I’m so behind on most things right now I’m actually writing this from the future trying to get caught up. No, not really because then I wouldn’t have to say, has anyone read the June 14th New York Times Magazine article by William Logan Poetry: Who Needs It? If I were writing from the future, today would be June 15th not June 30th.
It is not a wholly satisfying article, more fluff piece than anything. But it is amusing. For example:
The big magazines and even the newspapers began declining about the time they stopped printing poetry. (I know, I know — I’ve put the cause before the horse.) On the other hand, perhaps Congress started to decline when the office of poet laureate was created.
Logan comments that it is not a disaster that poetry is not popular, after all we don’t expect everyone to love the ballet. Poetry, he says, is “a major art with a minor audience” and that’s ok because
There are still those odd sorts, no doubt disturbed, and unsocial, and torturers of cats, who love poetry nevertheless. They come in ones or twos to the difficult monologues of Browning, or the shadowy quatrains of Emily Dickinson, or the awful but cheerful poems of Elizabeth Bishop, finding something there not in the novel or the pop song.
I laughed at this. I might be an odd sort though I suspect I’m not that odd. Of course I could be wrong. One of my coworkers is always telling me what a nerd I am. I am not disturbed nor do I torture cats (I could probably get Waldo and Dickens to vouch for me but they are cats so it could be risky because you just never know with them). Unsocial? Well, maybe a little. But not in a creepy serial killer or Unabomber kind of way. More like a leave-me-alone-I’m-reading unsocial, which to some people who are confirmed non-readers might actually fall in with the creepy serial killer or Unabomber unsocial sort. She was so quiet, kept to herself, always had her nose in a book, I never would have thought she would … fill in the blank. Yeah, just wait until I go off the deep end.
But I digress. Logan has a blue-sky proposal:
teach America’s kids to read by making them read poetry. Shakespeare and Pope and Milton by the fifth grade; in high school, Dante and Catullus in the original. By graduation, they would know Anne Carson and Derek Walcott by heart. A child taught to parse a sentence by Dickinson would have no trouble understanding Donald H. Rumsfeld’s known knowns and unknown unknowns.
Heh. Revealed! The real reason why Logan’s is a blue-sky proposal: the government doesn’t want us to be able to understand what they are saying. Or not saying as the case may be. I read poetry Mr. Rumsfeld, I saw through your verbal smokescreen from the start! If only that were the case with a large portion of America many terrible things might have been avoided.
Though I agree wholeheartedly with William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
I also agree with Logan:
You can live a full life without knowing a scrap of poetry, just as you can live a full life without ever seeing a Picasso or ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ Most people surround themselves with art of some sort, whether it’s by Amy Winehouse or Richard Avedon. Even the daubs on the refrigerator by the toddler artist have their place. Language gainfully employed has its place. Poetry will never have the audience of ‘Game of Thrones’ — that is what television can do. Poetry is what language alone can do.
Prose is good, don’t get me wrong. Most of what I read is prose. But poetry, it is something I can’t do without. It does things even the most poetic prose can never do. Now if you will excuse me, I think I shall go be unsocial and read a poem or two.
Man’s mind, what is it but a convex glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To re-unite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?
Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book (1869), Book X, ll. 1306-10.
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Oh Tom, perfect! 😀
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The glass chose to reflect only what he saw
Which was enough for his purpose: his image
Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle.
John Ashbery, Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
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Pykk, oh I love this! A poem quote to comment on a poem quote! Thank you!
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A slight unease with the marginal place poetry has in modern culture is, of course, old news. Orwell in about 1941/2 writes of poetry as being the “least tolerated” of all the arts. Even 100 years ago the leading English language poets,I suppose would have been Yeats, Hardy and Kipling and these had a worldwide fame that almost no poet enjoys today. And yet….poetry has survival value and the author of the piece is right about the art not ultimately needing a mass audience whereas the novel is perhaps diminished without at least the possibility of that. .
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Ian, it is old news just as the death of the book is old news, eh? It’s one of those cyclical things. An interesting thought, that prose might be diminished without a large audience. It certainly is a bigger time and money investment for artist and publisher. Hmm. Something to think about!
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I think Logan’s article is terrible, full of faulty assumptions and half-truths. And how gratuitous, to say that people who read poetry would torture cats!
One of the half-truths, though, is that teaching poetry as an art, rather than as self-expression, would be a good thing. I hate it when he says children should be “made” to read poetry, but I think it’s about time for a change in how we teach poetry, since so many people say they hate it because of the way it was taught to them.
I have been trying to read The Ring and the Book because Tom suggested it. And Aurora Lee, because Jenny (at Reading the End) suggested it. Long poems are not usually something I enjoy, except in small bits, like the one Tom quoted.
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Jeanne, most of it is tongue-in-cheek I think, an attempt to be funny and provocative that doesn’t quite work. I too think the way poetry is taught needs to be changed, I am not sure, but the way it was taught to me and the way it is taught now don’t work.
Good for you, going for the long poems! I’ve been meaning to read Aurora Lee for ages but haven’t managed to get to it yet. Those long poems do take a commitment that even a collection of shorter poems doesn’t require.
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That’s a great William Carlos Williams poem. You did make me laugh with “I am not disturbed nor do I torture cats (I could probably get Waldo and Dickens to vouch for me but they are cats so it could be risky because you just never know with them)”. I read mostly prose too, and I read far less poetry than I would like to, but I’d hate to think it disappeared.
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whisperinggums, WCW is a fantastic poet, one I would really like to read all of since every time I do read him I like him even more. I am glad I made you laugh 🙂
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You often do Stefanie – you have a lovely sense of humour. As for WCW, I need to check him out.
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Golly, thanks! Oh yes, if you’ve never read WCW, you are in for a treat 🙂
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Americans have never loved poetry more. They call it rap:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/29/americans-have-never-loved-poetry-more-but-they-call-it-rap.html
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Richard, I have to admit, that’s a good point!
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Love poetry (thank you, Mother, for access to your own books of poetry!) I have many poems or parts of poems by heart and love John Donne and Dylan Thomas, Yeats and Oliver–a wide variety of poets, style, and content. I do wish more learning and recitation of poetry were required for reasons beyond the beauty of the poems themselves.
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jenclair, I had a teacher in high school that made us memorize a few speeches in Shakespeare which came in handy in college because it really impressed a few professors. And the professor of a class I took on the Romantics required us to memorize 120 lines of poetry so I had the whole of Tintern Abbey at one point which was really something to know. Sadly I have forgotten most of it, but the experience of memorize gave me a great appreciation for the poem and the language. So I agree, I wish more learning of poetry involved recitation at the least, memorization at best.
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Bravo! Love, love, love this post. Well done! You know, though, “in my day” we did begin reading Shakespeare and Chaucer and Milton and Burns (actually, the first elementary school I attended was named after Robert Burns) by the eighth grade. Of course, beginning in the second grade I was sent to Catholic schools taught almost exclusively by nuns. We received a very good education in the 50s and 60s and by senior year of high school we were translating Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Galico How can we get back to teachers being able to be teachers in the classroom and not prison wardens? My friends who teach (taught) would love to be able to bring poetry and all other types of reading into the lives of their students. What’s the solution? Is there one? If you can light that kind of spark in a child, it stays with them forever.
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Grad, thanks! Let me just say wow about your education! I went to public school in the 70s and 80s and while I feel like I had a decent education I know it could have been better. But at least I came out of it loving to learn and have never stopped. I was in a teacher training program for a semester and quit because if became clear to me after visiting a number of high classrooms and talking to teachers that they spent more time managing the classroom and less and less time teaching. I don’t blame them, I blame government, parents and school administrators. I think part of the solution will require a cultural shift from seeing school as a place to pass tests and something to do in order to get a good job to a place for real learning, exploration and experimenting with the goal of forming a creative, thinking individual, not a worker bee.
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Ha! You nailed it! I, too, attempted a brief stint at teaching before I decided on a change in profession. Three days was all I could take. Everything hurt…my feet, my throat, my head, my spirit. Ever since then I get heated up when someone criticizes a teacher’s salary or the fact they get a fairly good vacation come summer. I can say with certainty that the vast majority of teachers need it!
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Grad, do you ever think about trying it again? Once in awhile I think, “maybe I should…” but then I hear a story on the news about new government rules or linking student test scores to teacher salaries and I change my mind.
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I really do feel as though I am missing out by not really reading poetry. I think it is going to hit me all of a sudden just like reading short stories did, and now you know how much of a convert I am. Maybe I need to choose one day a week and share a poem I have read. Just one poem a week? Surely I can do that? Will have to think on that one…. (It’s always good to have a set posting idea each week in any case). Are kids not taught poetry in school these days? Just like handwriting has gone by the wayside? I hope that is not the case. And I am un-social in just the same way you are! 😉
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Danielle, there is only one thing to do then, read some poetry! 😀 You know Cath and I would both be happy to talk poetry any time and make all sorts of suggestions! No pressure though! You could try signing up for the poetry.org poem a day, where a poem will magically appear in your email box. I think poetry gets sort of taught sometimes but not much time is actually spent on it sadly.
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