A Poetry, Most Elegant

by Hugh Blanton

Yet another new poetry release receives a standing ovation, and the poet is heralded as the "voice of a generation." The book's rear panel is lavished with ecstatic praise, suggesting only a complete imbecile would pass it over. Readers today, it seems, are expected to gobble up whatever is set out before them and smile contentedly, even if it means having to swallow verse after verse of opaque metaphor and absurd simile. The poems say nothing (pretty much) but do so in an elegant manner, which lands the tome that cradles them firmly in the 811 Dewey Decimal classification. They are artifacts that have trickled down through the proper channels, university MFA programs that teach would-be-literati the proper application of polish to verse; they are also why most poets are left to depend upon fellowships, grants, tenure, and sugar mamas instead of book royalties to pay their bills.

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It's not just the difficulty of reading abstract poetry that keeps it from mainstream acceptance and success; it's also the fakery. No amount of clever figurative language can mask the words of a safe and secure person claiming that they live a life of strife and peril. This, however, does not stop poets from slathering on the camouflage—the concealment—to not only present a certain image but to cover up the fact that they have very little to say (if anything at all).

                        Autumn resumes the land, ruffles the woods

                        with smoky wings, entangles them. Trees shine

                        out from their leaves, rocks mildew to moss-green;

                        the avenues are spread with brittle floods.

                         --from "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England" by Geoffrey Hill.

There are any number of poems about seasons, trees, or rocks that could easily be used to exemplify what most deem to be "poetic," effectively demonstrated by Hill. Wings are not smoky, and floods are not brittle, but that is exactly what makes this a ‘poem’ (or what one is "supposed" to be). These are the types of poems that earn their writer a Pulitzer, a pat on the head, and ultimately a trip to the cemetery of literary obscurity. Nature poems are every bit as cliche as the pulp fiction private dick, alone in his shabby New York City office at midnight and swigging down glasses of bourbon, grousing about the dame who just hired him to find out who really murdered her husband. Regardless, you'll never see such pieces satirized as cliche because they are high art (or are at least supposed to pass as such).

From the golden oldies of yesteryear, written with a feather quill, to modern tours-de-force composed on Samsung Galaxies and iPads, Eliot's "order" must be completed by “sanctioned” poets before we can move forward. Or does it?

Poetry would have a much greater acceptance if it would just ditch the tricks. If a poet wants to bring about the full force of language, one sure way not to do it is to lock his or her work up in form and/or meter. Instead of confining “the beast” within the cages of pentameter or villanelle, let it loose to ravage the countryside and burn the cities down. There have, however, been some writers who do have the poetic firepower to bring about masterpieces within poetic form: Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle, "One Art," for example. One also can’t turn a blind eye to the rhyming quatrains of Emily Dickinson, despite the current embarrassment of contemporary poets who try to clear the bar she set so high all those years ago. These, however, are the exceptions, not the rule. Poetry should say what it wants to say, not try to bedazzle the world with prescriptive literary constructs. Poetry, some claim, is not for the many but for the few. This is an ironic stance of questionable plausibility given we live in such an age of declining literacy.

In his 1961 essay, "Essay on the Recent History of Immortality," Robert Vaughan complains that prose is sneaking into poetry. That was over 60 years ago, and similar complaints are still made today. Prose is not sneaking in, but a few renegade writers have tried to wipe away the denseness and intangibility required of the modern-day ‘poem.’ Sadly, these works are derided by academic critics as "accessible" if they have been stripped of this MFA shimmer. Rhyme and meter do not make up poetry's DNA, words and phrases do.

                        Finally we look at each other

                        and laugh.

                        She laughs a church

                        of chocolate bubbles.

                        I laugh a quail flushed out of a

                        possum-bellied moon.

                         --From "Driving Josie to McDonald's to Work" by Mather Schneider.                       

Here, Schneider delivers verse that is poetic and accessible, knocking one out of the park (so to speak). A poem doesn't have to be one or the other. As with most things in life, dualism applies. A poet should write his or her own way, leaving laws and ordinances to the legislators. Poems do not have to be immune to reading.

Poetry doesn't have to be popular (and for its own sake probably shouldn't be). A reader who wants a little more from their literature will eventually find their way to poetry, just like someone who wants a little more from their music will likely (hopefully) veer away from Justin Timberlake to Philip Glass. Poetry can reveal a language’s potential without all the bells, whistles, and glamours. It can evoke thought, or it may simply delight (preferably both). True, one can live a full life without poetry—or operas, or paintings, etc.—but most people enjoy art in one form or another. People could live without Dancing with the Stars, too, but more people, unfortunately, live without Leaves of Grass.

The outsiders, the guerrillas, the insurgents—these will be the pioneers who move poetry forward, away from the sacrosanct rule of literary mores. For decades, poetry has been the How are you doing? I'm fine “lie” of the expected call and response. We open a new book of poetry hoping for new fire, a new shake-up, but all we get is I'm fine. These verses are born from university classrooms, where instead of learning how to throw literary Molotov cocktails, poets-in-training learn to ululate over their own reflections, ghosts, and jejune grasps of life’s complexities. The “gates” that guard the castle are triple-reinforced, armored, and booby-trapped, making it damn near impossible for “the barbarians” to break through.

If there were only a Don King to come to the rescue.

*Original version published in the now-defunct Bard and Prose.

BIO: Hugh Blanton's latest book is Kentucky Outlaw. He can be reached on X @HughBlanton5.