Just curious. Maybe the title is more inflammatory than it needs to be.
For a year or two, to help my writing, I've been reading poetry from "Best loved poems of the American people." a bit most days.
For the past few weeks I've been looking around at currently produced poetry. Some from the poetry magazine and other stuff from books on amazon.
What struck me like a brick to the face, is that virtually all current poetry I've read screams at you to not care... it's self centered, about the person, you have to dig deep to get any meaning, and most importantly imo, you are given no desire to remember the poem.
Maybe people have just abandoned the idea of people, other than themselves or people deeply invested in poetry, valuing their poems as anything other than wisps of passing, dancing pointless words begging to be forgotten.(I actually own the book "Beautiful and pointless: A guide to modern poetry." I just got it, but wanted to ask this before I was indoctrinated into the official explanations lol.)
My objectivity is obviously compromised since I've been reading from a "best loved" collection... but I still haven't come across anything in current poetry that makes me want to say "Hey, I want to memorize this poem because I'll feel like a better person for knowing it." Whereas in that collection I have, there are many I feel that way about.
Even deeply meaningful poems like the ones the President likes, about social issues and such, just feel like they're crafted as much as possible to be forgotten and thrown away as you feel good about yourself for patronizing threatened art forms that's hard to give a damn about.
We're wired, even if we care deeply, to gloss over people talking about themselves. In a novel that's overcome with connection, with depth. The problem is anything deep in these poems I'm reading ripples so gently in impossibly light-weight verse it's hard to even recognize meaning or tension on the fourth or fifth read through. By then you've probably gone on to other poems looking for actual meaning... or at least continuing your ride atop their verse, meant to be discarded the moment it's read. I'm probably automatically a heretic for asking this question, but is rhyme a four letter word now even though it has five? Or is popularity with common people scorned? I thought that guys trick with the raven was pretty great, a common man's poem from the ground up.
I don't know, maybe if there's something that feels catchy about it, a contemporary poet makes a song out of the verse instead... All we're seeing is the pretty but effectively pointless stuff.
I just see a place for poetry right now. Something a little bigger than a soundbite, but smaller than a news article or blog post and far more memorable. Like a meme but text only, bigger than ascii art but more appealing to the grey matter than another self improvement quote. Right now poetry seems more like masterwork pencil drawings commissioned to adorn the back of throw away 1-day buss passes.
TL;DR: All the contemporary poetry I can find supports the idea that poetry is an art form that wants to die. It's pretty but quickly consumed and easily forgotten. I would *love* to be proven wrong. I'm talking about consumption by regular people, i.e. the people who used to care the most about a well turned verse.
For a year or two, to help my writing, I've been reading poetry from "Best loved poems of the American people." a bit most days.
For the past few weeks I've been looking around at currently produced poetry. Some from the poetry magazine and other stuff from books on amazon.
What struck me like a brick to the face, is that virtually all current poetry I've read screams at you to not care... it's self centered, about the person, you have to dig deep to get any meaning, and most importantly imo, you are given no desire to remember the poem.
Maybe people have just abandoned the idea of people, other than themselves or people deeply invested in poetry, valuing their poems as anything other than wisps of passing, dancing pointless words begging to be forgotten.(I actually own the book "Beautiful and pointless: A guide to modern poetry." I just got it, but wanted to ask this before I was indoctrinated into the official explanations lol.)
My objectivity is obviously compromised since I've been reading from a "best loved" collection... but I still haven't come across anything in current poetry that makes me want to say "Hey, I want to memorize this poem because I'll feel like a better person for knowing it." Whereas in that collection I have, there are many I feel that way about.
Even deeply meaningful poems like the ones the President likes, about social issues and such, just feel like they're crafted as much as possible to be forgotten and thrown away as you feel good about yourself for patronizing threatened art forms that's hard to give a damn about.
We're wired, even if we care deeply, to gloss over people talking about themselves. In a novel that's overcome with connection, with depth. The problem is anything deep in these poems I'm reading ripples so gently in impossibly light-weight verse it's hard to even recognize meaning or tension on the fourth or fifth read through. By then you've probably gone on to other poems looking for actual meaning... or at least continuing your ride atop their verse, meant to be discarded the moment it's read. I'm probably automatically a heretic for asking this question, but is rhyme a four letter word now even though it has five? Or is popularity with common people scorned? I thought that guys trick with the raven was pretty great, a common man's poem from the ground up.
I don't know, maybe if there's something that feels catchy about it, a contemporary poet makes a song out of the verse instead... All we're seeing is the pretty but effectively pointless stuff.
I just see a place for poetry right now. Something a little bigger than a soundbite, but smaller than a news article or blog post and far more memorable. Like a meme but text only, bigger than ascii art but more appealing to the grey matter than another self improvement quote. Right now poetry seems more like masterwork pencil drawings commissioned to adorn the back of throw away 1-day buss passes.
TL;DR: All the contemporary poetry I can find supports the idea that poetry is an art form that wants to die. It's pretty but quickly consumed and easily forgotten. I would *love* to be proven wrong. I'm talking about consumption by regular people, i.e. the people who used to care the most about a well turned verse.
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