Abstract: “Technique’s Marginal Centrality: Poems of the doomed”

“Technique’s Marginal Centrality: Poems of the doomed”

By Clive James

Poetry vol. 199.4

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/243228

In this essay Clive James looks at the trend in much of contemporary poetry that avoids anything that smacks of the tradition. Of these free verse poets, James recognizes two types: poets who eschew technical considerations like form, meter, rhyme, etc… in hopes of achieving a specific result, and poets who ignore technique because they have none. James traces this retreat from technique to Pound and the modernists, who were revolting against a poetry that was all technique, all flourish for the sake of flourish – the literary equivalent of ‘peacocking’. Pound and Eliot, while moving away from traditional forms, were still superbly educated in technique, thought it a necessary part of every poet’s education. A poet who could not write in the tradition was not a poet at all. The trouble arose when successive generations of poets, versed only in poetry from the modernist period and onward, misunderstood the move away from form and measure. Where Eliot still used form and measure, he used his substantial formal prowess to highlight content while actually hiding the technique used to make that content so pertinent, so essential. A reader can see this in Prufrock, which drops into iambic when emphasis is needed, ending on two iambic, rhymed tercets.  As well as in The Waste Land, which aside from falling in and out of measure as needed, contains hidden within it perfect sonnets. To Eliot and other masters, technique’s prime use was to hide itself, James calls it a ‘subservient impulse’, one that, when made dominant results in the empty flourishes that the modernists rebelled against. That many contemporary poets have missed this key point has created a poetry that is only delineated from prose by the occasional line break (and often it’s not even a good line break). Technique is not for demonstrating one’s skills, but to hide them to allow what one has to say to be said in the most compelling way possible.

Abstract: "A Sexy New Animal: The DNA of the Prose Poem," Natasha Sajé

 In this essay, poet Natasha Sajé examines the origins of the prose poem in an attempt to distinguish what a prose poem is and how it works. In considering the definitions put forth by other poets, she sees the prose poem generally as prose which is “straining toward style” (a phrase used by Mallarmé), most often short, and determined by content in that prose poems use more of the conventions of poetry than those of other prose genres. She asserts that “the prose poem is a hybrid that actually derives its energy from the collision of opposites,” which leads her to discuss the prose poem as a reaction to other forms, and most particularly, she argues, as a reaction against the realist novel, which was developing at the same time as the prose poem. The ability to use dialogism and displace the lyric subject within prose also results in many subjects that are politically subversive. Sajé uses Baudelaire as an example of the French origins of the prose poem, arguing that the variety of new techniques Baudelaire used in his prose poems led the way for surrealism, Dadism, and many other new techniques and movements within poetry. Baudelaire's poetry also presents an argument against the idea that prose poems must use heightened poetical language, as the tone of his poems, like many other prose poems, is informal and conversational. Sajé does not finish with any kind of complete definition for the prose poem, but instead ends with an idea suggested by the poet Ann Killough that while lineated poetry seems to demand some kind of certainty or retrieval, the prose poem allows the poet to “get lost” in order to find something “real.”

Sajé, Natasha. “A Sexy New Animal: The DNA of the Prose Poem.” The Writer's Chronicle. 44.5 (2012): 34-49. Print.

Poetry is Dead. Also, Women are Pissed.

McIrvin, Michael. “Why Contemporary Poetry is Not Taught in the Academy.” Rocky

Mountain Review of Language and Literature. Vol. 54, No. 1 (2000), 89-99.

            As a response to the increasing denigration of poetry in the contemporary literature classroom, Michael McIrvin offers a forthright, if sometimes cynical, explanation. A poet himself, McIrvin does not wax poetic about the ways in which poetry has been discounted by the mainstream, reduced to the solipsistic wailing of those attempting to align themselves with the academic ideal.  In this critique of the modern creative writing program’s tendency toward neo-confessional inflection in poems that make form an end in itself, McIrvin admits to discovering, quite unexpectedly, hope for the future of American poetry.  McIrvin lays out two imperatives for the reformation of the MFA: to innovate and allow for mutation within the program that will reestablish an authentic literary lineage for emerging poets, and to force young poets to commit to their critical and poetical allegiances, rather than let publication dictate their creative efforts.  McIrvin argues that when language and subject becomes merely a pose, the poet’s voice too easily slips into inauthenticity and pastiche. The outcomes of most writing programs culminate in a body of contemporary poetry that, in McIrvin’s opinion, has been stripped of meaning. To remedy this problem, McIrvin calls for poets of all stripes to take an active role in the revivification of poetry, which should serve to remind us that “meaning is a dynamic, the truth the purview of individuals rather than of power, that to be actively is an act of conscience” (99).

Dowson, Jane. “’Older Sisters Are Very Sobering Things:’ Contemporary Women Poets

and the Female Affiliation Complex.” Feminist Review. No. 62, Contemporary Women Poets (Summer, 1999), 6-20.

By examining the ways in which women’s poetry has been established by their literary predecessors, Jane Dowson argues that it is possible to predict how twentieth century woman poet’s will be characterized following their tenure, and the extent with which their work is perceived to have value and authority. By looking at the legacy of poetry written by British women, one can see that just as the label “poetess,” and its incumbent handicap to self-perception hindered the efforts of nineteenth century female writers, the term “woman poet,” will have the same effect, largely due to the mythologizing of overlooked female poets, who were seen as underclass and undermined. One reason that Dowson points out to explain the consistent reoccurrence of published female poets who are absented from literary histories is the fact that they are ignored by a largely male-dominated culture of literary criticism. Although there are women in large enough numbers who are finding success as published poets in the contemporary era, there is still an argument to be made for what Dowson calls “positive discrimination.” However, positive discrimination is often resisted by woman poets because of their uneasy relationship with each other.  Dowson argues that in order for women to align themselves and build a culture of literary significance for their work, women must form bonds of connection, thereby becoming positive role models for the women who follow in their footsteps. 

Abstract: Poetry and Science: “Metaphor or More?”

Poetry and Science: “Metaphor or More?”

Jacket2, an online literary magazine that is a continuation of the longstanding Jacket that was discontinued last year, hosted an online panel discussing the relationship of poetry and science. Contributors were Rae Armantrout, Amy Catanzano, John Cayley, Tina Darragh, Marcella Durand, Allen Fisher, James Harvey, Peter Middleton, Evelyn Reilly, and Joan Retallack. One section of this panel investigates the level at which scientific discourse would ideally be integrated into a poem: simply as a metaphor or “as an independent discipline or set of disciplines.” Many of the panelists reach the same conclusion—that metaphor is not contained within poetic language but also proliferates in scientific discourse as well. As Rae Armantrout observes, “[M]etaphor is 'always already' embedded in the language of science.”

Another issue the panelists discussed is potentially problematic issues relating to using scientific concepts as metaphors. As Joan Retallack states, “[W]hat if it turns out in the new cosmological physics that there really aren’t any black holes, leaving all those thousands (millions?) of poems with their black hole metaphors embarrassingly intact. Is this decade’s science true? … false?” Scientific theories are ever-evolving, and antiquated theories are discarded; however, poetry does not show such a linear progression. Many of the lines of discussion, such as this one, span the course of the entire panel, which is six separate articles. So to get a complete idea of the panelists ideas on these topics, one must devote the time to read around 60,000 words. However, as hybridity in subject matter and form makes further developments in poetry, discussion of the underlying ideology of such hybrids provides inspiration and caution on how to approach poetic composition.

Abstract: “Born Digital” Stephanie Strickland.

“Born Digital” Stephanie Strickland.

Electronic poetry is not print poetry accessed through an electronic medium, such as an online literary journal or an ebook. Stephanie Strickland, in her essay “Born Digital,” gives a list of eleven traits of e-poetry that distinguish it from other forms of poetry. Some of the attributes she lists give only a vague idea of what differentiates e-poetry and e-lit from other forms, such as number four: “E-poetry is a poetry requiring new reading skills.” While others are arguments of person values and perceptions, such as number three: “E-lit is the mode of literature appropriate to new social conditions.” However, some of the attributes she describes are concrete and quantifiable,

such as number one and ten: “E-poetry relies on code for its creation, preservation, and display: there is no way to experience a work of e-literature unless a computer is running it—reading it and perhaps also generating it,” and “In print poetry the interface (reading surface) and the storage surface are one and the same; in e-lit they are not.” In the end, Strickland builds a cohesive set of tests for one to use in order to categorize a piece as e-poetry.

Equally as valuable as her work defining e-poetry are the plethora of examples she gives to support her assertions. A person ignorant of all aspects of e-poetry would be hard pressed to find a better sampling of e-poetry to showcase the potential of the genre.

Bloom's Contemporary Poets and Kukulin's "Documentalist Strategies in Contemporary Russian Poetry"

Abstracts of 21^st Century Poetry books/articles

Bloom, Harold. Contemporary Poets. New York: Infobase, 2009. Print.

                Harold Bloom’s Contemporary Poets explores the advent of contemporary poetry based on the teleological progression of all poetry. He traces all contemporary American poetry back to eight major American poets – Frost, Stevens, Pound, Williams, H.D., Moore, Eliot and Crane. Further, he traces those poets back to Whitman and Dickinson, and further back into British poetry. The collected essays within the book – from various prestigious experts in the field - explore the various ways in which contemporary poets have been influenced by past poets and how they influence each other. Each essay focuses on a particular poet or a particular aspect of contemporary poetry: for example, there is an entire chapter dedicated to Jorie Graham’s epistemological approach to poetry, and another on how modernism has yet to leave contemporary criticism of poetry. At the end of the book is a chronology of the births and deaths of famous contemporary poets, which embodies Contemporary Poets teleological approach to contemporary poetry, and traces the influences of poets and poetry over time. Bloom commands authority with his reputation as Yale professor, Shakespeare expert, and through his 20+ books of literary criticism which he has published. He is arguably the most famous literary critic alive today. This book is incredibly informative in its historical approach to the formation of the phenomenon of contemporary poetry, and gives a hint at where it may develop from here.

Kukulin, Ilya. "Documentalist Strategies In Contemporary Russian Poetry." Russian Review 69.4 (2010): 585-614. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Apr. 2012.

In “Documentalist Strategies in Contemporary Russian Poetry,” Ilya Kukulin shows the associations between the Russian totalitarian regime and Russian poetry from the 1990s. He argues that documentalist poetry – that is, poetry which records factual events or history – does so not necessarily for political reasons, but more for the philosophical ramifications of poetry. He argues that under the threat of destruction due to censorship, poets were forced to operate through and against repression to create a sort of subtlety unseen in world poetry free of totalitarian regimes. Kukulin shows how this repression manifested itself as paradox in Nekrasov, Urbanism in Bruisov, journalistic bend in Maiakovskii, and a parody of propaganda in poets like Voznesenskii and Evtushenko. These poets, Kukulin argues, use poetry as a sort of aesthetic polemic in response to real world stimuli such as the influence of Western television, the September 11, 2001 attacks, Russia’s war with Georgia (the country, not the state), and so forth.  This aesthetic polemic is compared to the Romantic era in Russia, and defines contemporary Russian poetry as “Post-Romantic” in that its aesthetic is towards fragmentation and paradox rather than wholeness and unity. Kukulin is a poet, literary critic, and linguistic scholar who has published multiple poems and is a professor at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute of the Humanities and of the Higher School of Economics.

Two contemporary poetry anthologies

I thought I'd do a quick summary of 2 contemporary poetry anthologies that I like.  Sorry for the lack of world representation.

1.) The Swallow Anthology: New American Poets - 2009 by Ohio University Press (Edited by David Yezzi):  This anthology seems to pride and define itself in representing new voices that do not follow the extreme experimentalism of contemporary poetry (so sort of the opposite of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics): "As David Yezzi notes in his astute introduction, these thirty-five poets seems simply to have ignored the ideological wars that had raged in the magazines for half a century.  He calls them 'unified sensibilities,' and that seems an apt term to describe a group of poets - I wouldn't say 'a poetry' because these are a set of very individual writers - who haven't been blinded by fealties or hardened against traditional ways"  (xx). Some poets worth noting in this collection: Geoffrey Brock, Bill Coyle, and John Foy.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Swallow-Anthology-American-Poets/dp/0804011214/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333928767&sr=1-1

2.) The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry - Second edition 2003 (Edited by J.D. McClatchy):  This collection "gathers together, from every region of the country and from the past fifty years, the poems that continue to shape our imaginations [...] this anthology takes the full measure of our poetry's daring energies and its tender understandings" (back cover). It is a pretty standard collection of the big names, including: Sharon Olds, W.S. Merwin, Robert Creeley, Frank Bidart, Ellen Bryant Voigt, etc.  This would be a good quick read for those who need a comps reading list refresher as well. And the cover is sweet.

http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Book-Contemporary-American-Poetry/dp/1400030935