the
necessity of poetics
robert sheppard
ship of
fools
liverpool
2011 edition
This piece, along with others, on, of, or about
poetics, appears in my 2024 Shearsman book The Necessity of Poetics.
Details here: Pages:
The Necessity of Poetics - out now! (robertsheppard.blogspot.com).
The Identification of Poetics
Despite the
present prominence of the critic, it is to the poet we must turn for poetics.
With few exceptions, those qualified to theorise about poetry are those who
write it. And the most effective poetics take the form of an apologia
for one particular style of writing – usually the poet’s own. The nature of the
apologia can vary enormously – from the brusque practicality of Pound’s Don’ts
to the introspective pondering of Valéry – but they are all stratagems of
defence, and usually gain in polemical edge for being so. In addition to these
qualities we find, in the finest poetics, a profound reserve before the fact of
poetry, and a refusal to be dogmatic; after all, the great poems have usually
broken laws. (Romer 1982: 63)
Thus opens Stephen Romer’s review
of Jean-Claude Renard’s poetics with a matter-of-factness that perhaps does not
allow for the force of resistance towards poetics (in this country anyway) and
perhaps lacks a sense of the speculative nature of poetics itself, but it does
acknowledge the kinds of irony and ambiguity that colour relations between
poetics and poetry (and writing more generally).
I present next (in a later post and in the Pores version) a
proliferation of definitions, deliberately miming poetics’ own refusal of laws
and templates, a mode which I believe best captures the spirit and meaning of
the enterprise, its excitements, incitements and its spirit of exploration and
innovation (and its occasional excessiveness).
*
Read part two, the 'proliferation of definitions' referred to above, here.
Part three, on poetics as a specific discourse, here.
Part four, some examples of poetics (and links to many more) here.
(NB: It seems appropriate to begin posting this booklet on the 20th anniversary of my starting work at Edge Hill, since this work on poetics developed in my first years of teaching and researching there. April 1st was my first official day.)
*
Read part two, the 'proliferation of definitions' referred to above, here.
Part three, on poetics as a specific discourse, here.
Part four, some examples of poetics (and links to many more) here.
Part five, a flavour of poetics (of poetry, of fiction, of
scriptwriting) here.
Part six, ‘Don’t explain’, explains why your shouldn’t
explain, that poetics is not an expository discourse, but a speculative one,
here.
Part seven is an abridged conclusion, and it contains the
notes for all seven parts and a bibliography of works cited, here.
*(NB: It seems appropriate to begin posting this booklet on the 20th anniversary of my starting work at Edge Hill, since this work on poetics developed in my first years of teaching and researching there. April 1st was my first official day.)
