The problem with poetry

[Bunx]

   

Through a timely series of fortunate events (the bump of milo's "yield" thread on which he linked to an old thread with some Frost) I spent an enjoyable morning reading Frost and Larkin and came upon this response to Achebe who had a similar but even further reaching complaint.

Leanne Wrote: 
Ah yes, you're right of course -- the best of English came from people who despised their Englishness and went off to foreign countries to try to become king/ not die of venereal diseases/ find someone to shag who wasn't related. Alternatively, let us look to 700-odd years ago, when all poets were beloved of milkmaids and other demonstrative demoiselles, but the language they wrote in can only be called English by virtue of it having been written occasionally in a garret in Cornwall, pining across the centuries for an Arthurian figment.

Alternatively, we could just work with the rich, fluid and exceedingly poetic language that we have right now, and do it properly

.

Holy seesh Leanne mic drop.

[Luckieman]

I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

It dates back to the 16th century, if not earlier. See Gregory Leadbetter,  'The Mother of Lies?' in Rishi Dastidar's The Craft (Nine Arches Press 2019). However I'm a firm believer in live and let live. There's an old Russian proverb: O vkusakh ne sporyat (they don't argue about tastes), so I strongly believe that criticism should restrict itself to technical errors and the appropriateness of technique and craft to the author's message and leave the message itself to the author. They're the one after all who knows what they're trying to say, and it's not for us to try to change their mind about that. I remember an agonised plea by a young poet on another forum who submitted a poem for review, and it came back amended, saying something quite different from what she'd intended. It's maybe worth considering as well that style and form are matters of taste so we shouldn't be condemning for their selection, merely commenting on how well they've been implemented.

And as to the weariness - given that humans have been thinking and creating for quite probably a million or so years and that there are now billions of us still thinking and creating, it's not realistic to consider that we can all be novel all the time. The aim should be to express what is interesting (even if familiar) to the reader in interesting ways. Trying to be consciously original elevates the author above the work, which is ultimately unimportant to the reader, if not an actual turn-off. In any case, being original doesn't mean doing something nobody has done before, it means coming up with something using your own devices rather than following some external model. It's still original for each, even if other folk have come up with the same thing. The originality will be in subtle differences due to each of us having unique experiences and thought processes, but will only be noticed by the perceptive observer.

And above all, we should all avoid blanket condemnation of specific techniques or vocabulary, as that merely verges on prejudice.

[Luckieman]

I don't really see it as a problem so much as a challenge. I prefer reading older poets less because I think most poets nowadays are bad---most poets of every age are bad, with the success of Ben Jonson or Pope's Dunciad as good evidence---and more because things so often go back to them. If you want to distinguish yourself as either a writer or as a reader, you have to read a lot of the old farts, either to reference them (for readers, to understand when they're being referenced) or to studiously avoid them. Plus certain old poets survive because they were such masters of their respective forms that it would be stupid not to try and follow their example at some point, whether one desires to generally write in form or not, like how the most accomplished visual artists at one point or another drew nude models. The challenge, then, is how not to get bored reading Pope's perfect couplets (because greatness does not necessarily equate to excitement), or how to find the Shakespeare or Milton of one's era (albeit that probably comes down to luck, more than anything else).

" most poets of every age are bad "

Yes indeed, we forget how ruthless the filter of time has been on the art. In any case, quite possibly the majority of what every poet (even an excellent poet) comes up with is second rate at best - compare Titus Andronicus with Hamlet and the 'Scottish play'. Out of the collected poems of Robt. Graves (1975) (that's some 600 poems) I find only a dozen or so appealing, and only maybe half of those really speak to me. But here's the point - for each of us it'll be a different half dozen or so. So as rhe Russian aphorism goes 'each their own taste, said the grandmother, kissing the cow'.

[matsunosuperfan]

ah yes the standard wan default to "its all a matter of taste"

I have no problem being prejudiced against bad poetry

It's two of y'all now gassing up that doggerel romance poem. That poem sucks. No version of that poem will ever get published in a reputable journal, because it isn't any good. It has the sensibility and approach of a teenager who has been weaned on Dungeons and Dragons.

[Luckieman]

ah yes the standard wan default to "its all a matter of taste"

I have no problem being prejudiced against bad poetry

It's two of y'all now gassing up that doggerel romance poem. That poem sucks. No version of that poem will ever get published in a reputable journal, because it isn't any good. It has the sensibility and approach of a teenager who has been weaned on Dungeons and Dragons.

which poem are you referring to? Posted here?

[matsunosuperfan]

ah yes the standard wan default to "its all a matter of taste"

I have no problem being prejudiced against bad poetry

It's two of y'all now gassing up that doggerel romance poem. That poem sucks. No version of that poem will ever get published in a reputable journal, because it isn't any good. It has the sensibility and approach of a teenager who has been weaned on Dungeons and Dragons.

which poem are you referring to? Posted here?

The one that goes, like,

Come my lover sing the song
As we ride the waves
It will not be very long
You will misbehave

or wtf ever

[Luckieman]

ah yes the standard wan default to "its all a matter of taste"

I have no problem being prejudiced against bad poetry

It's two of y'all now gassing up that doggerel romance poem. That poem sucks. No version of that poem will ever get published in a reputable journal, because it isn't any good. It has the sensibility and approach of a teenager who has been weaned on Dungeons and Dragons.

which poem are you referring to? Posted here?

The one that goes, like,

Come my lover sing the song
As we ride the waves
It will not be very long
You will misbehave

or wtf ever

where's the post?

[busker]

ah yes the standard wan default to "its all a matter of taste"

I have no problem being prejudiced against bad poetry

It's two of y'all now gassing up that doggerel romance poem. That poem sucks. No version of that poem will ever get published in a reputable journal, because it isn't any good. It has the sensibility and approach of a teenager who has been weaned on Dungeons and Dragons.

which poem are you referring to? Posted here?

The one that goes, like,

Come my lover sing the song
As we ride the waves
It will not be very long
You will misbehave

or wtf ever

Had it been written a hundred years ago, it could easily have been published in Poetry magazine

---

But also, excuse me, you say Anne Carson is one of the four or five greatest?
What utter drivel is this?
The same old white woman bellyaching. If you didn’t grow up in the hood, you’re not allowed to whinge. And the LGBTQIA+++ aren’t allowed to complain unless they Mutawwa is after them with the musings of Imam Hanbal as grounds for punishment 

A wife is in the grip of being.
Easy to say Why not give up on this?
But let's suppose your husband and a certain dark woman
like to meet at a bar in early afternoon.
Love is not conditional.
Living is very conditional.
The wife positions herself in an enclosed verandah across the street.
Watches the dark woman
reach out to touch his temple as if filtering something onto it.
Watches him
bend slightly towards the woman then back. They are both serious.
Their seriousness wracks her.
People who can be serious together, it goes deep.
They have a bottle of mineral water on the table between them
and two glasses.
No inebriants necessary!
When did he develop
this puritan new taste?
A cold ship

moves out of harbor somewhere way inside the wife
and slides off towards the flat grey horizon,

not a bird not a breath in sight.