Does poetry still matter?

[Petrushka]

http://www.phillytrib.com/lifestyle/does-poetry-still-matter/article_754dc1dd-2757-5af1-85f2-84f048632c4b.html?mode=jqm

[Petrushka]

1. The Breakbeat Poets & How HipHop Revolutionized American Poetry

http://review.gawker.com/the-breakbeat-poets-on-how-hip-hop-revolutionized-ameri-1720356934

[ananda]

2. Gustavo Adolfo Becquer thought so!

While the waves enkindled by the kiss of light all palpitate,
While the sun adorns the broken clouds with robes of fire and gold ;
While the air bears harmonies and perfumes in its ample lap.
While there is a spring to glad the worlds there will be poetry !

While Science strives in vain to find the origin of life,
And in the sea or sky remains unsounded one abyss ;
While mankind advancing ever knows not whither trend his steps,
While there is a mystery for man, there will be poetry !

While we feel the soul rejoicing with no laughter from the lips ;
While we feel the soul lamenting with no tears to cloud the eye ;

http://www.poemhunter.com/gustavo-adolfo-becquer/

In Rhymes (Rhyme 21) Becquer wrote one of the most famous poems in the Spanish language. The poem can be read as a response to a lover who asked what was poetry:

¿Qué es poesía?, dices mientras clavas

en mi pupila tu pupila azul.

¡Qué es poesía! ¿Y tú me lo preguntas?

Poesía... eres tú.

A rough translation into English reads:

What is poetry? you ask, while fixing

your blue pupil on mine.

What is poetry! And you're asking me'?

Poetry... is you.

[Petrushka]

3. Would he still think so after reading the July/August issue of POETRY magazine where . . .

. . . he'd find such "poems" as the one at the following link . . . and taking into consideration that POETRY has, since its inception, been the exemplar or the premier arbiter of taste?

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/250606

[ananda]

4. I blame Ezra Pound.

It's truly sad what's happened to poetry in America... no respect for the genre and its artistry at all.

Actually, I blame the egregore that has infected minds here and is spreading like a contagion
of maniacal nano-wasps through so many brains.

But I will always like what I like and write what I like.

[Petrushka]

5. I "blame" Ezra Pound for introducing Robert Frost's work to the world . . .

. . . and I can't fault Ol Ez for doing that. Frost's mastery of the pentameter line and blank verse is on a par with Shakespeare's, in my opinion.

When it comes to your actually blaming the occult for what's happened to poetry, that's a subject for another day---and one worth taking into consideration, whether or not one agrees.

All best!

http://www.biography.com/people/ezra-pound-9445428

[ananda]

6. Weelll...

It's Pound's poetics and bully tactics directed at other artists and writers that I object to. I think that was the Pound that was moving into fascism and basic poetic incoherency, though. I do understand that the younger Pound was very good to some artists and writers, including Hemingway, and his later fascist activism really caused some of them considerable consternation because it made it very difficult for them since they owed so much to the earlier Pound. I think many artists had to suck up their misgivings in order to be part of the history of art engendered by Pound and the Imagists. I feel their pain, I really do.

And I also like Frost, a great poet in my opinion. But Frost's influence on our current dismal spate of American poetry was minimal at best, whereas Pound's deplorable influence was far too great. His poetics opened up the door to extreme laziness and a disrespect for the long traditions of poetry as great art, that required a facility with the magic of words and the ability to weave them into great art.

As for the egregore, I was really using it metaphorically, as a negative term for the shadow of our collective unconscious and the memes contained therein that have infected our minds on a very widespread basis. If I recall, the term was coined by Victor Hugo without any particular occult attribution or connotation. The epic poem in which he used it, called The Legend of the Ages -- written from the standpoint of Hugo as an eavesdropper at the door of legend, depicts humanity in scenes painted in words on the wall of centuries, evolving in a positive direction from darkness into light. However, if Hugo were alive today, it is quite likely that his voice would be silenced or marginalized into insignificance. That is very likely because our society has fallen under the spell of the negative aspect of the egregore, now in the grip of powermongers with a very large and dark shadow. And if there is indeed a collective unconscious operating as this egregore, it is one very much adumbrated with the dark brush of our lesser demiurges.

So there’s a cautionary thought, that the kind of artist who once changed and shaped society for the better no longer exists in any meaningful or significant way, just as the Pound who was good to his artist friends fell under the dark spell of a huge ego interested only in destroying the poetics of the past for the sake of a future of language without the magic of poesie. And by that magic I mean both the "mousika" and the "tekhne" -- the music and the technique that hold an audience spellbound with its sound, imagery, and message.

[Petrushka]

7. When you wrote,

"His poetics opened up the door to extreme laziness and a disrespect for the long traditions of poetry as great art, that required a facility with the magic of words and the ability to weave them into great art.", if I didn't know otherwise, you might just as well have been referring to Walt Whitman whose "...huge ego ((was)) interested only in destroying the poetics of the past...."

As for "...Frost's influence on our current dismal spate of American poetry ((being)) minimal at best,...": I disagree. Many of the formalist poets still living today might also disagree, poets such as Richard Wilbur, Robert Mezey, Timothy Murphy, Leo Yankevich, Joseph Salemi, Alicia Stallings, Janet Kenny, Janice D. Soderling, Rhina Espaillat, etc., etc., etc.

The question remains: "Does poetry still matter?" ((emphasis added)) Of course it does. It matters to people who read and enjoy good poetry almost as much as it matters to people who compose it. It matters most, however, to those of us who encourage living poets by purchasing their books, thankful that all skillful poetry isn't, yet, a thing of the past.

[ananda]

8. Okay

Last edited Wed Aug 5, 2015, 10:54 AM - Edit history (1)

I was thinking of Richard Wilbur as an exception to the rule. He's a very fine poet.

I didn't know there was a classification of poetry as "formalist." Could you explain that school and how it came about?

Also, I have to backtrack a little on what I said about Pound because he was a very important influence on some great poets whose poetry took energy from the imagists and symbolists, here thinking mainly of T S Eliot and Guy Davenport. The only problem is that their genius was almost too great for the genre, just as Joyce's was for the novel. It's hard to take an audience along with you if the reader or listener is not privy to all the allusions and inside jokes and secrets, so to speak. But their artistry does rather make up for it, imo, if you can take the time to catch up with it.

I should add that Davenport was more of an experimentalist in the school of art as pure art and artistry, very playful in what I think he would consider the manner of the French. Reading his stuff is a very rich and heady experience, but it takes work to get at the gist through all the allusions. He's like the child in da Vinci's workshop, drinking in genius and then pouring it out himself. I plan to stream my thoughts on the entirety of his work in Da Vinci's Bicycle. I got about halfway through and then other works and interests took me down some different paths. But the book is still sitting on the table right next to me waiting until I'm ready to return to it.

Also, remember, you pointed me to some very bad poetry which turned me in a certain direction. Now, by pointing me to some good American poetry, our conversation can take a different direction.

Do you have any links to the works of any of those "formalist" American poets you mentioned? The only one I'm really familiar with is Wilbur. I have his books and I love the riddles he's been posting. I guess I soured on American poetry because the stuff I had access to over the years wasn't very good. I hope that will change now if I can get access to some good stuff. Thanks.

ananda

[Petrushka]

9. As someone once told me years ago---here, on DU---"Google is your friend." :-)

Last edited Wed Aug 5, 2015, 11:50 AM - Edit history (1)

If you "...didn't know there was a classification of poetry as 'formalist.'", it isn't likely you've heard of the new formalism. So, here are two links to get you started:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/ch05.htm
https://www.bing.com/search?q=new+formalist+poetry&pc=MOZI&form=MOZSBR

Having done my good deed for the day, please forgive me for my abrupt departure. I don't have time (at my age!) to provide links to "the works of any of those guys" when it would be more advantageous, in my opinion, for you to do your own searches and discover their poetry for yourself.

All best!

Edited to add:
You might find it interesting to eavesdrop at the following link where poets workshop formal poems:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/
For what it's worth: Wilbur has been known to accept invitations to stop by and give his opinion on the poems workshopped at Eratosphere.

[ananda]

10. Thanks. And...

I realize that google is my friend, so to speak. I was just giving you a chance to flesh out your ideas about formalism and suggest what you might consider to be good examples of it.

Barring that, at some point, I will of course do my own research and reading ... which I would have done anyway.

This will, however, happen at some vague, undetermined time since other explorations have intervened since I wrote my request.

See you later,
ananda

p.s. -- OK, I have to say that the politico-economic side of lit crit really bothers me. However, it has caused me to think better about art as art, what draws me to a poem and basically, what makes a poem poetic.

This means that I will stop blaming any one specific poet or critic for the failure of some modern poetry to appeal to me poetically. In fact, it's quite possible that the American proclivity for "irreverence" and disrespect for high poetic art and its potentials, might be the root of the problem for me. But obviously, and hopefully, there has been some resistance to this in the interests of moving poetry along creatively. Fortunately, this means that I can now read some of the moderns that I might have avoided before: Guy Davenport, W H Auden, David Jones, and hopefully, the Americans you listed as formalist. We'll see. Sometimes it's just hard to ignore the poltics that I despise, but I have managed to study and appreciate Eliot, while despising his pretentious aristocratic affectation and politics; so maybe there's hope for me yet in coming to terms with art separate from the personality or political affiliation of the artist. We'll see.

What happened is that the Romantics spoiled me, especially Shelley. I just love their politics, that love for humanity, their revolutionary spirit and hope for an egalitarian, even anarchic, utopia. So their poetry speaks to me in a big way. And this was just the kind of poetry that Pound was so vitriolic against. Coming to terms with that is what made me so antagonistic to Pound and his poetics, even though I am in complete agreement that the power of the language is in the image.

[Petrushka]

11. You're welcome!

I smiled when I read that "...maybe there's hope for me yet in coming to terms with art separate from the personality or political affiliation of the artist. We'll see."---because, for most of my life, I knew next to nothing about the politics, etc. of the the poets whose poems I loved. In fact, I memorized many poems without remembering who wrote them! It was the poem, not the poet, that mattered.

For that matter, does anyone really care who wrote poems such as the following by Anonymous?

Westron wind, when will thou blow?
The small rain down can rain.
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

[ananda]

12. Well, there's a school of formalism that would ...

Last edited Mon Aug 10, 2015, 03:28 PM - Edit history (3)

... agree with you, and you certainly have a good pov.

I think it's the Brooks and Warren school.

However, for me there's a problem when anyone says that politics or social ideas and ideology should not be part of art .. or that the author's life and pov should not be considered. I guess this would be the art for art's sake school, and lot of people in the 20th c. advocated it and/or bought into it.

Me: I will never buy into that. That's because -- on the whole -- I don't buy into hard and fast rules for what makes a great or appropriate subject for art.

For me, once a rule is offered or established for what makes great art, it is meant to be broken greatly. I like to think that Shelley and Auden would agree with me because their art did just that; and of course, they're not alone.

However, the notion of sprezzatura I find very appealing, the art of doing a difficult task so gracefully that it looks effortless. That idea is at the heart of all alchemical transformations by the way, and it is represented by the first card of the Tarot's Major Arcana -- The Juggler or Magician. I think the word sprezzatura was coined in the 1500's by Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier. For Castiglione, this grace was represented by the Court of Urbino and its signature painter was Raffaello who just happened to show this virtue in his portrait of Castiglione, lol. See it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Baldassare_Castiglione

Later writers were also captivated by this idea, including Somerset Maugham who wrote: "A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident."

And yet the poetry that is speaking to me now shows such intricacy, complexity, and artistry that I can never read it without always being reminded of it; yet as Auden put it, the work that goes into reading it is well worth it. And once that work is done, then I can really feel the sprezzatura of it, so to speak. And, of course, it also makes the simple beauty of your example from Anonymous stand out as the epitome of simple grace of such elegance and fire that it strikes right through any mental carapace straight into the soul of souls.

So in the spirit of sprezzatura, since we both like Richard Wilbur, here is what I consider a transcendent example.

MIND

Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.

[thucythucy]

13. Thank you for this post.

I'm reading Jack Gilbert now, his book "Rejecting Heaven." It is to me an enormous consolation, given my current circumstances (no need to elaborate). I'm reading Pattiann Rogers for her minute particulars. And recently Doug Anderson's poems on war, especially his recasting of Homer, has been enormously powerful for me.

I don't see contemporary poetry in decline at all. As with all other arts, perhaps ninety or ninety five percent won't survive the decade, in terms of touching, influencing, enlightening readers. But that's always been the case. For every Shakespeare sonnet there were thousands of others that molder now in libraries. The dedicated reader will perhaps stumble upon those, shrug, and move on to something truly powerful, moving, insightful.

Here's a Jack Gilbert piece that especially speaks to me now:

BY SMALL AND SMALL: MIDNIGHT TO 4 AM

For eleven years I have regretted it,
regretted that I did not do what
I wanted to do as I sat there those
forty hours watching her die. I wanted
to crawl in among the machinery
and hold her in my arms, knowing
the elementary, leftover bit of her
mind would dimly recognize it was me
carrying her to where she was going.


Thanks again for your post.

Best wishes