My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry

[Dinkleberry2010]

I will begin by saying that there is poetry being composed in our time that I think is good; it may not be great poetry, but it possesses quality. I suppose one can make an argument that this era in which we are living is not a great poetic age. But I do not wish to get into a discussion of whether this time in which we are living is devoid of great poetry, whether poetry has ceased to matter, or that, as some have suggested, it has actually died. My purpose in writing this article is much more modest. I simply want to point out a problem that I have with some contemporary poetry. My problem consists of four parts.

Firstly, I find in a number of contemporary poems that I read a lack of a specific subject. It seems that the poem is aimless, has no definite object, and is without purpose. The poem is not about anything specific. It possesses no subject. If one were asked what is the point of this certain poem, the answer would be there is no point in it. I find these poems to be a waste of time to read because they are not about anything. They are simply irregular ramblings.

Secondly, many of the poems that are being composed in our time I find to be nothing but catalogs of unconnected and unrelated images, listings of fragmented phrases and observations, and ununified feelings and thoughts. A mere listing of images, or a catalogue of unrelated and unconnected thoughts or feelings does not make a poem.

Thirdly, I find a lot of contemporary poems to be simply too personal. It’s as if the poet has felt an emotion and expressed it, has written of one particular experience he or she has had in such a way that it’s hard to view it as anything more than a certain experience. It’s like reading personal letters by someone, or reading diary passages, or a listing of personal impressions someone has written. The raw expression of emotion or impression is not enough to constitute a poem; a poem must contain something more than a statement of emotion. I find these types of poems to be meaningless to everyone but the writer.

Finally, many of the poems that I read are written in generalities. They are general statements consisting of indefinite, unspecific, or undetailed words or phrases, which have been used so much they have lost much of their power, effectiveness, and in many cases their meaning. An example of this is the statement: “My love for you is wider than the widest sea, deeper than the deepest ocean.” Triteness is a hallmark of these types of poems. They lack freshness or effectiveness because of constant use or excessive repetition. They are in short hackneyed.

In conclusion, I will simply state that the above is the problem I have with some contemporary poetry. As I stated, there is poetry being composed in our time that is good and possesses quality, but there is also much that is, for want of a better word, bad.

[stlukesguild]

90% of all art at any given time in history was mediocre at best. When we read older literature... the "classics"... the most difficult work of cherry picking the best or the strongest has been done for us over time by subsequent generations of writers, critics, etc... When dealing with the present we must largely make such decisions as to what does or does not resonate ourselves. This challenged is further exaggerated by the sheer volume of art being produced today and the lack of any real controls or standard. Nearly anyone can call themselves an artist or a poet today without the least real concept as to what those disciplines entail... or what constitutes a well-crafted poem or painting. As a result, the worst art today may be far worse than it was in the past... and it may be far more pervasive... although that is arguable... but one might also remember that many of the innovations in art have been wrought by those outside the mainstream. Again... one recognizes that without any real set standards, and as a result of the increased wealth and free time afforded to us as opposed to the past... there are far more people today involved in creating art of one form or another... including poetry... and this sheer volume is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

The reality is that there are very good poets writing today... as there were at any time in history. Whether we are living in one of the greatest era for poetry is debatable... and perhaps something only time will sort out. I would suggest that a checklist of what results in bad poetry is about as useless as a checklist for good poetry. Individual poets and poems succeed or fail through a vast array of reasons. I agree that the personalized, "confessional" approach to poetry can wear thin after a while... and it might be noted that such is often the approach of the mediocre or really untutored poet who imagines that poetry entails little more than "self expression". Still... such an approach to poetry also resulted in Wordsworth, Whitman, Neruda, and many other brilliant poets.

As for the complaint that too much poetry is but a catalog of unconnected or loosely connected images... certainly, this is nothing new. Japanese poetry often works on such a level. Certainly Leaves of Grass, Rimbaud's Season in Hell and especially Illuminations, Eliot's Wasteland... indeed a great deal of Modernist poetry from Mallarme to Garcia-Lorca, to Breton, to Pasternak, to Montale, to Octavio Paz functions through an accumulation of loosely connected imagery rather than is a more literal, narrative manner. Of course metaphor and symbol and complex levels of meaning beyond the mere literal "meaning" has always been at the heart of poetry.

There are great poets writing today. I'd suggest that if you are indeed interested you look at critical journals and other similar sources for suggestions. I'd also suggest that you be willing to search outside the realm of British/Irish/American poetry as you will discover a whole worls of great work out there. Among the contemporary or near-contemporary poets that I would surely recommend I would include: Charles Wright, Geoffrey Hill, Paul Kane, Anthony Hecht, Anne Carson, Yves Bonnefoy, Octavio Paz, Rafael Alberti, Homero Aridjis, Jaroslav Seifert, Wisława Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski, W.S. Merwin, Yehuda Amichai, Seamus Heaney, Czesław Miłosz, Bella Akhmadulina, Joseph Brodsky, etc...

[JBI]

90%? I would think higher, and certainly much, much higher if you count the pseudo-published texts.

Then again, one of the greater poets (certainly by my estimate the best Canadian poet) died 2 days ago and seems ignored on these boards, in contrast to the fact that every time a mediocre 1-hit-wonder author from the States dies they get a thread, so perhaps people aren't even reading the good stuff to begin with (not directed at St. Lukes, but at the notion of these threads).


Really, the argument toward images clustered together is tedious at best. It betrays a lack of understanding of the abilities of poetry, and the abilities of form.


There are thousands of years of tradition written with so called cataloged images if you will - some being even more intense in that the languages themselves are composed of such "cataloged images," and the idea is not particularly new.

I think actually that the structuring of poetry as metaphoric and metonymic associations is the oldest form anyway - language itself is constructed out of such an understanding of the world - though I wouldn't take things as far as Pound in his misreading of how Chinese characters came about. Really though, think of how we think - trees, branches, truck= tree, therefore, mentioning parts of them gesture to the tree itself - or, in contrast, fire - too hot to touch, pain, unbearable, therefore burning pain = a link between the two based on a common association

Imagism, in its original form was actually seen as a movement back toward the classical - it is a move away from the moral, which somehow managed to usurp, as seen through the perspective of modernists, the role of sensual feelings in poetry, particularly after the English Civil War. I don't see how it is "the problem of contemporary poetry."

Really though, French Symbolists - probably the best known French poets outside of France, and probably within France too - were working with far more intense cultural associations and images - Symmons' intro to The Symbolist Movement In Literature is worth taking a look at, as it gives the first English account, and probably the best (according to one of my profs.) of what symbol meant in that period, and how symbols work as well.

If you are insisting on a lack of cadence or sound-pattern in contemporary poetry, I recommend you read more widely.

St. Lukes, how is the volume of Gu Cheng going?

[Jozanny]

:rolleyes: If I had the time, which I do not, I'd certainly kick some tush to the moon on this complaint--but Jermac, you tell me you've been publishing longer than I have, though curiously play fast and loose with terminology. A post, dear fellow, is not an article.

Board or forum posts are mostly verbal conversation. An article is created to inform a readership. Now, maybe you have the rough edges of a column or a personal essay, but there is still a significant difference between posts as informal interactions between community users, and published material directed at readers.

When I have the time, however, I will defend contemporary poetry, and I can, vigorously.

[blank|verse]

It's a thought-provoking argument; and I don't think you're alone in questioning contemporary poetry.

I don't know if any of the following applies to you, but I think that people can find it difficult to appreciate contemporary poetry because it demands more of the reader. For example, if you're reading anything by the Neo-Classicists, Romantics, Modernists etc... they kind of come 'pre-packaged', have been analysed to death, and there are lots of helpful books and articles to give the reader 'ways in' to understanding them, the times they lived in and so on.

Today, when you're just presented with some words on a page, the difficulty the reader faces is appreciating them as much as canonical writers. The temptation therefore, is just to give up and dismiss everything as rubbish.

You clearly have defined expectations of what poetry 'should' be as well - something that probably isn't shared by a great number of professional writers. If you could give a list of poets you do like, maybe people could suggest other writers (contemporary or not) who you might enjoy.

I'm English, so am not up on contemporary American poets as much as StLukesGuild; but if you enjoy more traditional poetry (ie. not free verse) then perhaps you should look into the New Formalists - Anthony Hecht mentioned above is one, Richard Wilbur and James Merrill are others. They influenced the Irish-American poet Michael Donaghy, who died a few years ago, but is a brilliant recent poet (check out 'Machines').

Also, look on websites such as the UK's 'Poetry Archive' with recordings and poems by lots of contemporary poets. It's a great way to get a taste of modern work and writers, and there's information about them if you want to find out more.

After all, if you don't like some poetry, don't read it.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Thank you, dear fellow, for the information. I thought a post was part of a fence.

[JBI]

It's a thought-provoking argument; and I don't think you're alone in questioning contemporary poetry.

I don't know if any of the following applies to you, but I think that people can find it difficult to appreciate contemporary poetry because it demands more of the reader. For example, if you're reading anything by the Neo-Classicists, Romantics, Modernists etc... they kind of come 'pre-packaged', have been analysed to death, and there are lots of helpful books and articles to give the reader 'ways in' to understanding them, the times they lived in and so on.

Today, when you're just presented with some words on a page, the difficulty the reader faces is appreciating them as much as canonical writers. The temptation therefore, is just to give up and dismiss everything as rubbish.

You clearly have defined expectations of what poetry 'should' be as well - something that probably isn't shared by a great number of professional writers. If you could give a list of poets you do like, maybe people could suggest other writers (contemporary or not) who you might enjoy.

I'm English, so am not up on contemporary American poets as much as StLukesGuild; but if you enjoy more traditional poetry (ie. not free verse) then perhaps you should look into the New Formalists - Anthony Hecht mentioned above is one, Richard Wilbur and James Merrill are others. They influenced the Irish-American poet Michael Donaghy, who died a few years ago, but is a brilliant recent poet (check out 'Machines').

Also, look on websites such as the UK's 'Poetry Archive' with recordings and poems by lots of contemporary poets. It's a great way to get a taste of modern work and writers, and there's information about them if you want to find out more.

After all, if you don't like some poetry, don't read it.

New Formalism is a gimmick, and those poets mentioned aren't even associated with it. They write in form, but they aren't "New Formalists". The whole notion of the movement is centered around a periodical and was designed to get third rate poets more exposure because they were writing in form. What the mentioned poets are is something else - merely poets using form.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Please keep in mind the title of my article (and yes Jozanny it as an article): My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry. The title is not My Problem With Contemporary Poetry, or The Problem With Contemporary Poetry.

[stlukesguild]

St. Lukes, how is the volume of Gu Cheng going?

So far I've only read the intro and a couple of the poems. I've been focused upon a deeper reading of Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love which must be as laden with historical allusions as Eliot's Wasteland... perhaps more. I've also been spending most of my spare time in the studio working on my own art after two weeks absence due to a lingering cold.

...one of the greater poets (certainly by my estimate the best Canadian poet) died 2 days ago and seems ignored on these boards, in contrast to the fact that every time a mediocre 1-hit-wonder author from the States dies they get a thread, so perhaps people aren't even reading the good stuff to begin with...

A real loss... (P.K. Page) especially if she is as good as you suggest. I must admit to having never read anything by her... although I have repeatedly come across her name. Perhaps it was the overly "feminine" covers of her books that suggest one of those little old ladies scribbling sentimental verse ala Sandra Haldeman-Martz. I do have one of her books on order from Amazon so I'll take a look soon. Why not post your own thread on her work?

[Jozanny]

http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/rshepherd01.htm

[Dinkleberry2010]

Jozanny, you need to go back and reread "My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry," paying close attention to the title. It is clear that you misunderstood and misinterpreted it. You took it as an attack on all contemporary poetry. Hopefully, if you reread it you will understand and comprehend it, and not feel that you need to personally attack me.

[mortalterror]

I've been focused upon a deeper reading of Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love which must be as laden with historical allusions as Eliot's Wasteland... perhaps more.
"But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously sought, and violently applied." - Johnson's Life of Milton

[Dark Muse]

Jermac I could not have stated it better myself. I do not have any greater insights to add to what you said or the previous comments, but I will say that your article and thoughts upon contemporary poetry reflect my own personal feelings about it as well. I have the same experiences when I read much of the contemporary poetry. I have always been more drawn to the romantics and other more classical poetry works.

There are a few contemporary poets whose work I enjoy, but I do not find myself being much inspired to want to pursue a great deal of contemporary works.

In addition to the fact that as you stated I often feel like a lot of (not all) contemporary poetry feels like someone just ripped a page out of their diary and someone managed to get it published a poem, somehow in spite of this fact, a lot of contemporary poetry leaves me feeling "cold" is the best way to describe it.

Though they may vent a lot upon their personal feelings, I don't actually feel a deep connection to personal motion, I don't feel the soul of the poet within the work. It seems distant, and aloof, and thus I do not personally connect to what I am reading.

[Jozanny]

So with just one broad swaith of the brush, the verdict of the members here is that contemporary poetry is simply lacking? You're wrong.

Of course there is bad confessional poetry out there, that may be too personal--quasi felt discomfort over one of my starker pieces in Pendragon that I gave him as a gift, and he is entitled to feel that, but I have literally dedicated my life to my work and that connection to other poets who are my friends, and your sentiments are lazy.

Over habituation through the blow-hole.

[JBI]

St. Lukes, how is the volume of Gu Cheng going?

So far I've only read the intro and a couple of the poems. I've been focused upon a deeper reading of Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love which must be as laden with historical allusions as Eliot's Wasteland... perhaps more. I've also been spending most of my spare time in the studio working on my own art after two weeks absence due to a lingering cold.

...one of the greater poets (certainly by my estimate the best Canadian poet) died 2 days ago and seems ignored on these boards, in contrast to the fact that every time a mediocre 1-hit-wonder author from the States dies they get a thread, so perhaps people aren't even reading the good stuff to begin with...

A real loss... (P.K. Page) especially if she is as good as you suggest. I must admit to having never read anything by her... although I have repeatedly come across her name. Perhaps it was the overly "feminine" covers of her books that suggest one of those little old ladies scribbling sentimental verse ala Sandra Haldeman-Martz. I do have one of her books on order from Amazon so I'll take a look soon. Why not post your own thread on her work?

You mock me - I did months ago and it sunk to the bottom.

[Dark Muse]

So with just one broad swaith of the brush, the verdict of the members here is that contemporary poetry is simply lacking? You're wrong..

Did you here anyone say ALL contempary poetry? No! I don't think so, Jermac very clearly said SOME which is quite different then say all contermpary poetry, and in my own post I specified that it did not apply to ALL


There are a few contemporary poets whose work I enjoy, but I do not find myself being much inspired to want to pursue a great deal of contemporary works.

In addition to the fact that as you stated I often feel like a lot of (not all) contemporary poetry feels like someone just ripped a page out of their diary and someone managed to get it published a poem, somehow in spite of this fact, a lot of contemporary poetry leaves me feeling "cold" is the best way to describe it.

Perhaps you should pay more attention to the word choice other people use before making your own assumptions about what people are saying.

[Scheherazade]

R e m i n d e r

Please do not personalise your arguments.

It is the ideas that we discuss, not the people behind them.

When we post on the Forums, we all accept that our views might be challenged by those who feel and differently from us.

If you are not willing to accept this, please refrain from taking part in discussions on issues about which you feel strongly.

[Dinkleberry2010]

In five of the posts which followed "My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry" I was either admonished for my supposed ignorance of poetry or personally attacked by the poster. A third of the posts were directed toward me, not what I had written.

[stlukesguild]

SLG- I've been focused upon a deeper reading of Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love which must be as laden with historical allusions as Eliot's Wasteland... perhaps more.

"But their peculiarity is not excellence; if they differ from the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously sought, and violently applied." - Johnson's Life of Milton

Much as I love Johnson as a writer, he also wrote "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last." and yet it would seem to me that Tristram Shandy may have better outlasted Johnson. Personally, I find Hill's to be a knotty poetry... not unlike that of Milton or Dickinson or Gerald Manley Hopkins or Eliot... but one that rewards the effort spent. Like Eliot's Wasteland or even Hart Crane I feel the work can be enjoyed on a certain level without fully understanding it... but a greater analysis rewards the reader with another level of pleasure.

SLG- A real loss... (P.K. Page) especially if she is as good as you suggest. I must admit to having never read anything by her... although I have repeatedly come across her name. Perhaps it was the overly "feminine" covers of her books that suggest one of those little old ladies scribbling sentimental verse ala Sandra Haldeman-Martz. I do have one of her books on order from Amazon so I'll take a look soon. Why not post your own thread on her work?

JBI- You mock me - I did months ago and it sunk to the bottom.

Perhaps to be expected when one considers that the misunderstanding of poetry as this thread perhaps exemplifies is not limited to Modern and Contemporary poetry... as I noted not too long ago with an essay written by Dana Gioia. My own broader threads on far broader topics of French poetry, Spanish poetry, and German poetry all withered and died... far too soon. Those poetry threads that are kept alive are largely done so through the concerted efforts of a few individuals such as Quasi or Dark Muse. How often have we even seen someone include a book of poetry among those threads of "Your 10 Favorite Books" or "Your Five Favorite Books by Living Authors"? Did anybody but me include a book of poetry on the thread asking for your thoughts on the best books written since 2000? Seriously, I do have a collection of Page's poetry on order from Amazon. I found it for less than $3 from an Amazon secondary dealer shortly after having read of her demise and I took the time to check out what was on Amazon.

[JBI]

SLG- A real loss... (P.K. Page) especially if she is as good as you suggest. I must admit to having never read anything by her... although I have repeatedly come across her name. Perhaps it was the overly "feminine" covers of her books that suggest one of those little old ladies scribbling sentimental verse ala Sandra Haldeman-Martz. I do have one of her books on order from Amazon so I'll take a look soon. Why not post your own thread on her work?

JBI- You mock me - I did months ago and it sunk to the bottom.

Perhaps to be expected when one considers that the misunderstanding of poetry as this thread perhaps exemplifies is not limited to Modern and Contemporary poetry... as I noted not too long ago with an essay written by Dana Gioia. My own broader threads on far broader topics of French poetry, Spanish poetry, and German poetry all withered and died... far too soon. Those poetry threads that are kept alive are largely done so through the concerted efforts of a few individuals such as Quasi or Dark Muse. How often have we even seen someone include a book of poetry among those threads of "Your 10 Favorite Books" or "Your Five Favorite Books by Living Authors"? Did anybody but me include a book of poetry on the thread asking for your thoughts on the best books written since 2000? Seriously, I do have a collection of Page's poetry on order from Amazon. I found it for less than $3 from an Amazon secondary dealer shortly after having read of her demise and I took the time to check out what was on Amazon.

I sincerely hope you got her collected works volume (I think published in two volumes) since it has most of the old good ones, but you can't go too wrong with her, and her collected poems "conveniently" happened to leave out her most famous poem at the time, "Arras", as she sought to break her associations with it as if not to cage herself as an author.

[Dinkleberry2010]

How does this thread "perhaps exemplify the misunderstanding of poetry"?

[stlukesguild]

Jermac- I will begin by saying that there is poetry being composed in our time that I think is good; it may not be great poetry, but it possesses quality. I suppose one can make an argument that this era in which we are living is not a great poetic age. But I do not wish to get into a discussion of whether this time in which we are living is devoid of great poetry, whether poetry has ceased to matter, or that, as some have suggested, it has actually died.

In conclusion, I will simply state that the above is the problem I have with some contemporary poetry. As I stated, there is poetry being composed in our time that is good and possesses quality, but there is also much that is, for want of a better word, bad.

Dark Muse- There are a few contemporary poets whose work I enjoy, but I do not find myself being much inspired to want to pursue a great deal of contemporary works.

There is such a thing as damning with faint praise. Both postings stated that some contemporary poetry was not bad and possessed merit... but a lot of it was bad... or didn't seem to resonate. Certainly saying "I don't like a great majority of contemporary poetry, although some of it is not bad" is not quite the same as saying "Contemporary poetry as a whole is rather bad..." but it is rather close. I can see why someone like JoZanny who is active in the field as a poet would take offense. While she may certainly agree that there is more than enough crap out there that passes for poetry... and I might agree that a hell of a lot of what passes for contemporary art is a bad joke... we still find that we are quite likely to become defensive anytime we suspect the usual argument about the decline of art or poetry is bantered about... because such an argument rarely acknowledges just which artists or poets are being being painted with the broad brush as representative of this decline... and which artists and poets are truly doing interesting work.

As I noted in my first post, if we are simply pointing out that a good majority of today's poetry is bad without questioning the possibility that the best poetry of now may be just as good as it ever was... well then what is the point? Admittedly 90%+ of all art is mediocre at best. For every Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge there were any number of mediocre and just plain bad poets writing at the same time who are now gratefully forgotten. When it comes to contemporary art we are always faced with the fact that the best work has not been sorted out and prepackaged for us by critics, historians, the schools, and subsequent writers. The experience of contemporary art is a hit-or-miss affair... although there are resources that may help lead us to a more informed selection.

If the point of the discussion is that you (anyone) have come across a number of contemporary poets whom you were less than enthralled with... let's discuss them on an individual basis. Let's talk about what you found was lacking. Perhaps those who are passionate about contemporary poetry and poetry in general can offer some insights... or even some suggestions as to poets that you might find to be far more interesting.

How does this thread "perhaps exemplify the misunderstanding of poetry"?

How else is one to take a posting admitting to a problem with a good portion of contemporary poetry... without ever getting into specifics? Without getting into specifics, such a complaint comes across as painting the whole of contemporary poetry with a rather broad brush in a rather unflattering manner. As I stated above... lets talk specifics. I've already offered suggestions of a number of poets who I find to be of real merit. I may just be that we agree on a good many who we find less than interesting.:wave:

...her collected poems "conveniently" happened to leave out her most famous poem at the time, "Arras", as she sought to break her associations with it as if not to cage herself as an author.

Yes. I suppose if one becomes too closely associated with a given artistic creation... especially if it is an older piece... one can understand a degree of reluctance to be forever connected with it. Paul Celan similarly refused at a certain point to allow his most famous poem, Todesfuge ("Death Fugue") to be further anthologized.

[Dinkleberry2010]

My initial post did not state that some contemporary poetry is not bad. My post stated that there is poetry being composed that is good.

I didn't say "I don't like a great majority of contemporary poetry." I said there is poetry being composed that is of quality, but there is much that is bad.

Nothing that I wrote in the initial post even hints about a decline of art or poetry. Nor did I say that the majority of today's poetry is bad.

No one who is active in the field as a poet has any reason to be offended by what I wrote. Jozanny misunderstood my post and took it as an attack on contemporary poetry as a whole. That is why I entitled the piece "My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry," not "My Problem With Contemporary Poetry."

As for specifics, I bring in a number of specifics and examples in my post.

[stlukesguild]

JoZ... quite a good article:

It’s been the fashion at least since the Modernists to complain that contemporary poetry has become difficult, and that this difficulty has alienated the readers who used to flock to poetry as they now flock to John Grisham novels and American Idol. I am not sure what constitutes the easy poetry these people look back to: Shakespeare? Donne? Milton? I’m also not sure when and where this massive poetry audience existed. The great majority of the 19th-century counterparts of those who now watch television and read pulp fiction were barely literate. They certainly weren’t seduced away from their immersion in Keats and Browning by the advent of the mass media.

I don’t believe that the imaginary “average person” doesn’t want to be challenged and stimulated. There is, for example, a whole industry of verbal challenges, from crossword puzzles to Scrabble, that the so-called general public relishes.

In the perennially popular “death of poetry” discourse, there’s a consensus that people don’t read poetry because it’s too hard, too “elitist”... I’ve always thought the opposite, that most poetry isn’t hard enough, in the sense that it’s not interesting or engaging enough. It doesn’t hold the attention—you read it once or twice and you’ve used it up. The engagement I look for and too often miss is a kind of pleasure, in the words, the rhythms, the palpable texture of the poem. It’s the opposite of boredom.

Many years ago, I sat in on a class of Ted Kooser’s in which he asserted that a reader wants to be led by the hand through a poem, that readers have no patience with being baffled, no tolerance for mystery. I had to interject that I hated to be led by the hand through a poem. I’d rather that the poet assume that I can make my own way through a poem... Just as mystery can be part of a person’s allure, so mystery in poetry can be a lure: Yeats calls this “the fascination of what’s difficult.” One wants to solve the mystery... ...On the other hand, superficial mystery is merely shallowness posing as depth.

What I cannot bear, as a reader or as a person, is to be bored. For a poem to be boring is much worse than for a poem to be baffling.

Incomprehension and even frustration can seduce in poems just as they can in people: many objects of desire are obscure, but their outlines are clear. What does the sunlight breaking through the clouds that have hovered all day, then filtering through the leaves of the giant live oak tree in my back yard, “mean”?... Too many bad poems, dull poems, are just meaning, with nothing or too little doing the meaning. I know what they mean, but I can’t be bothered to care... some poems are easy because they have nothing to say. Conversely, some poems are difficult for the same reason, in an attempt to cover up their vacuity... some poems are difficult merely in the manner of a difficult child, sullenly or gleefully sticking out their tongues at the reader.

It’s often said that “difficult” poems exclude potential readers. This can certainly be true, but I feel excluded by poems that give me nothing to do as a reader, that offer me no new experience and nothing I didn’t already know.

T.S. Eliot wrote that genuine poetry can communicate before it’s understood. I would say analogously that good poetry can and should give pleasure before it’s understood. As Wallace Stevens noted of his supreme fiction, it must give pleasure. It is this pleasure that makes one want to understand the poem... The grasping of a poem’s meaning, however provisional it may be, is only one of the many pleasures that poetry offers.

I don’t “understand” some of my favorite poems. I don’t know what they “mean,” but I know what happens to me when I read them; I know the experience I have and its effect on me. Hart Crane has been one of my favorite poets for almost thirty years, but until I taught his poetry I didn’t “understand” “The Broken Tower.” I am glad that I do now, but only because that understanding has enriched an experience I was already having.

Geoffrey Hill observes that “difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings. If you write as if you had to placate or in any way entice their lack of interest, then I think you are making condescending assumptions about people. I mean people are not fools. But so much of the populist poetry of today treats people as if they were fools.” I don’t want to be patronized or condescended, as a reader or a person; I would prefer that the poet assume that I am both intelligent and interested.

All readers, no matter how catholic in their tastes and in their knowledge, come to poems with some or another set of expectations. And those expectations are not merely individual but social and historical: What one age finds obscure sometimes, not always, comes to seem perfectly plain to another age. Readers may and do vary widely in their expectations of a poem, and they may have different expectations of different poems and different kinds of poems. But it’s impossible to approach a poem as if one were one of John Locke’s blank slates... readers' training, expectations, and knowledge have everything to do with whether particular forms of language are experienced as difficult… Different groups of readers have different skills and expectations; allusions familiar to one… audience may be mysterious to another, and received conventions that structure the sense of what makes an utterance a poem may vary widely.

Difficulty is not equivalent to complexity. Despite their deceptive surface simplicity, Ben Jonson’s poems on the deaths of his children, “On My First Daughter” and “On My First Son,” are complex, but they are not difficult.

“To read a poem should be an experience, like experiencing an act.”... A real work of art makes us stop and pay attention. It breaks through our crust of habit and routine.

If one truly cared nothing about making contact with others, however few or select (not every poem is for every reader...), there would be no reason to make art. One could simply commune with oneself within the confines of one’s own mind. But the will to communicate does not define the what or the how of communicating. A poem can communicate itself, in the way that a classical Greek statue or a painting by Willem de Kooning does. This is another way of saying that poems are, or should be, experiences in themselves, and not just accounts of or commentaries on experience; they should be additions to the world, not simply annotations to it.

Those who define or evaluate a poem in terms of its content or subject matter are making a serious category mistake. Poems are utterances, but they are first and foremost aesthetic artifacts, events and occasions in language.

Walter Pater famously asserted that all art aspires to the condition of music, and the musical analogy is very suggestive. On the one hand, music is intensely expressive, and on the other hand it’s hard (at least with instrumental music) to pin down exactly what is being expressed. Also, music is by definition organized and ordered, or it is not music, just noise or random sound, and the “meaning” of a piece of music is inextricable from its structure. Similarly, a poem means as much through its form, its shape in space and time, as through its content or “subject matter.”

A destination is also an end but, as Nietzsche wrote, the end of a melody is not its goal. Too often understanding is the prize you get after you have consumed the poem. Now that you have taken it apart to get the decoder ring, you’re done with the poem—you can throw it away. I don’t see poems as things I want to get over with, any more than I see life as something I want to get over with. The end of life is death.

I will allow Howard Nemerov the last word. “If poetry reaches the point which chess has reached, where the decisive, profound, and elegant combinations lie within the scope only of masters, and are appreciable only to competent and trained players, that will seem to many people a sorry state of affairs, and to some people a consequence simply of the sinfulness of poets; but it will not in the least mean that poetry is, as they say, dead; rather the reverse. It is when poetry becomes altogether too easy, too accessible, runs down to a few derivative formulae and caters to low tastes and lazy minds—it is then that the life of the art is in danger.”

excerpted from:
On Difficulty in Poetry
Reginald Shepherd
May/Summer 2008
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs

[mortalterror]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Much as I love Johnson as a writer, he also wrote "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last." and yet it would seem to me that Tristram Shandy may have better outlasted Johnson.
I know, and not many pages before that he takes the opportunity to run down The Wealth of Nations, Voltaire, Rousseau, Thomas Gray, Edmund Burke, James Macpherson, the Scottish, the Irish, the French, people who don't speak Greek, people who speak it badly, and anyone not named Samuel Johnson. He thought rhyming better than blank verse, and lauded both Dryden and Pope. In short, he was more often wrong than right but showed such character and intelligence in his opinions that one could hardly hold the error against him.

"That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims.

It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it."
-Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare

Personally, I find Hill's to be a knotty poetry... not unlike that of Milton or Dickinson or Gerald Manley Hopkins or Eliot... but one that rewards the effort spent. Like Eliot's Wasteland or even Hart Crane I feel the work can be enjoyed on a certain level without fully understanding it... but a greater analysis rewards the reader with another level of pleasure.
I quite agree that Eliot can be enjoyed without any deep understanding of his poems, or that Milton's opacity is small enough a barrier to his merit. But complexity is neither virtue nor vice in art. It is a choice and few poets share that rare quality, or that lucky fortune, to merge profundity and fecundity, depth with invention. Different Hill may be, abstruse, turgid even, but never good.

[Dinkleberry2010]

It's interesting that you include in your post the statement by Geoffrey Hill: "But so much of populist poetry of today treats people as if they were fools."

[mortalterror]

Did anybody but me include a book of poetry on the thread asking for your thoughts on the best books written since 2000?
In that thread's defense though, I'd like to admit that I hadn't heard of Cloud Atlas before, and it looks very promising. For the most part, I don't read living writers. The only two who spring to my mind as worthwhile are Marquez, and Walcott. I'd be interested in similar threads that look at the best books written in non-English languages since 2000.

[Dark Muse]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]There is such a thing as damning with faint praise. Both postings stated that some contemporary poetry was not bad and possessed merit... but a lot of it was bad... or didn't seem to resonate. Certainly saying "I don't like a great majority of contemporary poetry, although some of it is not bad" is not quite the same as saying "Contemporary poetry as a whole is rather bad..." but it is rather close. I can see why someone like JoZanny who is active in the field as a poet would take offense. While she may certainly agree that there is more than enough crap out there that passes for poetry... and I might agree that a hell of a lot of what passes for contemporary art is a bad joke... we still find that we are quite likely to become defensive anytime we suspect the usual argument about the decline of art or poetry is bantered about... because such an argument rarely acknowledges just which artists or poets are being being painted with the broad brush as representative of this decline... and which artists and poets are truly doing interesting work.

To be perfectly honest, I really do not see any reason why in the world another person ought to be the lest bit offended by the leanings of my own personal taste.

Art is perceived, interpreted and affects each individual in a different way. And just because one person may not enjoy contemporary poetry, or at least a portion of contemporary poetry is not per sae saying the poetry is bad in of itself, but simply saying that it goes against my personal taste, and does not personally speak to me on an emotional level. Just because I am not moved by a piece of poetry does not by default necessitate that that piece of poetry is bad.

In fact, I did not even out and out state that I thought it was crap, I simply stated elements of some contemporary poetry which I find unappealing to me as an individual.

Furthermore, when it comes to art in my personal opinion I think that if a work can inspire even strong negative responses it does more credit to a work which goes completely without notice or comment.

Contemporary poetry gets people talking about it, for good or ill, negative or positive, it stirs something within others and draws attention to itself in that way.

The fact the people feel so strongly against certain aspects of some contemporary poetry should do it more credit than harm.

[Dinkleberry2010]

There are threads on this site that discuss the best books of this decade. This thread is entitled My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry.

[stlukesguild]

I quite agree that Eliot can be enjoyed without any deep understanding of his poems, or that Milton's opacity is small enough a barrier to his merit. But complexity is neither virtue nor vice in art. It is a choice and few poets share that rare quality, or that lucky fortune, to merge profundity and fecundity, depth with invention. Different Hill may be, abstruse, turgid even, but never good.

As with Blood Meridian, it seems we disagree in this instance. I'll not attempt to change your opinion as I don't believe you can "make" someone like a certain artist in any genre by explaining what you find to be good about him anymore than you can convince me that a given food tastes good that I happen to find despicable by reciting its ingredients.:goof:

[mortalterror]

As with Blood Meridian, it seems we disagree in this instance. I'll not attempt to change your opinion as I don't believe you can "make" someone like a certain artist in any genre by explaining what you find to be good about him anymore than you can convince me that a given food tastes good that I happen to find despicable by reciting its ingredients.:goof:
You show remarkable sense if not especial daring; but in this instance I would actually like to be convinced. This McCarthy thing has me puzzled. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what I have missed that so many others have found. It makes me doubt my own abilities as a reader. Yet whenever someone defends the book, their excuses are full of platitudes and empty of citations.

I once described the ending of the book to a friend. "So then this giant albino dances naked on top of the bar. The end," I said while pantomiming a softshoe. The much lauded ending was simply ridiculous. It's not exactly:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


Graphic violence is nothing new to me. Battle Royale is one of my favorite movies. I grew up on Clint Eastwood and Louis Lamour; so I'm not prejudiced against westerns. If it's the brutality that readers are reacting to, just about any history book could shock them. But I've yet to see anyone break down the text, the way you can do when someone doubts the greatness of Moby Dick.


I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now do I glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, i read my sire. leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!
-Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Is there anything in Blood Meridian to compare?

[Dinkleberry2010]

I repeat: There are other threads that deal with subjects such as the best books of the decade, but this thread is about My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry. If you wish to discuss the merits of a certain novel then go to that thread, or start a thread.

[Jozanny]

I'd like to address this notion of contemporary poets being *too personal*. Sure, you can open any literary journal--like So To Speak, a low end women's art journal that is purportedly feminist but is more or less student creative writing gabbling, and find confessional modes of verse that come no where near dramatic modernist anguish, but there are also personal poems which serve the art of poetics as a modern conceit, as much as Donne's tropes serve his.

You just have to look for them, and my former associate Al Maginnes is a prime example, where his narratives aptly capture the current sense of dislocation in American life, yet holding on to that erstwhile expansive optimism which form the ligaments in the body and blood of American literature.

You have to consider what poets are using personal experiences for without a blanket condemnation of discomfort over their use.

[Dinkleberry2010]

Jozanny, I did not say that contemporary poets are too personal. That is something you have made up. I said that I find many contemporary poems that I read simply too personal. I wasn't giving a "blanket condemnation of discomfort over the use of personal experience in poetry," as you put it. You need to reread that section of My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry because it is clear from your response that you have misunderstood and misinterpreted it.

[stlukesguild]

Jozanny, I did not say that contemporary poets are too personal. That is something you have made up. I said that I find many contemporary poems that I read simply too personal. I wasn't giving a "blanket condemnation of discomfort over the use of personal experience in poetry," as you put it. You need to reread that section of My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry because it is clear from your response that you have misunderstood and misinterpreted it.

Jermac... this all just sounds like back-peddling and semantics to me. What exactly was the point of you post then? If all you were saying was that some contemporary poetry that you have read is bad... well then I might be tempted to simply say: Duh!!

It would seem obvious that a given percentage of everything is mediocre and a given percentage of everything is bad. Indeed, that would seem to go without saying. Again... what is the purpose of your post if (as you repeatedly suggest) you are not challenging the merits of contemporary poetry. Your initial post argues that you wish to draw attention to 4 problems you have with "some" contemporary poetry. Hell... I could probably find an endless array of deficiencies if my only goal was to point out how "some poetry" failed. But I could probably find as many examples of failings of poetry from any era... which again leads me to ask what it is that you were wishing to convey... if (as you claim) you had no intentions of questioning the merits of contemporary poetry in a larger sense?

[Dinkleberry2010]

stlukesguild--you need to go back and reread My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry. DUH

[JBI]

Jozanny, I did not say that contemporary poets are too personal. That is something you have made up. I said that I find many contemporary poems that I read simply too personal. I wasn't giving a "blanket condemnation of discomfort over the use of personal experience in poetry," as you put it. You need to reread that section of My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry because it is clear from your response that you have misunderstood and misinterpreted it.

Jermac... this all just sounds like back-peddling and semantics to me. What exactly was the point of you post then? If all you were saying was that some contemporary poetry that you have read is bad... well then I might be tempted to simply say: Duh!!

It would seem obvious that a given percentage of everything is mediocre and a given percentage of everything is bad. Indeed, that would seem to go without saying. Again... what is the purpose of your post if (as you repeatedly suggest) you are not challenging the merits of contemporary poetry. Your initial post argues that you wish to draw attention to 4 problems you have with "some" contemporary poetry. Hell... I could probably find an endless array of deficiencies if my only goal was to point out how "some poetry" failed. But I could probably find as many examples of failings of poetry from any era... which again leads me to ask what it is that you were wishing to convey... if (as you claim) you had no intentions of questioning the merits of contemporary poetry in a larger sense?

I'll just drop my two cents worth.

Historically, "judgment" in poetry, and theory have seem to played a role in developing what is "poetry" and its function. In the sense that Sidney wrote his defense, Gascoigne his notes on the contemporary English seen, Shelley his Defense, Coleridge and Wordsworth their Introduction to Lyrical Ballads, and numerous others.

A sort of Ars Poetica has always dominated discourse about poetry to an extent, as people like to describe the feelings they get from poetry in objective terms, yet somehow wish to make a more scientific approach out of it; so for instance, I would say that rhyme has such and such a mnemonic effect, or whatever, and say how that adds or detracts, or whatnot.

When we get to Blank verse though, the framework is harder to approach. Therefore we get people trying to "justify" art, or somehow "criticize art", but at the same time, the forum here is a very strange one, and if somebody were to attack all contemporary poetry, there would be those, as seen by this thread, who comment and debase. "some" then functions as a sort of weasel word around that, but in truth, if taken literary, would be like saying "some cooks cook food that is way too salty." In essence, that means nothing.

Of course, some structures and attributes of poetry are designed for failure; the long rhyming line in English, for instance, doesn't really seem to work, as the speech pattern of English almost always adds a caesura mid-line anyway. In addition to this, forms themselves go in and out of fashion; couplets are hard now to really pull off, whereas anything but couplets seems somewhat out of the ordinary for the way people like myself conceptualize 18th century verse.

In truth though, this whole defense nonsense assumes there is an attack on poetry; I don't know, this whole golden age bit is very fishy to me - genres have just evolved, but I don't think poetry was ever very popular with the masses, or was ever a money making scheme.

Most poets just seem to have something they feel they wish to express, as do most artists. There are those who write primarily for money, such as Johnson, and maybe Pope (though I think the latter was just writing for some Onanist satisfaction), the bulk of poets have day jobs, essentially all, and that has been relatively the rule across most countries. (China, for instance, for a period,required poetry almost as a job requirement to become rich, but it was just one of many, and not an actual source of income. In similar fashion, poetry was a "courtly practice" amongst aristocrats in European courts, up until the printing age, when the actual idea of making money from authorship seems to have emerged).


Back to the point then, there is too much poetry as it is going around; if some poetry is bad, just don't read it.

[Jozanny]

Well JBI, you make a good case for why so much of poetry fails to meet expectations, so I don't have a problem discussing those points, just a problem with near blanket statements that don't offer much in the way of external evidence. I don't like Pope, but I will concede he struggled to maintain the epic scope that poetics has since lost, even if he had to turn to comedy to do it--not that we haven't discussed this before.

I have to stick up for myself and my friends though. We have things to say, and the best of our craft is just as intricate today as it was for Dante and his peers.

[Dinkleberry2010]

I suppose I need to re-repeat this: There are other threads that deal with subjects such as the best books of the decade, but this thread is about My Problem With Some Contemporary Poetry. If you wish to discuss nineteenth century English literature, or classical Chinese poetry, or whatever, then go to that thread, or start one.

[Scheherazade]

Jermac> I understand your frustration; however, it is natural that discussions evolve and sometimes different turns.

If you simply would like to post your opinions without receiving further feedback, you can perhaps post your opinions in an essay format in the General Writing section in future.

[Dinkleberry2010]

I am requesting that this thread be closed.

[Jozanny]

I don't see why it should be closed if members have relevant points to make about poets currently publishing.

The confessional mode is certainly liable to abuse, but so is romanticism, or issue poetry that deals with environment or current events. I am simply asking why the baby has to be thrown out with the bathwater, especially when there are positive attributes to look at.

[Scheherazade]

This thread will now be closed.

If you would like to discuss contemporary poetry further, please feel free to start another thread.