小说与文学2015lrb.co.uk
论不喜欢诗歌
On Disliking Poetry
导读
这篇短文从“不喜欢诗歌”切入，讨论诗歌写作中超越性冲动与语言有限性之间的矛盾；评论区又把它扩展到具体经验、言语节奏和媒介限制等写作问题。写作者可借它反思：抽象口号和漂浮情绪为何让文字失效，以及如何把材料的限制变成形式。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写作要从具体、感官的经验出发，别让抽象概念或纯内部情绪取代可触摸的细节。
- 02
把语言的节奏和声音结构当作结构力量，而不只是语法和意义的附属品。
- 03
接受词语是粗糙媒介：它的外观、声音和上下文都会影响意义，过度偏离惯例会让读者无法理解。
- 04
把“作品总是不完美的记录”当成创作常态：从无限冲动落到有限词句的过程，正是写作真正发生的地方。
HN 评论精选
好诗应扎根具体感官经验和言语节奏，而不是浪漫抽象或纯情绪。
这种对诗歌的分析，就像宣称物理学的目的是造永动机，然后说我们都讨厌物理，因为它没能实现这个超越性目的。作者不加批判地搬出整套浪漫主义废话，还裹上术语让人不敢质疑。诗歌在现代世界的失败，源于拒绝把具体经验当作诗的基础材料，也放弃了言语的物理节奏（包括押韵）作为结构基础。好诗并不超越；人由肉构成，诗歌应反映肉身和感官生活。诗歌是言语，尤其指节奏结构压过语法结构的言语；节奏可以强烈外显（如说唱、吉卜林），也可以微妙。
tjradcliffe查看英文原文
This analysis of poetry is like declaring that the purpose of physics is to build perpetual motion machines and then saying we all dislike physics because it fails in this transcendent purpose. The author trots out uncritically the entire corpus of Romantic twaddle, swathed in sufficient technical language that most poeple will feel too intimidated to challenge it. But twaddle it is. The failure of poetry in the modern world is a result of the rejection of concrete experience as the foundational matter of poems. This has been accompanied by the abandonment of the physical rhythmicities of speech (including rhyme) as the basis of poetic structure. There's nothing transcendent about good poetry. People are made out of meat, and we communicate by flapping peices of meat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tScAyNaRdQ Poetry reflects our meat-based lives, the physicality of our meat. When we abandon that, when we abandon concrete, sensual experience for floating abstraction, as the Romantics did, or for purely internal emotional states as modern confessional free verse does, we abandon the very thing that makes poetry possible and necessary: meat. Poetry is speech, specifically speech where the rhythmical structure dominates the gramatical structure. The rhythmical structure can be strong and overt (rap, Kipling, etc) or subtle (even the best confessional free verse manages this at times, or the L A N G U A G E poets at their most surreal, although I don't have any use for their political programme.) The rhythmical structure of speech comes from the way we form sounds with meat, and nothing else. Nor does poetry have to be about anything out of the ordinary, although it certainly can be. Poetry is, amongst other things, the literature of moments. It's a way to capture and communicate a fleeting experience. Consider: young girls in blue shorts street corner in summer rain light changes, they run Way more memorable and evocative than "I saw some girls wearing blue shorts on the corner waiting for the light to change and they ran when it did 'cause there was a hard summer rain falling." Poetry makes the mind work in useful ways, focusing on structure and meaning and meat. We are physical beings capable of abstract appreciation of the world. Poetry exists at the intersection, grounded in one, guided by the other. What's to dislike?
创作冲动与材料有限性的冲突使作品成为“失败的记录”，这也适用于软件和创业。
我看到这与写软件有相似之处：你因某种超越性冲动而写诗，但一旦从冲动进入实际诗作，无限之歌就被有限词语妥协，所以诗总是失败的记录。诗人想造替代世界，而材料本身抵抗替代制造，这之间存在“不可判定冲突”。这也可比作超越或重塑当前市场的欲望，即所谓创业冲动；不过我认为诗歌是纯粹得多的形式。
wwweston查看英文原文
I'm seeing some parallels to writing software here: "you’re moved to write a poem because of some transcendent impulse... but as soon as you move from that impulse to the actual poem, the song of the infinite is compromised by the finitude of its terms. So the poem is always a record of failure. There’s an ‘undecidable conflict’ between the poet’s desire to make an alternative world and, as Grossman puts it, ‘resistance to alternative making inherent in the materials of which any world must be composed’" Or, for that matter, the desire to transcend/reshape a current market we sometimes name as the entrepreneurial impulse. Though I think poetry is a much purer form.
诗歌并未消亡，它以嘻哈等流行形式延续。
诗歌其实挺流行。只不过现在大部分叫嘻哈。
weeksie查看英文原文
Poetry is pretty popular. Most of it is called hip hop now, though.
词语是粗糙且受惯例约束的媒介，偏离过度会牺牲可理解性。
我认为诗人像总被迫用乐高雕塑的雕塑家。词语是表达艺术的粗糙媒介：它们的外观、声音以及和周围词的互动定义了意义。太偏离惯例，读你诗的人就不懂。我能理解这令人沮丧。
scriptman查看英文原文
I think a poet is like a sculptor that is always forced to sculpt using Lego. Words are a coarse medium for expressing art as their look, sound and interaction with surrounding words defines their meaning. Stray too far outside of convention and people reading your poem won't understand it. I can understand this being frustrating.
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