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Writer's Block: Poetry
Oct. 8th, 2008 08:06 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Is poetry ever not relevant? Since before the Bible we have been saying the things that we really mean in poetry. This semester in school I'm reading poetry spanning the years from 1800 BCE to the present and it's hitting me more than ever how important poetry is to our way of life.
This, of course, comes with a caveat. Poetry as a form of expression and a way of exploring society and tension and life is important. This does not mean that every poem is important. It definitely does not mean that it's better to say a thing in poetry. It just means that poetry as an artform is an exceedingly important aspect of modern society in ways that people don't understand. Sure, few people go around carrying copies of Shakespeare or Milton or Whitman or Eliot, but how many people go around carrying iPods jam-packed with songs? Song is just a step up from spoken-word poetry. I don't think people realize that.
I don't always (read: very infrequently) agree with the contemporary conception of poetry in the literary sense. Most of the poems that I read for my poetry workshop course don’t have any emotional impact upon me. I cannot stand the postmodern/contemporary poetic system in which poems can be so obscure. I think that the purpose of the modern poet ought to be to write things that will make the modern audience feel.
In conjunction with that, I have issues with the current ideas about the connection between a poem and its meaning. Many of the poems I’ve been reading in Hejinian’s class are so opaque that you cannot see through them to the meaning--you cannot even feel through them to the meaning. I care less about seeing the obvious meaning of a poem the first time I read it than I do about being able to sense somewhere deep in my gut that this poem has purpose. Poems should not exist to hide meaning, they should exist to present it, in a condensed way that is understood by the subconscious, or by what I more frequently refer to as the gut. I want poetry that makes my stomach shiver. I want poetry that affects the primal sense still left within me, that sense that tends to frighten the modern civilized urbanite. Howl was such an explosion in its time because it got to the guts of these people who were not used to having their guts gotten to and who did not like to think of themselves as still possessing guts, having attempted to trade them in for stock options.
I want poetry for the people. I was thinking earlier about how no one reads poetry any more. Once, it was possible to make a living as a poet. Now? People hardly read any poetry at all, unless it’s in school. People do not turn to poetry for succor; people do not turn to literature of any kind for succor, but that is another, larger problem. I wasn’t there when this happened, so I can’t state with any certainty that it is the case, but it seems to me that when people started withdrawing from poetry, poets started withdrawing from people. And that was the greatest mistake they could make.
Like Wordsworth and Coleridge proclaimed in their introduction to the collection of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800 (okay, so I'm an English geek, so sue me), we should have a poetry that celebrates the everyday human language by using it. Language should not be about obstruction of meaning, but rather about presentation of meaning. There is no need to use language deliberately intended to make the comprehension of the poem’s eventual goal more difficult. This is not to say that a poem cannot present itself on multiple levels--there are some poems that, when approached intellectually (ex. within a classroom or analytic setting) yield very different levels of content.
To me, it is acceptable for a poem to have no discernible symbolism, or connection to literary or poetic conceits. One does not need to be able to analyze a poem for it to be a good poem. But really--one ought to be able to call it a good poem if one is to spend time analyzing it!
...and that's my poetry rant for the moment.
In other news, the reason that I was on here was to post my favorite stupidity of the day. I just received my official election guide in the mail, and was idly browsing the arguments for and against certain propositions (okay, I'll admit it, I turned straight to the "controversial" ones, mostly for the purpose of seeing what the other side was saying and then laughing/pointing/screaming in outrage at their idiocy). But for me, nothing quite beats the title of one of the authors in support of Proposition 8: Jeralee Smith, Director of Education for the California Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays.
Um. Yeah. That's like saying, "Hey, faggot! We wanna be your friends!" Ex-gays and gays? Well isn't it nice that they're being inclusive. Let our ex-gays talk you out of your gay, too. You know, gay is like a country, you can leave whenever you like, like the expatriates. *fumes*
But back to the much more awesome topic of poetry! Not so awesome, because I have to write a paper about it, but still awesome, because it's poetry. Which is kind of what I ought to be doing right now -- working on my paper about Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." So I'm off to do that.
Is poetry ever not relevant? Since before the Bible we have been saying the things that we really mean in poetry. This semester in school I'm reading poetry spanning the years from 1800 BCE to the present and it's hitting me more than ever how important poetry is to our way of life.
This, of course, comes with a caveat. Poetry as a form of expression and a way of exploring society and tension and life is important. This does not mean that every poem is important. It definitely does not mean that it's better to say a thing in poetry. It just means that poetry as an artform is an exceedingly important aspect of modern society in ways that people don't understand. Sure, few people go around carrying copies of Shakespeare or Milton or Whitman or Eliot, but how many people go around carrying iPods jam-packed with songs? Song is just a step up from spoken-word poetry. I don't think people realize that.
I don't always (read: very infrequently) agree with the contemporary conception of poetry in the literary sense. Most of the poems that I read for my poetry workshop course don’t have any emotional impact upon me. I cannot stand the postmodern/contemporary poetic system in which poems can be so obscure. I think that the purpose of the modern poet ought to be to write things that will make the modern audience feel.
In conjunction with that, I have issues with the current ideas about the connection between a poem and its meaning. Many of the poems I’ve been reading in Hejinian’s class are so opaque that you cannot see through them to the meaning--you cannot even feel through them to the meaning. I care less about seeing the obvious meaning of a poem the first time I read it than I do about being able to sense somewhere deep in my gut that this poem has purpose. Poems should not exist to hide meaning, they should exist to present it, in a condensed way that is understood by the subconscious, or by what I more frequently refer to as the gut. I want poetry that makes my stomach shiver. I want poetry that affects the primal sense still left within me, that sense that tends to frighten the modern civilized urbanite. Howl was such an explosion in its time because it got to the guts of these people who were not used to having their guts gotten to and who did not like to think of themselves as still possessing guts, having attempted to trade them in for stock options.
I want poetry for the people. I was thinking earlier about how no one reads poetry any more. Once, it was possible to make a living as a poet. Now? People hardly read any poetry at all, unless it’s in school. People do not turn to poetry for succor; people do not turn to literature of any kind for succor, but that is another, larger problem. I wasn’t there when this happened, so I can’t state with any certainty that it is the case, but it seems to me that when people started withdrawing from poetry, poets started withdrawing from people. And that was the greatest mistake they could make.
Like Wordsworth and Coleridge proclaimed in their introduction to the collection of poetry entitled Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800 (okay, so I'm an English geek, so sue me), we should have a poetry that celebrates the everyday human language by using it. Language should not be about obstruction of meaning, but rather about presentation of meaning. There is no need to use language deliberately intended to make the comprehension of the poem’s eventual goal more difficult. This is not to say that a poem cannot present itself on multiple levels--there are some poems that, when approached intellectually (ex. within a classroom or analytic setting) yield very different levels of content.
To me, it is acceptable for a poem to have no discernible symbolism, or connection to literary or poetic conceits. One does not need to be able to analyze a poem for it to be a good poem. But really--one ought to be able to call it a good poem if one is to spend time analyzing it!
...and that's my poetry rant for the moment.
In other news, the reason that I was on here was to post my favorite stupidity of the day. I just received my official election guide in the mail, and was idly browsing the arguments for and against certain propositions (okay, I'll admit it, I turned straight to the "controversial" ones, mostly for the purpose of seeing what the other side was saying and then laughing/pointing/screaming in outrage at their idiocy). But for me, nothing quite beats the title of one of the authors in support of Proposition 8: Jeralee Smith, Director of Education for the California Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays.
Um. Yeah. That's like saying, "Hey, faggot! We wanna be your friends!" Ex-gays and gays? Well isn't it nice that they're being inclusive. Let our ex-gays talk you out of your gay, too. You know, gay is like a country, you can leave whenever you like, like the expatriates. *fumes*
But back to the much more awesome topic of poetry! Not so awesome, because I have to write a paper about it, but still awesome, because it's poetry. Which is kind of what I ought to be doing right now -- working on my paper about Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." So I'm off to do that.