American Artlessness

[mixed_biscuits]

@jenks

The OED says what you say but Chambers ignores the first definition, as I do. It says "simple; guiltless, unaffected".

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Frost sought Pound out when he arrived in London on the 1910s - it wasn’t a great success
“when Frost and Pound met, Pound looked at one of Frost’s poems, made a few corrections and said, “Not bad. Not much fat on that one.” Frost reportedly protested, “But you’ve messed up the rhyme! You wrecked the whole formal structure of the poem!”

Eliot also had problems with the technical demands. His cat poems are all over the place. He was 'artless' in lacking basic skills but not artless in the proper sense, being a massive poseur like Pound.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Now the question is whether Frost's yokel persona was also a pose.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I don't think you can really call him a poseur. He was interested in and highly valued rural life and work, he had experience of owning and working a farm. I wouldn't say he had a yokel persona as such, but he observed it and learned from it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

You could only come to the conclusion that Frost was artless, in any of its various definitions, from the abolutely shallowest of readings - that he used simple language and wrote about farmers and that.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Melville and Whitman were artless in some ways but not others, I can get what @luka means when he describes them as that. But not Frost.

 

[jenks]

@jenks

The OED says what you say but Chambers ignores the first definition, as I do. It says "simple; guiltless, unaffected".

The OED - the widely accepted authoritative source of English in the world. But of course you don’t accept it. Obviously.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Now the question is whether Frost's yokel persona was also a pose.

Not a yokel persona and no attempt to use colloquial language, which is what his entire work often gets reduced to. Look at the words he uses - 'Discern' 'rebuke' 'summer heaven godlike' 'and lo'.

For Once, Then, Something

By Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

 

[PeteUM]

I dont like elephants 'pushing' and if the wolf is tireless why is it resting in the shade of a tree

I don't know whether the poem is good and can only interpret so far but I read it that the wolf is patiently waiting for whatever's stuck up the tree.

 

[sus]

Not a yokel persona and no attempt to use colloquial language, which is what his entire work often gets reduced to. Look at the words he uses - 'Discern' 'rebuke' 'summer heaven godlike' 'and lo'.

For Once, Then, Something

By Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Amazing poem

 

[Corpsey]

You can't say "lo", sorry Bobby!

 

[entertainment]

'One comes across passages, even in very fine English poets, which makes one think: "Yes, very effective, but does he believe what he is saying?": in American poetry such passages are extremely rare.'

- W.H. Auden

Sincerety is a very American concept isn't it, and central I guess to the artlessness indictment. Trilling, David Foster Wallace, Hemingway etc.

American literature is an easier place to begin when you're young because of this I think. Easier to understand what it is about and how to participate in it, this being true to yourself, the masculinity in it as well. It connects more easily to worldly dispositions, the way literary voice becomes in effect an expression of personality in this quite conscious but not self-conscious way.

 

[shakahislop]

theres way more working class salt of the earth DNA in american literature (at least early 20th c) than there is in the british canon

 

[Corpsey]

Does Auden actually cite any examples of what he's talking about there?

Interesting here is Audrn emigrated stateside, which was seen by many Englishers as cowardice and which many Englishers (Larkin included) saw as the terminus of his talent.

I wonder if he was gassing up the yank poets post emigration?

 

[Corpsey]

But then as noted by others it can be a backhanded compliment

"The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them; they can inflict on them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies succeeding one another without interruption in the bosom of a family will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician."

 

[hmg]

 

[sus]

Sincerety is a very American concept isn't it, and central I guess to the artlessness indictment. Trilling, David Foster Wallace, Hemingway etc.

American literature is an easier place to begin when you're young because of this I think. Easier to understand what it is about and how to participate in it, this being true to yourself, the masculinity in it as well. It connects more easily to worldly dispositions, the way literary voice becomes in effect an expression of personality in this quite conscious but not self-conscious way.

What do older people learn that makes simple sincerity less available, or artful selfconsciousness more appealing?

 

[Corpsey]

Being sincere in England is a one way ticket to getting a deliciously droll barb aimed at your spleen

 

[sus]

Crabs in a bucket.

 

[Corpsey]

I don't think of Americans as sincere necessarily

I think of them plastering a fake grin on and saying have a nice day bucko