I'm not sure what I hoped to gain by reading this, other than moving it out of my "to read" stack, or indeed why I should be concerned with gain when it comes to the activity of reading. I read so rarely for pleasure, and it is not my first time to mention that I should probably do more of it. Nonetheless, I did gain some things, and I am grateful that it found its way into my stack.
Among my gains were the awareness of some astonishingly good works by modern authors, which is always a blessing to an English teacher. In teaching poetry to high school students, there is no particular need to adhere to a canon, especially insofar as I myself don't enjoy much of it. It is rather more important to find works of import that make clear what poetry is, and why one writes or reads it. The reason, as I spend an entire semester reiterating every year, is that there are things poetry can do that prose cannot, just as the obverse is true. Prose writing is meat, and poetry is dessert--a parfait to be precise: a richly layered treat, where each little element is present in every individual bite. Among the works that I will consider including in the curriculum this coming year: "A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn" by John Murillo, "When I feel a Whoop Comin' On" by Steven Leyva, and "Good Mother" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Among those that were marvelous, but either inaccessible to or inappropriate for my students and I keep for myself: "Big Gay Ass Poem" by BC Griffith and "The Seeds" by Cecily Parks.
But in addition to these jewels, I gained something else in the reading. I became aware of a trend that, not being a huge consumer of contemporary poetry, perhaps predates my notice, but was, at least, alive and well in 2020. In keeping with the way I teach poetry, which is naturally the way I think about poetry, I always look for the layers. Each element of a parfait must contribute to, and align with, the other parts, combining in a way that is one lovely thing, and in which each bite is a microcosm of the whole. That is the entire point of poetry, and the extent to which something does that is the extent to which it may be called "poetic". The form, texture, imagery, language, and meaning of a good poem all have a reason for being the way they are, and in the best poems it is the same reason for each of them.
I am reminded of a lesson given by Professor Susan Taylor in my undergraduate literary criticism class. In it, she challenged us to find a piece of prose writing and transform it into poetry by simply altering the form. I took the assignment with a grain of absurdity, as remains my wont, and chose an article from the Weekly World News entitled "Fish With Human Head Discovered". I don't think she was amused, but she made her point: form itself does not make poetry. It is this point that seems to have been en vogue to ignore during 2020. More of the selections in this volume than I care to remember, perhaps even the majority, would have been quite lovely as essays, but were instead chopped into symmetrical bits for no reason whatsoever. Was it enough, in 2020 to be set in stanzas to be considered poetry? In most of them, even in some by truly iconic poets whom I am ashamed to name here, the form has no purpose whatsoever, let alone any connection to a greater meaning. Whether this represents a contemporary poetic trend, the biases of the editor, or a blind spot on my own part, I cannot say. But I did not enjoy it in the least, and will do my best to teach against it.
No comments:
Post a Comment