Poetic Activity Research Articles

The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century

The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century

“Technogeneous” Imagery of Alexander Eryomenko’s Poetry in the Context of Evolution of his Romantic World Outlook

The article deals with technogeneous imagery in the poetry of Alexander Eryomenko. In his texts of the 1984-1986 period technical and scientific images are often compared with natural objects. This topic has been understudied. Various statements have been made by philologists about the ethical dimension of this imagery. The main aim of this article is to disprove these statements. Poetic texts of the later period (1987-1989) are devoted to politics. The purpose of this article is to identify the link between the two periods of his work. The task is to reveal the ideological orientations of these periods. Poet actively opposed his art to Soviet ideology and Russian nationalists. The author of the article suggests the following thesis: the two periods correspond to two stages which show how his romantic world outlook unfolded. Alexander Eryomenko first absolutized the mechanistical nature of the outside world (Non-I), and later singled out the image of the enemy in it. In the postSoviet period (after 1991) the poet gave up both political and poetic activities. The reason for it is the exhaustion of the romantic conflict and the image of the enemy. Philology has studied the issue of the romantic world outlook in contemporary literature insufficiently. The methodology of this article reveals its potential results.

Why Doesn't the Radical Left Read Literature?

A key essay in the volume Les années 10, Nathalie Quintane's "Why Doesn't the Radical Left Read Literature?" assesses the political potential of contemporary literature to reach the public. This translation brings Quintane's questioning of literature's capacities and relevancy to the radical left into English. Blending theoretical and literary prose, Quintane offers ways to think through modes of poetic action that would act "for real" in our epoch.

The Poetry of Pop by Adam Bradley

Reviewed by: The Poetry of Pop by Adam Bradley Eldonna L. May The Poetry of Pop. By Adam Bradley. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. [414 p. ISBN 9780300165029 (hardcover), $28; ISBN 97800300248326 (paperback), $22; ISBN 97800300165722 (e-book), price varies.] Illustrations, appendix, notes and credits, index. Adam Bradley’s book proposes that pop song lyrics are poetry. Certainly, there is a measure of truth to that statement, and he examines more than one hundred years of diverse popular song to prove it. Nothing is out of bounds in this investigation; Gershwin sidles up to James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, and Young Thug. In analyzing popular music, however, it is not always easy to find clear and convincing evidence of the poetic in a steady stream of melisma and fade endings. While I read Bradley’s The Poetry of Pop, the following words of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart came to mind: “In an opera, poetry must necessarily be the obedient daughter of the music” (Letter to Leopold Mozart, 13 October 1781). It also raised the specter of Richard Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, and, finally, the thinly veiled wisdom of Aaron Copland’s essay, “How We Listen,” in What to Listen for in Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939). Like opera, the lyrics—poetry—of popular music demands our full sensory attention to be properly appreciated; as Mozart pointed out, however, poetry and music must work obediently and gracefully together. This is the thrust of Bradley’s book as he calls the reader’s attention to the little-used concept of poetic analysis in popular music. He makes the case that while listeners focus on the romanticized meaning of popular-song lyrics, they often ignore the finer details of the “libretto” and do not practice “active” or “critical” listening skills when evaluating song lyrics. Instead, they are swept away by the pathos of the words and not the ethos. He keenly observes in discussing Rihanna’s song “Diamonds” that “a poetic act that is also a musical one. One finds an art in equipoise” (p. 13). The book is cogently organized in tripartite fashion, initially consisting of three chapters encompassing the relationship between lyrics and melody; the often-neglected poetic nature of song lyrics and the distinction between lyric and narrative poetry; and the importance of poetic form as it relates to cognition insofar as the language of [End Page 408] literature is concerned. Part 2 focuses on rhythm and rhyme and these components’ relationship to musical accompaniment. In discussing rhythm, Bradley raises the issue of tempo rubato in both poetic and musical phrasing from the classical perspective in juxtaposition with singers Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, and Willie Nelson. The thoughtful inclusion of Jerry Wexler’s observation that “the art of gliding over the meter and extending it until you think they’re going to miss the next actual demarcation” (p. 98) serves as an excellent example of the ways in which popular music artists enhance the relationship between words and music through vocal delivery—a device that listeners have both come to expect and take for granted. In this section, too, Bradley enters into a lengthy discussion of both the concept and history of rhyme. His thoughtful commentary concerning the timeline of lyric poetry and its absence in modern literature and song is beneficial to both educators and researchers in teaching and analyzing modern/popular song because it effectively explains the reasons for devices such as slant rhyme as well as the abandonment of rhyme by some songwriters altogether. In this section, Bradley takes us on a detailed songwriter’s journey including Samuel Francis Smith’s “God Save the King” (1832), the Beatles’ “Michelle” (1965), the Hollies’ “Stop, Stop, Stop” (1966), and Alison Krauss and Robert Plant’s “Raising Sand” (2007), discussing the relative merits and features of each song, the relationship between rhyme, rhythm, and music, and the artistic equation that led to such successful songs. One of the most interesting chapters in part 2 is devoted to the use of figurative language. This section in particular should be required reading for every vocal-music student because it includes an in-depth discussion of the use...

TOPOS UPOSTOJANjA OD PLATONA, PREKO BIBLIOCENTRIČNE PREDSTAVE, DO NjEGOŠA

The focus of this research is finding and analytical, semiotic-symbolic, theopoetic, and comparative analysis of cosmological and cosmogonic ideas of the origin of the world and human. The field of that analysis includes the ancient cos- mological protology presented in Plato’s Dialogues, the bibliocentric understanding of Genesis in the Six Days of St. Basil the Great and the romantic articulation of the meaning of existence. The romantic pessimistic conception of life, presented through the causes found in the universal principles of creation, is shown primar- ily in Njegoš’s song Luča mikrokozma. The primary goal of the research is to find a poetic-philosophical form of the deepest past of existence, and try to sense a causal sequence in existential development, the latter consequence of which is a pessimis- tic insight into the transience of this determination determined by the inability to know what vibrates outside lethal limitations of being. At the same time, this paper does not focus only on reviewing the historical development of thought about be- ing, but the result of the theopoetically oriented segment of research is reflected in revealing the summarization and transformation of ancient, biblical and romantic cosmological representations in Njegoš’s poetry. Hence, in individual subchapters related to Njegoš’s cosmopoiesis, his philosophical ideas on the source and cause of primordial origin, as well as on the primordial abode of God and being, and its cessa- tion whose cause is the first sin, are presented. In the last segments of the research, the artistic-philosophical concept of the renewal of the primordial embrace with the Creator through song is presented. The research concluded with the presentation of the idea of poetic action as a process of cognition of the primordial origin, and emphasizing that every theopoetically oriented writing represents a new possibility for merging with a transcendental melody. This introduced a new methodology for analyzing texts on metaphysical topics and laid the foundation for future research on the same or similar topics.

Modern Visual Poetry and Ecology: Towards Establishing “Eco-Visual Poetry” As A New Poetic Genre

In no other age in the history of literature did poetry witness this great change as much as it does in ours. Poetry moves indiscriminately towards visuality, fragmentation, and digitalization. This change has led to the appearance of modern visual poetry as an individual poetic production with specific characteristics and techniques after years of being a mere experimental poetic activity. Modern visual poetry is the mirror of the contemporary society which has declared the death of postmodernism and the appearance of new era of fragmentation, chaos, hyper-reality and techno culture. The new era is always concerned with ecology as one of the most important issues. That is why, the present paper aims at presenting a new subclass of visual poetry that is eco-visual poetry. The paper discusses eco-visual poetry as a new born genre of poetry that is associated with visuality, ecology, and literature. Thus, it defines eco-visual poetry as a new genre of poetry

ARTISTIC AND AXIOLOGICAL SEARCHES IN MODERN KAZAKH CHILDREN'S POETRY (based on the work of A. Esten)

The article examines the tendencies of modern Kazakh children's literature and its features. One of the characteristic trends in literature during the period of independence is the strengthening of the desire to revive national values. Especially the elements reflecting the uniqueness of the nation, revealing its history and traditions, reflecting its mental attitude, over the past quarter of a century have been vividly reflected not only in Kazakh literature, but also in almost all the literature of post-Soviet countries that have freed themselves from the yoke of colonial politics. Outstanding names and events, ousted from the stage of history and forgotten forever, were very intensively reproduced in the years after independence. This process continues to this day. The article provides an overview of the creative world of the outstanding representative of modern Kazakh children's poetry A. Yesten, an assessment of the poet's talent and taste in glorifying historical and cultural values ​​is given. The author draws attention to the extent to which works of art for children meet pedagogical requirements. He also dwells on the axiological and poetic activity of poetry, tries to reveal its significance in the life of a child. This scientific article was written within the framework of the AR05131632 project «Trends in the development of modern Kazakh children's literature» (1991-2021) for grant financing of fundamental and applied scientific research on scientific projects of the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2020-2022.

Militarism and the Bedouin: Intersections of colonialism, gender, and race in the Arab Gulf

This article investigates the development of militarism in the Arab Gulf using the militarized representation of the Bedouin and their poetic tradition as a site for its analysis. The article traces the ways in which Bedouin ‘martial masculinities’ and Bedouin culture have been appropriated and transformed by British colonialism and postcolonial nationalisms to produce unusual patterns of militarism within the Gulf. It addresses a gap in international relations and security studies literature, in which militarism is examined through state-centric and methodologically nationalist framings that largely overlook transnational and colonial histories. The article argues that contemporary displays of militarism by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates should be read in relation to how colonialism engendered militarism across the Gulf region through the paradoxical representation of the Bedouin as a ‘martial race’ whose martial-ness was also seen as a security ‘threat’ for the colonial/postcolonial state. Militarized responses and rationalities were normalized within Gulf society through the ‘Bedouin warrior’ stereotype, which served as a timeless and fixed construct, connecting the Gulf’s disjointed past to its present-day context. Significantly, the ‘Bedouin warrior’ stereotype helps foster the belief that stability and historical continuity underpin state-modernization processes in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The article’s intervention seeks to disrupt this continuity by looking at how militarism and its martial constructs created ruptures in state trajectories, using the example of the 1996 coup attempt, citizen revocations, and the depoliticization of the poetic act as evidence for the claim that militarism engenders particular insecurities for Bedouin populations in the Arab Gulf.

Two theories of action - Edelman's Neuronal group Selection and the Poetics of Paul Valéry

Motivated by two imperatives as they are framed in Code Biology – mechanism and actualization - we have turned to other attempts of modeling life at work. Here, we present two theories devoted to minds in action – one explains neuronal function, and the other dissects poetic crafting. Neuronal networks activation and poetic composition, respectively, are seen as the selection of specific connective patterns of either neurons or words, in action. Gerald Edelman, as a scientist, has generalized the Darwinian ideas of variation and selection to the cellular level in his “Sciences of Recognition”, a broader theoretical framework that includes the “Theory of Neuronal Group Selection” (TGNS) analyzed here. Paul Valéry, as a poet, has reconciled inspiration and technique in what he has called “works of the mind”, the creative processes mediated by sensing and making sense, in the “Poetic Theory” we present here he advances the mechanisms of artistic composition. We have identified the main ideas conveyed in these two theories, i.e., variation and selection, integration and differentiation, ambiguity and degeneracy, binding and blending, stasis and semiosis, by pairing and comparing textual fragments from the authors. We show that TGNS and the Theory of Poetic Action reconcile Sciences and Arts by recognizing that Natural Selection is a mechanism implied by formative acts in both scenarios and discuss to which extent Natural Convention - the main contribution of Code Biology – is integrated by the two thinkers.

One Must Say Yes: Poetic Acts of Affirmation in Works by Baldwin, Fanon, and Ellison

One Must Say Yes: Poetic Acts of Affirmation in Works by Baldwin, Fanon, and Ellison

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Shauna M. Morgan In celebrating and chronicling the first fifty years of CLAJ publications, Dana A. Williams noted "the significant and unparalleled role the journal has played in publishing scholarship by and about people of color and our literatures and languages" (2). Williams's introduction to issue 57.1 served as both a comprehensive historiography and as a re-grounding of the values upon which CLA was built. Her observation that "CLA has always been fully aware of present realities, all the while looking to the future" rings true for the organization's journal even today (7). It is in that spirit that we offer this issue. CLAJ remains ambitious in its endeavors as we chart a new path in the 21st century. In addition to scholarly essays, readers will now find papers engaged with the kind of critical and transformative pedagogical practices that have been at the heart of CLA's work since its founding, and in honoring a tradition which began with the publication of the first issue of CLAJ, our pages will now also feature creative works across genre. This inclusive approach offers a fuller view of the cultural productions of our expanding membership, and it creates space for the innovative and imaginative works currently shaping our literary landscape. Jacob Pagano's "One Must Say Yes: Poetic Acts of Affirmation in Works by Baldwin, Fanon, and Ellison" examines Black speech acts and the ways in which they are represented in order to affirm the complexities of Black subjectivity even as the writers accomplish aims beyond the literary projects. The essay positions the writings (both fiction and non-fiction) of James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, and Ralph Ellison as constructing communal affirmations and presenting language as a means for understanding community and one's place in it. Pagano's analysis of the seemingly basic affirmation of yes uncovers the innumerable possibilities of questioning extant understandings of canonical Black writing. "Stories to Tell: Family and Reality in Hip-Hop Autobiographies" by John Paul Meyers examines the life writing of three very different hip-hop artists and firmly situates their work in the long tradition of African American autobiography. Exploring the thematic elements which emerge in these texts, Meyers offers us a look at the aesthetic and narrative intersections of these artists lived experiences and lyrical work, and he invites scholars and artists to consider the possibilities of what we can learn about the craft of hip hop by studying autobiographical writings. In his essay, "'Cause that's the way the world turns': John Edgar Wideman's Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox, Jurgen E. Grandt asserts that "[r]ecorded music resonates within a suspension of time—or, more precisely, the spiral grooves of records revive a past event in the present, a repeatable action that riffs, however briefly, upon the (ostensibly) linear progression of history." This point [End Page 191] brings us immediately into the environment of the novel as Grandt thoroughly articulates the ways in which Wideman's Homewood is not only infused with music, but in addition to the world of the text, the language of the novel itself employs the aesthetic of the music that touches the character's lives. The pedagogical study presented in Nathaniel Norment Jr,'s "Some Results of Using Culture-referenced Prompts for Pre and Post-Test Writing Examinations at an HBCU" is both a reminder of CLA's roots and historical focus and a call for us to critically evaluate and enhance our pedagogy whether we are rooted at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) or plowing the earth at a Predominantly/Historically White Institution. As Monique L. Akassi asserts in the brief commentary which precedes this essay, "the need for more pedagogical attention in the CLAJ is more relevant now than ever." doris davenport's brief reflection on CLAJ's creative writing section reminds us that, in addition to being provisions for the exhilarating exercise of literary criticism, literary arts give us "meaning and inspiration" and help us move through a perpetually troubled world. The gathering of poems and creative non-fiction reflects an innerness and calls us to consider our connections to...

Symbolic meanings of totemic images in modern mystical artistic works

The authors of the article considered the artistic activity and the specifics of the use of folklore motifs and totemic images in modern mystical artistic works. To determine the symbolic meanings of totem concepts in the stories, the main sources are taken as a basis, demonstrating the relationship and features of literature, myths and folklore. The literary-aesthetic, philosophical, religious aspects and meanings of mysticism are explained. The scientific paradigm presents individual reasoning and concepts regarding artistic mysticism. The authors, along with identifying social problems in mystical micro-plot artistic works published during the period of independence, tried to find out the artistic, poetic activity of folklore genres (legends, myths, magic, fantasy, baksy) used by writers in the process of transmitting thoughts in an allegorical form. For the interpretation of folklore motifs in mystical prose, the artistic works of Tursynzhan Shapai «Sacred tree», Nurgali Oraz «Misplaced tree», Maksat Malikov «Headless wolf», Kanat Abilkair «Zhylan kegi (Revenge of the Snake)» and Lira Konys «Beloved of the Devil» are taken as the object of research, the literary and aesthetic subtext of snake, tree and wolf symbols is analyzed. Along with the activity of folklore totemic concepts as an artistic act in these stories, the role of the utilitarian and educational functions is differentiated from a scientific point of view. The aesthetic activity of legends, mythical totems as an intertextual text in today's Kazakh stories is comprehensively studied and demonstrated in a comparative form. For the first time, the elements that appear under the cross-influence of mystical and folklore motifs in stories are considered. Priority is given to the ways of reviving totemic concepts based on a literary text in the worldview and belief system of the people. Keywords: mysticism, motif, totem, symbol, myth.

A Note on African Socialism

A Note on African Socialism

Eudocia’s Singing Deacon: Another Programmatic Passage In Late Antique Christian Verse

AbstractAmongst the varied literary output of the fifth-century empress Aelia Eudocia is a hexameter paraphrase of the martyrdom of Saints Cyprian and Justina. The opening lines of the poem, which were rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century, describe the conversion of Justina (Justa) to Christianity through the preaching of a deacon named Praulius. Even as Eudocia remains close to her prose model(s), she imposes her own interpretation upon the text through subtle variation and careful choice of poetic vocabulary. In her version, she depicts the preacher Praulius as a Christian counterpart to the traditional singer of hexameter poetry, linked also to her own poetic activity. This description of Praulius’ transformational preaching, prominently placed at the outset of the poem, constitutes another programmatic passage in late antique Christian verse.

Traduzir o canto de Christine de Pizan no confinamento

Christine de Pizan left a very varied work regarding literary themes and genres, her first poems being written in verses, ballads, virelais, rondeaux, jeux a vendre and some songs. In this study, we will present two of her lyric compositions in translation into Portuguese, Ballade XI and Virelai I, in which Christine de Pizan regrets her new reality: the loneliness of widowhood and the contradiction of poetic activity in disguising and revealing her feelings. The aim of this work is to show that the translation of these medieval poems can illustrate principles of the translation of poetry that go beyond the meaning and form of the text. For that, we resort to some considerations by authors such as Antoine Berman and Mario Laranjeira, for whom the translation can shelter the other, can reveal the identity of a text and say something about its history. We also emphasize the distance in the timeline that separates the composition of the source texts and the translation exercise proposing our work as a witness to the other, aiming to offer the original a continuity in this century, giving it the shelter that the stranger can receive in distant lands.

The Other Arena: Poetics Goes Global in the Iberian Atlantic, 1500–1650+

AbstractThe period 1500–1650 is the period during which Europe’s poetic traditions — of ultimately Greco-Roman (i.e. Mediterranean Basin) origin — first came to be systematically exported outside the strictly European geographical sphere: the new contexts offered by the Portuguese- and especially Spanish-controlled zones of the rapidly expanding Iberian imperial world is where this first took place. This chapter moves away from the time-honoured Eurocentrisms of some of the more traditional approaches to early modern poetics by insisting upon 1500–1650+ as precisely the period during which the European literary tradition began to take on a life, or lives, of its own elsewhere across the globe. After surveying the key literary-historical developments in this connection, the chapter proceeds to consider how the Americas themselves came to be figured and indeed forged as a new zone of poetic activity — a new poetic(s) space — in early modern Ibero-American poetry itself. The selection of tropes identified and surveyed in this part of the chapter is offered as a sample of the dynamic literary phenomena that make up what we can call the poetics of the New World.

ПОЭТОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ МЕТАФОРА ПЕРА / ФЛЕЙТЫ КАК ИНСТРУМЕНТ МЕТАЛИРИКИ

The modern theory of metalyrics, as one of the manifestations of literary self-reflection, embraces a vast range of poetological metaphors, the metaphors of inspiration included. The German medievalist, F. Ohly, describes one of them as a written act of God, who created the world with the help of his reed pen. At the same time, the poet is portrayed not only as a writing instrument (Schreibrohr), but also as a flute. In medieval Persian poetry the theory of verse became the theme of this very verse, so that the technique and tasks of poetic activity were revealed through artistic form rather than with the use of special terms. Persian poets pay particular attention to such a metaphor of poetic writing as “writing / sounding reed”. In the final part of the article, the author analyzes texts by Goethe, and the Russian modernist poets, Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, and Mandelstam as samples of metalyrics connected by the traditional medieval metaphor “reed pen / flute”.

Tacit engagement using tablet-mediated learning for social good.

We discuss the effectiveness of mediated communication (internet communication via a computer tablet) and tacit engagement in a Project on mental health. The project is aimed at improving the wellbeing of adult women living with chronic mental disorders in long-term psychiatric internment. The computer tablets act as "portals" to provide access and conatct with the outside world for patients who have poor (if any) external social support. This support includes a patient-centred psycho-social care, and accompanying clinical and pharmaceutical treatment. Both patients and their relatives accepted the benefits of internet mediation, for very different reasons. For the patient, this is a flash of contact with humanity, and for the relatives the internet communication this proved to be an alternative to the need for physical proximity. As some patients had no relatives or friends to communicate (even remotely) with the outside world, and because there is a school next door to the clinic, we visualized that the communication between these two communities could provide both a therapeutic and poetic act of learning and compassion. The electronic portal could serve as a virtual bridge between two forbidden domains. Although awareness of students of the nearby school was raised about mental health, the use of internet mediation devoid of physical proximity made the students suspicious of the goal of the mediation. From the patient's side, however, each contact was an instance of joy. Several issues were raised from this exercise.

The poetic act as an act of resistance in the feminist practice of Ana Mendieta

Between the potential to and the potential not to, according to Giorgio Agamben, there is a process of a creative (poetic) act, as an act of resistance towards the end of one's own completion, in this context analyzed through the work of feminist artist Ana Mendieta. Regarding the (in)completeness, Mendieta?s oeuvre exemplifies a perfect illustration that the disappearance of her art work is a way of communication that resists production of any formal finality, as a process within which the traces of the media used (her own body) also disappear because of the time and circumstances left to nature. The dematerialization of artwork in Mendieta?s case epitomized one of possible aspects of exposing the act of resistance as a realization of a quantum of potential through the event, appearing as a poetics of inoperativity as defined by Agamben and erasing boundaries between the inception and the performativity of the poetic time, a duration that is not limited to one existence or aesthetic phenomenon. In the intersection between early feminist art practices (based on essentialism) and the second wave that relied on anti-essentialism as a new conception, Mendieta's work positioned its own dialectic among the separated feminist views about the use of the female body as a medium.

Новый человек и народ: лирический голос и поэтическое народовластие у Н. А. Некрасова

This article analyzes the expression of individual limitation in Nekrasov’s poetry as a model of democratic pathos which departs from the 1860s standard of self-sacrifi ce. Who Lives Well in Russia is treated as a culminating expression of Nekrasov’s unique combination of individual lyric voice and the shared affective experiences created by sound, which symbolizes a bid for agency among the intelligentsia and the narod alike and draws attention to linguistic form as a combined poetic and political act.