Modern Poetry

[Leabhar]

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

[quasimodo1]

To Leabhari: Is this a rhetorical question?

[JBI]

What do you mean? Are we talking contemporary or Modernist?

In the first sense, America is just having an artistic recession right now. Look to the North a little and you will be surprised with what gold you have - there isn't a night in Toronto when there isn't at least 2 poets reading their work for public audiences, and our government subsidies for small presses help to keep poetry publishers afloat better than our Neighbor's.

In truth though, I personally think the influence of Wallace Stevens is the most powerful thing holding back American verse today, as his works seem to be echoing behind almost all American poets after he became popular.

In truth, one must look elsewhere - good poetry is always out there.

If however, you meant modern as in Modernist, and everything following it, I would say that you should read more. Wordsworth is far more philosophical than most of the poets who followed him. If it is form that you have a problem with, well, then I can't help you. Free verse, which is generally acknowledged to be a problematic name, because it is anything but free, is liberating to the art, and has allowed it to survive for longer, without another direction being needed to take it to a higher dimension.

[Leabhar]

Most modern free verse is just writing put into lines
Like this, is this poetry?
They just stole the name "poetry"
And made all other poetry nonexistent
The emperor has no clothes.

[stlukesguild]

I'm sorry, but the analogy to the Emperor's New Clothes has been a tired cliché for decades... if not almost a century when speaking of Modern/Contemporary art/music/literature/poetry/etc... I certainly will be the first to admit that there are weaknesses and problems and hucksterisms and worse within the arts today... but I say this with a full knowledge that the majority of all art for the whole of history has been mediocre at best... as well as from the knowledge that there has been and continues to be artists... and poets working within Modernist and Post-Modernist forms that are unquestionably brilliant. Do you assume that for poetry to be of any merit that it must be structured in a manner in which the form is clearly and immediately understood: a sonnet, a ballad? Is there not a poetry to be found in Shakespeare and the Bible and Whitman and novelists such as Proust and Faulkner and Nabokov and even Poe? Is there no music there, or can music only exist where the form or structure is simple, plain, and clear? Or perchance you believe that the "meaning" of poetry must be clear and divulge itself wholly and easily. Again I disagree. How "easy" to understand are the poems of Dickinson? the longer works of Blake? Luis Gongora? Holderlin? Donne? Yes, there most certainly are some Modern/Contemporary poets who revel in obscurity and hermeticism for its own sake... but I would not suggest that what they have done is "meaningless" but rather that you, the reader, can discern no "meaning" from it. Again... one must ask... is such a "meaning" a necessity? What is the "meaning" of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Monet's Waterlilies? If there is none... are they then "meaningless"? Is life "meaningless" if we can discern no clear purpose? Again... I agree that there are some writers who seemingly throw anything together in the form of poetry and imagine that such becomes poetry by virtue of the layout on the page. The poet/critic Thomas Disch referred to this as "snapped prose" and humorously mocked the whole genre:

Take any piece of prose you like
and snap it into lines of verse
like this, 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.

Again... there are endless examples of poor art in any time or place... and surely there are times and places and cultures where art forms bloomed more or less than in other times/places/cultures... but to dismiss an entire art form so braodly suggests that one has not made much of an attempt at understanding or appreciating it.

[Leabhar]

But you have to admit there is definitely a weak flow of poetry today. Every poet or anyone who likes poetry has to admit this. There is something about the modern world that stifles creativity, or maybe the people who publish poetry are only looking for the modernist/postmodernist stuff or the random prose put into stanzas. Come on, even anything beyond someone rambling about drugs and flowers would be preferable to the popular garbage nowadays.

[TheFifthElement]

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

Define "random words and psychotic babbling", and

define "mainstream poetry", and

define "real poetry"

in fact, define "poetry"

and then it might be possible to debate...

Some examples would be good.

[stlukesguild]

I have no problem admitting that there is a lot of weak poetry today. I have admitted as much. But again I would argue that this is true of all times and places. We forget that because the hard work has already been done for us with regard to older literature. The weaker work has fallen away and we get the picture... an illusion... that during the Romantic era in Britain (for example) only poets of the status of Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordworth, Coleridge, Burns, and a few others were active. But the reality is that for each one of them there were hundreds... thousands that have been gratefully and mercifully forgotten. Again, I don't deny that poetry today is facing some problems. We have discussed as much here at LitNet on this post:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36954

I don't believe that popular tastes have much to do with the publication of certain types of poetry as the general public has little interest in poetry. Nevertheless... I have no problem stating that there are many poets currently active who are producing work of real artistic merit. Among these I would include Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai, etc... Undoubtedly this list just skims over the surface... especially when we consider that there must surely be poetry of real merit being produced around the globe... and yet we are limited to that work which has bee translated. If we consider that many of the poets who have been acknowledged as "classics" in Germany or France (for example) have never or rarelybeen well translated into English (Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, Friederich Schiller, Ludwig Uhland, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Theodore Storm, Hermann Hesse (as poet), Joachim DuBellay, Pierre Ronsard, Alfonse de Lamartine, Voltaire (as poet), Victor Hugo (as poet... until recently), Alfred de Musset, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Maurice Rollinant, etc... etc... we must then ask how many of the greatest living poets are being currently translated into English?

[JBI]

Honestly, study the bulk of poetry from any time period, and there are mediocre works. Historical works, however, have been sifted by scholars and time, and therefore are all relatively excellent, whereas modern poetry is unsifted, and subject to countless period pieces, like all poetry of its contemporaneous readership.

Also, the comment on it all sounding the same, and stifled creativity, I think has some merit, but not everywhere, perhaps only in the United States, in the sense that we think of it, and in Britain, where creativity seems to be in conflict with contemporary mentality. That being said, those are two countries; the world still has poets, and good poets among them.

The argument over free-verse I think is misplaced - free verse is nothing but free. Try scanning a free-verse poem, and you will notice that metrically it is just as intricate as any closed form poem. There is an invisible clockwork running through every poem, in the way it is constructed, and though it is less apparent than conventional Iambs, it still is there.

To reduce all verse to broken up prose is rather silly. The problem with verse is nothing like that, it is rather that too many people criticize it, without reading it.

[Leabhar]

stlukesguld - The poets you listed are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages.

JBI - That is an argument used by the practitioners of modern poetry, but does it hold up? I do read modern poetry, and most it has no rhythm, no theme, no invisible clockwork to speak of. These people are working on decades of poetry like theirs, they have no understanding of traditional poetry even if they evoke its name. They have no connection to tradition at all. Really, some of the poetry on this site even is better than popular poetry.

Maybe if you take modern poetry as modern poetry and read it as such it can be good, but if you read it as poetry, it is bad.

I dislike people calling it poetry. Lets call it something else. Moetry. Something with no clockwork or rhythm or even meaning which makes sense to only the people who write it.

[JBI]

Don Gutteridge

from Cornering

1
When we were young
we cornered as the
wind and windward
went down

snow-packed bicycle paths
drew us under the
ribbed Bridge with
quicksand / questions

thru October cattails
blown and ragged
milkweed morning

past the river-bank
and summer under
water seldom seen
thunder dreamed

beyond the smoking docks
the reeking fisheries

over C.N tracks and out
to fields sweet
with manure.
...

from New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books 25 (2000)

originally published in God's Geography (1982)
.........................

can you not see the flow pattern? the repetitition of sounds that keeps this together, and the arrangement of arguments and images that gives it its line-breaks and stanza-breaks? The images make the form, not the stress pattern, and the language itself seems to echo the images.

Take for instance the first stanza, the repetitive alliteration is used to mimic the sound of the wind, and blow through the verse.

Or the second stanza, where 'ribbed' is creating a ribbed feel in the prosody, to modify 'bridge'.

But whats more, look how the poem echos the title, and the central themes throughout; the poem literally corners major places, and describes what is seen, and what is felt, but what is more, if you had the complete poem, or perhaps even from the excerpt, you can tell that there is an inherent biblical allusion going on. It is making reference to Abraham, and his journey marking out the promised land. By doing so, Gutteridge is making a statement about the land, and comparing it not only to the promised land, but to the possessive, the land is a part of us, and we all are connected to it, in a sort of nationalistic way.

In this way, the poem manages to transcend its Southern Ontario setting, and become part of a universal experience, being that one can just as easily map out any other city's corners, or perhaps the world's, and thereby become a part of it. But even more than that, Gutteridge also brings up nostalgia, which is in all of us, and seems to not only empathize with our aging, which is more apparent in his generation, now that the bulk of the population is getting old, but also questions who we are, and the moments and places that change our lives. What we have here are deeply personal moments, made public, and made universal, by the fact that we all have such moments, and all have such feelings, and thereby can all connect with Gutteridge's cornering of Southern Ontario with our own cornering of the places we have been, and have shaped us, and the cities or towns we call home, and the landmarks that we identify with.

Gutteridge not only carefully constructed his poem, but is not devoid of meaning, or style, and is not merely broken up philosophical rantings. He imbues style, sensitivity, and meaning into his work.

Judging by the date of this poem, I hope I have convinced you, or at least sewn doubt into you, to help you sway from your closed minded opinion.

[Leabhar]

The poem you posted makes sense and indeed has a certain kind of rhythm (though it is still a far cry from true free verse). But am I wrong that even this type of poetry is very rare in poetry today? The poet you posted seems to be pretty unknown.

[JBI]

To you. Very few poets are well known in their lifetimes. Some didn't even publish in their lifetimes.

This, in my opinion, is free verse, since I cannot discern a metrical pattern, or a accentual pattern within the verses.

This type of poetry isn't even very rare, it is actually a rather old convention relative to modern tastes.

Take this cutting from Marianne Bluger:

from The Treaties

Lady Simcoe to this hour
moves in grace among the savages
sheened in the glow of bonfires
set on the shore to fish salmon at night.
she watches them
from a high bluff.

When autumn comes she roams days long
under maples torched with fire
stepping lightly still
over leaf-lost trails
through a haze which is
the smoke of autumn mountains.

from New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books 25 (200)
originally published in Gathering Wild (1987)

The style here, of course, isn't the same, but the same pattern of bending the verse to the imagery is present. Of course, I cannot really dissect this poem without giving the whole piece, but for metrical purposes, we can see how the imagery forms the stanzas, a common convention of today's poets.

Free-verse allows for verse to bend more freely, and to be more shaped. It doesn't mean a lack of style, or form, it means a lack of rules governing how the style and form are constructed. Many poets today use conventional metres, or blend in conventional metres, or even write in closed forms, such as the extremely popular Villanelle, which seems to pop up everywhere these days.


Of course, your argument of these not being "popular" poets is valid to some extent, but that is perhaps because American academies are far louder than Canadian academies, or perhaps Canada has regional publications which don't really publish in too large numbers, or travel very far. Either way though, these poems were well known enough to be re-printed over a decade later, which shows someone, at least, is reading them.

Honestly though, if you want more stuff like this, or perhaps more stuff of this quality, just look for it. It is out there, you merely just need to pick up a nice anthology of contemporary verse (preferably nothing that contains "100 best" or something of the equivalent in its title, or is too thick) and flip through, looking for new poets. Common publishers seem to stick with clichés. Regional publishers take more chances. You will only find well known poets, or well known styles amongst well known publications.

[Leabhar]

These poems, while better than the majority, still read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm. This is evident when you read them, and then go read a poem by Frost or Yeats for example. Theirs reads easily, though it can be complex, and this poetry is just hard to read and hard to imagine. Poetry has lost something big.

[TheFifthElement]

The Bloodaxe Books collections Being Alive and Staying Alive are really excellent collections which nicely show off modern talent from around the globe. Details here:
http://www.amazon.com/Staying-Alive-Poems-Unreal-Times/dp/1401359264/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221760140&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Being-Alive-Neil-Astley/dp/1852246758/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221760117&sr=1-3

[TheFifthElement]

From the Long Sad Party

Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps until morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone was saying something about the moon shedding its white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more of the same.

Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.
We began to believe

the night would not end....

(excerpt)

Mark Strand (1978)

[TheFifthElement]

Poem

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night.
And slippered her the one time that she lied.

And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn't spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face....

...Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

Simon Armitage.

[stlukesguild]

stlukesguld - The poets you listed are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages.

JBI - That is an argument used by the practitioners of modern poetry, but does it hold up? I do read modern poetry, and most it has no rhythm, no theme, no invisible clockwork to speak of. These people are working on decades of poetry like theirs, they have no understanding of traditional poetry even if they evoke its name. They have no connection to tradition at all. Really, some of the poetry on this site even is better than popular poetry.

JBI... I somewhat question why you carry on the argument in the face of such a dismissal. Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai, etc... are all but mediocre poets at best? Of course only time will tell... but it must surely be quite a feat for such poets... in spite of the piddling scale of poetry in contrast to the whole of contemporary literature... to have pulled the wool over the eyes of so many critics and discerning readers. I actually question how much of any of these poets Leabhar has actually read... one or two works required in a survey of Modern and Contemporary Poetry? I ask this especially when one considers the surprise he/she expressed for existence of such formalized structure in the Gutteridge poem. Richard Wilbur, W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heany and Geoffrey Hill are all known for their abilities at composing very structured poetry... often utilizing very traditional poetic forms (sonnets, ballads, etc...). This ability, no doubt, has helped to make them some of the most respected translators of older poetry... which they somehow don't understand. Anne Carsen is a respected classical scholar fluent in Greek who has built poetry in dialog with classical Greek poetry. Richard Wilbur is one of the best living translators from French known not only for his ability to maintain both meter and rhyme in his translations of French lyrical poetry, but also as THE translator of Moliere. W.S. Merwin has uncovered and given new life in the English language to endless poets... especially many from Spain. Heany has produced one of the most respected translations of perhaps the poetic work signaling the birth of English poetry: Beowulf... a translation that clearly shows an understanding of the rugged language and the internal mechanisms of repetition and sound from which this work was constructed. And yet none of these poets has the least understanding of or connection with traditional poetry?! Are you an apt judge of the same? The majority of the greatest innovators and iconoclasts in the arts are those with the greatest understanding, respect... even love for the achievements of the past. They also realize that one doesn't show this respect or admiration by simply mimicking what has already been done. If any art form is to remain a living language it must speak to the present as well as the past... it must not merely copy, but build upon the past... even tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them... to bring them to the present new and afresh. Again... the broad statements and claims as to the formlessness and meaninglessness of contemporary poetry suggest either but a passing familiarity with the best that poetry currently has to offer or an inability to recognize form and meaning when it exists anywhere beyond the literature of the past where such form has already been well digested and analyzed for us, and absorbed into the culture as a whole.

[stlukesguild]

...We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

from More Light! More Light, Anthony Hecht
complete poem: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Anthony-Hecht/2345

No discernible form or meaning, eh?

Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning (The Spanish Square in Rome)

I can't forget
How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;

Nothing upon her face
But some impersonal loneliness,- not then a girl
But as it were a reverie of the place,
A called-for falling glide and whirl;

As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it,
Rides on over the lip-
Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.

Richard Wilbur
from: http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/kagaya_rinoa/aa/Piazza.di.Spagna,.Early.Morning.htm

[Leabhar]

And I question how much of anything you have read when you can't even form paragraphs so your post is readable. I think you should stop the insinuations.

[mayneverhave]

For some reason I find this thread hilarious

[Leabhar]

...We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

from More Light! More Light, Anthony Hecht
complete poem: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Anthony-Hecht/2345

No discernible form or meaning, eh?

Did I say these poets didn't have form or meaning? I don't think so, I said the poets you listed were mediocre compared with representative poets from the past. Btw, I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention.

[stlukesguild]

Listen to the fool's reproach! It is a kingly title.

-William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Simple enough for you?

[Leabhar]

Listen to the fool's reproach! It is a kingly title.

-William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Simple enough for you?

It is your problem you appropriated my post to JBI to yourself. You misunderstood me, that is your foolishness, not mine. I will be polite and reply to your straw man type post anyway later.

[JBI]

I assure you, in addition, that every major poet these days is quite capable, and knowledgeable of closed form work than of free-verse. Free-verse, as it is practiced by poets today, is far more difficult to write than Iambs. Even Shakespeare didn't adhere to strict metrics, and went under criticism from his contemporary Jonson for his revolutionary use of metre.

The question of whether or not there is a poet to equal Yeats or not in this generation is a difficult one. In English, I personally feel the best working poet now is Seamus Heaney, from what I have seen. I would say he rivals, in terms of development of style, the majority of canonical writers. As to whether or not he is as good as Yeats, I would say time can only tell.

But that is just in English, who is to say Adunis won't be held as the standard poet, or some other poet no one has yet heard of? For all we know, there is an Emily Dickinson writing today, who is too reserved to reveal her work, and may, one day, be dug up, and stagger the world. We cannot know.

From what I have seen, poetry is far from dead, and is quite enjoyable. Keep in mind that the canonical poets have been sifted from their contemporaries, and even they are not known for all their poems, but a handful, or a cycle of poems. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are not all "superb" and he has the odd boring one in there (relative to the rest of the stack). All we can do, is just wait for the superb work to cross our paths. They are still being written, people are not less creative today than they were in the past.


As for StLukes, were you addressing that to me? It seems to not be, but starts with JBI... so I am a bit confused.

[stlukesguild]

It is your problem you appropriated my post to JBI to yourself.

This is an open discussion forum. Your comments to JBI concerning modern poetry as a whole are open to discussion by anyone... but obviously I should have made it more clear that the opening sentence alone was directed solely toward him.

As for the rest of your declarations... Judgment is but one part of criticism. It is usually dependent upon the critic to present a degree of proof through example, interpretation, and analysis. When one makes a sweeping judgment such as to proclaim that the whole of Modern and Contemporary poetry is bad... or mediocre at best when compared to the poetry of the past such criticism seems to speak more of the abilities and inabilities of the critic than of that which is being criticized. This becomes even more obvious when all counter-arguments and proofs are but repeatedly rebuked or dismissed with more proclamations of the same. Simply stating that something is so enough times is not proof that it is true, even if in the end it results in wearing down one's opponents. Logical dialog assumes that both parties are open to logic.

We all have our personal tastes and preferences. There are artists, musicians, and writers whom I prefer to certain others in spite of the fact that I will openly acknowledge that they may not be on the same level. I personally prefer Kafka and Borges to James Joyce... in spite of the fact that I will freely admit that Joyce is quite probably the superior writer. Examples of some exemplary contemporary poetry (but just a minuscule portion of that which is out there) were put forth as proof that not all contemporary poetry is poor... or mediocre at best. Again... in an act of omnipotence... they have been swept aside as having little value... without any explanation. They don't read easily... they "read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm". Really? And Donne and Dickinson and Milton and Holderlin read so much more easily in comparison? And even if it were true, what has such ease to do with quality. The simplest ditties, as you term it... a nice dirty limerick... actually read far easier than many great poems.

But then you do offer some reason for your rejection of Anthony Hecht... "I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention." You personally dislike the use of this subject matter? Fair enough. But then it would seem that as a Jewish poet of his generation Hecht must certainly have been deeply affected by the Holocaust and (excuse me if I am wrong) Art is usually the product of that which most deeply concerns a given artist. So Victor Hugo should be equally taken to task for "capitalizing" on the Napoleonic Wars, and Yeats for responding to the violence in Ireland, and Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owens for responding to the horrific experiences of the First World War.

[Leabhar]

And yet none of these poets has the least understanding of or connection with traditional poetry?! Are you an apt judge of the same? The majority of the greatest innovators and iconoclasts in the arts are those with the greatest understanding, respect... even love for the achievements of the past. They also realize that one doesn't show this respect or admiration by simply mimicking what has already been done. If any art form is to remain a living language it must speak to the present as well as the past... it must not merely copy, but build upon the past... even tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them... to bring them to the present new and afresh. Again... the broad statements and claims as to the formlessness and meaninglessness of contemporary poetry suggest either but a passing familiarity with the best that poetry currently has to offer or an inability to recognize form and meaning when it exists anywhere beyond the literature of the past where such form has already been well digested and analyzed for us, and absorbed into the culture as a whole.

Modern poetry speaks to the present? How exactly? It has never been so distant, poetry has never had so few readers (in relation to the amount of people, I mean). Modern form has been digested and analyzed, too. It amazes me you equate not liking modern poetry with never having read it. What a bizarre insinuation. I don't like bananas either, but I've eaten them. Like I've been saying, the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry, putting aside forms and content for a moment, it is still mediocre. Btw, to "tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them" is called corruption.

The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it. And why not? Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say [a strange thing since modern English is such a simplified language] for so long you stop caring. The reason you stop caring is because the words themselves, even if they convey imagery, or even complexity, etc, don't have a lasting effect on the mind. Name one modern metered poem you can recite and remember like Kubla Khan or something? Modern poetry doesn't have the right language to go far enough in the mind. It simply fizzles and dies.




This is an open discussion forum. Your comments to JBI concerning modern poetry as a whole are open to discussion by anyone... but obviously I should have made it more clear that the opening sentence alone was directed solely toward him.

As for the rest of your declarations... Judgment is but one part of criticism. It is usually dependent upon the critic to present a degree of proof through example, interpretation, and analysis. When one makes a sweeping judgment such as to proclaim that the whole of Modern and Contemporary poetry is bad... or mediocre at best when compared to the poetry of the past such criticism seems to speak more of the abilities and inabilities of the critic than of that which is being criticized. This becomes even more obvious when all counter-arguments and proofs are but repeatedly rebuked or dismissed with more proclamations of the same. Simply stating that something is so enough times is not proof that it is true, even if in the end it results in wearing down one's opponents. Logical dialog assumes that both parties are open to logic.

Modern poetry is bad though, according to a lot of people, poets and readers alike. When one thinks even the most widely recognized and revered poets of the times are bad than you know something is wrong.


We all have our personal tastes and preferences. There are artists, musicians, and writers whom I prefer to certain others in spite of the fact that I will openly acknowledge that they may not be on the same level. I personally prefer Kafka and Borges to James Joyce... in spite of the fact that I will freely admit that Joyce is quite probably the superior writer. Examples of some exemplary contemporary poetry (but just a minuscule portion of that which is out there) were put forth as proof that not all contemporary poetry is poor... or mediocre at best. Again... in an act of omnipotence... they have been swept aside as having little value... without any explanation. They don't read easily... they "read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm". Really? And Donne and Dickinson and Milton and Holderlin read so much more easily in comparison? And even if it were true, what has such ease to do with quality. The simplest ditties, as you term it... a nice dirty limerick... actually read far easier than many great poems.

Actually, they read much more easily, because their poems last in the memory. They use vivid language. They use memorable words and sentences and strings of sentences, which is what poetry is. When your poetry doesn't even conform to grammar, or is written like prose, how is someone supposed to remember it long enough for them to form a favorable opinion? That was one of the main points of meter and rhyme. When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo. Really, take the most famous Heaney poem and the most famous Donne, what is more easily remembered and easier to recite? Even though Donne's are more complex and written in old language, they are more memorable. Using Heaney as an example, one can even describe his use of language in his poems as sort of stagnant and simple. Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language.


But then you do offer some reason for your rejection of Anthony Hecht... "I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention." You personally dislike the use of this subject matter? Fair enough. But then it would seem that as a Jewish poet of his generation Hecht must certainly have been deeply affected by the Holocaust and (excuse me if I am wrong) Art is usually the product of that which most deeply concerns a given artist. So Victor Hugo should be equally taken to task for "capitalizing" on the Napoleonic Wars, and Yeats for responding to the violence in Ireland, and Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owens for responding to the horrific experiences of the First World War.

There never were as many people using the emotions of the Napoleonic Wars or the violence in Ireland or anything quite as much as the holocaust is capitalized on. Countless films, novels, poems, etc. It is kind of sick. The holocaust garners and immediate emotional knee jerk response.

[JBI]

Metrics have nothing to do with the memory in the sense that you use it. Many parts of Crane's Bridge are metrically perfect, but good luck memorizing them, or understanding them. "All free verse is bad" is the silliest argument I have ever heard. Free-Verse as it came to English, is far older than metric verse. It stems from biblical metaphor, and was used continuously through the Bible. It came back to English through Whitman, who borrowed its sense of simple to metaphor pattern, which helps to keep the idea in memory.

Donne is hardly, also, a poet who should be held up for metric perfection; he was well known for jerking his metre around, and throwing out random trochaic patterns. Take his "Song" which starts "Go and Catch a falling Star" as example. The poem blends Trochees and Iambs into an inconsistent pattern.

Have you ever scanned free verse? have you ever read contemporary poetry? Tell me some of the poets and poems you have read, and maybe I will be able to understand your association with contemporary and bad. As it is, you seem like someone who talks without knowing.

You would also note, that poets like Elizabeth Bishop are far more metrically perfect than almost any example you can really bring up. Every word of every line in Bishop's published poems was carefully chosen for both meaning and sound, sometimes taking her months of revision for one poem.

On topic more however, you still haven't acknowledged the poets writing today who use metre and closed form. What do you have to say to them? From what I have read, the New Formalism school, which seemed to hold your views on poetry, died out because they realized it was boring.

And just so you note, poetry has never been a "popular genre". Lord Byron and perhaps Tennyson are the best examples of "popular poetry", yet how many people read Emily Dickinson in her life time - trick question, the answer is less than 20, and none of them more than a handful of her poems.

[Dark Muse]

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

In some ways I see where you are coming from. There is a large chunk of contemporary poetry that I really have no stomach for. Though I am glad that poetry has become more "free" and is not as rigid as it once be, and allows for a greater freedom of thought and expression. On the other hand there are many contemporary poems that really do come off as just sounding like diary entries with line breaks. And a lot of it does sound like gibberish nonsense, and just a random collection of words and images that just sound cool if you put them together.

Typically most of my own poetry though is what is considered free verse because it is not rhymed and does not follow a particular structure, tends to reflect more the romantics than contemporary.

But their are some contemporary poets whom I really do enjoy, and with my own writing I have been known when the feeling struck me, to do some really very experimental type of stuff.

So a portion of it, does make me groan, and I do think is garbage, I think there is still value within it as well.

[mortalterror]

Surprise, surprise, I'm siding with Leabhar on this one. I also felt that JBI's earlier examples were weak and if he weren't on some hobbyhorse about the cultural superiority of Toronto, that city on a hill, that Athens of North America, crown jewel of western poesy and cultural gateway to the world he would have used Czeslaw Milosz or Derek Walcott instead of the poets he did pick.

In addition, StLuke has a nasty habit of insulting the intelligence of people he disagrees with. Leabhar doesn't sound foolish to me at all, and neither do JBI, or StLuke. You all make good points, whether your opponents choose to admit them or not.

Modern poetry isn't my specialty but as a person who just a few hours ago was reading Keat's Endymion and Hyperion, those verses looked like dogmeat. Try again. Every age has got somebody. I'm not sure who is on top right now, but I'm sure that poetry was alive and breathing at least as late as the sixties and seventies with people like Akhmatova, Neruda, and Auden.

P.S. Billy Collins wrote a nice poem on a related subject in 1991 called The Death of Allegory, which I quite admire. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=26904

[Leabhar]

Metrics have nothing to do with the memory in the sense that you use it. Many parts of Crane's Bridge are metrically perfect, but good luck memorizing them, or understanding them. "All free verse is bad" is the silliest argument I have ever heard. Free-Verse as it came to English, is far older than metric verse. It stems from biblical metaphor, and was used continuously through the Bible. It came back to English through Whitman, who borrowed its sense of simple to metaphor pattern, which helps to keep the idea in memory.

I didn't even say metrics were easier to memorize, I said poetry with a memorable voice and vivid language was memorable, but that rhymed meter was even more memorable. I never said "all free verse is bad", where did you get that from? You are putting words in my mouth.


Donne is hardly, also, a poet who should be held up for metric perfection; he was well known for jerking his metre around, and throwing out random trochaic patterns. Take his "Song" which starts "Go and Catch a falling Star" as example. The poem blends Trochees and Iambs into an inconsistent pattern.

Donne had a very poetic language though, which is why his poems are memorable to me. Anyway, jerking meter around is still meter, it is just abrupt sounding.



Have you ever scanned free verse? have you ever read contemporary poetry? Tell me some of the poets and poems you have read, and maybe I will be able to understand your association with contemporary and bad. As it is, you seem like someone who talks without knowing.

You're trying to brush my criticism off. Though I've read plenty contemporary poetry, some of the poets stlukesguild has posted. Heaney and Wilbur were my favorite of them but I still don't much like them. The most "modern" of the poets I actually like are Auden and Frost. I'm not randomly making a thread about how bad modern poetry is without even having read it. I've read modern poetry, and I dislike it. Why can't you take that at face value? Its almost as if someone is insulting your religion and you are insinuating they don't understand it. We all have access to the same content.


You would also note, that poets like Elizabeth Bishop are far more metrically perfect than almost any example you can really bring up. Every word of every line in Bishop's published poems was carefully chosen for both meaning and sound, sometimes taking her months of revision for one poem.

I'm well aware of Bishops meticulous nature, and her poetry is alright, but not good, and no where near ideal.


On topic more however, you still haven't acknowledged the poets writing today who use metre and closed form. What do you have to say to them? From what I have read, the New Formalism school, which seemed to hold your views on poetry, died out because they realized it was boring.

They are a pretty small group, correct? Anyway, I acknowledged that in the post you quoted. I'll repeat myself:

"When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo."

I'll expand on that. When people use meters today, and use modern speech, it doesn't sound right. There is no poetic language anymore. And then you have the convoluted language of modern free verse which relies on imagery, abruptness, strange grammar, etc, to feel poetic and mysterious because it has lost that former language. This is why modern poetry seems bland and tasteless to me. In fact it sounds a lot like babbling. I liken the decline of poetry with the decline of language. The root of poetry and all literature is in language, and any historian of English or any linguist will tell you, or even a discerning reader, English is declining and becoming simpler. It could be because of its widespread use in the world, or because of mass media, who knows? But the result is the same.


And just so you note, poetry has never been a "popular genre". Lord Byron and perhaps Tennyson are the best examples of "popular poetry", yet how many people read Emily Dickinson in her life time - trick question, the answer is less than 20, and none of them more than a handful of her poems.

Popular poetry, as in popular to people who read poetry is what I meant.

[Leabhar]

Dark Muse - True, free verse can be a freeing sort of thing, but modern poetry likes to abuse it. By the way, I like your poetry.

mortalterror - Thanks, good to know other people on the forum agree with me on this.

[JBI]

Honestly, you sound like some classicist yelling that vernacular is not suitable for verse, and everyone should be writing in Latin.

Your point on modern poetry, as you called it, listed names already established. You would note, that In Harmonium, Stevens's first volume was virtually unrecognized in its initial publication, but is, I would argue, the most influential volume on today's American verse. I have mentioned before, that you need to look for smaller publishing names, and lesser known poets, since those are who truly matter at this point. Poets don't become famous over night, and rarely become famous at all in their life times.

As for Mortalterror, a) you aren't Canadian, so wouldn't know anything about the poetic scene here. Though the same can be returned to me, I would argue American publishers have made the American scene more apparent to Canadians than even to some Americans. b) I gave these examples to avoid clichés, and as metric examples, not as "perfect" poems, as neither of them are, and both are incomplete in the form given to you. c) It is unfair to dismiss all poetry today as mediocre philosophical ramblings, as clearly they are not, as shown in the countless examples.

In total there are about 50 or so Canonical poets in English, that is, poets who are known for more than one or a handful of poems, and who are studied beyond a few works. Some would argue more poets than 50, some less, but I am thinking 50 is an honest number, if we set the cutoff at around 1970. English verse has been written since the 14th century, but for argument's sake, lets say 1500. That's 500 years, and 50 names, so lets say 10 a century, give or take. It is quite clear to anyone who cares to look, that there must have been bad poets who were published in those years. And of course, the factor of population is brought in, bringing us to a pyramid type shape, where more and more poets of skill appear at certain times. But lets say, that our century will be taking, I don't know, 30-40 or so of its own English poets. That leaves about 10s of thousands of people writing today out of luck.

The volumes of poetry one receives have been edited by many hands, and have been sifted, and sifted over generations. The volumes of contemporary verse someone buys today, have not had the same luxury. Clearly you are more likely to run into bad verse when going through contemporary verse, because bad verses from back in the 16th century or whatever have, for the most part, almost vanished from print. That doesn't mean that all contemporary verse is bad; far from it. IT simply means that the bad ones have not yet been taken out, and you must proceed with caution or with doubt. Fine. That does not mean one can dismiss unsifted poetry as bad, Lyrical Ballads was dismissed for the most part on first publication, yet proved to be one of the most important volumes of English verse in history.

In addition to this though, Emily Dickinson herself was largely ignored on first publication, yet she seems to me at least the best poetry of the American tradition, and perhaps a top contender for the best poet in the language.

To dismiss everything that is current is not only wrong, but also harmful. Say you do not care for certain poets, and state why, don't say "All contemporary verse is rambling nonsense. It is far from it.

[stlukesguild]

Modern poetry speaks to the present? How exactly?

At a risk of achieving nothing more than speaking into the wind I will still attempt to address your postings... not so much out of any misguided belief that I might be able to change your mind... one must be open to change for change to happen... but rather because poetry in general... and poetry as a still-living art form is something I am quite passionate about.

Contemporary poetry/contemporary art speaks to/of the present by building upon the past... not by seeking to merely preserve and recreate. That is the art of the mortician or the embalmer... not the living art of the artist. Artists build upon the past... but they also draw inspiration from the present. They use new forms, new words and draw from sources that are not yet accepted as worthy of "high art". The metaphors employed by Donne were often disconcerting... unexpected... even shocking. The theater of Shakespeare's day was as well-respected as television today. certainly there are times in which an artist employs archaic languages and forms... but they are acknowledged as such. The poets of today attempt to unveil a musicality... a visionary intensity... as it exists in the language that they have inherited: the spoken language of the present as well as the language of all that has preceded them.

It has never been so distant, poetry has never had so few readers (in relation to the amount of people, I mean).

That is absolute nonsense that shows a complete lack of knowledge of the history of poetry... one of the short-comings that you attributed to most poets of today. The latest volume by one of the more popular serious contemporary poets may only sell 5000 or 10,000 copies. An absolute pittance when measured against the sales of a popular novelist... but we are living in a time when quite admittedly... in the English-language-speaking world at least... prose and the novel reign supreme. Still I might ask how many readers did William Blake have during his life time? or Thomas Traherne? or Friederich Hölderlin? or Emily Dickinson? or Hart Crane? or San Juan de la Cruz? or Novalis? or even Dante, Virgil, Petrarch, and Ovid? The percentage of the population that was at all literate was far less than that of today, and without access to printed copies of books through the movable type the writings of Dante etc... were reserved to but a wealthy or scholarly few.

Modern form has been digested and analyzed, too.

Yes... it has been analyzed by critics and scholars, but it most certainly has not been absorbed or digested by the larger culture that appreciates art. Using the field of the visual arts we can see that Impressionism, that once disturbed, disconcerted, and shocked the art audience has been absorbed to the point where we can no longer even really grasp what was so shocking. It is so accepted that it has grown to the most popular art style. Picasso and Matisse on on their way to an equal absorption... but they still disturb a large portion of the art audience who cannot accept what they achieved. Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism are far from attaining anything that approaches the acceptance of Impressionism. The same holds true of literature. The innovations of Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Borges, Wallace Stephens, Hart Crane etc... are far from being absorbed.

It amazes me you equate not liking modern poetry with never having read it. What a bizarre insinuation. I don't like bananas either, but I've eaten them. Like I've been saying, the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry, putting aside forms and content for a moment, it is still mediocre.

Again... your argument is but a rant without any proofs. You continue to make blanket statements as to supposed mediocrity of the best of today's poetry without offering any examples. Your argument, if it can be termed as such, comes down essentially to "Ah! the good old days! They just don't write 'em like that anymore.":rolleyes:

to "tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them" is called corruption.

No. It is called change or innovation. You seem to have a concept that there is some perfect ideal of what poetry was in the past. You even speak of this "ideal" several times. Poetry of the past itself is incredibly broad. We are speaking of everything from Gilgamesh and Homer through Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and Blake and Tennyson and Yeats... not to forget Ferdowsi, Tu Fu, Yehuda Halevi, Hafez, etc... Poetry of the last several millenia represents an endless array of forms and structures and themes and means of expression. Who, among this poetic world, do you imagine represents THE ideal that all others must be measured by? And you want us to believe that all of this music... all of this poetry... has come to an end because the poets of the 20th and 21st centuries have had the audacity to think that they might also add their own innovations to this body of work?

The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it.

Yes... this is most certainly one of the most common criticisms of contemporary poetry, literature in general, music, and art... made by those with very little education or understanding. It is also a criticism that is so broad that it is meaningless. I can easily find any number of Modern/Contemporary poets for whom the opposite criticism may be far more apt: their work is too intellectual... too complex... too hermetic or esoteric. I might note that a good portion of the art-loving public has always had the greatest difficulty in understanding or appreciating contemporary contributions to the arts. The great orchestras fill their seasons with performances of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin... nothing wrong with that... but they rarely present new work. Why? Because it is not as good? That is far too easy of an answer. Rather it is because it is far more demanding of the audience. New work challenges our ideas about art. It demands a far greater effort than most older art... not in that older work is less complex or difficult... but rather its innovations have been absorbed over time and over time the critics, historians, art-loving public and later artists have filtered out the weaker works so that only the strongest work survives.

Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say [a strange thing since modern English is such a simplified language] for so long you stop caring.

Is it at all possible for you to put any more absurd statements within a single sentence. Again... these are nothing but sweeping statements that are impossible to really challenge because they essentially place your personal opinion as the final arbiter of taste and aesthetic worth.

The reason you stop caring is because the words themselves, even if they convey imagery, or even complexity, etc, don't have a lasting effect on the mind. Name one modern metered poem you can recite and remember like Kubla Khan or something? Modern poetry doesn't have the right language to go far enough in the mind. It simply fizzles and dies.

It really has been a long time since I have made a conscious effort to memorize/recite poetry, which is something I ought to return to. I don't doubt that there are those here who most certainly hold any number of Modern/Contemporary poems in their memory (JBI?). In spite of this... there are certainly any number of Modern/Contemporary poems are locked within my mind and held as dear as any number of novels, stories, symphonies, concertos, paintings, or other works. There are numerous poems by Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Dylan Thomas, Neruda, Theodore Roethke, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, etc... that I have turned to again and again... that echo in my memory.

Actually, they (older poems) read much more easily, because their poems last in the memory. They use vivid language. They use memorable words and sentences and strings of sentences, which is what poetry is.

Again, I am glad we have you here to inform the rest of us illiterates just what poetry is and what memorable words, sentences, and strings of sentences are, for it is obvious we have been lost without you.:rolleyes::brow::nod:

When your poetry doesn't even conform to grammar, or is written like prose, how is someone supposed to remember it long enough for them to form a favorable opinion? That was one of the main points of meter and rhyme.

Is that so? Then of what use is meter and rhyme to Dante's Comedia or Milton's Paradise Lost which we most certainly are not about to be able to memorize. Arguments for and against standard meter and rhyme go back to the Renaissance... and earlier and I doubt that any one's opinion... not even the Pope's... is going to be held as "infallible" any time soon.

When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo. Really, take the most famous Heaney poem and the most famous Donne, what is more easily remembered and easier to recite? Even though Donne's are more complex and written in old language, they are more memorable. Using Heaney as an example, one can even describe his use of language in his poems as sort of stagnant and simple. Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language.

Again... you make these blanket statements without offering the least shred of proof. Why not take what you feel to be one of Heany's strongest poems and show us just what is so weak about it in comparison to Donne or another older poet?

There never were as many people using the emotions of the Napoleonic Wars or the violence in Ireland or anything quite as much as the holocaust is capitalized on. Countless films, novels, poems, etc. It is kind of sick. The holocaust garners and immediate emotional knee jerk response.


So let me understand this... because many artists have dealt with the Holocaust... certainly one of the most defining and horrific events of recent history... of all history... that immediately makes all Holocaust-related art but a shallow means of capitalizing on our knee-jerk reaction to the subject? So that means that subjects as cliché as love, nudes and landscapes (in painting), etc... are a guarantee of artistic banality regardless of the individual art?

[Dark Muse]

Dark Muse - True, free verse can be a freeing sort of thing, but modern poetry likes to abuse it. By the way, I like your poetry.

Thank you, and I do agree that it does get abused in some ways. I do not agree with all examples of contempary poetry

[JBI]

You'd be surprised, on the subject of war as a subject. Of course, the Holocaust/ww2 at this moment seems the most horrific thing in human history and, arguably, it may be. And I will agree, the Holocaust in particular makes me a little queasy. But that doesn't make it a less important subject.

The French revolution in particular seems the backdrop of the romantic movement. Countless poets write about it, and even more, countless poets wrote, and write about industry, and war, and such.

Historically, poetry seems to be greatly, to an almost unthinkable extent, influenced by Sidney's Defense of Poesy, which preaches the poet shows the "golden world." in direct reaction to the platonic idea of poets as liars. In truth, this sort of narrowed the field of convention until Wordsworth, I would say, but even then, we get dark and passionate statements.

After Wordsworth, we seem to move into a wider range of possibilities with poetry. If you flipped through books of 19th American century poetry, I wouldn't doubt you would find countless volumes of civil war poetry, not to mention 1812 poetry, and Mexican war poetry. These have, of course, been sifted, as people simply don't care as much now, and nationalistic ideals in verse seem to be less important to contemporary audiences.

In truth, almost every major event in history has had its poets as commentators. The western verse tradition, in the way we see it, stems from the Trojan War! just think on that. The source of Western Poetry is a war. I think H.D. perhaps has the best criticism on this, with her long poems comparing her situation in air-raided England to that of gated-off Troy, awaiting destruction. The link is there, it isn't a new subject, it is just an event which we see as more revolting, because we are closer to it (and perhaps its industrial elements, and industrial modes of killing make us even sicker).

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I agree that the distance has made the Napoleonic Wars and even the First World War far more palatable. There are still Holocaust survivors... and their Nazi tormentors... living. It is also incredibly disturbing even in comparison with the Soviet Stalinist purges and the genocides of Mao because it was undertaken by a modern, industrial, educated Western nation. people who also gave us Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Rilke, Durer, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, etc... The Holocaust challenges every notion of educated, cultured humanity. It laughs in the face of the notion that mankind is essentially good... the measure of all things. It spits in the face of the idea of a covenant... of divine retribution. Anything that man CAN do he WILL do. It also presents a nagging doubt... "could it happen here?" We can easily dismiss the genocides of the Napoleonic Wars as events from another time and place... far less sophisticated and humane than ouselves. We can even ignore the events of Maoist China as but representative of a pre-industrialized, poorly educated non-Western, Godless nation. But the Holocaust showed the world just the sort of evil that can grow in our own back yard.

[JBI]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, but the question remains will these things be shocking to later audiences? I feel detached from most history, and I think a detachment from even World War 2 seems to already be beginning. In terms of topic, the general emotion of WW2 will probably transcend into any other generation, allowing the poetry to be quite effective (I think, in this case, of Thomas Hardy's Drummer Hodge, which is quite the freighting poem).

I think really, in truth, the thing with the Holocaust was that people realize, if this is how bad it was this time, the next time will be too destructive for the world to handle. There is then, this movement to tell, and educate, brought about by the lowering of nationalistic feuds, and higher literacy rates.

One could take, for instance, the Pavel Friedmann's I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a fantastic, yet gut wrenching poem, for example, and say that this, if anything, will transcend into the next generation. Yet of his contemporaries, I doubt all will transcend the way this poem does.

As time passes, we will become more detached, and forget the bulk of the world war 2/Holocaust poems. The good ones will remain, and the historically significant ones will be remembered, but even of World War 1 verse, we already can see Owen as coming out as the most enduring, while others seem to be already forgotten. There was far more verse written and preserved in that time period than is known to the public - time detaches the population from events, no matter how catastrophic. It's a fact of life.

That being said, that does not mean such poems cannot be good, far from it. It simply means that these sorts of events attract a lot of poets, and like all poets, only a few of them are good poets, and fewer great poets. The Holocaust/ww2 itself is not an improper subject for poetry, as I was trying to point out, but rather one of many subjects, that seems to be one of the most popular amongst the generation right after.

[stlukesguild]

Surprise, surprise, I'm siding with Leabhar on this one.


Yes... no surprise here. You always take the opposing view if only to perpetuate the illusion of your rebel status.:D

In addition, StLuke has a nasty habit of insulting the intelligence of people he disagrees with.

Making sweeping statements as to the mediocrity or down-right badness of the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry... without offering the least examples by way of proof... makes it almost impossible not to question one's critical acumen.

Leabhar doesn't sound foolish to me at all, and neither do JBI, or StLuke. You all make good points, whether your opponents choose to admit them or not.

Again... sweeping statements about the complete lack of poetic merit or aesthetic worth of Modern/Contemporary poetry, use of such tired clichés as "The Emperor's New Clothes" or "even a child of 5 could do it", and declarations that the poetic contributions by members of LitNet easily outshine the best examples of Contemporary poetry are all comments that can only undermine how seriously one can be taken. You may prefer Hemingway to Proust, and I the reverse... but I would never be so close-minded as to suggest that Hemingway or the whole of Modern American prose is without merit simply because it is not to my personal liking. I have no problem with admitting that there are endless mediocre and bad poets out there... and many being published and receiving accolades (Maya Angelou?) Neither do I have a problem with the notion that certain times, places, cultures have achieved more of real aesthetic worth than others. Personally... from what I have been exposed to I have no illusion that poetry today... at least in the English-speaking world... can match the achievements of poetry in the English-speaking world during the first decades of the 20th century: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Frost, Crane, etc... On the other hand... there is a world of poetry out there little of which has been translated... or translated well. There are also poets such as Milosz, Heaney, Rilke, Montale, Wilbur, Hecht, Pasternak, etc... whose work is most certainly of real merit. Which will stand the test of time... only time can tell.

[Virgil]

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

I haven't read the entire thread, but while I think you're over reacting, I do agree that there is this strain of contemporary poetry is crap and yet considered worthy. Check out crap like this by such a well known poet:


BEER
from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell
by Charles Bukowski

I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can **** me!"

the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.

while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horney cowboys.
...[Snip]http://www.charlesbukowski.20m.com/bukowski_poems.html

Frankly this is crap.

[Virgil]

In truth though, I personally think the influence of Wallace Stevens is the most powerful thing holding back American verse today, as his works seem to be echoing behind almost all American poets after he became popular.

In truth, one must look elsewhere - good poetry is always out there.


What? Wallace Stevens is a great poet. He's the premier American poet of the 20th century. That's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't have influenced anyone. But frankly which poets are so influenced by Stevens? I don't see who is emulating Stevens, exept perhaps A.R. Ammons.

[JBI]

I don't think, though, that many academics, or major poetry readers take Bukowski seriously. I find him a complete joke, I must confess, though I was shocked to see a volume of his collected works in an Italian book store in translation when I was over there. It was greatly upsetting, to say the least.

[Virgil]

I don't think, though, that many academics, or major poetry readers take Bukowski seriously. I find him a complete joke, I must confess, though I was shocked to see a volume of his collected works in an Italian book store in translation when I was over there. It was greatly upsetting, to say the least.

Well, he's not in academics because he's very contemporary. But unfortunately he's got a real consituency and I think it is influential enough that one day he will be discussed in classrooms. :( :(

[JBI]

What? Wallace Stevens is a great poet. He's the premier American poet of the 20th century. That's like saying Shakespeare shouldn't have influenced anyone. But frankly which poets are so influenced by Stevens? I don't see who is emulating emulating Stevens, exept perhaps A.R. Ammons.
That's not what I am saying. I am saying his voice is too powerful, to the point that everyone seems to be talking in a similar voice to his. Of course, no one metrically is as close to Stevens as perhaps the names you mentioned, but in terms of metaphor, his concepts are the most apparent. He, in my opinion, created the modern concept of metaphor in American poetry, and seems more influential than even Eliot, or Frost.

Wallace Stevens is a supreme poet, one of the top 5 or so from America, I would wager (in my opinion of course). But like all great poets, he seems to have set the creativity bar too high for most of the people that followed.

Poets learn to write poetry well by reading good poetry. Certain things stick into the poets head like metre, or concept of metaphor, or anything else you can think of. I am just of the mind that Stevens's work has entrenched itself in the mind of almost every subsequent American poet, to the point where he can be heard, breaking through, in almost all their works.

Another poet who seems to do this is William Carlos Williams, whose stylistic developments, in addition to metaphorical elements seem to have become commonplace conventions. He too can be heard in the works of many contemporary American poets, though I feel less assuredly than Stevens.

What I meant by him holding everything back is that his influence is making too much of the poetry too similar, and poetry needs to be innovative, in the sense that it surprises new readers. There are those who seem to have innovated out of him, one that comes to mind first is Rita Dove, who I find is an undervalued poet on these boards, yet even so, the bulk of poets in America writing today seem to sound Stevensian to me.

[Virgil]

That's not what I am saying. I am saying his voice is too powerful, to the point that everyone seems to be talking in a similar voice to his. Of course, no one metrically is as close to Stevens as perhaps the names you mentioned, but in terms of metaphor, his concepts are the most apparent. He, in my opinion, created the modern concept of metaphor in American poetry, and seems more influential than even Eliot, or Frost.

Wallace Stevens in a supreme poet, one of the top 5 or so from America, I would wager (in my opinion of course). But like all great poets, he seems to have set the creativity bar too high for most of the people that followed.

Poets learn to write poetry well by reading good poetry. Certain things stick into the poets head like metre, or concept of metaphor, or anything else you can think of. I am just of the mind that Stevens's work has entrenched itself in the mind of almost every subsequent American poet, to the point where he can be heard, breaking through, in almost all their works.

Another poet who seems to do this is William Carlos Williams, whose stylistic developments, in addition to metaphorical elements seem to have become commonplace conventions. He too can be heard in the works of many contemporary American poets, though I feel less assuredly than Stevens.

What I meant by him holding everything back is that his influence is making too much of the poetry too similar, and poetry needs to be innovative, in the sense that it surprises new readers. There are those who seem to have innovated out of him, one that comes to mind first is Rita Dove, who I find is an undervalued poet on these boards, yet even so, the bulk of poets in America writing today seem to sound Stevensian to me.

You make a lot of sense JBI. I do think that modern American poetry stems from either Stevens or Williams. There seems to be two branches. This is roughly speaking of course.

[Petrarch's Love]

Leabhar--I agree with you and Mortal that much of modern poetry is pretty bad. I know exactly the sort of stuff you are referring to when you talk about formless assortments of images strung together, or the sort of "snapped prose" St. Luke's was referring to in an earlier post. I readily concede that a lot of modern "verse" I've read is a disappointing waste of time. I cannot, however agree that there is no modern verse that is not good, even great. Nor can I agree with your claims that we simply live in an age when language is on the decline.

I do think that part of the problem with your debating style is that you tend to make some very broad statements, which does hurt the strength of your argument. Generalities about modern language not being as strong as the language of the past aren't really helping your case, and are giving the impression that you are simply averse to any modern poetry at all because it doesn't measure up to the past (note that I'm not saying this is what you think, just that this is what I took away from most of your comments).

More important, however, than a matter of resting on some quite general statements to build your argument (which is a common weakness in debate form and something most members of this forum have been guilty of at one time or another) is the way you seem to be invested in saying that the poetry of the past is all better than the poetry of the present. I don't object to you disliking some of the modern poets you've read, but to the way you are conceptualizing the present as contrasted with the past. You've been making statements like these:


Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say [a strange thing since modern English is such a simplified language] for so long you stop caring.


When people use meters today, and use modern speech, it doesn't sound right. There is no poetic language anymore. And then you have the convoluted language of modern free verse which relies on imagery, abruptness, strange grammar, etc, to feel poetic and mysterious because it has lost that former language. This is why modern poetry seems bland and tasteless to me. In fact it sounds a lot like babbling. I liken the decline of poetry with the decline of language. The root of poetry and all literature is in language, and any historian of English or any linguist will tell you, or even a discerning reader, English is declining and becoming simpler. It could be because of its widespread use in the world, or because of mass media, who knows? But the result is the same.

I have to say that I had the same thought JBI did, which is that this sounds remarkably like a lot of anti-vernacular sentiment expressed around the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance when Latin was considered the only language worthy of writing serious verse in. I get the sense that you are an intelligent and well read person, but I suspect that you haven't ever had the experience of thoroughly steeping yourself in all the poetry (good, bad, and indifferent) of another age. I say this because, once you've started digging in beyond the great poets of the past, you discover the enormous weight of of lousy verse produced in the same age that produced Shakespeare, or Keats (or even by Keats, as Mortal pointed out in a part of his post that did not seem to agree with your stance). It gives you an appreciation for how people living in those times were routinely confronted with just as much drivel as we are today, and blah sonnets are just as bad as blah free verse. If you read people from the past commenting on the poetry of their own age, you'll also find an astounding number of people writing things much like what you've posted here about the poetry of, say, Renaissance England (an age I personally have spent a lot of time in, and that I can fully attest produced more flimsy ditties than Faerie Queenes :p). To be fair, poetic production is not perfectly uniform, and some periods are more or less outstanding than others. My guess would be that poetry of the last twenty years or so is not going to be remembered as an outstandingly great period of poetic production, perhaps as a rather slow period. However, the more variety of poetry you read across history, the more difficult it becomes to feel that either greatness or mediocrity are confined to a particular age.

I personally used to have an almost identical stance on modern poetry to yours, and it was a tremendously great gift when, somewhere along the line, I began reading more broadly and with a more open mind, both in terms of being open to reading the mediocre as well as the great poetry of the past, and in terms of being open to reading a variety of works from recent years. Yes, this approach means wading through a lot of cr:sick:p, but it also leads to some really wonderful discoveries and a much richer understanding of the way both poetry and the poetic tradition work. Best of all, however, is the appreciation you can develop for just how much the great poetry of past ages emerged from a culture and a language that looked as hopeless to their contemporaries as ours does to us, and an appreciation for the potential of our own age. It is truly a wonderful thing to discover that the greatness of the past is within our own reach.

[Petrarch's Love]

Was away from the computer for a spell before posting the above and missed that the conversation turned to Bukowski. Now if Leabhar's claim was that writers like Bukowski are annoyingly wreched poets, then I think there would be little room for debate! I've got to confess that my stomach turned a bit a few weeks back when I found an entire shelf of Bukowski and not one volume of the Browning I was looking for at my local Barnes and Noble. (See how much more successful specifics are than generalities :D).


Well, he's not in academics because he's very contemporary. But unfortunately he's got a real consituency and I think it is influential enough that one day he will be discussed in classrooms.

Not in my classroom, Virg. And I'll be surprised if he actually has enormous staying power with other academics. I know some people whose narrow specialty is the poetry of the last twenty years, and they're none to keen on his stuff despite being into some less than genius poets. I'm guessing he'll fade neatly into the obscurity he is destined for, but I guess we'll see.

[Virgil]

Was away from the computer for a spell before posting the above and missed that the conversation turned to Bukowski. Now if Leabhar's claim was that writers like Bukowski are annoyingly wreched poets, then I think there would be little room for debate! I've got to confess that my stomach turned a bit a few weeks back when I found an entire shelf of Bukowski and not one volume of the Browning I was looking for at my local Barnes and Noble. (See how much more successful specifics are than generalities :D).


Not in my classroom, Virg. And I'll be surprised if he actually has enormous staying power with other academics. I know some people whose narrow specialty is the poetry of the last twenty years, and they're none to keen on his stuff despite being into some less than genius poets. I'm guessing he'll fade neatly into the obscurity he is destined for, but I guess we'll see.

Petrarch I'm afraid you will be shocked. Certainly he will not be considered a premier poet but I suspect he's got some staying power. He's got a point of view and a voice that resonates with many of the younger generation of poets. Ultimately he is crap as a poet, but themes and cultural identification will carry him into anthologies and sympathetic professors. Now in a hundred years he will be forgotten but it may take that long.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... once again I will state that you have seemingly missed your calling. Diplomacy rather than poetry certainly seems to be your metiér.:)

[mortalterror]

(or even by Keats, as Mortal pointed out in a part of his post that did not seem to agree with your stance).

You know, I saw that sentence you refer to and was thinking of rewriting it for clarity, but I didn't. My mistake. I was actually comparing Endymion to some of the free verse JBI put up on page 1. Compared to Hyperion and Endymion they are not good poetry. I am not altogether satisfied with Keats, as you well know from our previous discussions. For every good thing about him there are five things he does which annoy me, but just look at his opening:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darken’d ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

That's the good stuff, right there. Yet, it's not an effective opening in and of itself and it leaves the reader wondering what his epic is actually going to be about. It doesn't start in medias res. It doesn't start at the beginning. It doesn't start at all. There's no invocation, no statement of purpose, no conflict, no characters. This poem could be about anything. Little things like that bother me, but I would never call Keats writing dogmeat. It's unfocused, light hearted, sentimental maybe, but never simply lousy as the work of inferior poets can be.

Also, I did not mean to imply that I concur with the OP in all respects. I do not think we are living in an inferior age, and I understand that particular conceit dates from as early a time as fifth century Athens if not before. From what I've read of his comments, I'm not sure that's even what he was saying. Furthermore, I don't think people have stopped writing like Auden, Frost, or Housman. I don't think that kind of writing ever goes fully out of favor or practice. I just don't think that the spotlight is on it at the moment. People like JBI, and StLuke are having their day in the sun, when people with their types of opinions are prominent and authors like Whitman, Stevens, Roethke, and Crane are all major figures. The ones I like are a little more neglected than they used to be, but the wheel will come round, and one day we'll be on top again. I just don't care for certain fads which to hear them tell it are the entirety of contemporary poetry. If that's how you define "all of serious contemporary poetry", that Stevens based fragmentary, non-linear, obscure, stream of conscious stuff, then I understand why someone would say that most of it sucks.

It's a little like saying techno is the newest most experimental type of music and all major musicians of our age should be working in techno, and if you don't like techno "Good luck to you. You're an idiot." The type of "modern poetry" we are discussing, as I understand it is one arm of a rather large body of literature at the moment. If you don't care for it, there are options. But most music and literature is poor in quality whatever direction your tastes may run to.

I think that's part of the problem with our education. We only teach the major writers of an era, because we only have so much time, and if you read five or twenty different writers you're almost an authority on the period. It contributes to the illusion that major writers are only influenced by other major writers. But that is a topic for another thread.

[Petrarch's Love]

Well, I'm glad to hear you say it, Mortal. I personally am a die hard Keats devotee, and must confess I skimmed your post and thought you were referring to some of his much lesser works . Had I noticed Endymion thrown in there, I might have had some fighting words (though I would classify the poem as a whole somewhere in the fair to middle range of his oevre, I've long had the first hundred lines or so of that one memorized and they are, as you say, "the good stuff,"). As it was, I figured you were trying to say that even the greats have their not so great days and that's the sense in which I was referring to your post. I was a bit too lazy to get into contending that "dog's meat" was a rather overstated way of putting that, but am now glad to hear that this was a misunderstanding. :)


I think that's part of the problem with our education. We only teach the major writers of an era, because we only have so much time, and if you read five or twenty different writers you're almost an authority on the period. It contributes to the illusion that major writers are only influenced by other major writers. But that is a topic for another thread.

I agree that it's a problem. Teaching on the quarter system, I generally find myself having to slash too much really top stuff from the syllabus; forget finding room to teach Gorboduc (not that anyone is necessarily dying to teach Gorboduc even if they had the time:p). That's why I was suggesting to Leabhar that it's important to read both broadly and deeply in a past period: partly for some perspective on our own age, but also, as you say, to see where some of these "great" poets are coming from. That is however, as you say, probably topic for a different thread. This one's getting pretty crowded!

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch I'm afraid you will be shocked. Certainly he will not be considered a premier poet but I suspect he's got some staying power. He's got a point of view and a voice that resonates with many of the younger generation of poets. Ultimately he is crap as a poet, but themes and cultural identification will carry him into anthologies and sympathetic professors. Now in a hundred years he will be forgotten but it may take that long.

Oh, I'll believe he'll make it into a few classrooms for a few decades, but I had something like the hundred year view in mind. No one will recognize his name by then, and my personal opinion is that he'll get obscure in less than a century. It's possible I'll be proven wrong though. One never does know.


Petrarch... once again I will state that you have seemingly missed your calling. Diplomacy rather than poetry certainly seems to be your metiér.
:lol: Teaching often seems like a form of diplomacy. Completely unrelated, but how did you get the accent aigu on metier? I've never figured out how to get accents on my words in this forum, and any good diplomat knows the importance of using proper accents and spelling to avoid misunderstanding. ;)

[Leabhar]

At a risk of achieving nothing more than speaking into the wind I will still attempt to address your postings... not so much out of any misguided belief that I might be able to change your mind... one must be open to change for change to happen... but rather because poetry in general... and poetry as a still-living art form is something I am quite passionate about.

Yes, I know you think you are superior in opinion and intelligence than me, your conceit has already been established.


Contemporary poetry/contemporary art speaks to/of the present by building upon the past... not by seeking to merely preserve and recreate. That is the art of the mortician or the embalmer... not the living art of the artist. Artists build upon the past... but they also draw inspiration from the present. They use new forms, new words and draw from sources that are not yet accepted as worthy of "high art". The metaphors employed by Donne were often disconcerting... unexpected... even shocking. The theater of Shakespeare's day was as well-respected as television today. certainly there are times in which an artist employs archaic languages and forms... but they are acknowledged as such. The poets of today attempt to unveil a musicality... a visionary intensity... as it exists in the language that they have inherited: the spoken language of the present as well as the language of all that has preceded them.

And of course they failed by a long shot. High art is high art for a reason. Tradition is traditional for a reason. Musicality? Visionary? Modern poetry is anything but musical or lyrical to me, it is bland and dry. How can one expect to reveal the musicality, etc in the language when we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist? You can't completely dismantle even the concept of something, I.E. poetry and expect the world to like it and still call it the same name.


That is absolute nonsense that shows a complete lack of knowledge of the history of poetry... one of the short-comings that you attributed to most poets of today. The latest volume by one of the more popular serious contemporary poets may only sell 5000 or 10,000 copies. An absolute pittance when measured against the sales of a popular novelist... but we are living in a time when quite admittedly... in the English-language-speaking world at least... prose and the novel reign supreme. Still I might ask how many readers did William Blake have during his life time? or Thomas Traherne? or Friederich Hölderlin? or Emily Dickinson? or Hart Crane? or San Juan de la Cruz? or Novalis? or even Dante, Virgil, Petrarch, and Ovid? The percentage of the population that was at all literate was far less than that of today, and without access to printed copies of books through the movable type the writings of Dante etc... were reserved to but a wealthy or scholarly few.

I am not claiming poetry has always been popular or even is popular now. I said that in my last post to JBI. You are misunderstanding me. Most people who read poetry, at least 90% of the people I know who read poetry, also find modern poetry lacking and so don't usually read it. You like to think that in the future the geniuses or whatever will be recognized, but I think they will still be recognized as mediocre by the majority of poets and poetry readers.


Yes... it has been analyzed by critics and scholars, but it most certainly has not been absorbed or digested by the larger culture that appreciates art. Using the field of the visual arts we can see that Impressionism, that once disturbed, disconcerted, and shocked the art audience has been absorbed to the point where we can no longer even really grasp what was so shocking. It is so accepted that it has grown to the most popular art style. Picasso and Matisse on on their way to an equal absorption... but they still disturb a large portion of the art audience who cannot accept what they achieved. Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism are far from attaining anything that approaches the acceptance of Impressionism. The same holds true of literature. The innovations of Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Borges, Wallace Stephens, Hart Crane etc... are far from being absorbed.

It hasn't been digested because quite frankly it isn't up to par and not many people can stomach it long enough to consider it. Your conception of literature always being to the same standard and always having the same amount of talent being put into it is naive.


Again... your argument is but a rant without any proofs. You continue to make blanket statements as to supposed mediocrity of the best of today's poetry without offering any examples. Your argument, if it can be termed as such, comes down essentially to "Ah! the good old days! They just don't write 'em like that anymore.":rolleyes:

One could say the same about your argument. Your holier than thou, I know more than you way of arguing isn't going to get your point across. Why would I offer some random poem as an example when I am saying most modern poetry is mediocre? That is like standing in a field of dead mice and telling someone who is also standing there that they are all dead, and then him saying "show me an example".



No. It is called change or innovation. You seem to have a concept that there is some perfect ideal of what poetry was in the past. You even speak of this "ideal" several times. Poetry of the past itself is incredibly broad. We are speaking of everything from Gilgamesh and Homer through Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and Blake and Tennyson and Yeats... not to forget Ferdowsi, Tu Fu, Yehuda Halevi, Hafez, etc... Poetry of the last several millenia represents an endless array of forms and structures and themes and means of expression. Who, among this poetic world, do you imagine represents THE ideal that all others must be measured by? And you want us to believe that all of this music... all of this poetry... has come to an end because the poets of the 20th and 21st centuries have had the audacity to think that they might also add their own innovations to this body of work?

There is a point where "change and innovation" becomes corruption and perversion. One has to be blind to read modern poetry and think there is not something missing.


Yes... this is most certainly one of the most common criticisms of contemporary poetry, literature in general, music, and art... made by those with very little education or understanding. It is also a criticism that is so broad that it is meaningless. I can easily find any number of Modern/Contemporary poets for whom the opposite criticism may be far more apt: their work is too intellectual... too complex... too hermetic or esoteric. I might note that a good portion of the art-loving public has always had the greatest difficulty in understanding or appreciating contemporary contributions to the arts. The great orchestras fill their seasons with performances of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin... nothing wrong with that... but they rarely present new work. Why? Because it is not as good? That is far too easy of an answer. Rather it is because it is far more demanding of the audience. New work challenges our ideas about art. It demands a far greater effort than most older art... not in that older work is less complex or difficult... but rather its innovations have been absorbed over time and over time the critics, historians, art-loving public and later artists have filtered out the weaker works so that only the strongest work survives.

Ah, the old "you don't understand it" defense. Ridiculous. I understand it completely, and I dislike it completely. Modern poetry and modern art is so far distant from the past and from anything even the understanding, intellectual crowd of readers want its incredible. If everything is poetry, nothing is poetry. The reason why most people dislike modern art/poetry is not because they can't understand it (they've gone through decades of modern art champions telling them what it all means, etc) it is because they simply don't like it. It isn't complex because it is way more intellectual than past stuff, it is complex and hard to understand because they make it needlessly complex and almost silly and expect people to appreciate what is, in reality, a bunch of paint smeared on a canvas or a bunch of words written in lines.



Is it at all possible for you to put any more absurd statements within a single sentence. Again... these are nothing but sweeping statements that are impossible to really challenge because they essentially place your personal opinion as the final arbiter of taste and aesthetic worth.

You are the one who was and still is trying to claim I can't have an opinion on the subject because I supposedly "haven't even read it" or "don't understand it". Like I said, everyone has access to the same content, the same criticism, etc. You aren't alone in reading modern poetry, get off the pedestal.


It really has been a long time since I have made a conscious effort to memorize/recite poetry, which is something I ought to return to. I don't doubt that there are those here who most certainly hold any number of Modern/Contemporary poems in their memory (JBI?). In spite of this... there are certainly any number of Modern/Contemporary poems are locked within my mind and held as dear as any number of novels, stories, symphonies, concertos, paintings, or other works. There are numerous poems by Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Dylan Thomas, Neruda, Theodore Roethke, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, etc... that I have turned to again and again... that echo in my memory.

Being able to memorize popular poetry is a big part of its appeal. I like Rilke, Dylan Thomas and Neruda, but they aren't exactly modern poets are they? I like other poets from Neruda and Thomas' era, like I've explained already, such as Auden. Its ridiculous to think that a poem like "do not go gentle into that good night" or "I live my life in widening rings" is less memorable than some Wilbur poem. He is supposed to follow in the footsteps of Frost and Auden but I just don't see it.


Again, I am glad we have you here to inform the rest of us illiterates just what poetry is and what memorable words, sentences, and strings of sentences are, for it is obvious we have been lost without you.:rolleyes::brow::nod:

It sounds like you are critiquing yourself here.


Is that so? Then of what use is meter and rhyme to Dante's Comedia or Milton's Paradise Lost which we most certainly are not about to be able to memorize. Arguments for and against standard meter and rhyme go back to the Renaissance... and earlier and I doubt that any one's opinion... not even the Pope's... is going to be held as "infallible" any time soon.

Any person knowledgeable in poetry knows full well that innovations in the past were minor in comparison to the complete dejection of meter and rhyme in the majority of modern poetry. Who are you trying to fool?


Again... you make these blanket statements without offering the least shred of proof. Why not take what you feel to be one of Heany's strongest poems and show us just what is so weak about it in comparison to Donne or another older poet?

I've described why his poems and most modern poems in general are bad in my opinion already compared with past poetry. Their use of stagnant modern language even in meters and rhymes is to me unmemorable and weak. I am not some lone crusader on this subject, either, I've seen many criticisms of this type.


So let me understand this... because many artists have dealt with the Holocaust... certainly one of the most defining and horrific events of recent history... of all history... that immediately makes all Holocaust-related art but a shallow means of capitalizing on our knee-jerk reaction to the subject? So that means that subjects as cliché as love, nudes and landscapes (in painting), etc... are a guarantee of artistic banality regardless of the individual art?[


Have you attempted to read modern holocaust novels or watch the films? The historians shake their heads I bet when watching/reading them. I suggest a book on the subject written by a guy whose parents were holocaust survivors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry

[JBI]

Leabhar, you have no argument without proof. If you wish to prove Modern poetry is all rubbish, or mostly rubbish as you are trying to change your argument to(o) now, you must give examples. As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron." Yeah right. Like that is going to convince anyone.

Give some proof - get a volume of poetry out, from your stack, or the library, and pull some examples. As it is, I have seen accusations without any proof, and it is getting tiring, as you clearly seem to be unbudging on the subject, yet refrain from being the least bit convincing by failing to provide not just actual examples, but examples of poets you find are overrated/mediocre.

[Leabhar]

Leabhar, you have no argument without proof. If you wish to prove Modern poetry is all rubbish, or mostly rubbish as you are trying to change your argument to(o) now, you must give examples. As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron." Yeah right. Like that is going to convince anyone.

I did not say anything like that, I said modern poetry is distant from the reading public. You are putting words in my mouth again, I do not appreciate that. I am sure you are capable of reading the modern poetry yourself. The poetry I am speaking of is in books, I'm not going to type it out on the computer just to please you. Isn't that illegal, anyway?


Give some proof - get a volume of poetry out, from your stack, or the library, and pull some examples. As it is, I have seen accusations without any proof, and it is getting tiring, as you clearly seem to be unbudging on the subject, yet refrain from being the least bit convincing by failing to provide not just actual examples, but examples of poets you find are overrated/mediocre.


He gave list of poets, I said they were all mediocre. I said in my last post to you, if you remember, that my favorite of modern poets were Heaney and Wilbur, and I gave a critique of them. They are major representatives of modern poetry, are they not? Heaney won the Nobel prize, Wilbur was the US poet laureate and won the Pulitzer. If critiquing them is not enough, what more do you want?

[JBI]

Putting words in your mouth? "When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?" Sorry, I figured it was fair to equate psychotic babbling with rubbish. Perhaps you prefer a different synonym? But of course, this isn't "real poetry", which again imbues my statement with not slander, but accuracy.

You said who you like - Heaney is already quite old, and as established as one can possibly get in ones life time. Wilbur too is severely well known, and has won the Pulitzer twice now. Give me examples of poets who are less obvious. And on that subject, give examples of established poets who you think are "psychotic babblers" and prove why.

The fact remains, being too lazy is not an excuse for not supporting an opinion. If you were too lazy to support your opinion, you should not have so adamantly stated, and then expanded upon it. As it is, to me, it looks like if you are too lazy to go and type up some sections from contemporary poems, than you are probably too lazy to a) read contemporary poetry, and b) give it the in depth reading it needs. It's quite easy for anyone to get a volume of a canonical poet and say, "Oh this is great." because in truth, scholars have already said it for you, over many years. It takes virtually no skill to echo what has been said about something before, and one could even get by without having read the text. Contemporary poetry on the other hand, has very minimal scholarship, so you have to really know what you are talking about, since opinions are still less cemented than older poets. Because of that reason, to me you seem to be afraid to take a chance, or even approach new verse, which for the most part, requires a lot of time and patients, as countless volumes are published each year, and few of them are really superb.


You may want to try flipping through The Contemporary Poetry thread, primarily added to by Quasimodo1. You may be surprised with what you find, and certainly your theory of unmetrics will be shot within the first page of careful reading.

[Leabhar]

Putting words in your mouth? "When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?" Sorry, I figured it was fair to equate psychotic babbling with rubbish. Perhaps you prefer a different synonym? But of course, this isn't "real poetry", which again imbues my statement with not slander, but accuracy.

You said:

As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron."

I never called anyone an elitist moron nor insulted anyone, though I've been called a fool and now lazy.


You said who you like - Heaney is already quite old, and as established as one can possibly get in ones life time. Wilbur too is severely well known, and has won the Pulitzer twice now. Give me examples of poets who are less obvious. And on that subject, give examples of established poets who you think are "psychotic babblers" and prove why.

I would think obvious poets would be the most obvious and best examples.


The fact remains, being too lazy is not an excuse for not supporting an opinion. If you were too lazy to support your opinion, you should not have so adamantly stated, and then expanded upon it. As it is, to me, it looks like if you are too lazy to go and type up some sections from contemporary poems, than you are probably too lazy to a) read contemporary poetry, and b) give it the in depth reading it needs. It's quite easy for anyone to get a volume of a canonical poet and say, "Oh this is great." because in truth, scholars have already said it for you, over many years. It takes virtually no skill to echo what has been said about something before, and one could even get by without having read the text. Contemporary poetry on the other hand, has very minimal scholarship, so you have to really know what you are talking about, since opinions are still less cemented than older poets. Because of that reason, to me you seem to be afraid to take a chance, or even approach new verse, which for the most part, requires a lot of time and patients, as countless volumes are published each year, and few of them are really superb.

You've already said this, accused me of not knowing much about modern poetry, etc. I'm not "too lazy" nor do I "not understand it". You switched from me not even having read it to me being too lazy to have read it. Its annoying, if you want to have an argument with me, stop insisting I don't know anything about it and argue against my point.


You may want to try flipping through The Contemporary Poetry thread, primarily added to by Quasimodo1. You may be surprised with what you find, and certainly your theory of unmetrics will be shot within the first page of careful reading.

I've noticed the thread and have flipped through it a few times. Again, your theory of me not having read contemporary poetry is false.

[Leabhar]

Petrarch's Love: I appreciate your post and trying to make me understand it, but it looks like it came from the notion that I don't understand/haven't read contemporary poetry or much poetry at all. I have read it, though. Its simple; I dislike modern poetry.

[stlukesguild]

He gave list of poets, I said they were all mediocre. I said in my last post to you, if you remember, that my favorite of modern poets were Heaney and Wilbur, and I gave a critique of them. They are major representatives of modern poetry, are they not? Heaney won the Nobel prize, Wilbur was the US poet laureate and won the Pulitzer. If critiquing them is not enough, what more do you want?

I'm sorry, but you clearly lack even the least concept as to what a critique is. To simply proclaim "I don't like it" or "It sucks" is not a critique. That is merely a statement of personal opinion. A critique involves examples and comparisons... proofs... and not mere sweeping proclamations dismissing the whole of an art form from an entire age. You dislike Modern and contemporary poetry. We get that. Don't assume that you are going to convince us that your opinion is valid simply by repeating it enough times. Don't assume that you are going to convince those of us who happen to admire some of the best of Modern and Contemporary poetry without using logic or offering proof. I have no problem with admitting that there is a great excess of crap poetry out there today. I may even agree that we are not living in one of the peak eras for poetic production... at least considering that which I have access to. You throw out inane ideas about our living in an unprecedented era of artistic/poetic decline and decline of the English language. You make sweeping generalizations about the lack of merit of the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry and allusions to it all being but an example of "The Emperor's New Clothes" which is but a veiled criticism... insult to all of us who happen to believe passionately in the best of today's poetry. No one here has made a declaration dismissing the whole of past artistic achievements. No one here has made any attempts at convincing you that you must like a certain poet. But you repeatedly return ranting against the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry and expect us all to roll over and play dead?

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch's Love: I appreciate your post and trying to make me understand it, but it looks like it came from the notion that I don't understand/haven't read contemporary poetry or much poetry at all. I have read it, though. Its simple; I dislike modern poetry.

The last sentence is the entire crux of your argument. YOU don't like modern poetry. Fine. No one is forcing you to like it. No one can make you like it. I don't like lima-beans. No rationalization can make me like them. But saying I don't like lima-beans... or Modern poetry is not the same as stating that the whole of Modern poetry is bad... mediocre at best... "needlessly complex and almost silly"... "a bunch of words written in lines"... "we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist?"... "When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore"... "When people use meters today, and use modern speech, it doesn't sound right. There is no poetic language anymore"... "modern poetry seems bland and tasteless to me. In fact it sounds a lot like babbling"... "The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it. And why not? Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say".

All of these statements are sweeping generalizations made as if they were fact. I have absolutely no argument with you when you state "I don't like modern poetry," but that is not what you have done and are continuing to do, is it. You continue to declare that that the whole of Modern poetry is bad and repeatedly ignore any challenges asking for proof... examples... After all... those of us who actually believe that Montale or Heaney or Wilbur or Milosz have achieved something of real merit are but simple-minded dupes who cannot see the turth before our very eyes.

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch's Love: I appreciate your post and trying to make me understand it, but it looks like it came from the notion that I don't understand/haven't read contemporary poetry or much poetry at all. I have read it, though. Its simple; I dislike modern poetry.

Hi, Leabhar--No, I didn't think you hadn't read quite a bit of poetry. You come across as a reasonably well read person. And the object of my post really wasn't primarily to convince you to read tons of contemporary poetry. I was much less concerned with the fact that you dislike a lot of modern poetry (I do too) than the way you have been making sweeping statements like those I quoted in my post, which seem to be saying that there is something better about the language of the past and something hopeless about the language of the present. Such statements made me think, not that you haven't read a lot of poetry, but that you haven't read in a certain way, looking in depth at a broad array of poetry in a certain period and thinking about the way good and bad poetry is developed, both within a particular time period and within the context of a larger poetic tradition. Your posts gave me the impression that you lacked a certain kind of historical thinking that tends to put the quality (or lack thereof) of most of today's popular poetry in perspective. It's possible that this is not the case, since these forum posts reveal only little snippets of a person and can easily lead to misjudgment. However, if I am mistaken in my judgment, and you do have a more nuanced understanding of the flaws as well as the strengths of the past, and the strengths as well as the flaws of the present, then I think you should be aware that your posts are not conveying that to some of your readers, possibly because you do have a tendency to resort to quite broad statements.

[mortalterror]

I don't blame Leabhar for not bringing out bodies of modern text to criticize. There have been a lot of sweeping generalizations on either side. If you look at any page of this thread I think you can see what happened; why this discussion hasn't gone more in depth. The multi-quote function is at fault. StLuke and JBI quoted Leabhar and engaged in so many ad hominem attacks that he's been too busy re-quoting them and defending himself that he hasn't been able to further his argument. It's happened to me before when debating with them. You get so caught up in what they said about you that you forget what you were originally there to say; or if you don't forget, then by the time you've finished refuting their claims you have already typed a mountain of text and are too drained for further explication.

I do think that some of their demands on Leabhar are a little silly. JBI wants Leabhar not to cite major known poets. But that doesn't make any sense. If we quote obscure poets without any reputation then we don't have a common reference point for debate. Also, the reason why a poet would not be well known could be simply that they are mediocre like the ones JBI already cited himself. If they are mediocre then they aren't the best examples for JBI's case, which is saying that that kind of writing is good, and they aren't the best examples for Leabhar's case either because they can be easily dismissed as non-representative.

Let's not forget the ad hominems. They don't help a case so much as they inflame and harden opposition. While pointing out the shortcomings of others is a great way to make yourself look bigger, there's no surer way to have your own intelligence questioned than by questioning someone else's. This goes double for ad hominem arguments against a relative stranger. If you are going to use them, then they should be against someone whom you have a history with and are familiar to. You don't want to get caught calling down IcythePopoMcNinja03 and finding out it's really Harold Bloom. I've seen people on this very board telling Petrarch's Love that she didn't know anything about Renaissance epic. That was rich. I love it when people tell me I don't know anything about Hemingway.

I think that the reason intelligence is so often questioned on this board is that there is not a healthy respect for differing opinions. It's assumed that if we all have the same information and education, then intelligent people will all be of like minds. My own experience tells me this is not the case.

[quasimodo1]

To Leabhar: If you get a moment...I'd be interested to know just what "modern" poetry you have experienced, or maybe just the authors.

[JBI]

From Snails by P.K. Page:

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem1.htm

Are we pulling poets out of the hat now, because this thread will get large fast if you want me to prove there are good poets writing today Mortal, which I can pretty easily, given the wide selection of work in English these days.

[stlukesguild]

Mortalterror... I have no doubt that you too would (and have) grown quite heated if/when someone makes a suggestion that the whole of Hemingway was but less-than-mediocre schlock... the product that any 5-year old could do... and that anyone unable to see this was simply another example of the old "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome. I again have no problem with any declaration of personal likes or dislikes (ie. "I don't like Modern poetry"). When these personal opinions turn into statement of fact... and this fact goes against my own opinion and that of common sense (ie. declaring that there are poets here at LitNet who are better poets than the supposed best poets today) then I have little fear that I am engaging into a dialog with Harold Bloom... Allan Bloom... or even Orlando Bloom.

[stlukesguild]

By the way... IcythePopoMcNinja03 would be a perfect pseudonym for old Harold, wouldn't it?:lol:

[mortalterror]

Are we pulling poets out of the hat now, because this thread will get large fast if you want me to prove there are good poets writing today Mortal, which I can pretty easily, given the wide selection of work in English these days.

I've already conceded that you probably know more about modern poetry than I do. It's not really my area of expertise. And I haven't said that all recent poetry is bad, which may or may not be another poster's contention. I've offered the example of Billy Collins' The Death of Allegory (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=26904) and I'll offer Derek Walcott's A City's Death By Fire (http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/derek_walcott/poems/11255) as examples that good poetry is still being written. But like I say, contemporary poetry is not my field and you have the advantage of me.

With your admittedly superior understanding of the era, I think you are beholden to offer proof that your type of poet is indeed better than a minor poet of the past. Let's say, Edwin Arlington Robinson, an American poet of the late nineteenth century. That shall be your standard and you will have something to measure your own success by. I'm not demanding that you prove there's another Yeats, Eliot, or Tennyson currently walking about. If you can show me poems that are better than Luke Havergal (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175762), Richard Cory (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174248), and Miniver Cheevy (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=174244) consider your case as proven.

Do not be afraid to bring out the big guns such as Stevens, Roethke, and Crane whom I've already professed to dislike. Stop strangling me with pygmies. I won't take it amiss if you draw your comments from that other thread where I see you've already been discussing Roethke for a week now. Give me what you've got: your strongest arguments and your best examples.

If I may be so bold, and no one should take it amiss, I'd like to suggest certain stratagems to either side. Leabhar is trying to show that older writers are better; so he should be building his case with examples from the classics. JBI and StLukes haven't yet met their burden of proof for the present state of affairs. Each side can positively affirm what he sees as the virtues of his champions, in the comfort of his area of knowledge, without resorting to acrimonious taunts and insults. However, I don't think this contest would be fair without constraining ourselves within certain limits. For instance, I believe that Dante, Homer, and Shakespeare ought to be taken off the table; but I don't think that Dryden or Johnson are unreasonable standards of excellence.

Leabhar has said that he likes Frost and Auden. Are there contemporary poems to rival The Death of the Hired Man (http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html) and The Shield of Achilles (http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/99/jrieffel/poetry/auden/achilles.html)? I do not think that The Emperor of Ice Cream (http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Wallace_Stevens/wallace_stevens_the_emperor_of_ice_cream.htm) withstands that test.

[Petrarch's Love]

You don't want to get caught calling down IcythePopoMcNinja03 and finding out it's really Harold Bloom.

:lol::lol::lol: Haven't laughed like that in awhile. I wouldn't dream of calling down IcythePopoMcNinja03. That would be cowardly. Much more fun to criticize Dr. Bloom in person anyway.



I've offered the example of Billy Collins' The Death of Allegory
Forgot to thank you for that one earlier, Mortal. I should bring that into class when I teach my week in Spenser's allegory later this term.

[Jozanny]

Having skimmed about 20 posts in this debate, I am reminded again why the disparagement so prevalent in the network forums saddens me to the degree that it does. Perhaps this young century signifies the convulsions of aesthetic appreciation in its death throes. Even a statement like "Most of Bukowski's work is crap," is a barely reasoned dismissal of Bukowski's currency.

I am not partial to Charles, but I have been published in the same presses side by side with him, and I know something about the anti-formal gauntlet he and lyn lifshin promulgate, and I know even more than that, but don't see why I should heed the call to arms given this is the age of Xbox and Grand Theft Auto IV, which continually improves upon killing as a graphic mirror reality of ghetto culture spreading and evolving ever outward, nearly as clever as the AIDS virus itself.

[Justin Rockwell]

Poetry is poetry, please stop with the classifying for god sake lol.

[JBI]

Where are we drawing the line? Crane died in 32 if my memory serves me correctly, and Roethke in, I believe, 64. Are we limiting this to poems published in the last century, last half century, last couple decades, or last decade? Of course, the longer the playing field, the easier it will be to come up with examples, and lets face it, pulling from 450 years of tradition and scholarship is a lot easier than pulling from 50, but even so, I will try, and I think StLukes will probably try as well, to deliver some poems we feel have outstanding merit, in whatever time period given.

[Jozanny]

I was actually going to ask that myself JBI, but I suppose you've saved me the trouble. To me, *modern* poetry roughly starts with Eliot and ends --again roughly--with the death of Anne Sexton.

Contemporary poetry goes from ex-Beats like Robert Creeley (and dead ones like Ginsberg) to the moderately successful like Wheeler and her vast array of still living competitors. I am too tired to list everyone I've met since the 80's, but getting the chance to meet Robert means the most to me, since it was his work which drove me to publish.

[mortalterror]

Where are we drawing the line? Crane died in 32 if my memory serves me correctly, and Roethke in, I believe, 64. Are we limiting this to poems published in the last century, last half century, last couple decades, or last decade? Of course, the longer the playing field, the easier it will be to come up with examples, and lets face it, pulling from 450 years of tradition and scholarship is a lot easier than pulling from 50, but even so, I will try, and I think StLukes will probably try as well, to deliver some poems we feel have outstanding merit, in whatever time period given.

It depends on who you are trying to convince. I date most of the trends I don't like about modern poetry to Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I've seen professors date the post-modern movement to just after the second world war. Leabhar seems to be discussing English poetry of the last thirty or forty years himself. Since he's the dominant voice of your opposition, I'd direct my remarks to him if I were you.

Personally, I don't subscribe to the linear progressive view of art history with it's clear cut lines, dates, and movements. The tree structure, such as we see in genetic evolution, works much better for me as a model of how thought procreates, speciates, and changes on a large scale. The way I see it, what we are debating is not the whole of contemporary poetry but one of several coterminus and overlapping movements all happening at the same time. But I'm probably in the minority on this; so just use whatever time scale you think works to your own best advantage or suits the arguments you craft for it. If someone cries foul, you can redraft, or redefine the argument to keep your position as you see fit.

At the risk of seeming a Benedict Arnold to Leabhar, I would like to say a word for JBI, and StLukesGuild. I didn't adopt his position just to concede several points and then drop it. I really do see a great deal of sense in either side. The thing is, I don't consider all of contemporary poetry bad. What I dislike is a certain emphasis on free verse, nonsense verse, and various image based anti-narrative poems; basically anything you can read in a coffee shop while accompanied on a drum. Verse that is not at least tangentially related to either speech or song also raises flags for me. However, there are certain post-modern poems and writers which I do respect: Beckett, for one.

I know he's a playwright, not a poet as we've been discussing; but I'd like to use him to make a broader more general point, if I may. I like Beckett and I hate Joyce. By making this concession, or admission, however you choose to perceive it, I believe I actually strengthen my case. My case is not stengthened against post-modernism itself, with which I have no quarrel, but against certain particular abuses of specific authors and books (in this case Joyce and Finnegans Wake). I'd like to draw a distinction between the type of techniques, motifs, styles, subject matter, ideology, and execution of the two. As far as modernism goes I love The Wasteland and I hate Ulysses. I hope these small concessions can buy me some goodwill and patience from those of you who think that I hate all post-modernism, or every complicated work of literature because I hate to strain my brain. No. There are some very heinous, very particular grievances I have with sundry schools of writing, and I don't want to have them or myself dismissed out of hand as the ramblings of a crank or habitual contrarian.

You see, Leabhar said in his original post that much of the new mainstream poetry he has read is “random words and psychotic babbling “. Note how he did not say all of modern poetry. He said mainstream. Then StLukesGuild made a dismissive generalized statement about people who make dismissive generalized statements, which brings us to where we are now. I hope that by highlighting the offenses I take issue with in modern poetry, and admitting that I actually like one or two of the newer poems I won't be so easy to deprecate.

One of the few poems published within my lifetime which I enjoy is a poem by Ishmael Reed called I Am a Cowboy In the Boat of Ra (http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~lbriggs/art_pages/poem.html). *The page I linked to misprints a word toward the bottom as boogle which should read "I do the dirty boogie with scorpions" but is otherwise a correct text. Anyone trying to argue me out of my stance on post-modernism probably ought to start there or with Beckett. Arguing the virtues of writers you already know I have a disdain for is probably a less effective route, but be my guest.

[mortalterror]

Mortalterror... I have no doubt that you too would (and have) grown quite heated if/when someone makes a suggestion that the whole of Hemingway was but less-than-mediocre schlock... the product that any 5-year old could do... and that anyone unable to see this was simply another example of the old "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome. I again have no problem with any declaration of personal likes or dislikes (ie. "I don't like Modern poetry"). When these personal opinions turn into statement of fact... and this fact goes against my own opinion and that of common sense (ie. declaring that there are poets here at LitNet who are better poets than the supposed best poets today) then I have little fear that I am engaging into a dialog with Harold Bloom... Allan Bloom... or even Orlando Bloom.

No doubt I have. My temper often gets the better of me. It's a failing. But let's call this a case of do as I advise and not as I do.

As far as idiots go I've been pretty fortunate. I ran into a sixteen year old fellow here on litnet a few months back. He'd just read The Old Man and the Sea, as well as a short story or two for a class he was taking and he was convinced that all of Hemingway was symbolism. He called me a fool, and when I went back to check Hemingway for possible symbolism I found some weird stuff in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. He was wrong about almost everything, but he helped me to a new appreciation and understanding of literature. A smart man should be able to learn from fools and wise men alike. When we shut people down, nobody benefits.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we treated everyone we met here as if they were all authorities in the field they are discussing? It would change the whole tenor of the debate. I know I'd have to double check my spelling, my grammar, work a little harder on arrangement and style. It would force me to pay closer attention to people's arguments and consider their points from all sides.


Forgot to thank you for that one earlier, Mortal. I should bring that into class when I teach my week in Spenser's allegory later this term.

Why, thank you Petrarch. You're very kind. Besides, it's a pleasure to return the favor after all of the poetry you've introduced me to.

[Petrarch's Love]

Why, thank you Petrarch. You're very kind. Besides, it's a pleasure to return the favor after all of the poetry you've introduced me to.

Oh, I'm very glad to hear I've been of some help. :)


Wouldn't it be wonderful if we treated everyone we met here as if they were all authorities in the field they are discussing? It would change the whole tenor of the debate. I know I'd have to double check my spelling, my grammar, work a little harder on arrangement and style. It would force me to pay closer attention to people's arguments and consider their points from all sides.

Mortal--I appreciate your efforts at making debate civilized for litnetters everywhere. I think we can all agree that everyone should try to avoid ad hominem attacks and also try to really read and understand what the other person is trying to say.

I have to disagree, however, that we should automatically treat everyone like authorities in the field we are discussing, since most of the people discussing a given topic probably are not authorities on that topic, and some may be far from it. Not to mention, no one is an authority on everything (not even IcythePopoMcNinja03!). Though I am fairly knowledgeable about poetry generally, I am not really an authority on contemporary poetry, and so it would be misguided for someone to act as though I were. On the other hand, it would be equally misguided of me to have deferred to the person who told me it was foolish of me to regard Milton as a Renaissance poet (I honestly can't remember who that was, but you reminded me when you referred to it above) as though that poster were an authority, since in that case I really did know what I was talking about and had clearly considered the issue more fully than the person I was engaging. Not regarding someone as an authority, however, doesn't mean that you don't have respect for them as an intelligent person, which I think we most definitely should have for our opponents in debate. Though he or she was a bit misguided in calling my classification of Milton foolish or embarrassing (and clearly misguided in resorting to that slight ad hominem remark), I still had respect for that person and, as I recall, he/she was also coming from a perfectly sound, well reasoned place (there's certainly some room for debate in terms of how to classify Milton). He/she just hadn't thought the issue out fully yet, and jumped to the conclusion that there was only one answer, making me right and him/her wrong: a very small and common error.

Here are a few of the rules of engagement that I personally find useful to keep in mind:

1. Have a healthy understanding of how much you don't know. This is absolutely an essential first step to being a better thinker, learner and debater.

2. Acknowledge and respect what the other person does know. Even if you do know more (or think you do), I find it essential to really acknowledge what it is that the other person is bringing to the table and to respect what is sound in their argument (most arguments have at least one small redeeming quality). This helps because it forces you to really consider what the other person is saying and to fully understand their perspective, and if you've really mastered rule one, above, then you'll frequently find yourself learning, even from posters you disagree with for the most part.

3. Keep your opinion flexible. This is really the result of the first two points. It doesn't mean conceding your point when it comes under the least attack, but being open to revising your stance when necessary in light of the things you learn from others: either by conceding something you find you were wrong about, or simply revising the way you present your opinion.

4. When we shut people down, nobody benefits. Stole this one from your post above. Sounds like common sense to me. :)

[mortalterror]

You are right, Petrarch. I don't know what I was thinking. It was really late when I posted that and I wasn't quite an authority on myself at the time.

[mortalterror]

I wanted to get a better idea of what we were talking about so I ran a search for major postmodern poets. I didn't come up with much. I re-read some of Howl by Allen Ginsberg (http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt)which was more repetitious than I remembered it being. The first section is enjoyable through, "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night," but after that he loses me. Section two is fine, but section three is a snooze.

I took a look at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work. Not only isn't it very good, his line jumps around like a child who needs to go to the bathroom. What's with this? (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171592) I could understand if he was trying to express movement or the physical nature of his subject the way Herbert did with Easter Wings, but he did that jumpy thing with half the poems I looked at.

Lastly, I checked out some of Roethke's poems, since there's a discussion going on about him in one of the other threads. I still don't like him, but In A Dark Time (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172120) wasn't that bad. The line "Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire." resonated a little bit. I got the feeling I'd read it somewhere before, either in Virgil, Dante, Milton, or Blake. Who knows, I might have read the poem before and forgotten it? It did remind me of Milton's "No light; but rather darkness visible" from Book I of Paradise Lost.

I'd rather read Robert Penn Warren though if I had to choose strictly between American poets who won the Pulitzer around that time. For instance, his Two Pieces After Suetonius (http://books.google.com/books?id=tBMN6gmiA6EC&pg=RA1-PA154&lpg=RA1-PA154&dq=two+pieces+after+suetonius&source=web&ots=OujIqU6HNv&sig=qIk2lm0K55Bj6u6wf0huiUAJ2mA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result) is quite good.

[JBI]

Try Jay Macpherson's The Boatman (I believe now published with another work in Poems Twice Told). That is a phenomenal work, though it doesn't excerpt well at all.

[mortalterror]

Try Jay Macpherson's The Boatman (I believe now published with another work in Poems Twice Told). That is a phenomenal work, though it doesn't excerpt well at all.

For a second there, I thought you were recommending James Macpherson and his Ossian poems (http://www.exclassics.com/ossian/oss1.htm).

I couldn't find any of Jay Macpherson's poems online. Could you link to one, or provide a passage of text?

[stlukesguild]

After a visit to my local Borders I find myself almost agreeing with Leabhar. 21 different volumes by Maya Angelou, 22 by Charles Bukowski, 11 by Ginsberg... and one volume (an older one at that) by Ashberry, nothing by Wilbur, nothing by Heaney, nothing by Hecht... in fact only a single volume by Yeats. I was actually amazed to find 4 volumes by Anne Carson.:(

[Jozanny]

After a visit to my local Borders I find myself almost agreeing with Leabhar. 21 different volumes by Maya Angelou, 22 by Charles Bukowski, 11 by Ginsberg... and one volume (an older one at that) by Ashberry, nothing by Wilbur, nothing by Heaney, nothing by Hecht... in fact only a single volume by Yeats. I was actually amazed to find 4 volumes by Anne Carson.:(

This is due to the fact that poetry is no longer a viable product to book sellers, and all of you are ignoring the small presses, where most poets have to cut their teeth. Try buying a subscription to The Indiana Review:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rol leyes:

[JBI]

After a visit to my local Borders I find myself almost agreeing with Leabhar. 21 different volumes by Maya Angelou, 22 by Charles Bukowski, 11 by Ginsberg... and one volume (an older one at that) by Ashberry, nothing by Wilbur, nothing by Heaney, nothing by Hecht... in fact only a single volume by Yeats. I was actually amazed to find 4 volumes by Anne Carson.:(

Try doing the same with contemporary literary novels though - poetry is only one wall - it not containing any of the goods has no bearing - that is what the small shop is for, and the internet. You'd be pressed to find much value in a Barnes and Noble, outside of the classic section.

You really need to read periodicals, and order books from poets who are reviewed there, or who are published there, in order to get anything of value. That is relatively the same for prose, though the literary-novel section in a library tends to be a little decent, though most of them are mainstream novels with perhaps a little bit more depth, like the Hossieni novels that are popular these days.

Seriously though, specialty bookstores are the only places to find good books, without having to go through too much of a pain. It's the same with prose too for the most part.

Just think though, of the amount of sales Lyrical Ballads, or even Leaves of Grass got. Wordsworth and Coleridge weren't at all popular after their initial publication, and were saved by a slowly growing cult status that evolved by fluke around them, with fantastic prose writers like Lamb and Hazlitt there to champion their works. Whitman got a little luckier in that he caused controversy, and therefore had that for advertisement, though his sales were rather mediocre as well, and he suffered losing his job.

Barnes and Noble is what it is - a store designed to make money, by providing the most sought after texts, in the most convenient location. Poetry isn't sought after, and therefore hardly appears in said bookstore.

[stlukesguild]

Tell me about it. I get most of my books either at used book stores... including one that purchases entire estates and sells them all at $1-$2 per book (of course they are all just shelved at random... no logical order at all... but that makes the great finds all the more exciting:lol:) I seriously think that my own poetry collection would take up more linear shelf space than that at Borders... and I don't have a single Bukowski or Maya Angelou (although I do own Ginsberg's Howl... signed by the author, even). There was actually more shelf space devoted to Buddhism (mostly new age crap) and Judaica (in a very un-Jewish side of town) then there was to poetry as a whole.

[Geumjassi]

It's a hard question to answer when you don't define what you mean by "modern" and "real poetry".

I can vouch that not all current poets try to mimic James Joyce. Many of them are very accessible. Those who imitate the experimental mentalities of say, Cummings are not always drivel.

Try reading Louise Gluck. She is one of my favorite current poets. Her imagery may sometimes be quite abstract, but it's emotional impact is very real, and so are her poetry's merits, whether she writes in iambic pentameter or not.

I hate to see someone shut themselves off from potential new literary loves by making broad assumptions.

[Petrarch's Love]

After a visit to my local Borders I find myself almost agreeing with Leabhar.

Leabhar, where are you? Concession is nigh!:D


21 different volumes by Maya Angelou, 22 by Charles Bukowski, 11 by Ginsberg... and one volume (an older one at that) by Ashberry, nothing by Wilbur, nothing by Heaney, nothing by Hecht... in fact only a single volume by Yeats. I was actually amazed to find 4 volumes by Anne Carson.

I have a suspicion that Bukowski has some great deal going with Barnes and Noble. Angelou, I know is pretty popular (though, still, 21 volumes?!), but I haven't, actually met enough people who read, or have even heard of Bukowski, to convince me that there's actually a big enough market for the 20 + volumes that adorn every B&N store (maybe his publisher gives discounts for buying in bulk).


I get most of my books either at used book stores... including one that purchases entire estates and sells them all at $1-$2 per book (of course they are all just shelved at random... no logical order at all... but that makes the great finds all the more exciting) I seriously think that my own poetry collection would take up more linear shelf space than that at Borders... and I don't have a single Bukowski or Maya Angelou (although I do own Ginsberg's Howl... signed by the author, even). There was actually more shelf space devoted to Buddhism (mostly new age crap) and Judaica (in a very un-Jewish side of town) then there was to poetry as a whole.

I agree that the poetry selection in most Barnes and Noble/Borders stores is no good. I'm guessing I must have more volumes of poetry in my own collection than the poetry section of the B&N near me in California (not counting the Shakespeare, which is not too shabby there). The one here in Chicago has a slightly better selection, I think because they're in a University neighborhood and are trying to compete with all the truly fabulous bookstores around the U of C. Your estate sale store sounds fabulous. I didn't know there were any used book shops that just randomly shelved things anymore, allowing for great finds. I thought they all meticulously combed through and organized stuff in an attempt to make a killing on e-bay. :p

[Leabhar]

Too many posts to respond too. :D

[Leabhar]

Mortalterror... I have no doubt that you too would (and have) grown quite heated if/when someone makes a suggestion that the whole of Hemingway was but less-than-mediocre schlock... the product that any 5-year old could do... and that anyone unable to see this was simply another example of the old "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome. I again have no problem with any declaration of personal likes or dislikes (ie. "I don't like Modern poetry"). When these personal opinions turn into statement of fact... and this fact goes against my own opinion and that of common sense (ie. declaring that there are poets here at LitNet who are better poets than the supposed best poets today) then I have little fear that I am engaging into a dialog with Harold Bloom... Allan Bloom... or even Orlando Bloom.

When I was talking about the five year old thing, I believe I said something like "a lot of people think..." before that, which indicates to the reader that it wasn't my own opinion... The Emperors New Clothes thing was used in a poem and was referring only to the type of free verse it was imitating. And you accuse me of sweeping statements? Also, the attempted lambasting of your opponent as dumb or simple minded is just going to work against you when you're proven wrong on some detail.

[Virgil]

I have a suspicion that Bukowski has some great deal going with Barnes and Noble. Angelou, I know is pretty popular (though, still, 21 volumes?!), but I haven't, actually met enough people who read, or have even heard of Bukowski, to convince me that there's actually a big enough market for the 20 + volumes that adorn every B&N store (maybe his publisher gives discounts for buying in bulk).

I'm telling you Petrarch there is a real constituency for Bukowski. You should see some of the arguments I've had here and elsewhere over him. You may be shocked but he will make the college classroom one day, if not already.


I agree that the poetry selection in most Barnes and Noble/Borders stores is no good. I'm guessing I must have more volumes of poetry in my own collection than the poetry section of the B&N near me in California (not counting the Shakespeare, which is not too shabby there). The one here in Chicago has a slightly better selection, I think because they're in a University neighborhood and are trying to compete with all the truly fabulous bookstores around the U of C. Your estate sale store sounds fabulous. I didn't know there were any used book shops that just randomly shelved things anymore, allowing for great finds. I thought they all meticulously combed through and organized stuff in an attempt to make a killing on e-bay. :p
My Borders is not bad and neither is the Barnes and Noble on Staten Island is not too bad either. But the Barnes & Noble in up town Manhattan is excellent! You can find almost anyone. I guess I'm lucky living in New York. But why don't you people order from Amazon or one of the other on line book stores? If you know what you want you can find it at a reasonable price.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... I remember that Barnes and Nobles from when I lived in NY (well actually Jersey City). They may have to compete with various other stores with quality collections that supply the demand of college students, etc... Ne York has some great amenities. Unfortunately, the cost of living isn't among them. I couldn't lease a decent parking space for the month for what I pay for a 1500 square foot studio space plus woodshop... and the lease on my garage in NY would probably pay my mortgage twice over.

[Virgil]

Yes... I remember that Barnes and Nobles from when I lived in NY (well actually Jersey City). They may have to compete with various other stores with quality collections that supply the demand of college students, etc... Ne York has some great amenities. Unfortunately, the cost of living isn't among them. I couldn't lease a decent parking space for the month for what I pay for a 1500 square foot studio space plus woodshop... and the lease on my garage in NY would probably pay my mortgage twice over.

I absolutely agree, the cost of living sucks!! :lol: So allow me to enjoy the bookstores. :D

[Leabhar]

I never said "modern poetry sucks", (as stlukesguild is saying in other threads now) or even anything like it. What I said can be easily read in this thread by anyone, even on the first page:


When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

This thread is named Modern Poetry because it is about modern poetry, but if I thought all modern poetry sucked I would've named it "Modern Poetry Sucks". One needs to look no further than the first and third posts of this thread to find the truth of the matter. I referred to "most modern free verse" in this poem when JBI asked to what type of poetry I was referring, which is apparently a blanket accusation:



Most modern free verse is just writing put into lines
Like this, is this poetry?
They just stole the name "poetry"
And made all other poetry nonexistent
The emperor has no clothes.


Now if Leabhar's claim was that writers like Bukowski are annoyingly wreched poets, then I think there would be little room for debate!

This type of poetry was actually what I was referring to, if anyone in the argument bothered to read my first and second posts in the thread before typing up essays to rebuke me. Supposedly I made "blanket" and "sweeping" statements, even while I said I liked certain poets out of other modern poets, etc.


After a visit to my local Borders I find myself almost agreeing with Leabhar. 21 different volumes by Maya Angelou, 22 by Charles Bukowski, 11 by Ginsberg... and one volume (an older one at that) by Ashberry, nothing by Wilbur, nothing by Heaney, nothing by Hecht... in fact only a single volume by Yeats. I was actually amazed to find 4 volumes by Anne Carson.:(

Funny that he is lamenting there being no Wilbur or Heaney, when I said they were some of my favorite of modern, living poets (they came up in the discussion because they are obviously representative, laureates and such). People misappropriated what I said, put words into my mouth, etc. Then came the "you're too lazy to read" and quotes accusing me of being a fool, etc. These people cannot have a decent debate or discussion for the life of them.

Anyway, I'm done with this discussion, there is no point in debating with these people when they resort to ad hominems, like mortalterror said (by the way, his post #63 I think, was spot on). Feel tree to continue the discussion without me.

[JBI]

Angelou doesn't really write free verse, just so you know, if that is anything. Her verse is a mix of classical patterns with unstylized lines, and inconstant metre.

This thread is about modern poetry (better termed contemporary poetry), and I think the conversation got over your sweeping statements and moved on. There doesn't seem to be any more need of you to make yourself seem avant garde, as no body, I would think, really is going to continue this argument any longer, as it isn't get anywhere.

Instead, it would appear the thread is shifting towards lamenting the unsophistication of bookstores, and a shared discussion on particularly touching, or excellent poets working today.

[Petrarch's Love]

The debate does indeed seem to have petered out, and it's probably best to put all the misunderstandings to rest for now. Just a finisher for me on the subject of Bukowski and big bookstores:


I'm telling you Petrarch there is a real constituency for Bukowski. You should see some of the arguments I've had here and elsewhere over him. You may be shocked but he will make the college classroom one day, if not already.

Oh, I know he has a following, and I was, of course, joking about his publisher having to sell volumes off in bulk discount (though I really do think that Angelou is probably more generally recognized). I'm also almost certain he's already been/being taught in a college classroom somewhere but, in terms of being taught as a major figure a several decades down the line, I don't think he's one that's going to have that kind of sticking power. In all fairness, though I personally can't stand his stuff, I've read a few things by him that had a certain degree of talent and intensity, but I don't think his verse has the sound to it that's going to make him stand out as time goes on. Could be wrong though. Someday I may find myself having a violent argument at a faculty meeting because they're trying to nudge my Milton class off the schedule in favor of my colleague's Bukowski course. :eek2::lol:


My Borders is not bad and neither is the Barnes and Noble on Staten Island is not too bad either. But the Barnes & Noble in up town Manhattan is excellent! You can find almost anyone. I guess I'm lucky living in New York. But why don't you people order from Amazon or one of the other on line book stores? If you know what you want you can find it at a reasonable price.

Yeah, the Barnes & Noble downtown here in Chicago actually has a pretty decent poetry section. I actually like both Borders and B&N. Their selection in general is pretty good, and the B&N near me in CA used to have a better poetry section. It's only been in the last year or so that there's been both less shelf space given to poetry there, and an entire shelf (I do not exaggerate) dedicated to the works of Bukowski. I do order books online all the time: from Barnes and Noble online, Amazon, etc., and I also have a great array of truly wonderful new and used book stores here in Hyde Park, so I don't really have any complaints about not being able to find what I want. It's just disappointing to one day wander over to your local B&N poetry section and find it the victim of a hostile Bukowski takeover. :D

[Leabhar]

Except I made no "sweeping statements", as I described in my last post. Why does everyone love that term? Even if I had used "sweeping statements", that wouldn't make them any less defensible, that's a logical fallacy. You put words in my mouth and used ad hominems as an attempt to win the argument, which I think was low class even anonymously online. I don't care about seeming avant garde, why would someone care about their reputation on an internet forum? Besides, insulting the avant garde isn't avant garde, its an attempted return to "normality".

[JBI]

Except I made no "sweeping statements", as I described in my last post. Why does everyone love that term? Even if I had used "sweeping statements", that wouldn't make them any less defensible, that's a logical fallacy. You put words in my mouth and used ad hominems as an attempt to win the argument, which I think was low class even anonymously online. I don't care about seeming avant garde, why would someone care about their reputation on an internet forum? Besides, insulting the avant garde isn't avant garde, its an attempted return to "normality".

The fact that you persist so adamantly in arguing is rather disappointing, as the thread, and the attention, has clearly departed. The discussion of poetry isn't about arguing to be right, but arguing to gain insight into the works, and nature of things, and gain new perspectives, and new ideas. As it is, you still persist on considering yourself the center of the thread, which you seem no longer to be. As you have stated, the thread isn't about the modern poetry being crap, but modern poetry. Therefore, stop pushing an argument which has now become irrelevant to the thread. The thread isn't about Leabhar, it's about poets, who happen to be modern (or better phrased, contemporary). Winning the argument isn't the main point anymore, as it has been surpassed with a more interesting conversation, not on the "merits" of contemporary poetry, but on certain contemporary poets, and our thoughts and feelings regarding their works.

[Leabhar]

The thread ceased to be about the argument because I was away for a day and it drifted into a different discussion. I'm back and had to respond to a whole page or more of posts. I also responded to your post because you continue to say misleading things about me. To think I shouldn't respond to a whole page of posts regarding me only because you think the thread isn't about me anymore (?), or because another discussion is going on, is ridiculous.

[stlukesguild]

Supposedly I made "blanket" and "sweeping" statements...

Flash Back:

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

Most modern free verse is just writing put into lines

They just stole the name "poetry"
And made all other poetry nonexistent

The poets you listed (Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai) are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages

These poems, while better than the majority, still read like immature diddies compared with past poetry...

Modern poetry...has never been so distant, poetry has never had so few readers...

...the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry...

The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it. And why not? Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say...

Modern poetry doesn't have the right language...

Modern poetry is bad though, according to a lot of people, poets and readers alike. When one thinks even the most widely recognized and revered poets of the times are bad than you know something is wrong.

Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language.

The root of poetry and all literature is in language, and any historian of English or any linguist will tell you, or even a discerning reader, English is declining and becoming simpler.

High art is high art for a reason. Tradition is traditional for a reason. Modern poetry is anything but musical or lyrical to me, it is bland and dry... we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist?

How exactly do we make sense of these two statements:

...the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry...

Supposedly I made "blanket" and "sweeping" statements, even while I said I liked certain poets out of other modern poets

The majority here have bent over backward to be diplomatic... in spite of what might be seen as a statements that were rather intentionally inflammatory. One would not expect that one could walk into a group of contemporary artists or contemporary art connoisseurs and make declarations about psychotic babbling, the dumbed-down vocabulary, and the mediocrity of the best artists of today that appear as but immature scribbles without expected a response... perhaps even a heated one. Why did you expect to walk into a group who value literature... some of whom even value contemporary literature... and expect to make such statements without also raising some Cain?

You dislike Modern or Contemporary poetry. I have no problem with that. We all have our likes and dislikes. There is a difference between declaring that you dislike Modern poetry and declaring that "the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry..." or that it "reads like immature ditties..." When you make declarations of judgment that seemingly go against commonly-held opinions (and we are not speaking of the opinions of the man on the street... we are talking about opinions of those who seriously invest time and effort in reading modern poetry... and about modern poetry) then it is assumed that the burden of proof rests upon the accuser. Mere repetition of personal opinion does not make it fact.

After a period of time it became clear that no such attempt at "proving" that your opinions were fact was forthcoming, and the discussion moved on. And now you return and want to pick up the fight again where you left off... without offering anything new? I'm sorry... there are some people whose opinions on this or that genre or form of literature I will seriously consider without evidence of proof... because they have established well and clear that they have a good deal of knowledge of what they speak. You do not fall into this group. Perhaps you have an advanced degree from Harvard or Oxford and are well known for your critical acumen in certain circles. From what you have posted here I get more of the sense of the all-too-common sophomoric student of literature with a smidgen of exposure to poetry who is deeply disconcerted by the challenges presented by contemporary literature, and lashes out blindly at those who may disagree with him... regardless or mindless of what their experience may or may not be. Again... I may be wrong. But it takes more than repeated declarations as to the mediocrity of modern poetry and the decline of the English language for one to be taken as something more than a crank.

[JBI]

On another subject that came to mind re-reading the post, is more complicated language necessarily better? I think of my personal poetic favorite right now, Giacomo Leopardi, the noted Italian classicist/romantic (he seems to fall in between there, and contain elements of both), whose poetics only became simpler as his career matured. The poem in my quote, features more idyllic qualities, and more fancy language than his later poems allow. Yet he matured as a poet, and didn't get worse. Why is it that we associate flowery language (the ones that come to mind first are Milton, Pope, and Tennyson) with good, as we can clearly see, poets like Shakespeare in his plays seem to have abandoned this flowery neo-classical mindset in their later works.

Of course, this is all surmising, as we all know, many poets simply only wrote a handful of good poems anyway, but is something as simple as Wordsworth's daffodils less beautiful than Tennyson's Lady of Shallot? I think what modernism, and now post-modernism are trying to do, is get beyond that. We are allowed to use flowery language, and structure, but in truth they aren't necessary. That isn't what the poem really is about; metre and form are only one aspect.

[Leabhar]

I don't think saying that past poetry had more vivid language, etc is a blanket statement. A lot of people agree with me on this, as I've said in plenty of posts. I also do not think I didn't back up my statements. I compared well known past poets to well known modern poets in a number of posts, I think you simply failed to overcome your conceited attitude to people who disagree with you.

Again, your attempted degrading of your opponent does nothing to promote your argument. Nor does your cry for more evidence or proof hold up to the evidence I've already given. Anyone can clearly see modern poetry uses a more simple language than even was in use a few decades ago. Posting a few poems as examples is almost pointless when anyone can go on Google and find almost infinite amounts of modern poetry. Your demands are quite ridiculous.

[Leabhar]

On the other hand... as much as I admire certain artists/writers/composers of today, I have more than a sneaking suspicion that we are not living in an era to match that which preceded us.

Hypocrisy has been discovered.

[JBI]

Hypocrisy has been discovered.

No it hasn't. Should we burn all of Bronzino's paintings because the Renaissance came before him? Or perhaps we should out with Victorian literature, since Romantic literature is more fun. Just because there was such a big dumping of extremely good art before, doesn't discredit today's art. It just means that we aren't as successful right now, not completely unsuccessful. And who knows - StLuke is only guessing.

[Jozanny]

JBI, I would still quibble that modern poetry and contemporary poetry can be bracketed off, with overlap, but none the less. Frost is modern, but really cannot be deemed contemporary. Vassar Miller, who is the goal I one day hope to match (no, not surpass, but match) it can be argued, can go either way--but I would argue she is falling into *modern* even though she falls within living memory of President Bush, who was supposed to award her an honor in Texas before she passed:

Vassar Miller (http://www.thecpgroup.org/Subterfuge.htm)

Subterfuge

I remember my father, slight,
staggering in with his Underwood,
bearing it in his arms like an awkward bouquet

for his spastic child who sits down
on the floor, one knee on the frame
of the typewriter, and holding her left wrist

with her right hand, in that precision known
to the crippled, pecks at the keys
with a sparrow’s preoccupation.

{excerpt}


Whereas I am her contemporary, occasionally a reflective image, and I assume I will not get into trouble for posting myself, as I own the copyright to all my published work:

Joanne Marinelli

The Blue Dressed Black Girl I Was Rolling Behind

Or a variant of turquoise in an hourglass of rhyme,
the sun danced and praised her and sparkled and spangled–
the cloak of an armor to win every battle:
the flash of a lance,
the sheen of a halo,
a spectrum of color caught in surprise–
the gold green of a peacock spread out in display
who shimmers and struts on a jingle of heel,
how afresh I could find wonder in the magic a
woman could hold, a confidence with grace in every
gesture, every curve,
made ready to climb and conquest the world,
like tortillas from Tucson rolled just the right
way,
all sizzle, all dazzle,
she commanded that day.

The corner we came to would bring us to part,
a silent separation she would never turn to see,
the wheelchair rolling from her who held a
woman who was me.

from Coloring Book, An Anthology

Hopefully, the comparison makes the point.

[Petrarch's Love]

Since this thing does in fact seem to be going on :rolleyes:, I thought I'd put in my two cents as a relatively dispassionate observer:

1. Did St. Luke's allow his indignation/impatience to get the better of him, leading to some condescending sounding lines in some of his posts to Leabhar?: Yes!

2. Was Leabhar making some rather broad sweeping statements in the parts of his post that St. Luke's quotes above?: Absolutely!

I think from the start the crux of the debate has been less about modern poets people do or do not like and more about how one views history. Leabhar, I'm sorry, but the lines St. Luke's quoted above were also the ones I found problematic in your statements. You do seem to be making a very large generalizing claim in those statements about modern language (and thus modern poetry) being inferior to the history that preceeds it. The impression such claims give is that your view of literary history is one with a peak about a hundred years ago and an inexorable decline continuing into the present day, with our own age in a rather hopeless mess. You may believe that this generality about the past versus the present is true, which is fine. In that case you need to debate in terms of defending this particular view of history. However, even if they are viable opinions, you do have to at least acknowledge that statements like those quoted are general and sweeping statements about contrasting time periods. If you did not intend them to come across as such, then you need to clarify that a bit more.

Everyone seems to be agreeing that poetry is not at some great peak in this day and age. The main question seems to be about the view one takes of literary history. One way imagines it like a continuous series of waves in which there is consistently a certain amount of good and a certain amount of bad stuff produced in any age, with slight dips and swells that make certain ages a little more stand out than others. In this view the High Renaissance, for example, might be a crest of productivity, while the period that followed might be considered a slight dip. Yet this still wouldn't mean that there was no great artistic production in the period following the Renaissance (clearly there was a fair amount!). Similarly, this view would indicate that there may have been a slight swell in poetic output in say, the late 19th, early 20th century (just for the sake of argument) and a slight dip in, perhaps the last few decades, but it would not indicate that there is anything intrinsically wrong with our present period, just that we are experiencing the natural and continuous flow of artistic innovation.

Another way to view history would be to think that there was something particularly special happening in the past that led to great stuff being produced, and that there is something particularly wrong with our current culture, which is setting us in apart from the rest of history and the artistic traditions associated with that history. This view would suggest, not that we are part of ongoing and continuous sets of historical waves, but that we've broken this continuity in some fundamental way, which is impairing our ability to produce great verse. This struck me as the view that Leabhar was taking (please elaborate and correct me if I'm wrong, Leabhar) in the broad statements he was making. I actually think there are some things to be said for some aspects of this view in that it recognizes a certain dynamic that does propel art through the ages, namely a series of both breaks with the immediate past and attempts to reconnect with that past. However, I would set these moves toward rebellion and imitation within the context of the first model of history outlined above. In other words, while there certainly was a break with certain past traditions in the 20th century, this doesn't really mean a break with the past itself, but rather a repetition of a dynamic that has worked throughout the history of literature in which multiple small breaks, or innovations rebelling against the immediate past, combined with multiple small reconnections with or immitations of past periods have propelled the waves of continuous artistic production.

Of course there does need to be a balance between the innovative and the imitative, and Leabhar may have a point in that his underlying suggestion seems to be that poets should move in a more imitative direction, reconnecting with some of what worked in past poetry. If this is what he is trying to suggest (is it, Leabhar?), the main question then seems to be whether the break with the past, or the innovation which came between then and now, should be rejected in favor of a return to the past, or whether this would be an unproductive way of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and instead any imitative tendency needs to work within the framework of the current innovations.

[Jozanny]

The main question then seems to be whether the break with the past, or the innovation which came between then and now, should be rejected in favor of a return to the past, or whether this would be an unproductive way of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and instead any imitative tendency needs to work within the framework of the current innovations.

I'd opt for the latter, but what is upsetting my digestion in this discussion is any lack of examples from you, luke, or JBI, for that matter, about what contemporary poets are less than their progenitors, and why this is so. I think this is highly debatable, even easily refuted. Allen Tate's modernism is nearly breathtaking. Vassar, whom I love, has been critically acclaimed for making silence palpable. luke just introduced me to Carson, who--at least from his samples--has a distinct voice.

Poetry evolves, just like anything else, and a modern or contemporary introspective occupation doesn't mean this kind of poetry is less than its didactic public forebearers.

[JBI]

Honestly though - the last time poets tried to appeal to "classical models", and the trend took, we got the enlightenment - not a very good poetic output. Of all the centuries so far, in English poetry, from the 16th century, the 18th seems to be the dullest, as everyone seemed to be fixated entirely on neo-classicism, and couplets, to the point where creativity was compromised. Poetry needs to be innovative, and new, not classical.

[Petrarch's Love]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]I'd opt for the latter, but what is upsetting my digestion in this discussion is any lack of examples from you, luke, or JBI, for that matter, about what contemporary poets are less than their progenitors, and why this is so.

Jozanny--I'm a bit confused by your confusion, and perhaps was not clear enough in my previous post. My own stance, and even more forcefully that of JBI and St. Luke's, is that contemporary poets are not noticeably less than their progenitors. I took the claim that they are to be part of the stance Leabhar was advocating. What St. Luke's, JBI and I have been trying to suggest is that there are good and bad poets today, just as there were good and bad poets in the past. The very good poets of the past were better than both the so-so poets of their own time, and are better than the so-so poets of our time. Similarly, a really excellent poet writing today is producing work that is better than the mediocre poets of the 19th century. What I'm mainly trying to sort out right now is a fundamental difference in the way these posters are viewing our time in relation to the past, since that seems like an important thing to settle before moving on to which poets are the best or the not so great of our time. To be absolutely clear, I do not believe that there is anything about contemporary poetry that is particularly lesser than much of the poetry that has been produced before now. This is what I meant by using the metaphor of waves throughout history. There is a consistent body of artistic productivity, just as there is consistently water in the ocean, but there are then certain especially high periods of productivity, like the crest of a wave, and certain periods that, when viewed historically, are less stand out artistically speaking.

Perhaps I should have been more clear in the part of my post that you quoted that I was trying to say that Leabhar may be right that we are due for a shift toward the imitative in poetry. Usually when an era is in one of those less productive times--at the base of the "wave"--it tends to be either an innovative break with the past or an attempt to reconnect with the past in new ways that stimulates renewed creativity. If we are indeed in one of these less peak times, then one possibly invigorating approach could be to take a closer look back at some of the past traditions that may have been abandoned in the fervor of innovative rebellion and to incorporate a little of those past approaches to poetry into the contemporary mode. This is, of course, something that many poets do, and I do not mean to suggest that contemporary poets all fall neatly into the block of "innovative rebels," since clearly things are much more complicated than that. I'm also not stating absolutely that we even are in a particularly low ebb state poetically, though it is my sense that history won't be looking back at this time as one of the great heights. It is, however, very difficult to be completely accurate in one's assessment of the current day, and hindsight is always 20/20. ;)

[Leabhar]

No it hasn't.

It has. He hasn't brought that viewpoint to light in this thread, probably because it is almost the same thing I was thinking. I don't know why he keeps up the argument if he almost agrees with me. I like how he ignored the fact that he has been arguing with himself and lying about me for pages, saying I said "modern poetry sucks" etc, when I never said anything like that. Or when I was speaking of "most modern free verse" when I talked about the emperors new clothes fable, he took it out of context and propped up a nice straw man he further used to accuse me of being a fool.


Should we burn all of Bronzino's paintings because the Renaissance came before him? Or perhaps we should out with Victorian literature, since Romantic literature is more fun. Just because there was such a big dumping of extremely good art before, doesn't discredit today's art. It just means that we aren't as successful right now, not completely unsuccessful. And who knows - StLuke is only guessing.

Wording it different doesn't make it any different. We're in a relatively poor age of poetry compared to the past, which was what I've been saying since page 1:


Did I say these poets didn't have form or meaning? I don't think so, I said the poets you listed were mediocre compared with representative poets from the past.

stlukesguild started the entire argument, basically. Look at page one. You asked me what type of poetry I was referring to, this was my response:



Most modern free verse is just writing put into lines
Like this, is this poetry?
They just stole the name "poetry"
And made all other poetry nonexistent
The emperor has no clothes.

Most modern free verse.

Once again, stlukesguild likes to take things out of context. He propped up a straw man and claimed/assumed I was referring to all modern poetry, which is just absurdly false. Hell, was it the second page you posted a poem as an example of how some modern free verse has a sort of rhythm? I agreed with you, didn't I? stlukes has been arguing with himself for a while now, I've basically just been saying to stop with the ad hominems as responses to his posts.

@ Petrarch's Love: Taking quotes out of context doesn't prove anything, really. Its just a trick, its called a straw man actually, basic logical fallacy. I'm surprised with all his talk about logic he hasn't heard of it. stlukesguild has been doing that this whole thread. See post 91:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=623573&postcount=91

Its really not my problem if someone takes my post the wrong way, because as stlukes said earlier, this is a public forum. Its really ridiculous, claiming I have the burden of proof when he's misappropriating the entire argument. I'll admit he was winning for a moment there with his straw man, until I came out of it and realized I was arguing something I never even said.

[Jozanny]

A perhaps regrettable loss is that poets no longer have a place in the public square. Browning was one of the last (second tier?) greats who did--and by this I do not mean a reputation so much as a public argument. The epic masters had it, as does Dante, but it breathes its last in the Victorian era. I am not sure if Whitman is a very brief American version of this, as I am not well versed in Leaves of Grass and the more I learn about Whitman's life-- (to be continued)

[JBI]

A perhaps regrettable loss is that poets no longer have a place in the public square. Browning was one of the last (second tier?) greats who did--and by this I do not mean a reputation so much as a public argument. The epic masters had it, as does Dante, but it breathes its last in the Victorian era. I am not sure if Whitman is a very brief American version of this, as I am not well versed in Leaves of Grass and the more I learn about Whitman's life-- (to be continued)

I wouldn't call that exactly true - only true of American verse, and probably most English verse in general. However, Arab poets, for instance, have huge cultural followings and influence, as do many other poets. Either way though, that has nothing to do with poetry. Emily Dickinson didn't leave her house, and I would wager she is probably the best American artistic contribution.

There is really know way to tell how good this age is right now, since there is no way to tell without examining it, and quite frankly, that isn't available to us.

Of the major American poets of last century, both Crane and Stevens went pretty much unnoticed. Eliot was huge, of course, as was Frost. Pound was loud, but even he acknowledged his own failure as a poet. But there were hundreds of other modernists, some of which very good, who are still read, but for the most part, they all, even most of the popular ones, disappeared into time-specific classrooms only.

Modernism was a huge artistic movement, but so was Victorianism, and so was Romanticism. That's really a one and a half century long string of highly contributory movements in English verse. Not to shabby.

Either way though, we cannot say for certain that our own age is quiet. Seamus Heaney, to me at least, is a major poet. There are probably many others who will be major poets. Certainly there is bound to be at least a couple sleepers (I.E. the George Herbert, John Donne, Marvell, Dickinson, Hopkins, etc. type) amongst us. We need to wait to make sure that our assumptions are true.

Either way though, there hasn't been a particular period where good literature wasn't really produced. Even the medieval times produced some great masterworks.

[stlukesguild]

On the other hand... as much as I admire certain artists/writers/composers of today, I have more than a sneaking suspicion that we are not living in an era to match that which preceded us.

Hypocrisy has been discovered.

If you spent less time in just trying to win an argument at whatever cost and more time fleshing out your point of view we might be able to have a serious dialog. As it is now, it has devolved into a defensive game of "who said what and when" that offers little by the way of solid defense of your point of view.

As JBI suggested there is no hypocrisy in my suggestion that we may not be living in an era to match the past. The Renaissance was clearly a far greater era (at least in the visual arts) than that of Mannerism. That does not mean that Mannerism... as pale of an echo of the Renaissance as it may have been... did not produce any number of marvelous artists: Bronzino, Rosso Fiorentino, El Greco, Veronese, Tintoretto, Parmagianino, etc... I declared that I did indeed wonder whether a similar claim cannot be made of Contemporary poetry (and of course my comments upon what was shelved at my local Borders was all tongue-in-cheek as I am more than aware that Borders in pandering to the mass audience does not represent the best of poetry today). I do not proclaim it to be a fact that poetry today is a pale echo of that of high Modernism (Crane, Stevens, Frost, Montale, Pasternak, Eliot, Yeats, Rilke) because I must acknowledge that my knowledge of Contemporary poetry is limited by language, and other barriers. In spite of this, I completely reject the notion that the best of today's poets "read like immature diddies (sp.) compared with past poetry"... "the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry"... "Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language."... "Modern poetry is anything but musical or lyrical to me, it is bland and dry... we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist" I have come upon more than a fair share of Contemporary poets whose work seriously resonated.

Are these quotes taken out of context? Certainly. One can easily return to read the entire posts at will and it will be more than clear that the change in context has not distorted the original meaning... only intensified it by collecting similar sentiments into a single group.

We have repeatedly asked for proofs in this argument not because we feel it cannot be done (I would certainly have no problem finding plenty of bad poetry by Modern and Contemporary poets), but rather for clarity. It seems quite obvious to me that what was being suggested was that poetry as a whole had suffered some great decline... that even the best work by Modern and Contemporary poets was but a joke in comparison with older poetry. This is what we speak of when we mention "sweeping statements". You cannot damn the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry in one statement and then admit to liking Yeats or Auden or "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" in the next. Modern poetry is all bad... except when I like it? What exactly are we speaking of when we speak of Modern Poetry? You have dismissed Heaney, Wilbur, Hecht, Montale and others who frequently work in a rather traditional manner, as well as the more clearly Modernist and experimental poets... and then you turn around and claim that your intention was never to dismiss the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry? After a while it becomes impossible to continue a dialog arguing with someone who uses only abstractions... and leaves us guessing as to who or what you are talking of.

We have put several poems forward as examples of the solid poetry to be found among Modern/Contemporary poets only to have them dismissed as "mediocre" with the wave of a hand... with statements as to how this one "isn't really usual or modern", and that one is about the Holocaust and you don't like art about the Holocaust. Then clarify things for us. You continually accuse me of taking you out of context or attributing viewpoints to you that are misleading. Then why not simply make things clear and tell us what you are saying about Modern poetry... and who or what you imagine that includes... and who it does not.

[stlukesguild]

Wording it different doesn't make it any different. We're in a relatively poor age of poetry compared to the past, which was what I've been saying since page 1

Stating that "We're in a relatively poor age of poetry compared to the past..." is not the same as stating:

"the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry..."

"Modern poetry doesn't have the right language..."

"Modern poetry is bad though, according to a lot of people, poets and readers alike. When one thinks even the most widely recognized and revered poets of the times are bad than you know something is wrong."

"Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language."

"The root of poetry and all literature is in language, and any historian of English or any linguist will tell you, or even a discerning reader, English is declining and becoming simpler."

"The poets you listed (Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Eugenio Montale, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai) are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages."

stlukesguild started the entire argument, basically. Look at page one. You asked me what type of poetry I was referring to, this was my response:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar View Post
Most modern free verse is just writing put into lines
Like this, is this poetry?
They just stole the name "poetry"
And made all other poetry nonexistent
The emperor has no clothes.
Most modern free verse.

Once again, stlukesguild likes to take things out of context. He propped up a straw man and claimed/assumed I was referring to all modern poetry, which is just absurdly false.

"the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry..."

"The poets you listed (Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Eugenio Montale, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai) are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages."


If you had actually ever read anything by Geoffrey Hill, Eugenio Montale, Richard Wilbur, W.S. Merwin, and many others that you dismissed as mediocre at best you would have known that they often write in a manner employing traditional forms/themes/subjects, etc... But you dismissed them and any other poets we suggested just as rapidly as you dismissed "most modern free verse". Personally, I have no problem admitting that most modern free verse is bad. But so is most modern classical verse. And if you explored any era at any time in history in some real depth you would discover that most all art from any time/place/culture is/was mediocre at best. But free verse has also been the basis of some of the most brilliant poetic creations from the Biblical writings to Shakespeare, Whitman, Rimbaud, Pessoa, Neruda, etc...

So again... Let us start fresh. What exactly are you saying?

[JBI]

Sum it up like this - most verse is mediocre. Pope wrote a poem about it, it's called the Dunciad. In the same way, Austen wrote a novel mocking gothic fiction, and George Eliot wrote essays about mediocre women novelists.

There has always been bad stuff written - the same way there has always been bad music composed, bad paintings painted, wasted pieces of marble, etc.

[Jozanny]

Well, if we are moving on to what the current state of poetry needs, I think that one is something of a stumper. We cannot reclaim the epic voice (I disagree with JBI about what this is and how it was lost, but Frost, craftsman that he was, could not engage his public the way Dante does with the Divine Comedy; Dante was having a national conversion with Italy about maintaining imperial power through Roman Catholicism... Frost certainly had a dialectic going with what we'd now call American Exceptionalism, but a contemporary reader can see the introversion and insular interpretations coming; it can be traced from Frost straight through Susan Wheeler, who tries to return Frost to the public through imitation...) I don't know.

I understand what Petrarch means--movements which produce great poets tend to have some sort of discourse with tribalism or empire to say something about his or her own age--but this new century doesn't have that ease. The last empire, which is this one, the American, may or may not be fading, but it is certainly rumbling uneasily at its core, and its literary arts gets traded in ivory towers among the gatekeepers, but that doesn't mean those with the keys aren't producing intricate and even extraordinary work--but it is work for consumption among the high priests and priestesses themselves.

[quasimodo1]

Jozanny, This has to be the most incisive, intuitive position of the state of American poetry that I've read to date. ..."The last empire, which is this one, the American, may or may not be fading, but it is certainly rumbling uneasily at its core, and its literary arts gets traded in ivory towers among the gatekeepers, but that doesn't mean those with the keys aren't producing intricate and even extraordinary work--but it is work for consumption among the high priests and priestesses themselves."

[JBI]

I know of a poet currently writing an epic, of which I have sampled some passages. I won't say more, as he wouldn't approve, but I will say that the epic mode is not really a factor. The last 'epic' in the classical sense (Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, Roland, Niblung, etc.) as I see it was Dante, though Petrarch may argue something like Milton. The mode has been dead for years, yet the long poem variation of it continues to be written today. I know Merrill wrote one not long ago, as did Walcott, and other poets. That isn't really a problem.

However, if I understand you correctly, you are hinting at the fact that poets do not have the same prophetic status. I would disagree, and say that is only for America. If one looks at a poet like Darwish, we can clearly see that culture status is still being rewarded to poets today.

Shakespeare wasn't viewed like a prophet in his day, and in fact, I think Pope was the first poet fully supported by his poetic output (I am distinguishing between poetry, and other forms such as drama). Cult statuses only really establish later into a poets career, or after their death. With the exception of Byron, most poets don't achieve economic wealth purely from their work.

[Jozanny]

JBI, let me check some source material, and then maybe *we*, the defenders against the barbarians :), can start a new thread--as maybe I am not being entirely clear about what I mean, and what I mean is not aesthetic success, or self-support, which Pope was one of the last to achieve.

Yes, you are right, the epic mode is *dead*, and maybe that is as it should be, but poets lost the moral prerogative that coupled with the epic voice--and Browning was, arguably, one of the last to try to keep his grip on that prerogative. I don't know Darwish, and I am not sure *cult following* is the same thing as the *moral* authority Dante and Milton et al claimed--but let me chew on this a bit.

quasi: thanks. Will get back to you.

[Petrarch's Love]

@ Petrarch's Love: Taking quotes out of context doesn't prove anything, really. Its just a trick, its called a straw man actually, basic logical fallacy. I'm surprised with all his talk about logic he hasn't heard of it. stlukesguild has been doing that this whole thread. See post 91:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...3&postcount=91

Its really not my problem if someone takes my post the wrong way, because as stlukes said earlier, this is a public forum. Its really ridiculous, claiming I have the burden of proof when he's misappropriating the entire argument. I'll admit he was winning for a moment there with his straw man, until I came out of it and realized I was arguing something I never even said.

Leabhar--My response was not solely to the quotes that St. Luke's pulled out above. I have read all of your posts in full on this thread and one view or attitude that I, independently, got out of those posts was well represented by the quotes he posted. Just quoting a person is not necessarily a straw man, and in this case I thought they were statements of your point of view on the issue. It isn't just because St. Luke's has magically misappropriated the entire argument, but because I, and I think a few others on this thread really don't understand what you are trying to say when you talk about the language of today being worse than that of the past and there being no "real" poetry, if it isn't that you are contrasting an ideal past with an inferior present. No, you don't have to take on a "burden of proof" when someone misinterprets your post, but it would certainly be both polite and helpful to clarify for that person how he/she was wrong in their reading of your intentions and what your actual stance is when he/she remains confused. This is all I was trying to get you to do in my post. I outlined some ideas regarding how one views history, wrote what I thought was your stance, and invited you more than once in the post to elaborate or clarify what you were actually trying to say, and what you meant by some of these statements that you keep claiming are being taken out of context. Instead I get a response about straw men and you not having to explain yourself to anyone, which is hardly going to help to clear things up.

So let's just wipe the slate clean for a moment, temporarily forget all the back and forth that is clouding the issue, and I'll ask you again what your view of the contrast between past and present is. Do you believe that there's something uniquely bad about present language in contrast to the past? Are you of the opinion that there has been a bad break in our current day with the former literary tradition that has led to unusually bad poetry, and that the only "real" poetry would be a return to that past? Do you feel that past poetry is better than modern poetry by virtue of a certain special quality that our current society lacks? Or, was this not what you wanted to convey in your contrast of past and present, in which case could you please state what that was?

These questions and the thoughts in my post above are not an attempt at winning anything (indeed, very few intellectual debates worth having can ultimately be thought of in terms of "winning"), but an attempt to get at the heart of this matter and to give you the opportunity to straighten out any misinterpretation that has occurred.

[Jozanny]

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

Leabhar: This is your first post, and I have to join the moderately confused chorus of not knowing what you mean, which is why I have ignored you up to this point.

I do not care about certain literary styles, and the comic wit of Alexander Pope doesn't much appeal to me. I *studied* him under a professor who read aloud from the text for 40 minutes and felt that she had performed her teaching duties adequately thereby. This may have something to do with my lack of enthusiasm for Pope and his age.

However, I think most members of this forum can grasp that if I don't like Pope, I have my reasons and am willing to provide them.

What is *psychotic babbling*? Who has babbled psychotically? Can you give me the name of said poet with psychosis? And a sample excerpt? Have you studied poetry with an instructor?

[JBI]

Jozanny, I'm with you on not liking the pope, and for the most part, not liking the 18th century in English lit. I wouldn't go so far however, as to suggest it is all trash. That would be rude to poets like Gray, Goldsmith, Pope (who I don't personally like), Swift (who I also don't particularly like), and others.

[Jozanny]

Jozanny, I'm with you on not liking the pope, and for the most part, not liking the 18th century in English lit. I wouldn't go so far however, as to suggest it is all trash. That would be rude to poets like Gray, Goldsmith, Pope (who I don't personally like), Swift (who I also don't particularly like), and others.

Makes me wonder if "the greatest Shakespearean on the east coast" moved to Canada;). He refused to teach the Enlightenment.

I have not consulted my source material yet, but did look up Darwish. Thank you for that JBI.

I haven't done anything today except close my mutual fund and fight my fear by consuming every article I could read today about national politics. My sister is frightened too and I can't help her if she and her husband lose their house. I have some slight protection due to presumptive disability--slight, but she has none.

Procrastination has always been the worst enemy to my ambition, my young friend, :), but paralysis? I never bargained for it. Thought I'd model the Shakespearean. Never managed.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch's Love--Usually when an era is in one of those less productive times--at the base of the "wave"--it tends to be either an innovative break with the past or an attempt to reconnect with the past in new ways that stimulates renewed creativity. If we are indeed in one of these less peak times, then one possibly invigorating approach could be to take a closer look back at some of the past traditions that may have been abandoned in the fervor of innovative rebellion and to incorporate a little of those past approaches to poetry into the contemporary mode. This is, of course, something that many poets do, and I do not mean to suggest that contemporary poets all fall neatly into the block of "innovative rebels," since clearly things are much more complicated than that. I'm also not stating absolutely that we even are in a particularly low ebb state poetically, though it is my sense that history won't be looking back at this time as one of the great heights. It is, however, very difficult to be completely accurate in one's assessment of the current day, and hindsight is always 20/20.

I largely agree. I do think that over the course of history we can discern certain peaks and certain lower points in the production of art. This does not mean that the best artists of such a "low point" cannot be brilliant... even as great as some of the greatest giants of those most peak periods. Speaking of my own field of the visual arts one can recognize certain eras: The Renaissance, the Baroque era, Romanticism, Modernism... as peak eras. In each instance they are followed by "lesser" periods: Mannerism, Rococo, Realism/Symbolism/Academicism, Late-Modernism/Post-Modernism. I might almost suggest that these eras which follow in the wake of periods of great innovation are almost a necessary lull during which the innovations of the era preceding are dissected and digested. A good deal of the art of these periods becomes "mannered"... self conscious... academic and as a result it usually takes a reexamination of older traditions or an influx of new or unexpected sources to reinvigorate the art form as a whole.

For example... following the Renaissance painting slips into nearly 100 years of a period termed as Mannerism. Mannerism was indeed an overtly "mannered"... abstracted... stylized dissection of the rules and common elements of Renaissance art. In comparison to the art of the Renaissance it often seems cold... lifeless... overly contrived. It will take the innovations of the painter Caravaggio to bust the strangle-hold and give birth to the Baroque. Caravaggio's "innovation" is merely to paint what he sees from observation. In one sense he merely returns to the Renaissance focus upon naturalism and personal observation... but he takes them to an entirely new level. He stages his models in dramatic orchestrated groupings spotlit with raking light and insists on painting them just as he sees them... no Mannerist abstractions and stylizations... but no Renaissance idealism either.

Of course this is a gross simplification... and the biggest problem with this simplification is that speaking of "peaks" and "low points" ignores the fact that there are artists of real merit in the worst of times... and the great majority of artists during the peak periods are as mediocre as during any other era. Mannerism produced Bronzino, Parmagianino, Rosso Fiorentino, Cennini, Veronese, Tintoretto, and El Greco... all artists of true merit... even genius. The period following the peak of Romanticism gave us Ingres, Courbet, Millet, John Singer Sargent, Whistler, Gustav Klimt, Aubrey Beardsley, etc... in the visual arts... and Browning, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Baudelaire, Nerval, Rimbaud, etc... in literature.

Certainly, it is far easier to recognize... and be certain of the peaks and valleys of artistic eras as a greater deal of time has passed. I greatly suspect that we are not living in anything approaching a peak era in the arts. On the other hand... there are a great many of artists, writers, poets, composers who I find of real merit. It may be that future generations will imagine that we were living in one of the absolute pinnacles to be envied... with the only problem being that the greatest artists were not those who were recognized as such by the institutions. This, in itself, would not be new. How recognized were Mozart, Schubert, Bach, Bruckner, Van Gogh, Vermeer, William Blake, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme... even the unpublished bard himself during their own lifetimes?

Jozie is right in that if we are moving on to what the current state of poetry... or the novel... or painting... or music... needs, I think that one is something of a stumper... Or rather, it is the million-dollar question. We can easily point out what we believe to be weaknesses or flaws. The solution for reinvigorating the art form in question would seemingly not take the form of some essay (except in the case of Emerson:D) but rather would involve the creation of that ground-shaking work of art itself.

[Petrarch's Love]

Of course this is a gross simplification... and the biggest problem with this simplification is that speaking of "peaks" and "low points" ignores the fact that there are artists of real merit in the worst of times... and the great majority of artists during the peak periods are as mediocre as during any other era.

Yes, I was indeed speaking in simplified and macroscopic terms since it seemed as though this discussion first needed to sort out what sort of large scale schematics of history we were debating. I agree that there are many, many complexities that such a schema does not cover, but, just in the interests of clarifying this point in my stance for the thread, I was not envisioning a pattern of peaks and low points in which the low point hit zero, as much as a steady body of both good and bad artistic production throughout history (like a consistent large body of water) with unusually high peaks or dips occurring at the top of that body. In other words, I agree that excellent art is often produced during less stand out periods and bad art during peak periods.

[stlukesguild]

The larger sweeping generalities that are applied to all movements in the arts by academics are of course a necessity. Without such abstractions it becomes impossible to make sense of anything. All becomes an unending flow of unconnected events and creations. I know that you are something of a Borges fan... are you familiar with the tale of The Memorious Funes, that certainly explores the results of an inability to experience anything in terms of abstractions?

The more one learns, the more one realizes that all these abstractions are problematic. Impressionism is an artistic movement that many are well-acquainted with. Many have some concept of the essential elements of that movement and the key players. As one explores the individual artists generally attached to Impressionism, however, one uncovers endless inconsistencies. Degas, for example, despised plein air painting, rarely ever painted the landscape, hardly ever painted from direct observation (he was a traditional "studio artist"), was most deeply inspired by the masters of drawing such as Raphael and his beloved Ingres... rather than painterly painters... and he despised Monet's work for what he imagined as being his lack of compositional structure. Renoir was deeply enamored of the decorative paintings of Rococo. Manet would have little to do with the Rococo, but was rather profoundly inspired by Vermeer, and Velsquez and was more of a "realist" than an "Impressionist" Monet's most innovative works, his late waterlily paintings, were undertaken well into the 20th century... after the death of such Post-Impressionists as Van Gogh and Gauguin... even a decade after Cubism.

We cluster the successive generations of artists into eras and isms that we define by certain characteristics... yet know full well that almost every individual artist within these movements breaks one or another of these characteristics... perhaps the greatest artists being the least-likely to be able to be defined or contained. In many cases one can almost discern a greater affinity between the greatest artists of one generation and the greatest of another than between these same giants and the rest of their era. Surely Shakespeare shares more with Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Tolstoy, etc... in many ways than he does with Ben Jonson. In the end... what we are really left with is a collection of individuals... some greater and some lesser.

[Petrarch's Love]

The larger sweeping generalities that are applied to all movements in the arts by academics are of course a necessity. Without such abstractions it becomes impossible to make sense of anything. All becomes an unending flow of unconnected events and creations. I know that you are something of a Borges fan... are you familiar with the tale of The Memorious Funes, that certainly explores the results of an inability to experience anything in terms of abstractions?

That's such an amazing story. His description of Funes' mind provokes such a strange mixture of envy and horror! I hadn't really thought of that story as a fable about why we need abstractions. Nice example.


The more one learns, the more one realizes that all these abstractions are problematic.

Absolutely! The dangers of generalities are many and profound.


We cluster the successive generations of artists into eras and isms that we define by certain characteristics... yet know full well that almost every individual artist within these movements breaks one or another of these characteristics... perhaps the greatest artists being the least-likely to be able to be defined or contained. In many cases one can almost discern a greater affinity between the greatest artists of one generation and the greatest of another than between these same giants and the rest of their era. Surely Shakespeare shares more with Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Tolstoy, etc... in many ways than he does with Ben Jonson. In the end... what we are really left with is a collection of individuals... some greater and some lesser.

I almost completely agree with this, except that the "collection of individuals" view taken too far can be just as dangerous as the abstracted view. It's important to keep a nice healthy balance between the two, alternating between viewing the individual writer as an artist, and taking a longer historical view. Absolutely, as you say, it's necessary to use some sort of abstract framework when teaching, most especially at the introductory level. It's going to be easier for students to learn in a survey if they are able to think in terms of Chaucer being a Medieval poet, Shakespeare a Renaissance poet, Keats a Romantic etc. (There's something of a trend at some schools toward teaching the collection of individuals approach at the introductory level, and the result is, in my opinion, a disaster, since students spend more time being confused than appreciating the works they are reading). It's also true that it is equally important to teach from the start that these are generalizations and convenient imaginary lines, and that there is much more blurring between the boundaries of genres and timelines than one might suspect at first. I'm planning a chapter on Chaucer in my dissertation as well as chapters on 16th and 17th century writers, and it would be disastrous for me to approach such a project with a firm line in my mind at the year 1400 (Chaucer's death). There is much that Chaucer has in common with the later poets, both by virtue of their shared talents as writers, and by virtue of the way he was influenced by and dealing with writers like Petrarch from the Italian Renaissance, in a way that in places is, arguably, almost proto-Renaissance. There are many, many advantages to working without the benefit of an historical net, and of coming to terms with writers individually and out of the context of a larger framework.

At the same time it would be equally disastrous of me to completely reject the benefits of an abstract historical framework. While it's important to develop a nuanced and flexible view toward such a framework, and sometimes to think through things without one, it is also important to periodically return to that framework. It isn't as though dealing with historical abstractions is an introductory level tool that can be completely discarded when one moves to the next level. It may be a tool that needs to be refined, but abandoning it completely can lead to abstract simplifications of another kind. You start getting anachronistic readings of texts in which Joyce and Shakespeare are analyzed together in light of Freud, and in a way that doesn't sufficiently take into account that Freud could not, in fact, be a direct influence on Shakespeare (I have a real, horrific, critical example in mind). You start getting another kind of sweeping generality about the mind of the artist throughout history that can lead to a very flat understanding of the dynamics at play in the works of individual artists. You start getting readings that project modern concerns into a work where they don't really exist (I have no objection to reading texts in light of our own times, or to some reader response criticism, both of which I think can be quite useful. I do, however object when such approaches are taken so far that they start bending a work into something could not possibly have intended). The "collection of individuals" approach can also simply lead to a less rich understanding of a writer's work. While I think it's useful not to always think of Chaucer in some sort of Medieval box, I also have little doubt that the same man, had he lived 100 years later would not have produced The Canterbury Tales as they now exist (though it seems more than likely he would have produced something equally good). There are also some things about Shakespeare's plays that are better, and more interestingly explained in terms of the things he has in common with his contemporaries than in terms of the things he has in common with other great writers. Not only research into the history of a specific era, but also the use of a large scale, abstract, framework of history is going to be necessary to fully appreciate both those parts of a literary work that are specific to its own time and the way it is or is not distinct from great works of other times.

In summation, it's probably best to equally employ both the historic generality that groups artists in terms of chronologically designated categories, and the aesthetic generality that groups artists in terms of their skill in producing their art (and the pendulum of literary criticism swings pretty reliably between the extremes of these two generalities). Of course, the most fruitful and enjoyable place to be is between these two abstract poles: keeping both generalities in mind, but primarily dealing with the specifics of the poetry itself while shunning the temptations offered by either generalist extreme.

[stlukesguild]

I agree that a balance is probably a necessity... if not the ideal. If we completely end up ignoring the historical realities of the context and the culture in which an artist lived and worked in reality all we succeed at doing is placing them within our own current culture and context. Thus we have Milton and the Bible broken down by Feminist critics and Shakespeare re-imagined in Freudian/Marxist terms. For Borges, such would have been the fantasy... as he spoke of heaven or eternity as a realm in which Shakespeare bantered with Kafka and James Joyce (or something to that effect). Such is the source of inspiration... but Borges, it must be admitted, was engaging in fiction... and had a sense of humor as well (something a great many academics are not known for... present company excepted:D).

I was personally fascinated with Stephen Michell's introduction to his translation of Job in which he reinterpreted the Biblical masterwork in a rather Kafkaesque manner (One day J. awoke to find all that he had cared about stripped away from him for no apparent reason...) It was certainly intriguing... the portrayal of the anonymous powers above (The Lord and the Tempter) toying with a simple servant all for the sake of a bet ("See what you have made me do to my loyal servant, Job..."). One must question, however, what was the initial intent.

More recently I have begun to study Asian art with a greater degree of effort than ever before. Coming upon the famous Kandariya Mahadeva temple...

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=kandariya%20mahadeva%20temple&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

...in India I was absolutely stunned by the sensuality... nay the blatant eroticism... of the sculptural decorations. From a distance the work teemed with figures in a manner that echoes the horror vacui of medieval European cathedrals... with the exception that these were not scenes teeming with figures of the damned, Last Judgments, and the birth of Christ... these were teeming scenes of unedited sexuality in every possible configuration... in the open and on a grandiose scale. The professor in the course mused over what he imagined must have been the initial British response to these works... stiff upper lips quivering... monocles popping out...:lol: One cannot help but experience these works from one's own Western cultural perception... but it must be admitted that such a view is skewed at best.

Even in the elementary level there is constant talk of "higher order thinking skills"... which I feel cannot be applied prior to the student first developing a solid knowledge base... a collection of facts upon which to base analysis, synthesis, comparison, etc... Too often on these boards... and in real life... it seems I come across one extreme of another: the self-proclaimed iconoclast who lacks any real experience of basis of knowledge upon which to base rebellion... or the student who imagines that everything must be taken at face value... who doesn't understand that he or she can disagree with Plato, dislike Iago and Polonius, and find Francis Bacon's (the painter) world view to be deeply disturbing... and still acknowledge and even appreciate Plato's/Shakespeare's/Bacon's brilliance as artists. MortalTerror speaks of Cicero as being worthy of being read "but not in an unguarded way". That would seem the proper approach to all art... and the more the artist proclaims that he or she has all the answers or is only telling the truth, the more wary one should become.

[Virgil]

StLukes, Petrarch, you two are having one great convesation. Thanks for the reading pleasure. :)


We cluster the successive generations of artists into eras and isms that we define by certain characteristics... yet know full well that almost every individual artist within these movements breaks one or another of these characteristics... perhaps the greatest artists being the least-likely to be able to be defined or contained. In many cases one can almost discern a greater affinity between the greatest artists of one generation and the greatest of another than between these same giants and the rest of their era. Surely Shakespeare shares more with Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Tolstoy, etc... in many ways than he does with Ben Jonson. In the end... what we are really left with is a collection of individuals... some greater and some lesser.
This is an incredibly insightful statement. I couldn't agree with you more.



I almost completely agree with this, except that the "collection of individuals" view taken too far can be just as dangerous as the abstracted view. It's important to keep a nice healthy balance between the two, alternating between viewing the individual writer as an artist, and taking a longer historical view.
You sound like a raging moderate. :lol:


Absolutely, as you say, it's necessary to use some sort of abstract framework when teaching, most especially at the introductory level. It's going to be easier for students to learn in a survey if they are able to think in terms of Chaucer being a Medieval poet, Shakespeare a Renaissance poet, Keats a Romantic etc.
Or a frustrated teacher. :p


(There's something of a trend at some schools toward teaching the collection of individuals approach at the introductory level, and the result is, in my opinion, a disaster, since students spend more time being confused than appreciating the works they are reading). It's also true that it is equally important to teach from the start that these are generalizations and convenient imaginary lines, and that there is much more blurring between the boundaries of genres and timelines than one might suspect at first. I'm planning a chapter on Chaucer in my dissertation as well as chapters on 16th and 17th century writers, and it would be disastrous for me to approach such a project with a firm line in my mind at the year 1400 (Chaucer's death). There is much that Chaucer has in common with the later poets, both by virtue of their shared talents as writers, and by virtue of the way he was influenced by and dealing with writers like Petrarch from the Italian Renaissance, in a way that in places is, arguably, almost proto-Renaissance. There are many, many advantages to working without the benefit of an historical net, and of coming to terms with writers individually and out of the context of a larger framework.
When I went to school, there seemed to be two approaches even then, a historical approach and a genre approach. I think both are valid. But I do think it silly say that writers of a period think the same. Just look at the difference between Wordsworth and Keats. Both are Romantics yet frankly I think they are as different as Shakespeare and Milton.


In summation, it's probably best to equally employ both the historic generality that groups artists in terms of chronologically designated categories, and the aesthetic generality that groups artists in terms of their skill in producing their art (and the pendulum of literary criticism swings pretty reliably between the extremes of these two generalities). Of course, the most fruitful and enjoyable place to be is between these two abstract poles: keeping both generalities in mind, but primarily dealing with the specifics of the poetry itself while shunning the temptations offered by either generalist extreme.
I would agree with that except for contemporary works. Anything within the last fifty years should just be left as individuals. I don't think we can make sweeping statements when we are that close to a work.

[mortalterror]

bump!

[stlukesguild]

With Scher having killed the other thread on contemporary poetry at the OP's request we might continue on with this thread.

I just received my copy of The Essential P.K. Page (and so I will explore JBI's Great White... or Great Northern Hope). Unfortunately, it seems I've been bombarded with new poetry collections... a result of a number of Christmas gift cards: Vicente Huidobro's Altazor, Wisława Szymborska's Monologue of a Dog, Galway Kinnell's Strong is Your Hold, Yves Bonnefoy's New and Selected Poems, and several others... including a collection by Gu Cheng.

[Jozanny]

I quibbled over creating a new thread on aspects of contemporary poetry, to look at established poets--not including myself--but then saw a headache coming over who is and who isn't contemporary, so maybe modern poetry will do. I don't actually mind discussing my work, but my only collection comes out of the Chicago school of the late 80's, and I am more properly still emerging, in fact unheard of in the major reviews pecking order, and even Robert, who has me on the decent collection issue, is probably still emerging, even though, like with luke, we are generationally proportionate.

However, me would like to chat about some living poets, not quite grand old men or dames, who I like, maybe not quite as established as Levine, but I will not pick individuals simply in zine journals still moving up.

I have been quiet for quite some years, but I am on the first book circuit, which I don't doubt will happen soon unless I stop submitting. My reason for this confidence is when I was young I was stupid and had a couple book length offers, but had a chip on my shoulder that I have since scuttled.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Joz--I would enjoy hearing some recommendations of contemporary poets you like reading. I'm so wrapped up in my scholarly reading lately that I find I don't have the time to properly read around in the very right now stuff and recommendations are always welcome. Otherwise basically the only contemporary poetry I end up reading are things by people I've met or who are friends of friends.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... I seriously think that you would enjoy Anne Carsen. I'd recommend the Autobiography of Red or Plainwater. She is perhaps something of an ideal: the scholar/poet. Beyond her poetry, she has published essays and several intriguing books of translations including the poems of Sappho and a unique take on the Oresteia:

http://www.amazon.com/Oresteia-Agamemnon-Aiskhylos-Sophokles-Euripides/dp/086547902X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264315399&sr=1-5

I'll throw some other suggestions as I have the time... and no doubt JoZ and JBI will chime in as well.

[Jozanny]

When we were doing the poetry readings, I had once nominated The Ice Lizard (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Ice-Lizard/Judith-Emlyn-Johnson/e/9781878818171) by Judith Johnson, and I am going to quietly give her a little more limelight here, as well as bookmark her page that I just listed, because I do not own this collection.

An editor loaned an edition to me, and I had to return it, so I cannot offer specific comments about what truly impressed me, but I was very moved, and she turns the sonnet on its head, rescued it for me from a tired trinket to a powerful casting off of emotional wounds.

She knows the terrain of the Black Mountain school, but her incisive voice transcends the ironic limitations of the group as a whole, and when I allow myself to purchase another collection, this should be near the top of my list.

[ennison]

Richard Wilbur is not mediocre

[stlukesguild]

Another poet that Petrarch... as an academic versed in literary history... may enjoy, is Richard Howard. Howard is commonly compared to Robert Browning with whom he shares a penchant for poetic monologues. He poems are often written in the forms of letters or other forms of communications between various sophisticated personae: 19th-century French and English writers and artists, John Ruskin, Henry James, the early photographer Nadar, Proust and Jane Morris (William's widow), Madame Curie, Wallace Stevens, secretaries and intimates of other great artists, Robert Browning himself or the aged Walt Whitman in imagined critique of the closeted Bram Stoker.

[Petrarch's Love]

Thanks to both Jozanny and St. Luke's Guild for the recommendations. I don't believe I've read the works of any of those poets before. I've set them on my library list.

[Jozanny]

Petrarch, I really wish I could discuss her, but I have spent about 200 dollars on ereader files and hard copy texts since November, and I have to slow down, if not due to money than due to my ability to read anything, and as you can imagine, it is hard to post from memory with nothing to cite, but I can say this: She has Beat/Black Mountain influences, but one forgets this, and I can assure you she is not Bukowski. I do not read many strong female voices such as I hope to be one day, but she is one, and I do not know her, even though, similar to your experience, she came to me through a personal connection. I am trying to bribe myself.

When I make my next sale then I can buy more books. We'll see, since I could not help that I was knocked off my game for a significant period of time. ;)

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Joz--I am sometimes reminded of how absurdly fortunate I am to have access to a University library so complete that I have only on one occasion been unable to track down a copy of a book I wanted. I will definitely have to check out their copy of The Ice Lizard in a few weeks when some of my academic writing deadlines are past. Thanks again for the recommendation.

[Jozanny]

Petrarch: I think Linda Bierds (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D133141011&field-keywords=Linda+Bierds&x=13&y=13) provides an interesting contrast to Johnson, though more acclaimed than Johnson and not really needing any help from me.

(I will also consider putting you in restraints if you don't stay in your chair :lol:)

I do not have time tonight but maybe tis worth a discussion thread in the future.

I have one more name to offer which is sort of cheating, and after that I'll think about it.

[sixsmith]

I'm again finding myself partial to a little Thom Gunn, or at least his early work. For reasons no longer clear to me, I spent a good deal of my first undergrad year in the library, scouring his poetry when I should have been in class learning about Byron. In fact, I tended to do a lot of 'self educating' in those days, a fact that explains why my transcript frequently resembles a Tiger Woods score card.

More generally, I'm undergoing something of a re-birth with regard to poetry (due largely to greater exposure to foreign language poets). I find that relative ignorance of the form is something of a blessing in this late renaissance. No ideological allegiances, no a priori suspicions: I can open a volume or a journal and just let it speak. That's not to say I'm hearing and seeing all the right things: I'd like to bolster my foundational stock and am reading a good deal of criticism. But it's refreshing nevertheless.

Anyway back to Gunn. I know his reputation suffered when fell in with bohemian/beatnik types after his move to SF. I'm not overly familiar with that period. The following opens his 1961 volume My Sad Captains.


In Santa Maria del Popolo

Waiting for when the sun an hour or less
Conveniently oblique makes visible
The painting on one wall of this recess
By Caravaggio, of the Roman School,
I see how shadow in the painting brims
With a real shadow, drowning all shapes out
But a dim horse’s haunch and various limbs,
Until the very subject is in doubt.


But evening gives the act, beneath the horse
And one indifferent groom, I see him sprawl,
Foreshortened from the head, with hidden face,
Where he has fallen, Saul becoming Paul.
O wily painter, limiting the scene
From a cacophony of dusty forms
To the one convulsion, what is it you mean
In that wide gesture of the lifting arms?

No Ananias croons a mystery yet,
Casting the pain out under name of sin.
The painter saw what was, an alternate
Candour and secrecy inside the skin.
He painted, elsewhere, that firm insolent
Young whore in Venus’ clothes, those pudgy cheats,
Those sharpers; and was strangled, as things went,
For money, by one such picked off the streets.

I turn, hardly enlightened, from the chapel
To the dim interior of the church instead,
In which there kneel already several people,
Mostly old women: each head closeted
In tiny fists holds comfort as it can.
Their poor arms are too tired for more than this
-- For the large gesture of solitary man,
Resisting, by embracing, nothingness





Caravaggio's painting:

http://www.patell.org/assets_c/2008/09/conversion_st_paul-thumb-480x620.jpg

[Babyguile]

Not reading through this whole thread right now but my two cents is this:

No one better be bad mouthing Carol Ann Duffy, I know how edgey it is to do so though.

[Dinkleberry2010]

What will you do if someone bad mouths her. Throw something against the wall? Who is Carol Ann Duffy anyway. Never heard of her. Oh, I get it, she one of those hundreds of poets who may perhaps become known sometime in the future. Well, good for her. I hope she makes it.

[sixsmith]

I'm not familiar with her either. Interestingly, Google threw up the following article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7095291/Poet-Laureate-Carol-Ann-Duffy-praises-Arctic-Monkeys-poetry.html

[Babyguile]

Oh dear...I meant that as humorous, I wasn't being sincere at all Germac.

I mean, of course I'm not going to be obnoxious enough to say that we can't express our opinions on other poets! ...

Well, she isn't what you predicted at all, she is an incredibly popular poet who has been at the top of her game CRITICALY as well as commercially for decades, and she is the Poet Laureatte, no less.

I said that because she always gets flamed on Litnet and I half knew this thread would be no exception.

We can discuss her only if people do it more fairly, just get me started...

[Babyguile]

I'm not familiar with her either. Interestingly, Google threw up the following article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7095291/Poet-Laureate-Carol-Ann-Duffy-praises-Arctic-Monkeys-poetry.html

Yep, here comes the armoured cavalry...

Well, Duffy is now a public figure as Laureatte, she is deliberately trying to catch the attention of today's younger generation and get them interested in poetry. And what better way to do that than through possibly the most popular Indy band in the UK and Europe (by the way, since I assume you have know clue, that means a lot).

Wether deliberately or not, you are excercising the defensive, militant and elitist attitude that has given poetry its current status with young people.

Way to go you trooper you...

[Dinkleberry2010]

well, good for her--I wish her all the luck and good will in the world

[stlukesguild]

Wether deliberately or not, you are excercising the defensive, militant and elitist attitude that has given poetry its current status with young people.

Nonsense. We hear that crap all the time in nearly every art form: "elitism and snobbish classicism is spelling the doom of poetry, the theater, classical music, painting, the ballet (insert art form of your choice). The reality is that "elitism" is just a loaded word used by those who wish to make intelligence or high standards seem like something negative... rather in the same manner as it has been used by American politicians over the past decade or so. Poetry has probably never had a larger audience than it has now, nor has classical music, the novel, painting, etc...

Certainly, the audience for art that maintains certain standards and challenges the audience may never rival the populist audience of icons of the mass media mass media... but it never has. Dante was not being read by every medieval Italian peasant. The Florentine blacksmith was quite probably not spending his off hours listening to Monteverdi or studying the paintings of Caravaggio. The reality is that at this point in time the arts have never been more accessible. No longer are the finest works of art reserved for certain social classes. Art is an elective affinity. One may chose to invest the effort... elect that painting or poetry are important and put forth the labor required... or not.

I do not deny that there are those who maintain a cultural snobbishness or "elitism"... but there is just as great a reverse snobbishness/elitism: that which rejects of mocks anything difficult... challenging... demanding effort. There is also the snobbishness of the patronizing attitude: those who would suggest that the only way that teens or the masses or whatever audience could possibly appreciate poetry (or classical music, or the ballet, or opera, etc...) is for it to be dumbed-down and marketed with the products of popular culture: Jim Morrison as poet, etc...

Having said this... the art of the last century (and longer) has been greatly inspired by a blurring of the notion of "high" and "low" art. We have classical composers building upon elements of jazz, blues, and popular music; we have painters drawing inspiration from TV, film, and advertising. In no way do I imagine that we may not have poets of real merit inspired by lyrics by pop musicians... or even (gasp!:eek:) the possibility that such lyrics may actually hold up as poetry (although I have seen very little proof of this). I do question, however, the notion that the "great" Poet Laureate... almost certainly chosen for political reasons more than aesthetic merit... is doing something great for poetry by attempting the bridge the gap between poetry and the lyrics of pop music. It may be that there is a reason for this gap that has something to do with artistic worth.

[Jozanny]

I cannot debate Duffy. Despite how well connected I used to be to American poets, low and high brow, I never heard of her until Sche mentioned teaching strategies of her poem about British youth violence. I read the piece, and don't think it fair to judge her on one poem perhaps obscured by controversy, but I think Armitage is the more innate English talent, for more valid reasons. His poetry stays with me and impacted me as a poet immersed in another poet's work, rather than an ad hoc sociological statement--not that I have not been guilty of these in my publishing career.

[Babyguile]

well, good for her--I wish her all the luck and good will in the world

I should think so.

[Dinkleberry2010]

But I still had never heard of her until you mentioned her. You like her poetry--well, good for you. Congratulations.

[stlukesguild]

I cannot debate Duffy. Despite how well connected I used to be to American poets, low and high brow, I never heard of her until Sche mentioned teaching strategies of her poem about British youth violence. I read the piece, and don't think it fair to judge her on one poem perhaps obscured by controversy...

Certainly. Don't get me wrong. Like JoZ I haven't read enough of Duffy's work to offer much of an assessment. I only questioned the notion that "bridging the gap" between serious poetry and rock and pop lyrics is inherently something to be wished for.

[Babyguile]

But I still had never heard of her until you mentioned her. You like her poetry--well, good for you. Congratulations.

Bless you Germac are you trying to patronise me sweetie?

Here, have a kiss from me to you:

x

[wlz]

Bless air's gift of sweetness, honey
from the bees, inspired by clover,
marigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
the hundred perfumes of the wind.
Bless the beekeeper

who chooses for her hives
a site near water, violet beds, no yew,
no echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
or gold, pigment for queens,
and joy be inexplicable but there
in harmony of willowherb and stream,
of summer heat and breeze,

each bee's body
at its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
strumming on fragrance, smitten.

For this,
let gardens grow, where beelines end,
sighing in roses, saffrom blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing, praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.

Virgil's Bees,
by Carol Ann Duffy.

[Babyguile]

wlz that's not a very traditional Duffy poem at all, I can honestly say I would not have known it was her unless you stated its author.

[wlz]

You don't like it...? It was written for a climate change special in the Guardian. I'm sure you're familiar with the Saturday Review... I think it an enjoyable enough poem.

[Dinkleberry2010]

TheDave, I would never patronise anyone except by accident. I personally know a dozen excellent poets who have been published in numerous publications, but they are unknown. So excuse my cyncism. When I hear a relatively unknown poet praised, my attitude is: so the hell what.

You think Duffy is great; well, that's all well and good.

That's why I said I wish Duffy well. I really do.

[wlz]

Lads, I wouldn't worry about it, my guess is that Carol-Ann is fast asleep in her cot!