The author of this article has written with both humor and perspicacity exactly what I would have liked to have written.
I consider myself very liberal-minded, but the decline of standards,excellence, and the toleration of mediocrity for the sake of “self-esteem”, has turned me into a cultural conservative!
Does any one agree that poetry is about capturing life – not snobby acedemia? The merits of poetry lie with the reader. If the reader is too busy sneering and looking down his nose, he will miss out.
McClelland seems to be too busy revelling in his own intellect and writing style to look at the positive aspects of efforts untinged by society. I feel sorry for him I really do.
For the record I would much rather have read the works of a thousand ‘unprepared’ poets than his drivel. What a sadistic critique.
The sad thing is that his wit could be put to much better use. Satire can certainly be amusing but is it talent? Criticism seems a parasitical way to make a living to me.
As for Mary W Carson who also commented, being an 18 year old student I suspect I fall under the category she mentioned (although I personally am not interested in writing poetry). Presumptions are dangerous. Being naieve in life and not yet having received education does not mean we are stupid and do not read suppposedly ‘intellectual’ writing.
Yes, teenage poetry is probably the worst cultural artifact there has ever been, but beyond this truism, the article had nothing to offer beyond a vague undirected grumpiness and a rather lukewarm attempt to be fashionably un-PC.
The deterioration of poetry antedates hip hop by forty years or more. Teenagers are only attempting to model their poetry on the published work they see — actually, I suppose they’re being influenced by teachers who want them to write poems like the published “poems” they see. As a Canadian I can point to the evil influence of the likes of Leonard Cohen on the Canadian young and not so young. And irving Layton, and Louis Dudek, etc. etc. The published poetry I see from other countries suggests that anyone who modelled their poems on it would produce rubbish as well.
I agree. I took both creative writing and fine art in college a few years ago, and was frustrated by the lack of structured instruction. I was paying tuition at an elite private school for the privilege of receiving daily doses of gentle and vague encouragement from each and every one of my criticism-adverse professors. It’s only when I went to grad school and found myself under the brutal tutelage of a screenwriting instructor who didn’t give a damn about my self esteem (and did his best to tear it to pieces with each rewrite) that I learned the craft that supports the art. I still hate that man and wish him diarrhea and hemorrhoids, but Im grateful for what he taught me.
Yes and no… sure poetry is now mostly a rumbling of disorganized short stories, but there’s plenty of academic snobbery left, broad PC exceptions aside. If you want to exercise yours, go to funnypoetry.com to read “Love is All Box and No Cornflakes.
Human beings have a innate capacity for language, acquiring it effortlessly during infancy. Cabinet-making is a learned skill, requiring specific manual instruction. We are not born cabinet makers. Poetry antedates prose, and in fact appears before the invention of writing, hinting that it is very close to our natural ability to speak. Prose (e.g. writing articles for a newspaper) *is* more akin to cabinet making. We don’t naturally express ourselves in clear, concise, logically structured paragraphs. That is a skill that must be studied and learned – mostly by reading a lot and then writing a lot. So my basic comment on the article is that it seems to be applying, to poetry, standards which more appropriately hold for prose (and cabinet-making). Not that all poetry is good, but the standards for judging it should be relative to the culture that it speaks to and for.
Oh my dear God, I am a cultural relativist and didn’t even know it!
I agree completely with Barney McClelland, who (to me) just seems to be talking common sense. These sorts of differences in the relative merits of poems and poetry shouldn’t be hard to make, or agree on–and that’s what you have an academy for. For several years while I was a PhD student in English in New Zealand I tutored first year English courses, and what always struck me was that the students were far less radical than the staff about this sort of thing. Most were there (as I was once) because they liked reading, had a few favourite writers that they’d picked up in high school, and wanted to know more about what poetry ‘meant’. They were very uncomfortable with relativist answers and got a genuine kick out of learning how to interpret a poem–usually the more difficult the better. Perhaps it was only so they could impress their friends later, but perhaps that’s why people study nuclear physics, too. They also enjoyed the great ideas behind great poems and were pleased to see that someone had been there first. Actually, I found first-year tutoring a thoroughly enlivening experience: much more pleasant than having to deal with many of the staff and masters students. Unfortunately, the university in question has now largely cut its literature classes and replaced them with media studies and creative writing. Students can now get a degree by watching TV and writing bad poems. Not a job of course, but then, to be fair, I didn’t get one either and that’s why I now happily teach English in Japan for a living. I don’t miss the western academy at all, but then it no longer really exists.
McClelland speaks obvious wisdom here. Hip hop poetry is, at its heart, spoken media, and as such does not work particularly well in written form–no more than rock or opera lyrics work well as “poetry on the page.” The rhythmic, postural, and rhyming conventions of the Spoken Word milieu practically guarantee that a successful oral practitioner will be a failure on paper. (And on a personal note, if I don’t especially like Moliere’s rhyming couplets, why should I bend over backwards to validate the egocentric, cloth-eared patter of the “brave new world of communal uplift?” -Harold Bloom.) When I read refugees from the Spoken Word movement in broad-based poetry anthologies with no prior knowledge of their roots, their lack of ability never fails to shine like a beacon of weakness, often bringing the validity of the entire anthology into question. For the most part, this is simply weak poetry.
However, if by this accent on community art, we can bring converts around to the possibilities of the poetic and move them beyond cliche performance into broad and concentrated study of the written form, there may be long-term positive repercussions. Unfortunately, POD techonology is convincing many talentless fools and semi-talented beginners to assault the world with their painful exercises in self-aggrandisement before they have a fair chance to grow their art into something considered and fine.
Never mind the content for a moment, but the mere tone of this guy’s article is condescending and elitist. I can understand his point of view completely, even if I don’t agree with it; but if he wants the undecided reader (or teenage poet) to take his points seriously, he’s doing his objective harm by further enforcing this Us VS Them conceptUs being the published and poetry elite, and Them being the dumb teenagers.
But it seems as if that doesn’t matter to him (either that or he severely lacks perspective). He probably thinks he’s witty and intelligent. Having his poems published probably gives him warm fuzzies. I don’t see anything wrong with that, until you take it to the level he has. When his ideas become “right” and he feels they should apply to everyone (i.e., all poets should conform to his standards), it becomes blinding.
I wonder why, exactly, these unknown and “illiterate” wannabe poets get under his skin. Why do they and their “bad” poetry bother him? This isn’t a rage against the public school system or a rant about how literature and correct grammar have gone to hell; nope, this is just a wordy, intellectual way of saying, “I’m a better poet than you are, neener neener neener.” In fact (and he said as much himself), most teenage poets grow out of it and become interested in something else. But from personal experienceboth as a “wannabe” poet and the reader of some god-awful poems by angsty teenagersit’s cathartic, especially when others read it. ALL teenagers want to be understood, and ALL want to have something in common with their peers; poetry, in any form, seems like an excellent solution to both problems. Perhaps he thinks self-injury and smoking are better releases?
Hey! You made it to the Arts and Letters Daily Page!!!
Congratulations! and fie on your naysayers! The points you made are valid and cogent. You are simply trying to keep the barbarians at the gate–at least.
And it is not just the hip-hop folks who transgress and refuse to read the greats: More fuel for your fire–A couple of years ago a friend took a class in poetry, taught by a grad student at the University of Arizona. The “teacher” was majoring in literature and considered himself a poet.
During a class discussion, the teacher “fessed up” that he had never “gotten around” to reading Robert Frost!! Yikes! How did this happen? Is it a failure of his high school teachers? His American Lit Professor in the undergraduate school? His own fault for not thinking that Frost just might have something to contribute to his education in the poetic art?
More and more I am surprised to learn that people who are in “po biz”
have no background in literature at all, and have no interest in attaining it.
Their loss, I say. NOT KNOWING, not having the edge that is gained through “aspiration,” and not truly belonging to the tradition to which they mistakenly have appended themselves is pathetic and is sad, for they would be welcomed if they were willing to wipe their feet and come in through the front door instead of the coal chute. As it were.
To criticize contemporary modes of teaching, or not teaching, creative writing is no doubt fair game. But it seems to me that anyone concerned with the state of poetry today would find it unhelpful, and anyone sympathetic with the artistic process would find it cruel, to berate amateur and teenage poets. How sensible is it to bemoan the illiteracy of our society in one breath, and in the next to ridicule the work of poets? Need the author be reminded that all poets are bad to begin with (has he repressed his own early attempts and convinced himself that success is born fully formed?) and that most are bad to end with, whatever the prevailing attitudes of college faculty? Perhaps the author is above all annoyed that the internet and literary journals have exposed him to more bad poetry than ever before–but it has always existed. If he cannot abide sputtering attempts at verse, I would advise he bless the poor souls for trying, and kindly avert his eyes.
Thank you for the insightful article about the awful standard of the stuff that passes for poetry these days.
Each week in our papers they print poems from fairly well known people.
I long to be able to understand them.I am not exactly stupid, yet I cannot tie up the lines so that they make a cohesive story or feeling to me.
Is there any reason that all the so-called poetry nowadays is actually prose?
What is wrong with rhyming poems?
They remain in your mind like a song, and I find that I sometimes say them over to myself as I garden or do the housework, old poems by Wordsworth,Keats,Audin,Burns, there are so many poets that I love.
Some of their wonderful lines have become a mantra to me, and I chant them in my head.
I can’t do this with modern poetry.
Every teenager I know tells me that he/she writes poetry, and when I read it I find it is just a few lines of prose they have not given any thought to, it’s really just like a letter, written to someone they lost or someone they love.
Undoubtedly, what you term the ‘democratization of poetry,’ means the presence of a substantial amount of ‘junk’ in the realm of poetic creation. I can’t seem to discover, though, why–aside from their taxing burden on valuable landfill space–this is so troublesome to you.
ALL good poets have been canonized precisely BECAUSE their verse has transgressed pre-established norms, it is by transgression that the poetic canon grows.
The danger, I believe, and thus your fear, is that this verse that you call ‘rubbish’ will be canonized, and you will have to read it alongside Yeats and Heaney (who interestingly enough, often openly defies the strictures of grammar you seem to espouse). This is a legitimate fear. However, until it happens, that fear hardly deserves a diatribe.
At present, these exercises in self-expression are, as you suppose, stowed away in trunks in parents’ attics. Provided that is where the less ‘Quality’ verse is kept, there is, I believe, no danger.
As the amount of ‘poor’ verse on the net continues to mount (I must confess, I regularly upload poetry to the web), the ‘academy’ has yet to be ‘polluted’ by it. Precious few classes read the content of any number of ‘vanity press’ volumes, much less the verse that is selected for print in, say, the New Yorker. Indeed, Heaney and Milosz seem to have a fairly tight grip on precisely what is exceptional verse at present, so forgive me if I fail to notice the harmful side effects of this affirmation of self-expression.
The democratization of poetry is a very exciting (and scary) thing. But there is no danger in ‘saying Yes, Yes’ to those ‘self-expressers’ whose verse fails to acknowledge established norms. When these ‘self-expressers’ present their work for critical scrutiny, then is the time for critical scrutiny, and then it will be judged whether their work is lasting or otherwise. Until then, I believe, our blessed poetic canon–in its monocultural splendor–is safe.
For people of color, the problem with writing in english is that white people invented the language. Therefore, they have set the standards and so far, written more of the good literature. This is an absurd complaint, of course, but central to understanding the bitter arguments, hurt feelings and angry (yet obvious) theses constantly erupting in academia.
It’s a common defense for an artist to decide that a critic doesn’t like their work because they don’t “get it.” It’s far less common for the artist to take the critic’s opinion in stride and use it to improve her writing. When the artist and critic are of different races or sexes or backgrounds (but more importantly, different value systems and attitudes) it becomes easy for discussions that should be purely aesthetic or formal to spiral out of control and become personal and emotional. Artists, especially sincere ones without track records, often take their work awfully seriously.
Some people can make pretty nice cabinets without any training. A lot of people can’t. Some people can train themselves to make really incredible art. For me, the distinction between hip-hop poetry and let’s call it trained poetry is in their capability and their intent. This is not to say that there’s no training for spoken word or hip-hop poetry. And I’d love to abandon all discussions of their relative “quality,” because they don’t foster understanding, and things that keep people from respecting one another are useless. It’s not “all good,” in my view, but everything human is worth our consideration, no matter what we decide about it later.
Hip-hop poetry has more in common with song lyrics than trained poetry. It’s meant to be immediate, direct, unsubtle, and of the moment. Hip-hop poets can also be rappers, so they have legitimate dreams of wealth and stardom. Naturally, this is an affront to trained poets, who spend their lives in poverty and obscurity, writing and rewriting for greater subtlety and the usually vain hope of posterity.
Therefore W.S. Merwin doesn’t belong in the Wu-Tang Clan any more than Ol’ Dirty Bastard belongs in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. (Although I’d be very amused to see either poet in the improper place.) Why? Not because of their race or age, but because they are trying to meet very different standards. You can’t judge Merwin by Wu-Tang standards or vice versa. This doesn’t invalidate the work of either. Their individual works should be judged by their intent, and by their context. This doesn’t mean that one should have to know every detail of the cultural history of the creator of the work, because all artistic endeavors should in some way whether they mean to or not, relate to our common humanity. Yes, even the *Dude, Where’s My Car* series.
I believe in self-expression by any means necessary, but not in self-delusion. Everything is good to know. Not everything is good to spend too much time on, but no cultural phenomenon should be rejected simply because one is too vain, sensitive, elitist or race-conscious to examine it objectively and see its value in context.
My problem with identity politics is that it leads so often to shameless displays of vanity cloaked in the rhetoric of civil rights. I also hate stuffy academics who don’t understand that today’s outrage is often tomorrow’s canon. So shame on the McClellands and the Abiyahs of the world alike, for failing to work toward reconciling differences or creating more diverse works and forms of art and literature, and instead stirring up more of the same old tired stale crappy personal gripes disguised as objectivity.
If you have any knowledge of the current debate in the academy and without it over what constitutes ‘quality’ in poetry, you did not demonstrate it in your article. From your vague and trite meanderings, I can only guess that you are the kind of person who takes as given that the lyric modes currently embraced by college ‘creative writing programs’ constitute most ‘real’ or ‘good’ poetry produced today. I suggest that you read Jed Rasula’s “The American Poetry Wax Museum” or pick up some Susan Howe or Charles Bernstein. What passes for quality with you? Robert Pinsky? Rita Dove? Do you realize that there are a large number of respected critics, including (to name a few: Marjorie Perloff and Jerome McGann) who tend to think of those voices as representative of a nostalgic and bankrupt poetic practice?
Whatever one might say about multiculturalism, the fact is that it encourages people who are naive of the contestations of artistic practice both within and without their cultures to have a little goddamned humility about what they think they ‘know’.
Personally, I hate a lot of hip hop, and a lot of it I love. But I don’t love it because it tries to embody a set of aesthetic values that are by now long stagnant. I love it because it expresses – through a combination of diction and sound – a connectedness and a vibrancy that ‘creative writing’ is missing. When your Ms. Abiyah awakes to this fact (perhaps because her ‘multicultural’ sensibilities lead her to keep studying Keats despite his seeming irrelevance to her life), she will clearly see how little she needs your or any of her teacher’s narrow and dying notions of ‘quality’.
Mr. McClelland’s article has many good points, but I firmly disagree with the suggestion that teachers should keep creative writing out of the classroom — that we must protect poetry from getting into the wrong hands.
Yes, bad poetry is unpleasant, and bad poets with a sense of entitlement are even more so. But poetry has a gift to offer, even to those who are clumsy with it. And sometimes, that gift is so valued that the clumsy learn to be careful. We cannot predict a poet’s success based on his or her adolescent (in experience, not necessarily age) attempts. A good teacher balances encouragement and high expectations and standards and gives students room to improve.
It is precisely the kind of elitism displayed in this article that keeps some from approaching the academy and accessing the canon of Western poetry. Shouldn’t we encourage every miserable teenager to read Keats and Donne and Shakespeare, to recognize poetry in their own lives, and to try their hand at the craft of poetry? Surely the cream will rise to the top — and none of us will be around to fret about whose poetry survived in 2200.
I came upon this article by chance, almost by accident – what a stroke of luck, almost like having just received a precious gift or made a new friend. Much of it is exactly what I think. Thank you.
I am saddened but not surprised by this article. The fallacy here starts in the first paragraph with the question, “Would you try to build a cabinet when you did not posses (sic) even the rudimentary woodworking skills or knowledge of the tools necessary to build the cabinet? Of course not, then why do so many people think they can write poetry without an iota of preparation?
The concept that one must have training to become expert at a craft and that untrained craftspeople and untrained poets are necessarily incompetent is so short-sighted that it goes beyond elitism.
Everything has to start somewhere. Someone must pick up the chisel, or pen and try. The first cabinet was made by an untrained craftsperson, as was the first poem. You have to open your mouth and sing or be doomed to silence.
I will reduce this to its ultimate absurdity. If I were to refuse to converse with you unless you had training in rhetoric, I would deprive myself of your company and your ideas.
It is obvious that your position is born of ignorance rather than stupidity. You have categorized an entire mode of expression based on a limited experience with it. Hip-hop, like any other form of expression, has practitioners of widely varied skills. Those artists who create the most interesting material also create more difficult material. More difficult material is less popular. (How else can we explain the popularity of Rod McKuen?)
Dismissing an entire genre based on a small sample (I am making an assumption that you are not a fan of hip-hop) is arrogant and insular. Should one judge all jazz by Dixieland, all classical music by Gustav Mahler, all poetry by McKuen, all hip-hop by Eminem or Snoop Doggy Dogg?
To give you some context, I like classical forms of poetry. My work product is usually in the form of sonnets and rondels with an occasional attempt at a triolet. I do write both blank and free verse but I prefer the discipline of form.
That being said, my son is a fan of hip-hop and has introduced me to some extraordinary work. The artists he listens to are not “mainstream” or “gangsta” performers, they are thoughtful, interesting writers whose work reflects an extraordinary sense of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and flow.
Their subject matter is not the adolescent listing of body parts, epithets and violent behavior of the mainstream, but discourses on love, evil, nature, family, loss, death and life.
On the other hand, the only person who loses anything by your mindset is you. Historically, most innovation in art comes as a revolt against academicians. So, if you are comfortable in your role as Ruskin, I am sure the artists you denigrate will by happy to continue as Whistlers.
The most esentially aspect of poetry, is the art of finding a transcendent allusion, which all readers can understand to some degree. Loosely speaking, a poet (good or bad) is trying to reach out to the unknown i.e. to express the seemingly inexpressible. The aesthetic value of one poem over another, is a matter of personal preference. To venture down a path of laconic standards (for poetry), is to create a stringent unfeeling realm, analogous to Plato’s Republic. (You remember… the philosopher who banned poets from society.) Moreover, to assume that bad poetry (solipsistic poetry) is exclusively a trait, dominated by uneducated youth, is completely asinine notion. There are plenty of well educated bad poets in the world today. I recommend you research hip-hop more thoroughly, before ‘expressing yourself’ so irresponsibly in the future.
I don’t believe a writer should comment on his or her work once it has been published. It seems a bit disingenuous to my mind to defend, explain, or apologize after the fact. In short, take your lumps or laurels as they come.
Last month, an opinion piece written by Bruce Wexler appeared in Newsweek magazine entitled “Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?” Wexler states: “It is difficult to imagine a world without movies, plays, novels and music, but a world without poems doesn’t have to be imagined.”
Given the volume of your responses and the passion, wit and insight contained in those responses, both pro and con, I believe Mr. Wexler might be a bit premature in delivering his eulogy. And for that, I would like to thank each and every one of you for, as one reader put it, “bestirring” yourselves.
I am a college age poet, and I couldn’t agree more with most of what Mr. McClellan writes. Most of it. When it comes to pointing out the fact that many of today’s insitutions treat poetry not as art but as therapy, he is spot on. I go to a highly respected liberal arts college, which annually publishes a literary magazine the quality of which I have rarely seen surpassed. Inside one will flip through pages and pages of gorgeous photography, artwork, design, and interesting typesetting. To all appearances, the book appears as good as any art exhibition at the Met.
But for me, when I allow myself to read a few pages or poetry or prose, I am forced once more to realize that this is indeed written by my post-adolescent peers, and few if any of them have any idea what they’re doing. I’m not saying that the work is necessarily bad. I simply have been led to automatically shy away from student produced work because the vast majority of what I have read indicates precisely the attitudes towards creative writing that Mr. McClellan rightly points out. The poems are more often than not sloppy, formless first drafts that scratch weakly at the roots of an idea without ever fully digging into it and making it real. Words are chosen for their impressive sound, but not for their meaning. Narrow and illogical political or emotional complaints run rampant, unleashed with permission by the creative writing professor (who, still young, beautiful, and quirky, has managed to get pulished herself), who encourages them by all means to express what they’re feeling on a given topic, but rarely the faintest suggestion as to how to do it. I know all this because I took her creative writing class.
The problem here is not that kids should not be writing poetry; they should. They should write about whatever urges them creatively, with whatever voice or conventions guide them, from hip-hop styles to the measured verse of Robert Frost. To dimiss the literary influences of modern artists as shallow simply because they are not rooted in a deeper historical precedent is in turn shallow thinking on the part of Mr. McClellan. But I don’t believe that this was his point. Wouldn’t those same agnst filled young artists (for what else were Shelley, Joyce, or Alix Olsen?), he asks, be more satisfied with their work if they knew it stood even a chance of being appreciated outside their small circle of family and friends, who, to be polite and understanding, will undoubtedly praise it, no matter what they really think? To be sure, perhaps it doesn’t matter to some artists what the public thinks of their product years down the road, but then why do they show it to anyone in the first place? The great masters of poetry wrote and rewrote and perfected because they were trying to have their say in the most sublime, lasting way possible, so that, at the basest level, everyone could share their pain (or joy, or whatever the poem might be about). Too often, Mr. McClellan says, this temprament is mistaken for elitism, when it is nothing more than consideration for those who will be expected to read the product. He demands only that artists who make their voices heard show the same respect to their readers as they expect the readers to show for them, and put some thought behind their work. Otherwise, I will hesitate to pick up any of the myriad journals and chap books I can buy in my college bookstore for the same reason I flip past the text in the college’s publication.
The best way to learn how to make your poetry last in the hearts and minds of readers is to LEARN WHAT HAS WORKED IN THE PAST. And if the way to do this is to study the Dead White Males, then so be it. At least they’re still on the shelves. But, I hasten to point out to Mr. McCellan, so are Sei Shonogon’s 10th century Japanese list-making, Sappho’s fragments, Emily Dickinson’s private scribblings, Juvenal’s Satires, the Dreamtimes of the Australian aborigines…
The lack of artistry in art is a major problem facing those of us attempting to find place for self-expression. I am not a poet, nor do I strive to be. In fact, although I consider myself to be a mediocre to good essayist, my only true talent thrives in the visual realm.
With this being the case, I am subject to constant critism regarding my reactionary views on visual art. In my HUMBLE opinion, art in all of its forms should convey a certain amount of skill, regardless of how avant-garde it may be. We have yet to completely decipher Finnegan’s Wake, but its literary prowress cannot be denied. In the same respect, a student of painting will always look back to such artists as El Greco and think… hu’h? This is what contemporary art is missing. Although some spoiled, psuedo-intellectual artists believe that a rock in a puddle of piss in the corner of a gallery should be regarded as innovative, in actually, it is simply a rock in a puddle of piss that happens to be in the right place at the right time. The same holds true with Hip-Hop. I’m sorry, but Emminem spouting off about his troubled past in a vernacular of profanity will never have the same effect as Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the effect Public Enemy had on music is comparable to that of Hank Williams, but we don’t hear Hank William’s predesessors whining about county music not being considered poetry. On the same note, we don’t hear Public Enemy whining about it either. It seems as if those artists that are truely influential do not need to cling to their artistry, rather, their artistry is self evident through their work. Bernini never had to defend Saint Peters.
Yes, it could be argued that the greats had to start somewhere; however, once they did start, they never stopped learning. Perhaps Michaelangelo would have surfaced without the influence of Giotto, but his art would not have reached the same depths. Artistry is one of the only things that does not come naturally, it has to be taught. The most powerful artists in any media are those who WORK. It is far too easy to hold the sheild of self-expression. All artists express themselves, the rest is left up to the viewer. An audience, whether elitist or not, is NEVER obligated to regard what is on display as art.
Comparing mediocre poetry of today to poetry that has withstood the test of time is a little discourteous, the bad poetry of the past has been forgotten. Or has it? One wonders how many of our now “classics” were derided in their time the same way you derided just about everyone in the present (except yourself, of course). I’m surprised you didn’t throw a little of your own poetry in there for us, y’know, just to show us…
Art is in the eye and mind of the beholder. But, intelligent thoughtful people should not dismiss an entire genre without a more complete investigation.
Suppose that you have not been exposed to poetry before. I hand you a poem by Charles Bukowski. Let’s say that you are disgusted by the language and imagery. That is your prerogative.
If you jump to the conclusion that all other poetry is similar to his, it will certainly make life easy. You can dismiss poetry as a whole on the basis of a single sample.
Toss Ezra Pound into the mix. Add a dash of Leigh Hunt. It is still not a big enough sample for you to make such a sweeping judgement.
Judging hip-hop by the rantings of Eminem or Public enemy is easy (or should I say, facile). It means that you can use your personal distaste for an individual’s work to dismiss an entire culture.
To go beyond that to claim that because you see no depths in those performers, no other performers in that genre can be thinking deeply, learning, innovating and refining is dismissive.
But it IS your choice. We all choose things to dismiss. I have chosen to dismiss Bukowski because I do not enjoy him and Finnegans Wake because I don’t want to dedicate my life to prying the meaning out of it. I do not, however, make a judgement on their art or ability. I made this judgement on whether the individual work coincided with my taste.
Likewise, I dismiss Eminem, Run DMC, Snoop Doggy Dogg and their like in favor of Eyedea, Atmosphere and other more creative and ingenious artists.
Art is subjective. It is not for the individual to decide what art is. It is for the individual to decide whether the experience provided by the artist is art for them. James MacNeill Whistler said it well. “You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.”
The poets of previous eras spoke in the language, rhythms and flows of their times. The work of the great ones survived as echoes of the day and place of their creation. Their words evoke the past.
But as G.K. Chesterton said, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
Bravo, Mr. McClelland! Well, all except your exclusion of women poets in your favorite reading. Must admit I can’t think off-hand of any really fine European women poets (although I know there are many)..but I could name a long list of American women who’ve brought poetry stunning and original language…Ann Lauterbach, Malinda Markham, Jorie Graham to name a very few.
On the poetry workshop circuit (long abandoned by me) some pretty dreadful
writing has passed for poetry. I certainly agree with your exposure of the arrogance, let alone stupidity, of
those who think because they can write their names, have a smattering of hip-hop or rap, they can self-express and that should qualify as poetry!
Apparently, there are countless “poetry” groups around the country, giving readings, self-congratulating and scorning the academy for its repression of “spontaneous talent”…justifying their lack of education, auto-didactic or otherwise.
It’s good to see a working poet make a plain, sensible series of statements about bad poetry. Having just removed myself from a local poetry circuit whose participants specialize in several of the contemporary varieties of incompetent poetry writing (and presentation), I understand his frustration.
What worries me most about bad poetry is the ignorance, anti-intellectualism, or even anti-creativity that its practitioners demonstrate. I have met all too many poets who look only to their ethnicity, sexual preference, or faux-leftist politics for literary material, which positions them in a kind of poetic lockstep. They self-censor their creativity in the name of giving voice not to literature, but to lobbying-in-free-verse for yet another pressure group. By employing art with skillfulness, any poet from any background, class, or ethnicity can make a effective, even moving point about our common humanity. Those poets who refused to read for Laura Bush at the White House before the Iraq war could have used the national forum Mrs. Bush was offering (and the news coverage it could generate) to make much more reasoned, artful, clever, and effective anti-war statements (and I am one of those who supported the war). Instead, they amassed an online anthology of 10,000+ anti-war poems that nobody has the time to read. Which is a perfect example, en masse, of the solipsism that Mr. McClelland criticizes in his essay. Moreover, by not engaging face-to-face with a political administration they opposed, the anti-war poets did a disfavor to democracy.
I have been monitoring these letters for a few days. Although I have responded twice, I hope I will not wear out my welcome with one last post.
Talent is indeed a funny thing. Well-honed and practiced it can delight and enrich. It can … but, it may not. It is a bitter pill, a draught of gall for a poet who has some degree of talent, or perhaps a desire of talent, to realize that they are singing in a vacuum.
What a pity that all the craft, all the expertise developed through the years cannot make people listen to you, that a fine sense of metre, a rhyming dictionary, and the ability to create a sonnet that scans and follows the correct form does not translate into genius so overwhelming that it is instantly recognized by the public, or at least those that you consider your peers.
But, expertise does not translate into genius, for expertise is the study of how others did something. knowledge of a craft provides an infrastructure that may or may not help you to do what you want. Some artists use the infrastructure and work within it to create work that transcends its structure. Others bend or break the infrastructure until it supports their vision. Others find nothing within the infrastructure that they can use and create their own.
Look at how much had to be broken between the caves of Lascaux and Michelangelo, and then between Michelangelo and Van Gogh. Imagine all the horror of all the academicians along the way. Imagine the cries of, “you can’t do it like that, no-one has ever done it like that before!” Since the academy had the power, many innovative artists were disparaged. Some died poor, some insane, and only a few survived to see their changes braided into new standards to throttle the next innovator.
Unfortunately, in the letters of support for Mr. McClelland’s essay I hear the whine of oblivion. The voices say, “How dare these so-called artists make money, fame, popularity. Look how hard I have worked. I deserve the accolades, not them. They have to suffer, sacrifice, study. If they win without working as hard as I did, I have wasted my time.”
You’re right. It is unfair. In the age of the internet, desktop publishing, and recorded music it seems that genius can be rewarded in its lifetime. Artists do not die in the gutter in poverty, they die in a hail of bullets from rival artists.
… oh ease up, I’m joking.
The interesting artists are still struggling. They are not well known. They are obscure because they have been ignored or dismissed by people who can not or will not expend the effort to find them. Thus has it always been.
Poets create in the language, forms and culture of their time. Had Shakespeare written in the manner of Chaucer he would not have achieved his popularity. Had T.S. Eliot written in the language and style of Homer, he could not have developed such a distinctive voice.
A most intriguing paradox is that versifiers, those who should be closest to the original concept of spoken or sung poetry, should be so vehement in their dismissal of a new form that popularizes to the roots of poetry. King David’s chanting of psalms to the music of a lyre, a bard reciting Beowulf, Homer declaiming the Odyssey are more similar to a hip-hop artist working to an electronic beat than they are to a writer alone in a room with a keyboard.
It takes courage to take your poetry directly to the people. It takes an enormous need to communicate to strip your soul before an audience. It is much safer to submit to individual editors. If they reject your work, it is a failure of their taste, education or vision. But, if an audience fails to respond, the artist owns that failure. There is no one else to blame.
Perhaps this is the problem. Is there a deep fear that you may be wrong, that you may have failed that makes you vilify these new poets. Time will prove the art. That which survives will show who has used their talent best.
I find that those who are most critical of someone else’s work are almost invariably afraid that their own will suffer in comparison. They sound desperate and defensive. They are unwilling to wait for time to judge and strike pre-emptively.
I have a modest proposal. Work on refining your own writing. If you will not or can not open your ears and your mind, to other voices, then perfect your own. Have enough faith in your talent and vision to leave other people’s alone. That is what you should be doing anyway. Leave criticism for the critics to fail at.
According to my copy of Yeats, the fourth line reads ‘Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?’ (not the metrically irregular ‘a dog’). Mr McClelland may indeed mourn the admiration for poetry with what his friend calls ‘random line beats’; but he should surely then refrain from introducing the said random beats into Yeats’ exceptionally meticulous prosody.
Ms hip hop Abiyah is to be envied for her catalytic comments. She steps out from the inertia of the age. However crap the uninformed is, it is nevertheless worthwhile noting that it is the desire to BE that jerks each aching would-be poet from the inertia which has not been asked for but given by those whose task it is to educate and foster learning. If so many are in poverty of learning and literary hungry, is it not reasonable to expect that they will disgorge everything they can get their hands on? If this means the Internet and electronic publishing of ones enjambed thought processes, then let the beggars be for they do no harm to anyone and might even do good to some few.
O, Poetry is dead, the obituaries may be read, for the continuum is broken and a new birth awaited.
Although agreeing with everything said, I cannot bring myself to hold with the tone and sentiments expressed by Barney McClelland.
Every one of those voices is a cry for clarity. We don’t want no education is probably one of this age’s greatest cries of pain.
The more in ignorance we become the more each of us strives to make sense of expression. The less we possess of knowledge about literature the greater the urge speak.
Yes. And, no.
We are left to drag ourselves up by our boot straps. Those of us that have boots, that is. There is always someone worse of than you.
Hail to the once and future laureate! Whoever they may tern out to be!
Here we go again. Another forum for intellectual piddling. Having an intimate personal relationship with both incompetence and oblivion I can attest to the ease it takes to recriminate against nothing in particular and everything in general. What astounds me is the terrible sentence structure and lack of entertaining thought regarding the whole stupid argument. It really represents an indictment against both our educational
and intellectual institutions. Most English majors make barely creditable critics. Most critics make obnoxious stylists. Combining the two results in the article in question and the subsequent postings. Our era of minor poetic voices is fortunate in that it is complimented by similarly talented critics. Who could ask for anything more?
“undisciplined talent can only aspire to disappointment and eventually, tragic waste.”says the author. This statement is very striking and disappointing, because in my opinion, many things such as folklore, at the beginning, is based upon undisciplined talent. If one wants to express ones feeling, please let her do it. Why have you tried to set fixed standards for ages? If hip hop has been accepted by many young people, it should be recognized as reality.Many romantic poets in the 18th century were labelled as the stuff of the undiciplined talent! Many canonized writers were bitterly criticized when they began to write. Then after much sufferings they were praised.So you aren’t gods and you shouldn’t dry the well of freshness in the youth!
I have long thought the English language should have two different words for poetry. You and many others regard poetry as something that follows a strict form with regard to rhythm and rhyme, where there are many things the poet must accomplish. I and many others regard poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth, 1801).
As a person who (like most, probably) has tried to write poems of both types, I know that your kind is obviously harder to produce, because there are so many rules to abide by. The spontaneous overflow of feelings is much easier – you just write. This type of poetry does not always contain meter or rhyme scheme, because that’s not how people tend to think. Just because your poetry is harder to produce doesn’t mean the end product is of a higher quality. The two approaches create totally different art forms, and one is not “better” than the other, just as baroque painting isn’t “better” than impressionism.
If one sees poetry as simply the expression of emotion, then something like rhyme scheme is irrelevant. In fact, imposing any restrictions of this kind on the emerging poem only removes that spontaneous nature that Wordsworth spoke of. In this sense, the article you revised is not analogous to the poetry you criticize. Poetry is by nature sponateous, unlike articles. That is not to say that it can’t be improved by revision, but revision of what kind? Revision to use more precise language or better imagery or to provoke a deeper emotional response would make the poem better, but revision to include a fixed rhythm and rhyme is pointless. It doesn’t make the poem better, and if anything it distorts and places limitations on what the artist can say.
In writing your style of poetry an artist may think of an outstanding phrase to use, but can’t use it because the stressed syllables fall in the wrong places to go with the rest of the poem. In your style of poetry, the artist would be forced to work around it and find some other way to say it. In my style of poetry, the artist could say exactly what the artist wants to say. Leaving out, or totally overhauling, this phrase due to such arbitrary restrictions only diminishes the quality of the poem.
In my view, poetry IS self-expression, and forcing the poet to work with so many restrictions and obstacles, forcing the poet to rewrite the phrase in the example above, decreases the freedom to exress oneself. In your view, poetry is about how well a writer can stick to an established pattern of syllables and tones and still manage to say something worth saying. (I say, just say what you’re trying to say.) Therefore it’s no wonder that when you see poems that don’t conform to this standard you think they are “bad.” They don’t fit into your definition of poetry. But you can’t criticize them for not being what they were never intended to be.
As a side note, I find it laughable that you deign to “correct” with your (sic)s the nonstandard punctuation and capitalization in that sample. Not everyone who ignores a grammar “rule” believes it is an “outdated elitist [mode] of discourse designed to subjugate… individuality”. It simply isn’t important. I think you understood what the writer was trying to say when they put “i’m” instead of “I’m”, so what’s the point of pushing the shift key? Any linguist will tell you that language is as language does – that is, it evolves. What is “correct” in one time is not in another, and it is only self-righteous grammarians that think there are permanent rules that shouldn’t be broken. But even if you don’t agree with that, if the point is clearly understood without the capitalization, then what is the purpose of capitalizing? Just because that’s what everyone says you should do? It’s hard to believe that someone who considers themself a thinking person (as you probably do) would accept that as a reason for anything. Grammar rules are only valid insofar as they help to clarify and facilitate communication. We put commas on both sides of parenthetical information in a sentence because if you leave one out it makes the sentence hard to understand the first time through it, and it doesn’t represent the logic of the sentence. Leaving the ‘i’ lowercase doesn’t create logical problems and doesn’t make the sentence harder to understand, and therefore there is no reason to capitalize it, especially in poetry, and especially in an era when leaving out capitalization and punctuation is becoming more and more accepted in informal communication (what can i say, language evolves).
The author of this article has written with both humor and perspicacity exactly what I would have liked to have written.
I consider myself very liberal-minded, but the decline of standards,excellence, and the toleration of mediocrity for the sake of “self-esteem”, has turned me into a cultural conservative!
Does any one agree that poetry is about capturing life – not snobby acedemia? The merits of poetry lie with the reader. If the reader is too busy sneering and looking down his nose, he will miss out.
McClelland seems to be too busy revelling in his own intellect and writing style to look at the positive aspects of efforts untinged by society. I feel sorry for him I really do.
For the record I would much rather have read the works of a thousand ‘unprepared’ poets than his drivel. What a sadistic critique.
The sad thing is that his wit could be put to much better use. Satire can certainly be amusing but is it talent? Criticism seems a parasitical way to make a living to me.
As for Mary W Carson who also commented, being an 18 year old student I suspect I fall under the category she mentioned (although I personally am not interested in writing poetry). Presumptions are dangerous. Being naieve in life and not yet having received education does not mean we are stupid and do not read suppposedly ‘intellectual’ writing.
Hip hop or Barney McClelland? I dug around to find Mr. McC’s work, and was disappointed, in my critic’s duty, in not finding anything too awful.
But in the spirit of his article, there are a few choice clunkers from his work.
While the internet poetry he quotes in the article is best read with a sassy LA accent, these are to be read in your best drowsy English don voice.
“Not even the cicada’s buzz can relieve
For it is barbeque and beer this eve.”
– _Lines Written in Midsummer_
“Surprised and delighted with your ardor,
proud, I am, to have you as my daughter!”
— _To my daughter_
Oh, Christ, I’m a poet too. I hope I didn’t just rack up bad mojo.
Yes, teenage poetry is probably the worst cultural artifact there has ever been, but beyond this truism, the article had nothing to offer beyond a vague undirected grumpiness and a rather lukewarm attempt to be fashionably un-PC.
The East german judge gives it 2.0/10
The deterioration of poetry antedates hip hop by forty years or more. Teenagers are only attempting to model their poetry on the published work they see — actually, I suppose they’re being influenced by teachers who want them to write poems like the published “poems” they see. As a Canadian I can point to the evil influence of the likes of Leonard Cohen on the Canadian young and not so young. And irving Layton, and Louis Dudek, etc. etc. The published poetry I see from other countries suggests that anyone who modelled their poems on it would produce rubbish as well.
So D-Mac
Get out of our faces
Start putting the blame
In the right places
I agree. I took both creative writing and fine art in college a few years ago, and was frustrated by the lack of structured instruction. I was paying tuition at an elite private school for the privilege of receiving daily doses of gentle and vague encouragement from each and every one of my criticism-adverse professors. It’s only when I went to grad school and found myself under the brutal tutelage of a screenwriting instructor who didn’t give a damn about my self esteem (and did his best to tear it to pieces with each rewrite) that I learned the craft that supports the art. I still hate that man and wish him diarrhea and hemorrhoids, but Im grateful for what he taught me.
Yes and no… sure poetry is now mostly a rumbling of disorganized short stories, but there’s plenty of academic snobbery left, broad PC exceptions aside. If you want to exercise yours, go to funnypoetry.com to read “Love is All Box and No Cornflakes.
Human beings have a innate capacity for language, acquiring it effortlessly during infancy. Cabinet-making is a learned skill, requiring specific manual instruction. We are not born cabinet makers. Poetry antedates prose, and in fact appears before the invention of writing, hinting that it is very close to our natural ability to speak. Prose (e.g. writing articles for a newspaper) *is* more akin to cabinet making. We don’t naturally express ourselves in clear, concise, logically structured paragraphs. That is a skill that must be studied and learned – mostly by reading a lot and then writing a lot. So my basic comment on the article is that it seems to be applying, to poetry, standards which more appropriately hold for prose (and cabinet-making). Not that all poetry is good, but the standards for judging it should be relative to the culture that it speaks to and for.
Oh my dear God, I am a cultural relativist and didn’t even know it!
I agree completely with Barney McClelland, who (to me) just seems to be talking common sense. These sorts of differences in the relative merits of poems and poetry shouldn’t be hard to make, or agree on–and that’s what you have an academy for. For several years while I was a PhD student in English in New Zealand I tutored first year English courses, and what always struck me was that the students were far less radical than the staff about this sort of thing. Most were there (as I was once) because they liked reading, had a few favourite writers that they’d picked up in high school, and wanted to know more about what poetry ‘meant’. They were very uncomfortable with relativist answers and got a genuine kick out of learning how to interpret a poem–usually the more difficult the better. Perhaps it was only so they could impress their friends later, but perhaps that’s why people study nuclear physics, too. They also enjoyed the great ideas behind great poems and were pleased to see that someone had been there first. Actually, I found first-year tutoring a thoroughly enlivening experience: much more pleasant than having to deal with many of the staff and masters students. Unfortunately, the university in question has now largely cut its literature classes and replaced them with media studies and creative writing. Students can now get a degree by watching TV and writing bad poems. Not a job of course, but then, to be fair, I didn’t get one either and that’s why I now happily teach English in Japan for a living. I don’t miss the western academy at all, but then it no longer really exists.
“rights-sodden youth”
“never underestimate the power of indolence”
nice
McClelland speaks obvious wisdom here. Hip hop poetry is, at its heart, spoken media, and as such does not work particularly well in written form–no more than rock or opera lyrics work well as “poetry on the page.” The rhythmic, postural, and rhyming conventions of the Spoken Word milieu practically guarantee that a successful oral practitioner will be a failure on paper. (And on a personal note, if I don’t especially like Moliere’s rhyming couplets, why should I bend over backwards to validate the egocentric, cloth-eared patter of the “brave new world of communal uplift?” -Harold Bloom.) When I read refugees from the Spoken Word movement in broad-based poetry anthologies with no prior knowledge of their roots, their lack of ability never fails to shine like a beacon of weakness, often bringing the validity of the entire anthology into question. For the most part, this is simply weak poetry.
However, if by this accent on community art, we can bring converts around to the possibilities of the poetic and move them beyond cliche performance into broad and concentrated study of the written form, there may be long-term positive repercussions. Unfortunately, POD techonology is convincing many talentless fools and semi-talented beginners to assault the world with their painful exercises in self-aggrandisement before they have a fair chance to grow their art into something considered and fine.
CAW
Never mind the content for a moment, but the mere tone of this guy’s article is condescending and elitist. I can understand his point of view completely, even if I don’t agree with it; but if he wants the undecided reader (or teenage poet) to take his points seriously, he’s doing his objective harm by further enforcing this Us VS Them conceptUs being the published and poetry elite, and Them being the dumb teenagers.
But it seems as if that doesn’t matter to him (either that or he severely lacks perspective). He probably thinks he’s witty and intelligent. Having his poems published probably gives him warm fuzzies. I don’t see anything wrong with that, until you take it to the level he has. When his ideas become “right” and he feels they should apply to everyone (i.e., all poets should conform to his standards), it becomes blinding.
I wonder why, exactly, these unknown and “illiterate” wannabe poets get under his skin. Why do they and their “bad” poetry bother him? This isn’t a rage against the public school system or a rant about how literature and correct grammar have gone to hell; nope, this is just a wordy, intellectual way of saying, “I’m a better poet than you are, neener neener neener.” In fact (and he said as much himself), most teenage poets grow out of it and become interested in something else. But from personal experienceboth as a “wannabe” poet and the reader of some god-awful poems by angsty teenagersit’s cathartic, especially when others read it. ALL teenagers want to be understood, and ALL want to have something in common with their peers; poetry, in any form, seems like an excellent solution to both problems. Perhaps he thinks self-injury and smoking are better releases?
Hey! You made it to the Arts and Letters Daily Page!!!
Congratulations! and fie on your naysayers! The points you made are valid and cogent. You are simply trying to keep the barbarians at the gate–at least.
And it is not just the hip-hop folks who transgress and refuse to read the greats: More fuel for your fire–A couple of years ago a friend took a class in poetry, taught by a grad student at the University of Arizona. The “teacher” was majoring in literature and considered himself a poet.
During a class discussion, the teacher “fessed up” that he had never “gotten around” to reading Robert Frost!! Yikes! How did this happen? Is it a failure of his high school teachers? His American Lit Professor in the undergraduate school? His own fault for not thinking that Frost just might have something to contribute to his education in the poetic art?
More and more I am surprised to learn that people who are in “po biz”
have no background in literature at all, and have no interest in attaining it.
Their loss, I say. NOT KNOWING, not having the edge that is gained through “aspiration,” and not truly belonging to the tradition to which they mistakenly have appended themselves is pathetic and is sad, for they would be welcomed if they were willing to wipe their feet and come in through the front door instead of the coal chute. As it were.
To criticize contemporary modes of teaching, or not teaching, creative writing is no doubt fair game. But it seems to me that anyone concerned with the state of poetry today would find it unhelpful, and anyone sympathetic with the artistic process would find it cruel, to berate amateur and teenage poets. How sensible is it to bemoan the illiteracy of our society in one breath, and in the next to ridicule the work of poets? Need the author be reminded that all poets are bad to begin with (has he repressed his own early attempts and convinced himself that success is born fully formed?) and that most are bad to end with, whatever the prevailing attitudes of college faculty? Perhaps the author is above all annoyed that the internet and literary journals have exposed him to more bad poetry than ever before–but it has always existed. If he cannot abide sputtering attempts at verse, I would advise he bless the poor souls for trying, and kindly avert his eyes.
I concur
Thank you for the insightful article about the awful standard of the stuff that passes for poetry these days.
Each week in our papers they print poems from fairly well known people.
I long to be able to understand them.I am not exactly stupid, yet I cannot tie up the lines so that they make a cohesive story or feeling to me.
Is there any reason that all the so-called poetry nowadays is actually prose?
What is wrong with rhyming poems?
They remain in your mind like a song, and I find that I sometimes say them over to myself as I garden or do the housework, old poems by Wordsworth,Keats,Audin,Burns, there are so many poets that I love.
Some of their wonderful lines have become a mantra to me, and I chant them in my head.
I can’t do this with modern poetry.
Every teenager I know tells me that he/she writes poetry, and when I read it I find it is just a few lines of prose they have not given any thought to, it’s really just like a letter, written to someone they lost or someone they love.
That’s OK I suppose, but it is not poetry.
B.Pattison
Mr. McClelland,
Undoubtedly, what you term the ‘democratization of poetry,’ means the presence of a substantial amount of ‘junk’ in the realm of poetic creation. I can’t seem to discover, though, why–aside from their taxing burden on valuable landfill space–this is so troublesome to you.
ALL good poets have been canonized precisely BECAUSE their verse has transgressed pre-established norms, it is by transgression that the poetic canon grows.
The danger, I believe, and thus your fear, is that this verse that you call ‘rubbish’ will be canonized, and you will have to read it alongside Yeats and Heaney (who interestingly enough, often openly defies the strictures of grammar you seem to espouse). This is a legitimate fear. However, until it happens, that fear hardly deserves a diatribe.
At present, these exercises in self-expression are, as you suppose, stowed away in trunks in parents’ attics. Provided that is where the less ‘Quality’ verse is kept, there is, I believe, no danger.
As the amount of ‘poor’ verse on the net continues to mount (I must confess, I regularly upload poetry to the web), the ‘academy’ has yet to be ‘polluted’ by it. Precious few classes read the content of any number of ‘vanity press’ volumes, much less the verse that is selected for print in, say, the New Yorker. Indeed, Heaney and Milosz seem to have a fairly tight grip on precisely what is exceptional verse at present, so forgive me if I fail to notice the harmful side effects of this affirmation of self-expression.
The democratization of poetry is a very exciting (and scary) thing. But there is no danger in ‘saying Yes, Yes’ to those ‘self-expressers’ whose verse fails to acknowledge established norms. When these ‘self-expressers’ present their work for critical scrutiny, then is the time for critical scrutiny, and then it will be judged whether their work is lasting or otherwise. Until then, I believe, our blessed poetic canon–in its monocultural splendor–is safe.
Adam Woods
For people of color, the problem with writing in english is that white people invented the language. Therefore, they have set the standards and so far, written more of the good literature. This is an absurd complaint, of course, but central to understanding the bitter arguments, hurt feelings and angry (yet obvious) theses constantly erupting in academia.
It’s a common defense for an artist to decide that a critic doesn’t like their work because they don’t “get it.” It’s far less common for the artist to take the critic’s opinion in stride and use it to improve her writing. When the artist and critic are of different races or sexes or backgrounds (but more importantly, different value systems and attitudes) it becomes easy for discussions that should be purely aesthetic or formal to spiral out of control and become personal and emotional. Artists, especially sincere ones without track records, often take their work awfully seriously.
Some people can make pretty nice cabinets without any training. A lot of people can’t. Some people can train themselves to make really incredible art. For me, the distinction between hip-hop poetry and let’s call it trained poetry is in their capability and their intent. This is not to say that there’s no training for spoken word or hip-hop poetry. And I’d love to abandon all discussions of their relative “quality,” because they don’t foster understanding, and things that keep people from respecting one another are useless. It’s not “all good,” in my view, but everything human is worth our consideration, no matter what we decide about it later.
Hip-hop poetry has more in common with song lyrics than trained poetry. It’s meant to be immediate, direct, unsubtle, and of the moment. Hip-hop poets can also be rappers, so they have legitimate dreams of wealth and stardom. Naturally, this is an affront to trained poets, who spend their lives in poverty and obscurity, writing and rewriting for greater subtlety and the usually vain hope of posterity.
Therefore W.S. Merwin doesn’t belong in the Wu-Tang Clan any more than Ol’ Dirty Bastard belongs in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. (Although I’d be very amused to see either poet in the improper place.) Why? Not because of their race or age, but because they are trying to meet very different standards. You can’t judge Merwin by Wu-Tang standards or vice versa. This doesn’t invalidate the work of either. Their individual works should be judged by their intent, and by their context. This doesn’t mean that one should have to know every detail of the cultural history of the creator of the work, because all artistic endeavors should in some way whether they mean to or not, relate to our common humanity. Yes, even the *Dude, Where’s My Car* series.
I believe in self-expression by any means necessary, but not in self-delusion. Everything is good to know. Not everything is good to spend too much time on, but no cultural phenomenon should be rejected simply because one is too vain, sensitive, elitist or race-conscious to examine it objectively and see its value in context.
My problem with identity politics is that it leads so often to shameless displays of vanity cloaked in the rhetoric of civil rights. I also hate stuffy academics who don’t understand that today’s outrage is often tomorrow’s canon. So shame on the McClellands and the Abiyahs of the world alike, for failing to work toward reconciling differences or creating more diverse works and forms of art and literature, and instead stirring up more of the same old tired stale crappy personal gripes disguised as objectivity.
You’ve put into words almost exactly what I’ve been thinking for some time now. I thank you.
Mr. McClelland,
If you have any knowledge of the current debate in the academy and without it over what constitutes ‘quality’ in poetry, you did not demonstrate it in your article. From your vague and trite meanderings, I can only guess that you are the kind of person who takes as given that the lyric modes currently embraced by college ‘creative writing programs’ constitute most ‘real’ or ‘good’ poetry produced today. I suggest that you read Jed Rasula’s “The American Poetry Wax Museum” or pick up some Susan Howe or Charles Bernstein. What passes for quality with you? Robert Pinsky? Rita Dove? Do you realize that there are a large number of respected critics, including (to name a few: Marjorie Perloff and Jerome McGann) who tend to think of those voices as representative of a nostalgic and bankrupt poetic practice?
Whatever one might say about multiculturalism, the fact is that it encourages people who are naive of the contestations of artistic practice both within and without their cultures to have a little goddamned humility about what they think they ‘know’.
Personally, I hate a lot of hip hop, and a lot of it I love. But I don’t love it because it tries to embody a set of aesthetic values that are by now long stagnant. I love it because it expresses – through a combination of diction and sound – a connectedness and a vibrancy that ‘creative writing’ is missing. When your Ms. Abiyah awakes to this fact (perhaps because her ‘multicultural’ sensibilities lead her to keep studying Keats despite his seeming irrelevance to her life), she will clearly see how little she needs your or any of her teacher’s narrow and dying notions of ‘quality’.
Mr. McClelland’s article has many good points, but I firmly disagree with the suggestion that teachers should keep creative writing out of the classroom — that we must protect poetry from getting into the wrong hands.
Yes, bad poetry is unpleasant, and bad poets with a sense of entitlement are even more so. But poetry has a gift to offer, even to those who are clumsy with it. And sometimes, that gift is so valued that the clumsy learn to be careful. We cannot predict a poet’s success based on his or her adolescent (in experience, not necessarily age) attempts. A good teacher balances encouragement and high expectations and standards and gives students room to improve.
It is precisely the kind of elitism displayed in this article that keeps some from approaching the academy and accessing the canon of Western poetry. Shouldn’t we encourage every miserable teenager to read Keats and Donne and Shakespeare, to recognize poetry in their own lives, and to try their hand at the craft of poetry? Surely the cream will rise to the top — and none of us will be around to fret about whose poetry survived in 2200.
I came upon this article by chance, almost by accident – what a stroke of luck, almost like having just received a precious gift or made a new friend. Much of it is exactly what I think. Thank you.
I am saddened but not surprised by this article. The fallacy here starts in the first paragraph with the question, “Would you try to build a cabinet when you did not posses (sic) even the rudimentary woodworking skills or knowledge of the tools necessary to build the cabinet? Of course not, then why do so many people think they can write poetry without an iota of preparation?
The concept that one must have training to become expert at a craft and that untrained craftspeople and untrained poets are necessarily incompetent is so short-sighted that it goes beyond elitism.
Everything has to start somewhere. Someone must pick up the chisel, or pen and try. The first cabinet was made by an untrained craftsperson, as was the first poem. You have to open your mouth and sing or be doomed to silence.
I will reduce this to its ultimate absurdity. If I were to refuse to converse with you unless you had training in rhetoric, I would deprive myself of your company and your ideas.
It is obvious that your position is born of ignorance rather than stupidity. You have categorized an entire mode of expression based on a limited experience with it. Hip-hop, like any other form of expression, has practitioners of widely varied skills. Those artists who create the most interesting material also create more difficult material. More difficult material is less popular. (How else can we explain the popularity of Rod McKuen?)
Dismissing an entire genre based on a small sample (I am making an assumption that you are not a fan of hip-hop) is arrogant and insular. Should one judge all jazz by Dixieland, all classical music by Gustav Mahler, all poetry by McKuen, all hip-hop by Eminem or Snoop Doggy Dogg?
To give you some context, I like classical forms of poetry. My work product is usually in the form of sonnets and rondels with an occasional attempt at a triolet. I do write both blank and free verse but I prefer the discipline of form.
That being said, my son is a fan of hip-hop and has introduced me to some extraordinary work. The artists he listens to are not “mainstream” or “gangsta” performers, they are thoughtful, interesting writers whose work reflects an extraordinary sense of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and flow.
Their subject matter is not the adolescent listing of body parts, epithets and violent behavior of the mainstream, but discourses on love, evil, nature, family, loss, death and life.
On the other hand, the only person who loses anything by your mindset is you. Historically, most innovation in art comes as a revolt against academicians. So, if you are comfortable in your role as Ruskin, I am sure the artists you denigrate will by happy to continue as Whistlers.
The most esentially aspect of poetry, is the art of finding a transcendent allusion, which all readers can understand to some degree. Loosely speaking, a poet (good or bad) is trying to reach out to the unknown i.e. to express the seemingly inexpressible. The aesthetic value of one poem over another, is a matter of personal preference. To venture down a path of laconic standards (for poetry), is to create a stringent unfeeling realm, analogous to Plato’s Republic. (You remember… the philosopher who banned poets from society.) Moreover, to assume that bad poetry (solipsistic poetry) is exclusively a trait, dominated by uneducated youth, is completely asinine notion. There are plenty of well educated bad poets in the world today. I recommend you research hip-hop more thoroughly, before ‘expressing yourself’ so irresponsibly in the future.
I don’t believe a writer should comment on his or her work once it has been published. It seems a bit disingenuous to my mind to defend, explain, or apologize after the fact. In short, take your lumps or laurels as they come.
Last month, an opinion piece written by Bruce Wexler appeared in Newsweek magazine entitled “Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?” Wexler states: “It is difficult to imagine a world without movies, plays, novels and music, but a world without poems doesn’t have to be imagined.”
Given the volume of your responses and the passion, wit and insight contained in those responses, both pro and con, I believe Mr. Wexler might be a bit premature in delivering his eulogy. And for that, I would like to thank each and every one of you for, as one reader put it, “bestirring” yourselves.
I am a college age poet, and I couldn’t agree more with most of what Mr. McClellan writes. Most of it. When it comes to pointing out the fact that many of today’s insitutions treat poetry not as art but as therapy, he is spot on. I go to a highly respected liberal arts college, which annually publishes a literary magazine the quality of which I have rarely seen surpassed. Inside one will flip through pages and pages of gorgeous photography, artwork, design, and interesting typesetting. To all appearances, the book appears as good as any art exhibition at the Met.
But for me, when I allow myself to read a few pages or poetry or prose, I am forced once more to realize that this is indeed written by my post-adolescent peers, and few if any of them have any idea what they’re doing. I’m not saying that the work is necessarily bad. I simply have been led to automatically shy away from student produced work because the vast majority of what I have read indicates precisely the attitudes towards creative writing that Mr. McClellan rightly points out. The poems are more often than not sloppy, formless first drafts that scratch weakly at the roots of an idea without ever fully digging into it and making it real. Words are chosen for their impressive sound, but not for their meaning. Narrow and illogical political or emotional complaints run rampant, unleashed with permission by the creative writing professor (who, still young, beautiful, and quirky, has managed to get pulished herself), who encourages them by all means to express what they’re feeling on a given topic, but rarely the faintest suggestion as to how to do it. I know all this because I took her creative writing class.
The problem here is not that kids should not be writing poetry; they should. They should write about whatever urges them creatively, with whatever voice or conventions guide them, from hip-hop styles to the measured verse of Robert Frost. To dimiss the literary influences of modern artists as shallow simply because they are not rooted in a deeper historical precedent is in turn shallow thinking on the part of Mr. McClellan. But I don’t believe that this was his point. Wouldn’t those same agnst filled young artists (for what else were Shelley, Joyce, or Alix Olsen?), he asks, be more satisfied with their work if they knew it stood even a chance of being appreciated outside their small circle of family and friends, who, to be polite and understanding, will undoubtedly praise it, no matter what they really think? To be sure, perhaps it doesn’t matter to some artists what the public thinks of their product years down the road, but then why do they show it to anyone in the first place? The great masters of poetry wrote and rewrote and perfected because they were trying to have their say in the most sublime, lasting way possible, so that, at the basest level, everyone could share their pain (or joy, or whatever the poem might be about). Too often, Mr. McClellan says, this temprament is mistaken for elitism, when it is nothing more than consideration for those who will be expected to read the product. He demands only that artists who make their voices heard show the same respect to their readers as they expect the readers to show for them, and put some thought behind their work. Otherwise, I will hesitate to pick up any of the myriad journals and chap books I can buy in my college bookstore for the same reason I flip past the text in the college’s publication.
The best way to learn how to make your poetry last in the hearts and minds of readers is to LEARN WHAT HAS WORKED IN THE PAST. And if the way to do this is to study the Dead White Males, then so be it. At least they’re still on the shelves. But, I hasten to point out to Mr. McCellan, so are Sei Shonogon’s 10th century Japanese list-making, Sappho’s fragments, Emily Dickinson’s private scribblings, Juvenal’s Satires, the Dreamtimes of the Australian aborigines…
The lack of artistry in art is a major problem facing those of us attempting to find place for self-expression. I am not a poet, nor do I strive to be. In fact, although I consider myself to be a mediocre to good essayist, my only true talent thrives in the visual realm.
With this being the case, I am subject to constant critism regarding my reactionary views on visual art. In my HUMBLE opinion, art in all of its forms should convey a certain amount of skill, regardless of how avant-garde it may be. We have yet to completely decipher Finnegan’s Wake, but its literary prowress cannot be denied. In the same respect, a student of painting will always look back to such artists as El Greco and think… hu’h? This is what contemporary art is missing. Although some spoiled, psuedo-intellectual artists believe that a rock in a puddle of piss in the corner of a gallery should be regarded as innovative, in actually, it is simply a rock in a puddle of piss that happens to be in the right place at the right time. The same holds true with Hip-Hop. I’m sorry, but Emminem spouting off about his troubled past in a vernacular of profanity will never have the same effect as Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the effect Public Enemy had on music is comparable to that of Hank Williams, but we don’t hear Hank William’s predesessors whining about county music not being considered poetry. On the same note, we don’t hear Public Enemy whining about it either. It seems as if those artists that are truely influential do not need to cling to their artistry, rather, their artistry is self evident through their work. Bernini never had to defend Saint Peters.
Yes, it could be argued that the greats had to start somewhere; however, once they did start, they never stopped learning. Perhaps Michaelangelo would have surfaced without the influence of Giotto, but his art would not have reached the same depths. Artistry is one of the only things that does not come naturally, it has to be taught. The most powerful artists in any media are those who WORK. It is far too easy to hold the sheild of self-expression. All artists express themselves, the rest is left up to the viewer. An audience, whether elitist or not, is NEVER obligated to regard what is on display as art.
Comparing mediocre poetry of today to poetry that has withstood the test of time is a little discourteous, the bad poetry of the past has been forgotten. Or has it? One wonders how many of our now “classics” were derided in their time the same way you derided just about everyone in the present (except yourself, of course). I’m surprised you didn’t throw a little of your own poetry in there for us, y’know, just to show us…
Art is in the eye and mind of the beholder. But, intelligent thoughtful people should not dismiss an entire genre without a more complete investigation.
Suppose that you have not been exposed to poetry before. I hand you a poem by Charles Bukowski. Let’s say that you are disgusted by the language and imagery. That is your prerogative.
If you jump to the conclusion that all other poetry is similar to his, it will certainly make life easy. You can dismiss poetry as a whole on the basis of a single sample.
Toss Ezra Pound into the mix. Add a dash of Leigh Hunt. It is still not a big enough sample for you to make such a sweeping judgement.
Judging hip-hop by the rantings of Eminem or Public enemy is easy (or should I say, facile). It means that you can use your personal distaste for an individual’s work to dismiss an entire culture.
To go beyond that to claim that because you see no depths in those performers, no other performers in that genre can be thinking deeply, learning, innovating and refining is dismissive.
But it IS your choice. We all choose things to dismiss. I have chosen to dismiss Bukowski because I do not enjoy him and Finnegans Wake because I don’t want to dedicate my life to prying the meaning out of it. I do not, however, make a judgement on their art or ability. I made this judgement on whether the individual work coincided with my taste.
Likewise, I dismiss Eminem, Run DMC, Snoop Doggy Dogg and their like in favor of Eyedea, Atmosphere and other more creative and ingenious artists.
Art is subjective. It is not for the individual to decide what art is. It is for the individual to decide whether the experience provided by the artist is art for them. James MacNeill Whistler said it well. “You shouldn’t say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.”
The poets of previous eras spoke in the language, rhythms and flows of their times. The work of the great ones survived as echoes of the day and place of their creation. Their words evoke the past.
But as G.K. Chesterton said, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.”
dwl
Bravo, Mr. McClelland! Well, all except your exclusion of women poets in your favorite reading. Must admit I can’t think off-hand of any really fine European women poets (although I know there are many)..but I could name a long list of American women who’ve brought poetry stunning and original language…Ann Lauterbach, Malinda Markham, Jorie Graham to name a very few.
On the poetry workshop circuit (long abandoned by me) some pretty dreadful
writing has passed for poetry. I certainly agree with your exposure of the arrogance, let alone stupidity, of
those who think because they can write their names, have a smattering of hip-hop or rap, they can self-express and that should qualify as poetry!
Apparently, there are countless “poetry” groups around the country, giving readings, self-congratulating and scorning the academy for its repression of “spontaneous talent”…justifying their lack of education, auto-didactic or otherwise.
It’s good to see a working poet make a plain, sensible series of statements about bad poetry. Having just removed myself from a local poetry circuit whose participants specialize in several of the contemporary varieties of incompetent poetry writing (and presentation), I understand his frustration.
What worries me most about bad poetry is the ignorance, anti-intellectualism, or even anti-creativity that its practitioners demonstrate. I have met all too many poets who look only to their ethnicity, sexual preference, or faux-leftist politics for literary material, which positions them in a kind of poetic lockstep. They self-censor their creativity in the name of giving voice not to literature, but to lobbying-in-free-verse for yet another pressure group. By employing art with skillfulness, any poet from any background, class, or ethnicity can make a effective, even moving point about our common humanity. Those poets who refused to read for Laura Bush at the White House before the Iraq war could have used the national forum Mrs. Bush was offering (and the news coverage it could generate) to make much more reasoned, artful, clever, and effective anti-war statements (and I am one of those who supported the war). Instead, they amassed an online anthology of 10,000+ anti-war poems that nobody has the time to read. Which is a perfect example, en masse, of the solipsism that Mr. McClelland criticizes in his essay. Moreover, by not engaging face-to-face with a political administration they opposed, the anti-war poets did a disfavor to democracy.
I have been monitoring these letters for a few days. Although I have responded twice, I hope I will not wear out my welcome with one last post.
Talent is indeed a funny thing. Well-honed and practiced it can delight and enrich. It can … but, it may not. It is a bitter pill, a draught of gall for a poet who has some degree of talent, or perhaps a desire of talent, to realize that they are singing in a vacuum.
What a pity that all the craft, all the expertise developed through the years cannot make people listen to you, that a fine sense of metre, a rhyming dictionary, and the ability to create a sonnet that scans and follows the correct form does not translate into genius so overwhelming that it is instantly recognized by the public, or at least those that you consider your peers.
But, expertise does not translate into genius, for expertise is the study of how others did something. knowledge of a craft provides an infrastructure that may or may not help you to do what you want. Some artists use the infrastructure and work within it to create work that transcends its structure. Others bend or break the infrastructure until it supports their vision. Others find nothing within the infrastructure that they can use and create their own.
Look at how much had to be broken between the caves of Lascaux and Michelangelo, and then between Michelangelo and Van Gogh. Imagine all the horror of all the academicians along the way. Imagine the cries of, “you can’t do it like that, no-one has ever done it like that before!” Since the academy had the power, many innovative artists were disparaged. Some died poor, some insane, and only a few survived to see their changes braided into new standards to throttle the next innovator.
Unfortunately, in the letters of support for Mr. McClelland’s essay I hear the whine of oblivion. The voices say, “How dare these so-called artists make money, fame, popularity. Look how hard I have worked. I deserve the accolades, not them. They have to suffer, sacrifice, study. If they win without working as hard as I did, I have wasted my time.”
You’re right. It is unfair. In the age of the internet, desktop publishing, and recorded music it seems that genius can be rewarded in its lifetime. Artists do not die in the gutter in poverty, they die in a hail of bullets from rival artists.
… oh ease up, I’m joking.
The interesting artists are still struggling. They are not well known. They are obscure because they have been ignored or dismissed by people who can not or will not expend the effort to find them. Thus has it always been.
Poets create in the language, forms and culture of their time. Had Shakespeare written in the manner of Chaucer he would not have achieved his popularity. Had T.S. Eliot written in the language and style of Homer, he could not have developed such a distinctive voice.
A most intriguing paradox is that versifiers, those who should be closest to the original concept of spoken or sung poetry, should be so vehement in their dismissal of a new form that popularizes to the roots of poetry. King David’s chanting of psalms to the music of a lyre, a bard reciting Beowulf, Homer declaiming the Odyssey are more similar to a hip-hop artist working to an electronic beat than they are to a writer alone in a room with a keyboard.
It takes courage to take your poetry directly to the people. It takes an enormous need to communicate to strip your soul before an audience. It is much safer to submit to individual editors. If they reject your work, it is a failure of their taste, education or vision. But, if an audience fails to respond, the artist owns that failure. There is no one else to blame.
Perhaps this is the problem. Is there a deep fear that you may be wrong, that you may have failed that makes you vilify these new poets. Time will prove the art. That which survives will show who has used their talent best.
I find that those who are most critical of someone else’s work are almost invariably afraid that their own will suffer in comparison. They sound desperate and defensive. They are unwilling to wait for time to judge and strike pre-emptively.
I have a modest proposal. Work on refining your own writing. If you will not or can not open your ears and your mind, to other voices, then perfect your own. Have enough faith in your talent and vision to leave other people’s alone. That is what you should be doing anyway. Leave criticism for the critics to fail at.
dwl
According to my copy of Yeats, the fourth line reads ‘Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?’ (not the metrically irregular ‘a dog’). Mr McClelland may indeed mourn the admiration for poetry with what his friend calls ‘random line beats’; but he should surely then refrain from introducing the said random beats into Yeats’ exceptionally meticulous prosody.
Yours sincerely
John Mackinnon
Ms hip hop Abiyah is to be envied for her catalytic comments. She steps out from the inertia of the age. However crap the uninformed is, it is nevertheless worthwhile noting that it is the desire to BE that jerks each aching would-be poet from the inertia which has not been asked for but given by those whose task it is to educate and foster learning. If so many are in poverty of learning and literary hungry, is it not reasonable to expect that they will disgorge everything they can get their hands on? If this means the Internet and electronic publishing of ones enjambed thought processes, then let the beggars be for they do no harm to anyone and might even do good to some few.
O, Poetry is dead, the obituaries may be read, for the continuum is broken and a new birth awaited.
Although agreeing with everything said, I cannot bring myself to hold with the tone and sentiments expressed by Barney McClelland.
Every one of those voices is a cry for clarity. We don’t want no education is probably one of this age’s greatest cries of pain.
The more in ignorance we become the more each of us strives to make sense of expression. The less we possess of knowledge about literature the greater the urge speak.
Yes. And, no.
We are left to drag ourselves up by our boot straps. Those of us that have boots, that is. There is always someone worse of than you.
Hail to the once and future laureate! Whoever they may tern out to be!
Garsy.
Here we go again. Another forum for intellectual piddling. Having an intimate personal relationship with both incompetence and oblivion I can attest to the ease it takes to recriminate against nothing in particular and everything in general. What astounds me is the terrible sentence structure and lack of entertaining thought regarding the whole stupid argument. It really represents an indictment against both our educational
and intellectual institutions. Most English majors make barely creditable critics. Most critics make obnoxious stylists. Combining the two results in the article in question and the subsequent postings. Our era of minor poetic voices is fortunate in that it is complimented by similarly talented critics. Who could ask for anything more?
“undisciplined talent can only aspire to disappointment and eventually, tragic waste.”says the author. This statement is very striking and disappointing, because in my opinion, many things such as folklore, at the beginning, is based upon undisciplined talent. If one wants to express ones feeling, please let her do it. Why have you tried to set fixed standards for ages? If hip hop has been accepted by many young people, it should be recognized as reality.Many romantic poets in the 18th century were labelled as the stuff of the undiciplined talent! Many canonized writers were bitterly criticized when they began to write. Then after much sufferings they were praised.So you aren’t gods and you shouldn’t dry the well of freshness in the youth!
A breath of fresh air! I’m glad i found it!
I have long thought the English language should have two different words for poetry. You and many others regard poetry as something that follows a strict form with regard to rhythm and rhyme, where there are many things the poet must accomplish. I and many others regard poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth, 1801).
As a person who (like most, probably) has tried to write poems of both types, I know that your kind is obviously harder to produce, because there are so many rules to abide by. The spontaneous overflow of feelings is much easier – you just write. This type of poetry does not always contain meter or rhyme scheme, because that’s not how people tend to think. Just because your poetry is harder to produce doesn’t mean the end product is of a higher quality. The two approaches create totally different art forms, and one is not “better” than the other, just as baroque painting isn’t “better” than impressionism.
If one sees poetry as simply the expression of emotion, then something like rhyme scheme is irrelevant. In fact, imposing any restrictions of this kind on the emerging poem only removes that spontaneous nature that Wordsworth spoke of. In this sense, the article you revised is not analogous to the poetry you criticize. Poetry is by nature sponateous, unlike articles. That is not to say that it can’t be improved by revision, but revision of what kind? Revision to use more precise language or better imagery or to provoke a deeper emotional response would make the poem better, but revision to include a fixed rhythm and rhyme is pointless. It doesn’t make the poem better, and if anything it distorts and places limitations on what the artist can say.
In writing your style of poetry an artist may think of an outstanding phrase to use, but can’t use it because the stressed syllables fall in the wrong places to go with the rest of the poem. In your style of poetry, the artist would be forced to work around it and find some other way to say it. In my style of poetry, the artist could say exactly what the artist wants to say. Leaving out, or totally overhauling, this phrase due to such arbitrary restrictions only diminishes the quality of the poem.
In my view, poetry IS self-expression, and forcing the poet to work with so many restrictions and obstacles, forcing the poet to rewrite the phrase in the example above, decreases the freedom to exress oneself. In your view, poetry is about how well a writer can stick to an established pattern of syllables and tones and still manage to say something worth saying. (I say, just say what you’re trying to say.) Therefore it’s no wonder that when you see poems that don’t conform to this standard you think they are “bad.” They don’t fit into your definition of poetry. But you can’t criticize them for not being what they were never intended to be.
As a side note, I find it laughable that you deign to “correct” with your (sic)s the nonstandard punctuation and capitalization in that sample. Not everyone who ignores a grammar “rule” believes it is an “outdated elitist [mode] of discourse designed to subjugate… individuality”. It simply isn’t important. I think you understood what the writer was trying to say when they put “i’m” instead of “I’m”, so what’s the point of pushing the shift key? Any linguist will tell you that language is as language does – that is, it evolves. What is “correct” in one time is not in another, and it is only self-righteous grammarians that think there are permanent rules that shouldn’t be broken. But even if you don’t agree with that, if the point is clearly understood without the capitalization, then what is the purpose of capitalizing? Just because that’s what everyone says you should do? It’s hard to believe that someone who considers themself a thinking person (as you probably do) would accept that as a reason for anything. Grammar rules are only valid insofar as they help to clarify and facilitate communication. We put commas on both sides of parenthetical information in a sentence because if you leave one out it makes the sentence hard to understand the first time through it, and it doesn’t represent the logic of the sentence. Leaving the ‘i’ lowercase doesn’t create logical problems and doesn’t make the sentence harder to understand, and therefore there is no reason to capitalize it, especially in poetry, and especially in an era when leaving out capitalization and punctuation is becoming more and more accepted in informal communication (what can i say, language evolves).