Talk:Brecht's poetry

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[edit] Editing suggestions

I would suggest that this entry could benefit greatly by being expanded in length and elaborated, if not completely rewritten. There seem to be several factual errors and the overall view it gives of Brecht's poetry is somewhat misleading.

Suggestions/Questions -

- strike the reference to Socialist Realism. Brecht's poetry is not socialist realism - it is not considered such in the scholarship, he did not consider it such. There could be a section dealing with his relation to the cultural politics of the GDR, but as it stands it's simply misguided.

- how, and in which poems, did Brecht criticize the poor? This needs to be explained or gotten rid of.

- the section on epic poetry also seems off. If there is a connection between Brecht's theory and practice of epic theater and his poetry, it needs to be explained in much greater depth. "Epic poetry" seems like the wrong label entirely - if it was used by Brecht or has been used in the scholarship to describe his poetry, this needs to be cited, since normally the term refers to Homer, Dante, Vergil, Milton, et al., and would not apply to Brecht's poems, which are normally shorter and otherwise formally distinct from epic poetry.

- there needs to be a section cataloging the major collections and cycles of Brecht's poems, since that's how he usually published.

- there should be a section detailing his poetic development from the early poetry, which had roots in prewar expressionism, through his turn to Marxism in the late twenties, his work in exile during the second world war, and his final period after the war, which is stylistically radically different from the earliest work.

- the bibliography needs definite expansion.

- the entry would benefit greatly from more stylistic clarity.

- some other sentences are confusing, mistaken, or totally disregard the consensus in existing Brecht scholarship. To give only a couple examples - what does it mean to say that 'The poetry encompasses the entire scope of German romanticism'? Or this - 'However, much of the poetry used in the plays seem rigid and unincorporated' - which ignores the entire theory behind the defamiliarization effect (Verfremdungseffekt)? Is this a personal opinion or based on some source? If so, which source?

Sindinero (talk) 19:04, 29 May 2008 (UTC)