Literature

What is literature? ‘The only way to tolerate being alive is to immerse oneself in literature as if in a perpetual orgy’ – Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880) ‘Literature is news that stays news’ – Ezra Pound

Latin origins… The word literature is derived from the Latin for learned. A passing acquaintance with the masterworks of world literature (often referred to as ‘The Canon’) has long been considered an essential attainment of the cultured man or woman.

Literature is ‘a different kind of truth’ If history tells you what happened, and science describes what is, literature tells you only what might have been, or speculates on what might be.

Horace… As the Latin poet Horace once wrote… ‘The duty of literature is to instruct and delight’ …and while the latest best-seller, or hit single, or big- screen adventure may have the second half of this prescription down pat, it probably isn’t teaching us much that we don’t already know.

Literature that is literature Literature must possess some power which can affect each generation anew; and it must not only provide the pleasure of an escape from everyday life, but shed light on real issues that affect us all, in an interesting and essentially truthful way, as well.

Poetry Moan and sigh now… Go on…get it over with…

Poetry ‘Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure: all spirits on which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.’ Percy Bysshe Shelley From his essay ‘A Defense of Poetry’ (1821)

Afraid of poetry?

Poetry For many reasons, many people are afraid of poetry. They think that it’s too difficult, or too old- fashioned, or that it exists to express emotions that are better kept private.

Learn to understand poetry Understanding poetry should revive your interest and deepen your enjoyment of this most ancient of literary forms.

Poetry At its most basic, poetry is any kind of writing that isn’t prose. This means that they way that the words appear on the page – where the lines begin and end, and how many spaces come between them – is not determined by the conventions of margins and spacing but according to the poet’s artistic sense.

Rhyme and Reason Two traditional characteristics of poetry are rhyme, which link lines together through a similarity of sounds, and metre, which is the arrangement of the accents of words to create poetry’s own special rhythms.

What makes a good poem? A lot of this judgment is down to personal taste. One criterion more abstract than rhyme or rhythm or spacing is the freshness of a poem’s language. Does the poet’s description of a bird’s song, for instance, surprise us with its originality and make us hear it as if we were there?

What makes a good poem? Another crucial feature is compression. Have the words of the poem been selected with such exacting care that not one appears that isn’t needed, and all contribute to the desired effect? If the language in a poem seems newly- minted and precision tooled, good poetry is the result.

What makes a good poem? There is also a kind of pleasing musicality to poetic writing. It is helpful to think of poetry as the lyrics to a song that requires no music. If the poet has done a good job, the reader will be aware of a subtle music built into the rhymes, rhythms and sounds of the poem.