Modern Poetry

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

[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.

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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. ;)

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Originally Posted by JBI

No it hasn't.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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Originally Posted by Leabhar

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.

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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:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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/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.

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)

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Originally Posted by 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)

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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.

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.

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:

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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?

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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@ 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Leabhar

When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?

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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?

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.