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Unread 12-05-2008, 02:51 AM
Christopher Whitby Christopher Whitby is offline
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Being a UK citizen and having only come back to contemporary poetry in the last few years, I have to confess that, mea culpa, I knew nothing about Dana Gioia, the work of the NEA, and more importantly Gioia's 1991 article Can Poetry Matter? (when the internet was hardly yet a public phenomenon). I read it last night and note that the article referred to in the recent thread on Gioia's time at NEA describes it as 'influential'.

Was it? What struck me is that, to my mind, nothing has changed. Gioia's conclusions show very few signs of implementation, at least in the UK. Poetry readings remain exclusively focussed on the poets presenting them and the arts of poetry, criticism, music, sculpture and painting etc remain resolutely discrete in presentation. Poetry has hardly escaped from the creative writing halls of academia and I very much doubt that the proliferation of poetry on the internet has actually brought it a wider audience amongst (for want of a better term) the general public. For example, Open Poetry Ltd's small presence on social networking sites, which I instigated as a means of spreading word about the 2007 international sonnet competition, engendered no discussion, just frequent requests from (mostly young) Facebook and Bebo users to 'check out my poetry' – self-focussed again.

There have been a few notable exceptions, Poems on the Underground (subway) for instance, but as I read Gioia's article I kept thinking that it could have been written yesterday, not 17 years ago. Am I mistaken?

[I have posted this as a new thread since the thread on Gioia became a discussion of the work of the NEA, rather than of the manifesto his Can Poetry Matter? article presented.]
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Unread 12-05-2008, 04:08 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Christopher, not much is my answer. On the negative side, poetry has just become further professionalized and marginalized. On the plus side, there is less onus on and more opportunity for competent poets who write in form. We still don't reach a general readership. No progress has been made in radio, our ideal medium. We have a new medium, the zine, and several good ones are published by members of the Sphere; but I suspect their readership is confined to their accomplished contributors. I'd also acknowledge that the development of the online workshop is a big step forward, allowing poets across the breadth of the Anglosphere to get to know one another. I know more fine Australian poets now than I knew Americans when Dana wrote his essay.

But the real issue is education. Until educators at the college level and even more importantly, at the high school level, learn to read, recite and teach poetry, to make it exciting, indispensable, there is little hope. That's why I think Dana's high school memorization and recitation program was the signal accomplishment of his tenure.
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Unread 12-05-2008, 04:48 AM
Christopher Whitby Christopher Whitby is offline
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Tim, your comment rather echoes an article in The Times a few days ago concerning the issue that some educators seem to regard the internet as a self-sufficient source of knowledge and therefore they don't need to teach knowledge, facts, and memorising skills, but only the tools of interpretation and criticism. The article I've linked to above is a shorter version of the original, which made the point that knowing how to use a spade is of limited use if you don't have a spade.

I confess that as I grow yet older I tend to store in memory where I can find facts more than the facts themselves, but I think that's just because as one grows older it just gets harder to memorise: e.g. my adult efforts to learn Italian are markedly less successful than my childhood ability to learn French and German (much of which I have managed to retain). It's a feature of aging. I know my young daughter has a sponge-like capacity to soak up information, as I once did.

While searching for the Times article above, I found across this that I was not aware of but which suggests that Gioia's programme has crossed the water. However, nearly all government and educational initiatives here tend to be short lived, as they get pushed out by the latest bauble our leaders want to flash in front of our eyes.
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