Poems for the Eye Are Not Merely for the Sake of Eye :: English Literature Essays

Poems for the center Are Not Merely for the Sake of Eye What is poetry? Pressed for an answer, Robert Frost made a classic reply Poetry is the kind of thing poets write. In all likelihood, Frost was not laborious merely to evade the question but to chide his questioner into thinking for himself. A trouble with definitions is that they may stop thought. The nature of poetry eludes simple definitions. Definitions testament be of little help at first, if we are to know poetry and respond to it. We have to go to it willing to see and hear. To a particular poem, thousands of readers will have thousands of understandings. A poem can please us in many aspects. We usually concentrate our attention on its sound, wording, and figure of speech. In fact, a poem in stanzas can please us by its visual symmetry. This kind of poems is usually called the poems for the eye including spatial free verse and picture poems. though many poets seem hardly to care about it, enough importance should be giv en to the visual element of poetry. At least some of our enjoyment in silently reading a poem derives from the way it looks upon its page.Poems for the eye can be divided into two types. One kind is the visual feel predominates the whole poem the other is the visual remains subordinate to the aural and other elements of the poetry.There are indeed some spatial poems that can lead us pleasure through their quarrel arrangement. And far from being merely decorative, the visual devices of a poem can be meaningful, too. For examplesThis is William Carlos Williams poem that describes an energetic bellhop runs downstairs. Beside the words sound like that man is running downstairs, the appearance of the whole poem is like the stairs. This is not only good onomatopoeia and an accurate description of a rhythm the steplike appearance of the lines goes together with their meaning. This kind of appearance or words arrangement makes the common words ta tuck a vivid.The same with the pastime Kenneth Patchens (1911-1972) poemThe ball bumps down the travelIn the two poems above, the visual quality dominates the meaning of the whole poems. You can say that the shape of the words arrangement overweighs the meaning of the words. But it does bring us pleasure. It is more interesting and meaningful and stronger than just say, ta tuck a and The ball bumps down the steps Maybe this is one of the great charms of this kind of poems.