An Award winning poem by Mark Worger

worgs wrote:An empiricist, and the romantics, even Keats in his early days, would say people less informed have a more honest and fundamental connection - same goes for a brand of post-structuralism - the concepts of analysis distance ourself further from reality.

Ok, you are TOTALLY the winner!

We can leave it if you want: I don't really mind either way, to be honest.

As for myself, you're absolutely right: I'm elitest in many ways, mostly to do with believing education trumps 'instinct' for understanding things. The development of society (the fact that educated people generally run the place, for example) would seen to bear that out.

Also, it's not that uneducated people fail to connect with poetry - it's that they fail to read it as poetry, due to no experience of how poetry on paper relates to the reality of words and sound. Read a poem aloud and people and all will connect to its underlying psychological principles in exactly the same way; they will appreciate the form and structure, rhythm and rhyme and not care especially about poetry that lacks it; to them it will seem crude and unexciting.

So, you're in some slight ways right about Keats et. al., but only as regards poetry as a spoken medium - as a written one, people uneducated in its subtleties and complexities have very little hope of connecting with it on any meaningful level.

Anyway, good to have you hanging around; hope we've given you some ideas to mull over.

backgroundbob wrote: Read a poem aloud and people and all will connect to its underlying psychological principles in exactly the same way; they will appreciate the form and structure, rhythm and rhyme and not care especially about poetry that lacks it; to them it will seem crude and unexciting.

*slickjimmy raises hands slightly above shoulders and begins snapping fingers feverishly*

Slick -- if you're going to post, please make comments relevant to the poem of the discussion on the poem at hand.

In other words: stay on topic, otherwise, stop posting.

Bob, as you know, there is always something to think about and mull over! Cheers for the discussion. Mark