Personally, I don't really care...I love it when people read my poetry but its for me as much as anyone else. Still, I find it somewhat disturbing that people are no longer able to appreciate the beauty of one of the finest arts.
Do you guys read poetry or do you think its a bunch of dramatic squabble not worth being placed in the same boat as fiction writers?
I like some old epic poetry. I read Homer for fun, as well as some other epic poetry.
But mostly, 1st year university English killed any love I may have had for poetry with its overanalyzing and endless disucssions over "pentameter" and "iambic whatever-its-called"
Poetry always seemed like a math teacher throwing in quantum physics after the first multiplication lesson. To demonstrate, when I was reading through OSC's 'list of works' *, I thought this was poetry.
"I Hunger, Love, and Death
Walking on Water
Short-Lived Creatures
Echo
Grain of the Wood
Of a Private History
This Is the Poem I Made Then
I Go Out the Door
The Man Who Came Back from the Lunar Colony
5 a.m.
Declaration
Myrtle Beach
Elves
Light and Shade
[...]"
Obviously, somewhere along the way, I realized it was not. My point being, it seemed just as 'nonsensical' to me as poetry does.
* http://www.hatrack.com/osc/books/an-open-book.shtml
I do occasionally read poetry that excites me. Rarely do I find a piece that does that however.
Some authors poetry I like is Poe (who's been mentioned), Shakespeare, and Tolkien--I'm not just thinking Lord of the Rings, but also the Lost Tales collection. There are some great poems there, and The House of Lost Play is an especial favorite of mine.
Anyways, it seems to me that poetry has become the thing for cheesy emails and middle school stuck ups. Kinda insulting. I agree with you Ray, its just not the same anymore. I think the only other people who write poetry are professors and they get all worked up in the rythem and style that they lose the very purpose of the poetry.
So did poetry die with Frost? The last poem I ever heard was one of those idiot chain emails. Makes me want to puke...
Sry...poetry gets me kinda worked up...maybe i need to go write some..
[This message has been edited by ethersong (edited February 13, 2006).]
In general, I try to stay away from poems.
Other than that, good luck finding someone who cares about poems.
)But, then again, that may be because English is not my first language, and to me is way more musical than French.
I'm with Silver...I'd never be an English professor but it is poetry that first really made me want to write. Poetry is all about free expression in writing--a thing that is not always possible when writing a novel since you are constrained to plot and characters.
I think it simply takes a little work to appreciate poetry. And a little empathy. What John Mac says is absolutely true. Really try reading some poetry and you will be amazed at how it can move you. And its amazing what it can do to help your writing.
[This message has been edited by ethersong (edited February 13, 2006).]
Tolkien, now, I like a lot of Tolkien's poems...it's one of my regrets that there's no "collected poems" volume, and that bits and pieces appear here and there elsewhere in his work. I spent some time studying several of his works done in alliterative verse, trying to figure out how to do it (with little luck).
I also envy Tolkien's ability to drop poems in the body of his narrative, and make it work so well.
But lest you think my poetry reading begins and ends with Tolkien, I'll also express admiration for, and admit being influenced by, Shakespeare, Swinburne, Burns, Lewis Carroll, Lovecraft, Kipling, Poe, and Frost. And others, too...
I like the way Tolkein uses poetry, though it's not universally popular. Other ways of using poetry to enhance a text have been mentioned. But poetry is a bit hard on the reader, so it has to be really meaningful. And you can't get away with page after page of poetry anymore, epic poetry is a gimmick imitated from the greeks (and other primative cultures) without enough understanding of why they'd done it. Now that we live in a rather post-memnonic culture, we don't have any reason to create new examples. We now prefer memes, which are shorter and less rigid.
Anyway, good poetry shouldn't be either. It needs to have real value, not only for the reader's effort but for the writer as well.
For those of you who are interested in the history of Poetry and Speculative Fiction, go here: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2006/20060213/1beatty-rhys0-a.shtml
Poetry isn't dead, or dying really... but it is only read and appreciated by a relatively small group of people. Not even all of those who say "I write poetry" regularly read contemporary poets. And yet there are many, many, many journals and magazines that publish it--they may only be read by other poets and people in MFA Programs... but they do exist
Me? I like some poetry, but was put off to some extent by the beat generation. Just as I don't care for jazz, modern poetry doesn't "have a beat and you can't dance to it."
Having said that, a lot of modern short fiction leaves me with that same 'Huh?' feeling when I get to the end.
For me, poems generally work on two levels. I read a poem (and I tend to gravitate towards narrative poems) and enjoy its story, its language (playing with syntax always gets me excited)... then if I really like it, I'll read it again and start to see how the poet achieves a specific purpose (whether it's dealing with a particular theme or an exploration of an idea or concept).
I shy away from older poetry like the sonnets or Dunne, Frost, Whitman, etc because those are... well... almost too easy? There's nothing new for me to enjoy there unless I want to spend hours contemplating the use of rhyme or structure (which is dull, quite frankly). I also shy away from those who discuss the meaning behind a poem. A poem must stand on its own, it cannot rely on a hidden message to make it great.
I think if you have the time and patience, the more you read poetry--and read it for fun, not trying to get something out of it--the more you can understand it without even trying to. Perhaps because of the training of our English teachers, we approach poetry the way we would a Latin text in need of translation. We assume that what is on the page is simply an undecipherable riddle and thus we spend so much time and energy trying to figure out what the poet is trying to say, that we ignore what's actually on the page. We memorize terms like meter and rhyme and use them to the exclusion of others in our definition of poetry. Then, when faced with a fairly trite and cliche piece of e-mail forward drivel... people say 'Oh! I can read this and like it!' because the "hidden meaning" is so blatant and the structure so recognizable.
And there are definitely published poems that do not match my aesthetic principles of what a poem is or should be. And I do not think that all poems are great simply because they are in a form that I enjoy. What I do think is that when people believe that they do not like poetry, when they think that they "can't get it", then they will make themselves right--to their own detriment. What makes poetry so wonderful is the fact that it is so portable. You can far more easily print off a copy or even memorize a poem than you could carry around your favorite Picasso or OSC novel. So for those of you who were so kind as to read this entire message, I encourage you to give poetry another chance. Browse the archives of Strange Horizons, pick up a copy of Rosebud at your local bookstore, or look up Sharon Olds online. If it's not for you, it's not for you... but I hope you'll change your mind.
What Hel said is really true. However, I would say that there is still alot from Frost and Hughes and other such poets that we can appreciate.
Just another note: I love poetry mostly because of its meaning to me. Poetry is one of the places where free expression is at its finest and meaning at its deepest. So there's nothing wrong with finding meaning, even if it will invariably be different for everyone. Personally, I've never read any "genre" poetry because I really don't get what you would write about or why you would write it in "genre" unless it was part of a story. To me, poetry is about life, and thats why I like it!
quote:
Oh, you have dogs. I take it back
No! Bad dogs!
No bomb there! NO BOMB THERE!
That has its own poetry, don't you think?
The obvious answer is no, the harder answer is why.
Because of the experimentalism inherent in any art, there are published poems that make it seem that you could take anything and call it a poem. In fact there is a type of poem called a 'Found' poem that is simply anything that a poet finds--graffi, newspaper article, etc--that the poet then couches with his/her own writing.
The important thing for anyone who wishes to call something 'bizarre' a poem is to establish his/her own ethos. This is accomplished by publishing poems in well known journals, or any other process by which the individual establishes credibility within the field of Poetry.
So sure, you could call it a poem if you wanted... but you're gonna have a lot of trouble getting anyone (especially poets) to agree with you.
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."
As to what poetry is - I guess that's a shifting consensus. I tend to feel that poetry is about paying particular attention to the rhythm and sound of the words. It's as much about what you don't put on the page as what you do.
Tea is
A subtle dancer
Coffee stamps
Joyously through mornings
In big boots
Some do, some don't.
Some will, some won't.
http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/greetingcard.html
There's something poetic about that!
[/pun]
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Wellington
As for new poets that approach something like popularity -- Saul Williams comes to mind, for me. Also Joy Harjo, who's brilliant. Poetry will always have a tiny market, I suppose. Popularity is relative.
I love poetry. I have a few friends who'll occasionally buy a poetry book, and my little brother has a thing for really old poems, but it's certainly a rare thing, I think, to find people who really just love poetry. And rarely, I think, are they English teachers. I mean, who actually had an English teacher that liked poetry for reasons other than the fact that it was in the text book?
I always skip poetry imbedded in a work of fiction. To me it never seems to add to the story.
OTOH I like reading Robert Frost and to a lesser extent various other poets whose work verges on epic prose.