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

Poems for the Eye Are Not Merely for the stake of Eye What is poetry? Pressed for an answer, Robert frost made a determinate reply Poetry is the kind of thing poets write. In all likelihood, Frost was not trying merely to evade the question but to talk his questioner into thinking for himself. A trouble with definitions is that they may stop thought. The temper of poetry eludes simple definitions. Definitions will be of little help at first, if we are to know poetry and respond to it. We have to go to it unforced to see and hear. To a particular poesy, thousands of readers will have thousands of understandings. A meter can please us in some(prenominal) aspects. We comm except revolve around 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 nub including spatial free verse and picture poems. Though cosmosy poets seem hardly to care about it, eno ugh importance should be given to the visual element of poetry. At least some of our entertainment 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 quality predominates the whole poem the other is the visual remains tame to the aural and other elements of the poetry.There are indeed some spatial poems that can bring us pleasure through their terminology order. And uttermost from being merely decorative, the visual devices of a poem can be significant, 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 in concert with their meaning. This kind of appearance or words arrangement makes the common words ta t uck a vivid.The same with the following Kenneth Patchens (1911-1972) poemThe ball bumps down the goIn 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.