the place of poetry among discourses

[jdeirmend]

Probably 80% of poems posted these days don't pass the barnacle test, i.e. if you can substitute "barnacle" for any given word and the text still makes the same amount of sense, then you have got not poetry, but amphigory.

Good point. My inclination, however idle, is to try and speculate as to why this is so. The causes are manifold, but if there is a general rubric under which they fall, what is it?

Many writers seem to be losing sight of the three fundamentals of any writing: know your purpose, audience and context. Perhaps this is largely because people these days tend to write "for themselves" as if their diary entries are going to fascinate the rest of the world. This crime is second only to that of deliberate obfuscation in an attempt to make the writer seem terribly clever and impressive.

Within the venue of creative writing, specifically, I am inclined to say that many writers simply aren't taught these three fundamentals, if much of anything in terms of fundamentals. I know that in my creative writing coursework, I certainly wasn't; I was generally given free-for-all, and ideas like "craft" were generally just mentioned in passing.

What's more alarming is what passes for creative writing these days, with the increasing popularity of "creative non-fiction" and other roughly autobiographical forms on the rise in popularity.

Now, to be honest, I don't think I have a problem, in any absolute sense, with people writing about themselves. In fact, my favorite authors often do. But such writers will invariably use their writing as a way to explore, interrogate, and ultimately deconstruct themselves, along with their claims to self-importance. There is a discipline and a level of self-reflection necessary to do this well that over 90% of all people, I'm convinced, simply can't come to.

In the most recent creative writing course I took, the first assignment was for us to write a piece "on something we'd each personally lost." Of course this is just a terribly inappropriate way of starting out with people in general, writing class or not. The next assignment was a "reflective, autobiographical memoir," and the pieces that were paraded as examples for us to imitate were so very self-involved, it put a horrid taste in my mouth. As much as what commenced after this made for a fascinating experience for me, all of this probing set a very bleak and frustrating tone for the entirety of the course. And all this, from a national level prize winning poet . . .

I guess the deeper question becomes this: in our time, why are people so terribly self-involved? And not only that: how is it that the education of writers has declined, to the point where it's come to encourage this sort of navel-gazing? I do not think that my well-intentioned teacher's improprieties were the pedagogical exception, in other words, but rather more of the rule. Granted, she wasn't all bad, and taught us some good stuff . . .

Empty vessel, diary or cryptic crossword ≠ poem."

Agreed.

Great poetry has layers and levels that are not immediately obvious, but is not a series of in-jokes or randomly thesaurused phrases. Great poetry should exist independent of its writer and his/her own small circle of experience and influence. Great poetry should demand to be read over and over, not to puzzle it out but to luxuriate in its depths. Great poetry should inspire those who currently do not write great poetry and make them want to build such a monument to humanity.

I think that this is all very well and true, but the problem lies in the implications. I want to focus on the author-independence criteria that you mention. Most people in our time, I would reckon to say, simply aren't open to the idea that someone can write something that transcends the author's ipsiety, as much as his/her own time and place. Going back to the first question I asked, this, I think, is partly responsible for the cluster of narcissistic symptoms that we can't help but notice in what passes for poetry and creative writing in our era. What people don't realize, sadly, is the way that this tacit belief in the contingency of every truth, subverts the very norms whereby we can differentiate between great art and masturbatory drivel . . . which you get to with the fart jokes remark.

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i'm here sock puppet :J:

i like humour and i'm a toilet dweller, i have no other mitigating circumstances
you know you've read a good it sort of makes you think a little bit before reading again and then again
most poets think they know what poetry is and think they write good poetry but it's seldom the case.
but more of the poetic discourse. i live in the philippines now but when i was in the uk (the days before wine bars and pub restaurants) if you spoke of poetry in anything but a joke or parody, someone would
a] steal your beer
b] piss in your beer
c] take a dump in your beer
or outright leave the pub with your beer.

and to be honest, i'd sooner spend a session in a pub with non poetry discoursing people than be at some pseudo academical gathering where would be poets are blowing each other with who they now and what they know. here and other forums, fine (even if this starting post seems like the magna fucking carta with the American bill of rights tagged on to the end) you'll get more gravy if you take some of the veg off and add more meat. but i have to honestly say, i've never spoken about poetry for more than 5 mins outside the internet except with addy and then we're ridiculing everyone elses poetry. (just kidding)....or am i.

one of the marks of a truly good poem for me is if i can appreciate it or not. i don't have to like it, i'm not keen on bmw's but there's no doubt they're well made. same with art. i don't always like what i appreciate. many people think, i hate it, it's shite...and that's often a truism but there's another truism and it's this. we don't all have good taste. whistlers mother god bless her, classed as one of the best paintings whistler ever did, i hate to see his other works and then you have Picasso. i seriously dislike most of his works but see him as a painting genius.

Billy, your input is, as per usual, cause for copious laughter.

I will readily concede that, from the point of view of a "healthy, practical" form of self-consciousness - i.e., the bloke who knows that what he wants is beer and ass, and doesn't waste time pussyfooting, but just goes out and gets it - I have an illness. When I was studying for my M.A. in England, there was a native brit who was a Ph.D. candidate who regularly and in so many words called me a pussy for talking too much shop whenever we nerds were gathered at the pub.

So yeah, I think too much about things. What's more, I enjoy doing this. On that note, though, I truly do think that there is some divine sort of health in it. But what to speak it better than a poem?

Emily Dickinson, #620

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -