Mything the News
"Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular" -Aristotle, "Poetics"
When Aristotle uses the term "poetry" in poetics, it is in reference to a wide medium of artistic expressions including literature and drama, like the stories that we're reading in class. Isn't it ironic that underneath the "particulars" of history ("what's new", at the present) lurks poetry ("what's old)? For instance, to continue with the example of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, that we've been using in class: at surface level, it's all particulars. But beneath the catchy (or lame) headlines, a universal story springs. No matter how particular these publications get, or how many details they relate about what's current, there's something poetic at it's core.
We can acknowledge the headlines and the words when we peruse the newspaper, but at a deeper, more human level, we can be moved by the stories that we know, the universal elements of the daily news; and that is the poetic feature underlying historical events. Thoreau said "Read not the Times. Read the eternities". Times = history= particulars. Eternities= poetry= the universal.
We see in the Bozeman Daily Chronical a manifestation of ideas and themes that are very universal; truths that relate to all of mankind. We are hopelessly human, and so are our publications: writing our present reality from our past.
When Aristotle uses the term "poetry" in poetics, it is in reference to a wide medium of artistic expressions including literature and drama, like the stories that we're reading in class. Isn't it ironic that underneath the "particulars" of history ("what's new", at the present) lurks poetry ("what's old)? For instance, to continue with the example of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, that we've been using in class: at surface level, it's all particulars. But beneath the catchy (or lame) headlines, a universal story springs. No matter how particular these publications get, or how many details they relate about what's current, there's something poetic at it's core.
We can acknowledge the headlines and the words when we peruse the newspaper, but at a deeper, more human level, we can be moved by the stories that we know, the universal elements of the daily news; and that is the poetic feature underlying historical events. Thoreau said "Read not the Times. Read the eternities". Times = history= particulars. Eternities= poetry= the universal.
We see in the Bozeman Daily Chronical a manifestation of ideas and themes that are very universal; truths that relate to all of mankind. We are hopelessly human, and so are our publications: writing our present reality from our past.
posted by Carly Parelius at 4:14 PM
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