Of course, some of it isn't bad. When it has a rhythm to it, it rhymes, and it's rhetorical, it can be ok. I like story poems, thing that talk about something my simple mind can understand. In elementary school, I remember being introduced to poems like "Casey at the Bat" and my third grade teacher's favorite poem, Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" (the first few lines of which I still remember). Then in junior high, we got to fun things like Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and all those wonderful poems by Edgar Allen Poe Quoth The Raven Nevermore. High school got us to the heavy duty poets, like Will Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Geoffrey Chaucer. Some of these things were actually fun, they painted word pictures, and most importantly to me, they were singable; the art songs I was singing in music competitions were all poems. Even in Boy Scouts and our secret Order of the Arrow rituals, some of our longer initiation lectures were in iambic pentameter blank verse, and that was cool.
Then I got to college. In my freshman honors English class, our professor was not concerned about our ability to write a coherent essay (that skill was the primary criterion for admission to that section), so he had us read and discuss a lot of new, modern literature: short stories, essays, and........poetry. And therein was the problem.
Modern poetry. It was trash. It was garbage. It made no sense. It intentionally violated all the "rules" just for the sake of violating the rules. It was forced on us, because if we didn't like it, we weren't politically correct; we weren't supporting all the "victimized" poets—victimized because they were womyn or they were black or they were Chicano or they were poor or they were rich or they were country or they were urban or they were homeless or they were socially awkward or they were just a bad poet. And the hideous, uninspired, worthless modern poetry went on and on and on.
It's gotten to the point now where a serious poet dare not write a poem that rhymes for fear of being labeled old-fashioned and out of date.
I remember preparing my first English Composition 2 syllabus. I saw our departmental master outline mandate that we have a unit on poetry analysis; I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. What would I say? What would I teach? What if I had a poetry lover in my class? What would I do if a student actually had the intellectual curiosity to ask why a bad modern "poem" had been considered good enough to be in the anthology textbook?
Well, I managed to dodge those bullets. Yet, still, no end of study, reading, and preparation helped me answer to me the hard questions, the questions about modern poetry, the issues I could distill to a single, simple question: Huh?
Some of my friends like poetry. In fact, some of them actually write poetry. The "literature" kind. Occasionally our conversations will drift to the fact they have written some new poem, and I am gripped with fear: what if they want me to read their poem? Is it any good? Will I hate it? Is it weird? Or just maudlin? Can I agree with them how that editor/judge/selection committee really screwed them over by not giving them the first place prize?
Then, this morning I made a remarkable—a wonderous—discovery!
I ran across a brand new poem which flipped on the modern poetry light switch for me. Now, I can face my students. Now, I can be an English snob, too. Now, I can avoid changing the subject at cocktail parties dotted with literary people.
The exciting, young poet A. P. Quinn (who was educated at a small, no-name, Presbyterian liberal arts college with some help from the English modernists at the University of York in the north of England) has written a piece, satirical perhaps—but it's modern, so it may be deadly serious—which explains and sums up modern poetry into a single, understandable concept. It makes sense out of all those poetry books on the remainder tables at Barnes and Noble. It gives meaning to the recitations of those earnest young men and women in the coffee bars. This is the sort of breakthrough poem which jumpstarts new careers. This is the work which sets the stage for a new poet laureate (after all, Maya Angelou is almost 80!). I'm being very serious about this, and I hope my colleagues in English departments and editorial suites around the country read and cherish this poem as a brilliant primer on modern poetry.
Here is Quinn's work (Quinn doesn't believe in copyright laws, so feel free to reproduce it at will):
Erotica: A Meditation on Autumn Leaves
by A. P. Quinn
I am a poet, you
See because I can do
Pointless enjamb-
Ments that make no sense,
And I write about autumn and stuff,
Like leaves and birdies and
The autumn leaves and birdies
And nature, since nature is so poetic, ya!
But of course I will never even attempt
To utilize a single musical device since
Poems actually sounding beautiful is so
Last era. Bush sucks.
Fuck. Ooh, I said fuck, isn’t
That shocking?
Oh and I can’t use any words that are more than
Two syllables because I’m populist or something
Except, oh look, I used three-syllable words
Because I’m a master of irony.
Starbucks. Because that one contemporary pop
culture reference is so important.
Worship me.
Where’s my Pulitzer, fuckers?
No comments:
Post a Comment