[quote=“chgoliz, post:24, topic:50870”]
Milton created the English form of the sonnet because the traditional forms used by Romance languages like Italian and French simply didn’t work in the English language[/quote]
Just an off-thread-center niggle: The sonnet was thoroughly established and English-adapted by the time Milton wrote his. And the poets who did import and adapt the Romance form into English in the 16th century didn’t abandon rhyme or classical meter–the Shakespearean variation of four quatrains and a couplet contains seven sets of rhymes and adheres to a notional iambic-pentameter line. (How closely Shakespeare or any English poet adheres to strict iambic verse is a study all its own. But I digress.)
I may be in some kind of OCD/fussy-old-teacher minority, but the interesting question about rap or pop-song lyrics or limericks isn’t whether they’re poetry, it’s what kind of poetry they are–not just good or bad (for which there are no objective metrics) but how they fit into the social and aesthetic spaces that generate them and their audiences. Lind’s use of audience size to assign “major” and “minor” labels strikes me as not utterly trivial (there is such a thing as the sociology of art and taste) but as not very useful if what we’re looking at is not the gross audience demographic but the art in its relationship to its raw materials, its demands (in both production and reception), and its effects.
I think the distinction between “high” and “Low” art is arbitrary at best. It’s more of a series of overlapping spectra, closely akin to the definition of pornography (“I can’t define it, but I know what it is when I see it.”) It also depends on the personal tastes of the observer: Opera fans and rap aficionados probably have very little overlap as far as musical tastes go, but each would defend their genre’s right to be called art. There are tons of artistic expressions that don’t fit comfortably into a niche. Bonsai? The much-reviled ceramics? Cooking/molecular gastronomy/cake decorating/what have you? Beauty and art are all in the eye of the beholder.
The earlier English sonnets were basically translating Petrarch and Ronsard. Milton was one of the first to make it truly English in form, which meant easing back on the rhyme scheme (among other things). Obviously rhyme and meter weren’t abandoned, just made more English-compatible. That’s the point I was making. Creative use of language and form is the connection between these different lyrical forms. It doesn’t matter whether or not you consider rap to be poetry. It is what it is.
To take it from another angle: Imagine scrapbooks that manage to evoke in viewers who are not part of the maker’s family (or other immediate circle of intimates) responses that go beyond “yes, I remember that” or “yes, our grandchildren are darlings” to “that’s what it felt like to have this life” or “I never thought to connect these images” or “what a gorgeous design.” Imagine a scrapbook that has some of the impact of the modernist collages at, say, MoMA. Would it matter that the scrapbook was assembled by somebody’s auntie or gran for her own amusement?
If you are doing it for its own sake, it is an art or a hobby but if you are doing it for some other purpose, such as making comfortable clothes or changing society or teaching history, it is a craft. /s
The very earliest sonnets in English were translations and adaptations, but the form was thoroughly Englished before Shakespeare, whose work precedes Milton’s by two generations. This is not really an arguable matter–it’s undergrad-lit-course stuff, or at least it was fifty-plus years ago when I was an undergrad.
I don’t think so. There are lots of things in the world that are good, and which I would enjoy. I don’t like all of them. Some of them I simply haven’t been exposed to, for whatever reason. Some of them aren’t mainstream in my culture. Some of them are acquired tastes. Bacon tastes great. Part of the reason I know this is because I’m neither Muslim nor Jewish, and it is acceptable to eat pork where I live. Just because cultural acceptability is part of the reason I like bacon, it not true that I like it because of this, rather than because it tastes good.
Listen, you’re the one who said that artists are those who devote their life to their work, while craftsmen are hobbyists who practice their “art” in their leisure time (“Art tends to be a full-time compulsion to refine technique as an innermost expression of self. Hobby tends to be a form of leisure time entertainment to amuse oneself.”). So it seems that you think only those who are full-time professional artists are proper artists. And you also seem to feel that artists don’t engage in spec work or do things to please others, but place themselves in service of their muse or whatever, and dedicate themselves completely to their art and their innermost expression of themselves. And at the same time, you seem to feel there are a lot of completely unknown artists. I’m just asking how all this comes together. How do these people manage to do nothing but make art, make art only for themselves and not for laypeople/customers/clients, manage to do so in great numbers, and also manage to eat?
I believe that most people have the same romantic idea of art as you do, but I also believe there are very few people who are able to to make money while adopting an uncompromising approach to their creative expression while engaging in that expression full time. I believe that most of these large number of artists that you believe exist in society make compromises in order to support themselves. I believe that these compromises would make most people (including yourself, by the standards you’ve described) question whether or not they are actually “artists.”
You seem to grok my understanding of what it means to be an artist - but, like art itself, I think this is hugely subjective. I’d be horrified to witness somebody arguing that somebody is not worthy of the title, and this is partly why I am critical of the OP article as well as the one from the Atlantic. It’s great for people to explain what they think art is, or what an artist does, but there’s no point in getting worked up about it like people do.
I didn’t think it would be contentious to observe that most art and artists have no notoriety. Sure, some likely do make compromises of some sort. But some don’t, hence the well-known “starving-artist” trope. Some don’t eat very much. Some scavenge, sell weed, beg, do odd jobs on the side, any number of things. Art has existed as long as humans have, for hundreds of thousands of years. Contemporary market economics are only a few hundred years old. So, apparently many artists have found it possible to reconcile.
I didn’t know the Dallas Mrs. Baird’s was gone. I believe that was Mockingbird @ Central – Northpark was Northwest Hwy @ Central. I believe the parcel of land in question is now occupied by Barnes & Noble and a Container Store.
They were contemporaries. Shakespeare died when Milton was young, but they were alive at the same time.
I’m referencing Milton not because I don’t appreciate Shakespeare or his masterful sonnet cycle but because Milton was the specific writer used as an example of how formal English poetry is oh-so-much-better than rap.
Where are you going with this? I don’t get it. How can you claim something is good if you haven’t been exposed to it? Why are you drawing a parallel between motivation (e.g. liking something because it’s considered intellectual) and environmental factors (e.g. not even having the opportunity to like something)?
It’s possible to say: “I enjoyed reading War and Peace, but I also like that having read it makes me look smarter.” A person can like something for multiple reasons, one of which is elitism (see my earlier comment about differences in degree). However, Lind’s essay seems to disregard the important reason (i.e. it’s fun) and just focus on the minor ones. 'Cause it would just be too crazy if patronage were motivated by genuine enjoyment, rather than by a sense of obligation or intellectual snobbery.
Stratifying media into “high art” and “low art” has been done to death already. Lind didn’t invent it. In the digital age, the practice is outdated, unhelpful, and just plain weird. With the aid of the internet, anyone can potentially turn their bizarre hobbies into artistic careers. I watched a cool video linked on this site of a guy balancing rocks. I think that’s a little more niche than reading poetry.
I read the article, thanks. I can come up with a ton of anecdotal examples contradicting the author’s supposition. Do you habitually answer rhetorical questions?
[quote=“WalterPlinge, post:54, topic:50870”]
Where are you going with this? I don’t get it. How can you claim something is good if you haven’t been exposed to it? [/quote]
Because I know from experience that I’ve experienced new things and enjoyed them, and I’m not stupid enough to think that I’ve discovered everything in life that will ever be enjoyable to me?
Because they’re not that different? People avoid things because they’re seen as unpopular, geeky, silly, immature, low-class, uncivilized, etc. People are also drawn to things because they’re popular, high-status, in style, or are just plain supposed to be good according to cultural norms. People like “10 best” style lists, and these lists function as status cues as much as quality cues.
They might exist on your cultural sphere, but on mine they have practically disappeared (except theater which these days is dominated by comedies), so when any of them suddenly appears it seems to be begging for attention, flimsy and somehow threatening the remaining art manifestations for space.
Actually, they are not at all the same, since one presupposes much stricter restrictions than the other one. It’s hard to equate strong cultural or religious taboos to perceptions of what’s currently popular/unpopular.
In any case, I still don’t see how this formulation is any different from saying “people like things (referring to classical music, poetry, etc.) because they want to feel superior”. The main disagreement appears to be whether this is a big contributing factor or a small contributing factor to the continuing patronage of so-called “minor arts”. Would you agree with that? Feel free to replace the word “superior” with “cool”, “popular”, “mature” or any other socially desirable quality.
