World Class Poetry Blog

Does Poetry Matter - Any More?
26 December 2007, the poet @ 1:38 am

Poet Dana Gioia achieved fame and notoriety when he published his essay, “Can Poetry Matter?” in the 1991 issue of Atlantic Monthly. Since then, the essay has been circulated around the world a few times via e-mail. Every couple of years or so I’ll get another copy of it sent to me from someone who has discovered it for the first time or who may have known about it all along but thought I might not have. I read it every time. It’s an excellent essay.

From the first sentence on, Gioia captures my imagination: “American poetry now belongs to a subculture.” The truth of this sentence penetrates my conscience like a poison arrow as I realize I am a member of this little subculture. But it doesn’t seem so little any more.

I’ve been writing poetry since 1989. That was the year I read Satan Says by Sharon Olds and when I took my first poetry workshop with Sheryl St. Germain at the University of Texas at Dallas. I’ve been writing poetry ever since, having given up on my dream of ever being a novelist. It seems poetry fills my need to communicate.

But who am I communicating to? Other poets?

Poetry’s Self Obsession
Sometimes when I read I feel like I am speaking into a vacuum. At open mic poetry readings others sit patiently awaiting their own turn to read, but are they really listening to me read my poetry? I recently discovered that many do. There are two types of poets that attend poetry readings. The first type of poet is the poet who goes to read and couldn’t care less about the poetry everyone else is reading. They just want to be heard. The second type of poet is the one who shows up to hear what others have to say and to share their own. They realize that poetry is a give and take. Then, occasionally, a “listener” will wander in just to listen and not read at all.

Many “listeners,” I have learned, are friends or family of poets. They may or may not even be at the reading if they didn’t know someone who was a poet. Would you really consider them an audience? I wonder what Dana Gioia would think? His observation, recanted below, makes me think he’s say “No”:

But the poetry boom has been a distressingly confined phenomenon. Decades of public and private funding have created a large professional class for the production and reception of new poetry comprising legions of teachers, graduate students, editors, publishers, and administrators. Based mostly in universities, these groups have gradually become the primary audience for contemporary verse. Consequently, the energy of American poetry, which was once directed outward, is now increasingly focused inward.

Is poetry really that self obsessed? Sometimes it seems it is. I’ve met poets who themselves were obsessed with their own greatness, or their own uniqueness. Their sense of self-importance seemed to be a monument to nothing, an ode to their own love of the craft. While I certainly believe that craft is important, and passion is inescapable, I also believe that poetry must be something more than a social club or an association of like-minded enthusiasts. There must be an audience outside of the inner circle. Again, I quote Gioia:

Today most readings are celebrations less of poetry than of the author’s ego. No wonder the audience for such events usually consists entirely of poets, would-be poets, and friends of the author.

Poetry’s Futile Search For An Audience
The trouble with being a poet is that it is so hard to find the audience. With fiction, there are genres. Even if some of them are utterly banal, there is a built-in targeted audience. If you write detective mysteries, there are a group of people who love to read detective mysteries. If you enjoy writing historical romances, there will never be a want of an audience. Whether your particular story is good or not is a matter for the audience to decide. But at least you have an audience. If you write poetry, your audience is other poets.

The closest thing to a genre in poetry is being a member of a particular school or movement. If you are a language poet, for instance, you will certainly be familiar with Ron Silliman and Rae Armantrout. If you write formalist verse then you’ll likely know the poetry of Donald Justice, Richard Wilbur, and Howard Nemerov. But what if you just write poetry and have not settled on a definition of your style, or follow a particular school? Where do you fit in?

I believe poets should give this some thought. Who are you? What kind of poetry do you write? Don’t just answer that question by saying who your influencers are. Just because you admire Silliman doesn’t make you a language poet. Just because you enjoy reading the work of Donald Justice does not make you a new formalist. It likely means you are too narrowly focused to have any definition at all. A poet must always be learning, trying new forms, taking risks, testing himself in all directions. You can’t do that effectively as a poet without knowing some little bit about all types of poetry available. You may not like the avant-garde, but it helps to know what made the avant-garde poets so avant-garde and why you do not wish to move your craft in that direction.

Dana Gioia’s observation that academic poets working as teachers in higher education are not familiar with the poets of the past is an amazing confession. Why? Do they study only their contemporaries? According to Gioia, yes. And I suspect this is even more true today, 16 years after Gioia’s essay was published. That’s a terrible admission to make for someone who claims to be an expert in a particular subject. Imagine a house builder who had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright, or a musician who was not familiar with Beethoven or Bach. Would you trust them?

I think this is what Dana Gioia is saying in his essay. Society doesn’t take poetry seriously because poets take themselves too seriously, yet simultaneously they don’t take their art seriously. Until poets treat poetry like it matters and quit churning out mediocre verse simply to impress their teachers and fellow poets and really write poetry that speaks to the world around them, until then, poetry will just be an exercise in futile ego stroking. It is not something I wish to be a part of.

Millennial Poetry School Defined
I believe definitions are important. They say a lot about what a person stands for, and what he doesn’t. I have noticed that many schools of poetry, or literary movements, came about as a rejection of the school that preceded them. Either that, or they came about by way of admiration of a previous school that gave impetus to a new direction. You can see it in the historical movements from Romanticism to Modernism to the Beats, Language Poets, Postmoderns, and back to the roots with New Formalism. Each succeeding school of poetry either rejects a certain defining tenet of the previous school or takes a particular attribute of the preceding school and turns it into a defining tenet of its own philosophy.

The problem that I see with this is that all poetic schools contain something admirable. All of them contain some aspect that is annoying. What is considered admirable and what is considered annoying may be completely different from poet to poet, but we would all have our own preferences with regard to literary criticisms, poetic philosophies, and prejudices. We’re human; that’s our way.

We have reached a juncture in our history when poetry must be saved by our own sense of self importance, what I consider a weakness. There is no reason to wall ourselves apart. Why should the language poets and the formalist poets sit at different tables? Why must we attend different events and shun each other at the wine bar? Can we not learn from each other?

The Millennial School of Poetry is based on this presumption, that poets from different schools and movements can learn from each other. It is a belief that the ancient poets, classic forms, and contemporary styles can all exist together simultaneously, sometimes even in the same poem. There is no reason why a single poet cannot experiment with the known forms and still write free verse. There is no reason why a free verse poet cannot branch out and write a sonnet. There is no reason why the writer of villanelles cannot modify the form and create a unique twist on the form itself, or to invent a wholly new poetic form. No reason other than prejudice.

It is time to cast aside the prejudices of the past and move forward with Dana Gioia’s insistence that poetry can matter. Taking his suggestions, we can commit ourselves to creating a new breed of poet and a new appreciation for poetry. But to do so we must understand what made the poets of the past successful. What makes one poem stand out while another falls on its face. These are questions for everyone, not just some aesthete holed up on the third floor of some 200-year-old institution. Until the poets come down from their ivory towers, the elephants will not shed their tusks.

I believe that poetry is facing a new horizon. Like the poetry slams that took root in the 1980s, I believe that poetry is about to see a new regenerator - something explosive - that will make it relevant to people again. Poetry does matter, now it’s time for poets to make it matter. And may 2008 be the year we all resolve ourselves to ensure that it does - by studying the craft and not merely by primping our plumes.

4 Comments a “Does Poetry Matter - Any More?”

1. Jim Murdoch — December 26, 2007 @ 8:32 am
   

   I’ve always been opposed to the it’s-a-poem-because-I-say-it-is school of writing poetry. I know when I was much younger – I’ve been writing since 1973 – I was a bit pretentious; being a poet, the first thing in my life I had decided I was going to be, less an act of rebellion, more an act of definition one that has been continually refined over the years. I’ve not known many poets but the few I have have tended to be very possessive of their own voice and I’ve been no different. I used to worry that if I read too much I would find my own poetry would become diluted as opposed to enriched. Looking back that fear was not entirely unreasonable because the influences of Larkin and Owen – and later on William Carlos Williams – is clear and I had to work through these before a new voice appeared.

   To that end I was careful not to read too much poetry but that didn’t prove very difficult because most of the poetry I ran into I found I didn’t much care for. I couldn’t decide if it was just beyond me or whether or not it was simply bad poetry. I accepted that the TS Eliots and Ezra Pounds were just beyond me but it was the poetry of my contemporaries that bothered me, the people who were appearing in the same poetry magazines in which my early efforts were appearing.

   Although I never attended any poetry readings – I never knew of any – I held a similar opinion to you but with regards to the small press magazines, that they were only being read by the poets who were in, or trying to get into, them; I certainly never bought a poetry magazine without an ulterior motive. I bought a few, a very few, collections but most tired me. To my mind there was only one poet I liked reading, who I got every time, and that was me. That is less arrogant than it sounds. It’s more along the line of, if there’s no one out there writing what you want to read then write it yourself.

   Poetry suffers from the same problem as the short story; it’s hard to produce a collection where all the stories or poems gel. I struggle with my own poetry because although the style is fairly consistent, the subjects are variegated. I agree with your point about genres, it would be much more helpful it I could label the kind of poetry that I enjoy. The idea of a fusion-style where anything goes sounds seems to be more of a problem than a solution. Giving it a name, be it Millennialism or something else, is fine but it doesn’t stop it being what it is, a mish-mash of approaches. It’s like fusion in music, a bit is fine but I always see it as a variety of style each vying for attention. At least if you buy an album of Dixieland Jazz you know what you’re going to get.

   I think differences are important. If you think of it as specialisation rather than difference it makes it more acceptable. Tolerance is what needs to be cultivated, the realisation that they are other ways to say things. What is important is that people are listening to someone. Poetry matters but what matters more is that it is heard.

2. the poet — December 26, 2007 @ 11:19 pm
   

   Thanks for the input Jim. The point behind Millennialism is not that you are encouraged to “mish-mash” the schools, but that you can mish-mash them if you can do so successfully. Quality is still the most important element.

   The problem with other schools of poetry from the Renaissance on is that they are based on a certain prejudice. This or that is always a defining element. I’m simply saying it doesn’t need to be that way. All styles and techniques are open for use. Reject them if you will, but reject them because they don’t fit in with a particular poem you are trying to write or because you find it difficult to make that technique work for you, but don’t reject it simply because you don’t like it and therefore all poetry that does that is “bad” poetry. There is a lot of bad poetry out there, to be sure, but it’s bad poetry because it is poorly written, not because the poet didn’t rhyme or chose to capitalize the first letter of each line. Those are matters of personal preference, a preference that should be exercised on the basis of educated judgment as opposed to gritted teeth and snarling lips.

3. Robin Ridington — September 2, 2008 @ 2:36 am
   

   I’m launching a narrative book of sonnets at Galiano Island Books on Sept. 28. You can check out the blurb & cover by googling The Poets Don’t Write Sonnets Anymore Robin Ridington

   I invite comments & can send a review copy if you’re interested.

4. the poet — September 2, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
   

   Robin, you can fill in my form at http://www.world-class-poetry.com/poetry-book-reviews.html and I’ll tell you where to send a book for review.

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