Modal+Difficulty

While reading Shepherd's essay "On Difficulty in Poetry", I was especially struck by her explanation of modal difficulty. He states that when we experience this type of difficuly, "we fail to see a justification of poetic form, the root of the poem's composition eludes or repels our internalized sense of what poetry should or should not be". As a reader of poetry, I often wonder if some of the poems I read are truly poems. I like her example of "The Red Wheelbarrow" because it clearly illustrates a piece of work that most of us do not consider a poem. For those of you who don't remember, this is how the poem goes:

So much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens

While I do consider this to be a poem, Shepherd brings up a good point. Do I think it is a poem because that is what I've been taught? When look closely at the words, these could be simple phrases written in one line. There is no rhyme scheme or anything else besides short lines. Still though, we are taught that this is a poem. Does anyone else struggle with this? Do some poems seem unlike poems at all? What makes something a poem? 1204048681

Corrections: It's Reginald _Shepherd_ ... and he's a he, not a she .. i.e. you'll probably never meet a woman named Reginald.1204052888

Modal difficulty is not something that I struggle with; if the author writes something and calls it a poem, I will look at it as a poem because the author wrote it being conscious that it was supposed to be a poem. I'm not saying that I've never said "why is //this// a poem?" when I read something that I do not comprehend at first, but I just say that because I do not understand the meaning or purpose. The author obivously had a meaning and purpose behind the words s/he wrote to contribute to it's poetic nature, and I accept that, no matter how nonsensical or prose-like it seems. In regards to the point KSm made about "The Red Wheelbarrels," yes, I believe that it is a poem not just because teachers say it is, but because the poet intended it to be one. 1204063880

First of all, the poem mentioned above does have a meter. In the first line of the first and last stanzas, there are four beats, and all the second lines have two. As such, I call this a poem according to my definition. Unlike our friend above, I do have difficulty with modal difficulty. I want to be able to look at a poem and say "this is a poem." Random and abstract (T.S. Eliot) "poetry" does not work for me. The poem used above is not random, and maybe a little abstract. But I can say that its a poem 1) because it has a form and 2) because its difficult to understand, but not impossible. The poet is saying that we take everyday things for granted. Back to modal difficulty, I can not call "the colonel" a poem because it was not meant to be a poem at first. My stance is that poems can only be poems if they were intended to be. I think that "the Colonel" is poetic, but not poetry.

In conclusion, I don't like the definition of poetry to be so subjective, but I can't even decide what exactly it is. 1204075341

I agree with John in that a poem is a poem if it was meant to be so. I could work really hard at some horrible piece of writing that I would call poetry, and because I put so much effort into it, I would expect it to be seen as a poem. But I still have problems deciphering what in a poem, especially "The Colonel," makes it a poem. "The Colonel" was not meant to be a poem, but yet it is published in tons of poetry anthologies. Why? I don't understand. It's a poem because her friend told her that it was a poem. She didn't want it to be a poem initially and it doesn't look like a poem, so why is it a poem? Anyways, I guess that there is no way to decide what makes something a "true" poem. I don't think that it exists. 1204085899

I agree with what has been said that something is poetry because the author intended it to be. I like the definition that writing that requires certain attention is poetry. However, I do accept "The Colonel" as poetry. Even though its origional intention was not a poem, if she were to write a poem about that event, what would she have to change? It's poetic as it is. No changes would make it any more or less a poem. It looks like a paragraph, but Br. Tom said in my class that prose poetry might have been the only form that could contain it. Think about it, if it was with lines and rhymes it would almost lose some of the mood. It doesn't need a form like that, the event and words are quite enough to get me thinking and asking questions. Now, if Forche had said it wasn't a poem after her friend suggested it, I would have to accept it as such. In my opinion, it's up to author when determining if something is a poem. 1204238583

We read "The Red Wheelbarrow" in English class with Brother Tom sophomore year, and I disliked it then as much as I dislike it now. I look at that poem and go "Are you kidding? I can do this, too! Red monkey sitting down to tea with a puce elephant by the clock." The analogy I used in class was that this kind of poetry is a lot like modern art. There's a painting, I don't remember who made it, that is a huge canvas painted completely red with a small orange dot in the corner. My dad and I sat and stared at it for a good few minutes before we realized, "Wait, somebody actually paid thousands of dollars for someone to paint a canvas a solid color and put a dot on it. Did that take any skill at all?" Clearly, I have Modal difficulties.1205452253