While one can sympathize with outsider outrage at the FBI's shutting down of Poetree.coop (as reported by Seth Godin), it appears that the site was breaking all kinds of copyright laws by posting poems without getting permission from poets.
As a writer, I would take great umbrage at some renegade site stealing my work. With freedom of speech comes responsibility to reserve that freedom for your own ideas and work--you are not free to post someone else's work (unless it's in the public domain or with permission).
I firmly believe in spanking, from time to time, the establishment literary community, but for the right reasons. Whether or not you like individual poets or not, you still don't have the right to lift their work, depriving them of their livelihood.
This right to control one's own intellectual property is the cornerstone of the literary community and benefits both insider and outsider.
By the way, I know my way around the domaining community and am aware that the .coop TLD exists, but I believe this is the first time I have seen it in actual use--or in this case, was in use.
Thread: When an Esteemed Poet Writes a Bad Poem
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During poetry month, I usually open the daily poem email from poets.org, glance over it, and move on. Today, I was compelled to respond to James Tate's Father's Day:
A Non-Poet’s Lament
The poet has lived in a dusty tower since the twentieth
century. He speaks of Michelangelo–the women, too–
and the academy concurs. Royalty, a man with no robes
or under shorts. He lives on celebrity and a few sips
of kudos. He dreams of past book awards. His iconoclastic
child lashes out at his noted conversational surrealism.
Yellow cats rub sleek torsos against his trouser legs.
I detect a whiff of a putrid peach, the poet’s conceit.
I opened my email, trying to quell the mind-numbing
poetic assault. I, too, have written a drawer full of prose
but not to the State Department. They would have never
written back, for I am not a poet–and know it. I
never listened to his nuggets. I was always tapping
away. I never called him anything–I already know
my shortcomings–and he will never know of me.
Chickenshit: this–his–poem’s middle name.
Note: I am never surprised when a poet or writer creates a bad poem--writers are notoriously bad judges of their own work. I have drawers full of questionable work.
What surprises me: when editors fall all over themselves to publish anything by a famous writer, no matter how mediocre.
I do not know James Tate, nor do I have an ax to grind with him personally; I was just struck by the mediocrity of this particular poem.
Of course, you are free to respond, tell me how lousy my imitation is--which I already know. I spent less than one hour on it and don't have time for revision. I have to move on and grade papers.
But could someone please tell me (and others) why Tate's poem is worthy of being the poem-of-the-day for April 16, 2008? Am I missing something? If so, what?
During poetry month, I usually open the daily poem email from poets.org, glance over it, and move on. Today, I was compelled to respond to James Tate's Father's Day:
A Non-Poet’s Lament
The poet has lived in a dusty tower since the twentieth
century. He speaks of Michelangelo–the women, too–
and the academy concurs. Royalty, a man with no robes
or under shorts. He lives on celebrity and a few sips
of kudos. He dreams of past book awards. His iconoclastic
child lashes out at his noted conversational surrealism.
Yellow cats rub sleek torsos against his trouser legs.
I detect a whiff of a putrid peach, the poet’s conceit.
I opened my email, trying to quell the mind-numbing
poetic assault. I, too, have written a drawer full of prose
but not to the State Department. They would have never
written back, for I am not a poet–and know it. I
never listened to his nuggets. I was always tapping
away. I never called him anything–I already know
my shortcomings–and he will never know of me.
Chickenshit: this–his–poem’s middle name.
Note: I am never surprised when a poet or writer creates a bad poem--writers are notoriously bad judges of their own work. I have drawers full of questionable work.
What surprises me: when editors fall all over themselves to publish anything by a famous writer, no matter how mediocre.
I do not know James Tate, nor do I have an ax to grind with him personally; I was just struck by the mediocrity of this particular poem.
Of course, you are free to respond, tell me how lousy my imitation is--which I already know. I spent less than one hour on it and don't have time for revision. I have to move on and grade papers.
But could someone please tell me (and others) why Tate's poem is worthy of being the poem-of-the-day for April 16, 2008? Am I missing something? If so, what?
Public Domain Poem: "The Flea" (John Donne)
Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
Confesse it, this cannot be said
A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,
-----Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
-----And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
-----And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.
-----Though use make thee apt to kill me,
-----Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
-----And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.
Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
In what could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;
-----'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
-----Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
-----Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.
Forum Thread: Does the Difficulty of Modern Poetry Mask Its Underlying Superficiality?
In 2008, The Writer's Chronicle published a timely article: "On Difficulty in Poetry," by Reginald Shepherd. In his introduction, Mr. Shepherd says, "It's been the fashion at least since the Modernists to complain that contemporary poetry has become difficult, and that this difficulty has alienated the readers who used to flock to poetry as they now flock to John Grisham novels and American Idol" (8).
Then he refers to enduring difficult poets of the past: Shakespeare and Donne--though I would contend that these poets were not considered difficult back when they were writing their plays and poems. They're considered difficult now because their works are written in English not commonly used today.
Shepherd believes that poetry ought to challenge the reader and that total understanding of a poem is not necessary. Sometimes it's enough to appreciate the language, allusions, and structure, even when meaning eludes. He even says, "...the poem that alludes frequently eludes" (10). In other words, meaning is secondary to how a reader experiences a poem, intellectually, emotionally, and sensually.
Up to this point, I agree. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely an elusive poem worth reading and rereading and pondering because underneath all the fancy language, allusions, metaphors, there is substance, a universality of human experience and mortality.
However, as I read some modern poems, I get the distinct feeling that they hide their underlying superficiality behind difficult language--that a poet's walk down Fifth Avenue, during which his contemplation of his grocery list has been interrupted by an ill-timed bomb by an overhead bird will not be enhanced by complicated allusions to Prometheus.
Shepherd says, "Poems considered difficult often allude to material outside the common literary or intellectual frame of reference. Modern poetry is particularly difficult in its wide range and idiosyncratic, often inexplicit, deployment of allusion" (13).
Perhaps that is debatable; what I see in modern poetry is a tendency toward sameness, a flat affect, a self-indulgent contemplation about nothing masked by high-toned literary language: all style, little substance.
The question posed here: "Does the Difficulty of Modern Poetry Mask Its Underlying Superficiality?"
Feel free to comment.
___________________________________
Shepherd, Reginald. The Writer's Chronicle," May/Summer 2008, Vol. 40, Number 6, 8-14.
Then he refers to enduring difficult poets of the past: Shakespeare and Donne--though I would contend that these poets were not considered difficult back when they were writing their plays and poems. They're considered difficult now because their works are written in English not commonly used today.
Shepherd believes that poetry ought to challenge the reader and that total understanding of a poem is not necessary. Sometimes it's enough to appreciate the language, allusions, and structure, even when meaning eludes. He even says, "...the poem that alludes frequently eludes" (10). In other words, meaning is secondary to how a reader experiences a poem, intellectually, emotionally, and sensually.
Up to this point, I agree. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is definitely an elusive poem worth reading and rereading and pondering because underneath all the fancy language, allusions, metaphors, there is substance, a universality of human experience and mortality.
However, as I read some modern poems, I get the distinct feeling that they hide their underlying superficiality behind difficult language--that a poet's walk down Fifth Avenue, during which his contemplation of his grocery list has been interrupted by an ill-timed bomb by an overhead bird will not be enhanced by complicated allusions to Prometheus.
Shepherd says, "Poems considered difficult often allude to material outside the common literary or intellectual frame of reference. Modern poetry is particularly difficult in its wide range and idiosyncratic, often inexplicit, deployment of allusion" (13).
Perhaps that is debatable; what I see in modern poetry is a tendency toward sameness, a flat affect, a self-indulgent contemplation about nothing masked by high-toned literary language: all style, little substance.
The question posed here: "Does the Difficulty of Modern Poetry Mask Its Underlying Superficiality?"
Feel free to comment.
___________________________________
Shepherd, Reginald. The Writer's Chronicle," May/Summer 2008, Vol. 40, Number 6, 8-14.
Public Domain Poem: Sonnet 18 (William Shakespeare)
.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
_______________________________
As a graduate student at the University of Florida (about a million years ago), I had to memorize this sonnet.
But I don't hold that against this cool poem--it's still a fave.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
_______________________________
As a graduate student at the University of Florida (about a million years ago), I had to memorize this sonnet.
But I don't hold that against this cool poem--it's still a fave.
Forum Thread: Good News and Bragging Rights!
This happy thread is reserved for your good news and bragging rights.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
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