The Education of J.H.S.

It's the veritable warhorse when it comes to writing poetry: concrete language. For many beginning writers, their abstractions serve to derail the poem, but what happens when the poem falls into more capable hands?

I think most of us would agree that when it comes to writing no rule applies 100 percent of the time, and I know a poem cannot be built on entirely abstract language. Still, in the poems I read (many of which are of a more experimental and contemporary nature) I think there is a heightened awareness--perhaps not the "abstract"--but of the "idea". When it comes to poetry, I'm not interested in what is considered "correct", I'm interested in what works. What are people having published? What type of work is considered arresting in the world we live in now?

Despite what some traditionalist may say, I don't think contemporary poetry has reached the level of "anything goes". I watched a youtube video of a discussion panel--the poets chosen were Lyn Hejinian, Ron Perelman, Carl Phillips, and Kay Ryan. Two "experimental" writers and two more "traditional" ones. I admire all these poets (although I'm unfamiliar with Perelman's work). Lyn Hejinian's poetic autobiography, My Life, written using the New Sentence, is highly regarded even now, and it's only been about thirty years since it was published. Carl Phillips writes beautiful elegiac poetry that has garnered him a nomination for the National Book Award, and a spot as the judge of the Yale Younger Poets' Prize, one of the most prominent first book awards. And Kay Ryan, former Poet Laureate, whose concise, sharp witted poems hold a unique wisdom.

All three are considered accomplished. The topic of the discussion is "strange" language. The video is only an excerpt, but you can tell they have discussed what context strangeness exists in--is it an arena all it's own, or does it exist within the parameters of the normal? Hejinian argues that poetry allows for meaning to be made in many ways, while Ryan insists that going so far out into strangeness makes the work, in effect, meaningless. The video ends with Hejinian asking Ryan how she justifies the poetic works of Gertrude Stein, some of the earliest radical poetries, from a modernist icon. Ryan's response is as sharp as her poems: Stein's work is "very experimental".

Somehow this has become not just about Concrete Language, but a larger issue...do the same rules still apply to language in the same way that they did?

What are your thoughts on experimental writing? Do you ever read any of it and find something valuable, or do you think it's a bunch of garbage?