Yes, Chris. Indeed. I didn't make it clear that I now agree with that professor.

Just take one example, Wallace Stevens. Is there a biography about him? Is so, I can only assume it must be boring. He didn't have an adventuresome life. But he actually composed his poems in his head when going to work, where he dictated them to his secretary. That to me is worth the price of admission as to how interesting his mental life must have been. Otherwise, we have Byron and Shelley who had adventuresome lives and wrote poetry deeply informed by poetry.

Don

Thanks for starting this thread, John! I'd never heard of Felix Dennis; I've now spent some time on his site, reading and listening to a few poems--not enough to have an opinion on his work. I did notice, though, that some of his poems do make reference to other poets/poems, and some of them are on more serious topics than this one.

I suspect we'd all agree that it's easy to be "successful" as a poet if you're wealthy and can offer free wine at your readings, produce books of your work with pictures in them, use all the latest technology (including your very own "app") on your website, and create "media buzz" about yourself and your poetry. Your events can then become part of the vast entertainment options available to most people these days. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing; just that I don't imagine most poets have the money to do it. I'm interested in how to reach audiences who would not, by choice, go to a poetry reading, and so I was very interested in what Tim M. and John said on the "depth" thread about writing poems for--and bringing them to--ordinary people like loggers and farmers. But I think that's a subject for the General Conversation board.

What do I think about the poem John suggested we look at? I think, first, that Felix is definitely writing for his own voice, in performance. (I would imagine he sells a lot of books at his readings; his audience, having heard his performance, can now re-create it when they read silently.) I imagine him, as he's writing/revising, feeling himself onstage in direct connection with his listeners. This is a way of working as a writer that's very different from writing onto the page and then (possibly) sharing one's work with others.

As I see it, there are real advantages to working this way: it keeps you aware that there are other people out there, beyond the page; it encourages you to talk directly to them, to be in connection with them, to think about what they might need at any given point in a piece. And I think this way of working helps to create the sound of a living voice on the page, even if the writer doesn't intend to perform the poem. For me, this felt sense of connection with other people on the part of the poet is one of the things that makes me enjoy a poem. (It could also be a connection with another character, as in dramatic monologue.)

(I should add that I think there's a lot more to this relationship with readers than I'm mentioning here. As with all relationships, things are complex. Some performers, for instance are "givers'; others are "takers"--my intuition after reading a few of Felix's poems, and listening to a couple, is that he's probably in the latter category. But I may be generalizing from too small a sample.)

Felix seems to be working in the tradition of oral poetry, using accentual meter and paying attention to the music of language. "Summer of Love" is very song-like, with its repeated clause structures (e.g."We were…). He does do a little varying of these structures in each stanza: the "we were" clauses take up, in turn, 4, 3, and 2 lines. And the repeated "And we…" clauses also get varied: "We were very certain, we were very sure/We were very righteous (and we were very poor) of S1--four repetitions of the clause structure--becomes, in S2, "We were dressed in satin, Army coats, and beads," which creates a variation. That technique of repeating a phrase or clause structure and then varying it is one I like a lot (again, common to a lot of oral poetry); because it's musical, I think most people will respond positively to it.

I think these techniques (among others) are useful to know and use--and (I'll go out on a limb here) I think they can help make a poem "accessible."

Perhaps the problem with Felix's work is that his repertoire of these musical techniques is limited? (The poems I read all sounded more or less the same, musically speaking--but maybe that was my selection.)

I would love to see someone post another poem by a "populist" poet.

Barbara

Summer of Love is a masterpiece of humble bragging. Even as he satirizes the retrograde attitudes of the male hippies, he's letting us know how much he got laid and how many women he had under his thumb. And as much as he mocks the 60s, I think he's proud of having been there right in the thick of it all and so much with the times -- just as he's with it now in disavowing his flower-child past.

I give it a 'meh' out of ten.

Putting him squarely in the company of Tolstoy! I'd take it, if I were him.

And a much higher rating than Tolstoy gave Shakespeare. So there you go.

Maryann: those are good points; and thanks for drawing my attention to the Millay poem, I didn't know it. Funny that even the most populist poets can befuddle me with their literary allusions. But at least knowledge of that poem isn't entirely necessary to appreciating his.

Ann: I do sometimes engage with and enjoy deep inacessible poetry, and I don't think my general reluctance to do so is fear of snobbery exactly. It's very like my experience as a scientist: over and over again I'm forced to sit through seminars where the speaker assumes a level of knowledge of the particulars of their own technique which I don't have. How do I respond? I could go away and read up on every technique in current use in biology, chemistry and physics so that I'll be prepared for the next time. Or I could catch up on my sleep while they talk. When I give seminars, people often compliment me on how very clear they are, and how they understood everything I said. But they probably go away thinking my work must be very trivial if it can be so easily explained. I can't help myself. When I'm writing or speaking science or poetry or anything, I want to communicate with my audience. I don't want to blind them with science or literary brilliance. If I look around a room and people are dozing or staring at me blankly, I lose the will to go on. Why am I standing there, torturing us all? Haven't we all got better things to do with our time?

Barbara: you ask for another populist poet...I'm not sure she'd like to be described as such, but how about Wendy Cope? My favourite of the ones posted on poetryarchive.org is Flowers:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...A9?poemId=5679

I  think "Summer of Love" is as good as low-end Michael Cantor. It's enjoyable.


:D:D

Mary McLean, your comparison of the scientific seminar and poetry publication/reading is apt. Jargon, specialized form, code, assumptions about the reader's/hearer's and the speaker's/writer's background being so similar that normal-speak is unnecessary, can be characteristic of both. The reader/hearer often reacts with indifference, frustration, or anger.

But I suspect you have had the experience of looking forward to attending a meeting where you will interact with the select few who speak and listen with passion about the presentation of your work on (in my case) the parasite that you have discovered with your electron microscope and only three other people in the world have seen. But you and your little club know the biological implications for humans with AIDS this little world has. What a relief not to have to talk down, to paraphrase, to translate.

I would not be comfortable in a Dept. of Mathematics seminar about the misuse of string theory in cosmology, so I would read Scientific American instead. I rarely read Poetry magazine for the same reason, but Sharon Olds, Linda Pastan, A.E. Stallings, and Barry Spacks I look for wherever they are published or read.

Should we read the critics for explanations of contemporary poetry, or should we just muddle, study what we like, and not be frustrated angry readers? I do like challenge, effort, literary stretch, but I don't want to be a grumpy reader. Too little time.

For writers and readers, the old Real Estate joke may be applied: there are three important things - audience, audience, and audience.
Cheers wkg

You are beginning to answer my question. Audience it is. So long as that audience is there to try the poetry in the first place. Mary and I stand on the same piece of ground and are in accord. I was anxious only to point out, from my Lilliputian observation, the danger of both sides deciding they know how breakfast must be undertaken without actually experiencing the dippy deliciousness of a soft-boiled egg.

Mary, I agree with you that someone giving a seminar, in any field, needs to make darn sure he or she is being clear, so listeners will understand what's being said. And I prefer poets who keep my basic needs as a reader in mind, providing me with enough clarity of diction and syntax so that I have at least a chance of being able to process the poem. At the same time, as we all know, the way a writer/speaker uses language in a seminar (or a report or a PhD. thesis, etc.) is not the same as the way poets use language. Someone giving a presentation is using discursive language, language which speaks only to the intellect. But a skilled poet knows how to use language to speak to the intellect and to the imagination, to the ear, even to the body. And while someone giving a presentation (usually) just wants to communicate, poets also want to move readers/listeners in some way. It's the ability to make use of language in so many different ways that, I think, creates that "multi-layered" quality of a good poem we were talking about on the d&a thread. So my question is always: how do they do it?

In the Cope poem (and thanks for giving us the link!), one of the things I admire is the way she conveys a whole story in just three stanzas--not telling it directly but suggesting it. I think another source of the poem's effect is the direct address to the now-absent lover. And I really love the way she makes the whole poem turn on successive ripples of meaning for the word "flowers." The word keeps its same common meaning, but its significance in the poem changes in each stanza. And these changes can be understood and felt without recourse to dictionaries of symbols or to Google. I admire that technique!

Barbara