I feel (again I show how postmodernism has affected me) that there must be a distinction between art and science.
The standard distinction (however simplistic) would be that art is emotional and science is objective. That is true, I think. Art has some similarities to science, in that different forms of art have guiding rules and regulations that they must follow (a poem is not a sonnet, for example, if it only has five lines). I also believe that art and science are methods by which we can discover truth; however, I believe that they lead us to two very different types of truth (but that is a post for another day). The difference I want to talk about, is that I see art as an expressive way to illuminate truth. I would say a roundabout way, but that carries connotations that I don't want. Art (and specifically poetry, literature) provides a way of expressing a truth without using that wallop I spoke of, that frying pan to the face. Art is able to do so because of our emotions, because of the way true poets meticulously choose their words, their form, their spacing, their rhythm, so that they evoke in (most of) their readers the emotional response that they want. They pick and pluck at the common experiences and emotions that connect us, playing on them and drawing us to a crescendo of emotion that raises us up to the point they wanted to make.
True, the emotion is not the poem, the poem uses emotions as a tool to bring us to its meaning. W and B have it right when they talk about specificity of emotion (1398), but I feel that, overall, they come down a little too hard on emotion, and veer too far towards objectivity for my liking.
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Kat,
I would agree with you on this issue of objectivity you discuss. I would say that W and B have a good argument with form being important to evoking the emotion that the reader is intended to feel, but they base everything on form, and nothing on actually connecting with the poet, and that is what I struggle with. Even if poetry is supposed to be separate from the poet as soon as the poem is born, why would the poet have written it in the first place if not to reach the reader at the same point of experience?
Thanks for your thoughts :)
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