Poetry in Popular Culture
A poet shirt: I'm supposed to wear this, right?
If I told someone I had consumption, I’d expect they’d be simultaneously puzzled and concerned. They’d be puzzled because they probably wouldn’t know what consumption is, yet the name alone would likely give them some idea that consumption, whatever it is, isn’t exactly desirable.
When on occasion I mention to people that I’m a poet, I get a similar reaction. First, there’s the look of puzzlement. Most people don’t really know what poets do, or even that there are adult poets at all. I have a sneaking suspicion that many folks equate poets and poetry with rather marginalized art forms such as miming, and God forbid, clowns. Tim Pawlenty, my state’s governor, summed this up notion when he vetoed a bill to create a Minnesota Poet Laureate.
He stated: Even though we have a state ‘folklorist,’ I also have concern this will lead to calls for other similar positions. We could also see requests for a state mime, interpretive dancer or potter.
(The bill has since passed—and was signed by Pawlenty. Robert Bly is Minnesota’s 1st poet laureate.)
= Robert Bly ?
In fact, I’ve encountered this myself when I’ve (rarely) brought up poetry to folks. One of the reactions I get is, “You don’t look/act like a poet.” By this, I take it to mean that I’m (a) not wearing a frilly shirt, (b) I’m not constantly looking skyward while proclaiming my love for the clouds and the moon, (c) I’m not frolicking through an alpine meadow flanked by adorable, cuddly puppies, (d), I’m not always rhyming, and (e), I’m actually a pretty average Minnesotan who loves pretty average Minnesotan things, like baseball and fishing and hiking and whatnot. I also happen to write poetry.
That’s the thing, average people can be—and are— poets. And lots of them are. I run a tiny podunk literary magazine and we get oodles of submissions, almost all of them from folks who have normal day jobs. This is why I always dismiss articles lamenting the death of poetry, the death of fiction, the death of this or that, as it’s quite clear (from my personal experience, at least) that we have more than enough good writing to go around. If you ask me, we’re actually living in a wonderful time in American poetry, certainly not the end times. A lot of this has to do with the sheer number of serious poets writing now, and undoubtedly, there are more than ever before. Assuming that something like a bell curve applies, one has to think that an expanded rank of poets leads to a quantitative increase in the amount of high quality work that is out there (though it is not necessarily published).
By analogy, the same could be said of soccer in the states. There are all sorts of folks out there who’d probably be great strikers, defensemen, etc., but given the popularity of other sports, they don’t take up soccer. If the next generation were to take up soccer instead of football or baseball, our (already formidable) national team would be likely world-class in fairly short order.
In effect, this has already occurred in poetry; there are all sorts of great poets writing in the States today. If we were to field a contemporary all-star team, it wouldn’t be a matter of finding folks to staff the team, the hard part would be winnowing down the field. Furthermore, I’d argue that it could hold its own against a good number of the poets across the pond.
So there’s an odd sort of disconnect here—we’re living in a country with more (good) poets than ever, but poetry and poets are typecast as know-nothing frilly-nillies. So where did that notion come from? It certainly wasn’t there 50 years ago, when there were actual sections of newspapers devoted to books (remember those?), and poets even became celebrities of sorts. (Jack Gilbert was featured in photo spreads in Vogue and Glamour; he didn’t take to the popularity and went all hermit-style.)
I’d argue that this mythos originated in how poetry has been taught over the past 50 years. Most folks are exposed to poetry once—in school. Generally speaking, the poetry varieties that folks are introduced to in many primary/secondary schools are simple, sentimental, and formulaic—haikus are popular, as is sing-song, lovey-dovey rhyming verse. Worse yet, these poems are taught by teachers who don’t read poetry. The representative poetry is usually written for children (Dr. Seuss and Co.) or it’s too difficult to approach right away (Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge.)
This is a problem for a number of reasons. First, all of the varieties mentioned above aren’t particularly relevant, at least not at first glance. This makes it less likely that kids will actually become interested in the work and this gives poetry a negative connotation in the future. And even for folks who end up liking poetry, their definition of poetry itself is somewhat limited to types of poems that are “about” something (love poems, sad poems, etc.)—a good old-fashioned Google search of the word “poems” supports this theory. Among the “related searches” (which have to have been searched a gazillion times to show up here), one finds searches for: love poems; poems about life (?! What poem isn’t about life?), friendship poems, sad poems, etc.Of course, this at least is a possible beginning to a reading life, and folks can bridge this poetry gap fairly quickly.
The worst possible outcome of contemporary poetry education is that the students can’t understand the poetry they are given, and this leaves them bored and frustrated. This happens all too often with Shakespeare. Given the state of our educational system, you can’t throw Shakespeare at a 9th grader and expect them to be able to follow it; that’s like starting a kid on algebra without teaching them the basics of variables, equations, all that. In other words, you’ve got to break them in easily.
I’d therefore posit that the current system is organized backwards. I’d suggest to break them in with work they can relate to, but work that is also good poetry. (Billy Collins and Russell Edson come to mind.) This way, you’ll avoid some of the “formulaic traps” that contemporary poetry education seems to be vulnerable to. After they are acclimated to the work, and enjoying it, work your way up in terms of accessibility. The less accessible (but equally important) work—formal verse, Shakespeare, Eliot, etc. —should come later in the process, not earlier. That way, the students will be more interested in poetry, as they’ll already have some conception of the value that poetry can offer. They will therefore (hopefully) put more effort into getting acclimated to the more difficult language/allusions, etc.
I think that’s a pretty good idea. I certainly didn’t understand King Lear in high school. I think with a solid base of poetry knowledge in high school, meter, rhyme, etc., and applying that to more accessible poets, a person would be much more able to appreciate the complexity, rhythm, and simple beauty of someone like good ole Will.
Nice post. And I love the photo.
Bert–That is, without a doubt, the best/worst/best photoshop job ever. Love it. Excellent post, too.
Worthy of about 739 comment posts, for sure. But then, you’ve pretty well said what needs saying. One looks at the current education model and is much confused about how it’s organized. Then one realizes the basic concepts haven’t changed in many decades and oh, yeah, it starts making sense. Heaven forbid we do some re-evaluating.
I can’t figure out why the average American understands that there are different levels of painting (finger painting is generally different from being a portrait artist) and accepts that some painters are real artists, but doesn’t understand that there are different levels of literature, and that haiku written by third-graders isn’t quite of the same merit as, you know, Robert Bly.
nice content.