Emañ miz Mae o tooooooont ! Echu miz Ebrel neuze, hag un notenn ouzhpenn eget ar miz tremenet, hehe ^^ Gwelloc’h vefe din chom hep paboriñ re, ‘mod all e vo ret din ober muioc’h ar miz a zeu, hag ar miz war-lerc’h, hag all o_O’ Disoñjomp neuze, 37 devezh a zo e miz Ebrel ‘forzh penaos 🙂
Ul loaiad indezeuropeg a yelo ganeoc’h c’hoazh ? Ma gwalc’h am eus bet evit ur mare, evit lavaret gwir, met emañ ma fri e-barzh c’hoazh ^^ Plijus eo gwelet memestra ez on gouest da skrivañ pennadoù hirik e saozneg, hag a live uhel a-walc’h ouzhpenn-se. An dedennusañ o vezañ dielfennañ testennoù kentoc’h eget diverañ traoù hon eus gwelet e-pad ar gentel , met ne raer ket ar pezh a garer bepred. Plijadur am eus koulskoude.
Skouer:
Great poetry does strain at the limit of expression as it pushes the boundaries of language and meaning to their extreme, mastering the sense of words and their connotations as well as their sound and the mental images linked with these phonemes.
The master poet strives to touch both implicit and explicit meanings. In this, he has to reach for the deepest thoughts, as a duty, for only his carefully chosen words he uses will be able to express rightly these thoughts. The mark of a great poet is his ability to be a-temporal, to make sense at any point for any person, to resonate in spite of time. When Walt Whitman “hears America singing”[1], his praise of the work of people building a nation is still palpable today, and could apply to any country, in which men and women will always praise their efforts. The repetition he uses as a stylistic device is reminiscent of the rhythm of a machine, or of the repetitive gestures of the worker in general. In this also he goes beyond the simple meaning of language, adding to it a new layer of interpretation. The force of this kind of poem is their ability to express the feelings common to all humanity, and in doing so allowing us to reach a better understanding of ourselves through the interpretation of the words, an interpretation that will always be personal. A poem that can only be understood from the point of view of the poet himself and which meaning is opaque otherwise is not great poetry, it is merely what a diary is to a novel. Thus when T.S. Eliot writes: “As he rose and fell/He passed the stages of his age and youth/Entering the whirlpool”[2], the feeling will resonate in anyone, as fear of death and desire for youth is present in every human being. This is but one theme that is common to all poetries in the world, for all humans have roughly the same questionings and fears, desires and pleasures; and poetry revolves around a series of themes.
But in expressing these thoughts and feelings, the poet does not need complexity for its own sake, and poetic language does not limit itself to archaic constructions and obscure meaning; it, on the contrary, has the ability to express these ideas in so few words, for they are carefully chosen for the load of their meanings. This is the somewhat paradoxical idea of complexity expressed through simplicity, and this is where the expression is really pushed to its boundaries. This will lead to the crafting images, expressions, to articulate his meaning, and to strangeness sometimes, as in R. Robertson’s The Translator for instance: “Sewing the surface/one quarter man/three quarters verb” [3]; the imagery is stunning, and the doesn’t seem to make sense at first glanc, but is a reflexion on the very personal aspect of translation, the fact that a translation will be according to what the translator understood and felt in his reading.
When David Long declares that the ‘strangeness is an antidote to the awful sameness of received ideas[4]’, there is no complexity in the wording, but the very meaning of the phrase goes beyond these mere words, and triggers reflexion, which is the point in which it reaches the boundaries of meaning, in creating a string of thoughts that will perpetuate itself further. One could say that the meaning is exceeded, and the boundaries breached. This is a distinctive feature of great poetry; it doesn’t assert, but conveys meaning and generates thoughts and emotion. If the poem only asserts and gives closure, what can the interest be for the reader? If it is self-explanatory and doesn’t involve the reader, it is not worth reading. Thus when P. Mullineaux describes his “teacher leaning over one shoulder;/saying nothing,/(a cough perhaps)/moving on”[5], he doesn’t describe his feelings, he doesn’t tell the reader what the meaning of it is, but rather lets them remember times when the same situation happened to them, and think upon these moments and their significance.
This should lead the poet to avoid generalizations, and rather concentrate on particular events, or representation thereof, which would make the reader draw his own conclusion from, by factoring in his own experience. This is what P. Kavanagh does, for instance, when he writes “I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’/And old McCabe stripped to the waist […]”[6], he is not interested in the Duffys and McCabe in particular, but rather uses them as an embodiment of a greater crowd as a pars pro toto synecdoche. Instead of solely describing the outline of a situation, he goes to particular people, and creates a vivid image for the reader. Whitman achieves the same effect in “I Hear…” singling out each profession rather than representing the workforce as homogenous.
The great poet has the ability to go from abstract to concrete and back again, bringing the reader with him. For every abstract thought he will be able to paint a proper concrete example, to make these thoughts accessible to the reader, and from concrete material he will be able to make the reflexions emerge. In this liminal state lays the great poetry, expanding on both sides and thus pushing the boundaries a bit further.
[1] Whitman, I Hear America Singing, The Answerer, 1900
[2] Eliot, Death By Water, The Wasteland, 1922
[3] Robertson, The Translator, A painted Field, 1988
[4] Long, You Are What You Read, 2006 (essay)
[5] Mullineaux, Gallery, A Father’s Day, 2008
[6] Kavanagh, Epic, 1938
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Boñ, ne oa ket ‘vidon zoken, hag 50% bullshit eo marteze met hohoho, pegen plijus skrivañ, c’hoari gant ar gerioù, dreist-holl pa gomz eus barzhonegiñ-barzhonegañ. Anzav a ran eo un tammig “ar pezh a felle d’ar c’hellener lenn“, met un dae eo un tammig ivez, ha plijout a ra seurt challenge din ur wech ar mare 😉 Plijus e tlefe bezañ mar deuan a-benn da vezañ kelenner-enklasker evel ma fell din bezañ, bezañ gronet gant paperioù, notennoù, ha gwelet an notennoù oc’h ober re vihan e traoñ ar bajenn (n’eo ket fall e talc’hfe WordPress an notennoù diwar word pa vez eilet/peget, sell ‘ta !). Gwell a-se ‘vidon mar plij din, chom a ra 5 da skrivañ ! Un dibenn-sizhun efedus, spi ‘m eus.
Ul levrig a vil pajennad 
Evezhiadennoù nevez