In the Shadow of Barolatry
 

I've decided to delete this post.

Perhaps, N, because there is no perception without contrast?

I guess I'd say: write because you find it rewarding and let your successes be a bonus.

Besides, the world will likely have fallen apart in less than 200 years time as so much more of it become uninhabitable, crops and economies fail, terrestrial and marine ecosystems collapse, wars rage and millions of refugees try to find somewhere cooler to live and so on. People will likely have more pressing things to think about than poetry.

But yes, if it's that important to you that there's at least some small chance that you'll write poetry that will still be read and admired in 200+ years, and even be considered better than Shakespeare's, and you believe that no poetry written now can achieve that, then stopping makes sense.

"I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them." —John Keats

You aspire to be great, listen to the great.

You will know if you have to write.
If the language chafes inside you, and it becomes more painful NOT to write, than to write, if you have an almost-instinctual need to write, then you will write. Greatness, and influence, and who will remember you, and remembering anyway, will be utterly meaningless in that moment, they are for afterwards.

Certainly, it is easier to theorise than to make poems. And maybe if literature gives you no joy because of some agon, maybe you should try listening to the language itself, and seeing if there is anything to hear.

But if you can rationalise yourself out of writing then all well & good. There are a hundred more healthy things to do than making poems.

N, writing is not a competition. I love Shakespeare's work, and I don't blame him for writing well. I am just glad that he was able to write as much as he did. For encouragement, I prefer to think of Dickinson, however, who was unknown and undervalued in her own lifetime, but just kept writing anyway. It is almost a miracle that her work survived, but it is now acknowledged to be blazingly memorable. I wouldn't wish it to be lost to us, just because Shakespeare predated her. We can't know what the future holds. We can't even judge our own work accurately. If we like writing poetry, we write it.

Susan

If you have trouble seeing a need for poetry that doesn't outdo Shakespeare, then, yeah, you should find something else to do.

What Max said. If you want to write - write. If you don't want to write - don't. Wringing your hands on the Sphere because you're unhappy about the poetic climate - when nobody knows you and there is no apparent link to anything you've published - comes across as juvenile.

And, oh yeah, it's "bardolatry", not "barolatry".

"Memorable" is a good phrase but I think it sells Dickinson short. At times, I know her to be the greatest lyric poet in the language; beside Shakespeare.

I misspelled it. I noticed that after.

Is this your main impetus for writing? Why poetry? How long have you been writing?

I highly doubt that supposition, but if it's true; so what? You'll be dead then, as will the rest of us -- let future generations think of us or not, it's one and the same when you're not there to see it. And really, no 20th century poet? Frost, Eliot, Heaney, Thomas, Auden, Plath, Pound, Ginsberg, Bishop, cummings, Rilke, Brooks, Owen, Oliver -- not a single one of them will survive?

If you will only attempt that at which you think you can be the all-time best, then enjoy doing a spectacular squat-diddly-nothing with your life. Needing to "be the best" is a shit motivator. It will kill your creativity, pleasure, bravery, and resilience.

I write because I enjoy it, because language is the most wonderful tool and playground I know, because I want to use the gifts I have, because there is pleasure in mastering a craft, because there are things I want to remember, because it makes me feel close to my grandmother, because it brings me joy when people enjoy or are moved by something I've created, because it occasionally puts a little money in my pocket -- for so many reasons. I don't want to be the best poet out there. I want to be the best poet I can be. Do you hear the difference?

And I think that this whole rant smacks of trying something, finding it was harder than you expected, and deciding that it's easier to take refuge in grandiosity and throw the whole thing over as a dead end than to pick yourself up and do the hard work of trying and trying again.

I don't think it helps to see poetry as a hierarchy with Shakespeare or whoever on top. I'm not naïve though and I have observed that the structure of the poetry community is more hierarchical than many other types of art or literature.

Perhaps you could set an alternative target? Why not aim to be the best worst poet? The one who finally sinks below William McGonagall on the bottom rung.

Orwell wrote about good bad poetry in his Rudyard Kipling essay:

Betjemen and Tennyson wrote good bad poetry too apparently.

Before you tire yourself out wondering if people not yet been born will like your poetry, maybe you should try it out on some living people? You know, sort of like a focus group?

I'm assuming the OP is just taking the piss out of all of us with this thread. They have to be, right? It's just too rich to think otherwise.

Shakespeare's great. I had a dissertation chapter on him, I've presented at conferences on him, I have a publication on him, and I teach him regularly to my university students -- as recently as two weeks ago, in fact, and indeed, I did teach Sonnet 18. Funny thing about that sonnet in particular: if the subject of the poem was a real person (a dubious proposition, but still...), then we have absolutely no idea who he (or she) was, which gives the lie to the idea that Shakespeare would immortalize him/her with his words. He immortalizes his own impression of the object of affection, but no details are given. There's a parallel there to the OP's own ostensible worries about posterity...

But here's the thing. Milton's great too. And Dickinson. And Keats. And all the others mentioned by Christine, Susan, and others in this thread. I was teaching Marvell's "A Horatian Ode" today, and asked my students to give a definition of an ode. When they did, I mentioned that odes were often to people, but I rattled off a few other odes to animals and objects. One of my students literally squealed when I mentioned "Ode on a Grecian Urn," as it turned out that she absolutely loves the poem. Beauty is truth indeed! My point is that it really doesn't matter if Shakespeare is the "best," because that's an utterly foolish metric. Some days I turn to Shakespeare, some days I turn to Auden, others I turn to Herbert, Betjeman, Robinson, or any number of others...because we have a big ol' canon full of brilliant men and women of words, and an even bigger assortment of non-canonical work that is brilliant in the eyes of many, many individuals too. If there were a billion poets out there, with most of them loved by two or three, that's still something incredible for the two or three readers (and likely for the poet).

In other words, who cares if Shakespeare is considered the pinnacle? It literally doesn't matter. Let academics write articles about it and debate the finer points of who is responsible for the order of the 1609 Quarto, or whether the "young man" and "dark lady" were real people. Just write and share your own damn poetry and let posterity take care of itself.

Interesting question about the motivations and ambitions of poets. I certainly admire those who write simply because the spirit (or demon) moves them, but I suspect many creative souls are partly motivated by the desire for immortality. Horace, Derzhavin and Pushkin wrote their “monument” poems, and Shakespeare said his verses would live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.” If that’s what puts a fire in your belly, let it work for you. Or, if you think Shakespeare has cornered the market, do something else, but if you don’t want to stand on the shoulders of giants, look for a very young field to make your mark in.

I know Horace's. I translated it.

Also, it's possible to be immortal yet still relatively unknown. When you write a poem or create any work of art, you are creating an object or a thing that exists and represents you without the continuing assistance of your heart, brain, flesh and blood. When you write and publish, you are taking some portion of your soul that is currently bound to your mortal self and placing it into a new container that will outlast its flesh container. So the very act of creating a poem that succeeds in encapsulating something of your humanity creates a form of immortality.

Of course, that's not the same thing as being immortally famous. It's possible that these little immortal chunks of your personhood will not interest many people in the future. The poems survive, in the sense that they are available to anyone who is interested, but that doesn't mean people will want to read them.

But here's the thing. Posterity may not recognize you as the new Shakespeare, and your name may not become a household word, but every now and then someone may happen across one of your poems and read it and like it and identify with it. Your poems will be available to show who you were long after you yourself are not available to do so, since pushing up daisies is a full-time occupation.

So be glad. You do achieve immortality through your poems after all. Unfortunately, though, no one may care.

But if you're in it for the praise and feel bad to think people won't be praising you after you're dead, why not settle for the consolation prize of being praised while you're alive, if you can manage it? Praise is best when you still have the ability to blush and say thank you.

A few years ago I had a long phone conversation with someone who said he would donate lots of money to the nonprofit choir on whose board I serve—IF we would sing nothing but Bach cantatas.

Bach wrote so many of them that we could go years before we needed to repeat them, and each is absolutely perfect. According to him, there was no need for any composers after Bach to write any songs at all.

"Not even Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff...?" I asked.

"No! They have several outstanding pieces, but their overall output can't compete with Bach's. Bach alone is enough."

I said, "Well, the San Diego Master Chorale has always presented music by a variety of composers, including living composers setting texts by living poets, and I don't see that changing. You might be interested in the Bach Collegium of San Diego. But even they don't sing only Bach."

"Yes, I know! Outrageous, isn't it? I've scolded them about it several times, but they keep on programming these lesser lights. It's false advertising to call themselves the Bach Collegium. I won't give them a dime."

If he's determined not to enjoy Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Rachmaninoff's Vigil and Vespers too much out of loyalty to Bach, he's free to feel that way, but the rest of us are going to go on delighting in them.

Ditto for the works of A.E. Stallings, Wendy Cope, Richard Wilbur, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and even us slobs on Eratosphere. People are going to go right on enjoying the best works of these, even though they weren't written by Shakespeare. Why does there have to be only one composer or poet worth remembering?

You tell me. I don't know why people have been reading Hamlet a dozen times but those same people couldn't identify John Milton to save their lives.

Dickinson, Yeats, Keats? Donne and Herbert did pretty well for themselves. Whitman. Look outside of English. Pessoa, Baudelaire, Reverdy, lots of good stuff is coming from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America. The question is bigger than poetry though. How long will written art be considered vital? Look what television and movies have done to drama.

There are many writers of the last five hundred years who will be remembered as long as any writers are remembered. I’d suggest worrying about your own writing if you are truly moved to write, as others have said.

Yes, and most people can tell you that Albert Einstein was a great physicist, but fewer people will name Wolfgang Pauli.

This is getting a bit silly. I mean, do we really have to argue about whether Shakespeare rendered all non-Shakespearean literature worthless? It seems that N is the only person who thinks so, and the rest of us are arguing poetry and literature with a person who hasn't told us who he is, hasn't shown us a single poem of his own, and told us a few weeks ago he had never heard villanelles.

I don't know why we all (me included) get sucked into these conversations started by quasi-trolls.

There's a really easy solution. Ignore him.

This was not an attempt to troll or make a joke. It was a serious statement. But clearly the consensus was reached. We can consider the topic closed. Apologies if this disturbed or bothered anyone.

No one was disturbed or bothered, N. I think the general feeling was mild astonishment that anyone could say such silly things and expect to be taken seriously.

It wasn't silly to me. I meant that as seriously as I could possibly be. I realize now nobody really gets my thinking, but there was zero joking or trolling involved. I meant that as fervently as I believe in the divine.

And, in turn, I believe you as fervently as I believe in the divine.

I think I understand your thinking perfectly. I just think it's the silly thinking of someone who is a largely uneducated beginner in a field he is entering for the wrong reasons. Tell us who you are, show us some of your work, and if you can last ten minutes here maybe then you can worry about lasting a few centuries later on.

I have plenty of poems to share, I just am poor at giving critique, so I can't share them!

What stands out, for me, is this obsession with being the best. It's an odd criterion for wanting to write poetry. It's kind of anti-poetry, really. There's this strange fetish about ranking everything lately, too, in pop culture, I suppose. Top ten side dishes with meat loaf, etc. Mashed potatoes and corn. I'm pretty firm on that. And, personally, I think Pope was a better poet.

Like writing poetry, writing critiques is also a skill that may be practiced. This checklist from John Drury may be useful to you: https://homepages.uc.edu/~druryjp/Ch...20a%20Poem.htm

Obviously it isn't necessary to hit every note in there when critiquing -- and you'll see around here that crits can vary widely in terms of length, scope, and general focus. But a reference like this can help you think through your approach to a poem.

Giving critiques is easy. Just try to explain exactly why the poem isn't as good as Shakespeare. :)

Seriously, though. I presume you lend a critical eye to your own first drafts and try to determine what works and what doesn't. Just apply that same critical eye to other people's poems.

Honestly, it's a good reminder that the 'Sphere still has a heartbeat. If we can't get a little riled in the face of...well...whatever the OP was trying to say, then what are we even doing here?

In any event, since the OP deleted the original post, and has declared the topic closed, I am (somewhat regretfully) locking the thread.