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.