Apr 02 2008
“I like your poetry, but I hate your poems”
It’s National Poetry Month. Google that phrase and you’ll get a bevy of websites ready to provide you with a poem-a-day and such. They’ll even deliver it right to your email box if you like.
You’ll also likely run into Charles Bernstein’s article Against National Poetry Month , where he insists that NPM consists of poems that are really not worth reading, because they don’t challenge us. That the poetry marketed to the American Public just dumbs-down the understanding of the genre even more. I don’t know if Mr. Berstein is really against National Poetry Month. But he wants us to be willing to invest in poetry. Poetry may be hard to understand. Take the time to understand it. And he has a point. A nation that thinks poetry is found mostly in greeting cards isn’t really something to be proud of. All well-written poetry has something it will give up if we work to find it; some understanding inside the words; some reward.
That said, some of my favorite poems are probably understood easily by the populace and I’m not an elitist, so I say “Okay? Well, we need to start somewhere.” I have heard tell that there are those out there who belittle the compilation of poems by Garrison Keillor on similar merits. The book, Good Poems, is just that. They are good poems. And some great ones. But once they mingle together, heaven forbid, how shall we ever tell the difference? Pah! is what I say. In fact I heartily suggest picking up a copy of Good Poems because there is some really delightful stuff in there. Really fabulous. And as Keillor says himself, saying that a poem is good may be the only recommendation it needs.
And here: Obscurity Knocks by the Trashcan Sinatras. Good stuff.
I must say there is nothing more depressing then someone asking you if “this is really a poem, because…it doesn’t rhyme.” !!! I do think that you must tackle some poetry, and read it out loud twice in your bathtub, and look up that word, just in case there was something you missed…and I also believe that sometimes you love finding that poem that you read though once and something in you connected with something in it, and you are fine setting it down and smiling/sighing as the case may be. There is nothing wrong with that either. There is also nothing wrong with enjoying and even having as a favorite poem something that has indeed been repeated in thousands of college anthologies, I don’t think you should dislike a poem on the basis of it being to too well known, and too well liked by many. I don’t think you should like a poem for the same reason, or the opposite reason as some people try to do. (You know, those who will only enjoy the obscure, as if those famous poets have committed a hate crime against literature for being famous.) Anyway, it looks like poetry has run away with me again…I liked this post. (Oh, one more…I do think it rather ridiculous sometimes where people use shock value instead of art in their poetry, and receive raving reviews…I mean, I’ll be honest, that drives me crazy in ever artistic medium…)