Why People Don't Like Poetry & What To Do About It

Poets have an obligation to consider why poetry is the least marketable of all genres. What do we do wrong?  In a poem, Rosario Castellanos wrote: 

Silence alone is wise.

But with my words, as with a hundred bees,

I am building a small hive.

Silence might very well be best, yet we are given the language and must use it for beauty's sake as well as practicality.  Poetry is a form that repels some people; perhaps they are afraid of being swarmed or stung.

Bad poetry gives poetry a bad name.  Bad poetry is pedantic.  It might be ostentatious, overwrought, or even unctuous.  It tells the reader what to feel.  It does not evoke an emotional response, and it can be too superficial or sentimental.  It lacks focus.  Metaphors are mixed. It relies on cliches. The mind wanders, the language is stilted or overly sing-song. The poet has arranged the lines in ways that are distracting and don't contribute to the meaning of the whole. Exposure to poetry like this is painful.

According to Mirriam Webster, solipsism is the philosophy that the self cannot know anything behind the self, and secondarily, "extreme egocentrisim." Solipsism might be one of job hazards for writers. Individual consciousness and experience offers a starting place for creative work, but how can we avoid boring others? Get off dead center. A friend of mine used to say that about people who despite the direction of dialogue always brought a conversation to their own struggles, accomplishments, wisdom. They are self congratulatory. It makes you want to run away, fast. How can you tell if you are solipsistic? Look for a glaze in the eyes of those around you, a certain lack of engagement, or withdrawal. At your desk, question the material and more importantly, yourself. What are your motives? What is your quest? Have you arrived at the true subject?  Have you developed your material enough to leap over the boundary of self? Can you find other patterns besides your own?

What is good poetry?  Of course, it's different for everybody, and it's difficult to articulate. I like what Emily Dickinson said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry." Good poetry is physical. It engages the senses. It opens the mind and senses. I also like what Dylan Thomas said, "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toes twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing." In other words, poetry connects to emotion, and it plays with language patterns in a way that is physically satisfying. In her work, my artist friend Gladys Koski Holmes felt she had to "break something open." This definition, applied to good art or poetry, satisfies me because it suggests that "aha" experience. It achieves or alternately, descends to a different level. It engages the imagination.  Carl Sandburg said, "Poetry is a diary kept by a sea creature who lives on land and wishes he could fly."

Aside from that, poetry needs good readers. It needs those who have a quest. The language of poetry is concentrated; it needs those who want to breathe a richer mix of oxygen. It needs people who are engaged in the creative process, who like to be challenged intellectually and who are not intimidated by ambiguity. Poetry needs readers who are willing to be changed by what they read.  It needs people to use their minds and bodies to receive literature; in other words, those who like to dance to new music.

Work like a bee, if you are a poet, from bloom to bloom, drunk with nectar, and make honey. (Keep in mind that bees have flight patterns, and notice how methodical and organized is a hive). If you are reader, visit the hive and savor the complex flavors.  Here's more of the poem that I began with -- poetry is the best way to speak:

THE SPLENDOR OF BEING

by Rosario Castellanos

  

Silence alone is wise.

But with my words, as with a hundred bees,

I am building a small hive.

All day the hum

of happy work strews the air

with the gold dust of a far-off garden.

Within me a slow roar grows as in a tree

when a fruit ripens.

All that was earth -- darkness and weight --

all that was turbulence of wild sage, leaves rustling,

is becoming flavor and roundness.

Sweet imminence of the word!

Because a word is not a bird

that flies and escapes far away.

Because it's not a rooted tree.

A word is the taste

our tongue has of eternity;

that's why I speak.

...

(excerpt from the longer poem translated by Magda Bogin)

Stavans, Ilan, editor. The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry. c2011. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York.  (pp 446-447)

Duluth's First Poet: Mary McFadden in 1907

On the Inland Sea


In his essay "Landscape and Narrative," Barry Lopez describes a correspondence between the external landscape and the psyche. The place we grow up and live becomes an internal landscape; the contour and dimensions of the earth become that of our thinking.

If this is true, then Duluth, the farthest inland port, has shaped its poets and writers. The shores of Lake Superior lap against the five miles of sandbar, Park Point is divided by water (and shipping lanes) from Wisconsin Point. The city of Duluth is on the north shore; Superior on the south shore.

The earliest poem I've found written by a citizen of Duluth is here. Mary McFadden published it in the city newspaper in 1907.  She was the editor in chief, a suffragist, and political lobbyist. Her poems focused on the natural world. This poem captures a moment between day and night as the canoe slips from land to sea, "drifting away."

Mary McFadden did drift away from Duluth about four years after this was published to become the editor of a monthly magazine in St. Paul, and then she worked in Europe for six months as a war correspondent and then moved to Greenwich Village in New York City where she wrote articles for Scientific American, and she published poems in International Journal of Medicine and Surgery.  Mary McFadden's poem reflects the style of poetry in 1907, and it marks the beginning of the literature written in Northern Minnesota.

I've discovered rich veins of material in my research about northern Minnesota's literature, history, politics, geology, geography, religion, immigration, labor history, environmental issues and public health.  The influence of women in these spheres is considerable, yet often their stories were not regarded.  The origin of this word is old, Middle English and Old French, and it meant to "take notice of to " gaze" or "heed."  Too easily these stories fall into silence and the next generation grows up without knowing, yet going into the future on a road built by the capable hands of many women and men.

Today, I went down Chester Creek Trail knowing that it was created in the early 1900s from a primeval forest with rugged waterfalls.  Mary McFadden walked here. My path took me past houses, over bridges, and along the eroding slopes, steep streets, and potholes made deeper by the spring's rapid snow melt and the floods of last year. I can no longer walk on the ground without thinking of those who walked before me. I aim to widen my vision to encompass those who are no longer visible and those who will walk after me, but aren't yet visible. Silence will never feel the same.

__________

Bakk-Hansen, Heidi.  "Mary McFadden: Duluth's Inkpot Warrior." Zenith City Online. March 1, 2013. Web. Retrieved April 6, 2013.  http://zenithcity.com/mary-mcfadden-duluths-inkpot-warrior/

Concerning the Spiritual in Poetry

I've often thought that poetry is a language within the language. A good poem is atomic, essentially indivisible, unchangeable, whole, and irreducible. The use of metaphor and figurative elements, compression, and sound work upon the language in such a way to make it particularly effective and powerful. In poetry, I believe that spirit talks to spirit. Many writers and artists have felt this way.  

Wassily Kandinsky in Concerning the Spiritual in Art writes: "Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt."  In his examination of the writer Maeterlinck (Russian), Kandinsky says:

The apt use of a word (in its poetical meaning), repetition of this word, twice, three times or even more frequently, according to the need of the poem, will not only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of the word itself. . . the word which has two meanings, the first direct, the second indirect, is the pure material of poetry and of literature the material which these arts along can manipulate and through which they speak to the spirit. (Kandinsky, 15-16)

Kandinsky used color as if it were language; color communicated spiritual meaning. But many poets reach for images to do this.

Jane Hirschfield (editor of Women in Praise of the Sacred and Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry) observes women's poetry that is spiritual frequently offers images of the house.  She says: "spiritual fulfillment is not to be found outside the door of the self."  Just as she uses the image of door to express an idea, so do other women writers.  The house can express the self and its boundaries. "To become the authority of one’s own household is no small thing in many women’s lives, even now, and the lives of earlier women poets are almost always marked by some fracturing with the expectations and course of ordinary life. The same is often true for men, of course, especially mystics."

Poetry is not ordinary language--it's extra ordinary. Consider the words of Czeslaw Milosz from his "Ars Poetica":

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

The house again serves as metaphor; it is not just the house but our movement in and out, others movement in and out, that enables him to express changefulness. Perhaps poets are architects of language.

Poetry is what we reach for to say what can not be said. It allows silence to speak. This is a spiritual quality. I don't believe that many good poets set out to say something spiritual; sermonizing never makes for a good poem. It will not preach, convert, admonish, or advise.  But a poem might serve as a prayer, an incantation, a song, a cathedral. It celebrates small things: a chicken coop, a red wheel barrow, a dog.

Why write poetry? What is it that drives a person to use this form? Many people avoid it. Poets generally find poetry is not much of a livelihood. Poetry is outside the market, and perhaps that is its value. It is outside of fashion. Its beauty is not the beauty of youth. It is not the big, fancy house in the exclusive neighborhood, but a humble abode.  Instead of a great view, it offers insight. A good poem will always be fresh, even if it was written centuries ago. As Paul Valery said, a poem is a mechanism that recreates the meaning anew each time it is read.

I want to be at home in poetry. I want to sit at the window and look into the branches of a white pine. Birds fly into the limbs, fly out in the rain, in the wind, in the light.


______________________
Hirschfield, Jane. "Spiritual Poetry."  June 28, 2006. Poetry Foundation. Web. March 22, 2013. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178390

Milosz, Cseslaw. "Ars Poetica." http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ars-poetica/

Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Translated with an introduction by M.T.H. Sadler. c1977. Dover Publications, New York.

Why I Read Anne Carson

I love this poet's work because the boundaries are not fixed. Patterns shift. Formal poems give way to informal. Meaning gives way to language. Poetry gives way to prose. Sources vary. Discourses mix. There is a potluck of essay, fiction, autobiography, poetry. Conventions travel. Cultures blend. Translations err and err again. Words are the stock in trade. Poets conduct raids of other landscapes and lexicons, make forays into art and science and metadata to yield the right friction or energy or fusion.

Anne Carson new book, Red Doc, has this on the book flap:

"To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing."


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/the-inscrutable-brilliance-of-anne-carson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

Not the Best: A Book Review

Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry

c2011 by Stephen Dobyns, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY. 

reviewed by Sheila Packa

While not as good as his earlier book, Best Words, Best Order: Essays on Poetry, Stephen Dobyns offers historical context, close readings, insightful critique into poetic concerns: subject, form, line breaks, counterpoint, and metaphor. As a poet and teacher, I'm always ready to enjoy poets writing about poetry, and I did like some of his ideas, but I found his selection of poems (that he explicated) sometimes questionable. 

His first two chapters, I found to be the least strong. Poetry overall is a very big topic. A peevish tone crept in as Dobyns attempted to address young poets. His tone was similar to that of a parent, piqued by the errancy and impulsivity of adolescents.  Whether new poets work will be "ephemera," as he suggests, remains to be seen. I did find the chapter “Aspects of the Syllable,” “Line Breaks,” “Context and Causality,” and all the rest engaging and full of insight.  It was interesting to consider his analysis of syllable, iambic, trochaic, pyrrhic, dactylic, anapest rhythms.  In the book, he says the form and content of a poem is inseparable. The form creates meaning as much as the words.  “The writer’s main loyalty is to the poem,” he writes. This is not a new concept; however, he heightened my own attention to rhythm and meter, and I appreciated that.

I was also engaged by his statement that poetry is either discursive or non-discursive. As evidence, he identified the frequently used form of including a number of propositions followed by a conclusion.  Also, a common examples of this is the "if/then" pattern that presents an argument.  The non-discursive poem is one that tends to be more imagistic and theatrical in its method; these are more enigmatic, dynamic, and they need contemplation.   The non-discursive poem (Merwin or Tranströmer, for example) is more likely to cause the reader to re-read in order to more fully take in the poem.  The poem then is taken in all at once and becomes "a symbol of affective life."

He describes types of closure in poems: "visual, syntactic, narrative, and contextual." Syntactic closure differs with discursive and nondiscursive poems, and both try to use a surprise or a shift in focus in the ending. The contextual, he suggests, may close the poem--he doesn't explain it well, but suggests it also opens out into larger meaning. What I take from it is this:  the image can resonate between the literal and metaphoric; meaning can expand, like concentric waves in a pond.

In his chapter “Revision,” he offers the reader a good examination of the creative process and the need to be expansive.  He has practical tips: after writing the first draft, poets might try starting their poem at different places to see what works the best. He advises that the poet work and revise with both “sound and sense,” and in patterns of tension and rest. Also he cautions against over-revision, or making decisions to cut or omit based on what somebody else might prefer.

I had some difficulty with his selection of poems for analysis.  While I realize obtaining permissions may be a challenge, it seemed that the poems he chose weren’t always good supports for his main points. “Performance Art Piece,” a poem by Bill Knotts (think Mapplethorpe only heterosexual), offended Dobyns; however, he chose to use it anyway in the chapter “Reconciling Paradox.”  He seemed to favor the poem because it was comic instead of earnest. In my estimation, using comic elements doesn't necessarily come across well. If the reader is the same gender or culture, it works; otherwise, it's perceived as dismissive, offensive, or puzzling.  Irony seems different.  Irony, an example being O.Henry's stories, reveal to the reader a complexity of misplaced effort, of good intentions gone awry. It creates sympathy for the character in the reader.

Later, he also presented poems by John Berryman (Dreamsong #4 and #187). These overall I felt weren't that strong poems, but they did have sexual innuendo.  Later, in the chapter “Closure,” he examines Heather McHugh’s poem “I Knew I’d Sing” which presents an incident: her mother washed her mouth out with a family sized bar of Ivory soap when she said the word, c---. He found it “an amazing joining of form and content” but I felt the last line sort of clunked, which I suppose is a form of closure. And later “Brahma” by Phillip Nast presents a sexual relationship in the metaphor of a bull-rider.  Rosen's poem, "Apple Tree," I found the most offensive of all because it describes, in gleeful terms, boys bullying an old woman.

I believe that very good poems are situated in the body; good poems are physical and engage all the five senses, but after considering these selections, I had started to wonder about Dobyns and his motives. Maybe he reached for somewhat racy poems to enliven what might be a dull topic, and maybe he did not consider or care that he comes across as sexist, heterosexist or as--to use an old-fashioned and possibly trite phrase--a funny uncle.  Also he tended to use more poems written by men (eighteen) than women (seven).  Overall, the selection was not balanced, and I’m wondering how balanced are his conclusions. 

As if in response to my question, he includes a chapter “Moral Inquiry” which claims that “a poem or a piece of fiction is, among other things, an instrument of moral inquiry.”  He goes into matter of taste, aesthetic judgment, the context of the times, and concludes that in poetry, nothing is off limits and “to be disturbed is as valuable as an aesthetic experience as to be pleased.” 

But, is it valuable to be disturbed in the way that pornography disturbs? This too has often been described or dismissed an aesthetic choice. It’s so much more complicated; it exploits or distorts love, women, children, relationship and seems to primarily render those in images of power and control. People try to protect their children from it.  Pornography arouses sexual feelings; it is not valuable for community.  I’m not saying that the few poems he uses for examination are pornographic, but that he  uses sexual images. He raises a question, and I raise a question as well. Is it appropriate? Is it useful? 

In other respects, I was satisfied with his ideas in this book and the other work he selected for analysis: WB Yeats, Yannis Ritsos, Walt Whitman, Zbigniew Herbert, Louise Glück, Jane Kenyon. Many of the poets included I was familiar with; a few I was not and welcomed the opportunity to consider their work. 

The book comes to a crescendo with the last chapter “The Nature of Metaphor,” an ambitious synthesis of what’s known about the development of language, the historical role of the poet, and the use of metaphor.  Unfortunately, this chapter also traces the rise of the patriarchy.  Leonard Schlain, in his book The Alphabet and The Goddess, did note that the rise of patriarchy coincides with the development of written word.  Written language made thinking more linear. The only woman mentioned in the chapter on Metaphor was that the courts often paid to poets salaries in eons past, possibly either in cattle or a slave-woman.  When one runs into this habit that some men have of not apprehending history, it's frustrating. He assumes the poets were all men. Has Dobyns heard of Sappho?  

So in summary, if you want to read a great book, read his other book: Best Words, Best Order.  If you love poetry like I do, and if you don't mind spending a day reading a middling book which both bores and provokes, read this one. 

_____

Finnish Women Poets

Because my grandparents immigrated from Finland, and the language of Finnish was lost in me, I often wondered about the poets and writers of that country.  Thinking perhaps that their work was also part of my literary heritage, I searched for their work and found that yes, there was a common root.  This essay traces the history of Edith Irene Södergran, Kirsti Simonsuuri, and Marja-Liisa Vartio.

Blind Pig: Distilling the Language

Lorine Niedecker called making poems "condensery."  It's true; poems must be distilled.  The language is compressed, and poets use line breaks and enjambment in order to create ambiguity and add meaning.  My mother was born right before Prohibition.  Many people built their own stills, called Blind Pigs, and distilled their own liquor. It was illegal, and the results uneven, but it happened.  The image of a still comes to mind when I think about the process of turning language into poems. One must take lessons in compression.

Dancing with the Past

Wonderful poets draw from their own personal history as well as their community or nation's history: Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Wislawa Szymborska, Yannis Ritsos, Rita Dove, Natasha Trethewey, Li-Young Lee, Joy Harjo. 

All writers have these wells of experience.  For many writers who attend writing workshops, the question emerges about how to develop raw material -- a writing exercise, journal entry, or a memory -- into an art.  How do you take a memory and turn it into a poem or a story?

Things, people, places are the basic building blocks of all writing. These quickly focus the writer; a story emerges; the subject arrives. As a teacher, I ask students who are starting a new piece of writing to start from a person, place or thing.

Develop Your Sources

Where do you get material?  Each person, no matter what, has rich sources in the surroundings: the places, people and things. I encourage poets to spend time developing their sources by researching personal history, the history of the place you grew up and live, and the connected events and people. The web offers some useful (and free) tools like Scoop It or Storify. These allow you to collect your links, youtube videos, images, and articles in one place. Here is the collection of materials I've found for my new manuscript. Some of the material directly inspires creative work. I have written poems based on photographs or letters. I've used techniques like persona poems, lists, prayers, songs, stories with this material. It provides me with background and understanding for the work.

http://www.scoop.it/t/vermilion-trail

This serves as a map to places and people. I also use other more personal sources, letters and photographs in the family archive, but this widens my material and enriches the personal stories.

Make your own map and develop your own historical archive. It will reward you with images.

Learn to Use Figurative Language

Work with Images

The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes can be a valuable text for poets.  I’ve gathered some insights from this excellent resource and present them here:

The painter Degas said he had many ideas for poems but couldn’t manage to say what he wanted. His friend, Mallarme, replied, “My dear Degas, one does not make poetry with ideas but with words.”  

There are two kinds of writing: literal and figurative. A literal image remakes something in words; it works as a photograph. A figurative image (also called a trope) will:

• expand the sensory perception beyond the literal meaning

• give pleasure or surprise to the imagination

• impart vigor by the inclusion of another active sensory detail

• intensify the deeper intention in the poem by adding the new dimension of the figurative image

Examples:  
Simile - a comparison that uses the word as or like

Silken Tent
by Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Metaphor -  “this is that” -- it transfers the meaning of one thing to another thing

754/   My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
Emily Dickinson

My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods --
And now We hunt the Doe --
And every time I speak for Him --
The Mountains straight reply --

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow --
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through --

And when at Night -- Our good Day done --
I guard My Master's Head --
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow -- to have shared --

To foe of His -- I'm deadly foe --
None stir the second time --
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye --
Or an emphatic Thumb --

Though I than He -- may longer live
He longer must -- than I --
For I have but the power to kill,
Without -- the power to die --

Besides simile and metaphor, a poet can employ other tropes or techniques:  

Synesthesia : one sense expressed in the terms of another

A crinkled paper makes a brilliant sound (Wallace Stevens)
And the Sabbath rang slowly/ In the pebbles of the holy streams (Dylan Thomas)
I stayed overnight at a motel by the E3./In my room a smell I'd felt before (Tomas Tranströmer)
Use of associations

• Metonymy: an identifying emblem is substituted for the whole name, ex: a red, for communist; old salt, for sailor;

           Her voice is full of money.  (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

• Synecdoche:  a piece of part of the whole represents the whole (keeps to itself for the representing image) ex: redneck

Personification- gives human qualities to a thing or to something not human

Figurative language greatly enhances the power of a poem.  

Source:

Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poetry. c2001. Harcourt Books. Florida.

Buy this book at your local bookstore or from Amazon.com -- http://amzn.to/UGYkZ5