Miranda says, “There was a time, decades ago, when every schoolchild in this country memorized Shakespeare, Blake, Shelley. We were brought up on the poetry of human experience, and we turned to poets when we sought truth … Poets are still living. But there are fewer and fewer now, and it seems to many that the art has been diminished.”
What’s your take on this? Do you think, like Miranda, that poetry is diminishing partly because of poems that interest only the author and “the author’s illustration of prevailing ideas”?
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Shanxi, I need to think on your last point in that question, but I thought there was a relevant passage from when Roman was teaching and thought his students sought unmerited praise for mediocre works or as though there should be some democratic notion in academia that all aspiring poets had something to offer when they just don't.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think there's a general lack of respect for people who are truly gifted at distilling universal human experiences into words. There seems to be a shift toward more specifically subjective concerns. Christy mentions the students who want validation just for putting stuff out there, whether it's good or not. And it also brings to mind a culture flooded with forums for personal expression, complete with marketing and self-promotion. Everyone is clever. Everyone thinks their every thought is worth sharing and being "liked." The notion that truly meaningful expression is the product of a writer toiling alone, of a writer widely reading and studying, of a writer painstakingly honing a style and a voice seems, sadly, to have become quaint and rare.
ReplyDeleteI think it's significant that Roman comes from the business world and sees poetry mainly as a means to personal glory and success. One more field to conquer.
Also, there's an interesting parallel here with the writing students in "Beasts," particularly the girls writing the "confessional" stuff and expecting praise — and some self-serving pity? — for their "honesty," not realizing that honesty by itself — the mere process of vomiting up all your problems for the world to see — is more irritating than inviting, if you don't shape that outpouring into something artistic and enlightening and universal. Bernard, I think, understood this by his choice of subject matter: two men exploring the actual wilderness, which is an interesting and subtle vehicle for exploring one's interior wilderness.
ReplyDeleteInteresting question. I always enjoyed studying poetry in school, but I never read it anymore. Not sure why that is. I also remember trying to write poetry in high school and feeling slightly defensive about my poetry being graded. There was already this notion out there of encouraging kids to "express themselves" and that any kind of "expression" was worthwhile, etc. I remember writing some poem about my dad's passing and my teacher wrote on it, "I'm glad you can use poetry to express yourself during this difficult time." And I thought, does that mean my poem is crap but at least I "expressed myself"?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, it's hard not to think that poetry is diluted these days, at least compared to the days of Shakespeare or Blake. There are just too many other outlets for artistic types to use their creativity. And then there's the social media phenomenon that kc was referencing -- Any untalented schmo can "express themselves" 24 hours a day to the masses. There's no craft to most of the writing that gets put out there.
This is a hard topic for me to comment on, because I don't understand a lot of poetry. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but I have trouble distinguishing free verse from prose.
ReplyDeletePoetry that draws me in tends to be poetry with more complicated forms -- strong rhythm and rhyme or alliterative verse. If the average reader were like me, that would explain the diminished popularity of poetry. But I don't think the average reader is like me.
So, since I don't understand poetry for reasons that are probably different than why other people don't turn to it anymore, I really have no idea why they think the art is diminishing.