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Poems preaching access
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Check out theJuly/August summer issue of Poetry magazine for a full boat of lessons on access, one of my favorite literary topics.
Christian Wiman and Don Share, without openly saying so, have offered Poetry readers a handbook in accessible poetry, from Tony Hoagland to Albert Goldbarth, to Sandra Beasley's "Let Me Count the Waves," which reads, in part:
You must not skirt the issue wearing skirts.
You must not duck the bullet using ducks.
You must not face the music with your face.
...
You must not use a house to build a home,
and never look for poetry in poems.
With few exceptions, each of the poems in the front of the book uses plain language, simple syntax, a stream of intelligible thought, and often humor to communicate with its readers.
This issue also has a section on "Flarf & Conceptual Writing," which I noticed is not called "poetry," and perhaps for good reason, since both kinds of writing are silly.
The Flarf, however, is at times entertaining and reaches the level of poetry demanded by Wiman in an interview I did with him last year, when he told me Poetry's mission was "just to publish the best poetry that's out there."
The 'Conceptual' writing on the other hand doesn't reach the level of poetry that meets Wiman's standard; and, in my opinion, ought to have been left out of the book, unless tackled with a prose essay to explain what it is in the "Comment" section of the magazine.
Even the prose articles in this issue's "Comment" section are in some way about accessibility to poetry. Clive James writes a very good piece that explains the endurance of good poetry through time, discussing several poets who have produced such poetry and one who had not.
Dunstan Thompson, a poet of the 50s, was recognized as a talent through a long career before his death in 1975, but his poetry never made the cut of history into this century. James says the reason for that is that "talent might be a necessary minimum, but it will not be sufficient if it can't produce a poem, or at least a stanza, assured enough to come down through time and make us ask, 'Who wrote that?'"
To make that cut, in my opinion, a poem must be accessible to the most readers. I believe the Internet is helping that cause by broadening the audience for poetry and producing a boom decade (going on two) for the art and craft of poetry.
Wiman, I think, believes that, too, judging from the last chapter of the interview I did with him and that I have promised to post here much sooner than now.
"One thing the Web has done is that it's brought people from all schools of poetry together to communicate [on Poetry's Harriet blog] and other places ... and I think it's changed poetry in that it's helping educators find ways of teaching poetry," Wiman said then.
"People go [to Poetry Foundation website] to find poems on certain subjects, or certain occasions, or they go to read the blogs to find out what's going on in the poetry world, or they go to read the articles which are about poets, and show people how to read poems."
"That has an enormous reach," Wiman added, "and it's a very different audience than, say, the subscriber base of Poetry magazine."
And there, at last, Wiman mentions another of my favorite terms in the ongoing debate over all kinds of writing: "audience."
Whether audiences are different for the Web or a print publication really should make no difference to the poet. Poetry must be written for the broadest audience it can reach in order to have the lasting effect through time that Clive James demands of it.
Making poetry accessible helps the poet reach that audience.
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