The Role of the Poet in Today's Society

As readers and writers of poetry, what do you think is the role of the poet in today's society?
Certainly poetry doesn't hold the populist place that in once did in our culture, but what place does it hold?

Would you believe Poetry still entrances, enhances, and still gives us joy.

Sure, it's not like the 1800's. I find it difficult to read a 1000+ line poem today.
But, and there is always a but, I started a thread on a cat group in LT.
And discovered Pablo Neruda.

Whenever we feel there is something at the edge of our feelings,
whenever there is a ghost - and I am a strict athiest - out there

I feel Poetry describes IT.

Poetry throws a few terse words together and lets us...

Edited for typo.

Are pop songwriters and hip-hop artists in or out as poets for this?

songs are poems. words that move you and fill the air differently then other writings.

"Are pop songwriters and hip-hop artists in or out as poets for this?"

I'd vote them off the island unless they also happen to write material that is meant to be read as well as heard/performed. That's just personal prejudice, but I like to think poetry as something the deaf have access to.

The poet? Or poetry? Very different questions...

the poet, as a "professional," so to speak, with what training, what contact with the public, etc.

the poetry, of whatever genre and quality, being written, being heard, being read.

Also, important to note plural roles, perhaps different roles for different combinations of readers/listeners, writers, and poems, and not a single role for everything.

In this way, those reading poems on Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards can be proposed to see the poems in different roles than those writing their first breakup poems, and these are different from reading political poems at a rally, and from writing language poems, etc.

I think musicians and poets have a lot of overlap here, with musicians taking over a lot of what poets used to be.

Lightning rods if someone would like them:

a.
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/01/poetry-and-appa.html

b.
http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ecpm.htm

c.
http://www.tsellis.com/Notes_Toward.pdf

chelleystick, I agree, I alluded to more than one question in #1.

and I would vote with #5. However, I very much agree with >6 chellerystick: that musicians have taken over a lot of what poets used to be.

Obviously, anyone reading this thread loves poetry; reads it, maybe writes it, as do I. I'm not asking the question to infer that poetry doesn't matter. We can assume, since I posted on this group, that I'm (and dare I suggest 'we") are interested in the roles of poetry and the poet in todays world. I have an interesting excerpt I'll transcribe when I get some time, but for now I thought I'd just throw the questions out there.

The role of the poet in today's society is to survive.

Obviously no one, not even the Poet Lauerate's can survive on writing poetry alone. Most of today's poets try for a teaching job, but even at the university grad school level, teaching uses up a lot of energy. No matter what the day job is, & there has to be some kind of day job because you never read "Poets wanted" in the help wanted ads. Any ways, day jobs (or night jobs) take energy & that leaves less energy & time for writing poetry & to anybody who manages to write a poem, any kind of poem in today's world, I say congratulations ! Best wishes! Keep up the good work!

chellerystick, I just got around to checking out the links you listed. The Giola essay is the one I wanted to transcribe excerpts from to provide some catalyst to the conversation.

MarianV, so true about day jobs. I was scrounging around on Amazon the other day following links (those who bought this, bought that) that began from various contemporary poets I was reading. I swear, everyone of the poets was an academic and I began to think about that. And I thought back to Giola's essay . . .

Has poetry taken a back seat to music because of inaccessibility?

The Giola essay was excellent.

What always depresses me is that as the population's of developed countries get bigger the interest in the arts gets smaller. With 200 million adults the US should have a booming poetry sector but the truth is that it doesn't even have a booming sector in any serious literature. The books that are bestsellers are predominately trashy, and when you look at it they don't sell as well as you would think - a bestselling book sells millions less than a bestselling album (and the music sector claims it is in crisis). This is at a time when there are more college graduates than ever. The question may not be where is the intelligent audience for poetry but rather where did the intelligence of the audience go? Is using your brain too much like work for the modern individual? How many times have you heard a literary novel described as boring because...; that someone doesn't watch foreign films because it's too difficult to watch and read at the same time; and so on?

Re lyrics and poetry - I think the best description of the difference between them I've heard was that poetry contains it's own music, it's own rhythm, while lyrics are usually created to fit music, to fit a rhythm. Poetry is a master, lyrics are a slave.
There certainly are some lyric writers who think of themselves almost as serious writers - Lou Reed springs to mind. His last album was based on the writings of Poe and he is always telling people that his mentor was Delmore Schwartz. The irony about Reed is that more 'intellectual' his work becomes the less interesting it becomes.

I forgot to include this: d. http://www.reason.com/news/show/30975.html

Not that I claim to agree completely with any of the articles, but they are starting points if we want to discuss. Gioia's "Can Poetry Matter" is particularly famous, being from the early 90's.

I do read & enjoy "academic" poetry, but feel, as a writer, that it is important to be part of the "real world" even in the midst of "intellectual" pursuits. I think more that we miss the presence of "occasional poetry" in our everyday, well, occasions. So we often get some drivel someone's dad wrote on the back of an envelope in the car on the way to an event; is there nothing in between? It's not a habit now that more of our news comes via TV than by broadsides and recitations.

I think the role of a poet is to be true to him/herself. I know there is business, but what if it is not published? Who will read it? I know for myself the answer to this and each person must work out what they need to satisfy their craving.

I wrote a really cool protest piece of poetry against John Howard when he was about to announce the election, but now that he's out of power my poem has only historical value. However it still contains a cutting satire of the early 21st Century in terms of the War on Terror.

Why poets don't seem to be as recognised in society as much is because young people like myself grow to dislike poetry because of the way it is taught. Endless memorising of a poem to cram for an exam which has too much in it to remember for. The flipside is that this weeds out the people who think poetry is stupid and "gay", and leaves the intellectuals who still like poetry and read their own choices of poems despite school curriculum.

Teenagers who associate books and reading with hard work, study and stress are unlikely to want to continue reading anything but Harry Potter, and then only to talk about the latest one, which now is old news. What was so fascinating about Harry Potter 7 was that everybody in my year group had to study for exams but they all rushed to get a copy of Deathly Hallows to read it before somebody spoiled the ending for them. These kids were EXCITED to read! Why? Because they had to read something in order to be part of what was going on in literature!

But a lot of people I go to school with now hate reading because they associate it with work, and what's more they hate creative writing because they believe that no matter what they write the exam markers will hate it.

How is this breeding the next generation of writers and poets, even readers and intellectuals? Not half, I say!

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Harry Potter was not about books, it was a cultural phenomenon; and in that, it was closer to 'Titanic' and 'High School Musical', or whatever the latest fad is. People did read the books to be up with the latest in literature, they read them to keep up with the latest in cultural fashion.

Reading is a little like work, especially compared to other leisure pursuits, because unlike them it makes you think at some level - it obviously depends on the book how much thinking is involved. What has happened is that culture in general decrees the lack of reading while at the same time sends out messages saying that reading is uncool and not fun. How many films/tv shows do we see where the dorky girl is saved from her boring friendless life of reading and education by the cool boy at school? (A big cheer for the 'Gilmore Girls' here for showing the value of education). How much coverage do books get on television or radio? A good example of the issue here is the BBC's "Newsnight Review" - this is a relatively high-brow discussion of the major new artworks during the week; before it was revamped a couple of years ago it reviewed at least one book a week, now it is lucky if it reviews one a month - virtually everything it now reviews is from a visual medium.

Re - creative writing. Let's be honest, exam markers don't hat creative writing but they despair of it because most of it is rubbish. Which leads us to the problem with the internet - everyone can now publish their rubbish and find people who are writing their own rubbish telling them it is great. It's a love-in for a mass of bad writers who get can't or won't take honest criticism elsewhere about improving their writing.
This is particularly bad for poetry as every half-wit believes they can write poetry - and that's the problem with the modern day poet. People don't read poetry any more, they 'write' poetry. Forget reading Seamus Heaney, what can he teach me? I'll write my own masterpiece -


The night was cold and dark
A lonesome dog did bark
My love was lost at sea
And I in revelry
Of joy and summer sun
Of Beach Boys and fun fun fun

The great thing about my poem is that it only took me 60 seconds; now I have plenty of time to finish 3 novels this afternoon.

Well I just finished reading Songs of Innocence and Experience. And I write poetry as well as read it. Trouble is convincing others to do the same.

Jargoneer, would it be fair to characterize your point as being that "low culture" is explosively available at the moment, and that reading (except for Harry Potter) is "high culture" rather than "low culture"?

Some observers (e.g. Douglas McLellan: http://www.artsjournal.com/diacritical/2007/11/the_rise_of_the_arts_culture.shtm... ) believe that high culture is also experiencing a resurgence, but it is still a small area. Others believe that western culture is falling. For me, it is difficult to sort out this high-low question because 1. fashions are cyclic and 2. there is observer bias, or in some cases reporter bias. The example comes to mind of historians trying to understand children's lives before widespread schooling and literacy: the primary sources are things like parenting manuals and the autobiographies of very elite individuals.

you guys always confuse me. I thought the role of poets was to write and readers were supposed to read. The role of poetry would seem to be whatever the reader does with it (it entertains, informs, convinces, foments revolution, etc.) I'm with jargoneer; there's a lot of . . . um, rubbish . . . out there. I'm always grateful to find any culture at all

It is not very easy to divide culture into low and high; reading, for example, embraces both - the poetry of Wallace Stevens and the novels of Danielle Steel. This leads to the good-bad argument. i.e. you can Stevens should be read for his use of language and his ideas but the Steel reader will say that I don't read Stevens because he is boring, I read for entertainment. It is an unwinnable argument but does that mean we shouldn't argue it? This is an argument that has arisen in a number of threads in LT, usually becoming quite personal very quickly - people see the boys they read as an extension of themselves and when they are attacked it is viewed as a personal attack. Is this because we are now encouraged to view things emotionally, that every opinion is equal? It doesn't matter than you can't think critically about the book, you know you like it, so it must be good.
(An interesting aside, a number of leading UK universities have criticised school policy for sending them students who can pass exams but lack the ability to think freely).

Of all the written arts, poetry probably demands most that we think critically - with so few words each word matters. It is therefore ironic that the general public views it as the simplest form, one that can be mastered in an afternoon. I'm speculating wildly but I wouldn't be surprised that for every poetry book sold there are five people claiming to write, and love, poetry. There is now a widespread belief that poetry is about communicating emotions first and foremost, when it really is about technique first - no-one sits down at piano with no musical knowledge, bashes a few keys and then states I have just written a song - why should it be so with poetry?

McLellan seemed to be a little vague with his sources but even if we assume he is correct, his argument doesn't discuss the audience for the arts; it discusses participation in the arts. What we would need to know is: (1) why do people participate in the arts? is it because they love the arts or is it as a social group, or a form of healing, etc; and, (2) what is the breakdown of the audience? is it ageing white middle-class that is always suggested or are other socio-economic groups now involved? (the same question could be asked of (1) as well).

>16 Jakeofalltrades: - the problem is getting people to read poetry and stop writing it, or least until they have learned how to write it - the world needs more bad poetry like I need a bullet in the head.

bless you jargoneer - you is my kind of person! but asking people to think and read at the same time (or even sequentially) seems to be too much today. I'm a believer in the poet as "maker" school, so keep that thought. But criticism - doesn't it all devolve to "I like it" or "I don't?" I can cite Stevens' language and constructions as virtues - but doesn't that ultimately mean only that I like those aspects of his verse? The top of Mount Parnassus is flat and there is room enough in Paradise for us all .

Probably obvious, but "study how to become better as you practice writing poetry" rather than "stop writing poetry until you learn how to write it." The rule of thumb I've heard is that it takes seven years to get good at something.

Also: why have people ever participated in the arts? In some ways we live in such a privileged time, but it is a time that does not have a national history.

What gives some people cognitive authority about what makes good poetry?

Edited to add: maybe to that end we could start a workshoppy thread, a "post your poem... for critique" instead of just "post your poem."

But criticism - doesn't it all devolve to "I like it" or "I don't?"

Absolutely not. There's plenty of writing I love that I know is trash and plenty of writing that I admire that bores me silly.

>21 chellerystick: - that was my 'deliberate' mistake - I should have used 'publishing' (i.e., putting it online, etc) instead but I used writing for more dramatic effect. You could say I took poetic licence.

You effectively used the word "writing" to express your view that some poetry is so bad that it should never be written. Trouble with that is, nobody can enforce laws on poetry, for all we know twenty million teenagers could be composing odes to Paris Hilton or The Pussycat Dolls, and we'd never know because we can't exactly monitor the writing activities of the young. Be thankful that Vogon poetry is a fictional beast, then...

hmmm 22
so you "like" or admire aspects of works that bore you, but enjoy things without elements that you like? I suspect the admiration represents a "like" for some elements, at least at an intellectual level, but . . .

maybe we could pass some poetry laws?

#25
Yeah....we already have poetic license...

Poetic license to kill... DAH NAH NAH NAHHHH DAH DAAAAH....

LOL Bond movie themes!

I hate it when I'm waxing lyrical about some landscape or other and a policeman comes up to me, "I'm not sure you should be talking in that manner, sir. Can I see your poetic licence?"
"I'm sorry, I seem to have forgotten it."
"In that case, sir, please keep your descriptions more prosaic for the time being."

If getting a poetic license requires a trip to the RTA (the Aussie equivalent of the American DMV) then most people would probably fail the test twice before getting theirs.

re: 25. I dunno. I guess I think of like and dislike as an emotional response rather than an intellectual one.

There's a distinction between saying you like something, and saying it has artistic merit. Someone once described the purpose of a liberal education as 'to enable one to express approval or disapproval in a qualified way'; that is, you should be able to say why something is good/bad in artistic terms, as opposed to just saying 'it sucks'.

Evelyn Waugh's objection to abstract art and jazz music was that you either 'got it' or you didn't; there was no scope for aesthetic discussion about such art forms. Thousands of cultural commentators have since proved him wrong.

There's no way that we can forcefeed literature (or poetry) to anyone. That some people might feel obligated to read a few 'trashy' novels a year just to keep up with the Joneses--well it's been a fact for a long time. On the other hand often at the upper end of the intellectual or artistic scale we will find the narcissistic.

People in the United States used to read a lot more--and not only English speaking writers--now it's simpler for people to turn on the TV, the MP3 player. Media and technology have broken down the cultural norms of 30-40-50 years ago and replaced it with a new set of norms. Literature does not play a large part in it. Formulaic writing that pushes the pace and resembles the new norms appeals more to the broader masses of once in a while readers. Entertainment for entertainment's sake. Action for action's sake. Intellectual curiosity is not something that sells.

So where have the poets gone? They're out there but it used to be a lot easier for them. They are more localized than ever--more often than not oddities of the communities they live in--voices muted, ambitions scaled back. There are the odd band or rapper able to tap into the live current of society (whether it's Cobain or Eminem)--to have a finger on its pulse for a moment in time--hard for them to sustain it though--they just find themselves more susceptible to the outer shell glamour of the new and become advertisements for the same cultural excesses, fade away eventually or destroy themselves.

I agree with Iriley. And I just wanted to add that the few times I have met and spoken at length with poets I find them to be open once you get past the shyness. And they have to pay the mortgage too, so they have day jobs. It is a rare few that earn their keep on writing. So I find them very localized in pockets of cities and universities.

I think the idea of bands tapping into the current of society is interesting, especially when you look at those bands. Rather than being innovators, these are the followers, the popularisers: i.e., Nirvana taking the template of bands like the Pixies and Husker Du are making the sound more commercial. What this success does is generate an interest in that area of music so that the original bands get more exposure (ironically, often as 'followers').
I think poetry used to work this way - there was always a high-brow movement but there were also popular poets who reached out to a much wider audience. This audience would then be tempted to explore further, hence everyone benefitted. The question therefore is how do you take poetry to the masses?

I suppose back in the day before television-media saturation Jargoneer it was possible for a poet to obtain some kind of iconic stature within our (United States anyway) society whether it was a T. S. Eliot, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop or a Sylvia Plath. It seems it's no longer the case. There are american poets I like very much like Philip Levine or Lawrence Ferlinghetti but they are old now and the torch has not passed along. Interesting the kind of influence that a Charles Bukowski can have on first time readers though (whether it's fiction or poetry) but most people don't seem interested in stretching theirselves away from the tried and the true entertainments. They have too many other distractions. Beyond the range of influences that led to the almost overnight mega-success of Nirvana--Cobain in his own right was an unique and tragic figure. He had an almost eerie way of describing his own frustrations and rage and setting them to a music that ranged from a menacing quiet to a violent roar and still remain tuneful. Even just looking at him one could see he wasn't just the same old same old and that whether or not his music might be described by some music exec somewhere as more commercial than a Husker Du's--whoever was willing to take them on was not destined for an easy relationship. In some respects (suicides aside) Cobain might be a more aggressive version of an Ian Curtis. In any case looking back at your comment about Lou Reed--his original band's--Velvet Underground--first two albums anyway are not only very poetic but brilliantly done. I agree his output since then has been very mixed.

re 32

It's often said that people read less than they used to, but I'm not sure that's true. Booksales continue to rise, year-on-year, and that's leaving aside the growth of the reading of online material eg in Wikipedia.

On the narrower point of who reads poetry, I doubt that reading poetry has been 'mainstream' for a century or so. There's the odd modern exception like Betjeman, whose poetry was read by hundreds of thousands, but poetry in the UK at least, has been a minority interest probably since the death of Tennyson. It's difficult to think of any since who made a living out of poetry; Dylan Thomas perhaps, but even he died 50 years ago.

re 34

I think this is a slightly rose-tinted view of the past. Who were these popular poets, and what evidence os there that reading them encouraged readers to explore further?

It's interesting to see the lists of bestsellers listed here in LT from time to time; for every lasting masterpiece of literature there's a dozen desrvedly forgotten slabs of tripe.

Do you think since we have all of these distractions that poetry is more a product of a quieter civilization?

On #36--booksales have risen-sure. Population has been rising likewise. Things such as literary movements at least within the United States no longer exist. Poetry as a form has been marginalized. Less than 1 % of books read inside the US last year (if I'm not mistaken) were translated from other languages. Considering a very large and growing Hispanic community what does that tell you? The easy availability of other mediums--have shifted to more culturally disposable avenues. This is not to criticize--people have the right to dispose of their free time in ways that give them the most pleasure--and reading is more like real work it seems to the majority of people.

My grandmother died several years ago at 107. Afterwards my father sold her house to my youngest sister and over I went to dispose of all the books she had. As for my grandmother--she wasn't unusual for her time--she had the normal prejudices of the age she lived in--not particularly good for these times we live in now--she wasn't in any way an intellectual--and I'm not trying to put her down because I liked her--very much the prototypical catholic though--very much shutting herself off from certain ideas/new ways of looking at things and yet among her books we find Camus' The Rebel, Hemingway, Halldor Laxness, Sartre--many many things that might surprise you. It leads me to conclude that this country until the last 30 or so years was very much more interested in real literature than it is today.

Great conversation going.

>33 yareader2: finding poets in cities and universities. yeah, true, but you need to get out more:-) Poets like Donald Hall and Maxine Kumin have farms in New Hampshire, for example.

>34 Jargoneer: very true about the highbrow and the popular. I am reminded of a past fondness for Rod McKuen (it was a friend, yah, a friend of mine who was fond of his stuff...;-) The most popular poets in the US today, judging from my experience with bookstore sales, are Billy Collins and Mary Oliver.

I agree with jargoneer:
Re - creative writing. Let's be honest, exam markers don't hat creative writing but they despair of it because most of it is rubbish. Which leads us to the problem with the internet - everyone can now publish their rubbish and find people who are writing their own rubbish telling them it is great. It's a love-in for a mass of bad writers who get can't or won't take honest criticism elsewhere about improving their writing.
This is particularly bad for poetry as every half-wit believes they can write poetry - and that's the problem with the modern day poet. People don't read poetry any more, they 'write' poetry.
It's brutal but true, imo. Besides the internet, the self-publishing/vanity publishing industry has assisted in the anyone-can-be-a-poet belief.

mess 40

I understand what you mean that not all poets are in cities. It is more the idea that people can gather and talk together about poetry. It is nice to talk on the internet, but it is a different connection to meet them in person, not necessarily better, just different. My fav poets happen to be dead and communication is severly lacking in these situations, leaving me to be forced accept my understanding of the meaning. ;) Discussion brings me to another level of understanding where I can open myself up to anothers interpretation. I am interested if another could sway my opinion or if I stick to my opinions.

As for self-publishing I have mixed feelings. There is credibility in the publishing world if something is accepted there and I wonder why the work did not make it there and the author does this on their own. I do tend to think it is an ego trip. But it is a business with all its bells and whistles which can fool some honest people into thinking this is the way. I must also mention the loads and loads of garbage that do get published from well known publishers.

The poets that have been catching my attention most have been women from third world countries. They are usually dead by the time their work has made it to the west from some deplorable act, but they usually have enough friends and family to keep the work hidden. I find they truely are dreamers and can dream of love and happiness that I can relate to here in freedom.

#39

Well, there you; personal experiences give rise to different perspectives. My maternal grandmother (also, coincidentally a devout Catholic) didn't own a single book. My paternal grandmother died long before I was born, but my father never read anything other than the newspaper. My mother only 'discovered' books after I joined the local library. Maybe it's a 'class' thing; I grew up in a working-class environment where books were an alien concept.

Not a class thing at all. My father was a prison guard. My mother didn't work. She took care of us. I have two brothers, three sisters.

I have one twin brother. My parents decided two was enough. Considering I'm a twin, added to the fact that giving birth to one baby is painful... ouch.

But it seems that my mother made a strong effort to make me love books. And it worked. The first book I remember had bears in it, I don't remember the title, but it was not Goldilocks and the Three Bears or The Bearenstein Bears or Whatever. It just had adorable bears.

Bookstopshere, what may those laws be?

ah, but everyone has to write their own laws; I'm an anarchist

Assumptions (OK, presumptions):

1) Sharing poems suggests a desire for connection (intellectual &/or emotional) between writer and reader.
2) Creative impulses are common as dirt.
3) "Poet" comes from the Greek meaning "maker" - so let's presume some intent.
4)Poetry as art derives it's force from the tension created by consciously binding creative impulses into some kind of form.

Laws:
1) Poems have form and form is good, acknowledging that there is organic form as well as the recognized traditional (formal) forms.
2)Criticism is feedback is good; conversing about how poems work is good.
3)You can't dispute anyone's opinion - or anyone's right to their opinion.

a corollary has been suggested that I am an idjut.

ah well . . .

For one, the notion that poetry once had a large, or larger, audience than it does today is false. See The Place of Poetry: Two Centuries of an Art in Crisis (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1981), by Christopher Clausen.

"Back then," most poetry was written by and for the leisure class -- which is obviously a small audience.

For another, it is quite possible there is a larger audience for poetry today (even if the percentage of the population which is its audience remains a minority), since it has been made to appear "doable" by anyone and everyone, without regard for the qualities of poetry, and discipline.

And for another, poetry is a solitary making, a solitary action. (Denise Levertov describes it as essentially a "conversation" between one part of oneself, and another part of oneself; so, in her view, others are allowed to "listen in".) It is intensively, even radically, individual. It is destroyed by competition -- including the ego-prancer's farce of "poetry slam".

The "role" of the poet is no different -- or more "special" -- than that of any other artist. Or, in the view of such as Nicanor Parra, any other member of society that doesn't pretend to superior morality, insight, or whatever, and indulges his individuality in a deliberate and both exclusive and inaccessible obscurity. But poetry is not the poet; poetry is unique in its way, and deserves the attention it earns by not being exclusive, even if apparently aloof.

"Sure, it's not like the 1800's."

What were the 1800s like? I don't know because I wasn't there, and haven't studied the extent of the audience for poetry then.

Here's an apt analogy: feminists make much of the fact that there were women who led the abolition movement before, into, and during the Civil War. And it is true that there were women who led that movement. But if you look at their context, they were women of the middle-/upper-middle classes who didn't have to work for a living; they were married to relatively wealthy husbands who funded their wives (and in some cases daughter's) activities.

And if you look closer, you'll note that many were as racist -- and, moreso, classist -- as anyone else: they were for abolition, but they weren't actually about to hang out with "those folks".

The audience for poetry has never been large, because it requires leisure, and uninterrupted/disrupted contemplation, in solitude, to both write and read -- more at apprehend -- it. The majority of "reg'lar" folks hadn't the time, or if they did, lacked the inclination. Or were not sufficiently "schooled" to appreciating it. And in some social strata, it has long been other than "manly" for males to read (let alone write!) poetry without questions being raised about their -- um -- "orientation".

Check out the Lowells and the Wordsworths and such and you'll find they sat on a pile of inherited wealth. They didn't have to be "practical".

"A song is a poem that can't walk by itself." -- Bob Dylan.

"A poem is a naked person." -- Bob Dylan.

Someone else said that poetry "circumvents the intellect" -- which is to say, it is not linear-rational but rather non-rational or meta-rational. Very, very, very, very few song lyrics would qualify as being poems.

Dylan's songs may qualify as poems; but academics make a distinction by means of which they insist song lyrics are not poems.

As for hip-hop "artists": plantation/folk blues evolved into urban electric blues. Urban electric blues moved "uptown" in suits, as rhythm & blues. Rhythm & blues included singing and harmonizing. It included actual music -- not only "scratching" and an electronic drum-track. Hip-hop is a degeneration of rhythm & blues to lesser musical standards than the original plantation/folk-blues.

Another problem with hip-hop -- which makes it so utterly monotonous, tedious and imitative -- is the apparent unawareness of its practitioners that there's actually more than one "length" of rhythmic line, more than the one sequence of beats -- iambic pentameter -- they use over and over and over to the exclusion of all variation and -- perhaps this is the risk and danger they endeavor to avoid -- innovation.

". . . the intellectuals who still like poetry . . . ."

Poetry is not an intellectual exercise; and not for "intellectuals" only. And neither reading it nor writing it makes one an "intellectual". Poetry is next to dance; it is visceral -- physical.

What makes one an "intellectual" is learning to think, and that includes think critically about one's own thinking, instead of falling back on pre-fabricated ideology or belief. The only place critical thinking has in relation to poetry is in the final rewritings of a piece. And in literary criticism, most of which is a self-indulgent/-promoting, therefore beside-the-point bore.

That said, poetry hopefully also doesn't fall into anti-intellectuality (or the pseudo-intellectuality of the deliberately obscure).

"The question therefore is how do you take poetry to the masses?"

That's an elitist's elitist question, and therefore self-defeating, in that it defines the "problem" as the non-elitist "masses" -- which latter the "masses" will always be.

Somehow that is the wrong question.

Perhaps Nicanor Parra (and following his lead Neruda) gives the solution: take poetry from "I" to "we". Stop the self-indulgent obscurantism -- the "I'm a poet therefore special" elitism and re-join society; use plain language -- one needen't be illiterate -- instead of obscure words and bedeviling images and metaphors.

If you use irony and paradox, make the inherent "split" clear. If you play head-games, if you endeavor to "befuddle," you will be rejected.

"The poet, provided he/she is able, works to expand the context of language, testing the viable parameters of usage. Experimenting in parallel with cultural currents, in opposition to those, or along a singular avenue, the poet writes a song filled with encoded questions. Readers of poetry decode the questions and, when available, the answers.

"By default, the hunt for hidden meanings will have higher appeal for poets than non-poets. . . ."

Poppycock. The making of poetry is not done in accordance with a marketing strategy. And it is certainly not about playing games with people based upon the sort of elitist, snobbish OBSCURANTISM you describe.

Poets do many things -- not only those things you list (and if they play those games, they deserve to go unread -- at minimum for endeavoring to insult the reader's intelligence). What a poet must do is to "do it his way," while remaining within the nature of poetry (non-linear; non-rational; non-intellectual), and pursuing his individual path sincerely and honestly. There is no need to BS or belittle the reader -- which is something altogether other than poetry.

All the game-playing -- "Let's see if reader is smart enough to 'decipher' my oh-so-clever little squib" -- is exactly that which is off-putting. Who has the time to read according to the rule -- a minimum three times -- a piece of unintellible gibberish -- if it is unintelligible, deliberately or otherwise, it is properly termed "gibberish" -- if it is clear from the first three efforts that no amount of re-readings will "crack" the pseudo-intellectual game-playing which is not actually intended to be be "cracked" but rather to outwit and defeat the reader?

Communicating -- actually communicating -- with the reader, in terms the reader can understand -- is neither capitulation nor failure to be an "intellectual" (if one's reason for writing "poetry" is to be perceived as being an "intellectual," he is in the wrong field of endeavor).

I've read everything in print by Denise Levertov -- a fine and deservedly distinguished poet. Not only is she accessible -- meeting the reader at the reader's place of being, instead of demanding that the reader "measure up" to the "superiority" of the poet -- but in all that reading there is only one word concerning which I needed to resort to a dictionary: "minims".

And yet she is a poet well worth reading -- and even, dare I say it, relevant to the lives lived by those to whom the contemptuous term "masses" is applied.

Wanna be an "intellectual"? then hang out with that extremely small minority who has no actual other goal than that. That is not the same as being a poet.

You end with this piece of unintelligibility:

"The smart and dedicated poet sells poetry as genre for poetry as phenomenon."

Sounds good -- or at least it appears to do so. But what does it mean? I do know I'm fed up with everything a given individual "likes" being elevated -- or reduced -- to the status of "genre" (especially when its proper classification is "sub-genre"). In fact I've come to hate the word it is both so overused and misused.

Poetry is its own category -- with near-countless different things going on within it. Included as going on within it are this, that, and the other "genre" of poetry.

And many of those "genre" have sub-categories called "sub-genre".

Poetry is a "phenomenon"? So is a cloud -- but a cloud is not a poem. Poetry is not a thing, or a noun, but rather a verb.

". . . . My maternal grandmother (also, coincidentally a devout Catholic) didn't own a single book. My paternal grandmother died long before I was born, but my father never read anything other than the newspaper. My mother only 'discovered' books after I joined the local library. Maybe it's a 'class' thing; I grew up in a working-class environment where books were an alien concept."

I grew up poorer than working poor. That meant in my reality that we didn't get TeeVee until some six or so years after others our age. So instead we listened to radio (I followed "Gunsmoke," as example, from radio to TeeVee) -- and read books.

Not many in my 'hood did read -- they were inculcated with the anti-intellectualism that appeals to those with low self-esteem: "School sucks, so drop out" -- rather than risk "certain" failure.

The one thing I thank my mother for is the books. Using many of those I read my butt through high school (the only member of my family to do that) and out of that 'hood into several universities.

Today I'm a published writer (the term for which is "author") without self-publishing. It's odd, though: those who shouldn't be impressed are, and those who should be aren't.

"3)You can't dispute anyone's opinion - or anyone's right to their opinion."

Actually one can. I have a sister who endeavors to reduce everything to "opinion" -- it's her way, as a high school dropout with poor self-esteem, to attempt to equal my having been graduated high school and attended universities -- and my being a reader (and writer -- she doesn't know enough about that to accord it due respect). In short, she prefers to remain intellectually lazy, and therefore substitutes BS -- and cutting off the conversation once she's had her say -- for actual thought and knowledge.

In other words, in her view -- she doesn't think this far -- there is no truth, no fact; only "opinion," all of which "opinions" are "equal".

Finally I managed to confront on the point with this question:

If a person who hasn't read (as example) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has an opinion about it, is that person's opinion equal in weight and validity to that of a person who has read it?

The obvious answer is: No.

In other words: not all opinions are equal, because some are informed, and some are not. Some are true, and some are false. I strenuously object (and I do so constantly) to the giving of a false -- untrue -- equivalency to a falsehood, untruth, or lie, with that of a truth, "as if" both are "equal" because "only opinion".

Is a deliberate lie a truth? Obviously not. Is a deliberate lie an "opinion"? Perhaps -- but not a valid opinion.

Yes: one can dispute opinions -- based upon facts, and known truths, and the fact that the opinion being disputed is contrary to the facts and known truths.

A corollary has been suggested that I piss people off by being correct on the point.

Yoo takin' to me, "iamwhoambic?

If so, I can only speculate as to what you are attempting to communicate. So I'll respond based upon that speculation.

Some of us actually read materials additional to poetry. In fact, some of us (I speak for myself here) have been reading for over forty years. Among those I've read -- and enduringly enjoy -- are Ray Bradbury and Robert Sheckley. During the last two years of high school* I read nothing but everything I could get my hands on by Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn is a wonderful character -- even though he grew up barefoot and knee-deep in mud. (He is a bit older than I, but in the view of some doubtless not by much.)

*That was when one had to walk to school 20 miles, uphill, each way; and doors and windows hadn't yet been invented, so there were these holes in the walls no one yet knew what to do about during rain and winter -- which latter was year-round.

I love Beatles and Dylan, Kinks and Animals, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez -- too long a list to prolong the stress on your attention span.

I love Bullwinkle (and his friend Rocket J. Squirrel).

At the same time, I read (and reject most) literary criticism, and poets' writings (few of which, if any, I reject; I do, though, reject most so-called "Beat" excuses for intellectual laziness and sloppiness) about poetry (an exciting example is Denise Levertov's The Poet in the World -- perhaps not to your taste as it's by turns down-to-earth, and even at times earthy).

And as I've been a full-time and professional writer (and published-by-others, theefore technically an "author") for at least 40 years, I think my favorite topic about which both to read and write is writing. Not only do I learn from reading writers' writings about writing, ther are even times when I gasp and say, "Wow! That's the same a my experience!"

I also -- on the opposite end of the spectrum (which also requires professional writing) -- as a legal professional I enjoy researching and studying legal history -- specifically colony and later which as it eventuated in US Contitution and Bill of Rights.

At simplest, I read and write poetry, and I read and write in and of law, both differing and overlapping disciplines, but disciplines nonetheless.

"TeenPoet" (if I have his handle right) is looking good in his use of language -- distinctive, which is "forced" by writing about non-overdone ideas. In my view he should stick to it (he's probably more advanced at his age than I was at his age).

Otherwise, and in sum, as an ethicist (some would argue that all philosophy is a discussion of ehtics; that notwithstanding, ethics is a category of philosophy, immediately subordinate to ethics is aesthetics, and immediately subordinate to aesthetics is etiquette) I respect and endeavor to exercise the discipline acquired by -- and required of -- those who respect both language and reader. Everyone is "time-limited": being mortal means one's wasted time is non-replaceable; thus I endeavor not to waste a reader's priceless time; which is to say I endeavor to make my writing worth the reading of it.

But I don't now, and never have, worn stilts, and singing in the shower would be too public for the occasion.

lol
where arrogant egos clash by night

golly, theefore i is an "author" too
my pride welleth over (and over)
but whoamiambic, Bullwinkle has a point:
respect that reader!

As my dad always said, "where's the blood"? This is too important a topic for people to start busting out all ad hominem, a point to which we are epsilon-close.

JNagarya, you have made some excellent comments and I will possibly go back and respond to a few of them at some other time. I think, though, that you are assuming that everyone here shares your basic beliefs about what poetry is and so forth. What this thread may need is an examination of the warrants and backing of what we are discussing: something more naive than a Russell and Whitehead could still be of service. Anyway, I suspect people are responding harshly because with... nine messages? in a row, it could give the impression that you have hijacked the thread, a tenuous fiber to use as a bully pulpit. Now that you're caught up with what you've missed, I entertain the hope that the group can return to some measure of sociability.

It occurs to me that we may not have an "introduce ourselves" thread on this group. I'm going to go check, and if not, start one.

my zentiments exzactly - but what's sociability without cheerful argument?

and beer

Being new to the thread, I responded to messages to which I felt compelled to respond as I read them. "nine messages? in a row". I fail to see the problem with having written nine messages "in a row," except that that is how the software deals with it. In fact, I was almost to the end of the thread when I saw that the "Post a message" link on the lower left of each message doesn't do that it implies it does: add one's response to the specific post to which one is responding.

As for ad hominems: I did none of that. But I have studied, and thought long and hard (I began writing circa March, 1965, and have never ceased doing so), about the issues to which I responded. Do I have strong opinions? Yes. Reread my response to my sister's moral relativism. And look at the consequences of moral relativism in the world -- as acted upon by such as Bush*t and Cheney. With them there is no truth, therefore a lie is just as good as anything else, so long as it advances the agenda and achieves the (disreputable) ends. Therefore that which has been defined in and prohibited by law for over 100 years is not, according to their abuses of power and language, torture when the US does it. (Even though it was when the Japanese and Nazis did it, and the US participated in the executions of them for having done so.)

Do poets -- and other writers -- those who have a moral conscience to begin with -- have or not a social responsibility? Levertov speaks to that question more fully than anyone of her -- or our -- generation. While she was writing against war and the like, those who bashed her for "defiling" the "purity" of poetry by bringing political concerns into it, themselves said and did little or nothing against war and the like. Is that not an important question for discussion -- whether politics and poetry can or should be mixed? Is it not inevitable that such an exploration of the question might be sufficiently robust as to be heated here and there?

Not being a milkquetoast, I can handle robust debate without viewing it as threatening, or threatening it with such characterizations as "hijacking the thread" simply because I posted nine responses, which because of the software were collected together at the bottom of the thread (how many total posts were there in which my nine would be essentially obscured were the software not to do that?). And thus I challenged views -- uncritical views -- with which I take exception, and in which I stated my reasoning for those exceptions. One is invited to attack the reasoning for those exceptions.

As for comments about "ego": I am beyond the age of dealing with reality from the made-of-sand foundation of ego. My focus is writing, not personalities, including my own. If, however, a person gets personal I reserve the privilege to respond in kind. I suspect the perceptive will recognize that my skills in writing, and in articulating critique, and representing a reasoned defense of same, all carry the ability to fry fingertips all the way to the elbow if necessary. That perception should make personal attacks unnecessary -- and thus force the effort to find a "new" way of responding other than defensively-offensively. That "new" way is obvious, though it requires pausing for thought, rather than knee-jerk reactivity: speak to the issue -- attempt to refute it, if one disagrees with it -- instead of attacking the person.

A re-read of my "nine messages? in a row" will find that that is exaclty what I did in 8 of them. The speculative response to an unclear meaning -- writing well (a rewrite) perhaps would have rendered it clear -- is an unwritten/edited response to that which appeared to be a personal attack -- but was so poorly articulated that even that was uncertain.

Ego? I like "first-era" Kinks. If that isn't sufficiently "low-brow" to establish my "creds," then perhaps I should post only in threads in which adults participate, and omit personal attacks based upon uninformed assumption because instead pursuing informed discussion.

As for "bully pulpit": the innuendo is false. I note that others have posted more than nine posts in this thread -- whether "in a row" or not -- without it being implied that they are either "preaching" and or "bully"ing. Instead of relying on my word, one can follow up and read the references to which I provide citations. Clausen's volume, as example, is a comprehensive history, unlike Gioa's article. And I believe it predates Gioa's article by at least a few years. If so, why did Gioa fail to research the issue before writing about it?

In order to write, one must read. That means one also reads commentary, critical and otherwise, about writing. Levertov published her usually-brief articles on "how to write poetry" to share how she approached doing so -- as others had done before her, and from which she learned. Those who would write poetry would not be harmed in that endeavor by reading those essays. Or by reading Clausen's. From Poet in the World one gets a well-rounded presentation of her full concerns, including the political. And this point:

"The obligation of the writer is: to take personal and active responsibility for his words, whatever they are, and to acknowledge their potential influence on the lives of others. The obligation of teachers and critics is: not to block the dynamic consequences of the words they try to bring close to students and readers. And the obligation of readers is: not to indulge in the hypocrisy of merely vicarious experience, thereby reducing literature to the concept of "just words," ultimately a frivolity, an irrelevance when the chips are down. . . . When words penetrate deep into us they change the chemistry of the soul, of the imagination. We have no right to do that to people if we don't share the consequences." From "The Poet in the World," in The Poet in the World (NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1973), Denise Levertov, p. 114. (Emphases in original.)

Is this bit of ephemera "too long" (the next anticipated charge)? I'm a writer, therefore I write. If one writes for enough years, writing being one's central concern, through whatever weather, both predictable and unpredictable, the world throws, one learns that writing is many things -- even at times a refuge. That is, if one first, in earliest years of writing, discovers a sense that writing is somehow sacred; perhaps because it is a handing to others, with open hands, one's self, who one is, at the moment of writing.

No, this is not too long. I was simply trying to explain why people seemed unhappy with you. (And stuff on the web, while not physical, is persistent enough not to be considered ephemera.)

The comments about ego, etc., are exactly why I said things were about to erupt into ad hominem, from one side or the other. As I said before, you made some interesting comments. I am also intrigued by your years of experience. However, your writing style, to at least some of us, seems... combative? Or rather it seems aimed to shut down any further discussion. I am all for a higher level of discourse on this thread! But it needs to work within a social system. I believe one thing we need to discover about you, as a new person in our group, is a sense of your voice--is your brusqueness a habit of speaking, or is an antisocial attitude? If it's the former, then we can learn to say, oh, that's just JNagarya's way of making his point. If it's the latter, then we can leave you alone.

Okay, here's an example that might be useful. You refer to "obscurantism" and "gibberish." I don't know what you think about Gertrude Stein, but a lot of people would say that her work is an example of those nouns. If such a person were to make that claim, I would suggest that on the contrary, her work is very important, not for being avant garde per se, but for bringing to the forefront the rhythms, the music, of speech. I would say, let us not confuse the means with the ends. There are many worthwhile projects a poet can undertake, and many different ways to work at them; the important thing is whether they are done well.

(Edited for typo.)

Also, LT groups have kind of developed certain conventions. It might be useful to make some of those explicit.

1. Group threads are asynchronous conversations among acquaintances; this implies a number of things about turn-taking, language choice, etc.

2. Many groups have an "introduce yourself" thread, where people post a little bit about themselves and their interest in the group.

3. On Poetry Fool, people who are posting poems post each poem in a separate post.

4. To refer to a previous post, it is common to list the author and/or number of the post. (You might see @ or > used.) For example:

Avaland @ 1, I am not sure I agree about your assumption about a previous "populist place" in the culture. However, I do not have any good references on this at the moment.

5. A common post format in an active thread is a series of brief responses to previous posts (Avaland @ 1, etc.), followed by a longer discussion of objections, synthesis of arguments, what have you.

6. People mostly post in informal language written in a standard way, limiting text messaging abbreviations, 133t5p34k, and the like to fairly common things such as LOL, IMHO, etc. If someone doesn't know the abbreviation, all s/he need do is ask and someone else will cheerfully clarify.

7. ??

Is it "combative" to challenge a comment which is false? To exercise one's critical faculties, and actually express those in writing, instead of playing the pointless "If you don't criticize 'me,' I won't criticize 'you'" circle-jerk?

I'm hardly brusque. I do, though, alternate the lengths of my sentences -- in keeping with visceral feel; a reason to do so is emphasis; another is for variety so as to prevent monotony. And as a writer of poetry, I have a felt sense of the fitting end of a line.

As obvious, I oppose the snobbery behind obscurantism. If one purports to write poetry in order to communicate, then communicate. Or don't make the claim that that is one's intent. Nicanor Parra, who've I've noted, "invented" "antipoetry"; his intent in that was to strip away the normative floridity of Spanish poetry, the obscuring metaphors, etc., and bring it back into language accessible to more than ("professional") poets. His intent was to move from the "I" to the "we". In the "favorite poems" thread I posted translation of an early poem of his, "All Forgotten," in which the penultimate line, though he is not florid, is, "She died with my name in her eyes."

Another "plain speaking," accessible poet is Denise Levertov -- none of which prevents her making "pretty" lines, or "beauty" -- an example I read last night, from her The Great Unknowing: Last Poems (NY: New Directions, 1999); note especially the first line:

Celebration

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

Nothing obscure about it; nothing requiring an advanced degree in the "Science of Poetry" in order to decipher it. Gertrude Stein? I'd ask her motive for playing games on the reader, at best inviting them to take a tour of her navel, but not telling them where it's located.

At the same time, if purported writers of poetry can't keep up with the minimal basics -- reading not only poetry but also the literature around it -- then should I regress and wait for them to do so? I think not. One can be intelligent about it, and not pretend to be otherwise; or go along to get along with an implied but clear agreement of mutual stroking. I attacked no one. I did refute an all-inclusive generalization which was easily done.

In essence I did nothing more than challenge, and refute, a number of instances of fuzzy, uncritical "thinking" and expression, and of unevaluated cliches. Challenged habits which are contrary to the discipline and accuracy required in the making of poems. An interesting and relevant definition: "Reasoning, tested by doubt, is argumentation." ("The Great Courses" catalog, "The Teaching Company, Spring 2008.) "Tested by doubt" is the equivalent of "critiquing one's own thinking" -- the sole real reason rewriting is done: to find and correct errors and inaccurracies in it. (Writing is thinking on paper. Rewriting is rethinking, correcting errors, lapses, inaccuracies, by removing words that are there that shouldn't be, and putting in the words that should be there but are not. )

I also offered sources to support others of my statements -- particularly about respecting the language, and the reader. (In there must also be respect for self.) "Higher level of discourse . . . within a social system". If that's true, who dictates the parameters and rules of that system? My sense so far is that, yes, "higher level of discourse" is okay, but that it not be critical of the thoughtless, the uncritical, the false. We can always instead discuss T. S. Eliot's footnotings of some of his poems, and how elegantly he did so (but not ask why they were necessary, as an aesthetic concern, because that might offend fans of Elitot, or of footnoes, or of both).

Seriatim (which means "point by point) --

"Also, LT groups have kind of developed certain conventions. It might be useful to make some of those explicit."

Are those "certain conventions" all the same in all the groups? I'm not so certain they are. Odd one would expect a person to conform to some abstract "standard" I've not seen -- and yet indicate allowance of individual voice, which implies individuality in expression.

It would be difficult to believe such an over-all-and-everything conformity exists. As example, I find the "Librarians Who Librarything" "group" to be wonderfully informative about all sorts of relevant fine detail of research and cataloging, who to most efficiently and fruitfully interact -- work with -- librarians. Some of the frustrations are telling -- as in, "OK, I'll avoid doing that while at the library."

And some of it is utterly hilarious. And if one posts a humorous statement, it isn't mistaken for something else that it is not.

"1. Group threads are asynchronous conversations among acquaintances; this implies a number of things about turn-taking, language choice, etc."

"Turn-taking"? Respond to one post only, then wait for everyone else to do the same, before responding to a second? (I've been telecomming, by the away, since 1987. I remember when one had to be online in order to respond to posts; then there came the evolution to downloading one's messages, answering them offline, then uploading them; then the evolution to offline readers which did the down- and uploading automatically. From time to time, of course, there was "flaming"; and those who would knit-pick spelling errors as indirect personal attack, rather than address the issue. Another indirect would be "complaints" about how many posts a person posted -- which was never an issue when the person complaining was in agreement, or with whom agreed.)

"2. Many groups have an "introduce yourself" thread, where people post a little bit about themselves and their interest in the group."

And some individuals are not comfortable with doing so -- at least initially, and perhaps in some circumstances never. Is it a requirement one do so, nonetheless, in order to conform to an undefined notion of "sociability" or "social system"? (I am far from "antisocial". But I'm also not a rug.)

I responded to your email to me with details about myself and my publications history, but that response bounced back. I was going to try sending it from within Librarything, but now I think I won't.

"3. On Poetry Fool, people who are posting poems post each poem in a separate post."

Did I sin somewhere in that regard?

"4. To refer to a previous post, it is common to list the author and/or number of the post. (You might see @ or > used.) For example:

"Avaland @ 1, I am not sure I agree about your assumption about a previous 'populist place' in the culture. However, I do not have any good references on this at the moment."

I already responded to your first sentence: the implication in the fact that "Post a message" is at the lower left corner of EVERY message is that one's response will be inserted immedately after the message to which one is responding. Other message bases which imply such actually do function that way. It wasn't until I got near the end of the thread that I discovered that this message base doesn't do that.

Otherwise: What if one is sure one doesn't agree? Must one misrepresent that fact by pretending otherwise? Wouldn't that be disingenuous, and add an unnecessary level of complication -- and -- dare I say it -- obscurantism?

"5. A common post format in an active thread is a series of brief responses to previous posts (Avaland @ 1, etc.), followed by a longer discussion of objections, synthesis of arguments, what have you."

Oh, there's only one correct way to respond to a post. I didn't know that. (And I did anticipate that the next objection would be, "Too long," however indirectly stated.)

"6. People mostly post in informal language written in a standard way, limiting text messaging abbreviations, 133t5p34k, and the like to fairly common things such as LOL, IMHO, etc. If someone doesn't know the abbreviation, all s/he need do is ask and someone else will cheerfully clarify."

Again, I've been telecomming since 1987. I know all the abbreviations. And I write as I do as a matter of discipline -- and because it is how I write. I've had the experience of letting such discipline (careful thought) lapse only to see the lapse -- it becomes habit -- creep into and undermine "formal" (careful thought) writing when that was required.

lol, bookstopshere! I'll take the beer where the cheerful argument becomes a soliloquy. Or maybe play hopscotch?

Re 70: I wasn't referring to you, JNagarya. I was, in part, inspired by you and a consideration of what the learning curve might entail, but was intended generally and at no time in that post do I suggest that you broke one of my conventions. Consider it a tour guide based on what I've seen in the groups I follow. So you needn't take it personally.

Neither did I email you, though I did post a message to your profile page suggesting you check out the LT Authors feature.

Back to our scheduled program....

hopscotch? some variant of boilermaker? (hand me a nice single malt and a triple stout) sadly brings to mind the "role" of too many writers I've known . . . seventy-some posts into this thread - let's add some verses about writing - then we can tally up the ways it works or ?
Perhaps someone will volunteer their own work if we promise to be nice

So, do we, then, begin to promise, adding as many posts as nicknames on this thread?

And what are the guidelines? You have posted yours, thebookstopshere. I think there are other threads where members' poems are being posted.

You be the marlboro who changes the route of this thread; I dare you!

Gee, I thought this thread had all but died, but it seems not.

Thanks, chellerystick, for your patient primer. I actually learned a couple of things in there!

jnagaya, admittedly, I don't find your posts encourage conversation (or allow for other opinions) and, quite honestly, they felt like a lecture and I stopped reading after the first two (although I did read #70). I shall take it from chellerystick that you had some interesting points to make. Unfortunately, if my reaction is any indication, the posts may have effectively killed the thread despite chellerystick's noble attempts to rebuild one.

avaland --

1. Many, if not most, participants in this group write, or hope to write, poetry, and have the ambition to be good enough at it to be published by others than themselves. If they are serious about that, then they'll have to learn a great deal, write a great deal (at least until one can distinguish one's crap from the rest), and learn and EXERCISE discipline.

One element of that discipline is CRITICAL THINKING.

2. I did what is termed "making philosophical claims" for and about poetry, and in doing so I practiced adult, mature, critical thinking. I refuted some blatant nonsense -- the "I won't criticize your interpretaion if you won't criticize mine, 'kay?" killer of learning and growth. The "responses" I got (not counting the personal attacks because communicating intelligently and critically is "threatening" to some) were basically of two kinds:

A. You're hurting my feelings (in fact, that is caused by self-intimidation); and,

B. "Dumb it down". So, I can either "dumb down," or I can conduct myself as an adult, with the discipline and critical thinking necessary to worthwhile writing -- and in the latter case be "invited" to leave because adult critical faculties are "upsetting" to some. I've not been here for a number of reasons, one of which is that disciplined, adult, mature critical faculties are not welcome.

Given the choice I'm damned straight not going to "dumb down".

If you can't handle challenging discussion then I suggest you take over the thread and eliminate it, else it continue to elicit wet-blanket whining from you.

Good-bye.

what if the role of a poet in today's society is to just write poems?

i've found, and surely sites like this might support my observations, that poets are just like everyone else: we have the capable and the not, the timid and the bold. some of us write for the glory, others merely for the exercise. some of us enjoy the craft, orr gift, or call it what you will, and, apparently, as in any other field, some write but don't enjoy ...

i admit to not having the time to read in depth, as of yet, anything online. a couple of paragraphs? sure, i might, as i would you would too if you'e read this far.

but the role of poet in today's society?

is to write poems. don't you agree?

The act in which the poet instantiates his or her "poet-ness" is in writing poetry, yes, but "role in society" seems to indicate a context, an interaction with the poem or poet. If poetry is not read, then the role would seem to be a different one than if poetry is read. Of course, there are poetry readers and non-poetry readers, which means that there are multiple roles for the poet.

To some extent, I believe that for some non-readers of poetry, the role of the poet is to serve as a kind of mystic: oh, there are those poet people Out There who do these Arcane things with Words. We kind of hold them in awe, but at a distance. For other non-readers, poets are just one more example of the vilified stereotype of lazy hippies or angsty punk rockers or whatever. I'm sure there are other variations.

For those who do read poetry, poets are participating in society in many other ways. For example, they make arguments about political, social, and aesthetic issues within and outside of their poems. Many variations are available here too.

That is what I might propose for a first order approximation of what the roles ARE in society, although I would be happy to hear further discussion; what they have been at other times and what they could or should be is, as we have noted above, a much more contentious question.

JNagarya - where can I find your verses? I'm compelled to try them.

tcw - I'm with you on the role of poets - "writing" would seem to cover it all (I dumbed that down)

Now, the role of readers of poetry . . .

Enjoying, Dumbed dumbed down.

#79 --

You've seen two old first-drafts by now. Here's a newer -- actually an anti-war poem, but different in that it focuses on the constructive --

Outside Kosovo

Many new orphans
from old war.

What can be new
about being alone?

A pretty little girl,
self-possessed,

comforts younger children
similar to her--

Draws a picture
of her missing father.

4/8/99

Copyright 1999-2008

Genesis: I was writing, with the TeeVee on -- old habit, "white noise" in the background; a way to subject potentially-distracting noise to control -- and paused to think of a word, and glanced at the TeeVee. On it was a brief news piece about a refugee camp, in a green field beside the road, outside Kosovo.

At the heart of the story was a young girl -- perhaps 7-8 -- whose parents were missing (the adults in the know presuming them dead, but saying nothing to her about that).

The girl, though, was taking care of a number of little ones -- a little mom, a flower of hope in the midst of that disaster and misery. And as she was briefly interviewed, she was drawing a picture of her father, and talking about when they'd be together again.

I grabbed a pen and jotted that down. First draft.

Poignant. But paramount: the creative process is (said to be) "bringing chaos into order"; and this little girl, in the midst of all that uncertainy and misery, was bringing chaos into order.

Why should "anti-/war poetry" be only about the destruction? Why not focus more on the preferred aftermath?

#78 --

One of the most immediate ways to begin to get a perspective, handle, or whatever, as to the "role" of the poet in society is to consider the contrasting views on whether poetry and politics mix. Denise Levertov "mixed" the two, and wrote about doing so in her The Poet in the World. And, she was also bashed for that mixing.

There are several sites which delve into that: one is "Jacket" magazine, which has several essays by Robert Bertholf, co-editer (with Albert Gelpi) of the Robert Duncan-Denise Levertov letters. Levertov was born in England, but in 1947 met and married an American soldier, Mitchell Goodman. (She'd already published her first book the year before, in England.)

While on the continent, she read William Carlos William's In the American Grain and was taken with his view of making American poetry other than an extension of the European -- making it into an "American idiom".

She and Goodman came to the US in 1948, and through associations met such as Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. Duncan became one of her "mentors" (second to Williams), and that relationship -- Duncan was gay; she was not -- the intimacy, with no sexuality as potential static -- was epic.

There relationship lasted for some twenty years, and the end of it had to be excruciatingly wrenching: it ended over their disagreement as to whether poetry and politics can mix. (Bertholf and Gelpi, in the published letters, explore the complexities and differences in their respective underlying "religious" views in their introduction to the volume.)

Another source of important critique on this very question -- I've read a number of essays from it within the past several evenings -- is the Michigan Quarterly Review. Do a google on that, looking for the specific URL (you'll come up with mich.press or the like -- don't go there). Once on that page, do a search of the online Review copies on Levertov. One will be from 1968; in that issue are several essays which confront the issue of poetry and politics being "mixed" (one is about "political poets" of the '30s, and worth reading as well); and one of those shows how it can be done without the poet taking sides -- an artist is essentially to be apolitical, non-ideological (thus is always "subversive" -- see Bob Dylan at Newport, as example, where he threw off the chains of the political ideologues who thought they owned him). Countless artists have been ruined by adopting a political view or ideology, and endeavoring to advance it.

Art is (said to be) always a critique of reality. Of society. Essentially it is a "complaint" that reality, that society, isn't perfect; and an effort to make it so. (It is also about questioning -- going beyond the surface, trying to find out what's underneath, what's behind the surfaces, the masks, the pretences . . .) So perhaps the "role" is that of unavoidable iconoclast and gadfly.

For those interested, some quotes about artists/writers. Over the years I've made a practice of collecting those which speak to me. These are by no means all I have. --

The Creative process is the process whereby order is brought out of disorder, form out of chaos. That is why James Joyce was being only very literal rather than heretical when he insisted on the artist's role as God-like. For as God brought the universe out of chaos and ancient night, so the artist brings his creative work out of the chaos of his subjective life and out of the disorder of the world. . . . The created object, every truly creative act, transcends in one degree or another both forms of order, the order of the world and the potential order within the subjective life, is new, goes beyond what has been. This is not in the least to say that it is better, only that it is itself, and therefore in one way or another, perhaps in many ways, different. . . . viii.

"Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!"--Henry James xi

It is reassuring to find this quality in Dr. Donald McKinnon's summary of the qualities that one creative person shares with other creative persons: "his openness to experience," including his own early experience, "his freedom from crippling restraints and impoverishing inhibitions." The creative process itself may be described as a movement from the unrealized to the realized. It is itself the highest form of realization. It is a process that begins in the unconscious, yes; but its impulse, beginning there, is to bring that realm into the realm of consciousness, to objectify the subjective, to know and to make known the unknown, to bring the shining new out of the darkness of ancient night. xi

. . . . As T. S. Eliot has written, "The artist, I believe, is more primitive, as well as more civilized, than his contemporaries, his experience is deeper than civilization, and he only uses the phenomena of civilization in expressing it." . . . xiv

Yet the need to live in the nighttime world has been observed by many writers. "The poet is at the disposal of his night," Jean Cocteau has written. .
. . xiv

The first responsibility of the creative writer is to his language and to his technique, because only through these can the creative impulse itself find its realization. His second responsibility is to his own freedom to use his language as he must. He must be free to rebel, and in a profoundly basic sense every real writer is a rebel. The rebel for so many literary generations, the hero, has been largely replaced today by "the stranger," the outsider, the alienated and disaffected wanderer, the human being who declines to participate in the human enterprise.
The creative writer, like his heroes, is also the stranger, but there is always this fascinating thing about the artist: he creates what he describes and, in the act of creation, is superior to the object of his observation, which cannot create itself. And therefore the writer, as stranger, is not doomed to that nihilism in which the hero, as stranger, is caught. The artist, always using his freedom, remains a rebel even when he is a stranger; his basic rebellion, in this time or any other, is directed at the universe itself . . . . Every truly creative act is an act of rebellion against the universe and a celebration of the universe . . . . xvii

. . . . The third responsibility, which is to the act of rebellion against which that so smugly and chaotically is, the universe, society itself. Rebellion, Camus tells us, is the pursuit of values. . . . xxviii

Lionell Trilling has written that "The function of literature through all the mutations has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture." The responsibility of the writer then is to maintain the high authority of his free self, which is to say his creative self, which is in turn to say his rebelling self. His responsibility, in short, is to excellence alone.
. . . xix

A wise society will take care to preserve the freedom of its literary culture, of the man of letters, precisely because he has taken upon himself a necessary fight with the world and experience. His task is to force it into shape, into order. And this, the creative act itself, is the only affirmation that he must make: that the artist can and perpetually does create an order that did not exist before he made it. . . . xix

From "Introduction," by Mark Shorer, to Techniques of Fiction Writing: Measure and Madness (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., Anchor Doubleday Books paperback, 1969), Leon Surmelian.

And this is the Appendix to Kubie, which I mendtioned (full citation at the end) --

There are several ingredients of the learning process without which learning is impossible. Comparing is one of these. Where men in general shrink from making comparisons about any aspects of human nature, this area remains impervious to progress or change. Consequently, the deep-seated tendency of men to hide from themselves and from one another their struggles with the neurotic ingredients in their make-up (as though it were an occasion for shame) has restricted to a small group such knowledge of the neurotic process as we are slowly winning. Yet a general appreciation of the universal masked neurotic ingredients in "normal" human nature (and particularly in the gifted) would make possible a profound cultural advance. This is where the creative craftsman in art and literature would come into his own, and would help to deepen man's understanding of himself. What for most men is buried and inaccessible (i.e. "unconscious" in the technical psychoanalytic sense) is more readily accessible to many artists. Therefore they should be able to clarify for the average man both the underlying conflicts out of which neurotic troubles arise and the influence of these neurotic processes on human life.

Actually, whether he realizes it or not, when any artist or writer attempts to express the neurotic components in his own nature, he is reaching for this high goal; and his attempt commands respect and gratitude even when he is not wholly successful. Nor should we be surprised or angered when he fails; since this very failure is a measure of the immaturity of our culture as a whole and of the inadequacy of the educational processes to which all of us, artists included, are exposed. Sometimes this is manifested in the confusions of the creative writer or artist about those neurotic ingredients in his own life which he is trying to express. Or his failure may be due to the strength of our reluctance to understand anything as painful as that with which he is trying to challenge us. The analyst knows how hard it is to communicate insights such as this to one person at a time, to wit, one patient. It is hardly surprising that the task of the creative artist is even harder, when he challenges men en masse to look at these same aspects of themselves without averting their eyes. Blocked and confused by these obstacles, both internal and external, the artist often makes unwitting compromises, which end by obscuring instead of clarifying the essential nature of the struggles which he is attempting to represent. This, in turn, is one reason why the creative product, like the neurotic symptom, usually masks more than it illuminates, even when it is skillful and moving.

These compromises are of many kinds. Thus the goriest or lustiest sexual melodrama or comedy contains elements of truth; but in a form which goes so far beyond the range of ordinary human experience that the audience reacts to it with feelings of mingled fascination, horror and pleasure. Yet at the same time each member of that audience is enabled by the artist's exaggerations to feel that it is something so alien to him that, "It cannot happen here. It has nothing to do with me." This is a familiar defense, to sit and stew in complicated emotional juices with a mixture of pleasure, pain and distance. Portraying universal human struggles in a form which makes each living man feel that this is an alien experience cannot add to his insights either into himself or into human nature in general. Alternatively, to dilute the full impact of some painful human struggle by the use of humor or any other form of sugarcoating is another way of pretending to look at something, while actually looking the other way.

I do not pretend to know the answer to this problem. I do not possess any pat formula for communicating to the many those painful inner problems from the contemplation of which every individual flees. Nevertheless, to face up to this problem fucuses our attention on it as one of the unsolved basic problems of the arts and literature. Its ultimate solution will make available to us, perhaps for the first time, the great contribution that art and literature can make to human culture. I repeat that this is why I sympathize deeply with the struggles of modern art and literature, even as I deplore their failures. There are formidable obstacles to success, doubly rooted in the artist's own confusions and in the age-old resistances of man to face painful truth.

Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process (NY: The Noonday Press, paperback, 1961), Lawrence S. Kubie, "Appendix," pp. 151-52.

As that indicates, if one can find it, this book (originally published 1958) is very much worth reading.

Post 84 JNagarya, gives me 'illusion.' I have a poor notion of the word 'hope.' I think hope comes in when all else failed - not too promising.

Don't know about "illusion" -- you'd have to clarify.

Otherwise, perhaps "hope" is necessary to motivation? And the idea that the artist, dissatisfied that reality is imperfect, endeavors repeatedly to make it perfect -- and as repeatedly fails at the effort. Here're several of mine encountered last night/this morning while rereading parts of my 12/2001 Notebook (while, as is usual, looking for something else):
_____

"Writing? You express your true opinions, feelings--(character?), then do what you can to make it palatable for others, without lying (Notebooks, 2/21/77).

"Art is a public result of extraordinary private struggle.

"The artist's constant effort is to grasp the open heart of permanently elusive mystery.

"The task of the artist is to remember and remind--against a population which does not want to remember, and actively resents being reminded.

"Society praises creativity and demands of the artist "originality": the never-before-seen. But when he meets that demand, he is denegrated--"weird," "mad,"--marginalized for having fulfilled the demand. Thus the demand for originality is perhaps actually: don't challenge, confuse, disorient, intimidate with ways to see the world different than my always-seen-it-this-way habit: provide me new configurations of that-we-all-ready-have that confirm that I all ready know, to which I desperately cling, and will go to war to maintain unchanged."

Copyright 1977-2008
_____

From that little rereading I rediscovered that I've much material, by myself as well, scattered throughout more recent Notebooks, to abstract and gather together in one place.

I will get to 'illusion' later. Perhaps I was trying to elude the word 'hope.'

I like your notes. Question: Do you really wish to work on past notes? Will they change into the way you think or write at the present? Do you have the time to go back and recapture how you felt to resume? Or is what matters how you feel now about what you wrote then? Would you not prefer to 'go on,' ahead? Or is there a time when 'going back' is, indeed, going ahead, somehow?

Some notes I found from my teenage years are amazingly revealing of how little I have changed, in essence. Often, I think I have not changed at all in matters of emotion, sense of justice or injustice, and many other matters.

However, I seem to have a deeper intellectual understanding of that which I wrote from emotions. It is clearer now than it was when I wrote it. I wish I had kept all of it. There were 'revelations,' things about myself that I knew without being conscious that I knew. Those 'things' have become reality decades later, and I found a few pages written by myself in my teens, all spelled out then, buried in the convoluted trickster psyche.

More interesting questions --

#87: zentimental --

"I will get to 'illusion' later. Perhaps I was trying to elude the word 'hope.'"

I hope so. :}

"I like your notes."

I do too. :) I note that they indicate the impossibility of every bit of it.

"Question: Do you really wish to work on past notes?"

Certainly. Sometimes in a few hours or days of writing I'll end up with a dozen or more first drafts, and sometimes among those one or more later "To be Added to (Fill-in-th-Blank-Earlier-Draft)" for one or more. Sometimes I contemplate themes which emerge.

"Will they change into the way you think or write at the present?"

Ummmm . . . perhaps, moderately. --

"Do you have the time to go back and recapture how you felt to resume?"

That is what I really try to do, though hopefully with greater skill than I had at the time I wrote whatever it is. There are many pieces I wrote during the last, say, 8 years, about events circa 1968 which really tend to capture the feelings "of" then as I was unable to do then. 'Course, there's the added dimension of hindsight: it is very weird to look back 20-30-40 years and see oneself at a particular spot -- while at that very spot -- and confront the conundrum that one is both there and "not there". That -- hey, it's right there, only a foot in front of me, where I stood and did such-and-such 40 years ago, but -- if I step forward that foot and stand on that very same spot: I'm still in the present. And no amount of struggle or magic thinking will transfer one back to "then," even if one doesn't also return to that age.

(Tip: Enjoy when the years are long, while you can, because the older you get, the shorter the years are. I would estimate my years average about 3-6 months in length, now.)

"Or is what matters how you feel now about what you wrote then?"

How I feel now about what I wrote -- or felt -- then is certainly not preferred -- it is tinged with sadness, in its way. One can't return to whatever the "then" and enjoy it a second time (or suffer it a second time), or correct a decision -- even if not a mistake -- which altered the course of one's life in a wholly unanticipated direction.

It's all very strange.

"Would you not prefer to 'go on,' ahead? Or is there a time when 'going back' is, indeed, going ahead, somehow?"

There's no future in getting older, so I'm going the other way. I'm about 9, at present; a few more years and I'll be 2.

"Some notes I found from my teenage years are amazingly revealing of how little I have changed, in essence. Often, I think I have not changed at all in matters of emotion, sense of justice or injustice, and many other matters."

My values are actually pretty much the same as they were when I was 20. But it was quite an experience when, after decades of law/non-fiction, I finally got opportunity to begin to do the writing I all along had wanted to do, which I began by reviewing all the "creative" writing I'd done -- Notebooks, etc. -- which was totally forgot, and typing them into the computer so as to eventually print them out, and thus reduce the bulk of the writings so they'd occupy less space.

I also decided to type them in as I reviewed them because I knew it would be a boring chore. Instead, I could not remember "what came next," so it was like someone else had written it all. There were times I couldn't stop I was so excited to find out "what happened next".

In addition -- I remember a specific poem where this really came through: I could remember the context of it, see where I was, see the glorious day it was, and the feelings were the same, except that the feelings were much more complex -- richer -- than I'd realized at the time. Or than I remembered. (Or I'd done that ghastly thing of "maturing" despite my best efforts.)

And then there's the piece of writing I mentioned that derived from a letter. When I got to that letter (2/14--I think/72 -- there's was something about it that stopped me in my tracks. Unlike all before, it leapt out at me. I studied it and realized it was the very first time I'd succeeded at my goal of getting down on paper my thoughts exactly as they were in my head, without their being distorted or mangled in the process of going from head to paper. It wasn't well orgainzed, but I'd learned to do that later.

That became something lightyears away from what it is -- something in a new (for me) kind of language -- an emotional depth I'd never been aware of let alone able to express before. That hasn't happened often -- where a piece of "old" writing became wholly something else. But it does reflect how I've pretty much always worked: write something -- a fragment, perhaps a whole piece, then rewrite to the best of my ability at that moment. Then later in reviewing it "bring it forward" if possible. But that instance is an amazing leap from relatively mundane, silly, and informal and unorganized letter to something "serious" (it's actually about "How to Write") with attractive language, and conceptions beyond my wildest imaginings at the time I wrote the letter.

"However, I seem to have a deeper intellectual understanding of that which I wrote from emotions. It is clearer now than it was when I wrote it."

There you go: it's that hindsight, and perhaps the dangeous thing "maturity". :) And sometimes one can rewrite the piece closer to what one intended at the time one wrote it.

"I wish I had kept all of it. There were 'revelations,' things about myself that I knew without being conscious that I knew."

I've kept nearly everything I've written since a junior in high school (I have notes from girlfriends in high school -- but I neglected to make copies of mine to them, so that part is missing), though a few things got lost along the way. Those gaps are really a hole in my memory, now.

"Those 'things' have become reality decades later, and I found a few pages written by myself in my teens, all spelled out then, buried in the convoluted trickster psyche."

Yep. When I was putting my Notebooks on disk, I encountered notes/letters/poems between another writer and myself (a young lady), and decided to write to her and see if she'd be willing to pick up where we left off (with the writing -- I got my first insights into "literary criticism" from her comments on mine), so began a letter to her. As that went I figured I should update her as to what I'd been doing all those years.

It grew to 45 pages -- with footnotes. I thought: "An informal, personal letter with footnotes!? She'll think I'm crazy!" I didn't send that letter, but in it I got down much useful "memory work" -- some of it hilarious -- ("some things aren't funny until long after they happen") and began developing a method of writing I stumbled upon in the writing of that.

(I did finally write her -- I think about 7 or so years after that; sent a letter under 2 pages that I'd worked out; and then it sat on my hard drive for some years before I finally got the guts to print it out and send it. After all that: no response.)

That period -- breaking back into the writing I'd all along wanted to be doing -- was much fun. And work ("I'll just finish this paragraph, then eat . . ."). And I really enjoyed the writing process itself; for onr the freedom of not doing any research for it.

It's out of all that (and study over years) that the "epigrams" about the artist, and creativity, came, usually as outcome of lengthy process. I've been intending for some time to go through all my Notebooks, beginning circa 1968, and abstracting out -- especially from those later writings -- the various topics, which are as scattered fragments. Some are about writing itself, which should be much fun if ever I get motivated to begin climbing that mountain: it's a lot of writing to read.

Thank you, JNagarya, for your response.

I, too, choose the mood, and then allow the poem to 'happen.'

As much as I realize a poem or a painting is not completed, for the most part, after editing to an 'enough' point, which, to me, usually only means I got tired of continuing, even if an arm is missing, which ends up having a meaning of its own in incompletion, I prefer the birthing to the conquering, the spit to the cleanup, the definition to the finishing touches. The 'work' is always a challenge, but the curiosity and surprise of a new piece is far more alluring, so I tend to let canvases lean against walls, unfinished, too long, and poems go into the 'forgotten file more often than in the 'to be shared' file, selfishly. The latter, pretty much like a letter written and never mailed, appearing to be that the discharge of energy was needed more than the urge for the message to be read by anyone else. Dead as the now in writing becomes the past. Shame, but that is what happens to me, unless there is someone or something which ignites my desire to write more and more and makes me feel like sharing, which, truly, is the way in which any art becomes alive - through the eyes of others, it grows, and meaning multiplies with every single interpretation.

Too much preoccupation in the way of daily petty matters rob us from enough continuity that I think is necessary. Sinking in dark mood takes some concentration, and elation of a high mood seems to render less profound expression. Do you feel this?

#89 zentimental - That was moving. I had stories in my mind for a very long time. I was afraid to put them on paper. When I finally started to write them down I was so excited. I really liked them and that made me happy. I never thought of writing becoming alive through the eyes of others. But it seems relevant. I started writing to some authors after feeling very connected to their work. I was also very sad to hold the same feelings for writers who have died long ago and I couldn't tell them what their work meant to me.

Most friends have told me that the next step is to send things out more. And I want to because I wonder if there is anyone out there who could feel connected to what I think. So far the only pieces that I have written and seen in b&w are nonfiction articles, very safe and not at all personal.

As for daily petty matters, I believe them to be the arch enemy of writing.

#90 yeareader, thank you for your comment. When you mention 'to send things out more,' I imagine you are referring to publishers. Do you feel you need other writers' or someone else's thoughts on what you write before you consider each piece 'completed,' or do feel secure enough as a critic of your own work? I always seem to benefit from constructive criticism, whereas I know others who prefer to go at it alone, or present their work 'as is.'

Sharing just to share, in regards to writing, is not at all unselfish on my part, because, for the most part, I do it for the constructive criticism. The pat on the back helps, but never as much as having someone I see as knowledgeable or whose writing I think of as being polished or seasoned, taking the time to comment on something I put forward, of reading closely enough to point out weaknesses, not just say 'I like it or I don't.' This is the hardest to get, I think, and, to me, a how-to book could never be as effective as a 'real' person. I think a group is good because there may be more than one voice, thus, different views of the same piece, which I like to call 'growing more eyes.' In the end, I decide what to take or not, of course.

I do wonder if I will ever feel I have grown enough eyes. Probably not.

We are mighty fighters against arch enemies *smile*

#89 --

"Too much preoccupation in the way of daily petty matters rob us from enough continuity that I think is necessary."

Mmmmm, yes. So we have to create the circumsances, the environment, that make that lack of interruption and disruption possible.

And be willing to be "servants of one's night" to paraphrase some French guy: I've mentioned and somewhat described an absurd "noir" piece I wrote (about a black & white film filmed at night), in which I point out aspects of the "scene" one can't see because it's dark, and point out that the person with the moustache who is behind the camera is myself. That was the last thing I wrote after some 12 hours, at least, of writing. Satisfied and exhausted, I shut the computer down and went to bed. Then, the moment my head hit the pillow this silly off-angle "noir" thing (inspired somehow or an extension of serious stuff I'd been writing) popped into my head -- "This I'm not going to lose!" I determined, so jumped out of bed, booted up the computer, and captured it.

(It even included approximate TV viewing time -- 3:09-ish a.m. -- and the caveat that it would be either some 3 minutes long, or an hour and 39 minutes -- or whatever -- that as yet undetermined because the film had yet to be edited because the film-editor's union refuses to work on film filmed at night.)

"Sinking in dark mood takes some concentration, and elation of a high mood seems to render less profound expression. Do you feel this?"

I don't really have to get into a mood; I do need to slow down, and put aside everything else in my head, focus internally/on a feeling, and just begin writing whatever comes. If I stick with that, I'll before long come upon something that wants to go on for a while. Sort of writing oneself into the mood to write. After that I am likely to go on for hours.

My current problem is getting up some stuff to submit to a publisher, but not yet being willing to do all the reading necessary to do that. Sheesh! it's not like I actually have to come up with stuff from scratch!

JN shared this from Levertov and I thought it deserved wider discussion:

"When self-expression--self-revelation--occurs as the result of another devotion it rocks us, it literally 'moves' us: and only then. But art motivated by a desire for self-expression is sick at the root--it is art used, used without respect to its nature, art raped. It lies limp, abandoned after use.) . . ."
from the intro to a 1961 anthology

I like this - and think it says a good bit about what the poet's role is not. thoughts?

bookstopshere, thank you for this quote. It answers my questioning myself clearly. Those unfinished pieces are, to some degree, equivalent to, let's say, having sex, versus making love, as are those motivated by "another devotion," which are complete even if they are not, because they are shared, therefore, even if not finished, or if they need more work, they do not lie "limp, abandoned after use..."
Some would like to think of themselves as loners and not needing motivation from 'outside,' but I have to say the best fuel for anything I do lies not solely within, unless something from without has already been incorporated into my being. I am presently witness and lucky a member of a group where I am seeing this amazing vine of creativity, how from one post, another is born, and more and more and more, clearly and undoubtedly seeing that it may be one word from someone else's poem or the sentiment expressed, and there is a beautiful chain reaction happening that would be impossible in a solitary setting. For even a solitary writer will be inspired by nature. For oneself to serve oneself for a meal is self-defeating, not self-satisfaction. Yes! This is great! It may well be that the unfinished pieces were a way to deal with anxiety for me, and not inspired by love of someone or a response to images dancing in my mind wanting me to aid them to expression. I do think, for the most part, that I am more the vehicle, the tool, through which expression happens. The most rewarding pieces, I always feel do not belong to me at all, but to everyone or someone else in particular. So, lately, I have started to call myself, incorrectly, 'reactionary' (should be 'reactive'), realizing that the best fuel comes, for example, from my answering a poem which, indeed, rocked me or moved me to respond with a poem I could not possibly have written without that wonderful interactive trigger. This is definitely a gift of understanding you have given me, bookstopshere. I thank you immensely!

Or, did I not understand the quote? And if so, would it matter? Now I am nervous. Where may I find Levertov online? You are a wizard of links! *smile* HUGE thanks!

Oh, darn. Just four (more) little edits, one to add a missing double-quotation mark . . .

Google "Denise Levertov" (without the quotes) and you'll find a wealth of her poems, especially here --

http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/levertov.htm

But don't go only there -- the "Poetry Foundation" has the best biobibliography of and about her I've seen online.

Among the hits will be a significant number of articles about her and her work, particularly from "Renascence" magazine (Marquette U.), and poems published by her in that magazine. Also a portion of her last interview -- you'll see the word "egotism" in the hit -- in which, if I recall correctly, she speaks to that same point. (In her second or third book of essays is one she published in Boston's "Real Paper" shortly after Sexton committed suicide -- again addressing that theme. An impressive consistency.)

Otherwise, while I continue to struggle to be certain I understand her point, and thus not be guilty of doing that she condemns, this is probably my favorite quote of all from her (prose) writings:

". . . . The obligation of the writer is: to take personal and active responsibility for his words, whatever they are, and to acknowledge their potential influence on the lives of others. . . . When words penetrate deep into us they change the chemistry of the soul, of the imagination. We have no right to do that to people if we don't share the consequences." The Poet in the World (NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1973), p. 114.

It is that I have in mind when I speak of the writer respecting language, respecting the reader -- beginning with self-respect, which is also a responsibility.

Levertov is probably in my top three -- it's so far been impossible to find an equal of "Little Emily" Dickinson -- in part for her ethics/aesthetics/poetics. But I love much of her poetry: accessible, lucid, clean lines. These are from her (posthumous) last volume of poems (she died 12/12/1997):

Celebration

Brilliant, this day-–a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green–-
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes-–
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

Aware

When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.

from The Great Unknowing: Last Poems (NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1999).

Today I received copy of her second US (born in Britain, her first was published there) book, Overland to the Islands (Highlands, NC: Jonathan Williams, Publisher, Jargon 19, 1958). In the first/title poem, which, as I looked cursorily through the book, and paused to read, are these first two lines--

Let's go--much as that dog goes,
intently haphazard. . . .

If that caught you, made you smile, she has a special gift in the use of near-contradiction like that "intently haphazard". That brings to mind her poem "Talking to Grief," which is available online (the "metaphor" in which is a dog). And "Complicity," in which is this line -- properly the longest in the poem --

"from the hummingbird world of swift intensities--

The "expansive" polysyllabic "hummingbird," to the "contracted" "world" (which rolls) and "swift" (which picks up speed) to the "expansive" (and sibilant) "intensities" is a perfect explosion--carried on and enhanced by it being the longest line, and by the "--" at the end of it.

I don't know what others think, but I think she's superior to the vast majority of her contemporaries.

You might also find an essay or two of hers about her poetics, one possibility being "Some Notes on Organic Form". (I recommend the whole of Poet in the World.) Yes, there is a wealth of material by and about her online.

(Nearly all the edits of this post -- and there were quite a few -- were for spelling errors, some of which required web searches.)

excellent. I thought her earlier bit sounded familiar & looking I found:

In 1979, Denise Levertov addressed a group of students at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan. The speech was published in her 1981 prose collection, Light Up the Cave.

"I was asked to talk about the life of a poet. Some of you will not find poetry at the very center of your lives though no doubt it will go on being a profound resource--both writing it and reading it. Others will find that it is indeed a dominant force in their lives--it has been for me. I started very young. The primary impulse for me was always to make a structure out of words, words that sounded right. And I think that's a rather basic foundation of the poet's world. Of course, one also is motivated by the desire or need to "express one's feelings"--and it is essential that the poet has something he or she passionately wants to say--or rather, to sing, since poetry is closer in its essential nature to music than to expository prose. But without the impulse to make a thing out of words, as a sculptor makes a freestanding thing out of clay or wood or stone, a poem will remain only self-expression. Poetry is an art, not a form of therapy, and if a person with a love of poetry, a love of language, recognizes this early, it helps. Because then that person's natural gifts will be put at the service of the art, instead of the art being put into bondage and utilized as a "vehicle" for opinions or emotions. The arts are not vehicles, they are not like bicycles or bomber planes!

I was lucky--as you are--in starting early, because when you begin to write early you avoid some of the self-consciousness that people who only begin later in life tend to suffer from. You just plunge in, not knowing what you're doing, and find that you've done something, made something. It's exciting and encouraging to take oneself by surprise like that. But even a strong talent needs nourishment: don't ever feel that if you read other people's poetry you'll lose your originality. You have to trust it--your talent. If it could be so easily destroyed it wouldn't be worth much anyway. It's useful to be influenced--after a while an influence will be absorbed into your own style. Read widely and deeply. But also use your eyes and ears. Try to avoid vague general statements about your feelings, and instead practice accurate description of things you see. You will find that because you are seeing them through your emotions, as if through tinted glass--blue or rose!--the way you evoke a picture of your street or your friend or the sky will convey more about your feelings than any statement can. And thus another person reading it will feel what you feel instead of just being informed about how you feel. When one discovers that one has a gift for writing poetry it's a solemn and also a deliriously exciting moment. Maybe many moments--because sometimes you don't believe it and then you discover it over again. One feels chosen--and if one has an adequate recognition of poetry being something larger than oneself, one feels a sense of dedication to the calling of poet. It's a secret feeling and you don't have it all the time, but it's there. And because of this dedication a poet learns to revise, to work at his or her poem until it is as perfect as it can be. Not in order to show off, to compete with others, to demonstrate personal cleverness, but for the sake of poetry itself. You can't make a poem happen, but once it begins to happen you can help it become complete. It's a little bit as if the poet were a sort of photograph developing medium, which makes the mysterious hidden image appear from the negative and become clearer and clearer. (You've probably watched a Polaroid photo appearing as if by magic while you look.) This task of working at and with the poem is what really grabs one. I think the people who go on writing all their lives are those for whom that process is itself utterly fascinating. For the poet, not having written a poem, but the experience of writing it, is what matters. And somehow, if your gift goes on growing and making its demand on you, you will try to find the ways of living that will be most suitable for you as individuals to go on doing your work in poetry--you will find your talent giving shape to your lives."

terrific stuff!

#96 --

There really isn't anything more to say than that. I'm blown away -- feel like shouting, "YES!" -- every time I read that.

And in a real sense, this says all one need know:

"The primary impulse for me was always to make a structure out of words, words that sounded right."

Structure of right sound/s.

#97

I totally agree

This is a wonderful tribute, by Levertov. I'm certain that those who don't know who Karen Silkwood was, and what happened to her, can find information online by Googling her name.

Read this one line at a time, at sufficiently slow pace that one understands each line as one goes.

Beginners
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
—we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

#95, Thank you, JNagarya. I have saved that link to read her poetry. I like the part in which you quote about the responsibility of the writer. I have noticed how those angry pounding poems that seem to be for therapeutic purpose affect me, and I am avoiding them. However, if the same darkness and frustration were expressed in a form I found beautiful and admirable, I would, most likely, read through and reread. So, to me, as a reader, this may be where aesthetics would kick in and hold my attention. But it need not be the horror or suffering as theme that brings tears to my eyes, but the beauty alone, like some notes some tenors hit, which, out of context, will make tears roll down my cheeks. Reading is by no means passive, but, as writers, do we or don't we consider the reader? I am confused, when etiquette or aesthetics consider the reader and when true to self, no falsehood does not consider the reader or audience. Not sure about bookstopshere question about aesthetics and personal distance. Blurs.

#96 bookstopshere, this gives me goosebumps! Teary I am as I type, for these are different words to state much clearer that which I think about almost exactly, in essence. Even at the point where 'art is not a tool' I understand to be the same as my feeling I am the tool, art is my master, and I follow its mandate. The process of painting helps me explain better: I smudge, let us say, two colors as first coat, as if a clump of fresh clay, then begin to see things and chisel away or add or take away, not really knowing what it will be, for, even when I think I do, it will take me where it takes me, not the other way around. Yes, the aesthetics comes in at the point I call 'conquering,' where the work really begins, then I do come in and will that which willed me. So I am both its slave and its master, in that order, for its final form will depend on what I do with it. And yes, tremendous responsibility, but not necessarily to the audience, but to myself first. This makes me think canvases end up against walls not only when started with excess energy I needed to burn, but also when I become frustrated and feel I am not 'getting' to the level of quality of rendition (aesthetics). More poems end up in the trashcan that not. More canvases end up painted over than not. But 'sick from the root and limp and abandoned' all the same, whether I started out with a noble or not so noble state of mind or being. So it seems. This is most encouraging to me, and so true that last statement that I used to beat myself up for procrastinating and now I think that being able to procrastinate all that can be, for the sake of stealing time to paint or write, is a blessing! I have come to love the word, not only because of its beauty, but because I apply it positively, where it is supposed to have a negative connotation! haha I leave this thread a much happier being! Thank you!!!