what is quality poetry?
I have always been eager to know what exactly differentiates great poetry from ordinary rhymes
This spring I attended an online course devoted exactly to this issue, to the ways we can distinguish good quality poetry from mediocre texts. We were looking for the answer to our question in several ways.
First, we would read a verse which the course creator considered to be great and tried to figure out what makes it great. Then we would read a verse which she considered to be failed and also discussed it. Sometimes we would come to the conclusion that the text was not that bad after all. Finally, we would compare two revisions of one text written by a classical Russian poet and try to understand what and why he changed in his text. At the end of the course, I had kind of a list of features which described quality verses.
It does not mean, though, that one can distinguish a good verse from a bad one just ticking the boxes in the list. A fiction text is a complicated construction, after all, and it is impossible to reveal its quality in such a mechanical way. But these features can give a direction of thought, a general idea of what to look out for when reading poetry.
Creating a clear artistic image
Poetry is a very minimalist and so to say, compressed art. It creates an image in a concise form that affects reader's emotions and brings aesthetic pleasure.
Poetry describes things by a minimum of precise details, very quickly, without loading the text with anything that might obscure perception.
And that is what differentiates good poetry from poor quality verses. In bad poetry, the image is not so strong and poignant. It lacks accuracy and originality and leaves an impression of being incomplete and hazy, or unclear.
The sound organisation of the poem also influences the creation of a clear and strong artistic image. It evokes strong emotions in the reader, especially if the verse is read aloud. A large cluster of vowels and sonorants in the text create one sensation, hissing consonants — another, lip-sounding consonants — also another, etc. Wise usage of this technique is also a sign of good poetry.
In Pasternak's texts there are a lot of strong and vivid images being created. Later in his career, he began to edit his earlier texts because often it happened so that there was a good kernel of vivid and interesting imagery in his early verse, but being young, he was unable to put it into the right words. While in his mature years, when he was already a more experienced poet, he knew how to develop the core of this image concisely and make it strong and evocative.
Let's take, for example, one of Pasternak’s most famous texts, «February. Take ink and weep» («Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать»).
Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping,
Of February, in sobs and ink,
Write poems, while the slush in thunder
Is burning in the black of spring.Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing
A hired cab will take you where
The town has ended, where the showers
Are louder still than ink and tears.Where rooks, like charred pears, from the branches
In thousands break away, and sweep
Into the melting snow, instilling
Dry sadness into eyes that weep.Beneath — the earth is black in puddles,
The wind with croaking screeches throbs,
And the more randomly, the surer
Poems are forming out of sobs.
This translation by Lydia Pasternak Slater even conveys the mood and rhythm of the original text. We almost hear these clanking wheels and church bells, can feel the atmosphere of the twentieth century Moscow streets in February. The image is bright, clear and precise; Pasternak uses just several key details to create a real and live image of the city in the end of winter. It is laconic and visible. There are also some unusual, not trite metaphors, such as the «slush of thunder» which is «burning in the black of spring» and «dry sadness» in the eyes.
All this makes the text genuine and fresh and gives a lot of aesthetic pleasure.
A mystery unrevealed
There must be always something left unsaid in the verse, some «empty spaces» which the reader is to fill when reflecting on the text. If absolutely everything is crystal clear, it is not a sign of a good text.
The mystery, though, is supposed to carry some meaning. A bad verse might also be unclear and incomprehensible, but one will not find any function of this unclearness. It will be expressed in a weak elaboration of the image, inaccurate word choice, careless attitude toward rhyme, etc. But it will not be subject to logical understanding, there will be no mystery to solve. The text will simply be incomprehensible and illogical.
To tell the truth, I do not understand a lot of Russian classical poets, but especially difficult for me (and not only for me) seem to be Pasternak, Mandelshtam and Brodsky. It usually happens so, that almost (but not all…) words are familiar and clear, but the overall meaning is slipping away.
It happens because the meaning of the verse is often not explicated only in its words. Verse is a highly discrete structure. The very fragmentation into lines and stanzas leads to weakening of language connections between words, while connections united by logic of the verse as such are strengthened. Hence, verse lacunae arise: non-thematised components appear between verse rows, which makes it difficult to understand the logic of the transition between thoughts.
Energy and tension
A verse needs to have energy, tension, which contributes to the development of the text, to its promotion. A quality verse always holds our attention; something is happening there, the text is moving and the reader is watching it; he is not bored.
A verse needs to develop naturally, to have its logic and speed of growth.
It doesn't have to be drawn out artificially. Artificial stretching of the text when there is no energy and no natural forward movement is a sign of a bad text. When the author has nothing to say and suffers from graphomania, it is noticeable.
For example, look at Brodsky’s poem «Lagoon» («Лагуна»). Here is actually only a part of it, because the full text is quite long. But I highly recommend you to read it to the end. It is worth it!
I
Down in the lobby three elderly women, bored,
take up, with their knitting, the Passion of Our Lord
as the universe and the tiny realm
of the pension Academia, side by side,
with TV blaring, sail into Christmastide,
a lookout desk clerk at the helm.II
And a nameless lodger, a nobody, boards the boat,
a bottle of grappa concealed in his raincoat
as he gains his shadowy room, bereaved
of memory, homeland, son, with only the noise
of distant forests to grieve for his former joys,
if anyone grieved.III
Venetian church bells, teacups, mantel clocks
chime and confound themselves in this stale box
of assorted lives. The brazen, coiled
octopus-chandelier appears to be licking,
in a triptych mirror, bedsheet and mattress ticking,
sodden with tears and passion-soiled.
There is tension and energy in these verses. No meaningless chewing up of one thought. The text develops, moves and keeps the reader intrigued and interested to read further.
Read in Russian, Brodsky's texts sound even more amazing, although I found this translation very good, because it keeps the rhythm of the original as much as possible. The combination of sounds, the rhythm, interesting non-banal rhymes and metaphors also contribute to making «Lagoon» a great poem. As for me, I experience a great spiritual uplift every time I read it.
Careful word choice
When some images (sadness, passion, beloved person, etc.) are called in the verse by a very direct, specific word, it is always worse than when the author describes the image in non-direct words, when he creates a metaphorical image.
The word choice as such is also extremely important, of course. Especially the choice of rhymed words, because they carry the heaviest semantic load in the text due to their position at the end of the line.
Accuracy of the words chosen for a rhyme is connected with conscientiousness of search, with accuracy of thought.
It is usually clearly seen when the poet did not bother himself with the search of the right word, but just used the first which came to mind. The word choice is crucial in fiction text of any genre, but it is especially important in the rhymes. Poetry is characterized by increased value, intensity and weight of every word: the words in the verse usually have several layers of meaning. Each word in the verse plays its own important role and none of them can be replaced by another without loss of meaning.
So-called “words-plugs” are used to sustain the rhythm of a verse or to match a rhyme scheme and are of course a feature of a poor quality poetic text. One might ask, how can the reader distinguish words-plugs from just words which the author truly needs to create an artistic image? But usually, when reading attentively, one can easily understand which words in the verse do not carry any meaning and are on their places just to be.
To illustrate these traits of good poetry, I could have given the same examples I used earlier, because they are the examples of a very high level of the choice of words and rhymes.
All the traits I mentioned are of course important, and they distinguish quality poetry from mediocre one. But there is one more feature, maybe the most important one.
It is when you read a text, clearly recognize its genius, but can not explain how the text is made.
These texts are definitely great literature.
That is what Pushkin's verse «The dark of night is lying on the Georgian hills» is («На холмах Грузии лежит ночная мгла»):
The dark of night is lying on the Georgian hills
Before me churns Aragva’s chatter.
I’m sad and languid; melancholy’s brightness spills
Of you, my sorrow’s brooding matter,Of you, of you alone… My sadness can’t be touched
By tortured spirit’s agitation,
My heart again is burning and by passion clutched —
From love there is no liberation.
I do not even know what to say about the structure of the text. It is just… well... great...
Maybe it is the best thing about studying fiction — the feeling when you just stand in awe of the text and feel your complete powerlessness as a philologist.
P.
If you enjoyed this post, you can read my other texts:
