This is the second of a multiple-part series containing the notes I took during a poetry workshop taught by the renowned poet, "The Pope of Greenwich Village," José Garcia Villa, (1907-1996). José, whom I got to know well, was a great teacher, who dedicated the latter decades of his life to the teaching of the art of writing verse. He intended to publish a book about this subject, but it never materialized. This makes the publication of these notes, imperfect as they are, all the more important; scholars, poets and lovers of poetry might well find something of interest here.
February 11, 1970
Inlearning: expanding knowledge of the interior
Endopoetics: regarding the essence within
Outlearning expanding exterior knowledge
Exopoetics: technical knowledge
Poema/Logos
Exopoetics, not logos, is what makes a poem art.
Next three weeks: "inlearning" of poetry
Roethke on prosy poems: "These wings are from the wrong nest."
François Mauriac: When a writer has style, it doesn't matter what he has to say.
Eliot: "Ulysses is the most important expression modern times has produced."
Joyce: Intellectual narrowness, but possessed an extreme gift for writing.
Art doesn't require intellect; it requires intelligence.
Ideas merely "show off" in art.
Art doesn't require intellect because its problems can be solved--and only thus: by intelligence. Doesn't need rationality
Poetry catches meaning unintentionally.
Valéry: It's the lack and the black which create.
Stevens: knowledge of poetry is part science and part theory.
Scholars generalize, artists individualize.
Ned Rorum: "I don't really know anything about music!" Inner, intuitive knowledge.
Blake: Are artists' rules to be drawn from fools?
Pound: The greatest barrier is set up by teachers who know just a little more than the public.
What follows is José's versification of the February 4th assignment, which he presented after we presented our versions. I do not know the source of this quote. I did not record any student version.
Give Coleridge one
vivid word from an old
narrative--
Let him mix
it with two
in his thought: "out
of three sounds he will
frame, not
a fourth sound,
but a star."
February 18, 1970
Marshall Mcluhan: The medium is the message.
Loving the medium is what is most important.
When the medium is effective, so is the content;
when the medium is not effective, content has no effect either.
Content is a fractional medium of larger, formal medium.
The medium in which the subject moves is what is most important.
Subjects as such are not literary.
Literary qualities: effects in language
Poetry exists as music, but in the form and medium of language.
Anything can be a subject
Language in itself is anonymous and without personality.
Bad poets practice alchemy in reverse: they touch gold and turn it into lead.
Valéry: the execution of the poem is the poem.
A good poem sometimes surprises with unintentional, metaphysical significance.
The medium is concrete, although what it has produced is not concrete.
Without the success of the concrete medium, there is no expressiveness.
Stevens: One of my ideals is to make everything expressive. I want to get out of line.
Poetry readings are like trying to win a beauty contest by sending the judges a recording of your voice.
Ned Rorum: Taste, touch, smell are for sex; eyes and ears are for art.
Prose content of poem is not an art factor; not the real meaning of the poem--It is a springboard, like the score of a musical composition:
Transfiguration and magnification of values in performance.
Even when Johnson announced good news it sounded like bad news.
The most expressive writers are the ones with deepest content, but it's the expression that makes it great.
Development and detection of expressiveness is a lifelong task.
The session ended, once again, with our "found poem" versification assignment. Here is José's version:
Each flower
owes it to itself
to fade
for the sake
of its fruit;
the fruit, unless it
fall and
die cannot
assume new
blooms: spring itself
rests on
winter's grief.
(Source unknown)
To be continued
February 11, 1970
Inlearning: expanding knowledge of the interior
Endopoetics: regarding the essence within
Outlearning expanding exterior knowledge
Exopoetics: technical knowledge
Poema/Logos
Exopoetics, not logos, is what makes a poem art.
Next three weeks: "inlearning" of poetry
Roethke on prosy poems: "These wings are from the wrong nest."
François Mauriac: When a writer has style, it doesn't matter what he has to say.
Eliot: "Ulysses is the most important expression modern times has produced."
Joyce: Intellectual narrowness, but possessed an extreme gift for writing.
Art doesn't require intellect; it requires intelligence.
Ideas merely "show off" in art.
Art doesn't require intellect because its problems can be solved--and only thus: by intelligence. Doesn't need rationality
Poetry catches meaning unintentionally.
Valéry: It's the lack and the black which create.
Stevens: knowledge of poetry is part science and part theory.
Scholars generalize, artists individualize.
Ned Rorum: "I don't really know anything about music!" Inner, intuitive knowledge.
Blake: Are artists' rules to be drawn from fools?
Pound: The greatest barrier is set up by teachers who know just a little more than the public.
What follows is José's versification of the February 4th assignment, which he presented after we presented our versions. I do not know the source of this quote. I did not record any student version.
Give Coleridge one
vivid word from an old
narrative--
Let him mix
it with two
in his thought: "out
of three sounds he will
frame, not
a fourth sound,
but a star."
February 18, 1970
Marshall Mcluhan: The medium is the message.
Loving the medium is what is most important.
When the medium is effective, so is the content;
when the medium is not effective, content has no effect either.
Content is a fractional medium of larger, formal medium.
The medium in which the subject moves is what is most important.
Subjects as such are not literary.
Literary qualities: effects in language
Poetry exists as music, but in the form and medium of language.
Anything can be a subject
Language in itself is anonymous and without personality.
Bad poets practice alchemy in reverse: they touch gold and turn it into lead.
Valéry: the execution of the poem is the poem.
A good poem sometimes surprises with unintentional, metaphysical significance.
The medium is concrete, although what it has produced is not concrete.
Without the success of the concrete medium, there is no expressiveness.
Stevens: One of my ideals is to make everything expressive. I want to get out of line.
Poetry readings are like trying to win a beauty contest by sending the judges a recording of your voice.
Ned Rorum: Taste, touch, smell are for sex; eyes and ears are for art.
Prose content of poem is not an art factor; not the real meaning of the poem--It is a springboard, like the score of a musical composition:
Transfiguration and magnification of values in performance.
Even when Johnson announced good news it sounded like bad news.
The most expressive writers are the ones with deepest content, but it's the expression that makes it great.
Development and detection of expressiveness is a lifelong task.
The session ended, once again, with our "found poem" versification assignment. Here is José's version:
Each flower
owes it to itself
to fade
for the sake
of its fruit;
the fruit, unless it
fall and
die cannot
assume new
blooms: spring itself
rests on
winter's grief.
(Source unknown)
To be continued
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