the "new" poetry paradigms

[quasimodo1]

By JAMES LONGENBACH

Published: July 22, 2007 in the New York Times:



The strength of American poetry depends on the fact that hardly anybody notices it. To emerging poets, eager for an audience, this marginality may seem frustrating, but it is the source of their freedom. Because nothing is at stake except the integrity of their medium, poets may write about anything in any way, from decorously rhymed couplets to sonically driven nonsense.


69 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $22.

TOM THOMSON IN PURGATORY
By Troy Jollimore.

97 pp. Margie/Intuit House. Paper, $13.95.

WHY SPEAK?
Poems.
By Nathaniel Bellows.

85 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $23.95.

VELLUM
By Matt Donovan.

67 pp. Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Company. Paper, $11.95.
The four volumes considered here, three of them first books of poems, suggest that poetry is dominated by no period style; no single figure delimits its parameters, as Eliot or Lowell once did. Efforts to boost poetry’s commercial viability would curtail this freedom, but such efforts are gloriously doomed to fail. Starkly different from one another, these books remind us that the language of poetry reforms itself from within, resisting all programs for reformation.

Josephine Dickinson is not an American poet. Living in England, where poetry maintains a higher profile, she aspires to the American poet’s marginality: Dickinson raises sheep in the Cumbrian mountains, perpetuating the vocation of her dead husband. When they married, she was 41; he was in his late 80s. Their six years together is the subject of “Silence Fell,” which is drawn from two books of poems Dickinson has published in England.

Dickinson has been deaf since childhood. More than her subject matter, her acute relationship to the physical sensation of language distinguishes these humble, deftly made poems. Sometimes the poems are metered and rhymed, but their formality is in any case registered syllable by syllable: “There was a darkness in the air, / I looked and saw it speak, / felt it waiting by my back, / not savagery ... but near.” There’s nothing showy here: the delicate near-rhymes feel as inevitable as the life the poems catalog — an ordinary life driven by extraordinary choices.

Many poems are structured as catalogs, journal-like lists of chores or observations: “Rain lashed the windows. / The trees strained. The back door / blew open. Greenhouse glass / smashed.”

....

[snip]

[quasimodo1]

Question for those interested in the evolution of poetry (if that indeed is happening) ...do you (who write poetry) feel obliged to use more modern formats or can poetry forms from any time period work, be read and appreciated?

[uranderson]

For me the forms and styles of any time period can be read and appreciated, assuming that the work is good. Some are easier than others to relate to immediately, but after giving the mind some time to become acclimated to the different way the language is manipulated, the value of the work will shine through, whether it's Wordsworth or Ashbery.

Writing is different. I think the modern forms were a necessary evolution tied to the remarkable transformation of modern consciousness over the last century. I feel that free verse is a necessary expression of the modern mind, and not just "tennis without a net" as Frost put it.

Yet form will always have a place, it's what separates poetry from prose. Even free verse, when it's written well, has some more or less loose application of form. It's just that it's determined by the writer at that time for that specific poem (or series of poems). In that way, it is more organic than say for example attempting to shoehorn the language of a poem that is begging for long, flowing unrhymed lines into a cramped sonnet form.

Yet writing in forms is the best way to learn the craft. Miles Davis once said something like "learn the rules before you break them". Also, it's still possible to produce a great modern poem in even the most ancient forms. I would argue however that it's no longer possible to mimic the tone and diction of archaic styles and still write good poetry (for example using words like 'hence' or 'forsooth').

One of the modern writer's challenges is to find and develop his own forms, ones that conform to the demands of their particular artistry. A lot of modern writers make the mistake of thinking form has become irrelevant in poetry. I would claim that it's only become less codified, and therefore more difficult to quantify.

When you look at it that way, writing well in free verse can be even more demanding than writing in a traditional form. The reason being that you need to be more attuned to what the poem requires of you, formally. Another way of saying that is that it's much easier to write a completely dreadful poem in free verse than in a form.

[quasimodo1]

and an older paradigm...http://www.jaffebros.com/lee/gulliver/other_swift/ypoet.html When Swift wrote "Gulliver" he claimed it was a work written for children; in this way his ascerbic satire denied confrontation with the powers that be.

[bloggod]

poetry is the last and first frontier. the word, logos, created the very cosmos, time, and firmament. by their name they be known, and so forth. how could the basis of creation be bound by rules, by nature mutable?

people have been hanged, quartered, censored, gagged, incarcerated, celebrated, inebrieated (sp?) beyond cheesy appeal, publicked, wanked spanked and dunked, flunked, raised before altars, etc., for words which aspire toward poetry.

it is all good if you ask me. i like what you both say, and i agree, there is an obvious evolution----from the ancient spoken traditions, to hallowed written pieces mangled in translation, the bible, the inquisitions of centuries leading to ginsberg miller and lenny bruce...

are we to accept the finale as hallmark cards and slam fests? or microascetic minutae governings of what is cool haiku and what is kosher sestina?

as writing, and storytelling, is equal with the very creation of all matter, (and modern physics will support that girder,) it is incumbent on your fine minds to leave doubt by the rubbish piles of constraint, and mainly express your very selves, with no quarter assuaged to the foes that have held us at bay since the dawns of darkness. write! and write your truth and lies and the silences intbetween shall be illuminentertaining, and keep our fires hot.

[quasimodo1]

The Properly Scholarly Attitude
by Adelaide Crapsey


The poet pursues his beautiful theme;
The preacher his golden beatitude;
And I run after a vanishing dream—
The glittering, will-o’-the-wispish gleam
Of the properly scholarly attitude—
The highly desirable, the very advisable,
The hardly acquirable, properly scholarly attitude.


I envy the savage without any clothes,
Who lives in a tropical latitude;
It’s little of general culture he knows.
But then he escapes the worrisome woes
Of the properly scholarly attitude—
The unceasingly sighed over, wept over, cried over,
The futilely died over, properly scholarly attitude.


I work and I work till I nearly am dead,
And could say what the watchman said—that I could!
But still, with a sigh and a shake of the head,
“You don’t understand,” it is ruthlessly said,
“The properly scholarly attitude—
The aye to be sought for, wrought for and fought for,
The ne’er to be caught for, properly scholarly attitude—”


I really am sometimes tempted to say
That it’s merely a glittering platitude;
That people have just fallen into the way,
When lacking a subject, to tell of the sway
Of the properly scholarly attitude—
The easily preachable, spread-eagle speechable,
In practice unreachable, properly scholarly attitude.

By Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914)

[quasimodo1]

All of which is to say, reading “Poems From Guantánamo” is a bizarre experience. “The Detainees Speak” is this book’s subtitle: but putting aside the real question of whether lyric poets ever “speak” through their art, in the sense of revealing a historical person’s actual life story (they have rarely done so through poetry’s long history, and often poets “speak” least revealingly precisely when they claim to be telling the truth), in what sense could these poems, heavily vetted by official censors, translated by “linguists with secret-level security clearance” but no literary training, released by the Pentagon according to its own strict, but unarticulated, rationale — “speak”?

excerpt from NYTimes review/8/19/07 here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/books/review/Chiasson-t.html

brand new Pentagon approved poems

[stlukesguild]

As a great fan of poetry I am somewhat saddened by the limited role that poetry plays in our current culture. Even at the mega-book stores like Borders poetry is usually limited to shelf space far smaller that that reserved for the books on sex or popular psychology and self-help. I remember reading (I believe it was in the book on 20th Century Russian poetry edited by Yevgeny Yevtushnko) how poets in Russia (at that time) had been able to fill large stadiums for poetry readings, while the best American poets are lucky if they sell maybe 10,000 or 20,000 volumes of their latest book (compare that with any best-selling novel), and were usually required to maintain a second (primary) source of income through teaching, translation, editing, or something completely outside of the field of literature.

Thomas Disch wrote an interesting essay entitled The Castle of Indolence which acts as an introduction to his book of the same title which explores the position of poets in America today. He notes that while poetry is so little read (even here, at the Lit Net, I seldom find anyone listing a poet among their favorite writers or a book of poetry among their favorite books) if one were to look at the bumper crop of poets being turned out every year from creative writing courses... and at the number of poems being published... we might assume we are in the golden age of poetry. Still... Disch suggests (and I tend to agree with him) that while there certainly are some great poets living and working today, the best works of 20th century American poetry were produced before many of the current poets were even born. Perhaps one of the biggest problems, he goes on to suggest, are the very "creative writing" courses that turn out ever new crops of poets in a self-perpetuating manner. In many ways I am reminded (I can't help it, being a visual artist myself) of the fact, pointed out by art critic Robert Hughes, that today in the US we are turning out more students with BFAs in Fine Art than there were people alive and living in Florence during the Renaissance. How many artists/poets can a society absorb? How many truly have what it takes when the requirements for an artist/poet seem so completely lax?

I am certainly not against experimental modes of poetry. One of my favorite among contemporaries is the poet/scholar, Anne Carson, who blurs original poetry with translation with prose fiction with non-fiction. On the other hand... I must agree with Disch who suggests that a lot of current poets are not so much challenging traditional forms as a means of seeking out new forms that best speak to our time... rather they are producing flaccid, formless ramblings that is only taken at all seriously because it is supposedly "poetry". I especially love Disch's parody on what he calls "snapped prose"...:

Take any bit of prose you like
and snap it into lines of verse
like tis, using the end of the line

as a kind of comma. You can create
a further sense of shapeliness
by grouping the snapped prose in stanzas, so.

Disch suggests that a great part of the problem is the huge number of "poets" lacking any real sense of discipline towards their craft. Where many of the great English poets honed their craft through the study of classic poets and through the translation of Greek and Latin poetic forms... where Rossetti and Shelley and Pound developed as poets through translating Dante and Cavalcanti and Anglo-Saxon poetry... where J.L. Borges would learn to read English and later explored Old English and Icelandic... simply for the intellectual challenge... the only apparent requirement for many current poets seems to be a gushin desire for "self expression" with little regard for the artistic merit of said expression. As such, perhaps we should not be surprised at the popularity of Ginsberg or Plath or others who "let it all hang out" as opposed to Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, W.S. Merwin, A.R. Ammons and Conrad Aikens, etc...

As I noted earlier I feel my own discipline (painting) is laden-down with an excess of formless mush. I am more than appreciative of the well-wrought work that breaks outside of accepted forms and traditions and modes of expression... but too often I suspect that the artists which are passed off as breaking free of the limitations of old forms simply lack the ability to work within these forms or to be measured by these standards. Just recently... to speak in a related manner of music... I purchased Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues. The Russian Modernist struck by Bach's achievements with the same forms (preludes and fugues) set himself the task of a contemporary work of art within these limits. The result, rather than limiting the composer, led to what must surely be one of his greatest achievements. Perhaps the "limits" of past forms should not be imagined as limitations at all... but as challenges to the creative mind... to work within... to turn around.... to invert... or to eventually reject... but ever a source of inspiration and expressive possibilities.

[Virgil]

The strength of American poetry depends on the fact that hardly anybody notices it. To emerging poets, eager for an audience, this marginality may seem frustrating, but it is the source of their freedom. Because nothing is at stake except the integrity of their medium, poets may write about anything in any way, from decorously rhymed couplets to sonically driven nonsense.


Quasi, I don't know what you mean by no one notices. I think American poetry of the last century stacks up better than just about any other country's. We have so many top notch poets that even our second tier are better than the top tier of other countries. It was the American poets that really openned up form in this century, probably because of our Walt Whitman legacy and influence. Plus I feel that our American language really bends and heightens poetic diction. Sadly our novelists are not in the top tier of world novelists and at best as a group rather average.

[quasimodo1]

To Virgil: The quote above describing the relative unpopularity of poetry at this time...here I quote and hopefully attributed to the NYTimes in one of it's reviews. I agree with you on quality and the many great poets but just how widely read it is, well, your best sellers (fiction and non-fiction) seem to get most of the attention. The "source of their freedom" remark is well taken if unfortunate. quasi

[quasimodo1]

This is not the latest edition of the nytimes review, which comes out every Sunday and considered the template for reviewers. Interesting articles and updates if not bran new. It is here.........................http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6DA1631F931A25751C1A9629C8B 63............Published: December 12, 2004

[AuntShecky]

"Poetry" and "Paradigms" should never be mentioned in the same sentence!
I mean, John Milton didn't write "Paradigms Lost," now, did he?
If you're interested in the topic of poetic form, Quasimodo, please give me your take on my posting of the other day. It is about the concept of "voice" in poetry. The thread's title is "Tweak Your Speaker."

[AuntShecky]

When yours truly made similar statements
(in the thread "Why Write Poetry?") some people on the network positively bristled! I guess the NYTimes gives street cred which apparently I lack.

[quasimodo1]

From a review called "Rhyme Zone" by Joanna Rudge Long. Excerpt from sample poem by Valerie Worth called "Camels".. They can afford to be ugly
And ungainly, to stand
About munching and belching
Like smug old maids

Remembering their ancient
Sway, when bearded
Traders sailed them over
The starry sand-waves, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Long-t.html?ex=1188792000&en=aae57644ea30714c&ei=5070 first two stanzas (Sunday NYTimes book review)

[AuntShecky]

I liked the postings by Stlukesguild
especially the passage quoting Thomas Disch, including the part about "snapped prose." Flannery O'Connor had a good --though a bit flippant-- line about creative writing courses. When asked whether writing workshops "stifle"
writers, she replied, "They don't stifle enough of them."
The poem about "attitudes" (from Quasimodo?) was charming, but the poet has a most unfortunate surname for anyone involved with words.

[quasimodo1]

Stlukesguild rocks....did I say that. Now to figure out how to pronounce that name. quasimodo1

[Virgil]

To Virgil: The quote above describing the relative unpopularity of poetry at this time...here I quote and hopefully attributed to the NYTimes in one of it's reviews. I agree with you on quality and the many great poets but just how widely read it is, well, your best sellers (fiction and non-fiction) seem to get most of the attention. The "source of their freedom" remark is well taken if unfortunate. quasi

Just saw this now. Yes, poetry does go mostly unread by the not only the general public but even most literary minded people. I have no idea how to improve that. But perhaps that's why the quality has been exceptionally high.

[quasimodo1]

To Stlukesguild: I think it was post#8 on this thread where you wrote a really great essay on this subject. I think "discipline" is the key concept here and like everything else it is not absolutist but extemely variable, even for those who have alot of it; they still have to stay in shape and employ it. You hear people talking about the :dumbing down" of certain educational systems or districts. This description is neither helpfull or usefull because the issue is all about acquiring some discipline in your work. quasimodo1

[quasimodo1]

John Barr claims that Poetry needs a new heart, preferably one of an investment banker, like himself, or the heart of an insurance salesman, or an Irish rebel, or a doctor—any heart except that which belongs to a professor or any graduate with an MFA degree in creative writing. Barr claims “poets today don’t seem even to be aware that what they write will be influenced by how they live.”1 MFA graduates and poets working in academe, he gripes, are not really curious enough about their world to go venturing into it. Out of touch with the American people, MFA graduates are apparatchiks, lost in a paper-chase of credentials and grant-grubbing. They are technicians devoid of soul. “LIVE BROADLY, AND WRITE BOLDLY,” Barr intones, wishing poets would take up more manly occupations, like Hemingway hunting on safari, or William Carlos Williams making house calls as a doctor, or Yeats politicking for Ireland, or Wallace Stevens piloting his desk at an insurance company, or T.S. Eliot working as a banker. Disconnected and remote, MFA graduates write, according to Barr, in a morose, modernist monotone that fails to reflect contemporary life. The audiences and book sales of poetry dwindle as a result. (source= ) http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/fenza02.htm

[stlukesguild]

I'm not certain that the boldness (or lack thereof) is what will make or break a poet... or any artist. I doubt that Eliot's banking career was all that inspirational. But I do find myself thinking to an article I once read about Einstein's development. While most of his fellow classmates went on to become professors working in academia, Einstein took what most would have imagined as a rather less ideal route: an examiner in the patents office. Many imagined that this was a sad waste of his abilities... but others have pointed out that for a certain type of personality it was far more ideal than academia. While Einstein's former classmates were jockeying for positions and promotions and rushing to publish... he was under no pressure... and able to slowly develop the theories for which he would become known.

Perhaps it is not a lack of the exposure to the "real world" that is the danger of academia... but rather the pressures to produce. Works must be produced regularly... and works must be produced which meet certain academic "standards" or "expectations". How open is academia to work which goes against these standards. How friendly is the field to the artist who is still developing... still searching... still full of doubt... but must put forth the illusion of being a "master" of one's field? I might also suggest that it may be the pedantic nature of academia that i part of the problem. All art engages in a dialog of sorts with other art. But the very term "academic art" suggests an art that is rooted solely in art... and ignores life. In my own discipline of painting I can find endless examples of "academic art" (Minimalism, Conceptual Art, etc...) which is clearly an art "about" art... and an art of which one might make legitimate criticisms as to its lack of concern for the visual world around us... or for ideas, emotions, experiences which are central to the human experience and not merely to the experience of the art school educated artist.

One of my favorite painters was Pierre Bonnard:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Bonnard11.jpg

Bonnard lived what was to all appearances one of the most mundane lives of any artist... and yet he succeeded in producing a wealth of fabulous paintings that are absolutely magical. Certainly there are writers like Hemingway or Montaigne or Milton or Dante or Cervantes who were men of action... having lived lives full of drama. On the other hand... every life has its drama... its tragedies... its moments of sublime joy or bliss... its experiences of utter loss and failure. The challenge is to recognize that one can find inspiration from wherever one is at and to give these personal moments of beauty or tragedy an appropriate form. An artist like J.M.W. Turner finds inspiration by strapping himself to the mast of a ship during a gale storm. Monet finds it in the landscape of his backyard. Emily Dickinson, by all accounts, had a somewhat limited experience of the world... as did William Blake... yet both were able to discover entire universes within their small confines. The grand experiences of a life full of drama may be something to be envied (or then again, not) but I would speculate that that quality of art is not to be limited by intensity of the source of inspiration... but only what the artist brings to it.