written 5/5/2008
Grandbaby
Ephraim,
born yestereday
amid parental joy
and God’s protecting hand.
He thrives.
For Ephraim
Category Archives: poetry
The Ides of April Constrain Me
Yes, I’m working on my taxes, working on preparing my weekly Sunday School lesson which includes writing a handout as well as teaching notes, and have found almost no time to write except for that. Also, the class my wife and I are taking Tuesday and Thursday evenings at the community college is cutting into all things avocational and leisurely. The good news is the taxes are well along. I might finish the Federal tonight, though will take a couple of days to perfect it. I actually finished the lesson for this coming Sunday last night also, so I might be able to prepare another one this week and be a week ahead. I’d like to be two weeks ahead, if I can.
So, in the place of writing a new post here, I’ll be lazy and copy in a post I made at the Absolute Write Water Cooler, in the poetry discussion forum. This is the first of several posts I’ll be making in the thread on poetry craft.
Quote: “A few weeks ago, I was asked to judge a chapbook contest, partly because I enjoy a little recognition locally and partly because it’s hard as hell to get someone to judge these things. I just finished going through the stack of pocketfolders that cradled the entries.YUK! After I finished, I almost wanted to cry. Most of the “poets” who entered this contest knew nothing about the craft….”
Okay, after saying I wouldn’t get to this for a while, I decided to use my lunch hour to do this instead of planned things. The wind at 30 mph and the threatening rain are excellent excuses to not take my noon walk.
Concerning the quality of the poems submitted to the contest, I would like to know to whom the contest was opened. The general public who might have seen a contest notice? High school students? University students? Members of a local poetry society? That’s important to know, because for each group we would expect a different aggregate quality of the entries. If entrants are people who responded to a notice posted in the library and in a newspaper, we would expect pretty poor quality. If these are English majors in college, we would expect something better. Since these are chapbooks and not individual poems, that tells me the entrants are more serious poets than the population at large, in which case the lack of quality is more disturbing.
We tend to think that there is more dreck being passed off as poetry today than at times past in history. I wonder, however, if that is true. Dissemination is so easy today, due to technological advances not available to poets in a ruder era, that more people see the dreck. But maybe, as a percentage of all poetry written in any given era, we have no more today than in eras past. Mercifully only the best of those eras survive; we don’t see the dreck that was written simultaneously as Keats’ odes, or Shakespeare’s sonnets, or Chaucer’s epics.This might not be true when one factors in the expansion of literacy, as Haskins said. More literate people, as a percentage of the population, might indeed produce a higher percentage of crap than did a people in the past. Either way, sponsor a chapbook contest in 1800, and I’ll be you’d get plenty of chapbooks at which you’d want to gag. Again, all those chapbooks were destroyed by knowledgeable heirs who found them tucked away in chests and realized the judges were correct in writing on it, “Foresooth, these stinketh.”
Other parts of your post will have to wait for a later time.
I guess there’s something to be said for lack of notoriety; no one is asking for me to judge anything. May it ever be so.
Flight of the Unwinged, Part 2: The Misuse of Poetry
Continuing from where I left off yesterday (and, for those who may have read that post before, as soon as I finish this post I’m going to edit something in there), I want to think about Carlyle’s comments as it relates to creative writing, especially poetry. Here is the essence of what Carlyle wrote.
- “Poetry” is a most suspicious affair for me at present!
- as if, when the lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the point were gained!
- Let a man try to the very uttermost to speak what he means, before singing is had recourse to.
- “No, we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good whatever there; by God’s blessing, we will fly….”
By jingle I believe Carlyle refers to rhyme and meter. By “speak” and “singing” I believe he refers to the difference between prose and verse/poetry. Many people prefer to distinguish verse from poetry, with poetry being the greater writing. I’ve never done that, for to my way of thinking this is just bad/fair poetry and good/great poetry. It would seem to be semantics. I think Carlyle, by using the word “jingle”, means bad poetry, or verse. He is saying too many people who write poetry are writing bad poetry, with rhyme and meter (making it like a jingle) being the dominant or only devices to distinguish it from prose. Prose is the equivalent of speaking; [good/great] poetry in contrast is singing. But so many poets try singing before they can speak, try flying before they can stand, walk, or do any good whatever.
Poetry is the most difficult type of creative writing, its demands for excellence far exceeding those of prose. Yet so many people write poetry because they think it is easier. In cummings-esque style, they think ignoring punctuation, ignoring grammar, seemingling breaking lines at random, and not making sense is what poetry is made of.
Carlyle would disagree; I would too. Of course, I’ve been convince that more bad poetry is being written these days than ever before (some of it by me), but maybe that’s not the case. Carlyle seems to think most of what he saw was bad. Maybe it’s just easier to find it now. And maybe most of that slush-thaw poetry from the 1840s has simply disappeared, as much of what is written today will not be found 170 years from now.
The Flight of the Unwinged
I’m still finding nuggets to write about in The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson Volume 2. Today the excerpt comes from a letter by Carlyle, on 17 November 1843. The text is somewhat difficult to understand; I had to read it several times. Here’s a somewhat lengthy quote from it.
But at bottom “Poetry” is a most suspicious affair for me at present! You cannot fancy the oceans of Twaddle that human Creatures emit upon me, in these times; as if, when the lines had a jingle in them, a Nothing could be Something, and the point were gained! It is becoming a horror to me,–as all speech without meaning more and more is. …Let a man try to the very uttermost to speak what he means, before singing is had recourse to. Singing, in our curt English speech, contrived expressly and almost exclusively for “despatch of business,” is terribly difficult. …If Channing will persist in melting such obdurate speech into music he shall have my true wishes,–my augury that it will take an enormous heat from him! Another…sends me a Progress-of-the-Species Periodical from New York. Ach Gott! These people and their affairs seem all “melting” rapidly enough, into thaw-slush or one knows not what. Considerable madness is visible in them…they say, “we cannot stand, or walk, or do any good whatever there; by God’s blessing, we will fly,–will not you?…And their flight, is as the flight of the unwinged,–of oxen endeavoring to fly with the “wings” of an ox!…I am terribly sick of that.”
I read this four or five times before it made sense to me. A little context will help. Emerson had sent Carlyle a book of poems by W.E. Channing, with a recommendation. Specifically, Emerson wrote, “Lately went Henry James to you….He carried a volume of poems from my friend and nearest neighbor, W. Ellery Channing, whereof give me, I pray you, the best opinion you can. I am determined he shall be a poet, and you must find him such.” Carlyle was not much for poetry, and yet he was bombarded by friends and others sending him things to read. What he saw of poetry tended to distress him. All of it was pretty much worthless in his mind–twaddle and thaw-slush, as he described in this letter. He says it seems that people think, just because the lines rhyme, Something can be made of Nothing. But Carlyle says the words must stand on their own, without the rhymes to prop them us.
Carlyle also seems to say that poetry is often mis-used, the equivalent of conducting business in song. Speak before you can sing, says Carlyle; write strong prose before you try poetry.
I am not really finished with this, but have run out of time. I’ll come back tomorrow and either edit this or make another post on the same topic.
Waiting, Waiting
Three months and three days. That’s how long it’s been since I sent a partial manuscrpt of Doctor Luke’s Assistant to an agent I met at a conference. The agent requested the partial, and I complied a couple of days later. No word since them. This is about at the time when, if you listen to on-line writer groups, I should be thinking about a refresher contact to the agent. I think I’ll wait another couple of months, however. It seems the waiting is getting harder on this one the longer it goes on.
Four months. That’s how long it’s been since I sent four items out for consideration by four different periodicals. Three were poems; one was a literary essay. I heard back from two of them over the next two months–two rejections. The other two, nothing. These are not ones I’m sweating over, as I don’t think much payment, if any, is involved, and not a lot of noteriety. Still, knowing would be better than not knowing.
One day. That’s how long it will be before they announce the results of the Valentine’s Day love sonnet contest at Absolute Write. I entered an older one titled “Motif No. 1”, a take-off of the famous fishing hut in Rockport, Massachusetts. One of forty-five entries with five prizes being awarded, I think I have a decent chance to get something. But I’ve been disappointed before, so my hopes aren’t really up.
Waiting is part of the writing industry, with most waits ending in the disappointment of rejection. We’ll see what these four unresolved submittals hold.
Reflections on the Death of Poetry
This is a frequent topic on the poetry boards I participate in and monitor. Poetry, if not dead, is minutes away from expiring. People don’t buy it; people don’t read it; newspapers don’t print it and don’t print reviews of it. Poets no longer have influence as they once did. The debate is heated on what has caused this. Some say competing entertainments, such as movies, television, and the internet has drawn off all but the most dedicated readers. Others say that poetry is imploding, due to the dominance of masters of fine arts (MFA) programs and how they produce poets just like their instructors, who are just like their instructors, thus resulting in a similarity of poetry that is strangling. Others say that the poetry community at large is to blame, that they are writing poetry that no one but other poets (or other MFA grads) want to read.
I think it is a combination of these. Many more entertainments exist than, say, when Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot were starting their careers–pre radio, pre television, etc. Entertainment in the home consisted of reading, and little else. Poetry was among the items read. But why does poetry not compete well with television, et al? I think it’s because poetry, as the most compressed type of language, requires the greatest use of brain power of all the written arts. Prose requires less, visual arts less still, motive visual arts even less. So when faces with a choice of brain-taxing poetry reading or mindless sexually-oriented sitcoms most people choose the sitcoms.
However, I do find fault with poets for not providing a product their audience wants. I have always been partial to poems with rhyme and meter (or rhythm), but it seems poets and their marketing outlets (many of which are MFA-led “literary” journals) find fault with rhyme and meter, and go for free verse exclusively. The vast majority of the people simply don’t like free verse. Why? I think Screwtape (see my last post) answered that. People have a love of change, while at the same time a love of permanence or stability. God fulfills that through rhymthm. The seasons change, but always come back to each other year after year. Daylight follows darkness. Low tide follows high tide. In poetry, rhyme and meter in poems to specific forms seem most enjoyable to the largest group of people. Yet, about the same time radio came in, the poets en-massse began moving away from rhyme and meter. Hence, in the face of a shrinking market, the poets turned their backs on what that shrinking market wanted.
IMHO.
2007 in Poetry
I spent little time with poetry in 2007. Having completed Father Daughter Day the year before (but with most of it written 2004-2005), I read it through once and did some minor edits, and found a few beta readers in my target audience. The year began with it under consideration by a gift book editor, but I heard in June (after three follow-up e-mails) that they weren’t interested. I showed it to a couple of editors at a writers conference in November, but as expected they were not interested in poetry. I almost looked into having the book illustrated, but decided the time was not right. So I’m letting this sit for a while.
As to writing poetry, my production this year was only seven:
– a sonnet “Yoked”, on the progression of marriage
– a free verse poem “A Far Away Look”, the first free verse I’ve tried for a while
– a light verse “Oxymoron No. 1”, about reading poetry
– a light verse epithet “For One Who Died Too Young”
– a light verse “On The Virtues Of ‘Good’ Or ‘Fine'”
– an haiku
– a sonnet “Of Bollards And Berms”, about the inner struggle to purity
Several of these I workshopped at Absolute Write or Mosaic Musings.
I just didn’t feel like writing poetry this year. Very few situations arose where I thought That would make a good poem and sat down to do it. I don’t know if this means my poetry interest is waning, or just that the time wasn’t there to do both prose and poetry, and thus I supressed, either purposely or subconciously, the desire to write it. I hope it’s the latter, and that at some point in the future my desire to write poetry–and read it–will come back.
