Has anybody read the July Harper’s Magazine article Poetry Slam Or, The decline of American Poetry by Mark Edmundson? (sorry, the article is behind a paywall). Or, maybe you saw Washington Post blog post on it?
If you haven’t heard about it, don’t worry, in spite of some deep digs at American poetry:
Poets now would quail before the injunction to justify God’s ways to man, or even man’s to God. No one would attempt an Essay on Humanity. No one would publicly say what Shelley did: that the reason he wrote his books was to change the world. But poets should wise up. They should see the limits emanating from the theoretical critics down the hall in the English department as what they are. Those strictures are not high-minded moral edicts but something a little closer to home. They are installments in the war of philosophy against poetry.
There has only been a minor kerfuffle over it. One blogger and poet calls it much ado about nada. Another acknowledges that Edmundson has some valid points but that his cynicism ruins any possibility of his criticism being useful. And still another takes the opportunity to make a tongue-in-cheek response to poetry criticism of this sort in general.
So, pretty much, whatever big blow-up Edmundson might have been hoping for, he didn’t get it. This tickles my funnybone.
It is interesting to note that Edmundson’s criticism focuses on “highly regarded contemporary poets” who are all in their fifties, sixties and older, as if there are no highly regarded poets under fifty. There are. Take, for example, our current Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey age 47. Or Richard Blanco, aged 45, the poet who wrote the poem for President Obama’s second inauguration.
Edmundson’s main criticism seems to be centered around what he sees as a lack of vision, ambition and grandeur in American Poetry. He complains that no one is writing big poems like Robert Lowell’s Waking Early Sunday Morning. No one dares say “we” or “our” or ventures any sort of unified vision. Everyone is too insular, too concerned about voice and the individual.
More than anything Edmundson’s criticism is less a criticism and more of an outline of his personal taste, of what kind of poetry he likes to read. And because there isn’t a lot of the kind of poetry he likes to read being written, American poetry in general has gone off the rails and is doomed. Well poetry has been doomed for decades but it isn’t dead yet. In fact, it shows vibrant signs of life for those who care to look beyond their own prescriptive box.
That there hasn’t been much of an uproar over Edmundson’s essay is heartening in one way; he doesn’t say anything new or interesting and so is not worthy of note. But in another way it is worrisome. That there hasn’t been much noise could also indicate that no one outside the small circle of poets and critics really cares all that much about poetry. I hope that isn’t the case. Or, maybe it’s just that not many people read Harper’s anymore so have no idea the essay even exists? I like the magazine and read it fairly regularly, but I don’t know that very many other people do, at least not in the numbers they used to.
What do you think? Does American poetry lack ambition and vision? Or is it doing just fine thank-you-very-much in all of its glorious variety?
I’ve read and heard this kind of thing all my life–free verse isn’t as good as formal poetry, modern stuff is too individual, too confessional, etc. I don’t think poetry as ever had a wider audience. When Pope wrote the Essay on Man, a poem circulated mostly in one language around the circles of folk educated enough to appreciate it.
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Jeanne, Same song, different verse, right? I get tired of it as a reader of poetry, as a poet you must be long past tired.
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What the people who promulgate this kind of critique of free verse seem to forget is how old free verse and modernism are at this point. They have generations of practitioners at this point. They are “traditional” in the sense that they have spawned their own traditions.
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Dr. Elizabeth, Edmundson doesn’t critic free verse, his beef is with American poetry in general and what he sees as a lack of expansiveness, vision and ambition. I don’t think he is at all concerned about how it is written, only about what is written.
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Now that I disagree with. Why go back as far as Pope? In the 19th century the audience for poetry was huge, a genuine mass audience. Books of poetry often were bestsellers; best-selling poets like Longfellow and Tennyson and Hugo became wealthy from their writing.
So there has been a decline from a Golden Age, but perhaps it is better described as a return to normal. The Golden Age was the unlikely fluke. Or such is my guess. No need to blame Modernism or creative writing programs or what have you.
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Tom, no need to go back to Pope. And since Edmundson is talking only about American poetry we can stick to Longfellow and even Whitman. And there does seem to have been a golden age of sorts for poetry that stretched from their time into the 20s and 30s. Then I think the novel took over. But poetry has always had pockets of popularity just never anything permanently central to American culture which is a shame really. I don’t agree with Edmundson that it has anything to do with a lack of ambition or vision.
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Is poetry even covered much in school these days? Without exposure, how can it flourish? Those of us for whom poetry was a required subject are getting older and older and will eventually vanish. Additionally, poetry is just one of those things one either likes or doesn’t like and how would one know if one isn’t exposed to it? I am not much of a poetry reader, not because I don’t like it but because I have fallen into a sort of comfort zone and really never think about picking up a volume. I think Ariel was probably the last volume of poetry I ever purchased…way back in the 70s. I really need to change that. But to answer your question, I think American Poetry is doing alright with those who like American Poetry, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing alright. Know what I mean?
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Grad, I do think poetry gets some exposure in schools but I fear it might be only passing notice during National Poetry Month, nothing sustained and deep. Which is a shame since one needs to learn how to read poetry just like one needs to learn how to read a novel. So that the people who do end up being poetry readers are self-selected one who take the time to learn how to read poetry on their own or seek out someone to teach them. Sad really. I think it’s time for you to buy a new poetry book if the last one you bought was Ariel 😉
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Isn’t this the same criticism leveled at novel writing–no one is writing the Great American novel, either? I wish I could comment on the current trends in American poetry, but you know this is a weak point in my reading. Surely, though, there must be many poets working and thriving and doing exciting things–but it sounds like maybe it’t not quite to the author’s tastes?
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Danielle, heh, yup, pretty much! I suppose it just goes to show what ever genre you write in there is always someone who thinks what’s being done is not good enough.
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So when Edmundson says that today’s poetry “does not traffic in the icons of pop culture,” I have to ask, have you read an entire generation of poets born after the 1970′s who writes as if pop culture were the only subject to encounter? Nothing limits their imaginations so much as pop culture does. It’s a false god. To write about the present requires a poet to aim for the future.
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Wilfredo, since Edmundson doesn’t mention any poets more recent than Sylvia Plath one has to wonder how much reading he has done past the 1970s. I agree that including pop culture in a poem doesn’t automatically make it more relevant.
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I love to read poetry but I would say I stick with certain themes and certain poets. I didn’t enjoy poetry much when I was in school just because we didn’t really cover much of it. So for a long time I guess I probably thought it had to be written a certain way and it was always going to be deep and complex. Then I started going to poetry slams and that was a fantastic way to “discover” poetry. I realized poetry can be anything.
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Iliana, oh yes, poetry can be anything can’t it? I think Edmundson takes much too narrow a view.
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I wonder if he was trying to create a fuss, get some excitement going about poetry? See if anyone wanted to debate it? I agree that the number of people who read poetry is small, and that it’s not taught properly in schools. I think that analyzing poetry in Grade 10 is like reading classics – it is forced down, like medicine, in clumps. I’m glad I discovered Jane Austen (so glad, she is one of my favourite writers), but I discovered her on my own, through the tv versions of her novels, not because I found her through any classes at university.
I think we have to make it pleasurable – I do know that of almost everyone I know, Robert Frost’s poems are among the most popular and read. Perhaps what Edmonston was getting at, was that poetry isn’t reaching out far enough, but then again, has he read The World’s Wife? Any Carol Ann Duffy? She is an amazing poet. As are the two you mention. There are so many good poets out there. I think though, it is a matter of keeping them in the public eye by using them as Obama does, and the UK does, by making poets part of the celebration of national events. Then people can get curious, and find out about them.
I’m not saying poetry shouldn’t be taught at school! far from it, I think it’s an essential way of seeing how words can be used, and language, to see form and shape differently, to make meaning be more than straight lines in novels. I also think that most poets write to take the singular, the individual, and try to find the commonality that everyone shares, which is what poets have been doing since day one.
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Pingback: Notes on Poetry III | DanielNester.com
So, i came late. I was in the woods. Could it be that poetry is more alive than it has been in ages? Isn’t poetry a forefront mark of its entire setting, for future generations to look back on and taste the essence of the world in that time? Perhaps all art, together, sure. Poetry can catch the moment and the decade at once like no other art. The uselessness of current poetry finds perfect balance when tossed in the corner against a heap of cd’s and dvd’s, who cumulatively depict our unique, seemingly unsalvageable situation.
You want to know what it feels like to achieve a summit, or come soaring down? I have a helmet cam, i’ll show you. I’ll tweet from the top on my satellite phone about how my legs feel, and my shortness of breath. Need to know what the firefight was like, i have a weapon mounted cam, i’ll show you. But why be so disengaged? Go get a modern warfare game, the suspense will be first person! If those topics should be left to journalists, and poets are supposed to be left the cleanup work, the emotional aftermath of life that can only be described, then poetry seems more alive than ever.
We may have broken away from meter in poetic ventures, but i feel it is in response to the seemingly unavoidable, and often now unattainable metered life. We have all manner of choices; ones carefully crafted by business, which will work for their future and greater prosperity. We can go and get a good education, and perhaps do an eternal service to the world and become professors. If only food and shelter grew naturally, we wouldn’t need any other jobs. The sole reason for everyones education could be to become educators! What a world! Universities would never be short of funds.
But hey, as long as we have a little food, a soft couch, climate control, we can handle a little ennui, and fend it off with little distractions. Why should it matter if they are written in binary code or 14 lines with a couplet? After all, no poem will ever inspire this country to endure the hardships required to find our own lives again.
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