World Class Poetry Blog

Cool, rare find: War poet’s diary.

The Mars Bar poet.

The Longfellow Student Poetry Awards.

Battle of the Poets.

The lost Dylan poems.

Don Share on slow poetry.

Getting a late start tonight. Was at a critique group I hadn’t been to in a while. We went a little later than usual. It was a good night.

I found myself in the unusual position of defending a piece written by a young college-bound woman who was new to the group. It’s not unusual that I was defending a young woman, but that I was defending her Cubist aesthetic. As you know, I’m not preferential to the avant-garde schools, and particularly Cubism, but I’m a firm believer in critiquing a poem toward a poet’s intent and not toward my own preferences.

The regulars of the group are a rather diverse crowd. We met in Michael Hoover’s home. Mike is the current poet laureate of Hanover, Pa. He is a poet’s poet, a sort of John Donne among a cast and crew of rather colorful characters. My friend Gary is the Beat poet, protege of Jack Kerouac. Anna is an older woman, a traditionalist who is rather rigid in her poetics. Janet is another older woman who is quiet most of the time, but who writes strictly in form and meter, almost always. Tonight she presented a sonnet, complete with the obligatory and obvious end rhymes. Katie is much more contemporary and Millennial-thinking in her approach than the others, tipping toward the postmodern without falling into it. Then there is me and I’m all over the poetic map. Some of the other regulars weren’t there.

At any rate, the young college-bound lady is a former student of Mike’s. Her poem was firmly entrenched in the avant garde. Her poem consisted of several hyphenated adjectives, a handful of colons followed by short bouts of terse pith, imagery that would make Ezra Pound stand up and sing “Holy Moses”, uncanny indentations, and an all-around creative visual and thought-provoking piece. It was quite imaginative and I was blessed to have read the poem. At her age, to have pulled that kind of poem off without the use of the most overused word in any language - the confabulated “I” - was incredible. I think it may have been the best, and certainly was the most creative, poem of the evening.

I defended her because everyone else in the group seemed to want to change the strophe in the poem that I thought was the heart and soul. In the midst of all this imagery surrounding that verse, the poet committed the cardinal sin of “author intrusion”, only it wasn’t so much an author intrusion as it was an addition of “self” in a family portrait. The poem’s title, you see, was “Cubism Family Portrait.”

What Is Cubism?
Anyone who has seen a Cubist painting will have one of two reactions. They’ll either love it or hate. I hate them. Pablo Picasso, heralded a genius by many art lovers in the 20th century, was a crazed, maniacal canvas abuser. I don’t like his Cubist art and I much less like his Blue Period paintings. But a thing is what it is.

When a poet presents a poem that is titled “Cubism Family Portrait”, it is pretty obvious what she is attempting. As a critique group participant, it is my duty to help her achieve her goal in creating the poem that is true to her aesthetic and reaches the point of perfection according to the principles of that aesthetic and not to infuse her poetry with my own aesthetic preferences or attempt to turn her into a miniature me. But that, unfortunately, is the approach of many critique group participants.

The Cubists attempted to present their subjects as geometric lines and shapes rather than the way we would normally see them. Cubist paintings are like stick figures on steroids. They are, in a certain sense, simplistic, but then they are also quite complex in other senses. The idea is to turn reality into an abstraction and the Cubists did that quite well.

I thought the young lady’s poem captured that sense of abstraction that can be found in Cubist art quite well. There was no mention of “I” in the poem, which I thought was a marvelous absence, yet the poet, or narrator, was definitely present. The poem attempted to describe the family in a very imagistic sense, including the dog, and even included two thoughts, spelled out explicitly, of the narrator regarding two imaginary events based on the movement of a chair in the scene. I thought the scene was spelled out quite well. Others didn’t think so. I didn’t have a problem with their inability to visualize it so much as I did with their attempt to fix the problem.

The suggestions had more to do with changing the way the poem was presented rather than improving it in the direction that it was moving. Group members didn’t like that she numbered her thoughts; well, it was unconventional, sure, but I thought it worked for her poem. The “author intrusion” as it was called was a necessary component to the poem because how can you have a family portrait without the painter, who is also a part of the family? The painter has to draw herself in too, doesn’t she?

So what we had was a poem that was primarily based on images, but which took a short excursion in two ways:

1. The painter, who was also a member of the family, entered the poem with thoughts and feelings (well, she is human, isn’t she?)
2. And the form of the poem changed, including a numbered sequence of the intruding author’s thoughts along with double indentions and italics

I thought the author intrusion was appropriate, but I was in the minority.

That’s not to say I thought the poem was perfect. I had my issues with parts of it, but I thought the one verse that everyone seemed to fixate on and wanted to fix was the part that needed the least work. Michael was the only one who saw my point, though I could see that Katie also agreed with me in at least one sense. While Michael could see my point, he still insisted the verse needed to be fixed.

I never try to fix someone else’s aesthetic while in a critique group. I don’t think it’s appropriate. I may not like their approach to writing, but it’s not my place to say it there in that setting. The best influence I can be is to help them improve their poem in the direction that they want it to go. If the aesthetic they have chosen doesn’t work for their poem, I think they’ll discover that on their own in due time. If they don’t then it will just have to be a bad poem. I’m not there to put a clay roof on a steel building.

Well, I’ve always wondered what Jim Murdoch really thought about me. Now I know. Thanks Jim.

I had prepared myself to write one of my philosophical posts on a topic related to writing today, but as I sat down to write, I’d forgotten the topic I was to write on. It was important earlier in the day when I thought of it, but as is the case sometimes, I got so busy with events that I didn’t have the time to stop and write down the idea. And I didn’t have a pen and notepad with me either. Dawg!

But while I did manage to let my mind slip, I also managed to get a little bit of writing done elsewhere. I kicked off the morning with this op-ed post at a new gig I thought I’d try. This afternoon I updated a few pages on the World Class Poetry site, and I also managed to add a new feature to the WCP Toolbar, namely, the addition of the PennSound PoemTalk, a daily podcast with Al Filreis. So I have had a fairly productive day.

Ordinarily, I’d have the grand kids today, but that didn’t happen so I took advantage of the solitude and got some work done. I also wrote a book review that will be published in the next couple of days. I love days like that.

My hope is that I’ll sleep well and remember tomorrow what it was I wanted to write about and be in a position to write it down or start the post. I don’t like being without my tools for very long.

Here’s a good review. And it makes me want to read the book.

Introduction to sci-fi poetry.

The Wergle Flomp winner.

PoemTalk (John Ashbery)

How to develop your own poetic style.

Who’s your favorite virgin?

Deborah Ager’s unwritten poetry rules. I like Nos. 1 & 2, and have always obeyed No. 2.

Diane Lockward’s. I like 7, 11, and 12, but I think No. 4 is quickly becoming overdone.

Poetry Hound’s poetry review tips.

The Shepherd on the poetry and criticism split.

And the final word: I’d rather read someone with whom I disagree, but who is capable of making me think, than to read the writing of someone whose premise I find agreeable, but who writes in such a way that even I can find holes in their theories. Kudos to Reginald Shepherd and Ron Silliman.

I’d like to offer a great big thanks to Timothy Green, editor of Rattle, for getting me thinking on this. He commented on a former blog post about the nature of didacticism and I wanted to respond in a way that calls for more than a simple comment on a post. Here’s his comment:

The problem with didacticism isn’t that you take a position, it’s that you take it from the start — maybe it’s as simple as the reader’s trust, and being suspicious of rhetoric. Although I think it’s more than that — I think it’s hard to write a poem that isn’t dull without surprising yourself.

Bear in mind that didactic poetry is instructional and, as such, its purpose is to teach. Now, I come from the position that there is a place for didacticism in poetry. I think that all poetry is, in some sense, instructional, but the problem with much of the poetry that seeks to be instructional as an end in itself is that its instructions are preachy and detract from the poetry. I believe that poetry must always strive to be poetry first and anything else secondarily.

That said, however, I take issue with Tim’s opening statement here. He likely didn’t intend it the way it sounds, but this is how I took it. Where you start out with a position that you believe and you write a poem to defend that position. Tim’s statement makes me think that he believes that isn’t appropriate, but I think otherwise. There are many great poems that do just that. One such poem is Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica.”

In “Ars Poetica”, MacLeish sets out to tell us what a poem should be. Right from word one he takes a position and he sticks to it. All the way down to his final line, that poem makes one point. Every line contributes to the point. It’s a fabulous exercise in polemics. He doesn’t say what he needs to say in every way possible, but he does say it in every way that it needs to be said in order for the poem to make its point. And he took his position right from the start.

I think that’s what good poetry does, but I also agree with Tim’s last point. It’s hard to write a poem that doesn’t surprise yourself. I think Archibald MacLeish would honestly say that he did surprise himself in writing “Ars Poetica”. The lines are surprising, not for what they say, but in how they say it. Again, that is a mark of good poetry.

Pardon Me For Being A Wise Ass
I’d like to thank Jim Murdoch for his response to my last blog post. I think anyone who reads my blog long term has figured out by now that I don’t believe that a poem is a poem just because somebody decided to throw some lines on a page and call it a poem. My point for that post was two-fold: No. 1, I just wanted to be a wise-ass and make fun of myself a little bit, and, secondly, just prove that I’m a bit of a contrarian on these matters. I don’t follow rules too well. I prefer to deal with principles because principles are flexible; rules are not. That doesn’t mean that everything is equal. To echo the words of the Apostle Paul, the author of much of the Christian New Testament, all things are permissible, but not all things are profitable. In other words, anyone can call himself a poet and just toss words onto the page, but the real test of one’s work is not what he himself thinks of it, but what the aggregate of posterity thinks of it.

The Many, Many Types Of Poetry
I’d like to issue a third thank you. This one to G.M. Palmer who writes the Strong Verse blog. He’s drawn a bit of a line in the sand over there about what constitutes good poetry and what doesn’t. I certainly give him credit for his passion. I like many of his ideas and agree with them. But he’s got a few as well that I think are a bit stuck in the barn.

What I do like about him is his willingness to promote narrative long-term poetry. I too believe that it’s time to bring back the long form narratives, though not necessarily in the traditional rhyme and meters of old. Nevertheless, his passion is commendable.

Where I do take issue with him is in his insistence that avant garde poetry and Spoken Word forms are not poetry. While my readers know that I’m not preferential to the avant garde, I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss them on the basis that we don’t like them. Just because I don’t like somebody’s style or techniques doesn’t mean that what I do is superior to what they do. Palmer’s polemics leave much to be desired and I’ve found that, by reading his blog, he often contradicts his own principles.

For example:

1. In his “Modern Aesthetics As Sola Fide” post he criticizes contemporary poets for their “it’s poetry because I say it is” position then he turns around in less than one week later and makes the argument that Language Poets, Spoken Word poets, and avant gardeists are bad because he says they are. Well, I think he owes it to us to defend his position with some examples rather than saying Google will lead you to the self-evident truths. Sorry, bad positing.
2. In his bio he says his favorite book is The Divine Comedy by Dante then he says in “Why I am a Skeptic” that he dislikes anything trendy or experimental. This is really quite laughable. Dante himself was an experimenter. All great poets are. Dante’s experimentalism is evident in his use of the terza rima, which was never used before he employed it in The Divine Comedy. Dante’s work went on to inspire Petrarch and Chaucer, who borrowed the form for English literature. Other English language poets followed, all the way down to William Carlos Williams, who is perhaps an iconic figure in the avant garde traditions. Personally, I’ve got no use for any poet who doesn’t step outside of the ranks and do a little experimenting. Who wants to read the same rehashed lines over and over again?

Rather than wear myself out poring over every word of his blog, I’ll just stop right there. I am not setting myself up as opposition to Palmer’s ideas. I simply think he should communicate them better. I like what he has to say in “A Declaration on the Revision of Poetry”, but we can’t get too wrapped up in the language of forms.

To say that no one reads poetry today because “artsy journals” publish crap is ludicrous. People stopped reading poetry when they could just flip on the channel and watch Uncle Miltie wearing a dress and smoking a cigar. Poets have to stop dreaming about the future halcyon days when poetry makes a big comeback. We should instead put our overactive imaginations to work and produce good, imaginative literature for the people who appreciate it. What do I care if my audience is 500 or 5 million? I hope, of course, that it’s 5 million, but I’m not holding my breath.

While Palmer’s declaration has merit, I wouldn’t expect it to revive interest in poetry. People just aren’t going to flock to Borders Books to buy the latest issue of Palmer’s grand opus. They might, but they’ll only do so if their friends tell them it’s good enough to spend their money on. Otherwise, they’d rather watch Homer Simpson.

Poets have got to quit blaming each other for the problems that we find. It isn’t Ron Silliman’s fault that your books don’t sell on Amazon. It isn’t some vaguely-defined School of Quietude’s responsibility to ensure that the avant garde poets are represented in the great poetic pantheon. These kinds of ridiculous assertions are just rhetoric that gets us nowhere. If you don’t like concrete poetry then don’t read it. Someone else may love the hell out of it. That’s their business. Leave it alone.

Today, there are more poets writing poetry than there ever have been in U.S. history. There are also fewer non-poets reading it. Dana Gioia noticed that 20 years ago. He wrote a manifesto and it was widely distributed. Still, even after the New Formalists waged their hostile takeover and ransacked the halls and walls of academe and the NEA, fewer people care about poetry. I’m not going to cry about it. Ultimately, poetry will live on in some form. If it’s a form that I don’t appreciate then at least I’m glad that it’s still alive.

How Many Types Of Poetry Are There?
The answer to the question, “How many types of poetry are there?” is this: As many as people read. The poetry tent is big enough to hold the Language Poets, the New Formalists, and everyone in between. It’s big enough for lyric poetry and narrative poetry. It’s even big enough for a few lyric-narratives. Perhaps we’ll all have to tolerate a little bad poetry in order to enjoy the good, but the good that is there is really good so why let the rest get us down?

This isn’t some “live and let live” manifesto. It’s a hope that poets will take the time to learn from each other. I think you can learn good poetics from bad poetry. I also think you can pick up bad habits from good poetry. The real issue is, What are you doing to make yourself as good a poet as you can be? And don’t spend all your time fixating on the different types of poetry. Rather, take some time out to invent a type of your own.

Mary Biddinger, editor of Barn Owl Review, asks, “What are your written or unwritten rules.” The responses, on her blog, are very interesting reading. Mine is here:

Allen’s Rules For Writing Poetry

1. First, I have no rules.
2. I don’t follow other people’s rules
3. If there is a rule that I’m supposed to follow then I break it.
4. If I’m expected to break a rule then I follow it.
5. Sometimes I write a rule just so I’ll have one to break.
6. I take risks. Even when I’m not taking risks, I’m planning my next rule break.
7. I don’t shun forms or devices because they’re too hard, too easy, or because I don’t like them. If I don’t try it then I can’t beat myself up for failing.
8. I write like an editor, edit like a writer, and read like a critic.
9. No poems go unrevised, except those that don’t need it.
10. There’s nothing I won’t do in a poem, nothing I won’t write about, and no one I won’t include; but I just might decide to leave things out anyway because I have that option.
11. I always limit my rules to ten.

All questions regarding these rules should be directed to the Department of Poetic Policy at (123) YAM-ETA4. Press 1 for discussing the rules, 2 for breaking the rules, 3 for obedience and submission, and 4 if you don’t give a damn. Otherwise, hold. We’ll be with you shortly.

Yesterday I sicked my inner sicko (psycho?) on the appositives to see if I could get away with murder. Today I’m going to prosecute myself.

Seriously, if I were to answer yesterday’s post with a rebuttal, I’d say there are three types of poetry where appositives are a positive. They are:

1. Prose poetry
2. Narrative verse
3. Language poetry

Differences Between Prose Poetry
And Prose Writing
In prose poetry, you essentially are writing in the same manner in which you’d write prose non-poetry. Therefore, the rules are essentially the same, right? Well, it would seem so, but I don’t think so.

I think the purpose and intent of prose poetry is different than that of strict prose. Strict prose writing is usually concerned with thesis, antithesis, synthesis. In other words, you are moving from point A to point B using arguments along the way to facilitate a particular train of thought. At least, that’s what prosaic nonfiction is all about. In terms of prose fiction, you are essentially doing the same thing but using more creative devices and imagination. Facts are still facts, but in fiction those facts may consist entirely of myth and could make no sense to the real world, but make perfect sense to the world of prose that is being created by the author. Prose poetry, on the other, could just be a scene with no particular movement from one point to another. Such is the case with parts of Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Here’s a sample poem:

Antique

Gracious son of Pan! Around your forehead crowned with flowerets and with laurel, restlessly roll those precious balls, your eyes. Spotted with brown lees, your cheeks are hollow. Your fangs gleam. Your breast is like a lyre, tinklings circulate through your pale arms. Your heart beats in that belly where sleeps the double sex. Walk through the night, gently moving that thigh, that second thigh, and that left leg.

Narrative Verse Redeems Itself
Narrative poetry is defined as poetry that tells a story. Robert Service is no friend of academic verse, but if you read his poetry it all does one thing well. There is always a story to tell.

Service was popular among rustic Americans in the early part of the 20th century. It’s easy to understand why. His poetry about the wilds of the Yukon, with their humorous twists and catchy rhyme schemes could hold simple imaginations spellbound for several minutes. And I understand that Service himself was quite a performer and entertainer. To have written the kind of poetry that he did, he would have to be.

The argument that narrative verse, like narrative fiction, should adhere to the same styles and devices is a compelling one. After all, if your aim is to tell a story then you want to use every possible device to help you do that effectively. Appositives are great for helping to vary the sentences, are they not?

Yes, certainly. But narrative verse must also rely on something else which is traditionally the purview of fiction. That is, it must “roll out” the story a little bit at a time. It’s called exposition. I’ll come back to that a little later, but for now, suffice it to say that any narrative writing must rely on exposition for effect and for effectual storytelling.

Language Poetry’s Natural Habitat
Language poetry is one of the most interesting developments to hit the world of poetry in awhile. Firmly entrenched in the avant garde tradition, its aim is simply to “play” with language. The main aim is to allow the reader to participate in creating the meaning of the poem. Therefore, the writer is not telling the reader what to think or how. Rather, he is simply offering the poem for review and analysis and leaving the rest to the reader.

Because of the philosophical underpinnings of the language poets, much of the writing appears disjunctive and unmeaning. That is, anti-meaningful. But the point is to facilitate the reader finding his or her own meaning in the poem. Devices are used to help the reader do that, but those devices are rendered flexible enough that the reader can act as co-creator. Appositives serve a useful purpose in this kind of writing because you can write entire poems with nothing but appositives, or nothing but verbs if you wish. Language poetry tends to “break all the rules”, or rewrite them. And that’s OK.

How The Three Forms Shun Apposition
For Exposition
While appositives can be a positive in any of these types of poetic environments (or any, I suppose), the underlying purpose for the appositive is much more important than simply employing the device to “see what happens.” Even when poets use an appositive, there should be a greater purpose at stake. That purpose should be to “move the poem along.”

Careful, Exposition Doesn’t Mean What You
Think It Means
By exposition I do not mean what is traditionally thought of as exposition. In fictional writing, exposition is moving the story along either through characterization or scene development. In nonfiction writing, exposition is moving the reader to your grand conclusion through a discussion of certain points based on factual findings and research. That’s not what I mean by poetic exposition.

In poetic exposition, it could mean either of the traditional definitions of exposition, but more often than not what it really means is a “driving” of the poem to its final aha! Whether you’re using elements of prose, narrative, or language twittering, the end result is to always get that poem to do what it’s supposed to do. Even if its only aim is to make the reader go, “Huh?”

Sometimes, the purpose of the poem is to get the reader to think. Other times it may be to get the reader to feel a certain way. Maybe it’s to show a traditional element of culture in a brand new light. Or to scare someone. Whatever the case, even if it’s to “redefine the rules”, exposition drives the writer, and the reader, to that place where discovery can be made. If you need an appositive to do that then don’t dig the knife in just yet.

I have this fun little game that I play with my poems. It’s called Kill the Appositives.

In case you are grammatically challenged, I’d like to explain what an appositive is. It’s really a negative, but some people see it as a positive (pardon the intentional pun). I was reminded of this game when reading a chapter in The Poet’s Companion, which I’ve been reading through the last few days. I was really excited that the poets - Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio - included a chapter on grammar because most poetry books don’t touch on it and after reading this one I concluded that maybe they should have left out at least part of it as well.

Now, overall, I like The Poet’s Companion. I really do. It’s been a good book. I took issue with the first chapter, but I haven’t had much to say about it since then - until now. Most of the chapter deals with the inclusion of appositives in poetry, which the authors encourage, and verbals. Otherwise, it wasn’t really much of a discussion on grammar and my disappointment comes in when I consider that there are so many ways that they could have taken that chapter and they chose to focus on appositives.

So, now the definition. Addinizio and Laux say this about appositives:

“Apposition” simply means that one thing is put beside another; an appositive is a word or group of words which explains the original in a little more detail. If you write “My grandmother, Stella,” you have created a noun appositive for “my grandmother,” since “Stella” is also a noun. Now we have a little more information; we know her name, at least. But you may want to tell us more, to use a group of words to describe her: “My grandmother, a tiny woman with long white hair and the face of a Botticelli angel.” Now you’ve used a noun phrase appositive.

The problem with this advice is that they are actually encouraging poets to add words to their text when conventional wisdom says you should be cutting things out, like a vasectomy. Most poetry is tragically overwritten, not in a dramatic sense, but in a grammatical sense. And this is the reason why. Teachers are encouraging the use of appositives.

I hate appositives. In poetry. I love them in prose. A good appositive in expository writing can turn a dull sentence into a Pulitzer Prize winner. In poetry, it more likely will just turn a bad line into a nuclear detonation.

Laux’s and Addinizio’s advice pretty much just kicks Strunk & White in the balls. E.B. White is the author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. But he is best known by writers as half of the authorship of The Elements of Style, but he really did the bulk of the editing. In chapter 13 of his 1918 edition, Strunk wrote

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

I can’t think of anywhere that this advice is more apt than in poetry. The point is not to make every sentence or line short and terse, but to make sure that every word has something meaningful to say. More often than not, appositives are just fluffy and full of information that doesn’t add anything of necessity for a reader’s understanding of a poem. Do I really need to know that your grandmother’s name is Stella? Unless that fact is a necessary component to the poem then it is unnecessary information, therefore a useless appositive, and that’s what most appositives in poetry are. Just plain useless. The poet’s mantra should be this: Cut, cut, cut.

So repeat after me: Appositives are negatives.

Got that? Good. Write it down.

Now, I’m not saying that appositives are never helpful. Sometimes they are. But I think encouraging beginning poets to use appositives is like teaching teenagers to hunt deer with claymore mines. Even if they manage to kill one they will likely do a lot more damage to the trees and if they can’t make nouns and verbs alone sing like a Gatling gun then there’s no sense in giving them things so they can hurt themselves.

What do you say? Ready to play?

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