Literature
Organic Poetry
Organic Poetry is a literary movement that emerged in the mid-20th century, characterized by a focus on the natural world and the use of free verse. It emphasizes the connection between the poet and the environment, and often incorporates themes of ecology and environmentalism. Organic poets reject traditional forms and structures in favor of a more fluid and spontaneous approach to writing.
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3 Key excerpts on "Organic Poetry"
eBook - PDFThe Idea of Coleridge's Criticism
Perspectives in Criticism
- Richard Harter Fogle(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- University of California Press(Publisher)
Dependence on the figure of the growing plant to represent organic structure and relationships might in- deed overbalance the critic toward necessity and un- conscious process. As we have seen, however, in The- ory of Life and the "Aesthetical Essays" Coleridge clearly differentiates between the creative process in nature and the creative process in man, whose con- sciousness is his hallmark. And surely his emphasis is unmistakable in such oft-repeated pronouncements as "Shakespeare's judgment equal to his genius," his re- pudiation of the merely natural Shakespeare warbling his native wood-notes wild. If, also, it is fair to allow his own poetic practice one might point to his demon- strably elaborate revisions of such poems "about" or- ganic unity as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and "Dejection: An Ode." Organic unity, as has been noted, involves the recon- ciliation of the concept of life with the concept of beauty, or, in the simpler terms of the great account of the imagination, of art with nature, the manner with the matter. It presents an ideal life, a translucence which is the fusion of image and idea, matter and spirit, in pure substance. Its reconciliation of artistic purpose with artistic material, or the potential with its realization, might fitly be illustrated in the old no- tion of the perfect statue that awaits the sculptor's hand in the block of marble—it is there in nature, but must be formed and heightened into art. The organic metaphor, as Coleridge uses it, emphasizes not the un- conscious necessity of the growth process but its com- plexity, appropriate to art and poetry in expressing the literally inconceivable subtlety of its being and its crea- 67 tion, the unity and wholeness of the mind of "the poet in ideal perfection." For Coleridge, then, poetry "in ideal perfection" is, like life and beauty, an organization or organic unity under special conditions and limitations which this chapter has sought to define.
- Roger Langham Brown(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The use of organic metaphors in aesthetics had a long history in Germany in the pre-Romantic period; the organic images found in the critical writings of A. W. Schlegel may be traced back through Herder to Leibnitz. 5 However, German aesthetic thought was as much in debt to English writers in this field as was the case with theories of the origin of language. Expressive theories of language β 2 James Benziger, Organic Unity, Leibnitz to Coleridge, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, LXVI (March, 1951), p. 33. 3 Cf. Hans Oertel, Lectures on the Study of Language (New York, Charles Scribner's, 1902), p. 56. 4 Cf. Lovejoy, op. cit., pp. 274-275. 5 Benziger, op. cit., p. 27; cf. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, W. W. Norton, 1958), p. 202. 6 Cf. ante, Chapter II. 42 ORGANIC METAPHORS OF LANGUAGE and organic theories of artistic creation in fact both manifested a widespread faith in spontaneity. In the latter half of the eighteenth century in England, organic metaphors began to appear in works of aesthetics. 7 In his Conjectures on Original Composition, first published in 1759, 8 Young draws a distinction between literary works that are mere imitations and works that are the natural products of genius, to the total advantage of the latter. Young implies that the produc-tive activity of genius is a biological, rather than a mechanical process; and further that a work of genius is itself to be compared to a biological organism, whereas imitations are mere artifacts: These are the glorious fruits where genius prevails. The mind of a man of genius is a fertile and pleasant field . . . it enjoys a perpetual spring. Of that spring, Originals are the fairest flowers: Imitations are of quicker growth, but fainter bloom.
eBook - PDFLand, Nation and Culture, 1740-1840
Thinking the Republic of Taste
- Kenneth A. Loparo, N. Leask, D. Simpson, Kenneth A. Loparo, N. Leask, D. Simpson, Peter de Bolla(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Criticism thus banished St Paul and various divines to embrace a professionalized status for Ariel. Recounting Biblical stories might provide parables for moral guidance, and the literature of moral uplift might offer secularized versions of such writing. Literary criticism would, however, come to professionalize itself by staring in the face the requirement that an attention to form – specifically, organic form – would involve sloughing off reference to the particular prob- lems that individuals might face in their lives. Poovey finds evidence to support her view in much of the most influential criticism of the last century, and she could easily find more. By the time that W.K. Wimsatt wrote an essay called ‘Organic Form: Some Questions about a Metaphor’ (which was published in collections in 1972 and in 1973), he discussed the question of ‘organic form’ as one professional to others. 3 He was relying on the histories of others, he said, because he took ‘history as an object . . . before us, almost palpably, upon the table’, so that he could ‘choose [his] own exhibits’ (Wimsatt, 1973, p. 13). He then proceeded to make a series of theoretical claims. His first was that what was organic had to do with form rather than content – so that Wordsworth’s writing might plausibly be seen as exemplifying organic form even though he did not use the term, while a ‘Currier and Ives print of watermelon vines, trumpet flowers, and humming birds’ might present ‘organic forms’ without our being disposed ‘to argue that it thereby has high artistic form’ (p. 19). His second claim, which he made by quoting G.N.G. Orsini, was that organic form could only be applied to ‘the finished product’, that it had no relevance to the psychological or compositional aspects of art that Coleridge had concerned himself with in his early deployment of organic form in an English context.
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