The modern poet, adept at the fashionable practices of exterminating punctuation, altering the spelling, ignoring capital letters, drawing with letters, repeating words exhaustively, etc., etc., has to concentrate very hard not to pass for a child or, in more serious cases, for a mental retard. How just a few pages are enough to make one sick of such gimmicks! Then we are left to wonder: what else? Often, we have to conclude that they are nothing more than disguises for an inability to work words in a dynamic and interesting way, showing mastery and making creative use of the resources offered by the language. We end up reflecting on what the Latinists repeat so often, and it seems that intelligence is related to the ability to articulate language…
Tag: literature
The Evolution of Manuel Bandeira’s Poetry
The evolution of Manuel Bandeira’s poetry describes, much more than an aesthetic rebellion, a search for authenticity, a progressive stripping away of adornment in order to focus on the fundamental. It is a poetry that sought more to rid itself of artificialities than to invent new ones; a poetry that is intimate, personal, and sincere, original more for the expression of an individuality than for the form—the form, which Bandeira himself expressly called secondary and which seems, to some, to constitute the essence of his poetic creation. That is why Bandeira is not imitated: to do so, one would have to be him; an honor that fortunately will not be bestowed on anyone.
Academic Analysis of Poems
There seems to be something wrong, counterproductive and absurd in these academic analyses of poems, which dissect the verses to the point of highlighting the expressive effect of each of the letters that make up its words. The contradiction is obvious when we see the result: endless paragraphs that seem to hide the essence of the verses rather than elucidate it. It is curious: these academics see alliteration, assonance before the very meaning of the words they read. There is no denying that such expressive resources sometimes reinforce an idea; but that is what they do: reinforce, and are merely auxiliary. It is even ridiculous to want to see the analyst as having expressive intent in sibilants when the author has limited himself to using plural words, not to mention worse examples. What is this? Finally, we are left with the feeling that there is an attempt to idealize the futile to the detriment of the essential.
The Poem Seems to Lack a Support
As far as rhythm is concerned, the poem seems to lack a support, an expected tonicity in specific syllables, so that there is a sense of harmony and that the planned breaks can stand out. If the rhythmic pattern varies with each verse, there is no pattern and therefore no rhythmic base on which the verses rest. Unless one avowedly makes poetry by stripping it of musicality, the much-criticized regularity seems a necessary condition for poems that are meant to be good.