Great analysis, Nic. I appreciated your thoughts on form in particular.
If I could offer this: I think part of the problem is that there are, roughly, three poetry communities. Academic poetry (lit journals, university presses, etc.), popular poetry (Rupi Kaur, etc.), and everyone else. I would suggest that the first two groups haven't really been great stewards of the art form. I say that because it doesn't seem to me that they've done anything to increase popularity, interest or overall enthusiasm. In fact I'd say they've done a great job creating echo chambers.
That's why, bad poetry or not, I place my faith in that third group. After all, it's the oldest. It was around long before the publishing industry, capitalism or societies as we know them. Could be naive thinking, but it's my belief that if poetry has any hope of having a future, it's going to come from its oldest group of practitioners: no-name poets who inspired from the ground up.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. The various groups have split and sequestered themselves, and ultimately have become provincial. Academic poetry is too enamored with both itself and its pet ideologies. Popular poetry is catering to certain needs I suppose, but seems to be having a short shelf-life, as it were.
I think you're right, we get back to stewarding the art, and resume the poet's habit. No simple task, of course, but I have faith in it.
Well said James! The third group is what keeps poetry alive! Who said poetry belonged in the English department? Poeisis means to create. How does it not belong in physics or mathematics, in biology or philosophy. Poetry is all of this. Yes it uses words. It touches upon language. Poetry does not belong to language. It enters into it. The failure of language is what allows poetry to exist. It leads us into understanding in the metaphor of wisdom beyond the speakable. It lives outside of the literalization of metre and sonnet. Are we truly writing poetry? Is it writing us?
I wonder how much bad poetry the great poets wrote compared to the ones that they thought publishable?
Perhaps the problem is the ease with which people today can publish whatever comes out of their "pen" without filter, so to speak...and so posterity will separate the wheat from the chaff?
Then there are those who reveled in doggerel...Kipling and Nash come to mind...
Lots of good stuff here, and some practical things to think about as I seek to improve my own poetry (even if I continue to revel in doggerel...😁).
So many great poets have "Complete Poems of" collections which are filled with duds. The majority of poems ever written are between mediocre and good, even those written by the best writers.
Yeah, I agree that ease of publishing has exacerbated the problem. It means more good stuff gets put out, but also more bad. The gems are buried under mountains of trash.
I do think that there are "universal," more-or-less, maxims of art that will increase our chances of writing a poem that the posterity will find to be more wheat that chaff. Or so I hope.
well said, and I would that the problem with poetry's increasingly being conflated with self-expression is that the writer only has to feel that he has expressed himself in order to think 'there, I have written the poem.' alas...
Definitely agree. A lot of this boils down to poets simply not knowing or caring about craft. And the fact they have equated word vomit with self-expression.
I like this and have written something somewhat like it, that I have not published. An interesting question is why these should be the forms of bad poetry at the moment. I think this is beyond the scope of what you are doing here, but it is an interesting question. I wonder, and this is a guess, is if we, if I can use that word, have lost, among other things, the profound cultural education including about poetry. If one has no idea about great works of past times and how they worked, and even what excellence looks like in different eras, particularly in form but also in the power of the poet's vision, then how could one ever reach that kind of subtlety? It would be like trying to play the violin, with no training. The other danger, of course, is being "killed" by too much academic analysis, that kills whatever lingering creativity might have existed in the poet. Cézanne said, something like, "After I have studied at the Louvre, at the masters who repose there, I go back out into nature to revive my own sensations." My guess is you need both; education, and forgetting it...
I’d definitely agree that our cultural education has been lost. Or if not lost, then totally devalued. Or if not that, then the niche, academic sensibility has exsanguinated the classics.
I think lot of the bad poetry comes down to what you’re saying about playing a violin without training. There is simply no consideration of craft, whether it be anything from genre and convention, to iambs and rhyme schemes. I find that the recent celebrated poets seem to love themselves more than they love their art. Art requires fealty to Beauty, but they prefer to serve themselves. (Of course this is the temptation of every poet, but at least in the past we’ve been willing to call it a temptation.)
As to why the bad poetry is expressing itself in these specific forms, I wrote a (monstrous) essay called Poetry and Posterity. I take a stab at answering that question particularly in parts I and II.
My answer, which I confess is not a novel one, is that current poetry has a taste for annihilation. It values above all the self, and as a consequence seeks disintegration of the self, because the self is not a suitable end of human desire.
Great read, lots to consider on my end so thank you! This is nitpicking but I think the piece would be better served if you spent more time on what the interplay of contrary principles within a poem actually looks like and why it's good.
Thanks for reading! I'm very glad you found it worthwhile.
What you ask is a fair request.
I can only say (apart from repeating what I said in the piece) that I didn't intend to write a comprehensive essay. More or less just casting a different light on things.
It serves as a fine example for the interplay of contraries. It juxtaposes several contrary images. It resembles something of an Ode, while maintaining a complex tone in the face of menace (Form/Content & Convention/Change). It is about a lake in Ontario, though it stretches into a much wider venue (Public/Private). And there are certainly a number of things which remain implicitly stated, such as the meaning of an image of a rusty boat which is employed in the poem.
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on rhythm vs meter. Is rhythm just the bastardized version of meter better suited to "self-expression" or is it another instrument in the artist's hands?
So rhythm isn't quite the best word for what I mean, but several prosody books use it, so I went with it. By rhythm I mean the variance in the natural stress of the words. By meter I mean a set stress pattern, such as iambic pentameter, irregular iambics, trochaic or even like a trochee-trochee-iamb-iamb pattern.
The idea is that the actual verse is created out of the expectation of the predetermined pattern played against the line's natural stress. A poet can create "tension" by straying from the metrical pattern and find resolution by returning to it.
If the balance of the verse is skewed too far towards meter, the verse becomes monotonous. If skewed too far towards rhythm, the verse loses coherence and structure (ie. the verse is "rough.")
My contention would be that poets prioritize their own personal rhythms as a way to express their selves. They dislike having the constraint of meter because it is "shared" language and they feel as if someone else's hand is writing their poems. You could imagine someone saying "What I have to say is beyond meter. Meter hampers my ability to express my self." (Honestly many poets don't seem to think about meter or stress at all.)
Yeats seems to stretch rhythm as far as possible on the rack of meter. I like the effect, but a more natural rhythm humanizes. And his remembered poems are a closer balance. Lake Isle, Sleuth Wood, When You are Old, etc.
I think about something Yvor Winters said about Yeats a lot (And I laugh every time.) He said because of Yeats’ very affected readings, that he had no idea how to read his own poetry, and had probably never even heard it spoken properly.
It’s the mark of a true critic when they tell a master poet “you’re reading it wrong,” lol.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, the highest path would be striking the balance of rhythm and meter: acknowledging and utilizing the structure of patterned stresses without legalistic adherence that ruins the effect of the poem ivy a stifling lack of variety? There's probably a better way to phrase all of that, but hopefully you get what I'm saying.
Yeah, that's the long and short of it. To me, best practice is finding a nice balance between meter and rhythm.
Working this out in practice though, is strictly a prudential question. Some things are better said formally, somethings more loosely. The poet has to figure it out for himself.
Well done Nic. In the end, poetry is what poetry does. It will bring different meaning to every reader who interacts with it, where it meets them. Whats good? What’s bad? As a writer we only truly write for ourselves. I feel sometimes we forget to hear a poem, as we write it, trying to say too much in the words. Thanks for sharing this! Keep them coming.
The emotional attachment to the loss of *dreams* repeated three times, which appears to me to be spontaneous self expression, rather than deliberate form - as it is actually quite clumsy.
It is surprising how often the content of emotion and feelings get attributed to the feminine 😉
If the question of the Yeats poem is whether form or content is the main factor in producing the poem’s overall effect, then I would say that we do not know. Or perhaps it is better to say that both form and content are fully employed here.
As to the poem itself, I cannot agree that the content is the predominant factor nor do I find the poem to be clumsy. With regard to form or content, I think that this poem has a great deal of artifice. For one, each of the end-rhymes are self-rhymed and “dreams” is not the only word used thrice, “cloths” and “light” are as well. The sheer amount of repetition in such a small poem bespeaks a formal consideration. Also, this poem is metrical, written in iambic tetrameter, certainly loose but I would scan it as such.
If we abstract the content of this poem in paraphrase, such as if we said: “In this poem the speaker, let us assume he is a poet, is offering us his poems (his dreams). However he requests that we treat them gently.” The logical content, stated thus, loses most all of its impact. For this reason I cannot agree that the content is king. I do not say that form is king, only that both form and content create the poem’s effect.
As to your final point, I am not equating content with either emotion or feelings. Nor do I equate form with emotion, and neither am I saying that emotion is feminine. I only wished to state that Form and Content have a Masculine and Feminine relation to one another.
Great analysis, Nic. I appreciated your thoughts on form in particular.
If I could offer this: I think part of the problem is that there are, roughly, three poetry communities. Academic poetry (lit journals, university presses, etc.), popular poetry (Rupi Kaur, etc.), and everyone else. I would suggest that the first two groups haven't really been great stewards of the art form. I say that because it doesn't seem to me that they've done anything to increase popularity, interest or overall enthusiasm. In fact I'd say they've done a great job creating echo chambers.
That's why, bad poetry or not, I place my faith in that third group. After all, it's the oldest. It was around long before the publishing industry, capitalism or societies as we know them. Could be naive thinking, but it's my belief that if poetry has any hope of having a future, it's going to come from its oldest group of practitioners: no-name poets who inspired from the ground up.
Much appreciated!
Yeah, I'd agree with that. The various groups have split and sequestered themselves, and ultimately have become provincial. Academic poetry is too enamored with both itself and its pet ideologies. Popular poetry is catering to certain needs I suppose, but seems to be having a short shelf-life, as it were.
I think you're right, we get back to stewarding the art, and resume the poet's habit. No simple task, of course, but I have faith in it.
Well said James! The third group is what keeps poetry alive! Who said poetry belonged in the English department? Poeisis means to create. How does it not belong in physics or mathematics, in biology or philosophy. Poetry is all of this. Yes it uses words. It touches upon language. Poetry does not belong to language. It enters into it. The failure of language is what allows poetry to exist. It leads us into understanding in the metaphor of wisdom beyond the speakable. It lives outside of the literalization of metre and sonnet. Are we truly writing poetry? Is it writing us?
I wonder how much bad poetry the great poets wrote compared to the ones that they thought publishable?
Perhaps the problem is the ease with which people today can publish whatever comes out of their "pen" without filter, so to speak...and so posterity will separate the wheat from the chaff?
Then there are those who reveled in doggerel...Kipling and Nash come to mind...
Lots of good stuff here, and some practical things to think about as I seek to improve my own poetry (even if I continue to revel in doggerel...😁).
So many great poets have "Complete Poems of" collections which are filled with duds. The majority of poems ever written are between mediocre and good, even those written by the best writers.
Yeah, I agree that ease of publishing has exacerbated the problem. It means more good stuff gets put out, but also more bad. The gems are buried under mountains of trash.
I do think that there are "universal," more-or-less, maxims of art that will increase our chances of writing a poem that the posterity will find to be more wheat that chaff. Or so I hope.
Anyway, thanks for reading, I appreciate it!
well said, and I would that the problem with poetry's increasingly being conflated with self-expression is that the writer only has to feel that he has expressed himself in order to think 'there, I have written the poem.' alas...
Definitely agree. A lot of this boils down to poets simply not knowing or caring about craft. And the fact they have equated word vomit with self-expression.
I like this and have written something somewhat like it, that I have not published. An interesting question is why these should be the forms of bad poetry at the moment. I think this is beyond the scope of what you are doing here, but it is an interesting question. I wonder, and this is a guess, is if we, if I can use that word, have lost, among other things, the profound cultural education including about poetry. If one has no idea about great works of past times and how they worked, and even what excellence looks like in different eras, particularly in form but also in the power of the poet's vision, then how could one ever reach that kind of subtlety? It would be like trying to play the violin, with no training. The other danger, of course, is being "killed" by too much academic analysis, that kills whatever lingering creativity might have existed in the poet. Cézanne said, something like, "After I have studied at the Louvre, at the masters who repose there, I go back out into nature to revive my own sensations." My guess is you need both; education, and forgetting it...
Thanks for reading!
I’d definitely agree that our cultural education has been lost. Or if not lost, then totally devalued. Or if not that, then the niche, academic sensibility has exsanguinated the classics.
I think lot of the bad poetry comes down to what you’re saying about playing a violin without training. There is simply no consideration of craft, whether it be anything from genre and convention, to iambs and rhyme schemes. I find that the recent celebrated poets seem to love themselves more than they love their art. Art requires fealty to Beauty, but they prefer to serve themselves. (Of course this is the temptation of every poet, but at least in the past we’ve been willing to call it a temptation.)
As to why the bad poetry is expressing itself in these specific forms, I wrote a (monstrous) essay called Poetry and Posterity. I take a stab at answering that question particularly in parts I and II.
https://acrossthespheres.substack.com/p/poetry-and-posterity-complete-edition
My answer, which I confess is not a novel one, is that current poetry has a taste for annihilation. It values above all the self, and as a consequence seeks disintegration of the self, because the self is not a suitable end of human desire.
Great read, lots to consider on my end so thank you! This is nitpicking but I think the piece would be better served if you spent more time on what the interplay of contrary principles within a poem actually looks like and why it's good.
Thanks for reading! I'm very glad you found it worthwhile.
What you ask is a fair request.
I can only say (apart from repeating what I said in the piece) that I didn't intend to write a comprehensive essay. More or less just casting a different light on things.
However, if you're interested, you can check out this piece I wrote on a poem called "Bear Lake Encyclical" https://silverdoor.substack.com/p/mystic-wreckage
It serves as a fine example for the interplay of contraries. It juxtaposes several contrary images. It resembles something of an Ode, while maintaining a complex tone in the face of menace (Form/Content & Convention/Change). It is about a lake in Ontario, though it stretches into a much wider venue (Public/Private). And there are certainly a number of things which remain implicitly stated, such as the meaning of an image of a rusty boat which is employed in the poem.
I admire your ability to discuss poetry in this way!! I write poetry but I have no idea how to talk about it from a critical standpoint
Very kind words, much appreciated. Thanks for reading, and taking the time to comment!
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on rhythm vs meter. Is rhythm just the bastardized version of meter better suited to "self-expression" or is it another instrument in the artist's hands?
So rhythm isn't quite the best word for what I mean, but several prosody books use it, so I went with it. By rhythm I mean the variance in the natural stress of the words. By meter I mean a set stress pattern, such as iambic pentameter, irregular iambics, trochaic or even like a trochee-trochee-iamb-iamb pattern.
The idea is that the actual verse is created out of the expectation of the predetermined pattern played against the line's natural stress. A poet can create "tension" by straying from the metrical pattern and find resolution by returning to it.
If the balance of the verse is skewed too far towards meter, the verse becomes monotonous. If skewed too far towards rhythm, the verse loses coherence and structure (ie. the verse is "rough.")
My contention would be that poets prioritize their own personal rhythms as a way to express their selves. They dislike having the constraint of meter because it is "shared" language and they feel as if someone else's hand is writing their poems. You could imagine someone saying "What I have to say is beyond meter. Meter hampers my ability to express my self." (Honestly many poets don't seem to think about meter or stress at all.)
Yeats seems to stretch rhythm as far as possible on the rack of meter. I like the effect, but a more natural rhythm humanizes. And his remembered poems are a closer balance. Lake Isle, Sleuth Wood, When You are Old, etc.
I think about something Yvor Winters said about Yeats a lot (And I laugh every time.) He said because of Yeats’ very affected readings, that he had no idea how to read his own poetry, and had probably never even heard it spoken properly.
It’s the mark of a true critic when they tell a master poet “you’re reading it wrong,” lol.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, the highest path would be striking the balance of rhythm and meter: acknowledging and utilizing the structure of patterned stresses without legalistic adherence that ruins the effect of the poem ivy a stifling lack of variety? There's probably a better way to phrase all of that, but hopefully you get what I'm saying.
In any case, I think we're on the same page.
Yeah, that's the long and short of it. To me, best practice is finding a nice balance between meter and rhythm.
Working this out in practice though, is strictly a prudential question. Some things are better said formally, somethings more loosely. The poet has to figure it out for himself.
A great read. The hope of the essay has definitely been achieved.
That's wonderful to hear. Thanks!
Well done Nic. In the end, poetry is what poetry does. It will bring different meaning to every reader who interacts with it, where it meets them. Whats good? What’s bad? As a writer we only truly write for ourselves. I feel sometimes we forget to hear a poem, as we write it, trying to say too much in the words. Thanks for sharing this! Keep them coming.
Much appreciated Jamie, thanks for reading!
“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
WB Yeats
A very famous and loved poem.
Do you think form or content holds king here?
I’m tempted to think that it is content.
The emotional attachment to the loss of *dreams* repeated three times, which appears to me to be spontaneous self expression, rather than deliberate form - as it is actually quite clumsy.
It is surprising how often the content of emotion and feelings get attributed to the feminine 😉
Thanks for reading!
If the question of the Yeats poem is whether form or content is the main factor in producing the poem’s overall effect, then I would say that we do not know. Or perhaps it is better to say that both form and content are fully employed here.
As to the poem itself, I cannot agree that the content is the predominant factor nor do I find the poem to be clumsy. With regard to form or content, I think that this poem has a great deal of artifice. For one, each of the end-rhymes are self-rhymed and “dreams” is not the only word used thrice, “cloths” and “light” are as well. The sheer amount of repetition in such a small poem bespeaks a formal consideration. Also, this poem is metrical, written in iambic tetrameter, certainly loose but I would scan it as such.
If we abstract the content of this poem in paraphrase, such as if we said: “In this poem the speaker, let us assume he is a poet, is offering us his poems (his dreams). However he requests that we treat them gently.” The logical content, stated thus, loses most all of its impact. For this reason I cannot agree that the content is king. I do not say that form is king, only that both form and content create the poem’s effect.
As to your final point, I am not equating content with either emotion or feelings. Nor do I equate form with emotion, and neither am I saying that emotion is feminine. I only wished to state that Form and Content have a Masculine and Feminine relation to one another.
Thanks for your reply! food for thought from a different perspective 🙂