“Therefore, I would rather be a swineherd out on Amager and be understood by swine than to be a poet and be misunderstood by people.”
-Soren Kirkegaard
“You can’t leave the room of corndogs.”
-Mike
I have to be cautious of the almost inherent anti-elitism that comes with being an American. Coming from a culture that too often frowns on intellectualism I feel I have to check myself when I experience (read or listen) subject matter like Shelley’s Defense of Poetry. I tend to refute claims categorizing and separating people based on social constructions. And when I started reading the essay I felt like Shelley was segregating people from becoming poets, yet reading on my feelings changed because I started to agree and understand further what he was saying.
Poets do have to view the world in a certain lens in order to have their craft be effective. Art is the expression of an idea into a concrete form, right? Effective art often is able to communicate these ideas in a way that others are effected by them some how. Whether it is through questioning or edifying their values, introducing new ideas or revamping old ones, Shelley is saying that the poet may hold certain keys to open particular doors through languages. Maybe the romantics used the beauty of their vernacular to hit the truth of the world. While contemporary American verse uses the truth with its grit and grime (“gutter” if you will) in order to understand the beauty in all things.
In reference to the poet’s language, I enjoy how he said “…it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension…” and how it is “vitally metaphorical.”
More later. My brain is full.
1 comment:
It was difficult for me to get through Shelley due to the blatent sexism. But After awhile I feel I built a filter that blocked the blaring segregation of sex. Could this be a way for you to describe your viewpoint as well? You filtered the "eliteism" as you put it. Maybe?
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