APRIL 1997
Forum:
Can Poetry Matter?
John Olson
FORUM: Does Poetry Matter?
by John Olson
[Editor's Note: this is the introduction for a panel Raven produced, supported by a grant from the King County Arts Commission/Hotel Motel Tax Funds. John Olson moderated and the panelists were: Ted Joans, Colleen J. McElroy, Bart Baxter, Duane Niatum and Sharon Hashimoto.]
This is a huge topic. I should say two topics. Concerning the latter, the "subtext" of today's discussion, I can only say yes, profoundly. "We are creatures of language and invent in turn with the sounds of our mouths," wrote Robert Duncan in Fictive Certainties, "or hands beating surfaces, or with marks upon a stone or arrangements of sticks, and other speech, a speech 'for its own sake' in answer to the World Order which was a language before ours." Poetry promotes a heightened awareness of particularity, of a reality larger than our own personalities, or history, or family, or city, or nation, or species. Poetry means different things to different people, but "for those of us whose sense of our common humanity has been outraged, the poem seems primarily political in its meaning: to arouse the conscience of the people against the existing order of dominion."
Concerning the head topic,
the survival of poetry in the 21st Century, I'm not so sure. It's a very
confusing and heavily conflicted picture.
Discussions over the legitimacy of poetry are old; in European culture,
they go back to the days of Plato, who felt doubtful about including poets
and poetry in his utopian republic. "At all events we are well aware
that poetry being such as we have described is not to be regarded seriously
as attaining to the truth," said Socrates, "and he who listens
to her, fearing for the safety of the city which is within him, should be
on his guard against her seductions. . . ." And in his Apology for
Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney, at the close of the 16th century in 1595
(which, incidentally, is the year Shakespeare quite probably composed Richard
II, Romeo and Juliet, and Midsummer Night's Dream), lamented
the state of poetry in England: ". . . poesy, thus embraced in all
other places, should only find in our time a hard welcome in England, I
think the very earth lamenteth it, and therefore decketh our soil with fewer
laurels than it was accustomed. . .and now that an overfaint quietness should
seem to strew the house for poets, they are almost in as good reputation
as the mountebanks at Venice. . . .so serves it for a piece of a reason
why they are less grateful to idle England, which now can scarce endure
the pain of a pen."
And in the last decade
or so here in the United States there has been a plethora of articles and
books about the demise of poetry: "Who killed Poetry," by Joseph
Epstein, a particularly virulent statement about the snobbishness and obscurity
of modern poetry, first appeared in Commentary in 1988 and was reprinted
in an "extravagantly acrimonious symposium" in AWP Chronicle,
the journal of the Associated Writing Programs. "Can Poetry Matter,"
by Dana Gioia, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in May, 1991. He,
too, characterized modern American poetry as a cloistered, exclusive cult,
made up of impotent sectarians more serious about making careers in institutions
than producing a vital and quality art. "American poetry now belongs
to a subculture," Gioia proclaims, "no longer part of the mainstream
of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation
of a relatively small and isolated group. As a class poets are not without
cultural status. Like priests in a town of agnostics, they still command
a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists they are almost invisible."
And in "Dead or Alive? Poetry at Risk," an article by Stephen
Goode which appeared in the August 23rd issue of Insight in 1993,
the author describes a befuddling perplexity: "Is poetry in America
a lost cause? Widely popular in the 19th Century, has it now been overwhelmed
by the proliferation of other mediaTV, filmsthat offer
more instant gratification and more accessible entertainment? Or is poetry
a dozing giant, gathering its strength, ready to rise from the backseat
it has taken for so long and become, once again, a potent force in American
life and culture? Plenty of convincing evidence can be mustered on both
sides, revealing the state of confusion poetry is in these days. It's a
long-simmering--and often volatile--debate about what audience poets should
be reaching, what their goals should be and whether poetry has any purpose
at all in late 20th Century American culture."
When I told a friend I
was going to be moderating this discussion, and the topic of the discussion,
he was extremely surprised. He thought poetry was all the rage right now.
What with two TV shows, "The United States of Poetry" and "The
Language of Life," hosted by Bill Moyers, and gazillions of magazine
and newspaper stories about the popularity of rap, poetry slams, poetry
readings, poetry awards, poetry contests, poetry kings, poetry queens, poetry
junkies, poetry janitors and poetry plumbers, one might well assume that
the entire North American continent was nourishing itself on a steady diet
of poetry every day. But hey, this is the media, and we all know how much
the media wants to please us and entertain us. The media has a bottomless
facility for distortion. Remember the windstorm of last November? The media
made it sound like the entire Northwest was about to be crushed by a wall
of raging wind. They closed the University of Washington down. People rushed
home in a panic. It was Orson Welles' radio production of "War of the
Worlds" all over again.
Nevertheless, there is
some truth to the popularity of poetry. Dana Gioia remarks that "there
have never before been so many new books of poetry published, so many anthologies
or literary magazines. Never has it been so easy to earn a living as a poet.
There are now several thousand college-level jobs in teaching creative writing,
and many more at the primary and secondary levels. Congress has even instituted
the position of poet laureate, as have 25 states. One also finds a complex
network of public subvention for poets, funded by federal, state, and local
agencies, augmented by private support in the form of foundation fellowships,
prizes, and subsidized retreats. There has also never before been so much
published criticism about contemporary poetry; it fills dozens of literary
newsletters and scholarly journals. The proliferation of new poetry and
poetry programs is astounding by any historical measure."
On the surface, this is
a very encouraging picture. But it's also a very false picture. Because
at the same time as this explosion of publications and readings and creative
writing programs, the audience continues to diminish. The same person who
expresses astonishment over the alleged demise of poetry might be asked
what poet they read: the answer would probably be 'none.' And if you asked
that same person who Robert Creeley, or John Ashberry, or Joy Harjo, or
Lyn Hejinian was, chances are they wouldn't have a clue. Allen Ginsberg
is the only poet to emerge as a readily identifiable public figure in this
country. But much of his fame rests on being a larger than life cult figure,
a colorful and articulate spokesperson for America's subculture.
I've been attending poetry
readings vigorously over the last several years and the more I attend them
the more I begin to feel like I'm living on an asteroid. I keep seeing the
same faces, time and time again. Now don't get me wrong. I like these faces;
they're the faces of people I like. But they're the same faces. "Poetry
Northwest considers 40,000 poems a year," writes Charles Molesworth
in The Fierce Embrace, "though the magazine has fewer than one
thousand subscribers. Grim quip that it is, it is true: more people write
poetry than read it."
The poets I've talked
to about this forum and its topic react very differently, and have very
different things to say, but the general consensus seems to be that it's
a silly and boring topic. Who cares if poetry is marginalized? Of course
it's marginalized. That's precisely where it should be. Poetry does just
fine in the margins, thank you. And in fact there's a quote by the French
surrealist poet André Breton which happens to be among my favorite
quotes, the kind of quote I wouldn't mind having done in needlepoint and
hanging on the wall, right above my desk: "Public approval is to be
avoided above all. It is absolutely necessary to forbid the public entry
if one wants to avoid confusion. I further emphasize that it is vital to
keep the public exasperated at the door by a system of defiance and provocation."
Now why do I feel this
way? I feel this way because it's vital to keep poetry free. Free of bias,
free of assumption, free of preconception, free of certainty, free of dogma,
free of adulteration and dilution and compromise.
In the preface to his
collection of essays called Prism, Theodore Adorno wrote, "to
write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge
of why it has become impossible to write poetry today." So pervasive
is the trend toward cleansing the world of difference and particularity,
toward placing a marketable value on everything that exists, that even the
attempt to resist it in art and poetry becomes a commodity, a product with
a value and a market. I hope Adorno's assessment proves as wrong as it is
bleak, but we live in a time that is so relentless in its push toward a
homogenized world, so invincible in its economic grip, planet earth is going
to end up as one big ball of concrete bristling with banks and parking meters.
My feeling is we need fewer parking meters, fewer parking lots, and more
sonnets and haikus exchanged on the daily market.
John Olson's poems have appeared in Antenym, B City, Clearcut Anthology, First Intensity, Lingo, New American Writing, Point No Point, and Sulfur. His reviews/essays have appeared in The Seattle Weekly, The Raven Chronicles, Sulfur, and The American Book Review. His chapbook of poems, "Swarm of Edges" (1996), is available from bcc: press, 2318-2nd Ave., #23, Seattle, WA 98121.
© The Raven Chronicles 1997