What is it with some forms of art that make me balk? I have a terrible time understanding them and an even harder time trying to figure out how people can consider them work of any imaginable quality.
I could be referring to any of a number of forms of art (Death Metal, modern art, odd sculptures that grace the entrances to several buildings, etc.), but the trigger for this lament is the widely acclaimed Boston Review literary journal. What this journal considers poetry often looks like verbal vomit on a page to me.
Don't get me wrong - I am the last person to consider rhyming verse the prototype for poetry, and far be it from me to inhibit creativity, whatever form it comes in. But creativity (which I would define as the ability to make something beautiful out of anything), seems to have vanished altogether from modern day poetry, to be replaced by something formulaic. The formula is beautifully and succinctly explained in Marjorie Perloff's article Poetry on the Brink (which, ironically enough, appeared in the Boston Review). She writes:
Sadly, this formula has now crossed the Atlantic, and now even a prestigious publication like The London Magazine, states on its website, "Abstraction is the enemy of good poetry." Ask any poet how much more difficult it is to write about abstract concepts, as opposed to writing about how they spent an hour staring at wild flowers in the garden. No wonder poetry is dying.
Then there are poets who seem to be labouring under the impression that poetry must be inaccessible for it to be considered great, must be completely apolitical (who wants to be a national/nationalist poet in this age, right?) or devoid of structural form. Where do I begin to speak to these people?
I recently attended a poetry reading by the famous Urdu poet and Hindi film lyricist, Gulzar. Gulzar is an old man, who has written for movie songs since the 1950s. It got me thinking that poetry in almost any world language other than English adheres to some form of meter or rhyme, some structure, and certainly some real meaning. The metaphors are beautiful, and there is a message. And what is wrong with that? Isn't that what great poetry should teach you? Instead of a 35 line exposition on how the neighbour's dog peed in your backyard?
The truth is, I am as worried as I am frustrated. I don't know if there is any room for the kind of poetry that I write any more, which can possibly only be described as obsolete now.
I could be referring to any of a number of forms of art (Death Metal, modern art, odd sculptures that grace the entrances to several buildings, etc.), but the trigger for this lament is the widely acclaimed Boston Review literary journal. What this journal considers poetry often looks like verbal vomit on a page to me.
Don't get me wrong - I am the last person to consider rhyming verse the prototype for poetry, and far be it from me to inhibit creativity, whatever form it comes in. But creativity (which I would define as the ability to make something beautiful out of anything), seems to have vanished altogether from modern day poetry, to be replaced by something formulaic. The formula is beautifully and succinctly explained in Marjorie Perloff's article Poetry on the Brink (which, ironically enough, appeared in the Boston Review). She writes:
What [is quite frightening (sic)] is that the sheer number of poets now plying their craft inevitably ensures moderation and safety. The national (or even transnational) demand for a certain kind of prize-winning, “well-crafted” poem—a poem that the New Yorker would see fit to print and that would help its author get one of the “good jobs” advertised by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs—has produced an extraordinary uniformity. Whatever the poet’s ostensible subject—and here identity politics has produced a degree of variation, so that we have Latina poetry, Asian American poetry, queer poetry, the poetry of the disabled, and so on—the poems you will read in American Poetry Review or similar publications will, with rare exceptions, exhibit the following characteristics: 1) irregular lines of free verse, with little or no emphasis on the construction of the line itself or on what the Russian Formalists called “the word as such”; 2) prose syntax with lots of prepositional and parenthetical phrases, laced with graphic imagery or even extravagant metaphor (the sign of “poeticity”); 3) the expression of a profound thought or small epiphany, usually based on a particular memory, designating the lyric speaker as a particularly sensitive person who really feels the pain, whether of our imperialist wars in the Middle East or of late capitalism or of some personal tragedy such as the death of a loved one.To Perloff's 'formula' I would like to add a fourth, far more annoying factor. American poetry in particular seems to be suffering from an overdose of "still-life-in-words," where nearly every poem you read is something of an elaborate metaphor of some otherwise highly mundane experience. Just look at any of the poems you'd find on Poetry Daily, and you'll get the idea. Half the people who have managed to get published are writing about their dogs and their neighbours and their dining tables. Beauty in the everyday, indeed!!
Sadly, this formula has now crossed the Atlantic, and now even a prestigious publication like The London Magazine, states on its website, "Abstraction is the enemy of good poetry." Ask any poet how much more difficult it is to write about abstract concepts, as opposed to writing about how they spent an hour staring at wild flowers in the garden. No wonder poetry is dying.
Then there are poets who seem to be labouring under the impression that poetry must be inaccessible for it to be considered great, must be completely apolitical (who wants to be a national/nationalist poet in this age, right?) or devoid of structural form. Where do I begin to speak to these people?
I recently attended a poetry reading by the famous Urdu poet and Hindi film lyricist, Gulzar. Gulzar is an old man, who has written for movie songs since the 1950s. It got me thinking that poetry in almost any world language other than English adheres to some form of meter or rhyme, some structure, and certainly some real meaning. The metaphors are beautiful, and there is a message. And what is wrong with that? Isn't that what great poetry should teach you? Instead of a 35 line exposition on how the neighbour's dog peed in your backyard?
The truth is, I am as worried as I am frustrated. I don't know if there is any room for the kind of poetry that I write any more, which can possibly only be described as obsolete now.
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