Week 6 Readings Response - Veronika

Harold Scheub’s “The Poem and the Story: The Poetics of Storytelling,” confronts this idea that “there was never a story without a poem.” This statement clearly states that every story has, at its core, characteristics of poetic style. This would imply every story has underlying rhyme, meter, lines, rhythm, and verses. In some sense I believe this to be true because poems do not necessarily need to be in a strict iambic pentameter, or a set style; some poems are in free verse, meaning they have no set meter, verse, and rhythm. Also, free verse poems can have as much effect on the reader’s emotions as a specific style poem. Therefore, in storytelling and stories, the words could be considered to be in free verse style, with no set meter, and the words have a rhythmic beat to them, in the way of assonance, consonance, repetition, and etc. Ultimately, I believe that this idea of story and poem coexisting is plausible in the sense that when they are combined, they are able to “summon emotions from a willingly submissive audience, and weave those emotions into the poem that is the core of the story.” Another aspect of this concept of this combination of poetry and story is that also in the way the story is formed is poetic – the ordering of the images and words in order to convey these emotions as well as the nonlinear path of the story. Harold Scheub also talks of a specific example of this fusion: a story about a king, and a poet’s view of the king. Here his story is seen in the format of a epic poem, because it is an extended poem over a long period of time. In his analysis of this story, Scheub tells the reader that the poet was not focusing on the king at all, but the tradition. He then later goes in to later detail saying how that without tradition we would be without direction, and that these poets and storytellers are able to link our past with our contemporary experiences, it shows how they remind us of our motivation to emotions. A good point he brings up is the fact that a poem is a metaphor: half old, half new, strengthening of this idea of tradition to the future and what unites them together is the rhythm of the poem. And thru this the emotions are brought out of the audience. Lastly Harold Scheub ends with this idea of repetition. I like how he relates this repetition to a slow blossoming of images that develops from a single image to ultimately lead to an explosion of emotions. All of these things are able to bring the audience into the core of the poem, the center, and allow them to form a reaction in their mind and understand the message of the story. Only audiences “participating in the performance” are they able to evoke this epiphany. Words are only words, “a beginning,” unless they are transformed into this idea of a narrative centered around a poem. – Garrett Chow

In Harold Scheub’s “The poetics of storytelling”, he describes the idea that story and poem are closely related. He believes that there “never was a story without a poem… narrative is constructed around a poetic interior” and that interior “is the engine for the story, which animates and motivates, that which keeps the narrative in motion, that which provides the rhythmical flow of the story”. This is an interesting idea I otherwise would probably have not noticed, I think it has a good point and definitely is true in many aspects of story telling. Especially in films or videos, this poetic structure is emphasized and used. First of all, poems serves as a literature form which can be used to tell a story, for example, Homer’s Odyssey, is in fact an epic poem that tells a story; poems can also be used to convey or evoke an emotion, (which can arise from a story), describe a scene, (can be part of a story) and/or all of the above. Therefore, we find great similarity between a poem and a story, in terms of theater or cinema, stories are told through a series of pictures, actions, conversations, where poem are describing the pictures, the actions and the conversations. Both cinema and poem is a function that conveys the content of the story, both are used to emphasize, to beautify, or to dramatize the story. This proves the idea that poetic interior is in fact the engine for the story. Many elements of poems are found in storytelling, whether being cinema or not. “Repetition, the rhythm of storytelling” is found in both cinema, and poems. For example, poems use repetition of words, phrases, to emphasize, cinema use repetition for the same purpose, but with different objects, rather than words or phrases, it might be pictures, colors, lights, or sequences. In “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring again”, the image of the frog, the river, the snake and the mountain are repeated, the film had minimal dialect, but it was pieced together as if it was a poem, telling the story of a young monk and his journey. The images are significant, as they are representation of purity, desire, and coming of age, they are repeated, and the music is repeated to emphasize. The stories needs not to be told in a linear chronological fashion, and poem definitely breaks the pattern of linearity, it could be describing a feeling, through past experiences, it could be connecting actions through their similarities. Cinema does the same, with “Pulp Fiction”, “Memento”, and even surprise endings are part of poem. “The poetry and stories are an art form that richly remembers and celebrates our finest impulses, as it recalls and commemorates our cruelest proclivities”. As films emphasize moments with close ups, colors and music, poems emphasize with it’s tone, because the driving force of telling a beautiful story is to tell it poetically, to emphasize, to repeat, to set the tone and to tell the story without just saying the words. Even though I agree with Harold that poems and story are intertwined and closely related, I believe that stories told through film can create new forms of poetry, and there’s no rule that applies to films, much like modern poetry.-p

“The poem never exists without a story, nor can a story stand without a poem” (Scheub 25). At first glance, I would have to disagree with Mr. Scheub on his views about stories rooted in poetry (and vice versa). How is it that a story cannot stand without a poem? There have been thousands of stories throughout history that have amazed audiences, and many of these stories have little to do with what we perceive as conventional poetry. From Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” stories such as these have little or not use of obvious rhyme or verse. However, before I dismiss Scheub’s opinions on stories and poetry, I must play devil’s advocate and try to see the situation in his point of view. After looking up various definitions of poetry, I have discovered that poetry can simply be defined as a, “composition that, though not in verse, is characterized by great beauty of language or expression” (www.dictionary.com). Based on this definition, it seems as if poetry does not need to be directly melodic or sweet-sounding. Rather, poetry is any composition or work that one can find beauty through the words used in the piece. Going back to my examples of “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Frankenstein,” although the authors of these stories did not intend to tell these stories as forms of poetry, they did, however, include all the necessary elements that would warrant these works as models of poetry. Stories such as these convey intense emotions and sentiments. What is more captivating about these stories is that the emotions they convey can usually relate to people on a personal level. Many critics have said that the mark of a good story is if audiences can walk away from a story knowing that they have truly been touched/impacted on a private level. Any story that can do this must be immensely expressive, and therefore there is a sense of beauty in their emotive capabilities. Hence, if these stories are works of beauty, why shouldn’t we consider them forms of poetry? Essentially, Scheub’s argument can be considered valid if he is trying to say that stories and poetry are one in the same. Throughout “The Poem and the Story; The Poetics of Storytelling,” Scheub uses a story about a poet, Mdukiswa Tyabashe, and his interactions and views of his king. In the selected passages from Tyabashe’s stories, one can easily observe Tyabashe’s use of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and verse. Like Homer’s “Illiad” and “Odyssey,” the Tyabashe’s story in itself is a long poem that utilizes rhythm and rhyme in order to strengthen the views of his king and emotions that he wishes to convey. Unfortunately, not all stories we read/encounter include or emphasize the typical elements of poetry found in Tyabashe’s composition. According to Scheub, it is our job, as readers and students of life, to find the poem in the story (Scheub 26). Perhaps we can find this so-called poetry in certain elements of a story such as the conflict and resolution, the illustration of key characters, or the diction used throughout. Regardless of where we find this “poetry,” I do agree with Scheub that three specific things do occur in all stories: 1) there is a historical aspect in which images are shaped by myth; 2) there is a narrative aspect in which images are moved from conflict to resolution; and 3) ther is an aesthetic aspect in which emotions are given form. In both stories and conventional poetry, we can find these three aspects working together to produce something beautiful. I suppose that I the end, it is still the individual who chooses what he believes to beautiful, and in turn – poetic.

In Harold Scheub’s “The Poetics of Storytelling,” he reveals the most important component of filmmaking: the narrative. This narrative isn’t just the story; it is the poetry, the images, the emotion. “Poetry is the very temper of story, in its melodic and rhythmic influence on the organization and shaping of images…The raw material is emotion, that of the performer and, most signally, that of the audience…The images have two functions: to move the story and to move the audience.” The narrative contains the plot, the characters, the morals, and the entire meaning for something to exist. Without a narrative, poetry, stories, and movies would have no reason for existing. However, if only this article were presented to show the importance of narrative, I would consider the author to be insane, as it is almost impossible to conceive an entire narrative when only in the planning process for a movie. While Scheub focuses more on the storytelling aspect of poetry and narrative, movies are a genre of storytelling, and as such should provide and require the same elements as poetry and stories. Wim Wenders comes to the rescue as he describes the thought processes he went through when he created his film “Wings of Desire.” Rather than describe vauge ideas and state requirements with no room for error, Wenders meanders through the first idea, the first concept, the first meeting, all the way to the entire plot. “At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a desire. That’s how it begins […] You have a wish” (231). Not a list of ready metaphors or a reference sheet of similies to flower your work, but only a wish. It is this idea of a work in progress that shows what Scheub couldn’t: every step of the way. Even though his writing is disjointed and at points confusing to understand, Wenders provides something that Scheub cannot: a concrete example of the creation of narrative. Rather than Scheub’s presentation of a village bard with a previously composed ballad, complete with undertones and hidden messages, Wenders chooses to start from the beginning and lead his reader the exact same way he was lead: by the whim of the mind.

I wasn’t sure which one to post on, but this one had two at the time I started typing this; safety in numbers, right? I just have a few thoughts on Scheub’s paper. I found his connections between the poem and the story, and the elements throughout to be sensible in the least, and personally agree with his findings. I was never quite sure though, that he implied or stated anywhere that all stories need to have a poem. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, I did agree though with the poems implicit argument of imagery. He uses some very nice examples to describe this. Especially in the end, “The story teller leans forward, pipe tobacco smoke curling around her head: ‘You begin with the remembered image,’ she said, ‘Everything builds on that.” I chose this quote because I think it also most agrees with the phenomenon in film (persistence of vision). To carry visual movement we must have a recollection of the previous image, and that in turn goes into mise en scene, and what makes such an image memorable. His discussions about how imagery set up a mood is also of key interest. Storytelling is heavily reliant of descriptive sensory words largely words that the vast majority can quickly identify with; like, the feel of hair, smoke curling, things that no pocket of people in the world can deny a conception of. Such visual imagery can be most often found in a poem. Though I believe many forms of writing would be so much better if they tried to create a more tangible image of things. Oxymoronic in some cases, but our interpretation can fill in the blanks. Every story needs a rhythm; the rhythm is just another form of persistence of vision. The imagery of stories, oral and written, require the imagery to evoke the proper emotion. These images aren’t to evoke emotion alone, but instead the imagery is broken into two different parts, first the primary mythic images, which though are more distant from the audience are larger than life, and create an emotional state, the second repertory of images are contemporary, to cement or detail the first set of images. This breakdown was very precise listing the two ways in which images influence a story, both in linear movement, from conflict to resolution, to pathos from the audience. The middle of his article, when he discusses the importance of music, loses me. I don’t necessarily agree that story’s told in song, or with ambient music in the background create better imagery. If he’d mentioned stories told in verse I might have been more inclined to agree. --A. Peltier