Poems at the Poetry Free-for-all - An interesting Link

Andrea345

07-11-2001, 12:57 AM

Ida know. I've got great reservations about calling "poetry dead." Frankly, I'm skeptical about nationalist identifications of whose poetry "is better." I'd rather ask, how many new works are being created in English? I'd bet there were more than those written in Latin, and of higher quality too. So I find the whole point of the argument inflammatory without being very clear about the criteria besides my second question.

Which is that I've got a question about the value of celebrity status. I don't regret not having a Jackie Collins (is that her name?) of 'merican poetry. The celebrities in American pop culture really aren't icons I'd want to think of as associated with the current Poet Laureate (it would probably be a good thing if I knew his/her name. I'll go look it up now, thanks). I've learned more here on PFFA than in college courses, workshops, and other sundry classes I've taken. In my opinion, the "failure" had more to do with the lack of teaching a critical process than not being encouraged to write or read poetry. The taking apart of a poem to put it back together again was the piece missing for me.

And if metrical verse is in such dire straits (I'm not saying that it isn't, I'd just like to see evidence) how come I have been able to learn it here? Donner lives in the state of Washington. If I'd screamed loud enough I think she would have heard me.

I guess my point is I'm not really sure what poetry needs "revitalization." It feels like I've heard this mantra for aeons. If it did need revitalization, then I'm not so sure that it wasn't the critical process, not the writing, which needed revitalization. And if everything needed revitalization, then, well, thank the god Bela for PFFA, I guess. Because it appeared in the nick of time before what? Poetry written in English became as rare as poetry written in Coptic?

I'm confused about the necessity of this argument. Anyone jump in here to explain to me how "dire" the straits of poetry are / were / will be. The "starving poet" is a cliche. Poets have always starved, except Colley Cibber.

-a

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 07-11-2001).]

Adam

07-11-2001, 06:10 AM

Hi,

I think a similar, but better presented and developed position can be found in Dana Gioia's actual essay, "Can Poetry Matter".

The basic idea is: Supposedly nobody reads poetry anymore. People used to read it, but starting with modernists (Eliot and Pound), poetry became necessarily "difficult" and couched in impenetrable literary theory. Modernism is indisputably dead, but while it was thriving and dying poetry moved from the cultural bohemia into the university where its stylistic and philosophical development has been commandeered solely by the literary theorists and academic poets who comprise the vast majority of it's audience. "American poetry" has been kidnapped and professionalized by a small group of professor poets and impenetrable literary critics who write only for themselves.

Gioia goes on to say that the reason that poetry has been preserved as such difficult, popularly uninteresting, free verse is that the popular audience for poetry in America has been isolated, fractionated and the various existing groups share no common ground to come together on. This is due, perhaps ironically, to the emergence of so many alternative forums and means of publication. He says something to the effect of "For the first time in history it is easier to publish your own work than to get it published by someone else." People who want to get read no longer need to conform to the stylistic dictates of the traditional New York or California presses. They publish themselves. Everywhere, except in widely read journals.

If we accept that the academic poetry of today is out of touch with much of what the general public can learn to relate to, let alone enjoy, the poetic mainstream has really been dissolved, or at least withered to the size of a classroom. This disintegration of the mainstream has lead to the disregard or disappearance of once-popular forums for artistic discourse, further facilitating the general disintegration. Gioia, I think, sees current American poetry as an array of specialized groups who are often relatively inaccessible (and unappealing) to each other. This condition is exacerbated by the lack of critics who write in a public idiom. The public doesn't know what's going on in American poetry, and there are no good critics and reviewers who can explain it in terms that they can (want to) relate to. Incidentally, Gioia does seem to write in this public idiom, which I think is one simple reason people read him.

One of the most interesting consequences of the fractionation of mainstream American poetry is that there is really no longer any strong American avant-garde. In fact, the concept of avant garde may have become obsolete considering the lack of an identifiable mainstream; "Avant-garde de quoi?" asks Gioia. The university is better at preserving and teaching the old stuff than creating the new, and the classic cultural bohemias like the Village have been bought up and dried up. What's left?

For one thing, tens of thousands of unemployed MFA's resulting from and subsequently locked out of the profoundly fecund, but professionally exclusive universities they attended--that is, these temp workers, bored administrative assistants, business execs, small time journalists, Gap clerks and local blue collar rabble who studied poetry at a graduate level for three or four years and "will be damned if they are going to lead uninteresting lives". He sees the growth of non-academic literary institutions (e.g. San Fran Poetry Center, The Loft, Nuyorican Cafe), the millions of thriving community/bookstore literary forums and discussion and writing groups, and quality nonprofit presses (eg Graywolf in Min./St. Paul) as the most promising source of a shift that could eventually wrestle poetry's destiny from the cold grip of the university. He doesn't specifically mention everypoet.com, but hey, I think there are some pretty sharp teeth around here, as well as a few other places on the web.

This is all more or less a summary of an article Gioia wrote called "Notes Toward a New Bohemia". Check it out, it's well written and interesting. His essays and reviews on individual poets are also great reads, not to mention his own poetry.

This discussion, I think, has been going on since at least 1982 (?) when the "Can Poetry Matter" essay came out (perhaps even since the 1950's?). Gioia is grouped among the so-called New Formalists, and as this group has been particularly loud in voicing their anti-academic positions (see the link that started this thread), the debate over the kidnapping of poetry has often been associated with the New Formalist agenda. I don't see why it should be. I don't know how successfully these poets have been at ripping the attention of the potential American poetaster away from the latest Thomas Wolfe novel, let alone the Simpsons or the latest trashy, "independent" box office extravaganza, but I seriously doubt that the appeal of any new sort of poetry to the general public will hinge on whether it is free verse or accented, that is "chopped up prose" or Mother Goose formal. I think this is more a matter of the idiom that the verse is written in. People are influenced far more by a mixed up popular culture today than anything anyone could properly call "high art", and that will affect what good popular poetry looks like. Writing for a literary theorist will look different than poetry produced for a reader who is not a professional critic or poet, but an intelligent reader all the same.

I don't know to what extent I subscribe to all this, and I don't know what such a poetry might contain. But it would be nice if it contained the terms "alluvial fan", and "terminal moraine". And new people like Li Hongzhi, as well as the image of a car engine hanging and dripping oil from the bedroom ceiling. A flavor of popular artistic revolution never tastes too bad either. Heh.

Adam

[This message has been edited by Adam (edited 07-11-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Adam (edited 07-11-2001).]

Julie

07-11-2001, 09:52 PM

Originally posted by Adam:
but I seriously doubt that the appeal of any new sort of poetry to the general public will hinge on whether it is free verse or accented, that is "chopped up prose" or Mother Goose formal. I think this is more a matter of the idiom that the verse is written in.

I'm going to home in on this one idea because it's the one that interests me most. I've been involved in numerous discussions about this very topic lately (some spurred by this article).

While I'm not a formalist supremacist (don't try to say that too quickly), and while I think the vast VAST majority of what the formalists are writing is lousy, though perhaps lousy in a different way than the vast swarms of free versers, I do think that dude on the street thinks poetry should rhyme, and that very dude can't figure out what makes free verse specifically "poetry."

My husband is well read, but not a reader of poetry. For him, as for others, if it doesn't rhyme it simply isn't a poem. We can sit here and say that they're wrong, but I think that sentiment lingers and will linger since rhyme is something discernible to the naked eye (to use an inappropriate cliche), and is completely understandable. "You know when something rhymes, and if something rhymes it's a poem."

What do you think?

Julie

Rachel Lindley

07-11-2001, 10:30 PM

Julie, I am in agreement with you that the average "dude" on the street feels that poetry should rhyme, and that if it doesn't, it isn't poetry. One comes to a dilemma when writing poetry: does one appeal to the lowest common dominator and stick with rhyme for that purpose, or does one lose some of the available audience and wade into free verse?

My own personal opinion is that, as is quite typical with human-type folks such as us, there's a tendency to go to either one extreme or the other. On one side, there's structured, formal, rhyming poetry, which can communicate more clearly to the average dude but can also veer into simplistic territory. On the other, there's obscure and difficult free verse meant to appeal to the überliterati of the world.

There is a good portion of free verse being written these days which holds absolutely no appeal to me. It's obtuse, obscure, and lacking huge chunks of any underlying foundation to give it clarity. Much of this poetry appears to be embraced by critics and fellow poets. I feel that such an approach defies one of the primary purposes of poetry, which is to communicate. That's what language is: a form of communication.

Of course the average dude doesn't appreciate a great deal of free verse; there are so many possible interpretations to much of the stuff floating around these days that essentially the poetry is rendered uninterpretable. It can mean whatever someone chooses it to mean, and so means nothing at all. I don't feel that the average but somewhat well-read dude has a problem doing some work to interpret a poem. However, the reader shouldn't be required to do all the work.

This does not mean a poet is forced to create simplistic, trite poems. It also doesn't mean that the only way to communicate to the average dude via poetry is through the use of formal verse.

Essentially, I personally feel that a number of poets today are not asking themselves the following questions while writing poetry:

What do I want to communicate?
To whom do I want to communicate it?
How can I do so with skill -- and clarity?

Too many times a poet tries to be clever, and thus loses an audience. Too many times a poet tries to gain a large audience, and thus writes simplistic crap. There is a happy medium, one which I personally feel will not isolate the average dude yet will also encorporate free verse form. It's a fine line to walk when writing in free verse, but there is stuff out there which is written with skill, does not rhyme, and can communicate to the average dude in a way that the average dude can appreciate and accept as "poetry".

How does one do it? Hell if I know.

**I'd like to add one more point. This type of free verse poetry may not be as readily accepted by literary critics as being of the highest quality, simply due to said clarity; however, one cannot deny the skill which has been used to write it nor the clarity with which it communicates to others, regardless of whatever free verse style is most readily acknowledged today.

There's the rub. Since poetry is a form of communication, those who write poetry want to communicate something to others. If free verse poetry which would have a greater appeal to the average dude is not as readily accepted by publishers and critics as the more common but less accessible free verse of today, it is less likely to be published. Therefore, it is read less, and therefore the poet communicates less to others, including the average dude.

As I see it, the biggest problem perpetuating the cycle of reader isolation and literary obscurity is not as much the abilities and skills of the free form poet, or lack of; it is, rather, the standards held by many publishers and critics today. Often, poetry is written which stands more chance of being published; one learns to use the methods more widely accepted by poetry publishers and critics of today. Said poetry may isolate the average reader; subsequently, readership of poetry may drop. This can lead to fewer publishers of poetry, further increasing the difficulty of publication and the ability to communicate to others, thereby further spurring writers to create work which will be accepted by publishers and critics.

How does one stop that ever-shrinking pattern?

Hell if I know.

Rachel

[This message has been edited by TheBroad (edited 07-12-2001).]

Julie

07-11-2001, 11:06 PM

Originally posted by TheBroad:
To whom do I want to communicate it?

It's late, Rachel, so I won't talk about the rest of your good points.

But this one, I had to comment on. The older I get, the more I am talking to that dude. That dude is my husband, my mother, my siblings, my neighbors, my congressmen or women. I want to write poetry that people who don't write poetry will recognize as poetry.

Julie

Andrea345

07-12-2001, 12:06 AM

I'm still working on the Steele book. The chapters about iambic pentameter are endless but informative. I'm on the chapter about rhyme.

For him, as for others, if it doesn't rhyme it simply isn't a poem.

Now this is an argument I can begin to understand. Funny, though, in the Steele book it seems this argument dates back to some guy (and probably before) called Samuel Johnson (I know. I know. I'm on my way to look him up.) He wrote a "rebuttal" of Milton's argument's about / against the use of rhyme in poetry. The way Steele phrases the anecdote is in reference to John Milton's Paradise Lost:

"Blank verse," said an ingenious critic, "seems to be verse only to the eye." [In his biography of Johnson, James Boswell identifies the ingenious critic as the art connoisseur William Locke, who apparently made the remark in conversation with Johnson.] pp. 182, 183

So it seems to me that this argument predates the New Formalists. The engineer in me finds the question of "the definition of poetry" as effective a question as "How many angels dance on the head of a pin?"

I like Rachel's questions better and it goes back to my thought that maybe it's the critical process which might be broken, if anything is, and not poetry.

As an aside, and because I don't know any better, I'm wondering what kinds of actual forms are not being written any longer. Maybe there are forms "going extinct." Are there people writing epic length poetry? It seems to me that I remember a lot of hoopla 10-20 years ago because someone published a book length poem. I can't remember the specifics. At this point, I can't name a poem written within the past thirty years which is longer than "Howl," (1956) much less "The Duncaid" (no, I haven't finished that yet, either... still working...)

Is there a longer piece, free verse or metrical I should spend time looking at, enjoy reading? Are there other forms (please, no examples found only in ancient Greek or Latin) which are no longer written? Does anyone write metrical narratives these days which tell stories (a la Robert W. Service or Tennyson)? Are these forms which are no longer written? If not, why not? And if the forms aren't being written in English any longer but metrical verse is, is there a problem with this? Or does it reflect a change in taste & the possibility of reopening what was, a 100 years ago, cliched and hackneyed ideas?

-a

I recommend the Steele chapter on Rhyme for a basic history of how it came into European & then English poetry.

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 07-12-2001).]

David Mascellani

07-12-2001, 12:49 AM

Here are a links to Dana Gioia's essays, "CanPoetryMatter" and "Notes Toward a New Bohemia" http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/gioia/gioia.htm http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ebohemia.htm

And this site is worth looking at as well. http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/texts/articles.html

Adam

07-12-2001, 09:41 AM

Thanks for the links, David.

Posted by Julie:

“"You know when something rhymes, and if something rhymes it's a poem."”

I got you. Most light verse--aimed unabashedly at “human type folks like us”--seems to be formal. However, Billy, our shiny new Poet Laureate of the USA, seems to have attracted a rather impressive audience of regular dudes writing free verse such as the following:

Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

–Billy Collins

You run into this poem all over the place. The title is a wheezing cliche, the poem is about the neighbor’s fucking dog that we all hate, juxtaposed to Beethoven who we first learned to respect in second grade by cracking the rhythm sticks and banging the cow bell along to the 9th, and who was subsequently memorized and mythologized through his honorable inclusion on the Classics of the Ages 10 LP special television offer. The two things thrown together--“the famous barking dog solo”--is vivid and entertaining and shows us exactly why both Beethoven and the dog are really great. The poem has a “big” point, but a point with which almost any reader can connect. It’s free verse and made up of elements most readers can apparently relate to and arrange in a way that makes the poem meaningful. It’s written in a public idiom.

Granted, boring free verse might not be recognized as a true poem by Julie’s husband, or anyone for that matter. Boring formal verse might be, but it would still be boring. Regardless of whether or not a poem is recognized immediately as rightfully earning it’s status as a poem, it should first and foremost say something to the reader—pique their interest or entertain. The reader can subsequently make the less important decision as to whether or not they want to say it’s a poem. When form aids in the poem’s communicative ability, which it often does, then it works, but I don’t think it’s really the most essential thing missing from today’s poetry. It is not what’s keeping a lot of smart people from enjoying poetry written by today’s great poets. It’s just that many of the poems fail to say anything anyone cares about in a way they can understand. They are written for literary experts who look for a different kind of genius than the rest of the reading world. Which side posterity will sympathize with remains to be seen I guess. I don’t care very much, but I would love to one day figure out how to write a poem that would get my mother interested in this question.

Rachel’s final point about the critics and publishers being responsible for reader isolation and literary obscurity is a good one. Popular poetry reviews introducing, criticizing and teaching good poetry, even obscure poetry, in a way that the public could understand could really open up an audience for new poets, and maybe even the old poets nobody cares about. The goal is a good reviewer who can show people how to read all the crazy new stuff, as well as a poets who feel good about writing for such an interested mass audience. There apparently used to be an abundance of both, and I guess the very question of whether or not this change is a bad thing is also up to debate.

Posted by Rachel:
“What do I want to communicate?
To whom do I want to communicate it?
How can I do so with skill -- and clarity?”

That’s always been the schtick around here, and I’m down with it. The advice becomes particularly poignant for poetry posted in a high traffic online workshop like pffa, where a lot of young and/or inexperienced poetry writers and readers are incessantly beating each other over the head as they gradually learn to communicate and be communicated to. However, I think that most successful poets (poets with books or fabulous awards or an attentive readership beyond five fast friends in thier MFA class) do in fact know more or less who they are writing for and how to impress those people with the right level of clarity, the correct sort of technique and the right kind of message or lack thereof. Perhaps there is simply no organized forum outside of academia, that is, no forum which speaks in publicly accessible terms, that allows the various groups of American poets to bash each other and over the head in front of an interested public. Like a nationwide poetry free for all.

Why is poetry so boring to so many people?

Adam

Rachel Lindley

07-12-2001, 10:28 AM

Originally posted by Adam:
Granted, boring free verse might not be recognized as a true poem by Julie’s husband, or anyone for that matter. Boring formal verse might be, but it would still be boring. Regardless of whether or not a poem is recognized immediately as rightfully earning it’s status as a poem, it should first and foremost say something to the reader—pique their interest or entertain. The reader can subsequently make the less important decision as to whether or not they want to say it’s a poem. When form aids in the poem’s communicative ability, which it often does, then it works, but I don’t think it’s really the most essential thing missing from today’s poetry. It is not what’s keeping a lot of smart people from enjoying poetry written by today’s great poets. It’s just that many of the poems fail to say anything anyone cares about in a way they can understand. They are written for literary experts who look for a different kind of genius than the rest of the reading world.

Thank you, Adam, that's exactly what I was trying to get at when I spoke of a lack of clarity in communication. Poems which "fail to say anything anyone cares about in a way they can understand" may actually attempt to communicate something that people would care about, if only they could understand it; conversely, other poems may be quite easy to understand but deadly boring, and thus don't communicate anything with clarity either. We all know what the attention span is of someone who is deadly bored.

I hope I didn't imply that it was important for the "average dude" to call the work a "poem" -- frankly, in my mind that's irrelevant.

Rachel

Julie

07-12-2001, 10:49 AM

Originally posted by TheBroad:
I hope I didn't imply that it was important for the "average dude" to call the work a "poem" -- frankly, in my mind that's irrelevant.

I don't think it can be irrelevant. To that person, a well read non-poetry reader, poetry is LAUGHABLE. It is silly and stupid and insane. It is pretentious. It is boring and pointless and obscure.

That person sees that people are writing poetry that only people in the "in-group" would ever call poetry. He sees that poetry being praised.

Let's put it another way, how many of us would sit down and spend ten hours watching a sport we don't understand? Yes, I know some wouldn't watch any sport, but I think this is similar. If you can't understand what's going on, you are bored. If you think you understand a little of what's going on, but the players don't seem to be playing by the rules you "know," then you are impatient and bored. The more complex the game (like cricket or baseball, say), the more easily that ignorant observer is bored.

And it must matter. There are only so many people writing poetry at any high level, so those people cannot be the final judges. If poetry cannot appeal to the well-read non-poetry reader, what future is there for the art?

Julie

Rachel Lindley

07-12-2001, 10:59 AM

Sorry, Julie, I don't think I made myself clear once again. What I meant was that if the "average dude" reads it, enjoys it, and feels it communicates something to him which is engaging and vibrant, whether he chooses to call it by the name of "poem" or not really doesn't matter to me. However, it is important to me that the work be indeed understandable, engaging, and vibrant -- that it communicate to the average moderately well-read dude. Of course, if one wishes that dude to quit looking at what he considers "poetry" as stupid and insane, then it does become important that the dude classify this work he enjoys and understands as "poetry" in the hopes that the mental wall will crumble.

In other words, I think I'm in complete agreement with you.

Of course, maybe I'm misunderstanding again. Heh.

Rachel

**Wait a minute; I think I understand what you're saying, and I agree with what I think you're saying. Heh. It only took me 24 hours too. I've been speaking purely of semantics when stating my lack of interest in what the average reader decides to call what s/he's reading. However, you have a good point, I think. If the average reader doesn't consider the work being read, being understood, and being appreciated as "poetry", then that reader will feel little need or desire to have a say in how "poetry" is written. "Poetry" still remains that stupid, insane stuff created by university English majors with their head up their own arse, or so the reader may continue to feel. Since the reader doesn't qualify what is being read as poetry, s/he also doesn't lump it in with the work which is rigorously ignored and ridiculed by the average reader, and thus the very word "poetry" continues to make the average reader wince.

Oh my. I'm obviously sleep deprived. Heh.

[This message has been edited by TheBroad (edited 07-12-2001).]

Mandolin

07-12-2001, 12:02 PM

I'm with Julie on this one -- but she already knows that.

Rachel, the dudes or dudettes won't find it stimulating or interesting if they never read it, and they won't, because they've been taught by a hundred years of free verse dominance that what they want from a poem just ain't there anymore. I would hate to lose the possibilities of free verse (though I seem, lately, to be unable to read even what I've loved in the past), but, as the major form or poetry it has been an utter failure and driven off large parts of the reading public.

It's too easy to write mediocre free verse and too damned hard to write really good free verse. The magazines and the books and the curriculum are crowded with hundreds of bad-to-mediocre poets whose lack of skill would be immediately apparent were they to try to make a sonnet, and, at the top end, there's almost nothing to match even Hiawatha.

Metrical, rhyming verse offers a teachable set of skills, both for writing and for reading, that one can't easily learn from free verse -- though those same skills are necessary to read and write good free verse.

PS to Andrea -- as an engineer, you might appreciate that the dancing angels argument was not over some specific number of angels but whether the number was infinite or finite. If finite, then angels shared some physical nature with us; if infinite, they were wholly spiritual and had a different relationship to the deity.

And there are a number of long metrical poems available: Glyn Maxwell's Time's Fool, a kind of Flying Dutchman tale set on a train, written in terza rima,; Fred Turner's two blank verse sci-fi epics, The New World and Genesis; Vikram Seth's Golden Gate, a comedy of manners set in Silicon Valley, written in Pushkin's Onegin stanza; Andrew Hudgins's After the Lost War, a life of Sidney Lanier, written in mixed forms. No doubt there are others.

Rachel Lindley

07-12-2001, 04:13 PM

Originally posted by Mandolin:
Rachel, the dudes or dudettes won't find it stimulating or interesting if they never read it, and they won't, because they've been taught by a hundred years of free verse dominance that what they want from a poem just ain't there anymore.

Mandolin, I'm a dudette. I am passably well-read; I have no formal post-secondary education. I do not work in the field of literature or education; I have a dudette job. I had absolutely no interest in the pretentious, stupid, insane stuff people wrote and called poetry up until a year ago, when on a whim I started reading some of it. I became interested in some of it. I kept reading. Therefore, the use of the word "never" is a generalization, and not necessarily an accurate one.

Perhaps I'm an aberration. Somehow, I don't think so. Some supporters of metrical poetry tend to underestimate a reader's intelligence, thereby claiming there is no hope in free verse. Some supporters of free verse tend to overestimate it, thereby writing the poetic equivalent to a thesis on quantum mechanics.

I would hate to lose the possibilities of free verse (though I seem, lately, to be unable to read even what I've loved in the past), but, as the major form or poetry it has been an utter failure and driven off large parts of the reading public.

I also personally consider the statement that the entire free verse movement as a major form of poetry has been "an utter failure" to be a generalization. When I began reading poetry not that long ago, I found some free verse poetry to be more interesting and more relevant to me, the dudette, than any formal poetry, be it traditional formalism or new formalism. That sort of free verse was hard to come by, I might add, but I see the possibility within it in reaching the average reader. I agree, the free verse movement as it has progressed so far has driven away large parts of the reading public. It does not have to stay that way; in fact, I feel it has the potential to do just the opposite.

It's too easy to write mediocre free verse and too damned hard to write really good free verse. The magazines and the books and the curriculum are crowded with hundreds of bad-to-mediocre poets whose lack of skill would be immediately apparent were they to try to make a sonnet, and, at the top end, there's almost nothing to match even Hiawatha.

It's damned easy to write mediocre poetry of any kind, formal or free verse. It's damned hard to write excellent poetry of any kind, free or formal. It always has been. That hasn't changed. I won't argue with you on the hundreds of bad-to-mediocre poets; however, I have personally found said poets to be well spread, like manure, across the entire field of poetic styles.

Metrical, rhyming verse offers a teachable set of skills, both for writing and for reading, that one can't easily learn from free verse -- though those same skills are necessary to read and write good free verse.

I agree. That doesn't mean that a writer can't learn a teachable set of skills from free verse. It's more difficult, less obvious, but it's possible. Anyone wishing to be a poet should learn the skills involved in writing metrical poetry, without a doubt. I also feel that anyone wishing to write metrical poetry should learn the skills involved in writing free verse. Perhaps if both sets of skills were learned, metrical poetry would read and sound more natural, vibrant and interesting to the present-day dude, and free verse wouldn't drown in its own self-consuming convolutions.

Rachel

Mandolin

07-12-2001, 04:50 PM

Rachel, one clarification and then more after dinner.

I didn't say free verse as a major form was a failure -- I said free verse as the major form was a failure. There's a world of difference. I'd said I'd be sorry to lose free verse -- but I think that as the dominant form of American poetry last century it was a disaster.

Rachel Lindley

07-12-2001, 07:00 PM

I apologize, Mandolin. Your sentence stated "the major form or poetry" and I think the mispelling of "or" instead of "of" threw me and skewed my interpretation.

I'm not going to say that free verse as the dominant form of American poetry over the last century was a disaster; I will say I personally didn't and still don't like, relate to, or understand quite a bit of it. Perhaps if metrical poetry remained the dominant poetic form in North America, the readership of poetry would be more widespread. Perhaps not. I do agree that the pursuit of a particular modality of free verse by poets over the past century has damaged poetry's accessibility. I don't think it has to stay that way, and I don't think it's absolutely crucial that metrical poetry surge to the forefront and take its place as the dominant poetic form in North America for accessibility to improve. It may indeed do so should that happen, but I don't think it's necessary.

I'm a creature inclined towards moderation; I see no reason for one or the other poetic form to remain dominant as a whole. I would prefer to see the pursuit of both forms by all poets, with the strengths of both modalities bolstering the other.

Rachel

Dunc

07-12-2001, 11:09 PM

I

Modern poetry - MP - the Platonic ideal behind High and Merciless - is never going to appeal to everyone. Why should it? Its ambitions almost deliberately exclude the majority.

First, some people can't grasp subtlety, or irony, or metaphor. Others can, but don't make the effort, whether because of cultural background, prejudice (‘poetry is for poofs'), laziness or disability. They're entitled to their view, and it doesn't include MP.

Second, MP shies away from tale-telling, humour, jokes, or pointless love. But these things go down a treat with all of us at times.

Third, MP doesn't reward success with ballad metre and simple rhythmic forms.

(Don't tell me about the exceptions unless they've outsold any Mills & Boone title in the last five years.)

So the age of the best-selling poet, the writer living well off his sales, the one read by the Public for reasons other than passing exams, has gone. Thomas Moore, FitzGerald, Tennyson, Canada's Service, Oz's Paterson - Lowell couldn't outsell them and Ashbery will never outsell Pam Ayres.

I don't feel inclined to apologise for this. If this is a bed of our own making, I'm comfortable in it. I'm also comfortable writing outside it, and judging from pffa's less formal forums, so are most of you.

II

Meanwhile, the Rest of the World, and we when we join them, are enjoying all the poetry they can handle, in the form of lyrics. We tend to strip the lyric out of the song, write it down, and see its faults. ‘Find a wheel, and it goes round, round, round As it spins along with a happy sound'; ‘Ena garda da Veda, baby, don't you know that I love you'; ‘Stand by your man, and tell the world you love him.' Lyricists like Noël Coward, whose work will past muster both on the page and in the song, are so rare that they prove the rule emphatically. How would you have critted the much-admired words to ‘Eleanor Rigby' if they'd been posted in High?

And every now and again, the ad men come up with a witty or memorable jingle. An embarrassingly generous stock of these is lodged in my brain all unasked.

Poetry is alive and well and kicking ass every day, out there in radioland. It just isn't MP.

III

You can find almost exact parallels for everything above in music. Who goes to classical concerts these days? Who in the street can name even one ‘modern composer' who writes for the concert hall rather than the stadium? Why are all the ‘modern composers' in universities?

IV

It's an attitude thing. We hold the ambitions of MP sacred, the way other people admire ‘modern' music. So when I post in Merciless, I've already censored myself to conform to my own perceptions of its demands. And when I crit there, I have a pretty clear idea of what I want, and it doesn't include the lyrics of Bippetty-boppity-boo.

Regards / Dunc

Andrea345

07-13-2001, 12:24 AM

Mandolin,
Thanks for the poems. I appreciate the information. If I can't find them, I'll bug you. I also have to say thanks for the historical context of the angels argument. It does make a difference. It's just hard to see it without that piece of information.

David,
Thanks for the additional links.
Adam, Julie, Rachel, Dunc,
I'm taking this all in - slowly. Thank you for your efforts. This is interesting.
-a

Mandolin

07-13-2001, 11:47 AM

Dunc, I've put [most] of your remarks in italics, and replied in plain text:

Modern poetry - MP - the Platonic ideal behind High and Merciless - is never going to appeal to everyone. Why should it? Its ambitions almost deliberately exclude the majority.

First, some people can't grasp subtlety, or irony, or metaphor. Others can, but don't make the effort, whether because of cultural background, prejudice (‘poetry is for poofs'), laziness or disability. They're entitled to their view, and it doesn't include MP.

Strawmen, Dunc. No one said poetry should be for everyone. But there was a time, not long distant, when the people who read, read poetry. When poetry was a regular feature of most general interest magazines. When poetry was regularly reviewed on the book pages of most newspapers.

Why are John LeCarre and Salman Rushdie and Sena Naslund and Vikram Seth and Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates regular bestsellers if readers can't grasp subtlety, irony, or metaphor? The readers haven't changed. Poetry has.

Second, MP shies away from tale-telling, humour, jokes, or pointless love. But these things go down a treat with all of us at times.

Third, MP doesn't reward success with ballad metre and simple rhythmic forms.

You enumerate the failings of Modern Poetry, Dunc, not its virtues. Are we too good to do what Donne, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Hardy, and Eliot did? Of course, they wrote more difficult things, as well. I'd suggest that if you can't do a ballad meter you're not likely to be able to write good free verse.

So the age of the best-selling poet, the writer living well off his sales, the one read by the Public for reasons other than passing exams, has gone.

It was never a living, not for poets. That age never existed. As for being read by ordinary readers -- again, it’s poetry, not readers, that has changed for the worse.

Thomas Moore, FitzGerald, Tennyson, Canada's Service, Oz's Paterson - Lowell couldn't outsell them and Ashbery will never outsell Pam Ayres.

Are you suggesting Lowell was a better poet than Tennyson? I truly cannot comprehend your grouping here.

I don't feel inclined to apologise for this. If this is a bed of our own making, I'm comfortable in it. I'm also comfortable writing outside it, and judging from pffa's less formal forums, so are most of you.

More's the pity.

Poetry is alive and well and kicking ass every day, out there in radioland. It just isn't MP.

It ain't poetry at all. I do both, and they're very different.

You can find almost exact parallels for everything above in music. Who goes to classical concerts these days? Who in the street can name even one ‘modern composer' who writes for the concert hall rather than the stadium? Why are all the ‘modern composers' in universities?

Bingo. And for the same reasons -- concert musicians abandoned their listeners in much the same way poets abandoned their readers. Popular song was always different from and better-known than concert music, but Pavarotti is a star even today, and not because he panders.

It's an attitude thing. We hold the ambitions of MP sacred,

You know the joke about Tonto and the Lone Ranger surrounded by a dozen hostile Apache? The Lone Ranger asks "What do we do now, Tonto?" Tonto replies, "What do you mean 'we,' white man?"

the way other people admire ‘modern' music. So when I post in Merciless, I've already censored myself to conform to my own perceptions of its demands. And when I crit there, I have a pretty clear idea of what I want, and it doesn't include the lyrics of Bippetty-boppity-boo.

In other words, Modern Poetry, in your view, has become as limited and and as stultifying as the High Victorian mode the Modernists rejected. Congratulations. I think the same.

Best,
Michael

[This message has been edited by Mandolin (edited 07-13-2001).]

Dunc

07-13-2001, 02:21 PM

1. The older history of poetry is poetry for everyone. The Psalms, the Odyssey, Beowulf, Le Grand Testament, Henry V, were written for everyone. Moore, Service, Paterson, wrote for everyone. And everyone listened to / read them.

2. I mentioned Lowell and Ashbery because the article that gives rise to this thread mentions them. I wasn't intending a qualitative comparison. (If you want one, there are more poems by Tennyson than by Lowell that I greatly enjoy, but both are in there. I don't enjoy Ashbery's stuff at anything like the same level - he's pretty bloodless.) The sequence in the para you refer to is meant to be chronological, showing a change with time. Sorry if I didn't get that across.

3. I have no difficulty with the idea that High and Merciless are forums that entertain the ‘serious' ambitions of just about all who use them in pffa. (They're the ‘us' I referred to, Tonto.) You seem to suggest that I err in discriminating between my ‘serious' and my ‘other' intentions; but you discriminate between ‘poetry' and ‘lyric' [in the sense I mentioned], which you say isn't poetry at all. I could ask you for a definition of poetry for High that excludes ‘lyric', jingles &c, without mentioning intent (in contrast to the way I've mentioned ‘serious' intent), but let's leave it at agreeing to disagree.

4. I say again, it's an attitude thing. If a modern Alfie Noyce submitted a new Highwayman to Merciless tomorrow, I'd clap as loudly as last time. But there are (grace à Dieu) no Noyces around any more - we hear other drums these days, and that's how we march. Let someone rise up and show us the better way, and I'd be very surprised if we didn't follow. Whoever you have in mind, get him to post in Merciless - well, High, anyway - and see who salutes, and why. All is not lost. All is not fixed in stone. Herakleitos was right - everything flows.

Meanwhile, there's nothing to apologise for. Those of us who post in High and Merciless in general have a sense in common of what we're trying to do - until your Real Thing Comes Along, why shouldn't we do it?

[5. You're wrong on two counts, though neither of them matters very much in the larger picture. (a) ‘It never was a living, not for poets.' Moore, Service, Paterson, lived well off the sales of their books of poetry to my certain knowledge, and FitzGerald, who had a private income, earnt enough from sales to do the same easily. Tennyson also did very well indeed from sales. (b) Back in the 70s, Pavarotti was a star (on the relatively small operatic scale) because he was then the best operatic tenor in the world. Now he's a star (on the vastly larger pop scale) because he ‘panders' (your word, not mine) - because he (and the Three Tenors) sing amplified muck (to use the old technical term for music for the undiscriminating). His operatic voice has aged and been replaced by pop savvy and celebrity. He was always a showman.]

Regards / Dunc

[This message has been edited by Dunc McReil (edited 07-13-2001).]

Harry Rutherford

07-14-2001, 03:32 AM

I was amused by the implication in the article that British poets are not professors. What does Seamus Heaney do for a living again?

Anyway, on the more general question of why poetry is not as widely read or influential as it used to be, I have a theory. I'm not sure whether I believe it, but I'll pass it on anyway.

I think that many of the roles that have traditionally been filled by poetry have been usurped by other things.
For example, one of the great historical uses for poetry- narrative- was already being largely superseded by the novel even before the invention of film. Despite occasional exceptions, narrative poetry declined as the modern realist novel developed in the C19th. This is because the novel is a better, more sophisticated form for the purpose.
One could draw a comparison with figurative painting and photography. Obviously there are things paintings can do that photography can't. But with the invention of the camera, the primary, everyday function of painting (recording reality for the future) was taken away from it. Without the bread-and-butter work, painting becomes something different, something less functional, something more 'artistic'. Suddenly it needs to demonstrate an ability to do something very different to justify its existence.

Of course, narrative poetry and figurative painting are relatively easy targets because the replacements are very obvious. So what about the other functions of poetry?
I think that many of the things that people used to look for in shorter poems have been taken over by recorded music. Music is a much more immediate form than poetry, and the ability to bring high-quality performances into your own bedroom is after all quite recent.
It is easy to see how the kind of poetry that aims to evoke mood, emotion, and atmosphere could be replaced by music.

Add to that the competition from film (an enormously persuasive medium) and TV (almost as persuasive, and which delivers vast audiences because it's free at the point of use), and poetry is left with little to do.
Once upon a time, for private entertainment, poetry was the only show in town. Now it has serious competition.

Harry
did that make any sense?

Rachel Lindley

07-14-2001, 08:27 AM

Originally posted by Harry Rutherford:
did that make any sense?

Yep.

I think you're right, Harry. Those mediums have appropriated many of the roles which poetry once performed, and to me it's clear why. They're easy and they're immediate. A large portion of the human population, if presented with the choice of quick gratification with little effort, will take that over hard work and mental effort if it provides similar (although not equal) results. Why expend the energy thinking about a poem when a TV, movie, paperback, or CD will supply that person with the stimulation one is looking for at a fraction of the neurological cost?

In combination with the path which the free verse movement has taken over the past century, the advent of modern technology in the field of entertainment has pummeled poetry to its knees. It's still kicking, but it's having a hard time catching its breath.

Rachel

David Mascellani

07-14-2001, 10:31 AM

http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/FreeVers.html
http://www.thomaslovepeacock.net/defence.html
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/indexcriticism.html
http://www.sff.net/people/neile/makingpoetry.htp
http://www.arts.uwo.ca/canpoetry/cpjrn/vol25/jones.htm
http://www.poetrysociety.org/disch.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/gioia/poetaud.htm

Andrea345

07-14-2001, 10:44 AM

PTV instead of MTV?

I'm trying to think of an art form which isn't struggling with its own relevance in mainstream culture. While the novel might be one art form not struggling as hard as the rest, Judith Krantz & Jackie Collins always outsell John LeCarre or Philip Roth. And while there are moments where a form is "popularized," as Dale Chihuily did with glass other forms fall from "popularity" (ballet post Baryshnikov). Each art form, from ballet to zydeco has to spend a lot of energy reaching out to the public to gain the public's interest. But, like any other kind of fame, it seems to come a go pretty quickly.

Maybe I'm an aberration and that's why this discussion is so confusing for me. I grew up with poetry read to me, along with Louis L'Amour. I grew up with ballet and football, music and baseball, painting and tv. Anyone who comes to my house for a visit or a party sees original paintings, hears my latest favorite poem, is fed fresh vegetables bought from a farmer's market, and is subjected to a discussion of my favorite novel. I always knew I was "privleged" in the way I was raised. This privlege had nothing to do with money, we didn't have any, but more to do with exposure and support of music lessons, ballet lessons, painting, sculpture, writing, and theatre.

Most people see "the arts" as separate from their lives. More people know the newest jet ski model than Philip Roth's newest release. In a culture where the arts are seen as separate from living, the dancer dancing for him/herself is more vulnerable than the writer, painter, or sculptor, who at least has a medium which can exist on its own.

Since I've grown up in this culture where art is seen as separate from "most people's lives" I don't really worry too much about it. I just try to introduce those people around me to the variety of life outside of television, scream radio and jet skiis. "When I Am an Old Woman Who Wears Purple" sits in my desk cube. Poetry is inflicted on those who displease me at work. I haul out a translation of Akhmatova or use Dorothy Parker against them. "The Way Things Are" is "the way things are." Part of the job of working in "the arts" is to bring new people into the experience. Maybe a new renaissance will come where the arts are incorporated into daily living. Until then, part of the job of the artist is to do the work of introduction.

Thank you PFFA.

[This message has been edited by Andrea345 (edited 07-14-2001).]

Patrice

07-14-2001, 10:47 AM

The pendulum will always swing back.

Good poetry will be good poetry and bad poetry will be bad poetry no matter which style it follows or period it hails from.

That Old Coffeehouse in the Sky (and PLEASE don't start the religious discussion again) in the coming century will be filled with 20th century poets (and critics) who wonder where their poetry went.(Do I hear heavenly bongoes already?)

Of the thousands of poets publishing in the nineteenth century, how many of them do we read today?

------------------

Patrice

An ace, pestering a jet

Steph

07-14-2001, 12:37 PM

I haven’t been fortunate enough to have had much of a formal education, I’m just the rude son of a Cotswold farmer, so, in all probability my contribution to this debate is of little value, but from my Point of View, the one thing that marks poetry out as superior to all the other Arts is that any one example can live in one’s memory, intact and entirely as the poet conceived it. I’ve noticed the renewed interest in this aspect; Ted Hughes’s book on poems to memorise (sorry, can’t remember the title). I couldn’t care two pence about the esoteric ramblings of the Modern Poetry Elite, they’re welcome to the hole they live in. As a child I was made to commit many of the Psalms to memory and even managed the whole of Ephesians, I’ve carried this over into my appreciation of poetry and find that poetry which employs rhyme and meter aids this endeavour.

“His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.

Across two countries he can hear
And catch your words before you speak.
The woodlouce or maggot’s weak
Clamour rings in his sad ear,
And noise so slight it would surpass
Credence - drinking sound of grass,
Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth;
The groan of ants who undertake
Gigantic loads for honour’s sake
(Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin);
Whir of spiders when they spin,
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs
Of idle grubs and flies.

This man is quickened so with grief,
He wanders god-like or like thief
Inside and out, below, above,
Without relief seeking lost love.”

This piece haunts me, nothing can replace the feeling of wonder this brings, when at any moment I am able to rehearse it in my mind. I do realise free verse can also be memorised, but in some mysterious and primal way, metered verse can tap deep into one’s psyche. (If that doesn't sound to pretentious).

Steph.

Adam

07-14-2001, 04:37 PM

Originally posted by Julie:
I don't think it can be irrelevant. To that person, a well read non-poetry reader, poetry is LAUGHABLE. It is silly and stupid and insane. It is pretentious. It is boring and pointless and obscure.

That person sees that people are writing poetry that only people in the "in-group" would ever call poetry. He sees that poetry being praised.

Let's put it another way, how many of us would sit down and spend ten hours watching a sport we don't understand? Yes, I know some wouldn't watch any sport, but I think this is similar. If you can't understand what's going on, you are bored. If you think you understand a little of what's going on, but the players don't seem to be playing by the rules you "know," then you are impatient and bored. The more complex the game (like cricket or baseball, say), the more easily that ignorant observer is bored.

And it must matter. There are only so many people writing poetry at any high level, so those people cannot be the final judges. If poetry cannot appeal to the well-read non-poetry reader, what future is there for the art?

Julie

RE: whether it is important if the regular dude recognizes a piece of writing as a poem or not.

I agree completely that form/rhyme indicate to the regular dude that something is a poem. But I don’t think that the debate about what should or shouldn’t be called poetry has an end. The debate is always secondary to the poetry, I think.

Personally I’m happy as long as people are making interesting stuff which they call poetry. No one really expects the meaning of the word poetry--the art of poetry itself--to suddenly for the first time in history solidify itself as rhyming or not, on the page or vomited through a microphone in a bar, set to music or scattered like confetti across the internet. The relationships amongst the various things people want to call poetry are usually apparent and meaningful enough for me to feel comfortable using the term in its most elastic sense.

But, the guy on the street doesn’t care about all that. He doesn’t feel comfortable with all this non-rhyming stuff he doesn’t understand. The guy on the street is simply not going to call an elephant a duck. He won’t, that is, unless perhaps the elephant was covered in little yellow feathers and gets the guy drunk and engages him in a passionate, interesting, entertaining tale about how he was born a duck in an elephant’s body, and after thirteen lonely years of secretly quacking and wiggling his elephant ass in the pond at night, he finally met Dr. Zbigniew Janowicz who was able to provide him with both the psychological and surgical support he needed to come to terms with his complex identity. I can imagine the dude might be moved to laugh, shed a tear or two, might be ready to sympathize, expanding his ideas about ducks and elephants, might even be sufficiently interested to walk the elephant-duck home from the bar.

I don't see why free verse can't be capable of making a connection with non-poetry readers. The question about whether or not formal poetry is what regular people typically think of as a poetry seems secondary to whether or not the poem says anything to the reader. If it efficiently communicates interesting and exciting things, or if it is explained in an interesting and exciting way, dudes could learn to recognize free verse as poetry.

Rachel Lindley

07-14-2001, 05:16 PM

No fair, Julie. Adam's always better at saying what I tried to say than I am at saying it.

I'm telling Mom.

Posted by Adam:
However, I think that most successful poets (poets with books or fabulous awards or an attentive readership beyond five fast friends in thier MFA class) do in fact know more or less who they are writing for and how to impress those people with the right level of clarity, the correct sort of technique and the right kind of message or lack thereof.

I guess, then, that I'm not the person for whom most of these successful poets are writing. Either that, or I'm just dumb. I suspect the latter.

Rachel

[This message has been edited by TheBroad (edited 07-14-2001).]

Mandolin

07-15-2001, 10:05 AM

Lots of good things said by all -- I want to thank Adam especially for the info about Gioia's remarks on the fragmentation of the poetry market, David for the links, Steph for the recognition of the importance of form to memory and of memory as one of the pleasures of poetry, and Rachel for her steadfast refusal to close doors -- but the fact remains that books are still a major industry, and poetry was once a significant part of that industry, and it isn't anymore. There are still lots of readers, but they don't read poetry. That change has occurred in a century which has seen free verse as the dominant form.

I want also to respond to one particular point (actually, a couple, but they've only got one number) Dunc made:
3. I have no difficulty with the idea that High and Merciless are forums that entertain the ‘serious' ambitions of just about all who use them in pffa. (They're the ‘us' I referred to, Tonto.) You seem to suggest that I err in discriminating between my ‘serious' and my ‘other' intentions; but you discriminate between ‘poetry' and ‘lyric' [in the sense I mentioned], which you say isn't poetry at all. I could ask you for a definition of poetry for High that excludes ‘lyric', jingles &c, without mentioning intent (in contrast to the way I've mentioned ‘serious' intent), but let's leave it at agreeing to disagree.

The first is the implication, at least, that poets with "serious" artistic ambitions don't write in metrical verse, and that the difficulty of a piece is a clue to its worth and seriousness. I hope I am just misreading, but let me refer everyone to Steve Kowit's excellent essay, <a href="http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/press/kowit.html">"The Mystique of the Difficult Poem"</a>.

The second is that I can indeed speak about why writing song lyrics is different from writing poetry without talking about intent, since some of the differences are quite technical, especially in opera and art-songs. It is more difficult to sing high notes on some vowels than others, so sometimes one has to change the words just to get the right vowel sound in a particular place in the melody. Rhythmic concerns are different. Busy, shifting rhythms (or even something as simple as an initial trochee in an iambic line) can be very difficult to set, and, on the other hand, the rhythms of music can strengthen quite flat lines. Songs can tolerate and even require levels of repetition that would sink a poem. I could go on for a while, but consider that even the lovely works of Campion and Dowland, often presented as poems, lose much of their charm when read rather than sung.

For an interesting piece on writing for music, see this <a href="http://www.n2hos.com/acm/rev42001.html">review</a> of Dana Gioia's libretto for Nosferatu.

[This message has been edited by Mandolin (edited 07-15-2001).]