[Michael F]

As usual, I think Miss Emily had a relevant thought:


406

Some — Work for Immortality —
The Chiefer part, for Time —
He — Compensates — immediately —
The former — Checks — on Fame —

Slow Gold — but Everlasting —
The Bullion of Today —
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality —

A Beggar — Here and There —
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight —
One's — Money — One's — the Mine -

[Maryann Corbett]

I was confident that this group would have something to say.

I'm not sure that I have anything coherent to say; the article probably caught my attention because my thoughts on the subject are so conflicted and disorganized. So, without much attempt at organization:

That money should come into it at all has always seemed strange to me. After all, I learned to love poetry because of exposure to it that was free. Nursery rhymes cost nothing. R.L. Stevenson is in the public domain. Schoolbooks are cheap or free. It was all given to me; why shouldn't I give it away? Even the contemporary poets whose work I've come to love because of the Sphere I was introduced to online. Though I buy many books now, I've read more work gratis than I've paid for.

So what of Jenna Le's argument that we should all be trying hard to get paid rather than giving our work away? I see the truth of the general idea that work is not taken seriously unless we get paid for it. We're not Renaissance courtiers, yet here we are, turning out work for not much more than praise for our sprezzatura--which we only get from each other.

Of course the pairing with carrot carnations is a deliberate provocation. It's meant to say "this is how little the world thinks of poetry." And it jibes with the sense I've always had that it's socially safer to say I'm a writer because poets are commonly assumed to be airheads.

To Colin's point about lyrics: Yes, people love and value songs and their lyrics, but I would argue that they don't think of them in the same mental breath as poetry. It's the rare, rare song lyric that rises to the level of poetry. Leonard Cohen is one in a billion.

As I said, disorganized....

[W.F. Lantry]

I'm always suspicious when pundits come out with an anti-poetry article so soon after the NEA grants are announced. And look at his list of "minor arts:" "... theater, ballet, opera, symphonic music and literary fiction." Along with poetry and a few others, the very things the NEA funds. Then, of course, he goes after "Creative Writing professors." The right loves to hammer professors and all writing programs. If I had a nickel for every rightwinger who used MFAs as a kind of cultural identification dog whistle, I could fund more than a few grants.

Now, before everyone gets in a twist, I know he's one of those conservatives who 'saw the light' and converted many years ago, like that guy from the American Spectator. But he's clearly still got some of those attitudes in his blood. You can see it in his Hamiltonian / Jeffersonian dichotomy. It's like walking into Hillsdale College and seeing that giant painting of "The Signers" they're so proud of. Yes, he may be critiquing the thing, but he's still focused on it.

Best,

Bill

[John Whitworth]

I consider many of Cole Porter's lyrics to be poetry.<'Brush up your Shakespeare' is a comic poem. Come to that Michael Flanders' lyric for 'The Slow Train' is poetry too.

[Wintaka]

Maryann:

Maryann Corbett said:

Yes, people love and value songs and their lyrics, but I would argue that they don't think of them in the same mental breath as poetry.

Agreed. Sadly, this distinction between two types of verse, between subset and superset, based on the presence or absence of music is both exaggerated and ubiquitous. However, I'm not convinced these people think of [contemporary] poetry at all.

Maryann Corbett said:

It's the rare, rare song lyric that rises to the level of poetry. Leonard Cohen is one in a billion.

Yes, but because they are completely overlooked by those same people it is even more rare today for poems to rise to the level of poetry. Barring a breakthrough, great lyricists like Cohen, Dylan, Ferron and a precious few others may be all we have for a while yet. As English becomes universal, the poet capable of pleasing broad audiences, as Cohen has, will be one in seven billion.

Best regards,

Colin (who resisted the temptation to say "So long, Maryann" here. Almost.)

[John Whitworth]

As English becomes universal... what a dreadful thought. However, English is not as universal as Latin once was, and as China becomes top nation, English will decline.

Chinese poetry anybody?

Meanwhile I recommend a book 'Poets of Tin Pan Alley' by Philip Furia.

[ross hamilton hill]

This is a typical shallow article about art. It fails to recognize time, that poems are read for centuries by millions of readers, the same goes for any great art. There is no distinction between minor and major arts, all are arts, the Japanese recognize this, one of their living national treasures produces origami. Also genre writing is not distinct from literary fiction, Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard are great writers, the fact that they work in crime fiction has nothing to do with the quality of their work. As for making money, a painter friend of mine when I was in my early twenties and complained about not making money from art, said "the art is the money", that art has value and that value will always be rcognized by others and the artist will always be supported, even though he may remain poor but poverty never got in the way of art, wealth often does, it corrupts.
To me there is no distinction between poetry and song, none at all, if a poem can be recited, it can be sung, if a song can be written down, it can be read, so what's the difference? Complexity? Who says good poems need to be complex, Shakepeare writing sonnets didn't.. 'shall I compare thee to a summer's day' is hardly rocket science. And poets have made millions, Byron made a fortune, if Dylan Thomas hadn't sold his copyrights his family (I knew one of his sons) would be immensely rich, have one poem on a school or university syllabus and you can make a neat pile. Leonard Cohen is a case in point, his lyrics are beautiful poetry and are recognized as such by his adoring fans, when he lost all his money to a corrupt manager, he went on a world tour, and made $9 million. Not bad if money is what you are after. And poetry is immensely popular, Neruda famously said he was so popular he could publish his socks. Just googled 'poetry' got 292,000,000 hits, porn gets 401,000,000 hits, so sex is a bit more popular than poetry. That sounds about right to me.

[Kyle Norwood]

John: Well, two of my heroes at UCLA were my dissertation directors Stephen Yenser and Calvin Bedient, poet-professors who write about poetry. But even in 1994, when I filed my dissertation, work on poetry was becoming an anomaly, and free-floating theory, unattached to any particular works of literature, was becoming the norm. As far as I can tell, that hasn't changed in the last 20 years.

I rarely take issue with Emily Dickinson, I wouldn't count on immortality to give contemporary poets their due. Poetry, like opera, seems to be losing the last of its non-practitioner audience. I go to the Rattle readings that Tim Green puts on in Flintridge, California, north of Los Angeles. It's an unusual reading series in that the open mike readers are uncommonly good and it's not affiliated with any MFA program or university--the attendees are dedicated poets and poetry-readers. Their average age is probably over 60.

I notice the same thing when I go to the NY Met live opera broadcasts at UCLA. The crowd is small and over-60; the only people under 50 that I see there are the doorman and the woman selling snacks. There are younger people at the L.A. Opera, but they're outnumbered.

Perhaps--I hope--it's different in the U.K. and Europe. Maybe it's even different in New York. Los Angeles is strange: there are a lot of good poets here, but (for a metropolitan area with 10+ million people) the poetry-reading scene is relatively dead.

[John Whitworth]

Free floatng theory. My daughter did painting at Brighton. There were three different parts of the art course. There was painting, which was what she did. There was Art and Design, which she respected. And there was Theory which she said was for people who couldn't DO anything. In a bloody nutshell if you ask me. They write that awful crap in Art catalogues.

[ross hamilton hill]

Kyle, in Australia poetry readings are often held in pubs, where alcohol becomes part of the inspiration, such 'readings' can be hilarious or end in a fist fight. I would never go to a 'formal' poetry reading, too dull and earnest. Poetry is immensely popular, it's present to some degree in every song, even ads and billboards. On the back of bus tickets in Sydney, back when we had bus tickets, each ticket would have on the back 'Please dispose of this ticket thoughtfully' That to me is a wonderful line of poetry, I used to imagine people walking around with a bus ticket in their hand, pondering the cosmic implications of where to put it.
If you narrow your conception of what poetry is to Universities, polite readings and slim volumes of verse, then of course it can seem a minor art but if you see poetry where it often is, all over the place, then you, if you write poetry can feel you are part of something that incorporates everyone from story tellers in the grand square of Marrakesh to rap artists making YouTubes on their always unmade beds.