On Poetry

[Tzara]

I sometimes want to carry on about some topic related to poetry—like write a mini-essay about something I'm interested in. So this thread.

If anyone else wants to write something similar, or comment on things posted here, feel free.

 

[Tzara]

As Angie recently pointed out on the 2024 Poetry Challenge Leader Sign-Up thread, April is National Poetry Month here in the USA, so I've been thinking (not too much, but some) about poetry and reading some things I'd been meaning to get around to.

One of the things I came across (though not itself particularly about poetry) is a quote from David Shields' book-length essay Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, which is a fascinating collaged essay about fiction, non-fiction, and originality. By "collaged essay" I mean that Shields' book is largely, maybe 80% or so, snatches of text from other writers, pasted together to form a (largely) coherent polemic on the nature of literary art. By the by, Shields makes this comment (and, judging from the attribution documentation Knopf's legal department made him attach to the end of the book, it actually is Shields' comment and not one he cribbed from someone else) on contemporary poetry:

The appeal of Billy Collins is that compared with the frequently hieroglyphic obscurantism of his colleagues, his poems sound like they were tossed off in a couple of hours while he drank scotch and listened to jazz late at night (they weren't; this is an illusion).
​

When I first read that, I nodded my head and thought that that was a pretty good description of the experience of reading one of Collins' poems. The language is relaxed, yet vivid, and his poems have a comfortable easy-to-understand feel without being overly simplistic or sentimental. Why Collins is that rare being—a genuinely popular poet.

Here's an example of Collins' poetry, one I'm particularly fond of:

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,
I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.
​

This week, I happened to start reading Walking to Martha's Vineyard by the late Franz Wright, a volume that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Wright, along with his father, James (a poet whose work I absolutely adore) are the only parent/child combo who have won the Pulitzer Prize in the same category. Franz Wright is also of particular interest to me as he was born a bit over a month after me, so we are (were) almost exact contemporaries. Here's the first poem in Walking to Martha's Vineyard:

Year One

I was still standing
on a northern corner.


Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.


Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.
​

OK, this is something to do about existential angst or an affirmation of religious faith or something like that. The third line is kind of interesting, though it seems to mix emotional perception with sense impressions. All in all, either too subtle for me (entirely possible) or kind of an "emperor's new clothes" thing (or, perhaps, Shields' "hieroglyphic obscurantism").

I had much the same reaction to Wright's other poems as I continued to read through the book. Either they seemed too simplistic a portrayal of religious angst/hope or I was just Not Getting It.

This is a feeling I often have reading contemporary poetry. There are a lot of authors whose poems work for me, volume after volume, and there are a lot of authors whose poems don't do anything at all for me. I used to worry about these latter writers, that somehow I wasn't reading carefully enough or hadn't the proper educational background to appreciate their writing—that, in other words, it was my fault I didn't get their poems.

And that may, in fact, be the case. But I guess I don't care anymore. I'm old enough at this point to be (relatively) comfortable in reading what I want to read. It also doesn't mean that the fact that, say, I find Franz Wright's poetry uninteresting means everyone else should as well. Different writers work, or don't work, for different readers.

Anyway, Happy National Poetry Month, all.

 

[Angeline]

This is a great idea for a thread, Tzara, and I'm always up for reading your thoughts on poetry (and, well, most subjects). As you know I'm a big fan of Billy Collins too. He's such a a warm accessible poet whose writing draws you in with cozy, down-to-earth content and humor, but there's usually a larger, more serious message in there. I'd encourage anyone who's unfamiliar with him to read his poems or watch him read on YouTube.

I recently introduced one of my kids, who's getting into avant garde sound recordings to ubu.com and their excellent sound archive. And while I was there I discovered there are recordings of Ted Berrigan (who you know *I* adore) reading his sonnets. I think all of them are there: (I tried to check just now but my wifi is being finicky tonight.) And there are also recordings from the inaugural New Year's Day poetry reading at St Mark's in the Bowery in NYC. This was in 1975 and I was there to see an incredible group of poets and performance artists, including Yoko Ono (boring tbh), William Burroughs (surprisingly erudite and dapper), the delightfully weird Helen Adam, and Patti Smith who was fabulous! It's thrilling to rediscover these recordings, especially the Berrigan sonnets.

I just read an article (I think in the New York Times or maybe New Yorker magazine, I forget) about why poetry is still relevant, which of course it is and not just in April obviously. As long as I can read or listen to the good stuff Innisfree is real, so to speak.

 

[42Below]

It is self evident that I am not well read poetically.

But. Ignorance as power. An empty mind is an ultimate blank page. Or not.

This resonates— Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles’ And, expands my understanding of the work put in by titles ‘No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.’ Prior to reading Tzara’s post on Billy Collins; I thought of titles as both a lock and a key. A title locks in a probable meaning and acts as a key to the actual poem for careful readers. How easy [a title] has made it for me to enter here, to sit down in a corner,’

Fear not another mans superior intellect, fear his ignorance’ 42Below

In thinking on Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard, Year One, I argue the poem doesn’t end in ‘but.’ But. when coupled with the poem’s title: the language choices in the single line stanza, and the title of the collection; the but. is an invitation to reread the entire last stanza to unlock the poem as follows:

Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.
[Proof
of Your existence?].

At first glance the but[period] is readably translated as being stuck. The issue for me is ‘Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves…’ is not a static image. The image in this sentence singled out by the poet is intentional and full of reoccurrence. If but. is stuck then this line is rendered as merely gargle to full one’s mouth. Hardly Pulitzer prize winning material.

Of course the but. stuck argument could be further made accept, well, really Franz went the effort of embedding a single line stanza as verbal gargle?

Taking directions from Franz Wright’s but. I ask myself. Is the desparation of Wolves’ seasonal and plural [but.] And can this but [period] be a but. standing still on a corner? And why a ‘northern corner’’? Now I’m guessing which is kind of the underlying perpetual point. Like the reoccurring magic of the northern lights, maybe, but. Year One. [begins again] Walking to Martha’s Vineyard [with] Franz Wright.

But. In order to make a full and compelling argument one must read Franz Wright’s Walking to Martha's Vineyard.

Thanks for the thought provoking workout. The add to my reading list. And, I wish I was intelligent. I would keep my mouth shut but.

‘

 

[Angeline]

Here is an excellent article from The Atlantic on the demise of two critics who celebrated opposite views of poetry, the traditional and the avant garde. Does their passing, within weeks of one another, represent a loss in the relevance of poetry and the ways we analyze it? It's an interesting read that you can access by clicking on the link below.

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/05/marjorie-perloff-helen-vendler-poetry/678252/

 

[Tzara]

In a similar vein what is Prose poetry?

I define prose poetry as poetry without line breaks but *with* poetic devices. I never thought of this before, but one could probably define an American Sentence as prose poetry.

How many poetic devices help one determine as to poetry or prose? That's subjective imho. I guess if a piece of writing is mostly plot and information one would call it prose even were there a few solid images, a metaphor, even a stray rhyme or two.

"Prose poetry" is a difficult thing to define (for that matter, "poetry" is notoriously difficult to define, but that's a rather different question). Edward Hirsch, in A Poet's Glossary gives it the operational definition of "A composition printed as prose that names itself poetry" (489), which seems to leave it wholly to the author to determine whether something is a prose poem or not. David Lehman, in his introduction to Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, says that "The prose poem is a poem written in prose rather than verse" (13). While this might not seem much, if any, better than Hirsch's definition, it does have the advantage of delimiting the concept on the basis of prose vs. verse, which are relatively clear concepts (but, as noted above, "poem' and "poetry" are hard to define, so it's kind of a pyrrhic victory overall).

Lehman does go on to elaborate on some of the characteristics of a prose poem: "On the page it can look like a paragraph or fragmented short story, but it acts like a poem. It works in sentences rather than lines. With the one exception of the line break, it can make use of all the strategies and tactics of poetry. Just as free verse did away with meter and rhyme, the prose poem does away with the line as the unit of composition" (13).

Per Hirsch, the form originated in France with the publication of Aloysius Betrand's Gaspard de la nuit in 1842 and possibly got its name from Charles Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris (1869), also known as Petits poèmes en prose (Little Prose Poems). Arthur Rimbaud's Les Illuminations and Stéphane Mallarmé's Divagations are other notable examples of 19th century French prose poetry.

The form often seems to invite surreal, dream-like, or just plain strange imagery. Russell Edson's prose poems are particularly notable for this, for example, this one:

A Performance at the Hog Theater
Russell Edson

There once was a hog theater where hogs performed as men, had men been hogs.

One hog said, I will be a hog in the field which has found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog which is in the field and which has found the mouse, which I am performing as my contribution to the performer's art.

Oh let's just be hogs, cried an old hog.

And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying, only hogs, only hogs...
​

Similarly, Charles Simic, whose collection The World Doesn't End won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, writes prose poems with odd narratives.

Given the recent prominence of flash fiction—very short fictional narratives—one might get confused as to what the difference is between a prose poem and flash or micro fiction. Perhaps my favorite prose poem, "A Story About the Body" by Robert Hass, is a good example of this confusion. It clearly is a little story, complete with characters, action, development, and climax, but was included in a book of poems by Hass (recall Hirsch's "A composition printed as prose that names itself poetry") and, I think, suceeds as a poem because of the vividness of the imagery—particularly that of the final image of the bowl.

But I wouldn't be surprised to find it in an anthology of flash fiction, either.

 

[Zandrite]

Just scanning through this, gave me some thoughts of my own.
I am not particularly well read, especially in poetry. I'm admittedly the poetry version of a cafeteria Catholic. I peruse and I pluck out what seems appetizing to me.

But, I suppose in my defense, I also feel that sometimes the amateur approach is the best approach anyway. I was reading into Zen a few years ago and got the same impression. Seeking to fully grasp the concept is akin to "the hand trying to grasp itself," or so it seems. It made me feel like being a layman in the subject was a wiser approach, and not to "stink of Zen."

It reminds me a lot of poetry. I have to say that from what I've experienced, some poets tend to "stink" of poetry. I suspect that this can be found a little bit in most disciplines, but poetry is where I've personally noticed it. There are some people, and some poems, that seem to be, in my view, deliberately opaque. I really don't like that. I think it does a disservice to the art form.

I'm not saying that all poetry has to be clear and direct, not at all, but I'm hoping many readers will know what I mean. I feel like a poem should be inviting someone into the thoughts of the poet. When a poem is overly opaque, it feels more like the message is: "look how profound I am, be in awe." I've gotten the same impression from some philosophical writing as well, come to think of it. As though the writer was trying to insulate their work and make it harder to critique. I worry sometimes that people are turned away from poetry precisely because of this.

At the same time, I try to keep an irreverent view on things. There are few things that should be taken too seriously. I love poetry, such as I understand it, but I don't want to put it on a pedestal. With that in mind, I thought I'd sign off with a parody:

Meta Poem

I thought
I met a meta poet
a meta poet on a train of thought
the train of thought
I thought it was
met a meta poet

and though I, meta poet
met a poet on a thought
the train of thought
a meta knot
was through the poet
lost

 

[butters]

in response to the above:

some poets do indeed try to write in such obscure language/references that it makes it harder for the average reader to glean their true meaning

sometimes that is a case of misplaced ego, a sense of 'look at me' rather than 'hear/see/experience the poem'

sometimes it's not, and merely an interpretation by a reader less well-versed (pun intended) in the art form

that will always be a matter of subjectivity

a lot depends on how accessible the author wishes their piece be to 'the masses': some will aim for easy understanding, requiring nothing more from the reader than to read and see the obvious; others may enjoy the use of more poetic tools to form layerings of understanding; others, yet, may choose to be so deliberately obscure their true intent is only discernible to a very few.

however the author chooses, that is up to them—it's not for me to say that one writer should write more simply, perhaps with less art, just so more readers might think them worth reading.

what i would say, though, is that the voice of the poem is more important than that of the poet and if the poet places the importance of themself above the poem then the poem becomes nothing more than a tool for attempted gratification of their ego.

the best poems, in my opinion, are the onions of the poetry world: easily accessible on the surface, with a 'face' meaning, but peelable, to expose layers of meaning as the reader grows in their own ability to reveal them.

at the end of the proverbial day, a poet writes what they must write, and how much a reader appreciates the results will always be the secondary consideration.

 

[Zandrite]

Definitely agreeing with you, @butters .
What gets me is the first thing on the list, for sure. Deliberate ego acts.
I like the onion analogy a lot. it's very apt.

I think it's perfectly fine to have the desire to connect in some ways through the poem. it's a personal creation, yes, but there is something to be gained by sharing, and that can be worth considering.
Kind of a "tree falls in the forest" thing.

It makes me think in particular about love poems. Love poems to me are often akin to happiness, something that I feel that inspires me to spread that feeling further.

 

[Angeline]

Here is a poem I didn't know I needed today until I read it. Maybe you do, too.



Prayer For The Morning
By Audette Fulbright Fulson:

Did you rise this morning,
broken and hung over
with weariness and pain
and rage tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind?
Get up, child.
Pull your bones upright
gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun.
Draw breath deep into your lungs;
you will need it
for another day calls to you.
I know you ache.
I know you wish the work were done
and you
with everyone you have ever loved
were on a distant shore
safe, and unafraid.
But remember this,
tired as you are:
you are not alone.
Here
and here
and here also
there are others weeping
and rising
and gathering their courage.
You belong to them
and they to you
and together,
we will break through
and bend the arc of justice
all the way down
into our lives.

 

[MrMrsMrsMr]

Definitely agreeing with you, @butters .
What gets me is the first thing on the list, for sure. Deliberate ego acts.
I like the onion analogy a lot. it's very apt.

I think it's perfectly fine to have the desire to connect in some ways through the poem. it's a personal creation, yes, but there is something to be gained by sharing, and that can be worth considering.
Kind of a "tree falls in the forest" thing.

It makes me think in particular about love poems. Love poems to me are often akin to happiness, something that I feel that inspires me to spread that feeling further.

How do you differentiate between a poem as a deliberate act of ego and a poem just being a poem? Was it ego that drove Hendrix, Basquiat, or Parker and his plastic Saxophone? I literally don’t know.

What if a bit of opacity were no more than a poet struggling for clarity? Or even worse, just horsing around having fun with a bit of word blithery?

I get it. As poetry readers we all want to interact with a poem. But poems are like the weather.

For mine, give a poet a brush, and let them be what ever they want to be without lines. That’s poetry. I don’t have to like it.