The Threat to Poetry
This post also appears on the Publetariat website.
My recent post, the poem Only Poets Read Poetry generated a great discussion, not so much the poem as the title. I was hoping to further the discussion as we covered to a depth of degree what could be interpreted by the line ‘only poets read poetry’ but barely touched on what could be done to steer the interpretation towards the positive.
I had two meanings in mind when I wrote the line, it could mean that poetry readership is very limited, to the point where only people who write poetry themselves are interested in reading poetry. The positive interpretation I had was that anyone who reads a poem, puts their mind into the mind of a poet and therefore becomes a poet.
Through the discussion Graham Nunn made the statement that ‘the reading of poetry is as much an art as the writing of it.’ A valid point supporting the positive interpretations, but does this lead to a reduction in readership due to the difficulty in comprehension. Poetry is well regarded as the most obscure of the literary arts, is this obscurity necessary? What purpose does it serve? I don’t think poetry should be as obvious as a Stephenie Meyer novel (I have not, nor do I plan to read one of these, this comment is a reflection on her readership(!)), but do we need to get to a point where, like W.H. Auden who awarded John Ashbery’s Some Trees (1956) the Yale Young Poets Award then later confessed that he didn’t understand a word of it. Are poets scared to reveal too much, or scared of becoming popular?
Graham’s comment led Stu Hatton to add another interpretation to the line, as in ‘only the elect can read poetry’. There is an art in reading poetry, only certain people have the skills to be able to read poetry, is this obscurity deliberately used by poets to reduce readership and maintain an elitist stance?
An alternate definition of obscurity was raised by Danielle Cross who chose the take that ‘good poetry is hard to come by’. Accessibility to poetry was discussed by Ashley Capes in terms of technology which has granted access to anyone who has the tech savvy to start up a blog, anyone can create a poetry page and call themselves a poet. Is this a good thing? People can now choose to call themselves poets and no longer have to rely on the acceptance of an editor.
I wish more people would venture into the world of poetry – to read and write. I don’t think it has to be difficult… I’ve read some delightful pieces about the most mundane topics. And one of my all-time favourites is by Aram Saraum and it’s just one line, with his name, like this:
“My arms are warm.” – Aram Saraum
His name rhymes with the last word in the sentence, and with that one link, one connection, one thought, he says: Here I am… Let me hold you, let me protect you, let me comfort you, let me love you…
It’s powerful. I have yet to see its equal in simplicity and impact.
That is a great poem, I love the minimalist approach, I think you have to get the message across as quickly as possible, people’s attention spans are shorter than they used to be, it is a fast food, instant gratification world in which we now live.
I agree – and especially with the ’skimming’ reading trend that the web fosters!
Great post too, Mark – I’ve had a discussion like this about music & the underground with friends before, but it relates to poetry.
The idea that poetry attempts to remain inaccessible & elitist seems to hold some water. Because, surely, if poetry became everyone’s bag, became completely accessible & Meyer-level-popular, would poets lose something? Once something is out of the ‘underground’ as it were, it becomes less rare and loses the value that is often attached to rare, precious & little known things.
Now whether that’s fair or not (to give something additional value simply because not many people enjoy/know about it) I won’t discuss, but I do think that’s part of the reason poetry maintains an elitist feel. What would the word ‘poet’ mean if 40 out of 50 people were poets, writing & publishing, print or otherwise? Would poetry become a ‘job’ rather than an art?
(sorry, this is turning into a huge rambling post)
But I do like what you’ve suggested, Mark – that poetry can be transformative & turn the reader into more of a poet – and to do that, poetry needs to be read. Thus most blogs & valuable and worthwhile.
(end rambling)
Thanks Ash, that’s not rambling, check my response to Marc if you want to see rambling.
You hit the opinions I suspected, and you’re right. To be called a poet is a highly esteemed reference, if everybody that has ever written a dirty limerick was referred to as a poet it wouldn’t mean much anymore.
If poetry lost its enigma and became readily accessible it wouldn’t be poetry anymore, poetry should make you stop and think, whether it be about a crushed beer can or world peace. I think poetry can retain its status as a rather elite form and still be accessible but given its history the general population is not interested, mention poetry and they remember some 300 year old crap they had to learn in school.
I don’t think it is too much of a stretch of the imagination to envision the demise of print media, an easy yardstick to measure its downfall is to study the patrons of public transport, what do they do when they have time to kill? However, I feel poetry lends itself to today’s seekers of instant gratification, you could read a 1000 page Stephen King novel without any meaning or pick out a few poems from an anthology and within the timespace of a train ride you’ve had some serious images injected into your head.
(now that’s rambling!)
Well here’s a simple layman’s views.
It is often the case that no matter how esoteric and mind boggling a poem can be, there is always something so much simpler than the poem “admits” to somewhere in there.
It is very easy to ‘read too much’ into something and completely miss that little piece of sense that was staring you in the face waving a little bright ornage flag and screaming “hey you! I’m right here on the tip of your nose.”
It’s almost like trying to find the butter in the fridge.
In regards to Graham’s comment, probably the best thing to do when reading someone elses poetry is to put themselves into their shoes. Although the problem with that is you’ll always get your interpretation of their shoes rather than the intended interpretation.
But to me that’s part of the joy of doing it; seeing what thoughts your works inspire in others.
In regards to Stu’s comment and the question it poses – I can’t say I believe it is intentionally done to create elitism (although I can not speak for all poets, and I am not a poet so I can not pretend to fully understand the mindset of this interesting breed of human being) but it seems to me that poetry can be seperated into genres rather like music. Rock is for rock fans, hip hop is for hip hop fans etc. etc.
There are some poems that are so esoteric as to be ridiculously illegible, but that doesn’t mean it is trying to be “elitist”. It is ‘avant garde’, pushing the bar and searching for answers in a place no one ever thought there were any questions (something like Mike Patton does with Rock and Metal in the music world).
It is true that good poetry is hard to come by. I have many, many friends waving around their poetry under my nose wailing “read it! read it! read it!”. Of course I oblige and cringe at the cliched teen angst stuff (seriously, they are all exactly the same. No word of a lie).
The access to poetry nowadays is huge because of blogs and etc. it is a good thing in some ways because of feedback and it’s free and easy to access. However, you have to wade through a sewerage pipe before you can find something good.
I myself have to admit that I don’t take my blog all that seriously. It’s just practice for me. Everything on there is 100% unedited and is written straight from the head to the blog. The only reason I do it in a blog is to get feedback on this practice and improve myself so that maybe one day I can actually be half decent. So I believe blogging is a very useful tool, but not a sufficient medium like a literary journal or chapbook or whatever.
Anyways, there’s my two bob worth.
P.S. My cousin loves Stephanie Meyers and is offended by you “brushing her off like that”
P.P.S. I think Stephanie Meyers is full of shit. I cheered.
Wow, very comprehensive. You make a very good point in breaking poetry up into genres, this is something that helps classify other forms of art. I know we’ve divided poetry into periods; neoclassicism, romantic, metaphysical, beat etc. but I think contemporary poetry is too broad to be left in a generalised bucket, I just haven’t heard too many people refer to themselves as rock poets or jazz poets.
I find it hard to believe that anyone with poetic leanings would deliberately set out to be elitist, a certain amount of obscurity would lead to ambiguity in meaning whereby the reader could take away something more personal. I just find too much obscurity leads to a wasted page and a smug poet.
I also agree that blogs are a great practice platform and not an end in themselves. They’re great for general feedback and to give the poet an indication as to whether he / she is ready to submit, and if so, what to submit.
Heheh, I used the rock thingy because I don’t know the “poetry genres” or whatever they’re properly called.
I believe obscurity can be a good thing sometimes as it forces me to think harder and also about more things than I normally would. I don’t think all obscure art comes from smugness – of course there are some people who do it just to make themselves look smarter than everyone – but there are still those who are trying to do nothing more than evolve their style through a bit of experimentation here and there.
I am of the belief that no page is ever truly wasted, because everything that is put down on it – the good, the bad, the ugly and the plain old cliched – can be used in many different ways further down the track after having considered the different angles etc.
I am of the opinion that nothing should be thrown away, no matter how bad you think it is because there may actually be one or two good concepts in the “rubbish” that could be used to enhance something else.
There were four poe,s I wrote a while back (if you can call them poems) that have since been lost, but lucky I could remember these poems almost word for word despite the fact that these things were nothing more than a collection of random sentences thrown together to tell a story.
They made no sense to anyone but myself. Later I got these concepts and turned them into something completely different (one of them actually became the promise of minty fresh breath not included.) and there were several other pieces which sort of branched out from the nonsensical experimentation that I did then.
I hope you don’t mind me relying completely on my own experience for this, because that is pretty much the only knowledge I have.
and by the way … that was rambling. I win.
I totally agree with keeping everything, this is in line with Hemingway who said “the first draft of anything is shit.” He was a master of the minimal. I’ve read stuff of mine that I thought was crap when I wrote it and when I read it weeks or months later it wasn’t as bad as I thought just needed some tweaking.
I also don’t believe that there is any such thing as a bad poem, it is all subjective, I’ve read stuff that I thought was absolute crap but some editor liked it! Any poem is born in a heart so that can’t be bad(?)
And relying on your own experience is the best way to respond.
It just seems strange to say “it’s not smug” and then rambling on about myself seems kind of … smug.
so I have lots of thoughts about this piece. great food for thought Mark. its 1am imma bullet point my thoughts, hee hee I am kind of stupid etc etc but these are my initial impressions given that I am new to the “poetry scene”
1. there are a bunch of elitist jerks in the poetry scene, they wear their bachelor of arts degrees and government art grants like intellectual armour, they spend hours working a poem to manipulate the reader, and only other poets with the same degrees or art grants really understand the clever techniques utilised by these poets…these same poets despair of cliches while turning poetry into one giant cliche by keeping it inaccessible
and a lot of my thoughts could come from the irritation of the super tired
2. poetry is in need of a publicist
3. if poetry is an art, why doesn’t it increase in value over time?
4. blogs have the edge of street poets, hawkers on street corners its a gritty kind of scene I like it
5. poets need to perform but more than this poetry needs to change with the time, yes a nostalgic book of verse is lovely, but poets need installations of art in gallerys, in history poets were the rock stars of thier times, they can be now, I guess mixed media projects etc are an area where poets pushing the envelope need to go
6. because poetry has such a small community, (most seem to be poets/artists,) there is only so much room where an individual poet can grow, if you want to be a poet you need to make a projected plan and treat it like a business
7. modern Australian poetry needs to enter the school curriculum
8. what do I know right?? my blog is full of my own inner bullshit and mostly my friends family and other loved ones look at the site, ( and some wonderful, supportive kind poets who make time for me in thier readings)
9. anyone who can read, has the right to read, interpret and have an opinion about what they read, (because they do not have the “education” is an elitist jerk of an opinion,) good rhythm, rhyme alliteration imagery etc etc will seduce the senses whether the audience has a degree or not
10. eeek I hope I have not offended, I am nobody LOL
hee hee posting…but I bet I am gonna wanna edit as soon as I submit..sorry Mark if I babbled too much or offended anyone
Thanks Gypsy, that is a fantastic response, of course I’ll have to respond in corresponding number points…
1. there are a gaggle of university educated elitists who maintain poetry as a cliche keeping it guarded from general readership, in poetry circles we call these people ‘editors’.
2. exactly my point, poetry has developed a ‘bad’ name someone needs to shout out that poetry can be fresh and dangerous.
3. I guess the best poems do stand the test of time, but it seems a lot more songs are remembered and covered.
4. blogs are the $2 wino filled hotels of legend with a broken neon sign flashing ‘vacancy’, I love them too.
5. poetry needs to be screamed in anger at perfect strangers! Poetry needs a fresh approach, books aren’t given the shelf space.
6. ooh, poetry as a business scares me, I couldn’t plan it, this point might be better solved by increasing the poetry reading community.
7. yes, yes, contemporary Australian poetry in school curriculum, primary and secondary, visiting poet talks etc., the kids steer the changes of tomorrow.
8. that is the attitude that those tertiary educated elitists want you to maintain, you are a poet and a reader, that is a formidable double barreled shotgun.
9. perfect point, poetry should seduce the senses, should leave you wide eyed and breathless, you don’t need a degree to know how to feel, quite the opposite actually, degrees teach you what you should be feeling!
10. no one should be offended, but if they are then that’s a bonus, these are the opinions of someone who reads poetry (a rare find these days) and should be held up as commandments.
Thanks Gypsy for taking the time to articulate, not babbling or rambling, obviously, by the responses from yourself and others this is a topic that empassions.
A lot of excellent points have been brought up in this entry and in the follow up discussion, I’m glad I stopped by to check it out. Poetry has more competition for people’s attention span now than it ever has before, yet it is also capable of reaching billions of people in a matter of seconds. It is certainly a click click now generation.
Thanks for stopping by Aaron. Technology has certainly opened up a lot of channels freely available to anyone, and you’re right, this causes a glut of ‘poetry’ at the same time as offering instantaneous publication to reader. I think the biggest advantage poets have over other artists in today’s tech based world is that, where musicians might complain that the pirating of music is robbing them of income, poets never had the aspirations of income to begin with (I knew there’d be an advantage in there somewhere!).
We remember language easily in rhyme. Nearly every classic poem you can recall is in rhyme.
How do I love thee? -Barrett Browing
The Raven -Poe
The cremation of Sam Mcgee -Service
Ozymandias-Percy Shelley
Roses and Rue -Wilde
Renascence -St. Vincent Millay
childe Harold’s Pilgrimage -Byron
Every classic poetic master employed the use of rhyme to appeal to a large number of people. If it rhymes, they remember. This was especially during the romantic period and Shelley and Byron were like rock stars, such was their impact. It appears there has been a war against rhyme in poetry for some time and if you do write rhyme, other poets look down on you with disdain as if you are a juvenile who is misbehaving and thus not a ‘real poet’. I feel this is part of the elitist aspect of the art form in addition to the expectation of a MFA degree and an adoration of Leonard Cohen that borders on blind fanaticism. I’m a Canadian and will make a blasphemous statement: I can’t stand Leonard Cohen. I think his work is terrible for the most part and if he had been born in another era, he would have been laughed out of the room by the names I’ve mentioned above.
We have lowered the bar, just as we have in many areas and now with texting and internet lingo, we are becoming stupid. I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll start practicing my knuckle dragging because it may come in handy in a few years when we start grunting again instead of speaking. I hope I’m wrong.
Hey Val, I agree – the Romantics were like rockstars, & I think it had a lot to do with the way they clouded the act of writing, by keeping it as something ‘divinely bestowed’ etc and refusing to talk of editing and reworking, just the instant of creation! Clever buggars!
Dhyan recently showed me an amazing poem by an Israli poet Yehuda Amichai & the comments had an interesting discussion on translation
http://matthewsalomon.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/yehuda-amichai-tourists/
BUT that’s an aside – it was noted that the romantic languages can be easier to translate due to the natural rhyme endings of their words (italian for eg) whereas English doesn’t have this – and you have to really work to rhyme – and I think that’s where that ‘looking down the nose’ comes from – when beginner poets write with ‘rhyme for the sake of rhyme’ & are basically lazy or have small vocabs.
So it’s often overlooked that to rhyme in a non-cliched way takes a bucket load of skill!
Where was I going with all this?
And of course, your Romantics above were masters of meter and such. Shame they never got over themselves!
Hey Val & Ash,
Rhyme is certainly frowned upon these days as archaic, also because most metrophobes believe poetry has to rhyme to be considered a poem. I tend to let the poem decide what form it wants to take. People starting to write poetry do tend to lean towards rhyming couplets and it could be considered doggerel. But you’re right Val, the most memorable poems are the strong rhymers, look at Henley’s ‘Invictus’, because it had such a tight rhyme structure it carried Mandela through 27 years.
Oh, and Val, why don’t you just take a large kitchen knife and stab me straight through the chest; you don’t like Leonard Cohen? I read this and fell off my chair, crawled into the foetal position and started crying ‘no, no, no!!!’ OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, I only said ‘no’ twice.
LOL Mark, You are exactly the type of fan old Len loves! Seriously, he needs to let it go for god sake. In Canada, we have a habit of making people into living institutions, whether the masses think they are worthy or not. Leonard is known to play up the ‘image’ a bit more than just a little and that image has taken him far. Of course, this is only my opinion that I’m swimming with upstream. Now take that dagger out of your chest will ya and read some Alden Nowlan instead!
We’ll agree to disagree on Mr. Cohen (!), but Alden Nowlan is a fine example of what we have been talking about, a poet in spite of his family’s abjection to education. I look forward to seeking and reading his stuff, thanks for the heads up.
I’m glad I came upon this so far into the discussion. I love many of the points that have been raised. The social stigma of poetry is something that I’ve been thinking about lately – just how ‘cool’ is it to be a poet? Personally, I’m not really sure, but I’ve met wonderful poets who would be ashamed to even mention that they wrote in front of their normal group of friends, and others who relentlessly read their angst-ridden ABAB rhymes at slams and open-mic nights, wondering why people don’t listen to them, try to understand. I refused to call myself a poet until I was able to read something I wrote a year before and still be proud of it, still enjoy it.
In this light, anyone can call themselves a poet, and yes, we or you or she or he can by cynical when we hear what immaturity is offered by said claimant, but the fact is that when I was a teenager, I wrote like that, and it took a while to realize that hey – it’s all the same. nothing new is being said – time to move on with it. I’m certain that I’m not the only case of that.
Mark, you brought up the point of its history earlier, and I definitely agree with you there. For some, Poetry instantly means Shakespeare which subsequently means incomprehensible, and truthfully, much of it is! But there is beauty in that. Poetry is everchanging. Every time I go back to read a poem I’ve read before, a word here or a stanza there evokes a different image and meaning within me based on my experience: a newspaper headline from last year, a paragraph read out of a random book at the shop, the blind dog at the farm in Iceland.
I read something about a music analogy to poetry, and I liked it a lot. Granted, I’ve never heard of a rock poet either, but I think there are different forms that people appreciate more than others. For me, it comes in waves. Modern, contemporary poetry like Saul Williams will stab me in the gut one month – while the next, I’m obsessed with the tonguetwisted poetpriest Mr. Hopkins. And on and on.
True, poetry doesn’t have the appeal it once did to the masses. When I heard the story of Poe walking down the street, with children on his heels because they knew him, and he’d spin around and frighten them with “Nevermore!”, I knew that poetry would never reach that point again. And I’m not sure I’d want it to. Like many other forms of expression, it has become popular to the point of obscurity, where even those few who manage to make a living off poetry (or things associated with it) go largely unnoticed but by their fanbase.
The whole internet language phenomenon has had me baffled for years. Growing up more or less when it was taking off, I quickly decided to abandon it and spell out my words (and if I miss one now and then, so be it), but I have hope enough for humans in general that our print media will not be assimilated into that world. I would not want to read articles written in 1337 speech, and maybe editors feel the same way. Perhaps this hope is wishful and misplaced. We’ll have to hold on to our current state of evolution and create a sub-race of poets and live underground with our stanzas and rhymes.
(apologies for the novel)
Thanks for taking the time to respond Sean, it has been a great discussion with some very valid points. As you say it is very difficult to know when to call yourself a poet, I wrote recently on the Overland blog I prefer to tell people I sell drugs to underage mothers who are training with Al Qaeda, that is not frowned upon as much as saying I’m a poet.
I also like the way a poem can change from one read to the next, or one line that unlocks the whole and the pieces fall glistening into place.
It is a good comparison poetry : music, Bukowski is good when I’m in a Tom Waits mood, Kerouac while Miles Davis plays, Patti Smith while I’m listening to Patti Smith (?).
I like the Poe anecdote, I don’t imagine hordes of screaming fans, but also what is classic literature to us was popular back in it’s day. In a hundred years Stephenie Meyer might be filed under ‘classic literature’, if this happens I’ll give up writing.
I like to use some 1337 for visual effects that I’m experimenting with, but never use it when I’m sending a text because my text messages are never that urgent that I need to use abbreviations to send them faster.
Thank you for the novel, it was a great read.
You wrote “anyone can create a poetry page and call themselves a poet. Is this a good thing?”
I’d put it a little differently. Anyone can explore poetry and call themselves a poet. That doesn’t make their work any good. It just means they’re reaching – and that desire for sensitivity *is* good, even if the output is self indulgent crap.
I think readers are the ones who need to rely on the acceptance (vetting) of an editor. I don’t think most people read as deeply or thoughtfully as we once did. Life is faster and the bar is lower – big words and long sentences are out of style. On QuoteSnack I try to excerpt the classics in ways that might make readers curious, or remind them of something they loved.
Right now I’m working on some excerpts of James Joyce, about one screen in length – an unintimidating peek. I don’t expect most readers to read Finnegan’s Wake any more than they’d pick up Proust, but I do think the loveliness or playfulness or pain in the language will still stir the waters, and I think we all need that – to fall in love with an expressiveness, even if (maybe especially if) we don’t see eye to eye with the whole being of the writer. I’m not concerned with coolness. I’m here for the lit.
Eventually I’d like to have permissions in place from literary reviews and art house publishers, so I can post more copyrighted work. I’ll be relying on their editors to pre-sift, freeing me to put energy into supporting newer authors. My search engine traffic will still probably come from people who want to know who wrote some famous phrase, and sometimes I have time to write out some background information. Once I’ve got the readers on the site, why not serve up something fresh? I guess that’s where Elizabeth the literary tourist becomes an editor — now we’ve got editors all over the place, in our own blogs as we self-edit, and as we decide what of someone else to post. It takes all kinds.
By the way, my time-on-page is all over the map. Some skim. Some Social Media visitors really do read. A few come back more than once a day.
And as for Cohen… he’s sort of the Spock of Canadian poets, isn’t he? Into every generation, a little mind meld must fall.
Thank you very much Elizabeth, this is a fantastic response and throws a whole different light onto the discussion; the trust that readers inadvertently place in editors. I look forward to the Joyce quotes, you are doing an absolutely fantastic job on Quote Snack, and your tweets are a precious rarity in the twitterdome.
I’m not sure what you meant by Cohen as the Spock of Canadian poets. but since Spock is my favourite Trek character, I am taking it that you like him also(?) He is a line you can use anytime (on Quote Snack, at parties, as an example of bad rhyme!) I scribbled it last night when I was chillin’ to Cohen’s I’m Your Man, but it would never develop any further; “I don’t believe in the fate of men, I do believe in Leonard Cohen.” : )
Mark, I just want to say a huge thank you for being the catalyst for such a great discussion… this kind of lively debate fills my heart to overflowing. Keep the blog posts coming!!!
Thanks Graham, I was very happy to see all the comments, all the particpants had so much to add and really shone different angles over the post, I am so honoured to be a part of this active community.