Modern Poetry

[Petrarch's Love]

Leabhar--I agree with you and Mortal that much of modern poetry is pretty bad. I know exactly the sort of stuff you are referring to when you talk about formless assortments of images strung together, or the sort of "snapped prose" St. Luke's was referring to in an earlier post. I readily concede that a lot of modern "verse" I've read is a disappointing waste of time. I cannot, however agree that there is no modern verse that is not good, even great. Nor can I agree with your claims that we simply live in an age when language is on the decline.

I do think that part of the problem with your debating style is that you tend to make some very broad statements, which does hurt the strength of your argument. Generalities about modern language not being as strong as the language of the past aren't really helping your case, and are giving the impression that you are simply averse to any modern poetry at all because it doesn't measure up to the past (note that I'm not saying this is what you think, just that this is what I took away from most of your comments).

More important, however, than a matter of resting on some quite general statements to build your argument (which is a common weakness in debate form and something most members of this forum have been guilty of at one time or another) is the way you seem to be invested in saying that the poetry of the past is all better than the poetry of the present. I don't object to you disliking some of the modern poets you've read, but to the way you are conceptualizing the present as contrasted with the past. You've been making statements like these:

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.

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.

I have to say that I had the same thought JBI did, which is that this sounds remarkably like a lot of anti-vernacular sentiment expressed around the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance when Latin was considered the only language worthy of writing serious verse in. I get the sense that you are an intelligent and well read person, but I suspect that you haven't ever had the experience of thoroughly steeping yourself in all the poetry (good, bad, and indifferent) of another age. I say this because, once you've started digging in beyond the great poets of the past, you discover the enormous weight of of lousy verse produced in the same age that produced Shakespeare, or Keats (or even by Keats, as Mortal pointed out in a part of his post that did not seem to agree with your stance). It gives you an appreciation for how people living in those times were routinely confronted with just as much drivel as we are today, and blah sonnets are just as bad as blah free verse. If you read people from the past commenting on the poetry of their own age, you'll also find an astounding number of people writing things much like what you've posted here about the poetry of, say, Renaissance England (an age I personally have spent a lot of time in, and that I can fully attest produced more flimsy ditties than Faerie Queenes ). To be fair, poetic production is not perfectly uniform, and some periods are more or less outstanding than others. My guess would be that poetry of the last twenty years or so is not going to be remembered as an outstandingly great period of poetic production, perhaps as a rather slow period. However, the more variety of poetry you read across history, the more difficult it becomes to feel that either greatness or mediocrity are confined to a particular age.

I personally used to have an almost identical stance on modern poetry to yours, and it was a tremendously great gift when, somewhere along the line, I began reading more broadly and with a more open mind, both in terms of being open to reading the mediocre as well as the great poetry of the past, and in terms of being open to reading a variety of works from recent years. Yes, this approach means wading through a lot of crp, but it also leads to some really wonderful discoveries and a much richer understanding of the way both poetry and the poetic tradition work. Best of all, however, is the appreciation you can develop for just how much the great poetry of past ages emerged from a culture and a language that looked as hopeless to their contemporaries as ours does to us, and an appreciation for the potential of our own age. It is truly a wonderful thing to discover that the greatness of the past is within our own reach.

[Petrarch's Love]

Was away from the computer for a spell before posting the above and missed that the conversation turned to Bukowski. Now if Leabhar's claim was that writers like Bukowski are annoyingly wreched poets, then I think there would be little room for debate! I've got to confess that my stomach turned a bit a few weeks back when I found an entire shelf of Bukowski and not one volume of the Browning I was looking for at my local Barnes and Noble. (See how much more successful specifics are than generalities ).

Well, he's not in academics because he's very contemporary. But unfortunately he's got a real consituency and I think it is influential enough that one day he will be discussed in classrooms.

Not in my classroom, Virg. And I'll be surprised if he actually has enormous staying power with other academics. I know some people whose narrow specialty is the poetry of the last twenty years, and they're none to keen on his stuff despite being into some less than genius poets. I'm guessing he'll fade neatly into the obscurity he is destined for, but I guess we'll see.

[Virgil]

Was away from the computer for a spell before posting the above and missed that the conversation turned to Bukowski. Now if Leabhar's claim was that writers like Bukowski are annoyingly wreched poets, then I think there would be little room for debate! I've got to confess that my stomach turned a bit a few weeks back when I found an entire shelf of Bukowski and not one volume of the Browning I was looking for at my local Barnes and Noble. (See how much more successful specifics are than generalities ).


Not in my classroom, Virg. And I'll be surprised if he actually has enormous staying power with other academics. I know some people whose narrow specialty is the poetry of the last twenty years, and they're none to keen on his stuff despite being into some less than genius poets. I'm guessing he'll fade neatly into the obscurity he is destined for, but I guess we'll see.

Petrarch I'm afraid you will be shocked. Certainly he will not be considered a premier poet but I suspect he's got some staying power. He's got a point of view and a voice that resonates with many of the younger generation of poets. Ultimately he is crap as a poet, but themes and cultural identification will carry him into anthologies and sympathetic professors. Now in a hundred years he will be forgotten but it may take that long.

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch... once again I will state that you have seemingly missed your calling. Diplomacy rather than poetry certainly seems to be your metiér.

[mortalterror]

(or even by Keats, as Mortal pointed out in a part of his post that did not seem to agree with your stance).

You know, I saw that sentence you refer to and was thinking of rewriting it for clarity, but I didn't. My mistake. I was actually comparing Endymion to some of the free verse JBI put up on page 1. Compared to Hyperion and Endymion they are not good poetry. I am not altogether satisfied with Keats, as you well know from our previous discussions. For every good thing about him there are five things he does which annoy me, but just look at his opening:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darken’d ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

That's the good stuff, right there. Yet, it's not an effective opening in and of itself and it leaves the reader wondering what his epic is actually going to be about. It doesn't start in medias res. It doesn't start at the beginning. It doesn't start at all. There's no invocation, no statement of purpose, no conflict, no characters. This poem could be about anything. Little things like that bother me, but I would never call Keats writing dogmeat. It's unfocused, light hearted, sentimental maybe, but never simply lousy as the work of inferior poets can be.

Also, I did not mean to imply that I concur with the OP in all respects. I do not think we are living in an inferior age, and I understand that particular conceit dates from as early a time as fifth century Athens if not before. From what I've read of his comments, I'm not sure that's even what he was saying. Furthermore, I don't think people have stopped writing like Auden, Frost, or Housman. I don't think that kind of writing ever goes fully out of favor or practice. I just don't think that the spotlight is on it at the moment. People like JBI, and StLuke are having their day in the sun, when people with their types of opinions are prominent and authors like Whitman, Stevens, Roethke, and Crane are all major figures. The ones I like are a little more neglected than they used to be, but the wheel will come round, and one day we'll be on top again. I just don't care for certain fads which to hear them tell it are the entirety of contemporary poetry. If that's how you define "all of serious contemporary poetry", that Stevens based fragmentary, non-linear, obscure, stream of conscious stuff, then I understand why someone would say that most of it sucks.

It's a little like saying techno is the newest most experimental type of music and all major musicians of our age should be working in techno, and if you don't like techno "Good luck to you. You're an idiot." The type of "modern poetry" we are discussing, as I understand it is one arm of a rather large body of literature at the moment. If you don't care for it, there are options. But most music and literature is poor in quality whatever direction your tastes may run to.

I think that's part of the problem with our education. We only teach the major writers of an era, because we only have so much time, and if you read five or twenty different writers you're almost an authority on the period. It contributes to the illusion that major writers are only influenced by other major writers. But that is a topic for another thread.

[Petrarch's Love]

Well, I'm glad to hear you say it, Mortal. I personally am a die hard Keats devotee, and must confess I skimmed your post and thought you were referring to some of his much lesser works . Had I noticed Endymion thrown in there, I might have had some fighting words (though I would classify the poem as a whole somewhere in the fair to middle range of his oevre, I've long had the first hundred lines or so of that one memorized and they are, as you say, "the good stuff,"). As it was, I figured you were trying to say that even the greats have their not so great days and that's the sense in which I was referring to your post. I was a bit too lazy to get into contending that "dog's meat" was a rather overstated way of putting that, but am now glad to hear that this was a misunderstanding.

I think that's part of the problem with our education. We only teach the major writers of an era, because we only have so much time, and if you read five or twenty different writers you're almost an authority on the period. It contributes to the illusion that major writers are only influenced by other major writers. But that is a topic for another thread.

I agree that it's a problem. Teaching on the quarter system, I generally find myself having to slash too much really top stuff from the syllabus; forget finding room to teach Gorboduc (not that anyone is necessarily dying to teach Gorboduc even if they had the time). That's why I was suggesting to Leabhar that it's important to read both broadly and deeply in a past period: partly for some perspective on our own age, but also, as you say, to see where some of these "great" poets are coming from. That is however, as you say, probably topic for a different thread. This one's getting pretty crowded!

[Petrarch's Love]

Petrarch I'm afraid you will be shocked. Certainly he will not be considered a premier poet but I suspect he's got some staying power. He's got a point of view and a voice that resonates with many of the younger generation of poets. Ultimately he is crap as a poet, but themes and cultural identification will carry him into anthologies and sympathetic professors. Now in a hundred years he will be forgotten but it may take that long.

Oh, I'll believe he'll make it into a few classrooms for a few decades, but I had something like the hundred year view in mind. No one will recognize his name by then, and my personal opinion is that he'll get obscure in less than a century. It's possible I'll be proven wrong though. One never does know.

Petrarch... once again I will state that you have seemingly missed your calling. Diplomacy rather than poetry certainly seems to be your metiér.

Teaching often seems like a form of diplomacy. Completely unrelated, but how did you get the accent aigu on metier? I've never figured out how to get accents on my words in this forum, and any good diplomat knows the importance of using proper accents and spelling to avoid misunderstanding.

[Leabhar]

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.

Yes, I know you think you are superior in opinion and intelligence than me, your conceit has already been established.

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.

And of course they failed by a long shot. High art is high art for a reason. Tradition is traditional for a reason. Musicality? Visionary? Modern poetry is anything but musical or lyrical to me, it is bland and dry. How can one expect to reveal the musicality, etc in the language when we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist? You can't completely dismantle even the concept of something, I.E. poetry and expect the world to like it and still call it the same name.

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.

I am not claiming poetry has always been popular or even is popular now. I said that in my last post to JBI. You are misunderstanding me. Most people who read poetry, at least 90% of the people I know who read poetry, also find modern poetry lacking and so don't usually read it. You like to think that in the future the geniuses or whatever will be recognized, but I think they will still be recognized as mediocre by the majority of poets and poetry readers.

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 hasn't been digested because quite frankly it isn't up to par and not many people can stomach it long enough to consider it. Your conception of literature always being to the same standard and always having the same amount of talent being put into it is naive.

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."

One could say the same about your argument. Your holier than thou, I know more than you way of arguing isn't going to get your point across. Why would I offer some random poem as an example when I am saying most modern poetry is mediocre? That is like standing in a field of dead mice and telling someone who is also standing there that they are all dead, and then him saying "show me an example".

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?

There is a point where "change and innovation" becomes corruption and perversion. One has to be blind to read modern poetry and think there is not something missing.

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.

Ah, the old "you don't understand it" defense. Ridiculous. I understand it completely, and I dislike it completely. Modern poetry and modern art is so far distant from the past and from anything even the understanding, intellectual crowd of readers want its incredible. If everything is poetry, nothing is poetry. The reason why most people dislike modern art/poetry is not because they can't understand it (they've gone through decades of modern art champions telling them what it all means, etc) it is because they simply don't like it. It isn't complex because it is way more intellectual than past stuff, it is complex and hard to understand because they make it needlessly complex and almost silly and expect people to appreciate what is, in reality, a bunch of paint smeared on a canvas or a bunch of words written in lines.

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.

You are the one who was and still is trying to claim I can't have an opinion on the subject because I supposedly "haven't even read it" or "don't understand it". Like I said, everyone has access to the same content, the same criticism, etc. You aren't alone in reading modern poetry, get off the pedestal.

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.

Being able to memorize popular poetry is a big part of its appeal. I like Rilke, Dylan Thomas and Neruda, but they aren't exactly modern poets are they? I like other poets from Neruda and Thomas' era, like I've explained already, such as Auden. Its ridiculous to think that a poem like "do not go gentle into that good night" or "I live my life in widening rings" is less memorable than some Wilbur poem. He is supposed to follow in the footsteps of Frost and Auden but I just don't see it.

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.

It sounds like you are critiquing yourself here.

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.

Any person knowledgeable in poetry knows full well that innovations in the past were minor in comparison to the complete dejection of meter and rhyme in the majority of modern poetry. Who are you trying to fool?

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?

I've described why his poems and most modern poems in general are bad in my opinion already compared with past poetry. Their use of stagnant modern language even in meters and rhymes is to me unmemorable and weak. I am not some lone crusader on this subject, either, I've seen many criticisms of this type.

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?[

Have you attempted to read modern holocaust novels or watch the films? The historians shake their heads I bet when watching/reading them. I suggest a book on the subject written by a guy whose parents were holocaust survivors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry

[JBI]

Leabhar, you have no argument without proof. If you wish to prove Modern poetry is all rubbish, or mostly rubbish as you are trying to change your argument to(o) now, you must give examples. As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron." Yeah right. Like that is going to convince anyone.

Give some proof - get a volume of poetry out, from your stack, or the library, and pull some examples. As it is, I have seen accusations without any proof, and it is getting tiring, as you clearly seem to be unbudging on the subject, yet refrain from being the least bit convincing by failing to provide not just actual examples, but examples of poets you find are overrated/mediocre.

[Leabhar]

Leabhar, you have no argument without proof. If you wish to prove Modern poetry is all rubbish, or mostly rubbish as you are trying to change your argument to(o) now, you must give examples. As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron." Yeah right. Like that is going to convince anyone.

I did not say anything like that, I said modern poetry is distant from the reading public. You are putting words in my mouth again, I do not appreciate that. I am sure you are capable of reading the modern poetry yourself. The poetry I am speaking of is in books, I'm not going to type it out on the computer just to please you. Isn't that illegal, anyway?

Give some proof - get a volume of poetry out, from your stack, or the library, and pull some examples. As it is, I have seen accusations without any proof, and it is getting tiring, as you clearly seem to be unbudging on the subject, yet refrain from being the least bit convincing by failing to provide not just actual examples, but examples of poets you find are overrated/mediocre.

He gave list of poets, I said they were all mediocre. I said in my last post to you, if you remember, that my favorite of modern poets were Heaney and Wilbur, and I gave a critique of them. They are major representatives of modern poetry, are they not? Heaney won the Nobel prize, Wilbur was the US poet laureate and won the Pulitzer. If critiquing them is not enough, what more do you want?

[JBI]

Putting words in your mouth? "When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?" Sorry, I figured it was fair to equate psychotic babbling with rubbish. Perhaps you prefer a different synonym? But of course, this isn't "real poetry", which again imbues my statement with not slander, but accuracy.

You said who you like - Heaney is already quite old, and as established as one can possibly get in ones life time. Wilbur too is severely well known, and has won the Pulitzer twice now. Give me examples of poets who are less obvious. And on that subject, give examples of established poets who you think are "psychotic babblers" and prove why.

The fact remains, being too lazy is not an excuse for not supporting an opinion. If you were too lazy to support your opinion, you should not have so adamantly stated, and then expanded upon it. As it is, to me, it looks like if you are too lazy to go and type up some sections from contemporary poems, than you are probably too lazy to a) read contemporary poetry, and b) give it the in depth reading it needs. It's quite easy for anyone to get a volume of a canonical poet and say, "Oh this is great." because in truth, scholars have already said it for you, over many years. It takes virtually no skill to echo what has been said about something before, and one could even get by without having read the text. Contemporary poetry on the other hand, has very minimal scholarship, so you have to really know what you are talking about, since opinions are still less cemented than older poets. Because of that reason, to me you seem to be afraid to take a chance, or even approach new verse, which for the most part, requires a lot of time and patients, as countless volumes are published each year, and few of them are really superb.


You may want to try flipping through The Contemporary Poetry thread, primarily added to by Quasimodo1. You may be surprised with what you find, and certainly your theory of unmetrics will be shot within the first page of careful reading.

[Leabhar]

Putting words in your mouth? "When did we let random words and psychotic babbling become mainstream poetry and when did real poetry become "outdated"?" Sorry, I figured it was fair to equate psychotic babbling with rubbish. Perhaps you prefer a different synonym? But of course, this isn't "real poetry", which again imbues my statement with not slander, but accuracy.

You said:

As it is, you basically said, "Modern poetry is rubbish, I don't like it, and anyone who disagrees is an elitist moron."

I never called anyone an elitist moron nor insulted anyone, though I've been called a fool and now lazy.

You said who you like - Heaney is already quite old, and as established as one can possibly get in ones life time. Wilbur too is severely well known, and has won the Pulitzer twice now. Give me examples of poets who are less obvious. And on that subject, give examples of established poets who you think are "psychotic babblers" and prove why.

I would think obvious poets would be the most obvious and best examples.

The fact remains, being too lazy is not an excuse for not supporting an opinion. If you were too lazy to support your opinion, you should not have so adamantly stated, and then expanded upon it. As it is, to me, it looks like if you are too lazy to go and type up some sections from contemporary poems, than you are probably too lazy to a) read contemporary poetry, and b) give it the in depth reading it needs. It's quite easy for anyone to get a volume of a canonical poet and say, "Oh this is great." because in truth, scholars have already said it for you, over many years. It takes virtually no skill to echo what has been said about something before, and one could even get by without having read the text. Contemporary poetry on the other hand, has very minimal scholarship, so you have to really know what you are talking about, since opinions are still less cemented than older poets. Because of that reason, to me you seem to be afraid to take a chance, or even approach new verse, which for the most part, requires a lot of time and patients, as countless volumes are published each year, and few of them are really superb.

You've already said this, accused me of not knowing much about modern poetry, etc. I'm not "too lazy" nor do I "not understand it". You switched from me not even having read it to me being too lazy to have read it. Its annoying, if you want to have an argument with me, stop insisting I don't know anything about it and argue against my point.

You may want to try flipping through The Contemporary Poetry thread, primarily added to by Quasimodo1. You may be surprised with what you find, and certainly your theory of unmetrics will be shot within the first page of careful reading.

I've noticed the thread and have flipped through it a few times. Again, your theory of me not having read contemporary poetry is false.

[Leabhar]

Petrarch's Love: I appreciate your post and trying to make me understand it, but it looks like it came from the notion that I don't understand/haven't read contemporary poetry or much poetry at all. I have read it, though. Its simple; I dislike modern poetry.

[stlukesguild]

He gave list of poets, I said they were all mediocre. I said in my last post to you, if you remember, that my favorite of modern poets were Heaney and Wilbur, and I gave a critique of them. They are major representatives of modern poetry, are they not? Heaney won the Nobel prize, Wilbur was the US poet laureate and won the Pulitzer. If critiquing them is not enough, what more do you want?

I'm sorry, but you clearly lack even the least concept as to what a critique is. To simply proclaim "I don't like it" or "It sucks" is not a critique. That is merely a statement of personal opinion. A critique involves examples and comparisons... proofs... and not mere sweeping proclamations dismissing the whole of an art form from an entire age. You dislike Modern and contemporary poetry. We get that. Don't assume that you are going to convince us that your opinion is valid simply by repeating it enough times. Don't assume that you are going to convince those of us who happen to admire some of the best of Modern and Contemporary poetry without using logic or offering proof. I have no problem with admitting that there is a great excess of crap poetry out there today. I may even agree that we are not living in one of the peak eras for poetic production... at least considering that which I have access to. You throw out inane ideas about our living in an unprecedented era of artistic/poetic decline and decline of the English language. You make sweeping generalizations about the lack of merit of the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry and allusions to it all being but an example of "The Emperor's New Clothes" which is but a veiled criticism... insult to all of us who happen to believe passionately in the best of today's poetry. No one here has made a declaration dismissing the whole of past artistic achievements. No one here has made any attempts at convincing you that you must like a certain poet. But you repeatedly return ranting against the whole of Modern/Contemporary poetry and expect us all to roll over and play dead?

[stlukesguild]

Petrarch's Love: I appreciate your post and trying to make me understand it, but it looks like it came from the notion that I don't understand/haven't read contemporary poetry or much poetry at all. I have read it, though. Its simple; I dislike modern poetry.

The last sentence is the entire crux of your argument. YOU don't like modern poetry. Fine. No one is forcing you to like it. No one can make you like it. I don't like lima-beans. No rationalization can make me like them. But saying I don't like lima-beans... or Modern poetry is not the same as stating that the whole of Modern poetry is bad... mediocre at best... "needlessly complex and almost silly"... "a bunch of words written in lines"... "we use the most simple and dumbed down version of English yet to exist?"... "When you use free verse as it is used today or even meters with too simple a language, it isn't really poetic anymore"... "When people use meters today, and use modern speech, it doesn't sound right. There is no poetic language anymore"... "modern poetry seems bland and tasteless to me. In fact it sounds a lot like babbling"... "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".

All of these statements are sweeping generalizations made as if they were fact. I have absolutely no argument with you when you state "I don't like modern poetry," but that is not what you have done and are continuing to do, is it. You continue to declare that that the whole of Modern poetry is bad and repeatedly ignore any challenges asking for proof... examples... After all... those of us who actually believe that Montale or Heaney or Wilbur or Milosz have achieved something of real merit are but simple-minded dupes who cannot see the turth before our very eyes.