World Class Poetry Blog

Contemporary Poetics: What I Find Irksome
28 November 2007, the poet @ 8:46 pm

There are certain things that I find irksome about contemporary poetics. The main thing is that quite a bit of it is actually, well, not poetic. I mean, there are no obvious signs of poetry other than the unmistakable enjambment. But throwing a bunch of sentences on a page and breaking the lines up instead of letting them run the full length of the page doesn’t make it a poem. It may not necessarily be prose, but it isn’t necessarily poetry either.

I’m not talking about certain lyrical narratives that strive to surpass the boundaries of narrative. I’m even OK with prose poems. But the irksome part is the attempt by contemporary poets to write in a conversational tone about things that no one really cares about then calling it poetry just because they chose not to write it in paragraph form.

I don’t want to embarrass anyone so I won’t mention any names, but here are a few lines from a poem that I found in a very respected poetry journal. The journal is associated with a well-known university with a long history and tradition. I copied this straight from the website where I found it. My comments follow (save the tomatoes and stones please until after the performance):

i suppose most people know that when i come to a place i have
a bit of difficulty trying to say precisely what i’m going to be
doing so i dont start with large introductions but as usual
ive got a number of things on my mind when i go places and i think
about them out loud in public and because what i’m doing is
entertaining ideas not people i’m quite happy for people to
feel free to get up and leave whenever they stop finding this
entertaining and thats how i know i’m a poet not an entertainer

First, the poem has no line breaks or punctuation. I’ve broken it into segments for easier consumption. My first critique is this: There seems to be no real reason for the lower case Is and lack of punctuation. I have no problem with either of those. I’ve read many poems that employ these techniques and have enjoyed them. They just don’t seem to work in this case and there is no real reason for it being written this way. Now, let’s take a look at the content.

There isn’t any.

From the very first words, “I suppose,” I am set up to expect nothing. As a reward, I’m given nothing. If the poem had started with “Most people know” then I might expect a little more from what followed, but the poet chose to start with the overused “I,” and immediately I’m turned off. Why? Because I really don’t care about “I.” Again, it isn’t that the poem is written in first person. Many great poems are written in first person. But for the first person to work it must be compellingly obvious that this is the best way for the poem to work. If I can rewrite the lines in the third person and have it be more effective then it would be best to drop the “I.”

There are no usual poetic techniques involved in the poem that would make me defend it on the basis of poetics. No rhyme, no alliteration, no irony, no tropes, nothing of any substance to make me cling to it as poetry. All I have is one long run on sentence that goes nowhere, says nothing, and uses too many words to do it. All I’m left with is “What’s the point?”

though on several occasions people have compared me to
entertainers like lenny bruce but thats not what i’m like
i’m not very much like lenny bruce if i’m an entertainer
at all
i admire lenny bruce and have great respect for what he did
but lenny bruce worked in clubs where he had to take on drunks
and coax and coerce them into thinking about something more than
getting laid while he kept them from getting out of the chair and

Now here we are, 16 lines into the poem, and all I know about the “I” is a bunch of vague non-descriptions:

• Difficulty saying a precisely what he is doing
• Doesn’t start with large introductions
• He’s got things on his mind
• He thinks about these things out loud in public
• Because he’s really entertaining ideas
• Not people
• He’s quite happy for people to feel free to get up an leave
• He’s a poet
• Not an entertainer
• Though people have compared him to Lenny Bruce
• But he’s not like Lenny Bruce
• He respects Lenny Bruce
• But Lenny Bruce worked in clubs and so on

Here’s the irksome part of all this: There is no description, no concrete images to ground me in the place and time of what is going on; all telling, no showing. And that’s the irksome part. No show, which is a bad show for an entertainer. Instead of telling me he’s an entertainer like Lenny Bruce, why doesn’t the poet just show me the Lenny Bruce in him that he can’t himself see? I might actually enjoy the poem then.

A Poem That Irks In A Different Way
By contrast, I’d like to reprint a poem from Iraq War veteran Brian Turner. It’s a poem that I like, but one that I find irksome in a quite different way:

Here Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

The opening line of this poem strikes my conscience like a bullet driving into hot flesh. “If a body is what you want …” Obviously, the person speaking is addressing that hot piece of lead headed through the forensic air. Immediately, I stop to catch my breath. There is action. Something I can see. And it’s in the very first line.

And the language just pulls me in. “then here is bone and gristle and flesh.” The line reads like slow motion, as if I’m watching it on the silver screen. This poet is in no hurry to tell his story, but he tells it well. The repetition of the word “here,” eight times in sixteen lines, keeps me focused on where the action really is. It’s inside the man. Inside. The action is inside the mind, the emotion, the psyche of the one who is soon to be no longer active, alive.

Then there are the alliterative vowels - “clavicle-snapped,” “synaptic gap” - and the use of “Because” as the beginning of the sentence leading me to the “cold esophagus” of the barrel, the language that reminds of a body about to be destroyed by a death seeking life taker, the bullet. The “triggering my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have inside of me” is such strong language. The metaphor of the body acting as battlefield armaments act and the complimenting metaphor of the bullet owning the characteristics of a body are so perfect for the poem. It is action, action grounded in concrete images, that provide the philosophical underpinning for the metaphysical aspects of the poem - not the other way around.

Then, we come to the final passage. The world-ending determinant of the poem’s success. The very last line; indeed, the last word. So much depends on that last word. It can turn a perfect poem into a disaster. Every time.

Brian Turner has set me up so well. All the way to the end. Beautiful language, action, concrete images, metaphysical realities, execution followed by sheer ballistic execution, and I love it. Then, “here, Bullet,” the personification of a lifeless life force, “here is where the world ends,” and he kills it for me by adding “every time.” Do I need “every time?” Does it add to the poem? That’s what irks me. If I read the poem without it I still love it. I read the poem with “every time” and I don’t love it any more. It bothers me. Maybe it shouldn’t.

Purchase Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

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