opinion and stuff

[peccare.livejournal.com]

hey i dont know if this is allowed so feel free to delete it, mods. but i found an interesting blog post over at the guardian, and was wondering what you guys thought.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/07/whats_a_perfect_line_in_poetry.html

whats your idea of a perfect line in poetry? i quite like the 'life like a dome...', but i think the line from lady lazarus that talks about the maggots like sticky pearls is also pretty perfect.

it's so difficult to pick a line that keeps its perfection outside the context of a poem, because often it's perfect due to the leadup, or what comes after it, even.

Comments

[lonely-lycanth.livejournal.com]

I don't think that there is a "perfect line" that easily and uncontestedly (is that a word?) retains its perfection outside its own context. It's a complicated issue to say it that way, however, because it must be remembered that not every poem has a perfect line hidden in it. But context isn't always the poem (sometimes can't it be the subject matter?) I think that there are lines that retain something of what I consider 'perfection' outside of their own poems.

In short, it all really depends on what the reader is looking for in a poem.

For me, perfect lines are characterized by delicate, careful eloquence, and a rushing feeling in your chest, like falling from a great height. One example comes from "Scheherezade" by Richard Siken:

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.


The spacing gets a bit messed up in transit, but there it is. It's about, as one review of the collection said, "nerve wracked love."

[peccare.livejournal.com]

i love that poem, it does give you that feeling. and really, siken should have made the spacing easier to reproduce :P

[lonely-lycanth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. It's not like the odd spacing really contributes anything to the poem, anyway. He could easily have done without it.

because it's a pain in the ass to post on Guardian

[silent-claws.livejournal.com]

From "Love Calls us to the Things of this World (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem98.html)"

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

If I had to pare it down further, the astounded soul/Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple/As false dawn. would do it.

:) That's one good poem. I think the lines fit Lonely_Lycanth's delicacy, eloquence, and falling feeling rubric. :)

Re: because it's a pain in the ass to post on Guardian

[peccare.livejournal.com]

wow. i really like

"outside the open window
the morning air is all awash with angels"

smiths line--

[madmouth.livejournal.com]

'last night I dreamt that somebody loved me'


I find songs are more quotable succinctly; all my favourite poetic clips are 2-3 lines.

[fractalstars.livejournal.com]

I think "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas" comes close to perfect. It's like a little poem in itself.

There are a few lines in Shakespeare that I thought of, too; "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" from The Tempest, and "Thou hast not half the power to do me harm as I have to be hurt" from Othello. The first has such beautiful imagery and flows wonderfully off the tongue, and the second just always seemed like such a dramatic and powerful line to me.

It's really hard to figure out what it is about some lines that makes them feel "perfect" and able to stand on their own... Interesting article, thanks for linking it. :)

[peccare.livejournal.com]

i love prufrock, but i cant find a single 'perfect line' in it, i think each line is so dependent on the one that came before and the one that comes after. it is so beautiful, though.

[fractalstars.livejournal.com]

Mmm... I wanted to mention the "I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be" line as well, but that one really is strengthened by the rest of the poem that's around it. the same with the final lines about the sea-girls and mermaids.