When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?
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When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?
To Leabhari: Is this a rhetorical question?
What do you mean? Are we talking contemporary or Modernist?
In the first sense, America is just having an artistic recession right now. Look to the North a little and you will be surprised with what gold you have - there isn't a night in Toronto when there isn't at least 2 poets reading their work for public audiences, and our government subsidies for small presses help to keep poetry publishers afloat better than our Neighbor's.
In truth though, I personally think the influence of Wallace Stevens is the most powerful thing holding back American verse today, as his works seem to be echoing behind almost all American poets after he became popular.
In truth, one must look elsewhere - good poetry is always out there.
If however, you meant modern as in Modernist, and everything following it, I would say that you should read more. Wordsworth is far more philosophical than most of the poets who followed him. If it is form that you have a problem with, well, then I can't help you. Free verse, which is generally acknowledged to be a problematic name, because it is anything but free, is liberating to the art, and has allowed it to survive for longer, without another direction being needed to take it to a higher dimension.
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.
I'm sorry, but the analogy to the Emperor's New Clothes has been a tired cliché for decades... if not almost a century when speaking of Modern/Contemporary art/music/literature/poetry/etc... I certainly will be the first to admit that there are weaknesses and problems and hucksterisms and worse within the arts today... but I say this with a full knowledge that the majority of all art for the whole of history has been mediocre at best... as well as from the knowledge that there has been and continues to be artists... and poets working within Modernist and Post-Modernist forms that are unquestionably brilliant. Do you assume that for poetry to be of any merit that it must be structured in a manner in which the form is clearly and immediately understood: a sonnet, a ballad? Is there not a poetry to be found in Shakespeare and the Bible and Whitman and novelists such as Proust and Faulkner and Nabokov and even Poe? Is there no music there, or can music only exist where the form or structure is simple, plain, and clear? Or perchance you believe that the "meaning" of poetry must be clear and divulge itself wholly and easily. Again I disagree. How "easy" to understand are the poems of Dickinson? the longer works of Blake? Luis Gongora? Holderlin? Donne? Yes, there most certainly are some Modern/Contemporary poets who revel in obscurity and hermeticism for its own sake... but I would not suggest that what they have done is "meaningless" but rather that you, the reader, can discern no "meaning" from it. Again... one must ask... is such a "meaning" a necessity? What is the "meaning" of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet or Monet's Waterlilies? If there is none... are they then "meaningless"? Is life "meaningless" if we can discern no clear purpose? Again... I agree that there are some writers who seemingly throw anything together in the form of poetry and imagine that such becomes poetry by virtue of the layout on the page. The poet/critic Thomas Disch referred to this as "snapped prose" and humorously mocked the whole genre:
Take any piece of prose you like
and snap it into lines of verse
like this, using the end of the line
as a kind of comma. You can create
a further sense of shapeliness
by grouping the snapped prose in stanzas, so.
Again... there are endless examples of poor art in any time or place... and surely there are times and places and cultures where art forms bloomed more or less than in other times/places/cultures... but to dismiss an entire art form so braodly suggests that one has not made much of an attempt at understanding or appreciating it.
But you have to admit there is definitely a weak flow of poetry today. Every poet or anyone who likes poetry has to admit this. There is something about the modern world that stifles creativity, or maybe the people who publish poetry are only looking for the modernist/postmodernist stuff or the random prose put into stanzas. Come on, even anything beyond someone rambling about drugs and flowers would be preferable to the popular garbage nowadays.
Define "random words and psychotic babbling", andQuote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar
define "mainstream poetry", and
define "real poetry"
in fact, define "poetry"
and then it might be possible to debate...
Some examples would be good.
I have no problem admitting that there is a lot of weak poetry today. I have admitted as much. But again I would argue that this is true of all times and places. We forget that because the hard work has already been done for us with regard to older literature. The weaker work has fallen away and we get the picture... an illusion... that during the Romantic era in Britain (for example) only poets of the status of Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordworth, Coleridge, Burns, and a few others were active. But the reality is that for each one of them there were hundreds... thousands that have been gratefully and mercifully forgotten. Again, I don't deny that poetry today is facing some problems. We have discussed as much here at LitNet on this post:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=36954
I don't believe that popular tastes have much to do with the publication of certain types of poetry as the general public has little interest in poetry. Nevertheless... I have no problem stating that there are many poets currently active who are producing work of real artistic merit. Among these I would include Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai, etc... Undoubtedly this list just skims over the surface... especially when we consider that there must surely be poetry of real merit being produced around the globe... and yet we are limited to that work which has bee translated. If we consider that many of the poets who have been acknowledged as "classics" in Germany or France (for example) have never or rarelybeen well translated into English (Clemens Brentano, Joseph von Eichendorff, Friederich Schiller, Ludwig Uhland, Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, Theodore Storm, Hermann Hesse (as poet), Joachim DuBellay, Pierre Ronsard, Alfonse de Lamartine, Voltaire (as poet), Victor Hugo (as poet... until recently), Alfred de Musset, Jose-Maria de Heredia, Maurice Rollinant, etc... etc... we must then ask how many of the greatest living poets are being currently translated into English?
Honestly, study the bulk of poetry from any time period, and there are mediocre works. Historical works, however, have been sifted by scholars and time, and therefore are all relatively excellent, whereas modern poetry is unsifted, and subject to countless period pieces, like all poetry of its contemporaneous readership.
Also, the comment on it all sounding the same, and stifled creativity, I think has some merit, but not everywhere, perhaps only in the United States, in the sense that we think of it, and in Britain, where creativity seems to be in conflict with contemporary mentality. That being said, those are two countries; the world still has poets, and good poets among them.
The argument over free-verse I think is misplaced - free verse is nothing but free. Try scanning a free-verse poem, and you will notice that metrically it is just as intricate as any closed form poem. There is an invisible clockwork running through every poem, in the way it is constructed, and though it is less apparent than conventional Iambs, it still is there.
To reduce all verse to broken up prose is rather silly. The problem with verse is nothing like that, it is rather that too many people criticize it, without reading it.
stlukesguld - The poets you listed are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages.
JBI - That is an argument used by the practitioners of modern poetry, but does it hold up? I do read modern poetry, and most it has no rhythm, no theme, no invisible clockwork to speak of. These people are working on decades of poetry like theirs, they have no understanding of traditional poetry even if they evoke its name. They have no connection to tradition at all. Really, some of the poetry on this site even is better than popular poetry.
Maybe if you take modern poetry as modern poetry and read it as such it can be good, but if you read it as poetry, it is bad.
I dislike people calling it poetry. Lets call it something else. Moetry. Something with no clockwork or rhythm or even meaning which makes sense to only the people who write it.
Don Gutteridge
from Cornering
1
When we were young
we cornered as the
wind and windward
went down
snow-packed bicycle paths
drew us under the
ribbed Bridge with
quicksand / questions
thru October cattails
blown and ragged
milkweed morning
past the river-bank
and summer under
water seldom seen
thunder dreamed
beyond the smoking docks
the reeking fisheries
over C.N tracks and out
to fields sweet
with manure.
...
from New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books 25 (2000)
originally published in God's Geography (1982)
.........................
can you not see the flow pattern? the repetitition of sounds that keeps this together, and the arrangement of arguments and images that gives it its line-breaks and stanza-breaks? The images make the form, not the stress pattern, and the language itself seems to echo the images.
Take for instance the first stanza, the repetitive alliteration is used to mimic the sound of the wind, and blow through the verse.
Or the second stanza, where 'ribbed' is creating a ribbed feel in the prosody, to modify 'bridge'.
But whats more, look how the poem echos the title, and the central themes throughout; the poem literally corners major places, and describes what is seen, and what is felt, but what is more, if you had the complete poem, or perhaps even from the excerpt, you can tell that there is an inherent biblical allusion going on. It is making reference to Abraham, and his journey marking out the promised land. By doing so, Gutteridge is making a statement about the land, and comparing it not only to the promised land, but to the possessive, the land is a part of us, and we all are connected to it, in a sort of nationalistic way.
In this way, the poem manages to transcend its Southern Ontario setting, and become part of a universal experience, being that one can just as easily map out any other city's corners, or perhaps the world's, and thereby become a part of it. But even more than that, Gutteridge also brings up nostalgia, which is in all of us, and seems to not only empathize with our aging, which is more apparent in his generation, now that the bulk of the population is getting old, but also questions who we are, and the moments and places that change our lives. What we have here are deeply personal moments, made public, and made universal, by the fact that we all have such moments, and all have such feelings, and thereby can all connect with Gutteridge's cornering of Southern Ontario with our own cornering of the places we have been, and have shaped us, and the cities or towns we call home, and the landmarks that we identify with.
Gutteridge not only carefully constructed his poem, but is not devoid of meaning, or style, and is not merely broken up philosophical rantings. He imbues style, sensitivity, and meaning into his work.
Judging by the date of this poem, I hope I have convinced you, or at least sewn doubt into you, to help you sway from your closed minded opinion.
The poem you posted makes sense and indeed has a certain kind of rhythm (though it is still a far cry from true free verse). But am I wrong that even this type of poetry is very rare in poetry today? The poet you posted seems to be pretty unknown.
To you. Very few poets are well known in their lifetimes. Some didn't even publish in their lifetimes.
This, in my opinion, is free verse, since I cannot discern a metrical pattern, or a accentual pattern within the verses.
This type of poetry isn't even very rare, it is actually a rather old convention relative to modern tastes.
Take this cutting from Marianne Bluger:
from The Treaties
Lady Simcoe to this hour
moves in grace among the savages
sheened in the glow of bonfires
set on the shore to fish salmon at night.
she watches them
from a high bluff.
When autumn comes she roams days long
under maples torched with fire
stepping lightly still
over leaf-lost trails
through a haze which is
the smoke of autumn mountains.
from New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books 25 (200)
originally published in Gathering Wild (1987)
The style here, of course, isn't the same, but the same pattern of bending the verse to the imagery is present. Of course, I cannot really dissect this poem without giving the whole piece, but for metrical purposes, we can see how the imagery forms the stanzas, a common convention of today's poets.
Free-verse allows for verse to bend more freely, and to be more shaped. It doesn't mean a lack of style, or form, it means a lack of rules governing how the style and form are constructed. Many poets today use conventional metres, or blend in conventional metres, or even write in closed forms, such as the extremely popular Villanelle, which seems to pop up everywhere these days.
Of course, your argument of these not being "popular" poets is valid to some extent, but that is perhaps because American academies are far louder than Canadian academies, or perhaps Canada has regional publications which don't really publish in too large numbers, or travel very far. Either way though, these poems were well known enough to be re-printed over a decade later, which shows someone, at least, is reading them.
Honestly though, if you want more stuff like this, or perhaps more stuff of this quality, just look for it. It is out there, you merely just need to pick up a nice anthology of contemporary verse (preferably nothing that contains "100 best" or something of the equivalent in its title, or is too thick) and flip through, looking for new poets. Common publishers seem to stick with clichés. Regional publishers take more chances. You will only find well known poets, or well known styles amongst well known publications.
These poems, while better than the majority, still read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm. This is evident when you read them, and then go read a poem by Frost or Yeats for example. Theirs reads easily, though it can be complex, and this poetry is just hard to read and hard to imagine. Poetry has lost something big.
The Bloodaxe Books collections Being Alive and Staying Alive are really excellent collections which nicely show off modern talent from around the globe. Details here:
http://www.amazon.com/Staying-Alive-...1760140&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Being-Alive-Ne...1760117&sr=1-3
From the Long Sad Party
Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps until morning
and the morning goes.
Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.
It was a long night
and someone was saying something about the moon shedding its white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more of the same.
Someone mentioned
a city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles
against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.
We began to believe
the night would not end....
(excerpt)
Mark Strand (1978)
Poem
And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night.
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn't spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face....
...Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.
Simon Armitage.
stlukesguld - The poets you listed are mediocre at best compared with representatives from other ages.
JBI - That is an argument used by the practitioners of modern poetry, but does it hold up? I do read modern poetry, and most it has no rhythm, no theme, no invisible clockwork to speak of. These people are working on decades of poetry like theirs, they have no understanding of traditional poetry even if they evoke its name. They have no connection to tradition at all. Really, some of the poetry on this site even is better than popular poetry.
JBI... I somewhat question why you carry on the argument in the face of such a dismissal. Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur, Charles Simic, Anthony Hecht, Wislawa Symborska, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, W.S. Merwin, John Ashberry, Yehuda Amichai, etc... are all but mediocre poets at best? Of course only time will tell... but it must surely be quite a feat for such poets... in spite of the piddling scale of poetry in contrast to the whole of contemporary literature... to have pulled the wool over the eyes of so many critics and discerning readers. I actually question how much of any of these poets Leabhar has actually read... one or two works required in a survey of Modern and Contemporary Poetry? I ask this especially when one considers the surprise he/she expressed for existence of such formalized structure in the Gutteridge poem. Richard Wilbur, W.S. Merwin, Seamus Heany and Geoffrey Hill are all known for their abilities at composing very structured poetry... often utilizing very traditional poetic forms (sonnets, ballads, etc...). This ability, no doubt, has helped to make them some of the most respected translators of older poetry... which they somehow don't understand. Anne Carsen is a respected classical scholar fluent in Greek who has built poetry in dialog with classical Greek poetry. Richard Wilbur is one of the best living translators from French known not only for his ability to maintain both meter and rhyme in his translations of French lyrical poetry, but also as THE translator of Moliere. W.S. Merwin has uncovered and given new life in the English language to endless poets... especially many from Spain. Heany has produced one of the most respected translations of perhaps the poetic work signaling the birth of English poetry: Beowulf... a translation that clearly shows an understanding of the rugged language and the internal mechanisms of repetition and sound from which this work was constructed. And yet none of these poets has the least understanding of or connection with traditional poetry?! Are you an apt judge of the same? The majority of the greatest innovators and iconoclasts in the arts are those with the greatest understanding, respect... even love for the achievements of the past. They also realize that one doesn't show this respect or admiration by simply mimicking what has already been done. If any art form is to remain a living language it must speak to the present as well as the past... it must not merely copy, but build upon the past... even tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them... to bring them to the present new and afresh. Again... the broad statements and claims as to the formlessness and meaninglessness of contemporary poetry suggest either but a passing familiarity with the best that poetry currently has to offer or an inability to recognize form and meaning when it exists anywhere beyond the literature of the past where such form has already been well digested and analyzed for us, and absorbed into the culture as a whole.
...We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.
Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.
Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.
No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.
No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.
from More Light! More Light, Anthony Hecht
complete poem: http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Anthony-Hecht/2345
No discernible form or meaning, eh?
Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning (The Spanish Square in Rome)
I can't forget
How she stood at the top of that long marble stair
Amazed, and then with a sleepy pirouette
Went dancing slowly down to the fountain-quieted square;
Nothing upon her face
But some impersonal loneliness,- not then a girl
But as it were a reverie of the place,
A called-for falling glide and whirl;
As when a leaf, petal, or thin chip
Is drawn to the falls of a pool and, circling a moment above it,
Rides on over the lip-
Perfectly beautiful, perfectly ignorant of it.
Richard Wilbur
from: http://members.fortunecity.co.uk/kag...ly.Morning.htm
And I question how much of anything you have read when you can't even form paragraphs so your post is readable. I think you should stop the insinuations.
For some reason I find this thread hilarious
Did I say these poets didn't have form or meaning? I don't think so, I said the poets you listed were mediocre compared with representative poets from the past. Btw, I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Listen to the fool's reproach! It is a kingly title.
-William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Simple enough for you?
It is your problem you appropriated my post to JBI to yourself. You misunderstood me, that is your foolishness, not mine. I will be polite and reply to your straw man type post anyway later.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
I assure you, in addition, that every major poet these days is quite capable, and knowledgeable of closed form work than of free-verse. Free-verse, as it is practiced by poets today, is far more difficult to write than Iambs. Even Shakespeare didn't adhere to strict metrics, and went under criticism from his contemporary Jonson for his revolutionary use of metre.
The question of whether or not there is a poet to equal Yeats or not in this generation is a difficult one. In English, I personally feel the best working poet now is Seamus Heaney, from what I have seen. I would say he rivals, in terms of development of style, the majority of canonical writers. As to whether or not he is as good as Yeats, I would say time can only tell.
But that is just in English, who is to say Adunis won't be held as the standard poet, or some other poet no one has yet heard of? For all we know, there is an Emily Dickinson writing today, who is too reserved to reveal her work, and may, one day, be dug up, and stagger the world. We cannot know.
From what I have seen, poetry is far from dead, and is quite enjoyable. Keep in mind that the canonical poets have been sifted from their contemporaries, and even they are not known for all their poems, but a handful, or a cycle of poems. Even Shakespeare's sonnets are not all "superb" and he has the odd boring one in there (relative to the rest of the stack). All we can do, is just wait for the superb work to cross our paths. They are still being written, people are not less creative today than they were in the past.
As for StLukes, were you addressing that to me? It seems to not be, but starts with JBI... so I am a bit confused.
It is your problem you appropriated my post to JBI to yourself.
This is an open discussion forum. Your comments to JBI concerning modern poetry as a whole are open to discussion by anyone... but obviously I should have made it more clear that the opening sentence alone was directed solely toward him.
As for the rest of your declarations... Judgment is but one part of criticism. It is usually dependent upon the critic to present a degree of proof through example, interpretation, and analysis. When one makes a sweeping judgment such as to proclaim that the whole of Modern and Contemporary poetry is bad... or mediocre at best when compared to the poetry of the past such criticism seems to speak more of the abilities and inabilities of the critic than of that which is being criticized. This becomes even more obvious when all counter-arguments and proofs are but repeatedly rebuked or dismissed with more proclamations of the same. Simply stating that something is so enough times is not proof that it is true, even if in the end it results in wearing down one's opponents. Logical dialog assumes that both parties are open to logic.
We all have our personal tastes and preferences. There are artists, musicians, and writers whom I prefer to certain others in spite of the fact that I will openly acknowledge that they may not be on the same level. I personally prefer Kafka and Borges to James Joyce... in spite of the fact that I will freely admit that Joyce is quite probably the superior writer. Examples of some exemplary contemporary poetry (but just a minuscule portion of that which is out there) were put forth as proof that not all contemporary poetry is poor... or mediocre at best. Again... in an act of omnipotence... they have been swept aside as having little value... without any explanation. They don't read easily... they "read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm". Really? And Donne and Dickinson and Milton and Holderlin read so much more easily in comparison? And even if it were true, what has such ease to do with quality. The simplest ditties, as you term it... a nice dirty limerick... actually read far easier than many great poems.
But then you do offer some reason for your rejection of Anthony Hecht... "I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention." You personally dislike the use of this subject matter? Fair enough. But then it would seem that as a Jewish poet of his generation Hecht must certainly have been deeply affected by the Holocaust and (excuse me if I am wrong) Art is usually the product of that which most deeply concerns a given artist. So Victor Hugo should be equally taken to task for "capitalizing" on the Napoleonic Wars, and Yeats for responding to the violence in Ireland, and Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owens for responding to the horrific experiences of the First World War.
Modern poetry speaks to the present? How exactly? It has never been so distant, poetry has never had so few readers (in relation to the amount of people, I mean). Modern form has been digested and analyzed, too. It amazes me you equate not liking modern poetry with never having read it. What a bizarre insinuation. I don't like bananas either, but I've eaten them. Like I've been saying, the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry, putting aside forms and content for a moment, it is still mediocre. Btw, to "tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them" is called corruption.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it. And why not? Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say [a strange thing since modern English is such a simplified language] for so long you stop caring. The reason you stop caring is because the words themselves, even if they convey imagery, or even complexity, etc, don't have a lasting effect on the mind. Name one modern metered poem you can recite and remember like Kubla Khan or something? Modern poetry doesn't have the right language to go far enough in the mind. It simply fizzles and dies.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
Actually, they read much more easily, because their poems last in the memory. They use vivid language. They use memorable words and sentences and strings of sentences, which is what poetry is. When your poetry doesn't even conform to grammar, or is written like prose, how is someone supposed to remember it long enough for them to form a favorable opinion? That was one of the main points of meter and rhyme. When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo. Really, take the most famous Heaney poem and the most famous Donne, what is more easily remembered and easier to recite? Even though Donne's are more complex and written in old language, they are more memorable. Using Heaney as an example, one can even describe his use of language in his poems as sort of stagnant and simple. Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language.Quote:
We all have our personal tastes and preferences. There are artists, musicians, and writers whom I prefer to certain others in spite of the fact that I will openly acknowledge that they may not be on the same level. I personally prefer Kafka and Borges to James Joyce... in spite of the fact that I will freely admit that Joyce is quite probably the superior writer. Examples of some exemplary contemporary poetry (but just a minuscule portion of that which is out there) were put forth as proof that not all contemporary poetry is poor... or mediocre at best. Again... in an act of omnipotence... they have been swept aside as having little value... without any explanation. They don't read easily... they "read like immature diddies compared with past poetry... They use imagery as rhythm, they have no natural rhythm". Really? And Donne and Dickinson and Milton and Holderlin read so much more easily in comparison? And even if it were true, what has such ease to do with quality. The simplest ditties, as you term it... a nice dirty limerick... actually read far easier than many great poems.
There never were as many people using the emotions of the Napoleonic Wars or the violence in Ireland or anything quite as much as the holocaust is capitalized on. Countless films, novels, poems, etc. It is kind of sick. The holocaust garners and immediate emotional knee jerk response.Quote:
But then you do offer some reason for your rejection of Anthony Hecht... "I dislike this poem, it relies on holocaust and war imagery to get peoples attention." You personally dislike the use of this subject matter? Fair enough. But then it would seem that as a Jewish poet of his generation Hecht must certainly have been deeply affected by the Holocaust and (excuse me if I am wrong) Art is usually the product of that which most deeply concerns a given artist. So Victor Hugo should be equally taken to task for "capitalizing" on the Napoleonic Wars, and Yeats for responding to the violence in Ireland, and Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owens for responding to the horrific experiences of the First World War.
Metrics have nothing to do with the memory in the sense that you use it. Many parts of Crane's Bridge are metrically perfect, but good luck memorizing them, or understanding them. "All free verse is bad" is the silliest argument I have ever heard. Free-Verse as it came to English, is far older than metric verse. It stems from biblical metaphor, and was used continuously through the Bible. It came back to English through Whitman, who borrowed its sense of simple to metaphor pattern, which helps to keep the idea in memory.
Donne is hardly, also, a poet who should be held up for metric perfection; he was well known for jerking his metre around, and throwing out random trochaic patterns. Take his "Song" which starts "Go and Catch a falling Star" as example. The poem blends Trochees and Iambs into an inconsistent pattern.
Have you ever scanned free verse? have you ever read contemporary poetry? Tell me some of the poets and poems you have read, and maybe I will be able to understand your association with contemporary and bad. As it is, you seem like someone who talks without knowing.
You would also note, that poets like Elizabeth Bishop are far more metrically perfect than almost any example you can really bring up. Every word of every line in Bishop's published poems was carefully chosen for both meaning and sound, sometimes taking her months of revision for one poem.
On topic more however, you still haven't acknowledged the poets writing today who use metre and closed form. What do you have to say to them? From what I have read, the New Formalism school, which seemed to hold your views on poetry, died out because they realized it was boring.
And just so you note, poetry has never been a "popular genre". Lord Byron and perhaps Tennyson are the best examples of "popular poetry", yet how many people read Emily Dickinson in her life time - trick question, the answer is less than 20, and none of them more than a handful of her poems.
In some ways I see where you are coming from. There is a large chunk of contemporary poetry that I really have no stomach for. Though I am glad that poetry has become more "free" and is not as rigid as it once be, and allows for a greater freedom of thought and expression. On the other hand there are many contemporary poems that really do come off as just sounding like diary entries with line breaks. And a lot of it does sound like gibberish nonsense, and just a random collection of words and images that just sound cool if you put them together.Quote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar
Typically most of my own poetry though is what is considered free verse because it is not rhymed and does not follow a particular structure, tends to reflect more the romantics than contemporary.
But their are some contemporary poets whom I really do enjoy, and with my own writing I have been known when the feeling struck me, to do some really very experimental type of stuff.
So a portion of it, does make me groan, and I do think is garbage, I think there is still value within it as well.
Surprise, surprise, I'm siding with Leabhar on this one. I also felt that JBI's earlier examples were weak and if he weren't on some hobbyhorse about the cultural superiority of Toronto, that city on a hill, that Athens of North America, crown jewel of western poesy and cultural gateway to the world he would have used Czeslaw Milosz or Derek Walcott instead of the poets he did pick.
In addition, StLuke has a nasty habit of insulting the intelligence of people he disagrees with. Leabhar doesn't sound foolish to me at all, and neither do JBI, or StLuke. You all make good points, whether your opponents choose to admit them or not.
Modern poetry isn't my specialty but as a person who just a few hours ago was reading Keat's Endymion and Hyperion, those verses looked like dogmeat. Try again. Every age has got somebody. I'm not sure who is on top right now, but I'm sure that poetry was alive and breathing at least as late as the sixties and seventies with people like Akhmatova, Neruda, and Auden.
P.S. Billy Collins wrote a nice poem on a related subject in 1991 called The Death of Allegory, which I quite admire. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=26904
I didn't even say metrics were easier to memorize, I said poetry with a memorable voice and vivid language was memorable, but that rhymed meter was even more memorable. I never said "all free verse is bad", where did you get that from? You are putting words in my mouth.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Donne had a very poetic language though, which is why his poems are memorable to me. Anyway, jerking meter around is still meter, it is just abrupt sounding.Quote:
Donne is hardly, also, a poet who should be held up for metric perfection; he was well known for jerking his metre around, and throwing out random trochaic patterns. Take his "Song" which starts "Go and Catch a falling Star" as example. The poem blends Trochees and Iambs into an inconsistent pattern.
You're trying to brush my criticism off. Though I've read plenty contemporary poetry, some of the poets stlukesguild has posted. Heaney and Wilbur were my favorite of them but I still don't much like them. The most "modern" of the poets I actually like are Auden and Frost. I'm not randomly making a thread about how bad modern poetry is without even having read it. I've read modern poetry, and I dislike it. Why can't you take that at face value? Its almost as if someone is insulting your religion and you are insinuating they don't understand it. We all have access to the same content.Quote:
Have you ever scanned free verse? have you ever read contemporary poetry? Tell me some of the poets and poems you have read, and maybe I will be able to understand your association with contemporary and bad. As it is, you seem like someone who talks without knowing.
I'm well aware of Bishops meticulous nature, and her poetry is alright, but not good, and no where near ideal.Quote:
You would also note, that poets like Elizabeth Bishop are far more metrically perfect than almost any example you can really bring up. Every word of every line in Bishop's published poems was carefully chosen for both meaning and sound, sometimes taking her months of revision for one poem.
They are a pretty small group, correct? Anyway, I acknowledged that in the post you quoted. I'll repeat myself:Quote:
On topic more however, you still haven't acknowledged the poets writing today who use metre and closed form. What do you have to say to them? From what I have read, the New Formalism school, which seemed to hold your views on poetry, died out because they realized it was boring.
"When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo."
I'll expand on that. When people use meters today, and use modern speech, it doesn't sound right. There is no poetic language anymore. And then you have the convoluted language of modern free verse which relies on imagery, abruptness, strange grammar, etc, to feel poetic and mysterious because it has lost that former language. This is why modern poetry seems bland and tasteless to me. In fact it sounds a lot like babbling. I liken the decline of poetry with the decline of language. The root of poetry and all literature is in language, and any historian of English or any linguist will tell you, or even a discerning reader, English is declining and becoming simpler. It could be because of its widespread use in the world, or because of mass media, who knows? But the result is the same.
Popular poetry, as in popular to people who read poetry is what I meant.Quote:
And just so you note, poetry has never been a "popular genre". Lord Byron and perhaps Tennyson are the best examples of "popular poetry", yet how many people read Emily Dickinson in her life time - trick question, the answer is less than 20, and none of them more than a handful of her poems.
Dark Muse - True, free verse can be a freeing sort of thing, but modern poetry likes to abuse it. By the way, I like your poetry.
mortalterror - Thanks, good to know other people on the forum agree with me on this.
Honestly, you sound like some classicist yelling that vernacular is not suitable for verse, and everyone should be writing in Latin.
Your point on modern poetry, as you called it, listed names already established. You would note, that In Harmonium, Stevens's first volume was virtually unrecognized in its initial publication, but is, I would argue, the most influential volume on today's American verse. I have mentioned before, that you need to look for smaller publishing names, and lesser known poets, since those are who truly matter at this point. Poets don't become famous over night, and rarely become famous at all in their life times.
As for Mortalterror, a) you aren't Canadian, so wouldn't know anything about the poetic scene here. Though the same can be returned to me, I would argue American publishers have made the American scene more apparent to Canadians than even to some Americans. b) I gave these examples to avoid clichés, and as metric examples, not as "perfect" poems, as neither of them are, and both are incomplete in the form given to you. c) It is unfair to dismiss all poetry today as mediocre philosophical ramblings, as clearly they are not, as shown in the countless examples.
In total there are about 50 or so Canonical poets in English, that is, poets who are known for more than one or a handful of poems, and who are studied beyond a few works. Some would argue more poets than 50, some less, but I am thinking 50 is an honest number, if we set the cutoff at around 1970. English verse has been written since the 14th century, but for argument's sake, lets say 1500. That's 500 years, and 50 names, so lets say 10 a century, give or take. It is quite clear to anyone who cares to look, that there must have been bad poets who were published in those years. And of course, the factor of population is brought in, bringing us to a pyramid type shape, where more and more poets of skill appear at certain times. But lets say, that our century will be taking, I don't know, 30-40 or so of its own English poets. That leaves about 10s of thousands of people writing today out of luck.
The volumes of poetry one receives have been edited by many hands, and have been sifted, and sifted over generations. The volumes of contemporary verse someone buys today, have not had the same luxury. Clearly you are more likely to run into bad verse when going through contemporary verse, because bad verses from back in the 16th century or whatever have, for the most part, almost vanished from print. That doesn't mean that all contemporary verse is bad; far from it. IT simply means that the bad ones have not yet been taken out, and you must proceed with caution or with doubt. Fine. That does not mean one can dismiss unsifted poetry as bad, Lyrical Ballads was dismissed for the most part on first publication, yet proved to be one of the most important volumes of English verse in history.
In addition to this though, Emily Dickinson herself was largely ignored on first publication, yet she seems to me at least the best poetry of the American tradition, and perhaps a top contender for the best poet in the language.
To dismiss everything that is current is not only wrong, but also harmful. Say you do not care for certain poets, and state why, don't say "All contemporary verse is rambling nonsense. It is far from it.
Modern poetry speaks to the present? How exactly?
At a risk of achieving nothing more than speaking into the wind I will still attempt to address your postings... not so much out of any misguided belief that I might be able to change your mind... one must be open to change for change to happen... but rather because poetry in general... and poetry as a still-living art form is something I am quite passionate about.
Contemporary poetry/contemporary art speaks to/of the present by building upon the past... not by seeking to merely preserve and recreate. That is the art of the mortician or the embalmer... not the living art of the artist. Artists build upon the past... but they also draw inspiration from the present. They use new forms, new words and draw from sources that are not yet accepted as worthy of "high art". The metaphors employed by Donne were often disconcerting... unexpected... even shocking. The theater of Shakespeare's day was as well-respected as television today. certainly there are times in which an artist employs archaic languages and forms... but they are acknowledged as such. The poets of today attempt to unveil a musicality... a visionary intensity... as it exists in the language that they have inherited: the spoken language of the present as well as the language of all that has preceded them.
It has never been so distant, poetry has never had so few readers (in relation to the amount of people, I mean).
That is absolute nonsense that shows a complete lack of knowledge of the history of poetry... one of the short-comings that you attributed to most poets of today. The latest volume by one of the more popular serious contemporary poets may only sell 5000 or 10,000 copies. An absolute pittance when measured against the sales of a popular novelist... but we are living in a time when quite admittedly... in the English-language-speaking world at least... prose and the novel reign supreme. Still I might ask how many readers did William Blake have during his life time? or Thomas Traherne? or Friederich Hölderlin? or Emily Dickinson? or Hart Crane? or San Juan de la Cruz? or Novalis? or even Dante, Virgil, Petrarch, and Ovid? The percentage of the population that was at all literate was far less than that of today, and without access to printed copies of books through the movable type the writings of Dante etc... were reserved to but a wealthy or scholarly few.
Modern form has been digested and analyzed, too.
Yes... it has been analyzed by critics and scholars, but it most certainly has not been absorbed or digested by the larger culture that appreciates art. Using the field of the visual arts we can see that Impressionism, that once disturbed, disconcerted, and shocked the art audience has been absorbed to the point where we can no longer even really grasp what was so shocking. It is so accepted that it has grown to the most popular art style. Picasso and Matisse on on their way to an equal absorption... but they still disturb a large portion of the art audience who cannot accept what they achieved. Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism are far from attaining anything that approaches the acceptance of Impressionism. The same holds true of literature. The innovations of Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Borges, Wallace Stephens, Hart Crane etc... are far from being absorbed.
It amazes me you equate not liking modern poetry with never having read it. What a bizarre insinuation. I don't like bananas either, but I've eaten them. Like I've been saying, the best poetry has to offer now is mediocre compared with past poetry, putting aside forms and content for a moment, it is still mediocre.
Again... your argument is but a rant without any proofs. You continue to make blanket statements as to supposed mediocrity of the best of today's poetry without offering any examples. Your argument, if it can be termed as such, comes down essentially to "Ah! the good old days! They just don't write 'em like that anymore.":rolleyes:
to "tear the achievements of the past apart in order to re-imagine them" is called corruption.
No. It is called change or innovation. You seem to have a concept that there is some perfect ideal of what poetry was in the past. You even speak of this "ideal" several times. Poetry of the past itself is incredibly broad. We are speaking of everything from Gilgamesh and Homer through Dante and Shakespeare and Milton and Blake and Tennyson and Yeats... not to forget Ferdowsi, Tu Fu, Yehuda Halevi, Hafez, etc... Poetry of the last several millenia represents an endless array of forms and structures and themes and means of expression. Who, among this poetic world, do you imagine represents THE ideal that all others must be measured by? And you want us to believe that all of this music... all of this poetry... has come to an end because the poets of the 20th and 21st centuries have had the audacity to think that they might also add their own innovations to this body of work?
The most common argument people have against modern poetry, rhythmic or otherwise, is that it almost sounds like a five year old could write it.
Yes... this is most certainly one of the most common criticisms of contemporary poetry, literature in general, music, and art... made by those with very little education or understanding. It is also a criticism that is so broad that it is meaningless. I can easily find any number of Modern/Contemporary poets for whom the opposite criticism may be far more apt: their work is too intellectual... too complex... too hermetic or esoteric. I might note that a good portion of the art-loving public has always had the greatest difficulty in understanding or appreciating contemporary contributions to the arts. The great orchestras fill their seasons with performances of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin... nothing wrong with that... but they rarely present new work. Why? Because it is not as good? That is far too easy of an answer. Rather it is because it is far more demanding of the audience. New work challenges our ideas about art. It demands a far greater effort than most older art... not in that older work is less complex or difficult... but rather its innovations have been absorbed over time and over time the critics, historians, art-loving public and later artists have filtered out the weaker works so that only the strongest work survives.
Modern language is too simple and ugly, and modern poetry, like a five year old's writing, is convoluted and requires sitting there trying to think what the writer was trying to say [a strange thing since modern English is such a simplified language] for so long you stop caring.
Is it at all possible for you to put any more absurd statements within a single sentence. Again... these are nothing but sweeping statements that are impossible to really challenge because they essentially place your personal opinion as the final arbiter of taste and aesthetic worth.
The reason you stop caring is because the words themselves, even if they convey imagery, or even complexity, etc, don't have a lasting effect on the mind. Name one modern metered poem you can recite and remember like Kubla Khan or something? Modern poetry doesn't have the right language to go far enough in the mind. It simply fizzles and dies.
It really has been a long time since I have made a conscious effort to memorize/recite poetry, which is something I ought to return to. I don't doubt that there are those here who most certainly hold any number of Modern/Contemporary poems in their memory (JBI?). In spite of this... there are certainly any number of Modern/Contemporary poems are locked within my mind and held as dear as any number of novels, stories, symphonies, concertos, paintings, or other works. There are numerous poems by Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Dylan Thomas, Neruda, Theodore Roethke, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, etc... that I have turned to again and again... that echo in my memory.
Actually, they (older poems) read much more easily, because their poems last in the memory. They use vivid language. They use memorable words and sentences and strings of sentences, which is what poetry is.
Again, I am glad we have you here to inform the rest of us illiterates just what poetry is and what memorable words, sentences, and strings of sentences are, for it is obvious we have been lost without you.:rolleyes::brow::nod:
When your poetry doesn't even conform to grammar, or is written like prose, how is someone supposed to remember it long enough for them to form a favorable opinion? That was one of the main points of meter and rhyme.
Is that so? Then of what use is meter and rhyme to Dante's Comedia or Milton's Paradise Lost which we most certainly are not about to be able to memorize. Arguments for and against standard meter and rhyme go back to the Renaissance... and earlier and I doubt that any one's opinion... not even the Pope's... is going to be held as "infallible" any time soon.
When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore imo. Really, take the most famous Heaney poem and the most famous Donne, what is more easily remembered and easier to recite? Even though Donne's are more complex and written in old language, they are more memorable. Using Heaney as an example, one can even describe his use of language in his poems as sort of stagnant and simple. Modern poetry goes along with the decline of intelligent language.
Again... you make these blanket statements without offering the least shred of proof. Why not take what you feel to be one of Heany's strongest poems and show us just what is so weak about it in comparison to Donne or another older poet?
There never were as many people using the emotions of the Napoleonic Wars or the violence in Ireland or anything quite as much as the holocaust is capitalized on. Countless films, novels, poems, etc. It is kind of sick. The holocaust garners and immediate emotional knee jerk response.
So let me understand this... because many artists have dealt with the Holocaust... certainly one of the most defining and horrific events of recent history... of all history... that immediately makes all Holocaust-related art but a shallow means of capitalizing on our knee-jerk reaction to the subject? So that means that subjects as cliché as love, nudes and landscapes (in painting), etc... are a guarantee of artistic banality regardless of the individual art?
Thank you, and I do agree that it does get abused in some ways. I do not agree with all examples of contempary poetryQuote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar
You'd be surprised, on the subject of war as a subject. Of course, the Holocaust/ww2 at this moment seems the most horrific thing in human history and, arguably, it may be. And I will agree, the Holocaust in particular makes me a little queasy. But that doesn't make it a less important subject.
The French revolution in particular seems the backdrop of the romantic movement. Countless poets write about it, and even more, countless poets wrote, and write about industry, and war, and such.
Historically, poetry seems to be greatly, to an almost unthinkable extent, influenced by Sidney's Defense of Poesy, which preaches the poet shows the "golden world." in direct reaction to the platonic idea of poets as liars. In truth, this sort of narrowed the field of convention until Wordsworth, I would say, but even then, we get dark and passionate statements.
After Wordsworth, we seem to move into a wider range of possibilities with poetry. If you flipped through books of 19th American century poetry, I wouldn't doubt you would find countless volumes of civil war poetry, not to mention 1812 poetry, and Mexican war poetry. These have, of course, been sifted, as people simply don't care as much now, and nationalistic ideals in verse seem to be less important to contemporary audiences.
In truth, almost every major event in history has had its poets as commentators. The western verse tradition, in the way we see it, stems from the Trojan War! just think on that. The source of Western Poetry is a war. I think H.D. perhaps has the best criticism on this, with her long poems comparing her situation in air-raided England to that of gated-off Troy, awaiting destruction. The link is there, it isn't a new subject, it is just an event which we see as more revolting, because we are closer to it (and perhaps its industrial elements, and industrial modes of killing make us even sicker).
JBI... I agree that the distance has made the Napoleonic Wars and even the First World War far more palatable. There are still Holocaust survivors... and their Nazi tormentors... living. It is also incredibly disturbing even in comparison with the Soviet Stalinist purges and the genocides of Mao because it was undertaken by a modern, industrial, educated Western nation. people who also gave us Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Rilke, Durer, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann, etc... The Holocaust challenges every notion of educated, cultured humanity. It laughs in the face of the notion that mankind is essentially good... the measure of all things. It spits in the face of the idea of a covenant... of divine retribution. Anything that man CAN do he WILL do. It also presents a nagging doubt... "could it happen here?" We can easily dismiss the genocides of the Napoleonic Wars as events from another time and place... far less sophisticated and humane than ouselves. We can even ignore the events of Maoist China as but representative of a pre-industrialized, poorly educated non-Western, Godless nation. But the Holocaust showed the world just the sort of evil that can grow in our own back yard.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying, but the question remains will these things be shocking to later audiences? I feel detached from most history, and I think a detachment from even World War 2 seems to already be beginning. In terms of topic, the general emotion of WW2 will probably transcend into any other generation, allowing the poetry to be quite effective (I think, in this case, of Thomas Hardy's Drummer Hodge, which is quite the freighting poem).
I think really, in truth, the thing with the Holocaust was that people realize, if this is how bad it was this time, the next time will be too destructive for the world to handle. There is then, this movement to tell, and educate, brought about by the lowering of nationalistic feuds, and higher literacy rates.
One could take, for instance, the Pavel Friedmann's I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a fantastic, yet gut wrenching poem, for example, and say that this, if anything, will transcend into the next generation. Yet of his contemporaries, I doubt all will transcend the way this poem does.
As time passes, we will become more detached, and forget the bulk of the world war 2/Holocaust poems. The good ones will remain, and the historically significant ones will be remembered, but even of World War 1 verse, we already can see Owen as coming out as the most enduring, while others seem to be already forgotten. There was far more verse written and preserved in that time period than is known to the public - time detaches the population from events, no matter how catastrophic. It's a fact of life.
That being said, that does not mean such poems cannot be good, far from it. It simply means that these sorts of events attract a lot of poets, and like all poets, only a few of them are good poets, and fewer great poets. The Holocaust/ww2 itself is not an improper subject for poetry, as I was trying to point out, but rather one of many subjects, that seems to be one of the most popular amongst the generation right after.
Surprise, surprise, I'm siding with Leabhar on this one.
Yes... no surprise here. You always take the opposing view if only to perpetuate the illusion of your rebel status.:D
In addition, StLuke has a nasty habit of insulting the intelligence of people he disagrees with.
Making sweeping statements as to the mediocrity or down-right badness of the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry... without offering the least examples by way of proof... makes it almost impossible not to question one's critical acumen.
Leabhar doesn't sound foolish to me at all, and neither do JBI, or StLuke. You all make good points, whether your opponents choose to admit them or not.
Again... sweeping statements about the complete lack of poetic merit or aesthetic worth of Modern/Contemporary poetry, use of such tired clichés as "The Emperor's New Clothes" or "even a child of 5 could do it", and declarations that the poetic contributions by members of LitNet easily outshine the best examples of Contemporary poetry are all comments that can only undermine how seriously one can be taken. You may prefer Hemingway to Proust, and I the reverse... but I would never be so close-minded as to suggest that Hemingway or the whole of Modern American prose is without merit simply because it is not to my personal liking. I have no problem with admitting that there are endless mediocre and bad poets out there... and many being published and receiving accolades (Maya Angelou?) Neither do I have a problem with the notion that certain times, places, cultures have achieved more of real aesthetic worth than others. Personally... from what I have been exposed to I have no illusion that poetry today... at least in the English-speaking world... can match the achievements of poetry in the English-speaking world during the first decades of the 20th century: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Frost, Crane, etc... On the other hand... there is a world of poetry out there little of which has been translated... or translated well. There are also poets such as Milosz, Heaney, Rilke, Montale, Wilbur, Hecht, Pasternak, etc... whose work is most certainly of real merit. Which will stand the test of time... only time can tell.
I haven't read the entire thread, but while I think you're over reacting, I do agree that there is this strain of contemporary poetry is crap and yet considered worthy. Check out crap like this by such a well known poet:Quote:
Originally Posted by Leabhar
http://www.charlesbukowski.20m.com/bukowski_poems.htmlQuote:
BEER
from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell
by Charles Bukowski
I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can **** me!"
the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows its bad for the figure.
while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horney cowboys.
...[Snip]
Frankly this is crap.