Poetry Forum

Poetry, that is. I've read threads on American forums saying that poetry there is mostly written by attendees and especially tutors on university writing courses (which are *huge* business there), so they publish lots, especially in the journals, to further their careers. And it all gets a bit in-bred and academic, to the extent that the US public rarely buys poetry any more - it no longer has mainstream appeal. Apologies for the huge generalisations there, but that was the gist of the thread.

I don't think the situation is quite so divided here, I think poetry probably does sell more generally (though only in small numbers). I notice that Carol Ann Duffy's books were on Waterstone's 3 for 2 promotion recently, for example, and my local shop (admittedly a 2 university city) has quite a large poetry section, and not just collections from dead poets. Do you think that poetry is bought by those who don't attempt to write it?

I think things in UK are a little different to USA, though they probably won't remain so for long. There's a distinct American poetry and poet, I think, lauded by writing colleges and universities. Whatever its merits, it certainly has little mainstream appeal, but then it consists to a great part of interior monologues to the nth degree, so no great surprise.Like you I'm generalising. A little.

Well, Ros, the U.S. poetry scene is much more dire than you suggest. The contributing factors far too many to be able to address succinctly. At this moment two salients of the problem come to mind. Creative Writing programs have crancked out so many certified poets, sort of like in mass-production fashion, the art has become devalued. Also there is that professional poetry circuits (pejoratively known as po-biz) have become closed unions, with poetry editors (editors in order to make a living) carrying the stuff of other poetry editors also only editors because they are looking to make a living and carrying the poetry of poetry teachers who, similarly, are only teachers because they need to make a living. With so much inbreeding, as you put it, what is there to interest the general reader in a poem? And I am not even touching upon the agenda driven programs such as Lang Po and New Formalism whose stridency tends to be off-putting.

The last time poetry in America could speak of something amounting to popular appeal would have been fifty years ago with both the Beat poets and the so-called Confessional poets. Curiously perhaps, both groups continue to get soundly trounced by professional poets and students of poetry today. In my estimation, American poetry of the last half-decade has become as much a back water, a provincial affair, as was the case when E.A. Poe railed against American letters because of how it kow towed to British letters in his life time.

But you know something? There are actually many Americas. The U.S. is only one. To the north of us I find vibrancy in a poetry reading public. To the south I find a multi-valenced vibrancy.

Tere

We do, of course, or we should. Hardly anybody else does. But they should too.

David wrote:We do, of course, or we should. Hardly anybody else does. But they should too.

Should they? Or has poetry lost touch with the common man? There are several poetry forums and poetry sites churning out 'poetry' on the Internet and the poems get a fairly good readership, at the same time Poetry is undergoing a decline in readership. Is that because it has become too intellectual? For just one example Auden was quite a straight forward writer and thus could appeal to the hearts of the 'common man', writers like Wendy Cope still do and still have an audience. Has poetry as a whole just got too clever for it's own good?

Going off subject a little, I imagine a little test. I have £15 to spare, am I going to spend it on a new CD by Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire or Regina Spektor (whom I have recently fallen in love with) or a new book of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage or Wendy Cope, all of whom I like very much. The music wins every time and I'm not even sure why! It would just seem absurd to do otherwise.

Is the question "who reads poetry?" or "who buys poetry?"

Ray's comment above is indicative of a growing trend I think. I don't have the statistics to support this, but I imagine there are more people reading poetry these days thanks to the internet. And yet, that is probably the same reason less people are spending their hard earned pennies on poetry books. Having been using online poetry forms for a couple of years, I am often amazed by other users who don't read much poetry at all, beyond the site they use. This baffles me.

As for Ray's comment on the absurdity of buying poetry before music, well, I would say that what with the myriad ways of finding free music on the web, paying for music these days goes beyond the absurd into the realms of quaintness. Though, agreed, buying anything by Wendy Cope would be quite absurd.

B.

~

I think there are definitely different kinds of poetry. There's accessible stuff, and then there's also stuff that tends to be appreciated by literature types like us. Some poet's get described as poet's poets - and I think that can be very often true that only another poet can appreciate the artistry that's gone into something. Saying that though, some talented poets managed to combine the two

I think in today's world, people expect things on a plate. Poetry often needs some work to read, and often people can't be bothered/don't have the skills.
On a side note - poetry books are very expensive compared to novels and that puts people off buying I think at times.

Brian - apart from the odd youtube listen, I always buy the cd/mp3 rather than rip the music from somewhere - same as if I really like an author, I always try and buy the book.It only seems fair somehow
Sharra
xx

I'd just like to confess that my posed test is entirely hypothetical as the only shopping I have done for myself in the last 25 years have been monthly visits to the second hand Amnesty bookshop.It's not even the Asbo's that restrict my freedom, more that my wife has kindly taken responsibility for my personal needs, like clothes and stuff. So to put the question another way 'cause I know Brian has a penchant for Uncle Len, would you want to listen to Leonard Cohen for 30 minutes or any poet you care to name for the same length of time? Again, for me Leonard wins every time. Is it just conditioning or something more basic than that? Perhaps music has something intrinsically more vital to us than mere words? Gone way off topic, I know.
Reference to Sharra's remarks,appreciating the artistry, the craft that has gone into something is very often not the same as enjoying it. I prefer the latter!

I've been thinking about the question, 'who reads poetry?' It occurs to me that, at least on one level, the answer to the question comes down to another question: why do poetry readers turn to poetry?

Over the last decade I've met many people online, on poetry boards, in poetry chat rooms, and on poetry blogs, who in many cases have come to poetry for the first time in their life. Sometimes they are young, sometimes in mid-life, and sometimes they are retired. What they tend to have in common is a relative degree of passionate interest in poetry. While they tend to be women I've also noted the men, often middle aged, who one would take as hard headed, no-nonsense, pragmatic, even business-like. I've also noted that often these poetry readers are in the midst of some sort of life-crisis. Divorce, death, and sometimes just that queasy, and existential, sense that they've lost something essential in their lives.

So I think at least a partial answer to the why of poetry reading involves people looking for something they cannot find elsewhere, people with a certain need that has been failed by religion, family, the material pursuit of happiness, society's sense of the meaningful life, a job, a profession, perhaps even science and the pursuit of things intellectual.

I can think of another kind of poetry reader and here too I am guessing this sort of reader comes to poetry for something she cannot find any where else. There is a great story the American poet, Paul Blackburn, told of waking up one morning in Malaga (I think it was Malaga), stepping out onto his balcony and hearing a peasant street sweeper on the street below reciting a Lorca poem. The act itself, occuring in the mid-fifties, would have been subversive. Franco was very much alive and it was his Fascist soldiers who, in '37?, had murdered Lorca. In the movie about Che's trans-American motorcycle ride, called "The Motorcycle Diaries", Che and his friend are picked up by a peasant or a farmer or a worker. In the truck he recites lines from a Neruda poem. Back in the seventies I had a similar experience when I found a worker in a bar reciting from a published poem of mine. The poem, by means of depicting a bucolic scene, a moment experienced in a forest one day, amounts to an explicit rejection of everything towny, even urban. It ends with the line: Go f**k your cars, go s**t on your lies. Certainly not great poetry, maybe not even good poetry, but something spoke to this hard hat who was a stranger to me.

So this would be my answer. People read poetry who are looking for something they cannot find elsewhere.

Tere

I've come back to add that my answer may be vectored by my own reason for reading poetry.

t

To all the above my madness has kicked in’
What is poetry???????????its between Chaucer, Shakespeare and Spike Milligan. i read it
What about the poetry of an AH-64-apache attack helicopter lifting off???????????
Or the poetry of a painting isle of the dead Blocken????????????
Poetry is a force that course the veins at all altitudes, it’s a visual language, its passions can be fickle,
Then the batty grandiose Sharra (saying it’s only appreciated by types like us) I’am I included in there,
Out side that circle is the great unwashed, if i can get help even its on a polystyrene plate I’am
grateful, from my tepee. Terreson ( with in breading, closed unions, the meaning of life thing) ben
Johnson (poetry is out of touch with the common people) who’s the common people????????
You sound like the uncorrupted intellectual race of academics,

American poetry is the air shaft sunk into the mine to let the common people breath,
Black mans rap/??????????????????????????
The American poetry brain is put in boiling water and poached, then the reader dips the
end of the asparagus to test,, to see if they are battery hens????????????, their poetry suffers from the poetes, who write drunk, or shot,or druged, or after a heavy fall,
American poets eat their young ,,,go to the bottle shop,,, to pick beers,,, gun,,, bullets
and women,,,,, all before they get home, , After the eviction of their bowels into the toilet
some of their poetry is a little above the intelligence of a child molester but that ‘s America,

some of the most luscious poetry, the most melodious, the most exhilarating, comes from the
british, the dead poets they never yielded, their poetry came from lampblack each night the ink the
blood. i read Spencer, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, these men and a few more are the gyroscopic stabilizer
To all poetry vast work,,,,, (the lady of shallot),,,,, their nebula will always shine,
You talk about the American poet and their leaches, that’s capitalism, nothing but a black hole
Into which all their bullshit will be swilled, American doctorial science, but it will just die slowly
In a few years god with binoculars will not be able see these poems.
tool

(Even extreme gangster rap mellow style, is pimp, AK-47 p0ety,) tool
know i don't read american poetry, well E A poe, emily dickinson,R W emerson walt whitman.

tool wrote:To all the above my madness has kicked in’
What is poetry???????????its between Chaucer, Shakespeare and Spike Milligan. i read it
What about the poetry of an AH-64-apache attack helicopter lifting off???????????
Or the poetry of a painting isle of the dead Blocken????????????
Poetry is a force that course the veins at all altitudes, it’s a visual language, its passions can be fickle,
Then the batty grandiose Sharra (saying it’s only appreciated by types like us) I’am I included in there,
Out side that circle is the great unwashed, if i can get help even its on a polystyrene plate I’am
grateful, from my tepee. Terreson ( with in breading, closed unions, the meaning of life thing) ben
Johnson (poetry is out of touch with the common people) who’s the common people????????
You sound like the uncorrupted intellectual race of academics,

American poetry is the air shaft sunk into the mine to let the common people breath,
Black mans rap/??????????????????????????
The American poetry brain is put in boiling water and poached, then the reader dips the
end of the asparagus to test,, to see if they are battery hens????????????, their poetry suffers from the poetes, who write drunk, or shot,or druged, or after a heavy fall,
American poets eat their young ,,,go to the bottle shop,,, to pick beers,,, gun,,, bullets
and women,,,,, all before they get home, , After the eviction of their bowels into the toilet
some of their poetry is a little above the intelligence of a child molester but that ‘s America,

some of the most luscious poetry, the most melodious, the most exhilarating, comes from the
british, the dead poets they never yielded, their poetry came from lampblack each night the ink the
blood. i read Spencer, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, these men and a few more are the gyroscopic stabilizer
To all poetry vast work,,,,, (the lady of shallot),,,,, their nebula will always shine,
You talk about the American poet and their leaches, that’s capitalism, nothing but a black hole
Into which all their bullshit will be swilled, American doctorial science, but it will just die slowly
In a few years god with binoculars will not be able see these poems.
tool

(Even extreme gangster rap mellow style, is pimp, AK-47 p0ety,) tool
know i don't read american poetry, well E A poe, emily dickinson,R W emerson walt whitman.

Tool. How apt.

B.

~

tool wrote: To all the above my madness has kicked in’
What is poetry???????????its between Chaucer, Shakespeare and Spike Milligan. i read it
What about the poetry of an AH-64-apache attack helicopter lifting off???????????
Or the poetry of a painting isle of the dead Blocken????????????
Poetry is a force that course the veins at all altitudes, it’s a visual language, its passions can be fickle,
Then the batty grandiose Sharra (saying it’s only appreciated by types like us) I’am I included in there,
Out side that circle is the great unwashed, if i can get help even its on a polystyrene plate I’am
grateful, from my tepee. Terreson ( with in breading, closed unions, the meaning of life thing) ben
Johnson (poetry is out of touch with the common people) who’s the common people????????
You sound like the uncorrupted intellectual race of academics,

American poetry is the air shaft sunk into the mine to let the common people breath,
Black mans rap/??????????????????????????
The American poetry brain is put in boiling water and poached, then the reader dips the
end of the asparagus to test,, to see if they are battery hens????????????, their poetry suffers from the poetes, who write drunk, or shot,or druged, or after a heavy fall,
American poets eat their young ,,,go to the bottle shop,,, to pick beers,,, gun,,, bullets
and women,,,,, all before they get home, , After the eviction of their bowels into the toilet
some of their poetry is a little above the intelligence of a child molester but that ‘s America,

some of the most luscious poetry, the most melodious, the most exhilarating, comes from the
british, the dead poets they never yielded, their poetry came from lampblack each night the ink the
blood. i read Spencer, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, these men and a few more are the gyroscopic stabilizer
To all poetry vast work,,,,, (the lady of shallot),,,,, their nebula will always shine,
You talk about the American poet and their leaches, that’s capitalism, nothing but a black hole
Into which all their bullshit will be swilled, American doctorial science, but it will just die slowly
In a few years god with binoculars will not be able see these poems.
tool

(Even extreme gangster rap mellow style, is pimp, AK-47 p0ety,) tool
know i don't read american poetry, well E A poe, emily dickinson,R W emerson walt whitman.

^ There's something insanely brilliant about all that. Will you be my personal guru?

Will everyone stop repeating the whole thing? Bandwidth, and all that, you know...server space... sheesh