn't post!

Give over DG. I know your reply was 'Yes. You are a freak.'

Seriously though, I sympathise. It's happened to me a couple of times but I can't seem to get into the habit of pasting each post just in case before I post it. The same thing happened more often on MMU's WebCT service. You would be in the middle of a long piece and the screen would suddenly flash up that you have 'timed out'. Very frustrating.

po ( note, one 'o')
as Edward De Bono would say.
There is beauty and austerity in your poems. There is sometimes a sumptuous sting. They are often contemplative and always intelligent. And, yes, emotion -- superimposed by the reader. But you don't do button-pushing and that makes the poems all the more potent.

Siren,

I agree that poetry doesn't have to include your own emotions in it, although i find it hard to write without my own emotions getting pretty heavily involved.

When I hear your poetry it doesn't tell me what to feel but lets me feel for myself - I like that. And yes clever words etc. can entertain and release emotions in the listener.

I reckon this is one of those questions that seems not to have a simple answer and could be debated for ages, but I think the answer is no (or was it 42?)

The nub of my comment was that maybe those romantic poets didn't do emotion, but they're dead now, and they were kind of dead then. And maybe you could learn from that. And your kestrels, badgers, roses and aspidistras do need a bit of work - you are still developing your style, and I think you need... something.

I read your stuff about a heron standing still for a bit and then twatting a fish that it'd had its eye on, and your one about the kestrel hovering about for a bit and then twatting a mouse and I didn't think: you know what, that's journalism. I didn't imagine a reporter saying '... and this just in: in a startling new development, herons stand still on one leg for ages and then whip fish out of the water, over to Kate Adie for this report that some viewers might find shocking.' And neither did I feel like I could see the scene in my mind's eye, because there was no feeling in the piece that would have put me there - nothing to make me feel like I was sitting watching this happen - and that makes your images not really work.

Some of your plant ones are a little too botanical too. That might seem a rather crass statement, but they sort of read like those care for your plant cards you get in the pot:

Spiny like an aligator
genus: aspidistra
species: eliator
native to south east asia
can be green or variegata

I mean - what is a reader supposed to get out of the experience of reading the above?

You are quite funny DG : )

I agree with DG 100%

This a very short one word poem without emotion.

Stone

Notice how it changes by the introduction one letter.

Stoned

Is there a such a thing as a one word poem?

Grief that would make the open mike nights rattle on a bit.

that's the best heckle I've had yet, Francine.

Well... here is a definition of poetry that I subscribe to:
Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response.

: )

DG, you wrote 'The nub of my comment was that maybe those romantic poets didn't do emotion....', and Gus agreed with you, no less than 100%. Go to the back of the class, both of you. Or alternately, actually read what I wrote in the introduction to this thread or learn a little poetic history. The Romantics started all this emotional me, me, me nonsense in the first place....'I wandered lonely as a cloud' etc. All fine and dandy, I'm partial to a bit of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats myself and John Clare's 'I Am' is, in my opinion, one of the best poems ever written. But it was Keats himself who complained that there was too much 'self' in poetry (particularly Wordsworth's), hence his concept of 'negative capability', the process of emptying one's mind of pre-conceived notions before writing poetry.
What you propose, DG (and I'm not arguing with it, I am merely suggesting there are other ways of writing) is nothing more than a reiteration of the basic precepts of early Romanticism - those deserving dead you are so casually disparaging about.

Poems do not need to illuminate basic human truths, nor do they need to appeal to an emotional part of the reader's pysche. There are other parts to the psyche - the intellect, for example. There is a whole world out there and not all of it is human. Poetry can encompass the world without reducing everything to smilies, frownies and lols....

'There is a whole world out there and not all of it is human.' - fair enough - but how much of the non-human world is reading poetry?

Cx

There is Vogan poetry... so I hear

But Siren's nature poems are reminiscent of Marianne Moore's work. Okay, a pared down, nub of MM, where the details, the latin names and zoological/botanical terms and descriptions are used (often listed) for their rhythm, otherness and beauty. They somehow trip the mind. The structure resonates. But not everyone hums -- some people aren't tuned in ( I might add that some people clutch themselves to stop themselves ringing ;) ) And what about Eliot's chestnut -- poetry being emotion recollected in tranquility? Recollection doesn't mean re-enactment, sturm und drang and whammalamma lordy.

Well, alright, but I sort of assumed that the romantics were unemotional because (with the exception of Coleridge) they don't engage me one iota. Keats was one of the more boring out of all of them. I am also against romance in all its forms (and anti- any other made up bullshit as you will, no doubt, have noticed from my poetry).

To say that emotional engagement started with the romantics is to ignore the wealth of Irish accentual poets dating back many centuries before (admittedly most of their poems are in gaelic, but they are emotive many are humourous, and some are tragic/horrific, and some are designed to be soothing - very few aren't geared to bringing about any emotional response.

You would also (in this analysis) be ignoring a hell of a lot of palestinian poets (including jewish and muslim poets, when some of the palestinians started identifying as these groupings), ancient greek tragic poems and oddysey-like epics (a ripping yarn is emotionally engaging), ooh - and Shakespearean poetry (you may well mock, but the rape of Lucrece is a rattling good read), and... actually, is any of your argument still standing? Need I go on?

Bias. As in binding.

Ok Siren... I have my seat - do continue ; )

I think humans are the most emotional of animals.
If we had no emotion we would not have reason at all.
we see the world through emotion
without it there would be no art and no inspiration
just as music evokes us, so should poetry, that requires emotion.
the individual is defined by his expression of emotion whether in loutish behaviour or in writing, painting, singing etc whatever it may be.
our whole purpose is to live our life thru our emotion.
Poetry that divorces from this can be an exercise in word mechanics, which in turn is fascinating and clever, this in turn provokes emotions. you cant escape it. You could be divorced from emotion and write in binary, you would end up though, thru no choice, describing yourself. Every word you choose is linked to an emotion, heck what of the alter ego......the animal id.......how far do we go. Birds, trees contain auras, auras link to spirituality, which in turn leads us back to..............................................

im just sad the word ends in 'tion'

'just as music evokes us, so should poetry, '

aye

"palestinian poets (including jewish and muslim poets, when some of the palestinians started identifying as these groupings"

Bloody 'ell. What are Jewish and Muslim poets? Identifying as a Jewish or Muslim poet makes no sense to me any more than me identifying as an atheist poet or a left handed, free market poet, or whatever other aspect of me that I might want to choose.

What do we know anyway. I don't speak Hebrew, Arabic or any of the languages of the Middle East. I know we are best by Philistines, but I am not interested in being taken to Philistia.

Pete is right that emotion is at the core of being human. The point of course is that we display our emotions differently. That difference enriches us. Pleasure is an important emotion and I get pleasure from playing with words. That will annoy some people. Another emotion.

I am against boredom though.

'just as music evokes us, so should poetry'

That statement is hard to agree with, especially because it is meaningless. To 'evoke' means 'to bring to mind' or 'to provoke a response'. In the above statement it has been used completely out of context, as though it means 'to create emotion in'.

I do cryptic crosswords because they make me happy. That is an emotion. But solving crosswords is not an emotional exercise, it is an intellectual one. Human beings, and arguably animals, undergo varying emotions all through their lives, they are what drives us, they are inextricably bound up with the id. Their ubiquity does not however negate the workings of the ego, the consciousness with which we live our day to day lives, often by means of rational decisions. The driver is not the car.

Of course there was emotion in poetry before the Romantics (now you have accepted, DG, that they are who I was on about). But Romanticism coincided with the growth of mass literacy, the emergence of the novel (hence the diminution of poetry as the major literary form), and increased urbanization. In response to this, Romanticism placed a particular emphasis on the individual, and on the emotions of the individual, which had not really existed in poetry before. Much of the poetry which existed before this conformed to pre-existing forms and frameworks, and was seen as a more intellectual or even socio-political exercise. The function of pre-Romantic poetry was primarily narrative, satirical, or courtly. Hence the rare use of the word 'I' in the modern, individualistic sense. Poetry tended to be written with a more pronounced poetic 'voice', a fictional alter ego of the poet as a teller of tales, a singer of love songs, or a bane of officialdom. All of these qualities remained with the Romantics, but more from the emphasis of the individual, the actual poet, and that actual poet's emotions. When Wordsworth said 'I wandered lonely...' he really was talking about himself, and placing his emotions at the centre of his poetry. This was a relatively new phenomenom.
The primary function of poets like Swift or Pope was not to explore or evoke emotion but to rattle the cages of the rich, or to expose political hypocrisy. Emotions such as jealousy, anger and the appreciation of humour may have been involved, but they were secondary to the poem as an agent of communication. The reason the age before Romanticism was called neo-classical (or the Enlightenment) is because it harked back to classical poetry's rational, functional bases.

Oh, and non-humans do not read or write poetry, but I believe it should be possible to write about them without superimposing human emotions upon them, or evoking a directly emotional response from humans in order to describe or understand their functions or actions.

The reason for the tardiness of this post is because I had one of my final exams this morning, and I have another on Friday. I'm feeling a little emotional.

half of what i say is meaningless


'just as music evokes us, so should poetry'


why pick holes in a statement siren when , i knew what it meant . as did you i am sure.
good luck with exams siren .

i forget now , was it meant to be a nerner nerner noise , or a mermaid like creature , i know you told me but i forgot

Hi Shoeless. Thanks for the luck, as I'm sure you know, exams are half luck/half hard work. I'll do the work but I'll gladly take the luck from you.

It's 'Siren' because it neatly compounds the first two letters of my first name and the first three of my last name. Although I am a mammal who can swim and I can be loud and monotonous....

I pick holes in obviously erroneous statements (but not the distressingly high number of spelling mistakes which I hope are down to typos) on this site because this is an area devoted to poetry, literature and language. I would expect somebody to do the same for me if I unknowingly used a word out of context. They would be doing me a favour and I would be grateful for it, rather than getting all defensive. A defensive reaction is what allows people to shy away from their ignorance. Ignorance should be embraced as a chance to learn. Anyone with knowledge is only someone who was once ignorant. And anyone truly wise sees the great depths of their own ignorance.

Also, the statement was repeated and endorsed by someone else which, for me, is like a red rag to an orthographic bull.

I know it irritates people. I also beep my horn at everyone who doesn't indicate...

'just as music evokes us, so should poetry'



;) but i like it , it engages my emotions teribley

I evoke music by twanging poets. It omusics me tellyibly. Quinto quinto crotchets dip-ending from molashes. Grum is the surround of won & clay ping.

I'm not even going to start on that one.

Oh go on. Join in. It's pimply twilling. My name is Eva Evoka and I dance on a slant and a poka.

Wilful misspelling. Oh, go on then...

To the casualty ward at St Michael’s

Limped a man with uneven testichaels

While one ball is fine

The other inclines

And chafes on the seat when he cychaels

Thor wunce was a spune from Berlyn
Huse primarky funkshun was cyn
He mejord owt dosis
Uv prymarl nuroses
Wiv a perficky vakuus grin

Poetry without emotion is like a one-night stand – gets the job done, but ultimately – who cares?

Poetry without emotion is like a beautiful, voluptuous woman in a tight corset – unable to breathe. Now, what kind of sick pervert wants that?

Poetry without emotion is like ‘courtly love’ – fine words, a flounce or two, but definitely not the real thing.

Poetry without emotion is like Courtney Love – ‘nuff said.

Poetry without emotion is like a balloon – lots of hot air, but ultimately not a lot of lift.

Poetry without emotion is not poetry in motion.

Poetry without emotion is ode-ious.

Poetry without emotion is never having to say you’re sorry.

Poetry without emotion is more autistic than artistic.

Poetry without emotion is not for the feint-hearted.

Poetry without emotion is insensitive.

Poetry without emotion isn’t.

Defo Christine

Some people have low emotional intelligence but high literal lobes.
I suggest a rewire.
If you aren't so hot with your emotional intelligence, you can be a computer dork.

I love this analogy Christine...
'Poetry without emotion is like ‘courtly love’ – fine words, a flounce or two, but definitely not the real thing.'

Hey Pete...
Do you think I need to be rewired? ; )

.

The last two posts from John and Pete have made me all emotional.

Poetry without Motion will be much better it will get duffed up or up the duff. Not sure.

Bring on the hairy balloons.

Poetry without emotion is more autistic than artistic.

CHRISTINE !!! did you fall off your pc horse :)

sometimes the nurse wins , so sorry


poetry without motion is just tough shit !

And this was going so well. Still worth reading though, generally speaking. If the unemotional words form a clear thought as in the 'flower tag', I can see poetry in it. From other blogs, you may have noted that I see poetry everywhere. But, I guess, if I smiled at the 'flower tag', I was influenced by emotion. How do we get away from it? Probably not possible,Simon.

the only real thing to write about is emotion.
nothing else engages like it.
what's the point of writing about science.
poetry is about expressing emotion
to investigate the endless possibilities of relationships.

intellectual engagement is not as exciting as true emotion.

I agree with Peter... If there is no emotional engagement - what is the point?!

wow! Do you really think the petty nostril flarings of Sir Mungo in regard to Miss Fanny Chartehouse Braithwait's disaffection is so much more meaningful than the rest of the Universe?

hahahahaha

It is like everything on here - it boils down to individual taste. Some people will be inspired/captivated by emotional poetry - others will prefer more clinical, rational, logical stuff - such as political poetry.
There is one poet on here who managed to write a brilliant poem about an orange - really quirky and different and not an emotion in sight. I am very impressed by her skill and enjoyed the poem immensely - so no - emotional engagement wasn't essential to that poem - much as I love oranges.
By and large I do like poetry that is inspired by life experience and emotions and think that I am not alone. Emotions, feelings are what bind us together in a crazy world. When you read poetry on those lines you can empathise, feel closer, get drawn in and I think that is a good thing.
Unless you are really good and can get away with it, raw poetry seems often to be looked down on - like some poor relation - it shouldn't be that way. There should be room and acceptance for all types of poetry - no one is obliged to read...

I have followed this thread with interest for some time now, but have refrained from commenting as I don't think I have an answer to the original question - well, at least not an easy answer. To be frank, I'm not sure I understand the question! the word that throws me is "essential." Essential for what? Enjoyment? Understanding? Quality? Qualification as poetry even?
Simon posed the original question, and I have no doubt that it's a worthy one. But, before I go any way to making up my mind, it would be useful if he were able to quote (or at least direct me to) what he feels are relevant examples of both emotionally "engaged" and "disengaged" poetry. At a guess I would say I probably might get something from both - but I expect what I get would probably be different. In that respect I suppose the answer to the original question would have to be a no. If I was asked which I prefer, then that would probably be an entirely different matter.
Regards,
A.E.

So - which DO you prefer?
Cx

I couldn't possibly say Christine, I'm a man - I'm not supposed to be able to deal with emotions! Anyway, I know you read some of my scribbles - it shouldn't be too difficult for an emotionally intuitive woman to work out! (blushes coyly - embarassed to have revealed a little of himself!) :-)

I have never understood why men are supposed to hide emotion - I'd much rather have one who can admit to feeling something - especially eloquently - as, of course, you do Anthony!
Cx

Well put, Christine.

A.E, you surely realize how valued all your contributions are, in 'threads' and in your poetry. I think they ring with emotion.

As Anthony says, it would be easier to say which do you prefer.

Hypnotherapists work basically on the principal that language affects thought, thought affects emotion, and emotion affects behaviour. Therefore they are able to change behaviour (in some cases physiological behaviour) by their manipulation of language, depending on the receptivity of their clients.
There is clearly an indirect link between language and emotion. The question is whether poetry, as an expression of language and therefore thought, relies on emotion in order to have full effect. I find it interesting that on this thread there seem to be some who imply that poetry without emotion is invalid, while there are none who believe the opposite. This points to emotion's importance in poetry, but does not necessarily support the idea that it is absolutely vital.
I would have to disagree with Isobel's statement regarding political poetry. I think you would be hard pressed to find a political poem that does not stem from strong emotion; whether it be anger or outrage. Not only do political poems seek to engage their audiences emotionally, emotion is actually intrinsic to their make-up. The angriest poem I know is Milton's 18th sonnet, a protest against an Italian massacre which is infused with a hatred of the Catholic church. It is a political poem, but it speaks directly to the reader's heart, not to the head. Most political poems react to events, they do not explain them coldly.
Anthony asked me to give examples of emotionally engaged/disengaged poetry in order to better understand my question. There are three variables which complicate the scenario: the poet; the poem; and the reader. The poet may think they are writing an unemotional piece, but ambiguity of language may lead the reader to extract an emotional message from it. This is just one example of how this formula may play out. There are several others. It is possible to analyse an ostensibly emotional poem purely in terms of its use of language - in this case the reader is disengaged from the emotional content of the work, but may still appreciate the beauty of the language employed.
Of course, the Milton poem cited above is an example of emotional poetry, so is my BNP poem which was the last work I posted on this site. I would say that more than half of my output does not seek to engage the 'feelings' of the reader. Whether they do engage or not is outside my power, but I believe there are other ways of writing, and reading, poetry. I think there is a poem in my showcase called 'Never Forever', which obliquely describes two bubbles connecting and bursting in the air. There is no overt emotional language in this poem, and none is implied on my part. Yet the reader may wish to see the bubbles as a metaphor for something, and so invest the work with their own emotions. Is this process necessary for the poem to work for you as an individual? That is the question.

You were right to pick me up on that Siren - I hadn't thought it out clearly. Political poetry is, I guess, inspired by strength of feeling and sometimes the frustration and impotency of not being able to correct a wrong. Whether or not the reader engages with it emotionally will depend on how it is put over and also the individual tastes of the reader. I do like poetry that on the face of it isn't emotional but carries a hidden agenda. I also like 'in your face' raw emotion - impossible to pigeon hole poetry...

Simon, I contest your 'bubble theory'. You can't escape symbolism; that is the crux of our human cognitive ability - relationships. What interested you in the first place to record two bubbles meeting and breaking? Writing gels a thought, but what drove you to record that observation? I maintain it was subliminal symbolism.

Go ahead; knock me out of the field.

Dear All,
having a lovely time here in the real world. Weather rubbish.
Wish you were here.
Love,
Derm

I mean - have you even listened to yourselves? Well? Have you?

Okay, suppose you were to join me in the real world for a second and you were to write your poems that don't emotionally engage people - poems that don't make them: laugh, cry, feel nostalgic, want to think more deeply about stuff etc. and you were to hand them out to people, and those people were to say "What am I supposed to do with these?"... Are you seriously going to say to them: "Whatever you like - just don't give a rat's ass about them, that's all"?

Or, better, suppose I was at Inn Verse tomorrow evening (as it goes, I double booked myself like an eegit so feel free to replace me with a tub of lard (or just read out this sarcastic posting)), and you were to read out one of your poems that isn't intended to engage us... do you mind if, instead of clapping, we all just go "Yeah... and?" at the end of it.

I think not.

Anyway, you ask: is being emotionally engaging vital to a poem? Do you mean does a poem have to be engaging to be a poem? Clearly not. It just has to have a rhythmic structure that is evidently there without cheating (otherwise it's something other than a poem). It doesn't even have to be any good whatsoever. There are a lot of poems that I wouldn't wipe my fat arse on, but that are clearly still poems... rubbish poems. A better question would be: if you are writing poems (or creating any form of art/literature) that you are not trying to engage your audience's emotions with then is there any point?

The other point was the political poetry. I'd say most that you hear in the library or the pub doesn't seem (to me at least) to have been created by anyone who actually gives a toss, and I really get the sense of a whole load of Rik the people's poets out there liking the fantasy of their words being looked on in retrospect as the thing that changed the world, but without ever really being bothered by anything other than such glory.

Even when they genuinely do have some feeling in writing it, ineptitude usually gets in the way. And, besides, whilst they are linked, you're all saying it like it's down to the emotions of the poet... it's not. It's down to the emotional response they elicit from their readers. And too many political writers are so wrapped up in their own little this-already-matters world that they don't see that they aren't putting things in there that will engage and bring on board readers who perhaps aren't as lentil-eating and crap.

Yay! Go Dermot!
:)
Cx

Completely ignoring Dermot's typically dismissive rant (he's just a big girl's blouse who can't swim 3/4 of a mile in freezing Scottish seas without having a shivering fit), let me address Isobel's and Cynthia's points:
I agree broadly with Isobel in that it is nigh on impossible to pigeon-hole poetry. But the crux of her statement for me is the phrase 'carries a hidden agenda'. Is the carrying done by the poet, the poem, or the reader? Some mathematicians get quite emotional over the beauty of certain equations, but this does not mean that the equations themselves are inherently emotional concepts. You cannot legislate for people's reactions to things. It is possible, however, to write verse which seeks to describe or even educate, rather than to evoke certain emotions. Such verse may be disliked by some, but it is still verse, and in my opinion, still valid. Whether people see it for what it is, or what it is not.

Which brings me to subliminal symbolism. Cynthia's idea seems to be that poetry, all poetry, emerges from emotion, whether we realise this or not. I would like to think that the bubbles I wrote about symbolise two people coming together and cancelling each other out but it is simply not true. I enjoy writing poetry which is simply descriptive. It is an attempt, I suppose, to engender an altered state of perception, firstly in me, secondly in the reader. Very basically, it is just another way of looking at things. I think it was Robert Herrick in the seventeenth century who described a poem as 'a picture in words'. In the early twentieth century Gertrude Stein's 'Tender Buttons' poems strove to describe everyday objects from a subjective angle. There is no overt emotion contained in these processes, or no more than are present in ordinary life.
What drove me to record the observation did, in a sense, involve emotion, but not in the way you might think. I'd been to see Manchester City beat West Ham at Eastlands and when the visiting crowd had finished their traditional rendition of 'I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles', we sang back, 'You can shove your bubbles up your arse!'. Puerile, I know, but it tickled me at the time, and I decided to write a poem about bubbles. If any emotion was involved in the creative process it was schadenfreude, which really does not come across in the poem. That West Ham song is where the 'Forever' in the title comes from, but it also neatly fit into ideas of intransience, of which bubbles are a rather cliched symbol.
I sincerely believe that the main drives to that piece are science and wordplay, and that any emotional engagement brought to it by the reader have nothing to do with me. I simply describe a natural event, not even commenting on its beauty. To read more into it than is there is wonderful. That is what poetry does; it compresses language in order for it to expand like foam rubber in the reader's mind. But it takes the reader's mind to do that. And that expansion need not be in the direction of emotion.

Let me take the one interesting point from Dermot's very funny, but erroneous post and use it to hoist his own petard to wherever it is that petards are hoisted.
Amongst a range of emotional responses to poetry Dermot managed to list 'thinking deeply about something'. Talk about subliminal symbolism! Since when has thinking deeply about something been an emotion? Is it not possible to ponder without getting all misty-eyed or pissing oneself or being a complete angrypants? As I have stated before, we are all in some emotional state at all times but that does not necessarily mean that we should invest abstract concepts or natural phenomena with such feelings.
If we go back to the hypnotherapist idea we can see that thought is related to emotion, but that does not mean that it IS emotion. And poetry as, in my view, the supreme form of the manipulation of language (and indirectly, thought) contains emotion - emotion does not contain poetry. Poetry is bigger than that.

oh I think you'll find that it talks about the reader/listener/audience being made to want to think more deeply about something - ie. having their curiosity piqued. That's an emotion, surely?

this bit is added later as an edit:

had to come back: "poetry as, in my view, the supreme form of manipulation of language..."

I want to get away from that view. I feel this inflated idea of poetry is the reason so many people want to call (perfectly good) prose that they have written poetry.

We are not a higher art form, we are just a specific written art form. I defy you to put a poetry open floor on in any provincial library (and I'm extending provincial to mean away from any of the larger cities, not just the capital) and advertise it as a "supportive atmosphere" and see how supreme the manipulation of language that turns up to it really is; even from the people who turn up who have bothered to learn the basics of poetry. We've got to stop talking about poetry as if it has a mystique about it and just say it's a thing that shares a lot of the techniques used in prose (imagery, adjectives, adverbs, comparatives, narrative structure or fracturing/lack thereof, etc.) but that is done to a rhythm, and occasionally may also have verses rather than paragraphs.

Such fun, gentlemen. I think we have fallen into the trap of equating emotions only with agitated feelings, excitement of any kind. All the word 'emote' means is: to move - more or less 'out of'. Therefore, removing emotion (re-moting it?) from the prison of 'feelings' puts it squarely in either camp - expansion or diversity of feelings OR intellect. Which observation, I think, makes a capital nod either to Siren or DG.

I wait with bated breath.

Indeed Cynthia: 'I need force to move a chair: I do not need violence'
Nimrod Sejaki- South African Revolutionary and Political Prisoner.

Yes Cynthia - blessed are the peace makers or mediators and very intelligent also - I gave up this thread some time ago - the arguments got so intense my poor brain was struggling and I can't bear having to read comments more than once to see what someone is getting at. I can get the gist of what you are saying though.

What the buggering hell are you two going on about. Isobel, you keep saying your brain can't cope with much and then claiming that you're able to discern who's intelligent and who isn't - for crying out loud, woman, which is it?

Tommy, what has that quote got to do with ANY of the foregoing?

I think you've both misinterpreted Cynthia's comment (which, to be fair, was probably written under the influence of a few bottles of lambrini). Cynthia seems to be looking at the lamping that Simon and I are giving each other and saying: this looks like fun. As I read it, she is standing around us in a playground circle, gleefully clapping her hands and chanting "Scrap Scrap Scrap Scrap".

As to the meaning of emote, it's irrelevant here but it means to "express emotion" usually for show or theatrical purposes - not what Cynthia said it means. However, we weren't talking about emoting, we were talking about whether emotional engagement is essential to poetry. Emotional engagement in the context of this discussion means what both of those words in that order mean in everyday speech.

We could go all postmodern and redefine it for the purposes of this discussion by lying that we all interpret language through our own cultural perspective (we do, but the effect is negligible) but when you shut down this discussion and go into the real world and use words to people you will expect them to understand you pretty much completely, so it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise. So, lets not go there on the this word actually means such and such because it's a nonsense.

No. You maybe looking at a poem from a variety of perspectives and an emotional perspective is just one of many.

I refuse to be insulted or 'emotionally engaged' by you Dermot. I've gone beyond caring who is right or wrong as there possibly isn't a right or wrong - just opinions. When 2 males lock horns, it is very rare to ever see one back down and say 'yes mate, perhaps you were right and I was wrong' - it just goes against ego. You could go round in circles defining the words emotional, engagement, essential, and poetry and then just for good measure complicate the equation by questioning 'who' the engagement is relevant to. Personally, I'd get more fun out of plucking my own toe nails out and then maybe swilling a few bottles of lambrini to add to the experience.
BTW - I never suggested that I could differentiate between intelligent and non intelligent people - I just praised Cynthia for what I thought was an intelligent input - if that makes you feel insecure and undermined - I am soooo sorry.

I did notice a little testy testosterone last night.

"We could go all postmodern and redefine it for the purposes of this discussion by lying that we all interpret language through our own cultural perspective (we do, but the effect is negligible)"

Well, no, Dermot, it isn't negligible. But not terribly relevant. It seems to me that emotional engagement in poetry is at many levels; including that of intellectual enthusiasm and curiousity. But I think it's sometimes a trap to be too emotional; it can seem manipulative, in an aah-kittens kind of way, or a kind of Daily Mail "young people today", grumpy kind of way.

I think part of what poetry can do is actually investigate the emotions, not just try to "move" the reader like an advertisement or a soap opera. And if people are made to feel uncomfortable through poetry, then that's a good thing too; and it's an emotional response that might lead to thought.