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Poetry. Your
dear editor thinks that this form of literature may actually be done for.
I get the New Yorker, which prides itself of printing the better
of it all but to be honest, I can never quite figure out what the contemporary
poet is trying to do, other than jab me with words. Contemporary poetry,
then, has disintegrated into lines of words 200% less cohesive than the
dialogue of The Riddler. Even erstwhile authors of note like, John Updike,
the consummate storyteller and literary icon, submit poetry that makes
about as much sense as what comes out when my head hits the keyboard.
But that's what you'll find from
contemporary poets. No longer bound by the forms meant to keep babblers in
check, they use precise wordplay to make their work do… something. For this
trained reader it strikes me as a smart person in a serious, contemplative
mood, staring out the window and playing around with a favorite thesaurus.
Unfortunately, since we have no access to the bongos playing in the poet's
head, we readers are eternally lost in a linguistic landscape that leads you
nowhere fast.
It hasn't always been this way.
Poetry has been around since the dim red dawn of time, preceding written
prose fiction by a good margin. Take, for example, the Sumerian Epic
of Gilgamesh, circa 3000 BC, which is about as close to the dim red
dawn of time as you can get. All of Europe was still drooling over stone
tools at that point. Quite a bit later we finally see the poetic works
of Homer and Virgil, which, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, tell the
long tale of a hero's adventures in all its sweeping glory. Though none
of that rhymed, as we like to think of poetry, those works do follow form
and meter, in these specific cases, the form and meter necessary for the
balladeer to recount.
Which leads us right to Shakespeare.
(Actually it doesn't, but I don't feel like talking about Dante's Inferno,
or Beowulf, or the Canterbury Tales or any of that.) Unlike
contemporary poets, who most certainly lack the vocabulary and the prowess
of Shakespeare, William S. devoted himself to traditional poetic forms - rhyme
schemes, meter, etc. - confining his vast talents to working within them.
In Shakespeare's day, poetry was considered a far more intellectual enterprise
than prose - Don Quixote and Tale of Genji aside - and so he
set to work. Not to mention make a buck, as the writer of the Globe Theatre.
To understand a man of his skill, working within accepted forms while still
creating works accessible to an average theatre audience, well, given that
I think you have a very special talent indeed.
Shakespeare may be without peer
but that doesn't mean we can't tip our hats to other special poets. In particular
I think we should point out John Donne, master of the love poem. Here's a
man who could write a sonnet - and listen up, contemporary poets, because
he could do all this within form and still rhyme - that could lead any lady
to bed, then bring him breakfast in the morning. And he knew it. I think he
is the original David Lee Roth.
I do admit, a more contemporary
poet has caught my eye. She's even won a Nobel prize for her work, but who's
counting. I'm talking about the Polish poet Wiszlaw Szymborska, whose work,
though not quite adherent to the traditional forms I enjoy, is still like
touching skin, it's so unpretentious and close. This decided lack or pretension,
I think, is what many contemporary poets lack, as though we must all join
in a poet's shitty sad mood, or else we're stupid.
If you are interested in poetry,
I would suggest studying the masters first: Your Shakespeares, your Miltons,
your Donnes. These are people who challenged themselves to master a particular
form of work, submitting their minds to it, and seeing what would happen as
a result. New forms - or lack of it - was not the key; poetry is what it is
and that's the job at hand. No, the best poetic works are those that innovate
within form, that move you despite the form, that sings lyrics to you in a
certain form, and by golly, that still manages to rhyme, when necessary, inside
a form.
Please note that when beginning
your poetic enterprise, it is okay to pick a poem and say, "What the…?" Your
editor is supposed to understand these things but in the face of today's poetry,
I still do it all the time. -ed.
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