Picasso: A Poem

Aesthetics Visual Arts
1

Where’s the poetry forum? :smiley:

Copyright 2006

Brandon Cropper

Picasso

By Brandon Cropper

He sensed the presense of madness

And saw his chance for fame;

Without learning the painterly art,

He could give as profound the inane.

He saw that art was corrupted,

Egalitarianized,

To the lowest common devisor,

From the values the Renaissance prized.

The stuff he made they call art,

Though that’s just a sign of the times,

A symptom of the corruption,

A signal of reason’s demise.

The stuff he painted was nonsense,

Random chaotic trash,

Hostile to reason and purpose,

Destructive, hateful and crass.

Today it is called Abstract Art.

This corruption does have a source:

His name is Immanuel Kant,

Irrational without remorse.

Immanuel Kant is the motive at base;

His fallacies trace back to Descartes.

Descartes brought Plato back from disgrace,

And here, we find the chain starts.

So it turns out we have Plato to thank

For creating all this insanity,

And making occur in our world today

A state of boastful inanity.

The End

Copyright 2006

Brandon Cropper

brandonjesse (at) hotmail (dot) com

2

For rhyme to fulfill its full pleasureable and meaningful value there must be a regular rhythm.

For example, your first stanza might be written:

He sensed the sense of madness

And saw his chance for fame;

Not high in painter’s art

He’d splash a deep Inane!

You see, you have to decide which is to be your dominant meter, and utilize its strengths, making now and then a few significant vatiations, if, indeed, any at all. But your inadvertant mixture of iambic and anapestic rhythms serves no meaningful purpose, and the poem is not a pleasure to read. Better to have good consistent meter and no rhyme than to force rhyme to bear the burden of music alone. But, when the two are united—then there is a chance for a a something joyful to read aloud.

3

The first four stanzas have three beats per line. The last two have four beats per line. Where is the mixture of rhythms? Not that a mixture of rhythms is bad.

Maybe this will help:

* = skip a beat, so that each group of words between the ateriks is pronounced in a single beat.

He sensed * the presense * of madness

And saw * his chance * for fame;

Without learning * the painterly * art,

He could give * as profound * the inane.

I am completly unable to see what your re-write added. Same rhythm and rhyme, but in your’s the word “sense” is repeated twice on a line, which seems clumsy to me. Other than that, what would it mean to “Splash a deep Inane!” ? That’s a bizar line, treating Inane as a noun…

BTW a “good consistant meter and no rhyme” would be “blank verse” as it is technically called. Rhyme is an essential of poetry. This is a poem.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Brandon

4

Maybe this will help:

* = skip a beat, so that each group of words between the ateriks is pronounced in a single beat.

The only problem is that a reader would not have your guide and would read with typical English stress, and a ear for meter that will allow him to change the stress a bit if the rest falls into place. So, for instance, take you third line.A reader would not usually say “Without learning” or “the painterly” as a single beat. Those have 4 and 3 syllables, respectively. Consider the soft and accented syllables in the two versions above, as a reader would read them naturally, and this is what one gets:

He sensed the sense of madness

And saw his chance for fame;

Not high in painter’s art

He’d splash a deep Inane!

-^ -^ -^-

-^ -^ -^

-^ -^- ^

-^ -^ -^

He sensed * the presense * of madness

And saw * his chance * for fame;

Without learning * the painterly * art,

He could give * as profound * the inane.

-^ --^ -^-

-^ -^ -^

–^- -^-- ^

–^ --^ --^

You can see that B.Royce’s version has a consistent rythm.

5

The only problem is that a reader would not have your guide and would read with typical English stress, and a ear for meter that will allow him to change the stress a bit if the rest falls into place.

You can see that B.Royce’s version has a consistent rythm.

I can’t see that my version doesn’t. I guess you are slowing down and using every sylable in every word. You have to read the lines with the beat.

From my “Essay on Potery” (also posted on this forum)

“If you have ever read a line in a poem and thought it didn’t quite work, and read it again, shifting the emphasis or stress on a certain syllable or word that made it conform to the rest of the line or stanza, you have experienced the musical quality of poetry.”

I just want to say thank you for the replies. I posted this essay on a “Free New Hampshire” web forum where a lot of Libertarians go and all I got was hateful, rude attacks defending e e cummings and railing about how good a painter Picasso was. Its refreshing to have my poems attacked because they have a single extra sylable, even if the attacks are still pretty aggressive. :slight_smile:

6

e. e. cummings wrote

free verse

be

cause

he

fail

ed

to

learn grammer

Now that’s deep and profound. :slight_smile:

7

“If you have ever read a line in a poem and thought it didn’t quite work, and read it again, shifting the emphasis or stress on a certain syllable or word that made it conform to the rest of the line or stanza, you have experienced the musical quality of poetry.”

Fair enough. That’s why I said, “…a reader would not have your guide and would read with typical English stress…” Basically, the reader would have to do the job himself and may do so. Question is: why would the poet make the reader do what is essentially the poet’s work?

A small irregularity is fine and even good in many cases – where it makes sense: e.g. the “best” word just doesn’t fit unless one takes a little liberty. The question for the poet, then, is this: am I deviating from the natural meter for a purpose, or because I cannot think of any more fitting way to put it, or some other reason?

And… welcome to the forum :slight_smile: