Let Poetry Die? Maybe so…

Posted by Mark on February 4, 2010 in Poetry | Subscribe

The bit ref­er­enced from the fol­low­ing post, has popped up on a cou­ple of other blogs of late so I decided that my two cents were burn­ing a hole in my pocket and I needed to get them out there where they can be spent.  The sub­ject line takes his state­ment and poses it as a question…

http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/let-poetry-die/

From this above ref­er­enced arti­cle by Patrick Gille­spie on his blog, PoemShape;

The best thing that could hap­pen to poetry is to drive it out of the uni­ver­si­ties with burn­ing pitch forks. Starve the lav­ish grants. Stran­gle them all in a bar­rel of water. Cast them out. The cur­rent cul­ture, in which poetry is writ­ten for and sup­ported by poets has cre­ated a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that  resists inno­va­tion. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader pub­lic, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the great­ness that is the col­lab­o­ra­tion between audi­ence and artist.

That sums things up fairly suc­cinctly.  I have tended to note that there are some poets who will talk down, or con­de­scend to read­ers who don’t “get” what they’re writ­ing about.  That the Poet has some secret knowl­edge or train­ing or some such bull­shit as that. That the reader isn’t try­ing hard enough to get the obvi­ous GENIUS pre­sent­ing itself on the page.  Which is exactly what that idea is, by the way; Bullshit.

My thoughts on the sub­ject are pretty short and very suc­cinct:  Namely, if the major­ity of read­ers don’t under­stand what you are try­ing to say in your poem, don’t grasp what your “Genius” is try­ing to con­vey, then the Reader isn’t the igno­rant party here.  The Poet is the dumb ass who is try­ing to baf­fle with bull­shit rather than daz­zle with bril­liance.   Poetry is fun­da­men­tally about com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  If the poet can’t com­mu­ni­cate, then the reader isn’t the problem. 

I mean, does any­body have any trou­ble under­stand­ing Wordsworth’s poem, The Daf­fodils?  Nope.   Lan­guage is stuffy and stilted to mod­ern ears, yet there is a beauty in that lan­guage.  Wordsworth saw a vast panorama of daf­fodils, he loved and basked in the sight, it uplifted him, he wrote a won­der­ful poem about it.  Pretty sim­ple in its beauty,

Then, there is this award win­ning book, The Waker’s Cor­ri­dor that won the Walt Whit­man Award, bestowed by the Acad­emy of Amer­i­can Poets, an orga­ni­za­tion I am a mem­ber of, and that I shall not be renew­ing my mem­ber­ship in. This poem was writ­ten by the author of that prize win­ning book, Design for a Sil­ver Box in the Shape of a Melon, 1918. His name is Jonathan Thirkield.

I’ve read this a cou­ple of times, and I’m scratch­ing my head.  That doesn’t really mean any­thing, but it should explain the dis­con­nect between the Poet and the reader.  There seems to be a lack of empa­thy here, a lack of a place where I can climb into the poem and under­stand what he is say­ing.  It sounds pretty, but what does it mean?  This is what bugs me, really bugs me, in fact.  This disconnect.

So, go read that essay linked above and as many of the com­ments as you can deal with.  It’s an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion and idea he puts forth.

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4 Comments

  • Patrick says:
    February 4, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    // I have tended to note that there are some poets who will talk down, or con­de­scend to read­ers who don’t “get” what they’re writ­ing about.//

    Yeah, that’s one of the things that gets me down. As if poets are owed some­thing by their read­ers. Well, no, read­ers don’t owe poets a damned thing. It’s not the read­ers’ respon­si­bil­ity to com­pre­hend the poet. It’s the poet’s job to be com­pre­hen­si­ble. But if they choose not to be, then great. I don’t care. Just don’t tell me they’re a “neglected” poet whose great­ness the pub­lic is too stu­pid, vul­gar or indo­lent to recognize.

  • Crafty green Poet says:
    February 9, 2010 at 4:22 pm

    Yes I know what you mean. i don’t have a prob­lem with a poet who expects me to work to fully appre­ci­ate a poem, and I like poems that unfold to show more as I re-read them. But wil­ful obscu­rity i hate.

    • RadioNowhere says:
      February 9, 2010 at 4:28 pm

      Oh, I agree com­pletely about will­ful obscu­rity. Dri­ves me nuts.

      Aid­ing and abet­ting that sort of thing by giv­ing it awards is almost crim­i­nal, to my thinking.

  • James says:
    February 9, 2010 at 8:55 pm

    I agree with you about that dis­con­nect. I’ve got no prob­lems with dif­fi­cult poems, but there needs to be a place for the reader to enter oth­er­wise it’s like see­ing a fenced field which all but screams, “you’re not wel­come here.”

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