Sam wrote:

Love and death can be awfully trite and tiresome subjects, too, yet some of our favorite poems treat these old chestnuts. I wonder if it's actually not the subject that wearies you, but a certain stereotypical approach to it.

(Although I concede that it could be that you just don't like the subject, period, or aren't in a particularly receptive mindset for it at this point in your life. For the past few days I've been trying to read a book of poems by someone who uses a lot of magical realism, and I've had to set it aside repeatedly because I just can't give this type of stuff a fair hearing while I'm dealing with certain unmagical goings-on in real life. Maybe next week...)

What indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?

Julie, this is one of my favorite lines of Whitman. In fact, I used it as an epigraph for an appreciation of Whitman (which will be published in a few months, I gather).

Death is not beautiful. It is tiresome though it does hang about like Coleridge's frightful friend. I think one subject very suitable for an old person is going crazy, or, as we English say, losing one's marbles. What rhymes with marbles?

I've forgotten if I ever knew.

Garbles. That has possibilities.

Just noticed we're not supposed to post links here. Withdrawn.

Dammit, Jerome. Nice one.

Warbles, too, John; well, sort of -- then, if you could figure out how to do something with gables. . .

I'm not sure if death itself is beautiful, but laughing at it, defying it, mourning it, those things are beautiful, or can be.

Best,

Ed

P.S. I regret missing Jerome's post before it was withdrawn.

Me too. Since when are links disallowed? Did I miss something?

Here it is, Ed. And a lovely one, too.

(Others can post links to friend's poems!)

http://www.lightenup-online.co.uk/in...ar-consolation

Bill, have you been sleeping on the job?? :) Just joking. This issue comes up every now and then. It's well-documented (if disputed, if undecided, if unclear) in many threads with poem input at GT, MoM, and elsewhere.

"barbels" those whiskery things catfish and some other fish have.

-Matt

This poem is growing, Matt.

Also, if you're will to get a little archaic, there's the verb 'to sparble', meaning to scatter, to disperse, to rout; and the verb 'to jarble' meaning to wet, to bemire.

If anyone can make it work, you can John.

-Matt

Those are fabulous words. For enjambed lines, you could also use contractions: garb'll, barb'll, and yarb'll, which as I've just learned, is a dialectical variant of herb.

Ed

P.S. But I think we've strayed a little ways away from Janice's original questions: What is American poetry? What is UK poetry?

And to take us even further away, Matt's mention of barbels or piscine whiskers reminded me that I was not long ago charmed to discover that there is an eel-like flat-headed bearded freshwater fish called a burbot, no mere misprint for a turbot with long bony tubercles on its body, itself no mere misprint for turbit, a domestic pigeon of stout build with a neck frill . . . Hurry up and write that piece, John, the suspense is unhinging us.

Sorry, Janice, you were saying . . . ?

Actually, I wasn't saying. I was muttering--about intentions and the best laid plans and so forth.

If the wild bowler thinks he bowls,
Or if the batsman thinks he's bowled,
They know not, poor misguided souls,
They too shall perish unconsoled.

I am the batsman and the bat,
I am the bowler and the ball,
The umpire, the pavilion cat,
The roller, pitch and stumps and all.

That, as also Andrew Lang knew, is the difference between American and UK poetry.

As Oscar Wilde said (despite attributes to Shaw and Churchill) "England and America are two countries divided by a common language."

Carry on, Jeeves. I am grazing new pastures.

The problem with this question, perhaps, is that is too broad, given increases in lifespan, access to education, ease of publishing something that doesn't took awful at low cost, etc.--all of which one can only really bemoan at the risk of being a Thunderdouche. I do notice that I'm liking Irish political poetry better than its American equivalent right now (perhaps due to a welcome absence of American liberalism and some actual socialists in the mix giving the place an actual political spectrum), which isn't to say that there isn't plenty of dog$#!t over there, too. But with literally thousands of trade-published books coming out in the U.S. every year, I miss most of what comes out. So do you. And you. And you. Throw in a day job and a personal life, and I read a few magazines, maybe twenty-five new collections of poetry a year, and whatever Jeff Holt forwards out of the Raintown slush, with the occasional curled-lip glance over to the Poetry Foundation's newest-latest. Which is a small fraction of what there is.

Yes, it is an open-ended question--I was thinking that would give room for a variety of thoughts. And so it did, from Bozo to Breaking News.

On the other hand, at present count the thread has had 2055 hits, so maybe 2000 shy poetasters are lurking nearby.

Or maybe 2000 chicken farmers can surf but can't spell "poultry".

The depressing thing is that this wasn't a General Talk thread, but a Musing on Mastery, where poetry people are rather expected to step forward and say intelligent and inspiring things about the finer points of prosody.

But it should probably be moved to GT now. Though some did take the questions seriously and I thank you.

You know who you are so stand tall.

This can slide now.

Well, I’ll try to make at least some amends for our barbling and warbling, and give my two cents about modern American poetry. Looking for good poetry has always been like looking for needles in a haystack; but though I suspect that needle production is humming along at a normal rate, the haystack is immeasurably larger; and, in fact, it isn’t really much of a haystack any more.

You can’t go to The New Yorker or Poetry these days and expect to find the best poems reliably collected for you, and if there are worthier journals out there – I think there are – they have very limited distribution. If there is an honest to gosh “Best of” anthology of modern American poetry out there, the common reader of poetry would be hard put to find it among all the other anthologies with their own agendas and protégés to push.

For the new reader of poetry, what this means is that you either have to know or have been taught by a skilled needle finder, or you have to get lucky and come across a few needles on your own, or else it’s likely you’ll just give up, having found little or nothing that excites you.

I see a lot of free verse with plain spoken, minor epiphanies, and a lot of hipper-than-thou obscurity, sneering and otherwise; but that might say less about the prevalence of that kind of verse among those writing poetry today than it does about the tastes of prominent editors -- they may have drawn an admiring crowd, for a while, but there were only a couple of tailors responsible for the emperor's clothes, as I recall.

So I would say that modern American poetry seems timid – in the sense that the same sort of treacly stuff keeps getting elevated, for no reason I can see – and diffuse, when viewed as a whole. But, while it affects the reception of poetry, the whole probably doesn’t matter that much in terms of writing poetry. There are good poems being written, just as there have always been, and that heartens me.

Best,

Ed

Deleted the post.

Physical biological death reseeds and regenerates new life, on the planet. Not sure what spiritual death, may, or may not do. I suspect that either one may be good, bad, beautiful, or ugly; depending on timing and circumstances.

A bird called warbler, warbles ---- think that could rhyme with marbles ---- if only it were a recognized word ---- Some do get lost, confused old birds ---- or so I've heard, I always leave a trail ---- so other old birds may follow, or not ---- and I may follow back, or not.

Also, I'm not sure what poetry is, to most others, in US, UK, etc; however, I mostly know what it is to me ---- but please don't ask me to explain. I'll let mine, speak for itself, as it is GBBU

sincerely,
stevie

The more poetry I read, the more convinced I am that Sturgeon's Revelation is Holy Writ.

Hmmm. On reading the Wikipedia article for it, I'm astonished to discover that Rudyard Kipling seems to have been an adherent of the more optimistic Pareto Principle. Heretic!

But we in Eratosphere are all in the top 10% it goes without saying.

In which the author reveals perhaps more than he intended about the state of poetry in America -- in, naturally, Poetry.

Also, here are a bevy of poets who answered the question, "What is American about American poetry?" in 1999 and 2010.

Best,

Ed

P.S. Here's part of what Tom Disch had to say on the subject: "Usually one can distinguish American poets from other poets by those cultural markers by which one can distinguish Americans from other peoples. But it's surely possible for any writer to write English "as if" one were English. When I lived a long while in London many of my poems took on a London tone, and to this day some readers and critics assume I am English on the basis of a few poems and mistaken assumptions as to what constitutes Americanness in poetry. Usually, lack of formal constraints and minimalist syntax." [Italics added.]

With all due deference to the estimable Mr. Disch, I'm not sure that's a completely "mistaken assumption," for "lack of formal constraints and minimalist syntax" seem par for the course in most of the more prominent journals here.

1. No (assuming you mean modern poetry), although I would add "or other poetry by members of Eratosphere".

2. Yes, but (with the above exception) only if it's more than 70 years old, and it rhymes and scans. And has capital letters at the start of each line.

I love all poetry, find it in all sorts of places, found a book of Masefield's collected works in a pub a week ago and read some of his sonnets while waiting for my friends to arrive. I love the poetry on YouTube, I love the poetry in everyday conversation, I love slang and the poetry of storytelling and jokes, I like the poetry in ads and notices, in TV shows and movies, songs and liturgy, chants and prayers. I love the poetry of toddlers and babies, teenagers and criminals.
I like all forms of poetry and can't understand why anyone would limit themselves, it seems absurd to me, like not experiencing all the cuisines of the world or all the music, so with poetry, metrical, free verse, modern, old, what's the difference? as long as it's good.

Imagine finding Masefield's poems in a pub. You in Oz are very well read.

Thanks to all who responded to my Musing on Mastery question:

Who on earth is Marius Bewly?

Well said.

http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/marius-bewley/

Just heard of this person myself. Gotta love anyone named Marius.

I hope he has a relative named Beulah, and that I find her and marry her, so her name will be Beulah Bewley Baurle. We will have many children and praise Morgoth of Utumno on an island somewhere with sheep and rabbits.

There is a Scottish island called the Island of Sheep (accordng to John Buchan).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Buchan

YAY! Now I know 2 more people than I did before.

*deleted this bit. I'm terrible at math*

Tweedsmuir?

No wonder you Brits have such a great sense of humor...er...humour.

Thanks for the lead (rimes with tweed) about the isle of sheep, but I've picked the island whereon and/or wherein the future ex Mrs. Baurle and I will raise our melkorian brood: Tol Galen. It's an island islanded by the twigging of the river Adurant, in Ossiriand. From what I've gathered in dreams and visions, it's populated mostly by coneys and moorhens. Turkish fowl are supposed to be good eating.