Poetry is old-fashioned. Don't you think? I love Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry. Emily Dickinson is awe-inspiring. Sylvia Plath could also be. Kenneth Patchen.... But that was a long time ago. Poetry today isn't allowed such luxerious themes and subtle developments toward grandiose visions or experiences. Poetry today is about other things. Deconstruction, cold musings or observations. Poetry is un-cool, so poets have to write poetry that doesn't seem like poetry in order to gain accept. The deconstruction began beautifully, with Allen Ginsberg who still had a vision to deconstruct, so that in the end we were left with his view of a world living and strange which he grappled with but which didn't seem to grapple much with him. But, as time passed, it seems poets have forgotten that deconstruction involves an original construction- they need something to deconstruct- a vision or experience of the world that is overpowering, at least to the poets themselves.
Visions are out of fashion. Amazingness is also out of fashion. Things are fucked is in. Deconstructing the fucked up world which everyone can understand. Well, I miss poetry. Men and women who sulked and hid for many years behind personal obsessions and overwhelming experiences of being alive.
If anyone out there knows of present-day poetry that I might like or that has moved them, I'd love to hear about it!!!
Visions are out of fashion. Amazingness is also out of fashion. Things are fucked is in. Deconstructing the fucked up world which everyone can understand. Well, I miss poetry. Men and women who sulked and hid for many years behind personal obsessions and overwhelming experiences of being alive.
If anyone out there knows of present-day poetry that I might like or that has moved them, I'd love to hear about it!!!
posted by TK at 11:29 AM
9 Comments:
"That I may reduce the monster to
Myself, and then may be myself
In face of the monster, be more than part
Of it, more than the monstrous player of
One of its monstrous lutes, not be Alone, but reduce the monster and be,
Two things, the two together as one,
And play of the monster and of myself,
Or better not of myself at all,
But of that as its intelligence,
Being the lion in the lute
Before the lion locked in the stone."
^You ever read Wallace Stevens?
I love what you are saying about the overwhelming feelings of being alive. It seems that valuing anything strongly and feeling anything strongly in our current culture is something to be avoided at all costs. Seriousness in the realm of emotions is definitely looked down upon. Right now the main value is in being the quickest one to tear something apart and render it laughable. It's like everyone's going around trying to defang the world before it bites them.
Hi Hobo, no, I haven't read him...is he still alive? The bit you posted was interesting...I'll check him out.
Dear cio che sono. first, what does your name mean in my native tongue? Secondly, it does seem that many people take the hasty and boring route of breaking down instead of building up, probably because they are so used to being broken down, like you said. Time has left us behind.
dead, dead, dead.
Yeah, what she said! That TK, I mean. Like, well put, girl!
Mr. Eloquence
My name means "that which I am". I decided to keep it simple :)
Amy Clampitt is fantastic (although, she's not exactly contemporary; pretty dead, in fact). There's a great poem, Beach Glass (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/clampitt-poems.html) that she's written about glass on the shore -- the kind that gets smooth and velvety after being washed up and rolled around in the waves. It's quite lovely and historical, epic even.
And here's another great poet, a contemporary named Dan Chiasson, who was one of my teaching assistants in college! I remember he told us about how Frank O'Hara would write poetry while watching TV (and Frank O'Hara is definitely one of my favorites!). Chiasson's got a little bit of a darker, mortal vision to his poetry, but the images are startling and quite beautiful in their weird way. Here's one of his poems, "The Bear": http://www.slate.com/id/2094450/
Thanks Melissa! I'll look into them...
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