As soon as Arthur Sze began his presentation you could tell he was incredibly passionate about what he does. Not only could you see his passion but, his intelligence of poetry and chinese. I found his presentation interesting, and intriguing because of the passion he carried throughout his presentation. I could tell he could've gone on for hours on end presenting all of his knowledge, he jumped around quickly in his presentation trying to give everyone as much information in the short time he had.
Arthur started by showing the group some chinese letters, and describing how the chinese write. There are 214 Chinese radicals, which is the term chinese use for letters. However, their letters are nothing like English letters, each letter …show more content…
Chinese use Juxtaposition all the time, they put two different words side by side and bring them together to create a metaphor by comparing and contrasting the two elements. Another example Arthur gave of juxtaposition is in a play if one character is talking and pauses slightly in between thoughts, and another character begins talking. It creates tension between the two characters.
Arthur also talked about ekphrastic poetry, which is a poem written in response to art work. Ekphrastic poetry requires a large amount of the writer's imagination as well as command of language. An example given was a poem written by Octavio Paz in response to Joseph Cornell's decorated boxes. Joseph creates boxes where he puts what seem to be random objects in them, however they all having meaning and allow your imagination to find what that meaning is. In these poems there is a feeling of mystery and surprise, no word is greater than another.
Overall Arthur's presentation was very informative, and not what I had expected when I saw “poetry workshop” on the syllabus. It was much more than just learning how to write poetry which I had expected, instead it was about different aspects of chinese language, which was then used in poetry with different poetic
Arthur started by showing the group some chinese letters, and describing how the chinese write. There are 214 Chinese radicals, which is the term chinese use for letters. However, their letters are nothing like English letters, each letter …show more content…
Chinese use Juxtaposition all the time, they put two different words side by side and bring them together to create a metaphor by comparing and contrasting the two elements. Another example Arthur gave of juxtaposition is in a play if one character is talking and pauses slightly in between thoughts, and another character begins talking. It creates tension between the two characters.
Arthur also talked about ekphrastic poetry, which is a poem written in response to art work. Ekphrastic poetry requires a large amount of the writer's imagination as well as command of language. An example given was a poem written by Octavio Paz in response to Joseph Cornell's decorated boxes. Joseph creates boxes where he puts what seem to be random objects in them, however they all having meaning and allow your imagination to find what that meaning is. In these poems there is a feeling of mystery and surprise, no word is greater than another.
Overall Arthur's presentation was very informative, and not what I had expected when I saw “poetry workshop” on the syllabus. It was much more than just learning how to write poetry which I had expected, instead it was about different aspects of chinese language, which was then used in poetry with different poetic