• Best of luck to the class of 2024 for their HSC exams. You got this!
    Let us know your thoughts on the HSC exams here
  • YOU can help the next generation of students in the community!
    Share your trial papers and notes on our Notes & Resources page
MedVision ad

Poetry is stupid (2 Viewers)

live.fast

Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
Messages
501
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
oh and yea..how can ya tell if a mod is watchin diz thread?
 

ign0r4mus

New Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Messages
25
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
sleepplease said:
it doesnt matter WHY he wrote it!! what matters is how YOU read it! read some of barthes stuff, seriously if you feel this passoinately about your hatred for poetry it should interest you, .. a text is separate from teh author as soon as it is created. Any message the author MAY or MAY NOT have been trying to get across is irrelevant. what is importnat is how you read it.

have you studied different readings (i'm not sure if you do at school..) but pretty much the point is that your reading of a text is the important thing.

thankyou m0ofin -- yay for you too :)
You can't be serious?? How can you say that any message the author may or may not have been trying to get across is IRRELEVANT?? Of course it is relevant. An author creates a text to reveal a message, whether it be about their opinions, ideas, beliefs, etc. Why should you even bother to write a text if people dont want to get your message? By deeming the authors message irrelevant, you are devaluing the meaning of the poem to its author, and hence mocking the author. It'd be like saying to Eliot "I dont give a stuff about what you think your poem is about. This is what i think its about."

However, i do feel that how you read it is another important part, just not the only.
 
Last edited:

ign0r4mus

New Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Messages
25
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
I think the a better title for this thread would've been 'eliot is stupid' or 'the hollow men is stupid' or something of that sort. I dont think live.fast is saying that poetry in general is stupid...
 

ign0r4mus

New Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Messages
25
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
bogen said:
sif it is, the way man kind has expressed itself litarayly is stupid cause you said so? yeah mate
Poetry isnt the only way humans have expressed themselves literacy-wise. Others include novels/novellas/short stories, songs, diary entries, recounts, reports, essays, discussions and editorials, just to name a few. It's just that you are implying that poetry is the only way that humans have expressed themselves and thus you are putting greater emphasis on its importance. Certainly, i would not rate poetry as the highest form of human expression, although it is higher than a quite a few (e.g. tabliod articles...i just hate them so much)
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2006
Messages
249
Location
what is this, Big Brother?
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
ign0r4mus said:
You can't be serious?? How can you say that any message the author may or may not have been trying to get across is IRRELEVANT?? Of course it is relevant. An author creates a text to reveal a message, whether it be about their opinions, ideas, beliefs, etc. Why should you even bother to write a text if people dont want to get your message? By deeming the authors message irrelevant, you are devaluing the meaning of the poem to its author, and hence mocking the author. It'd be like saying to Eliot "I dont give a stuff about what you think your poem is about. This is what i think its about."

However, i do feel that how you read it is another important part, just not the only.
EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

just to re-iterate, this is what ignor4mus... and i have been trying to say.

It is completely and totally relevant in regards to wat the author is attempting to bring across to the audience. Poetry is written as an ecprssion of feeling. Yes, i believe that it does create meaning and feeling within the reader. But is that it's sole purpose, of course NOT!!!

Like i said b4, we must consider the purpose of this poem, and by studying it, we must attempt to derive the meaning in which Eliot is attempting to put forward. However, Eliot does at times get caught up in his allusions (you must be living in a cave if u don't noe, but i think i've said it about 8 times now, that Eliot alludes to so many texts, that i believe he could've been caught fpor copyright infringement.....subjective enough?), that meaning throughout the poem is lost (kinda of)...and the Eliot can become ambiguos at times.

Anywayz, go live.fast, keep up the good work, and go ignor4mus, ur points rule, u look at the poem with a clever point of view.

Anyway, Eliot, be more original and creative next time....( i noe he has passed on)

No more copyright breaches alright.:bomb:

Eliot=emo:)
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2006
Messages
249
Location
what is this, Big Brother?
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
lol, soulsearcher, u got to get off the fence and take a side, plz tell me ur view, cos i want to noe

come on....is poetry, and more specifically eliot stupid or not???

by sitting back, ur acting like a hollow man....lol
 

sleepplease

Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2006
Messages
328
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
hmm been thinking about what you are saying about the author's original intentions being important and i still come back to the fact that it is your interpretation that matters. Of course their intentions will shape your interpreation (because if they have written it effectively it will be communicated) but precise meaning can change dramatically, and this shouldn't matter.
for example say a poem describing "leaves changin colour" to one school girl this poem may be interpreted as being about time, and the cyclic motion of life. This poem means a lot to this individual as she is just beinging to think about her place in the world.
What if the author attached a little note to it explaining what he meant "this poem is about me getting old and feeling threatened by degression in masculintiy" < written by a man who feels concious of his inability to live up to his previous "masculine" image.. THIS would mean very little to the school girl above.
I am merely suggesting, that whilst an authors intentiosn will clealry be communicated to a degree, both interpreations agreed that the poem was about the passing of time, the real mesage is up tp the reader.
 

filo_romz

Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2005
Messages
34
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
okay .. after reading all that debate .. im going to say that poetry should be recognised and acknowledged by students and that we should get some feeling out of it. BUT the point of poetry is to express a message to the audience right? and T.S eliots way of expressing his message is a bit farfetched dont you think? i mean he wrote the poem 'the hollow men' in a way only educated people could understand and so the messages can be clearly seen by them. But how about the other people? like us? the majority of the people can't really get the message from his poem and we have to fully look deep into each line and extrapulate their meanings which can really piss a lot of people off like live.fast (roger).. so if the main reason for poetry is to express a message, T.S eliots way of expresssing his message to the audience isn't that all well and good .. xD and so that's why live.fast is probably saying eliot is gay because he can't express the messsage clearer for us.
 

live.fast

Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2006
Messages
501
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
for example say a poem describing "leaves changin colour" to one school girl this poem may be interpreted as being about time, and the cyclic motion of life. This poem means a lot to this individual as she is just beinging to think about her place in the world.

What was the author trying to say in this poem about leaves? What was his original message? His MAIN message? DOn't you see how illogical it is to try and draw MORE meaning than originially intended from a text? It's like saying a few twigs make a tree - the meaning drawn, the MESSAGE drawn should be the MESSAGE the author wanted to put across, because it's why the text was written in the first place - otherwise people could do what you say, and intepret my anger at eliot as being an anger at English as a whole subject, and all written works - but it isn't, its about Eliot, so what you intepret CAN BE contextual interpretation as in the SAME message in diff worlds, but even trying to interpret the message as slightly different or trying to extend on the message beyond the author's original intent defeats the purpose of the author's labours, defeats why he's trying to write whatever he's trying to write about -

and so eliot is a gay man :)
 

sleepplease

Member
Joined
Apr 25, 2006
Messages
328
Gender
Female
HSC
2008
didn't understand any of that - not very coherent. what the fuck is with "elliot is a gay man" is that some kind of juvenille humour?
 

SoulSearcher

Active Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2005
Messages
6,757
Location
Entangled in the fabric of space-time ...
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
the pospinator said:
lol, soulsearcher, u got to get off the fence and take a side, plz tell me ur view, cos i want to noe

come on....is poetry, and more specifically eliot stupid or not???

by sitting back, ur acting like a hollow man....lol
It's a bit hypocritical of you after bagging out T.S. Eliot to use one of his ideas and accuse me of being a hollow man.

IMO, poetry is just another form of expression of the human experience. Poets choose what they write, what they allude to, what they want to portray to their audience, through their words and style of writing. There is no sole purpose of poetry; indeed, poetry could be written to express the poet's feelings and emotions, to communicate a message, to tell a story, to entertain etc. but we cannot conclude that the only purpose of any text is to give a message to the audience; rather that we can infer messages from texts.

The meaning of poetry can never be set in stone, there will never be one definite interpretation of any poem, because as individuals, we have our different contexts, our different views on human existence, our differences will be too great to ever agree on one set meaning of the poem. Although the intentions of the author will affect our interpretations of the poem in question, there can be no denying that inevitably we will never be able to agree on a single interpretation of the poem.

As for a message, would you rather be told flat out that unless you have a purpose in life and commit your will towards that purpose, you are condemned as a hollow man, or rather infer that message from the many deep allusions and style and diction of the poem? This message would be more poignant to you if you were able to reach the message for yourself, whereas trying to force your beliefs down people's throats will not be accepted by many. That was what Eliot tried to achieve, through his allusions and writing style. This is where the purpose of this poem lies, and rather than bagging him out for making it too hard to understand, think of why he wrote the poem this way, leaving it up to your own interpretation, because he wanted his audience to make the get the ideas out for themselves, thus giving more power to his message.

Please feel free to destroy this post in whatever ways you can think of :)
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2006
Messages
249
Location
what is this, Big Brother?
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
SoulSearcher said:
It's a bit hypocritical of you after bagging out T.S. Eliot to use one of his ideas and accuse me of being a hollow man.
soulsearcher man, that was a joke, that line...it was just a bit of humour, u can't really judge me and say that i'm being hypocritical, it was a little joke, why did u think i put 'lol' at the end of my sentence

i thought u would have picked up on that.

and much of my bagging has gon eto his use of allusions, or his overuse there of, just cos i bag Eliot doesn't mean i can't use his stuff, i bagged the Hollow Men, not Eliot as a poet

and don't worry, live.fast and i will think of a way to totally annihilate ur post, u can count on that
 

ign0r4mus

New Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2006
Messages
25
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
SoulSearcher said:
Please feel free to destroy this post in whatever ways you can think of :)
With absolute pleasure ;)

well, well....where to start??

Firstly, with the hypocricy comment. Bit harsh. The sarcasm was clearly evident there.

Secondly, with the two following paragraphs. Im pretty sure everyone here knows and agrees with that. No real point reiterating what we know.

Ok. you say 'would you rather be told flat out that unless you have a purpose in life and commit your will towards that purpose, you are condemned as a hollow man, or rather infer that message from the many deep allusions and style and diction of the poem', but that is not what we were arguing. We were arguing of the ambigious nature of his poem, in particular his inability to clearly convey his own message due to his overuse of allusions. Yes we all know he was using allusions, style and diction to try to convey his message and that is absolutely fine but there comes a point to which it becomes excessive, so much so that the meaning is lost within allusion after allusion and it is left to us, the reader to attempt to infer a message. But how are we to create a correct inference upon the poem if we do not know the authors meaning. I could say "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" with the intention of promoting and endorsing sea shell stores by the sea shore, but by not telling you my intention, you could infer i was mocking the stupidity of the girl selling sea shells by the sea shore because you could just pick up sea shells by the sea shore for free. Hence, we are critising his inability to clearly reveal his own message and his intentions in his own poem, and thus he is stupid and i will forever dance on his grave.

O yea, you said 'he wanted his audience to make the get the ideas out for themselves, thus giving more power to his message', but how can you seriously know this. Unless you were talking to him about the poem, you do not know this and can only make inferences. For all we could know, maybe he was trying to directly convey his message but he was just too stupid. And as you can see here, we do not know at all what the hell he was trying to do and hence the confusion he creates makes him a stupid poet. Im not saying a poem must be straightforward and simple, it just should be, IMO, evident what he is trying to say.
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2006
Messages
249
Location
what is this, Big Brother?
Gender
Male
HSC
2007
nice ignor4mus, couldn't have said it better myself.

Finally someone agrees wif me, that Elito's overuse of allusions is a credit to his stupidity.

Anhyway, like i said soulsearcher, we would think of a way to destroy ur post...feel free to fight back

let the argunment continue

GO THE AUSSIES:)

And by the way, Hollow Men is an infringement of copyright laws
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 2)

Top