Poet Robert Pinsky (that's Pinsky on the left) name checks grammar (and even sentence diagramming) in an appreciation of 17th century poet George Herbert: here.Can knowing what "clauses" and "main verbs" are help readers appreciate Herbert's poetry?
Does knowing how to diagram sentences help readers appreciate Herbert's poetry?
2 comments:
I appreciate the lengths to which grammarians will go in order to further their cause. I do not think that I need to know how to diagram sentences in order to appreciate poetry. If you think about it, "Cat in the Hat" is like poetry. I did not know how to diagram the sentences when I loved it at age 4.
I've never heard Robert Pinsky described as a grammarian. Or were you referring to me?
It's going to be hard to express this next idea without sounding picky, but my desire to communicate the idea is greater than my fear of sounding picky, so here goes:
a). I agree with you that many "grammarians" (whoever they are) will go to great lengths to . . . "further their cause"? (maybe: "defend the value of their approach"?), but . . .
b) I don't think Pinsky says you NEED to know how to diagram sentences in order to appreciate poetry and I didn't intend to intimate that this was true either. The suggestion--and I don't have an answer to it--is that extensive knowledge of grammar (including things like sentence diagramming, which is simply a way to parse sentences and understand the relationship between its different parts) can HELP someone appreciate some poetry, like, for example, the complex syntax of 17th century poets.
c) There is a difference between appreciating The Cat in the Hat and the 17th century of poetry of George Herbert, no?
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