DICTION AND LOGIC IN POETRY
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| Sir.Junh |
From the vantage point of logic, we have been able to
reappraise the workings of language in advertising, politics, and journalism as
they affect our daily lives. We have also seen how denotation and connotation are
related to clear and orderly thinking. Now we can apply all that we have
learned so far to the critical reading of language as art, as literature.
Through analysis of the diction and thought of several
poems and passages of literary types of prose, we shall try to arrive at some
general methods of evaluating the quality on any creative expression. With this
knowledge the reader may sharpen his perceptions and judgment of all that he
reads. He may also discover how he can further apply those standards to the
improvement of his own writing.
You may have worked through a few poems in earlier
exercises and in doing so perhaps asked yourself: “Why doesn’t a poet just put
down in plain words what he has to say and be done with it? Why does he have to
make a poem look and read the way the poems do? Why can’t a poem be read as
easily as prose is?”
The obvious reply is that both poetry and prose are
literary genres, but that each makes different demands upon the reader. A writer
of prose knows that he must be understood at even a hurried reading; poets,
however, have always desired and even required repeated readings of their
poems. Their meanings are more concentrated, and their rhythmic word patterns
plead for more attentive ear and eye. Yet poetry and prose are close companions
in language, as we shall see. Aside from possibly the rhythm and the usual appearance
of the poem on a page, a passage of prose may possess all of attributes usually
considered the distinction of good poetry- qualities such as these:
Imagination
Emotional
thought
Connotative
meanings
Rhythm
Insight,
vision
Figurative
language
Economy
of words
Structure
and form
Both poems and prose can explain, argue, describe and
narrate; both quality have tone ang theme as well as all such necessities of rhetoric
as parallelism, antithesis, paradox, definition, analysis, comparison and
contrast. There is no difference between the language of poetry and prose in
sense of separate, distinct vocabularies, as was true of, earlier poetry.
…
SCHARBACH, Alexander ---Critical Reading and Writing
