you questions about poems or poetry. Poetry is unique because it uses rhythm and language in verses to create images in the mind of the reader. Sometimes poetry rhymes, but not always. I will use the words 'poetry' or 'poems' to refer to verses intended to be understood as poems, not as part of something else such as rap, song lyrics, Bible verses, or greeting card messages."
from PoetryFoundation.org: Poetry in America: Report Summary
~~~~~~~~~~
4 comments :
Poets are writers, first and foremost.
You can't write for a select few with MFA's and expect everyone to read it. Shoving it down the throats of the general readership will only make them gag. That's pretty obvious, but the poetry foundation has more money than sense.
As to distinguishing "poetry" from the popular crap (such as slams or rap) - that's just literary snobbery. People would rather visit the slams and listen to rap because it's written FOR THEM.
Poets tend to fight definitions of our "art" - pointing to a particular poem that breaks all of the rules yet is still enjoyable and claiming that poetry therefore can't be nailed down into a strict definition... yet we have no trouble at all saying what it isn't.
Namely, if it doesn't look like the crap we're selling - it's not poetry.
Hi Carl,
I'm a little Louise Gluck, in thinking that if people want poetry, they'll know where to find it. The corollary is that people will find the kind of poetry they are looking for.
This puts me in the camp of people who are against any movement of any group or individual which holds that the current poetry ought to be such and so. This includes what great results might come from great studies. However, as you point out, that "such and so" is usually right up that particular poet's alley, pushing the espouser nearer the top of the poetry heap of respectablity. Or in the case of, say, the Poetry Foundation, it will direct them in what they will present as poetry to the consuming public, and therefore to the nth degree, what constitutes the real poetry.
As you say, "Poets are writers, first and foremost." So if I feel like writing, I will be guided by my musing--and with whatever focus and skills I have, I will write. You may not want to buy it or even read it, but I'll want to write it. My mother has played piano most every day of her life since she was five, whether before a group, or by herself. It's the same for poets like me.
I'll draw the fuzzy line around rap, though. I enjoy Eminem, but don't get him as a poet, as, for instance, Seamus Heaney does. Rap, etc., is music, even when a capella. This isn't to say that song lyrics, or portions of them, cannot be poetry, or that Eminem hasn't ever rapped poetic. Nor is it to say the same about plays and novels. On the other hand, I read Plato's dialogues as poems, The Symposium even in translation, being as good a poem as I've ever read. Philosophers give themselves headaches otherwise.
Thanks for your terrific comments.
Yours,
Rus
Hi Rus.
My biggest issue with the poetry foundation is their focus on print media. They always seem to exclude any non-print source of poetry from their studies. I suppose their focus is the revival of print poetry, which is slowly dying.
It might make more sense to see what poetry people actually read (regardless of its source) and adapt a publication to capture a wider market.
There are many different types of poetry available with popular appeal. The academic poets are the only ones excluding them as "real" poetry. It seems we're writing ourselves into exclusive oblivion, and that's a disturbing trend. If not for the increased level of enrollment in MFA creative writing programs over the past few years, the print market would be in much worse shape.
The foundation isn't all bad. I commend their support of Kooser's American Life in Poetry series, because Kooser seeks to bring poetry to the attention of the public by careful selection of easily-understood poetry with common appeal.
Other suggested programs such as poetry bees and the like just bug me, because they seek to preserve a dying status quo.
Hi Carl,
Anything's worth a try. I subscribe to the mag, and pretty much enjoy it.
Since they got all that money, though, I'm getting this big-corp feel between some of the lines, with the big-process that comes with it, and the big-ego management that follows the process.
As long as they think of themselves as part of the greater poetry community to be served, and not the greater part of the community, and so to be served or even reckoned with, I'm okay. People will be imperfect and clouded, which is fine with me too.
The poets will be poets anyway, until censored or shot. And I go along with the Kooser movement of accessiblbity, just like I'd go along with any other poetry movement. A new heady-poetry movement would be fine with me. In fact, I'd love to hear of a poetry movement exclusively for 180 IQers and above. Just as long as one movement doesn't try to squelch the other.
Thanks for that excellent response.
Yours,
Rus
Post a Comment