Modern Poetry

[Jozanny]

Petrarch, I really wish I could discuss her, but I have spent about 200 dollars on ereader files and hard copy texts since November, and I have to slow down, if not due to money than due to my ability to read anything, and as you can imagine, it is hard to post from memory with nothing to cite, but I can say this: She has Beat/Black Mountain influences, but one forgets this, and I can assure you she is not Bukowski. I do not read many strong female voices such as I hope to be one day, but she is one, and I do not know her, even though, similar to your experience, she came to me through a personal connection. I am trying to bribe myself.

When I make my next sale then I can buy more books. We'll see, since I could not help that I was knocked off my game for a significant period of time.

[Petrarch's Love]

Hi Joz--I am sometimes reminded of how absurdly fortunate I am to have access to a University library so complete that I have only on one occasion been unable to track down a copy of a book I wanted. I will definitely have to check out their copy of The Ice Lizard in a few weeks when some of my academic writing deadlines are past. Thanks again for the recommendation.

[Jozanny]

Petrarch: I think Linda Bierds provides an interesting contrast to Johnson, though more acclaimed than Johnson and not really needing any help from me.

(I will also consider putting you in restraints if you don't stay in your chair )

I do not have time tonight but maybe tis worth a discussion thread in the future.

I have one more name to offer which is sort of cheating, and after that I'll think about it.

[sixsmith]

I'm again finding myself partial to a little Thom Gunn, or at least his early work. For reasons no longer clear to me, I spent a good deal of my first undergrad year in the library, scouring his poetry when I should have been in class learning about Byron. In fact, I tended to do a lot of 'self educating' in those days, a fact that explains why my transcript frequently resembles a Tiger Woods score card.

More generally, I'm undergoing something of a re-birth with regard to poetry (due largely to greater exposure to foreign language poets). I find that relative ignorance of the form is something of a blessing in this late renaissance. No ideological allegiances, no a priori suspicions: I can open a volume or a journal and just let it speak. That's not to say I'm hearing and seeing all the right things: I'd like to bolster my foundational stock and am reading a good deal of criticism. But it's refreshing nevertheless.

Anyway back to Gunn. I know his reputation suffered when fell in with bohemian/beatnik types after his move to SF. I'm not overly familiar with that period. The following opens his 1961 volume My Sad Captains.


In Santa Maria del Popolo

Waiting for when the sun an hour or less
Conveniently oblique makes visible
The painting on one wall of this recess
By Caravaggio, of the Roman School,
I see how shadow in the painting brims
With a real shadow, drowning all shapes out
But a dim horse’s haunch and various limbs,
Until the very subject is in doubt.


But evening gives the act, beneath the horse
And one indifferent groom, I see him sprawl,
Foreshortened from the head, with hidden face,
Where he has fallen, Saul becoming Paul.
O wily painter, limiting the scene
From a cacophony of dusty forms
To the one convulsion, what is it you mean
In that wide gesture of the lifting arms?

No Ananias croons a mystery yet,
Casting the pain out under name of sin.
The painter saw what was, an alternate
Candour and secrecy inside the skin.
He painted, elsewhere, that firm insolent
Young whore in Venus’ clothes, those pudgy cheats,
Those sharpers; and was strangled, as things went,
For money, by one such picked off the streets.

I turn, hardly enlightened, from the chapel
To the dim interior of the church instead,
In which there kneel already several people,
Mostly old women: each head closeted
In tiny fists holds comfort as it can.
Their poor arms are too tired for more than this
-- For the large gesture of solitary man,
Resisting, by embracing, nothingness





Caravaggio's painting:

[Babyguile]

Not reading through this whole thread right now but my two cents is this:

No one better be bad mouthing Carol Ann Duffy, I know how edgey it is to do so though.

[Dinkleberry2010]

What will you do if someone bad mouths her. Throw something against the wall? Who is Carol Ann Duffy anyway. Never heard of her. Oh, I get it, she one of those hundreds of poets who may perhaps become known sometime in the future. Well, good for her. I hope she makes it.

[sixsmith]

I'm not familiar with her either. Interestingly, Google threw up the following article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/c...ys-poetry.html

[Babyguile]

Oh dear...I meant that as humorous, I wasn't being sincere at all Germac.

I mean, of course I'm not going to be obnoxious enough to say that we can't express our opinions on other poets! ...

Well, she isn't what you predicted at all, she is an incredibly popular poet who has been at the top of her game CRITICALY as well as commercially for decades, and she is the Poet Laureatte, no less.

I said that because she always gets flamed on Litnet and I half knew this thread would be no exception.

We can discuss her only if people do it more fairly, just get me started...

[Babyguile]

I'm not familiar with her either. Interestingly, Google threw up the following article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/c...ys-poetry.html

Yep, here comes the armoured cavalry...

Well, Duffy is now a public figure as Laureatte, she is deliberately trying to catch the attention of today's younger generation and get them interested in poetry. And what better way to do that than through possibly the most popular Indy band in the UK and Europe (by the way, since I assume you have know clue, that means a lot).

Wether deliberately or not, you are excercising the defensive, militant and elitist attitude that has given poetry its current status with young people.

Way to go you trooper you...

[Dinkleberry2010]

well, good for her--I wish her all the luck and good will in the world

[stlukesguild]

Wether deliberately or not, you are excercising the defensive, militant and elitist attitude that has given poetry its current status with young people.

Nonsense. We hear that crap all the time in nearly every art form: "elitism and snobbish classicism is spelling the doom of poetry, the theater, classical music, painting, the ballet (insert art form of your choice). The reality is that "elitism" is just a loaded word used by those who wish to make intelligence or high standards seem like something negative... rather in the same manner as it has been used by American politicians over the past decade or so. Poetry has probably never had a larger audience than it has now, nor has classical music, the novel, painting, etc...

Certainly, the audience for art that maintains certain standards and challenges the audience may never rival the populist audience of icons of the mass media mass media... but it never has. Dante was not being read by every medieval Italian peasant. The Florentine blacksmith was quite probably not spending his off hours listening to Monteverdi or studying the paintings of Caravaggio. The reality is that at this point in time the arts have never been more accessible. No longer are the finest works of art reserved for certain social classes. Art is an elective affinity. One may chose to invest the effort... elect that painting or poetry are important and put forth the labor required... or not.

I do not deny that there are those who maintain a cultural snobbishness or "elitism"... but there is just as great a reverse snobbishness/elitism: that which rejects of mocks anything difficult... challenging... demanding effort. There is also the snobbishness of the patronizing attitude: those who would suggest that the only way that teens or the masses or whatever audience could possibly appreciate poetry (or classical music, or the ballet, or opera, etc...) is for it to be dumbed-down and marketed with the products of popular culture: Jim Morrison as poet, etc...

Having said this... the art of the last century (and longer) has been greatly inspired by a blurring of the notion of "high" and "low" art. We have classical composers building upon elements of jazz, blues, and popular music; we have painters drawing inspiration from TV, film, and advertising. In no way do I imagine that we may not have poets of real merit inspired by lyrics by pop musicians... or even (gasp!) the possibility that such lyrics may actually hold up as poetry (although I have seen very little proof of this). I do question, however, the notion that the "great" Poet Laureate... almost certainly chosen for political reasons more than aesthetic merit... is doing something great for poetry by attempting the bridge the gap between poetry and the lyrics of pop music. It may be that there is a reason for this gap that has something to do with artistic worth.

[Jozanny]

I cannot debate Duffy. Despite how well connected I used to be to American poets, low and high brow, I never heard of her until Sche mentioned teaching strategies of her poem about British youth violence. I read the piece, and don't think it fair to judge her on one poem perhaps obscured by controversy, but I think Armitage is the more innate English talent, for more valid reasons. His poetry stays with me and impacted me as a poet immersed in another poet's work, rather than an ad hoc sociological statement--not that I have not been guilty of these in my publishing career.

[Babyguile]

well, good for her--I wish her all the luck and good will in the world

I should think so.

[Dinkleberry2010]

But I still had never heard of her until you mentioned her. You like her poetry--well, good for you. Congratulations.

[stlukesguild]

I cannot debate Duffy. Despite how well connected I used to be to American poets, low and high brow, I never heard of her until Sche mentioned teaching strategies of her poem about British youth violence. I read the piece, and don't think it fair to judge her on one poem perhaps obscured by controversy...

Certainly. Don't get me wrong. Like JoZ I haven't read enough of Duffy's work to offer much of an assessment. I only questioned the notion that "bridging the gap" between serious poetry and rock and pop lyrics is inherently something to be wished for.