Why+so+personal?

In the essay by Reginald Sheperd, he quotes Geoffrey Hill saying, "If you write as if you had to placate or in any way entice their lack of interest, then I think you are making condescending assumptions about people. I mean people are not fools. " Then, Shepard goes on to say that he doesn't want to be "patronized" or "condescended" to and he would rather the poet write intelligently assuming that the reader is, "both intelligent and interested." I understand where both Sheperd and Hill are coming from, but I don't know why they had to take it so personally. Did they ever think that maybe a poet just writes what he or she can comprehend? That maybe poets are not creating their poems directly for the intelligence level of their readers, but because that is all the poet is capable of? I don't think that the poet always writes for his or her readers, but rather, they often just write for themselves and then decide whether or not is it good enough to be published. Any thoughts? 1204141884

I see where you are coming from, cdu. I agree that many writers (not just poets but all writers in general) write for themselves and should therefore freely write however they like. However, many writers do have a targeted audience, and it is necessary for them to write appropriately according to their audience. What I think Shepherd and Hill are trying to get at is that a poet should not try to go out of their way to cator to their audience's needs, whether that be stupidity or bordem. Poets should not have to be hindered by dumbing down their work or by making it over-the-top interesting just because they assume their audience is either stupid or bored. They should just write normally, and if the readers do not find it interesting or if they cannot understand the syntax or some words, that their fault. 1204148807

Although it is possible that poets write for themselves remember that he also states that poet write for the purpose of communication with other people, which is why I believe he took it so personally. To him each poet is communicating to him specifically, and if a poet dumbs down his or her writing, then Shepard feels as though he is being talked down to like a child. However, I think it is more than Shepard being personally offended; he is speaking for all the people who appreciate and like to read poetry. He feels that if you appreciate poetry, then you obviously possess a certain level of intelligence, so I believe he is just speaking out for everyone who likes to be challenged by difficult poems and does not want to be pandered too. I think his emphasis on making a poem intelligent and difficult also has to do with the fact that easier poems tend to be more accessible and therefore more popular, yet they may not always possess the same quality as do poems that perhaps aren't as popular yet are more complex.1204152459

I agree with a lot of what Msu has to say. I don’t think that Sheperd is taking it as personally as some people assume. I think he acted like he took it personally to make a point. He simple does not like it when poets dumb down their work for the audience and by acting like he was personally offended he gets that point across. I will say that sometimes I believe that some poems need to be dumbed down a little bit. If poetry is used for a form of communication then sometimes one should speak to the target audience’s level of intelligence, vocabulary, and even dialect I guess. Once a poem uses too many references to other writers, characters, vague and unknown Greek/Roman gods/goddesses, you begin to lose the audience because they don’t always have the educational background that the poet does. I think on some levels, Sheperd is wrong and doesn’t take the time to think about the avid poetry readers who do not have an extensive knowledge of other literary work or knowledge in general. 1204154438

I think there are both kinds of poets out there. I know for certain that there are some poets who write solely for themselves. They have no interest in whether or not someone is going to judge their work; as long as the author is pleased with it, then it's good enough. However, if someone is a poet for a living, they would most likely be concerned with how their work will be received by the general public. I suppose it depends on the situation of the poet. If you're making money off of it, you're probably going to write for other people. If one write poetry because it relaxes them or it pleases them, then I doubt they are going to worry a whole lot about what other people think about it. 1204163265

This quote from Geoffrey Hill just sort of baffles me. On the one hand, I can understand where he's coming from by saying that writer's should assume that their audience is intelligent and therefore should not have everything just handed to them, but on the other hand I believe that poetry to an extent must somehow appeal to people's interest because otherwise I see no use in writing it. I think the whole point of writing something is both to express one's self, but to also do it in such a way that other people can understand. I will say though that what a writer needs to do is create a balancing act so that he both can express himself, but also appeal to others. I believe though that an author doesn't necessarily have to write to an audience, but can still sort of accidentally end up writing to the audience. It's sort of like when a musician writes a song and they really like the song and then it comes out and other people like it and listen to it thus bringing the musician success because the artist gets to express himself and also gets to reach people who end up enjoying his work.

I do however agree with this notion of not dumbing down work and that's what I think Shepherd took so personally. I think he worries that poets will dumb down their work and will therefore dumb down the communication between author and reader established by the poem. I think he worries that instead of a communication about the secret to happiness in life, he will get a communication about a fart joke or something stupid like that because the author will write about a fart joke as that is maybe more appealing to a wider audience. I can agree that I hope that authors don't dumb down their work because the only way to achieve progress is to push the envelope and by just doing the dumb obvious thing, they would be slowing down the progress and evolution of the poem as a form of writing.1204164968

I agree that a writer should not bring themselves to a lower level of intelligence just to appeal to a broader range of people. I think that poetry has a large foundation on individuality, and if the writer changes what he is writing because other people do not quite get it, it is like he is giving up a part of himself. You should never have to change who you are to please somebody else. Since a writer's writing is his main purpose in life, any sacrifice or change in his writing could affect their overall performance, productivity, or happiness. And, cdu, I think that there is a big difference between naturally writing understandably and dumbing yourself down. Hill and Shepherd are against the latter. 1204166774

I think that Shepherd is addressing the issue of mainstream poetry or the attempts at creating mainstream poetry. This type of poetry assumes that its reader is not intelligent to understand historical references or literature references that go beyond common popular knowledge. I'm not saying that this is not good poetry, but it may not be the fullest expression of poetry that the poet is capable of. It may be dumbing down the poem's potential to fit a larger audience. I also agreed with Shepherd's initial statement that poetry was never mainstream in the first place, so I don't know how prevalent this dumbing down may be. He may be just trying to stop this from happening. In either case, I agree with him. I would not want to be condescending towards so that I won't have to put forth any effort to read a poem. Isn't that what separates poetry from prose? The extended effort and insight you must put in to understand the poem, to expunge its personal meaning and worldwide meaning? For me, at least, this is what a poet attempts to do when they put pen to paper and this is something that no mainstream theory should take away from. 1204169882

Many of the poems we have read throughout the school year have made me feel quite, I guess you could say, dumb. I sit there reading this gigantic names or places that I never even heard of. Most of the time, only one person in my class knows what anything is in that poem. But I have noticed that most of the time the words I do not understand only apply to one line in the poem. Sometimes a whole poem is based off of a greek god/goddess etc. but in other poems only one line uses these intelligent words and historical figures. They usually use these figures to just help with their overall statement in their poem. I find sometimes that I can understand an entire poem and know what the author meant to say even though they use certain words or figures that I do not know or recognize. I agree that poets should not dumb down for their audience, but I think that it is the audience who sees something complicated and automatically thinks, "oh, I don't understand it! It's such a big word!" When really, if they read the rest of the poem they can understand everything perfectly. We as readers have had so many poems dumb downed for us because we are, let's face it, kind of lazy. 1204173753

I think that whether a writer writes for an audience or himself depends solely on the writer. Emily Dickinson, for example, wrote entirely for herself: if she hadn't, then she would have put the order in her will to destroy all of her writing without having anyone read it--obvious a failed venture. Conversely, J.K. Rowling writes for an audience because she writes for money and reputation. She wrote her first book to pull herself out of poverty, and she continues to write to earn money to live off of. It isn't necessarily a bad thing: it is just her major motivation. Other writers, like Pope, write to gain respect among their fellow authors. The motivation often influences the writing: writing that is done for readers is usually more conservative and traditional, while writing done for personal reasons is usually much more radical and modern. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the number of writers is so large that a blanket statement cannot be made for their motivations for writing. I would even go so far as to say it is impossible to declare a majority motivation among writers, largely because of the variety of pieces and authors and motivations and time periods... there are just too many variable to have a consensus. 1204246570

First, I totally agree that writers should not write down for their audience. They should be writing because it is something that they love to do and something that brings them joy, not something that they feel they have to do in order to make the audience happy. I feel like some of the meaning of the work is lost if the writer's heart isn't in the piece for the right reason, sometimes they write something because it's what people want to hear not what they need to hear which does the audience a disservice. When it comes to the motivation of writers, I also don't think that we can say exactly what makes writers write. Like dsU said, there have been so many things that have changed throughout the years that there is no way that writers today and writers from hundreds of years ago can possibly be motivated by the same things. 1205355462

Yes I also agree that poets should be writing for other reasons than to just get their poems published for the masses. It needs to be about their self expression for their own purposes. Poetry should be made for the self. I think that both Hill and Shepherd would agree with this. I think they would agree also that if a poem seemed "easy" or not very intelligent to them, but it was written for the author, they would have no problem with it. I think that the problem comes along when writers start to write for their audience and assume that they need the material dumbed down. A dumb poem isn't necessarily bad, a poem written for an audience isn't always bad, but when a poem is written to be dumb so an audience will understand it, it becomes boring and even a little insulting to the readers. And I agree, poets shouldn't be assuming that I am just a dumb teenager when they write. If I can't understand the meaning of a difficult poem, I will admit that I am probably just not ready for the message.1205448685

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What I think that Shepard is really going at is that if you have an intelligent poem you shouldn't dumb down your poem for your audience. What this means that pretty much you shouldn't try to fit your poems to a mass audience because most of your mass audience wont be interested in the poems anyways. I think that what Bro Tom said in class was right, poetry will always be a niche form of entertainment. To me there is really no way to bring it out of this nich because in bringing it out of the niche you won't entice people to read and buy your works because the average Joe is too busy watching TV and playing Halo to care about poetry and in dumbing it down you remove the reason for the intellectuals who will normally read your work from reading it because why read a poem that isn't challenging? The reason that they take this sort of thing so personally is because they have probably seen alot of people get disillusioned with poetry and alot of poets try to go mainstream because people think that poetry should be simple enough for the masses to understand and he personally dosn't like to see what he sees as the destruction of his art. user:DGr-c

CDu I will have to agree. I posted on the idea of a poem being obscure but still a quality poem in a previous topic, and I feel the same way about this. What is wrong with a poet writing for themselves? Do they always have to think of the audience? Now obviously those who try to make a living out of being a poet need to write things that sell usually, but Br. Tom for example is a poet and writes simply for his personal reasons, I can only assume. I don't know you Br. Tom, but I can only imagine that you don't have an idea of who the audience of your poem will be, yet I also believe that you write excellent poems. 1205454958

I find that writers/poets/authors have different intentions in writing their work. Some do it out of sheer enjoyment, others want to share their work with others (like Shakespeare's entertaining plays), and I'm sure there are a plethora of other reasons. I like the example that dSu mentioned about Emily Dickinson's personal reason for writing--for herself. She did not write to please others; she did it out of her passion for poetry. I found the following info to be fascinating:

//Emily Dickinson is indeed probably the greatest American poet and a most original voice, and the fact that she never published or intended to publish her poems is a strong statement of "art for art's sake," of creativity for personal transcendence versus fame and the need for external forces to validate her identity and values. This motive is enough to put Dickinson in an estimable status. It was at this point in her life (1862) that she determined to pursue her art the more vigorously, eventually **producing 1, 775 poems up to her death at 55, but unawares to anyone, even to her closest kin.** And with the perfection of her art followed the perfection of reclusion.// http://www.hermitary.com/articles/dickinson.html

It is truly amazing that Emily kept her talent so secretive and personal; it is inspiring. I remember also hearing that her family altered some of the content of her poems after her death, which is frustrating because it is taking away from Dickinson's own intent and creativity!

Overall, I find that, when it comes to why people write, "to each his own." It is different for each person. 1205458131

I, too, understand what you are saying CDu. I mean, just as Br. Tom writes poetry everyday, he does not write for an audience, but for himself. he has no plans of binding all of his work and selling it. He writes the poetry for himself. But, at some point, a poet has to know that what he has written will be read. But, that does not mean that poetry has to be confusing. that is the beauty of it. I think that poetry can be simple or complicated; it is not so personal. As much as i would like to think that a poet writes a specific poem for solely me ( i sometimes read a poem and feel this), it is not true. 1205465837