shortstoryfan
01-07-2009, 10:03 AM
When I read poetry written in the last 75 years I can't seem to find the point. Most of them never seem to use poetic device. They are totally unconcerned with how their poem sounds when read aloud. Many of their lines seem totally random and unrelated. They describe things in ways that make you wonder if they even have seen or experienced what they are describing at all. And then, on top of all that, I can't even find the point! I understand that there are narrative poems or imagery poems, but should poems be random descriptions of things totally unrelated? Maybe I am just too dense to realize what the poets are saying. I suppose I could just be behind the times, and old fashioned. I'm totally for creating language that describes things in new ways, but shouldn't I be able to understand similes and metaphors to the point that they don't seem totally spastic? I know many of you have Master's degrees in this stuff, or are in undergrad right now for it, and I just want to know: can you tell me the point of this? What am I missing?
Is this the result of academic inbreeding over the past century? Have poets decided their works need to be as unaccessible as possible?
Contemporary poetry isn't that inaccessible - I would say it is more accessible than modernist works.
In truth, what you say is false, they do use devices non stop, often overlapping, and they do have very intricate structures.
Take this P.K. Page poem, that is in my signature:
from Arras
Consider a new habit - classical,
and trees espaliered on the wall like candelabra
How still upon the lawn our sandalled feet
But a peacock rattling his rattan tail and scraming
has found a point of entry. Through whose eye
did it insinuate in furled disguise
to shake its jewels and silk upon that grass?
.......
I ask what did they deal me in this pack?
The cards all suits, are royal when I look.
My fingers slipping on a monarch's face
twitch and grow slack.
I want a hand to clutch a heart to crack.
......
It was my eye.
Woluptuous it came.
Its head the ferrule and its lovely rail
folded so sweetly, it was strangely slim
to fit the retina.
And then it shook
and was a peacock - living patina.
Eye-bright, masculate!
Does no one care?
I thought their hands might hold me if I spoke.
I dreamed the bite of fingers in my flesh
their poke smashed by an image, but they stand
folding slow eyes on nothing. While they stare
another line has trolled the encircling air
another bird assumes its furled disguise.
1967
On first reading, we can only say so much - we are left with complex symbols and images, and of course a central image - the Arras.
In order to understand it though, rather than go line by line, quatrain by quatrain, as you would a sonnet, a different kind of reading needs to take place. One must figure out how the symbols and images relate to each other, and what Page means with her mention of the Eye, a, if you don't know, convention of poetry meaning their creative eye, rather than the practical eye.
So first we begin with the first image -
Consider a habit - classical,
and trees espaliered on the wall llike candelabra.
How still upon that lawn our sandalled feet.
By the placement in the poem, we can assume she is talking about the arras she is seemingly looking at. She gives us descriptions of its style - classical, but takes it further. She reveals, by her description of the trees a sort of three-dimensionality - a liveliness. She also, with the image of the Candelabra establishes a sense of illumination, as if the Arras is filled with classical insight.
From there we approach the peacock, who we are told someone has let it in - someone has allowed the peacock into this classical vision of the Arras. We are told it has entered through someone's eye, and that it disguises itself, in order to shake its Jewels and Silk, seemingly objects of beauty, upon that grass, upon the image of the Arras, altering it.
The peacock, we remember, but at this point cannot fully understand, without moving along further, so we wait upon it, hoping for some sort of clarity, though its meaning already seems to be coming to life.
Now we have the image of the pack of cards, which we are told, are all royal, all high cards, all good cards. The poet feels overwhelmed by the pack, and all the regal faces staring at her that she "twitch[es] and grow[s] slack". She is fighting them, and wants to be able to clutch them, to crack them, to, in this case, grasp what is hers, in the pack of cards.
Again the image though, needs to relate to the arras. Are we to say the pack is an attribute, or a symbol for the arras? Is the pack a mere convinience for grouping together the images she sees before her on the arras? I would think so - they represent the classical figures, the other eyes, who have, already been absorbed into the three dimensional world of the arras.
But then, we have the final admission, the about face of the poem. "It was my eye / Voluptuous it came." She finally acknowledges that it was she who let the peacock in - her eye, her vision that created the peacock, and allowed it to play amongst the classical figures, and regal cards. But there is a darkness perhaps, "Does no one care?" After all this, was the vision not great, not worth mentioning? Is the peacock merely a noise maker amongst the classical images and three dimensional figures?
Then we go to the last stanza, which is, I will mention, a rather ambiguous one, given that it has attracted much scholarship and debate.
She thinks she is being absorbed, pulled in by these hands which are clutching her, biting into her. They are trapped, and are trying to absorb her in - motionless - two dimensional. These fierce fingers are grabbing at her trying to bring her to the world of the two dimensional, but in response, "another line has trolled the encircling air, / another bird assumes its furled disguise." She goes on, more confident, and able now to admit it was her bird.
Of course, there are other viewpoints on the end, as I have mentioned. Many suppose the hands clutching her are positive, coming from the pack of cards. I personally opt towards a view that the hands clutching her are spectators, outside of the arras, and are trying to pull her vision to themselves, to absorb it, so in a sense, critics, readers, spectators, an audience in general. She struggles against them throughout the poem, unable to accept her artwork as hers at first, in fear of them, or the other work, but finally at the end, ready to destroy their notions and grip, and as an artist, create a vision that undoes all their wrong. The peacock then becomes a metaphor for her artwork, and the arras a metaphor for all artwork, or all poets. The classical exterior therefore becomes a metaphor for the canon, the great writers, each laughing at her, threatening her, until finally she throws the peacock outhere, claims herself, and says "I am here".
However, there is more, in that so heavy line. That line "Does no one care?". It seems a rather bitter line when you think of it - as if her vision, though she finally acknowledges it, and becomes who she is, is rather ignored, and uncared for. There is a sense of constant struggle emanating from these words, more so in some of the parts I cut out, but throughout the whole thing.
The struggling artist and process seems to be thematically at the centre, once you break things up, but there is a sense of hope in the ending, as if the poet has grown, and can finally embrace things, rather than have to deny herself. She now can move on, and create other birds.
So in a sense, yeah, it is less structured than classical poetry, but I think the surreal symbolism is worth it in the end. Contemporary poetry seems rawer, and perhaps more difficult, but when you start to dig, beautiful things come out of it. I think the problem is that people, from highschool are so used to thinking of poetry in classical terms, that when they finally get to read new stuff, that has completely abandoned those notions, they are unable to comprehend things. In truth though, one merely needs to look elsewhere for meaning, rather than at metre, simile, metaphor, and all that junk.
I also think a problem is that many readers are unable to comprehend irony. that is a shame, as irony is so central to contemporary poetry, but really the classical senses are very different. Just try reading some more, and eventually things will start making sense. If you can't understand a poem, spend a week reading it every day, and eventually things will jump out at you. Getting into contemporary poetry may not be easy, but I don't think it comes from the poetry being incomprehensible, rather from the readers being desensitized to this mode of thinking.
Jozanny
01-08-2009, 11:19 AM
When I read poetry written in the last 75 years I can't seem to find the point. Most of them never seem to use poetic device. They are totally unconcerned with how their poem sounds when read aloud. Many of their lines seem totally random and unrelated. They describe things in ways that make you wonder if they even have seen or experienced what they are describing at all. And then, on top of all that, I can't even find the point! I understand that there are narrative poems or imagery poems, but should poems be random descriptions of things totally unrelated? Maybe I am just too dense to realize what the poets are saying. I suppose I could just be behind the times, and old fashioned. I'm totally for creating language that describes things in new ways, but shouldn't I be able to understand similes and metaphors to the point that they don't seem totally spastic? I know many of you have Master's degrees in this stuff, or are in undergrad right now for it, and I just want to know: can you tell me the point of this? What am I missing?
Is this the result of academic inbreeding over the past century? Have poets decided their works need to be as unaccessible as possible?
This sounds like a plea I don't quite know how to solve, but as a published and still practicing poet, I cannot take your condemnation of the genre that far. What do you mean by totally spastic? As my muscular system is afflicted with spasticity, your use of it as a critical term is original. I don't mean to sound pedantic, but to understand what modern poets are a reaction to, you have to know something about the various *movements* that precedes them. JBI might say these movements as a classification technique is too convenient, and he is right, but the student and the lay reader need some sort of starting point. The Renaissance has that name for a reason. Romanticism is not the same as Modernism. Confessional poetry is not the same as language poetry, and like anything else, if you want to understand it, you have to be willing to learn. Even minimalism, which earns the current poet laureate her praise, sets a poet off from a narrative imagist like myself.
It really is not as difficult as you seem to feel it is. Try my late associate Gil Ott (http://odeo.com/episodes/23302350-Gil-Ott-Memorial-Reading). He wrote funny little vignettes about spiced chilli. He wasn't my type, and I declined the open mike at his memorial, but we respected each other, and he even has a cameo in my last published short story.
The other thing you might want to consider fan, is that you don't like the literary genre altogether, and might have more fun discovering something else. I have read a few of your posts, and you seem highly anxious about the field as a whole, and that is really okay. I am indifferent to expertise in any number of areas.
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