"....given the current state of poetry that I’ve just noted, it’s not clear there can be a poet for the ages in our culture”
I think most of poetry is in the form of song lyrics these days. “Electric gold our love with tender care, hills of satin grass and maiden's fair.”— Flower Power, From the Fires, Greta Van Fleet. And, from the last century “And she’s buy-ying a stairway to hea-ven”…
Even better than reading it out loud is out loud with a pirate accent! It works with any poetry. But only works if out loud. I’ll start you off with Yeats.
"....given the current state of poetry that I’ve just noted, it’s not clear there can be a poet for the ages in our culture"
This is a question--a fact--that I've also pondered quite often. Can we have a great poet in the 21st century? If not, why?
I also taught high school literature for 16 years, and I found my students loved poetry--and this was in a rural district in Michigan, not a prep, private, or parochial school. These were farm kids and poor kids, some "country suburban," but very few "literary."
But what I noticed was that most Modernist and nearly all Postmodernist poetry was generally disliked. You'd think they'd like free verse, clever tricks, poems on "current" themes using natural everyday language--and once in awhile they'd be amused by this sort of verse--but not usually. They found it eye-rolling. So "hip" it was boring. "That's not poetry!" was a common exclamation. While I could over time help them understand Pound, Sexton, WC Williams, and the rest, that was all I could do. They might appreciate one or two 20th century authors, but they'd "like" none of it.
No, they loved rhyme. Rhythm. Formal patterns. Universal, even "outdated" themes (such as gallantry and honor.) Some of my fondest memories are reading aloud Homer and Frost and seeing them respond so positively. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" was a perpetual favorite. Shakespeare's sonnets, even.
But I couldn't push it too far. If verse became too "complicated" or esoteric, they'd shut down. Unlike you, I had little success with Eliot. Not because, I think, they didn't enjoy Prufrock, but they didn't have the antenna for it. And in the short time they sat in my classroom I could not bridge that gaping void. My teenagers' reading was universally unpoetic. YA and middle grade fiction. Modern commercial novels. Memes. The visual vs. written. It's hard to appreciate Pope or Dryden if approached "cold turkey."
Like you, I love poetry. I do keep hope alive for it to regain its exalted status, but (not to sound too elitist) it will take a cultural shift away from the obsession with trite, "easy," mundane, personal-confessional--even solipsistic topics and styles. And that will only come if, God willing, our culture shifts first.
Heh. I wouldn't say I had "success" with Eliot and "Prufrock"... I just found *myself* enjoying the experience of reading "Prufrock" aloud to a reasonably appreciative audience.
But yes, I think we need a massive shift both in culture and in the nature of the poetry we are writing (and reading) to revive the even the possibility of a "poet for the ages" coming out of our culture. My godson, Jesse K. Butler, might be a candidate, along with some of the other new formalists, but even much of the poetry that I've seen them get published does tend towards personal-confessional lines.
Perhaps that's one reason why Linda Pastan's strongly imagistic Eve "rubbing her eyes awake" struck me so powerfully: while there's still a personal-confessional element to it, there's also something universal and powerful in the choice and the use of the image, along the lines of what C.S. Lewis is getting at in "A Confession".
And it's fascinating to hear your students' reactions to Modernist and Postmodernist poetry, which so closely mirrors my own, as captured in the "Free Verse" poem I wrote way back when I was a student in Creative Writing 11:
Why is Substack's text-editing experience so inconsistent?!? I suppose it may be by design, in order to prioritize the long-form content that is the beating heart of the platform, but it's so frustrating to have the post editor do beautiful curly quotes and em-dashes and make poetry a first-class citizen with a special tool for preserving poetic formatting - and then not have access to any of those tools (especially the latter!) when engaging in a discussion about poetry in the comments section!
Even more mysteriously, when one shares one of these comments to the Notes, one gets access to a limited subset of those tools via the Notes editor, which you can then use to spruce up your Note - but those changes don't carry back over into the original comment!
You can't even post a picture in a comment, which was going to be my solution to fixing the formatting of my "Free Verse" poem which displayed properly when I pasted it into the comment editor, but then turned into a rigidly consistently double-spaced mess when I actually posted the comment. So, instead, I guess my only solution here is to link to where I've posted the poem previously, on a different (and much older) platform, which actually let me format it properly! https://blog.ehewlett.net/2011/11/free-verse.html
"....given the current state of poetry that I’ve just noted, it’s not clear there can be a poet for the ages in our culture”
I think most of poetry is in the form of song lyrics these days. “Electric gold our love with tender care, hills of satin grass and maiden's fair.”— Flower Power, From the Fires, Greta Van Fleet. And, from the last century “And she’s buy-ying a stairway to hea-ven”…
Even better than reading it out loud is out loud with a pirate accent! It works with any poetry. But only works if out loud. I’ll start you off with Yeats.
Arrr… Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
(Arr…) But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
"....given the current state of poetry that I’ve just noted, it’s not clear there can be a poet for the ages in our culture"
This is a question--a fact--that I've also pondered quite often. Can we have a great poet in the 21st century? If not, why?
I also taught high school literature for 16 years, and I found my students loved poetry--and this was in a rural district in Michigan, not a prep, private, or parochial school. These were farm kids and poor kids, some "country suburban," but very few "literary."
But what I noticed was that most Modernist and nearly all Postmodernist poetry was generally disliked. You'd think they'd like free verse, clever tricks, poems on "current" themes using natural everyday language--and once in awhile they'd be amused by this sort of verse--but not usually. They found it eye-rolling. So "hip" it was boring. "That's not poetry!" was a common exclamation. While I could over time help them understand Pound, Sexton, WC Williams, and the rest, that was all I could do. They might appreciate one or two 20th century authors, but they'd "like" none of it.
No, they loved rhyme. Rhythm. Formal patterns. Universal, even "outdated" themes (such as gallantry and honor.) Some of my fondest memories are reading aloud Homer and Frost and seeing them respond so positively. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" was a perpetual favorite. Shakespeare's sonnets, even.
But I couldn't push it too far. If verse became too "complicated" or esoteric, they'd shut down. Unlike you, I had little success with Eliot. Not because, I think, they didn't enjoy Prufrock, but they didn't have the antenna for it. And in the short time they sat in my classroom I could not bridge that gaping void. My teenagers' reading was universally unpoetic. YA and middle grade fiction. Modern commercial novels. Memes. The visual vs. written. It's hard to appreciate Pope or Dryden if approached "cold turkey."
Like you, I love poetry. I do keep hope alive for it to regain its exalted status, but (not to sound too elitist) it will take a cultural shift away from the obsession with trite, "easy," mundane, personal-confessional--even solipsistic topics and styles. And that will only come if, God willing, our culture shifts first.
Thanks for a great post.
Heh. I wouldn't say I had "success" with Eliot and "Prufrock"... I just found *myself* enjoying the experience of reading "Prufrock" aloud to a reasonably appreciative audience.
But yes, I think we need a massive shift both in culture and in the nature of the poetry we are writing (and reading) to revive the even the possibility of a "poet for the ages" coming out of our culture. My godson, Jesse K. Butler, might be a candidate, along with some of the other new formalists, but even much of the poetry that I've seen them get published does tend towards personal-confessional lines.
Perhaps that's one reason why Linda Pastan's strongly imagistic Eve "rubbing her eyes awake" struck me so powerfully: while there's still a personal-confessional element to it, there's also something universal and powerful in the choice and the use of the image, along the lines of what C.S. Lewis is getting at in "A Confession".
And it's fascinating to hear your students' reactions to Modernist and Postmodernist poetry, which so closely mirrors my own, as captured in the "Free Verse" poem I wrote way back when I was a student in Creative Writing 11:
Today
Our verses are free:
Shed are the shackles
That chained them to convention.
All subjects are now suitable.
Rhyme and rhythm
Are outcasts,
punctuation and patterns
insignificant
Where
Is one to start?
Unwritten laws
Declare glory and honour with War
Incompatible.
Instead,
One is free to write about Anything
In Anymanner,
especially
the insignificant
Perhaps,
Despite their restraints and their fetters,
Rhythm and rhyme are the betters
Of man's inherent anarchy
Now manifest in poetry.
Why is Substack's text-editing experience so inconsistent?!? I suppose it may be by design, in order to prioritize the long-form content that is the beating heart of the platform, but it's so frustrating to have the post editor do beautiful curly quotes and em-dashes and make poetry a first-class citizen with a special tool for preserving poetic formatting - and then not have access to any of those tools (especially the latter!) when engaging in a discussion about poetry in the comments section!
Even more mysteriously, when one shares one of these comments to the Notes, one gets access to a limited subset of those tools via the Notes editor, which you can then use to spruce up your Note - but those changes don't carry back over into the original comment!
You can't even post a picture in a comment, which was going to be my solution to fixing the formatting of my "Free Verse" poem which displayed properly when I pasted it into the comment editor, but then turned into a rigidly consistently double-spaced mess when I actually posted the comment. So, instead, I guess my only solution here is to link to where I've posted the poem previously, on a different (and much older) platform, which actually let me format it properly! https://blog.ehewlett.net/2011/11/free-verse.html