One of former students, a very rocking, reggae singer, way cooler than I'll ever be, posted a couple of very thoughtful reflections about poetry on social media:
Am I a snob for thinking there’s a difference between rhymes and poems? Not saying poems don’t rhyme, but am I wrong for thinking a poem is slightly more sacred than a rhyming thought stream of rhythmically balanced syllables?
For me, I suppose, poetry needs to reveal something that you feel when words come together and paint a picture or give you something that feels like a memory you never had. I hear/read a lot of things people call poetry but it’s just talking without revelation.
What I admire about these impressions is that Claire occupies that double layered grounding: first, poetry should be something more than just mechanical/maniacal technique (more than dutiful rhyme and meter and ornament), and second, poetry should be a revelatory artful construction (more than just talk).
It set off a discussion of what constitutes "poetry" itself, "bad" poetry, "great" poetry, and "popular" poetry, things I find routinely discussed on the poetry twittersphere. I think much of this discussion has been driven by the reaction to the incredible popular Instagram poet Rupi Kaur. I don't wish to discuss the aesthetic or intellectual merits of her poetry, other than to say this is an old dynamic--just that so many of the 30-something poets may not remember poetry sensations like Mattie Stepanek or Rod McKuen or appreciate just how deeply popular poets like Ogden Nash or Robert Service or Ellen Palmer Allerton or William Cullen Bryant or Michael Wigglesworth were in their day. I'm not even touching on the phenomenon of the celebrity poet; James Franco is in a long, long line: Viggo Mortensen, Jewel, Jimmy Carter, Suzanne Somers, Richard Thomas, Peter Ustinov, Leonard Nimoy.
So, at one point, I posted the following to Claire's thread:
Claire, your discussion here makes me very happy--your English majorliness is showing. I'm long accustomed to people calling almost any short form of expression poetry. People who don't really read poetry (and yes, here I mean actually books of poetry, old and new stuff, canonical and otherwise) will write these expressions. In a sense, they ARE poetry, in that they are "creative" and that they tend to value the expressive over the discursive; in other words, they aren't writing an essay or novel or memo or screenplay.
I'm good with it being called poetry, but it's also not worth much more than the fact that a human being expressed something, which may or may not be valuable.
Typically, these poems you're talking about are riddled with cliche, or worse, with the need to say something over the value of the words themselves. There's no artistic intention, in them, that can take the risk of allowing the language or the form or the poem's own terms to take over the poem. Rather, the poem is coerced to confirm what the poet already knows. They lack imaginative risk. They become precious little affirmations of wounds or wisdom. They are hollow. And they are poems.
Looking at my response, I realize it all is a slippery thing. Especially if you're someone doubly degreed as I am, an M.F.A. in poetry writing and a literature Ph.D., and on top of that some 35 years in the college teaching business, full-professored and all of that. And Claire feels like she might be a snob? I'm the old, white male embodiment of that caricature.
What I do know is that defining poetry cannot be relegated solely to the street poet, to the academic poet, to the angsty seventeen-year-old poet, to the fully woke poet. I love the disagreement and I love this kind of noise. The challenge for me has been to listen to these other poets. Yes, to recognize my own predisposition to prioritize a very narrow and privileged kind of education, but also to be mindful that poetry is always bigger, more contrary and unruly than what any one of us could reckon.
Am I a snob for thinking there’s a difference between rhymes and poems? Not saying poems don’t rhyme, but am I wrong for thinking a poem is slightly more sacred than a rhyming thought stream of rhythmically balanced syllables?
For me, I suppose, poetry needs to reveal something that you feel when words come together and paint a picture or give you something that feels like a memory you never had. I hear/read a lot of things people call poetry but it’s just talking without revelation.
It set off a discussion of what constitutes "poetry" itself, "bad" poetry, "great" poetry, and "popular" poetry, things I find routinely discussed on the poetry twittersphere. I think much of this discussion has been driven by the reaction to the incredible popular Instagram poet Rupi Kaur. I don't wish to discuss the aesthetic or intellectual merits of her poetry, other than to say this is an old dynamic--just that so many of the 30-something poets may not remember poetry sensations like Mattie Stepanek or Rod McKuen or appreciate just how deeply popular poets like Ogden Nash or Robert Service or Ellen Palmer Allerton or William Cullen Bryant or Michael Wigglesworth were in their day. I'm not even touching on the phenomenon of the celebrity poet; James Franco is in a long, long line: Viggo Mortensen, Jewel, Jimmy Carter, Suzanne Somers, Richard Thomas, Peter Ustinov, Leonard Nimoy.
So, at one point, I posted the following to Claire's thread:
Claire, your discussion here makes me very happy--your English majorliness is showing. I'm long accustomed to people calling almost any short form of expression poetry. People who don't really read poetry (and yes, here I mean actually books of poetry, old and new stuff, canonical and otherwise) will write these expressions. In a sense, they ARE poetry, in that they are "creative" and that they tend to value the expressive over the discursive; in other words, they aren't writing an essay or novel or memo or screenplay.
I'm good with it being called poetry, but it's also not worth much more than the fact that a human being expressed something, which may or may not be valuable.
Typically, these poems you're talking about are riddled with cliche, or worse, with the need to say something over the value of the words themselves. There's no artistic intention, in them, that can take the risk of allowing the language or the form or the poem's own terms to take over the poem. Rather, the poem is coerced to confirm what the poet already knows. They lack imaginative risk. They become precious little affirmations of wounds or wisdom. They are hollow. And they are poems.
Looking at my response, I realize it all is a slippery thing. Especially if you're someone doubly degreed as I am, an M.F.A. in poetry writing and a literature Ph.D., and on top of that some 35 years in the college teaching business, full-professored and all of that. And Claire feels like she might be a snob? I'm the old, white male embodiment of that caricature.
What I do know is that defining poetry cannot be relegated solely to the street poet, to the academic poet, to the angsty seventeen-year-old poet, to the fully woke poet. I love the disagreement and I love this kind of noise. The challenge for me has been to listen to these other poets. Yes, to recognize my own predisposition to prioritize a very narrow and privileged kind of education, but also to be mindful that poetry is always bigger, more contrary and unruly than what any one of us could reckon.
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