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[Draignean]

   Despite the protests of engineering advisor, my chemistry professor and summer employer, and pretty much everyone else I know from the ENGR college, I enrolled in creative writing class this semester. Taking a look at our books (not to mention how hard the teacher is stressing 'literary fiction') is starting to give me reason to believe they might be right. I'd hoped to gain knowledge of writing beyond self-taught tricks, but... well.

The following are a couple of excerpts from our book of poetry. It should be noted that the book of poetry declares that it is "highly respected" and the poems contained have "frank vitality and spiritual resonance" that "convey(s) the ongoing struggle to create a literature unique and peculiarly American." If this is American poetry, I'm moving. Or at least disowning my country.

Spoiler: Excerpts (click to show/hide)

The Mortician's Twelve Year Old Son (AI)

Lady, when you were alive
I'd see you in the streets,
the long green dress with the velvet flower
sewn dead center between your breasts
so tightly I could never get a look inside.

Now the gas lamps half-light the table,
washing the sheet that covers you with shadows.
A few strands of your dyed red hair
hang nearly to he floor,
as if all your blood had run there to hide.

I lift the sheet, rub the mole on your cheek
and it comes off black and oily on my hand.
I bend over your breast and sing,
love, sister, is just a kiss away.
I cover each nipple with my mouth.
Tonight, just a kiss away.

I Know A Man (Robert Creeley)

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, - John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going

Mock Orange (Louise Gluck)

It is not the moon, I tell you
it is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man's mouth
sealing my mouth, the man's
paralyzing body -
 
and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union -

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

Why Can't I Leave You? (Ai again)

You stand behind the old black mare,
dressed as always in that red shirt,
stained from sweat, the crying of armpits,
that will not stop for anything,
stroking her rump, while the barley goes unplanted.
I pick up my suitcase and set it down,
as I try to leave you again.
I smooth the hair back from your forehead.
I think with your laziness and the drought too,
you'll be needing my help more than ever.
You take my hands, I nod
and go to the house to unpack,
having found another reason to stay.

I undress, then put on my white lace slip
for you to take off, because you like that
and when you come in, you pull down the straps
and I unbutton your shirt.
I know we can't give each other any more
or any less than what we have.
There is safety in that, so much
that I can never get past the packing,
the begging you to please, if I can't make you happy,
come close between my thighs
and let me laugh for you from my second mouth.

Dead Hand (W. S. Merwin)

Temptations still nest in it like basilisks.
Hang it up till the rings fall.

Poems not included in my brief selection:
The Pope's Penis
I have got to stop loving you so I have killed my black goat
The Shower (Which is honestly about a woman checking for breast cancer in the shower)
Maple Syrup
Girl Friend Poem #3 (Actual title)
And MANY more!

Honestly, this is poetry today? Where is Ozymandias, Invictus, The Light Brigade, Xanadu? Or, for that matter, where is a consistent rhyming scheme or identifiable verse? I think I'm going to go quite mad. More than half the 'poems' in this anthology seem to be ways of referencing sex in ways of hitherto undiscovered awkwardness.

Am I missing something important, or is this what it is to write good poetry?

[DJ]

Try some Ern Malley.

[Skyrunner]

Awww, the <country you live>'s modern poems are so bad Half of those sound like some sort of niche indie song lyrics. There's a lot of TMI going on, too. >_>

I find that Korea's modern poetry is a lot deeper and more fun than those. Might just be bias, but... (if you want to judge for yourself, try the Writer's Apprentice thread in Creative Projects)

[Lectorog]

Modern poetry (in America at least) is about expressing anything without the need to adhere to standard language rules. I guess a lot of people feel the need to talk about sex.

Or, for that matter, where is a consistent rhyming scheme or identifiable verse?

Pfft, where do you thing you are, the 1800s?

Am I missing something important, or is this what it is to write good poetry?

There is no good or bad poetry anymore. It's just another type of art. The rules have all become optional.

[Durin Stronginthearm]

Most of the poets from any given era are mediocre, but when looking at the poetry from the past we have the luxury of forgetting the also-rans and concentrating on those whose reputations have stood the test of time. It shouldn't be surprising then, that when studying contemporary poetry that a lot of it doesn't stand up to comparison - it because most of it doesn't.

I'm not very impressed by the poems excerpted here either, with the possible exception of the Creeley one. They're technically competent, but seem adolescent and lacking the authority and power that a really great poem has - they certainly don't have a "frank vitality and spiritual resonance" to my mind.

You've mentioned awkward references to sex, and I think this sort of thing is one of the problems with the literary establishment - or in fact, it's a consequence of having a literary establishment in the first place. Literature has been captured by academe, or at least academics have convinced almost everyone that academic literature is the only "serious" literature (to the exclusion of things like poetry with strong metrical or rhyme schemes, "genre fiction" [a term I find particularly tellling, as if "literary fiction" isn't a genre!] etc), and so the "serious" poetry of today tends reflect that, these kind of disconnected, ivory-tower, over-thought perspectives. It's particularly noticable when they write about sex, because it's such a primal, visceral activity.

What book are these examples taken from, do you have a link? Are you only studying contemporary American poetry? (Seems a bit of a narrow focus, but then I've found the American literary tradition can be weirdly self-reflexive, cf "The Great American Novel", " the ongoing struggle to create a literature unique and peculiarly American" etc. It's not an ongoing struggle! There are plenty of great American novels! American literature has plenty to be proud of, why are you so insecure?) Not a field I'm very familiar with (though it depends to an extent on what is defined as "contemporary"), I like a lot of Mary Oliver's poems but she's possibly too popular to have much creedence with your teachers.

[Durin Stronginthearm]

Modern poetry (in America at least) is about expressing anything without the need to adhere to standard language rules. I guess a lot of people feel the need to talk about sex.
...
There is no good or bad poetry anymore. It's just another type of art. The rules have all become optional.

Art is rules. Rules make art possible. Sure, they should deveop and evolve over time; in fact, every artist should develop their own method, and any great one does. However, the idea that you can just "express yourself" is damaging to many forms of creative activity, but particularly poetry, becaue it's such a demanding discipline. Rules aren't there to limit you, they're there to help you.

[penguinofhonor]

Tell that to Picasso, man.

[Tiruin]

I really think the poems are influenced by the culture and what was widely accepted at the time..

...Err, might just be me and bias on the older styles of poetry and their wording anyway, but I'm not feeling...'right' with how modern poems go. Though I'm not familiar with the field (unsure /how/ those excerpts specify the unique 'American' point in a way..I can't see how it differs from any other poetic verse. Also those undertones...don't reflect or define the <specific culture>, really.

PPE: Durin.

That's insightful 

[Lectorog]

Guys, watch out, Durin's coming into this thread with opinions!

From what I've seen, there are two rules of poetry anymore:
1) The creator says it's poetry.
2) It is not better classified as something else.
The second is only used when the first isn't possible (ex. creator is dead or doesn't comment on their work).

All other rules are self-imposed - what is called "style".

[da_nang]

Just wait until you get to dadaism. One of the few styles with which computers can be poets.

[kaijyuu]

Haha, yeah, art having "rules" is what really stagnates things. There are no rules in art, only guidelines.

A good artist follows the "rules"; a great artist knows when and how to ignore them.

[Pnx]

Though many, many, artist find that working with certain constraints forces them to be creative in dealing with them. I tend to be like that with my poetry, because after all, if I'm not working with some kind of metre or something, what's the difference between what I'm writing and just waxing philosophically or something?

[Frumple]

Clarity and concise writing, probably. Those are the two primary virtues of philosophy writing. One of the primary goals of the philosopher is to communicate their concepts as clearly and concisely as possible.

... it's just often on subjects that are difficult to communicate about with much of either virtue >_>

[Vector]

Dammit, Durin, I really like you.


Hi, OP!  I'm a poetry translator.

Here's the deal.  When analyzing poems, we found out that more and less rhyme could associate different lines more and less; similar with line lengths.  So, like if two lines end with rose (verb) and rose (noun), they're extremely strongly associated.  Next rose/arose or rose/roses, then rose/nose, then rise/rice, and so on and so forth.  To remove the highly clockwork, mechanical press of counting syllables, poets like Ginsberg started measuring line lengths in breaths, the so called "breath meter."

And so on, and so forth.

It doesn't help, either, that the standards of "rhyming poetry" were imported from French, so that it is in fact very difficult to write metrical and rhyming poems in English, when the poetic form more native to English, alliterative verse, has all but died--and the influx of French words and their end-of-word stress, rather than first-syllable stress, has made Germanic poetry itself more and more difficult to work with.  English is, indeed, something like 85% French.

So, we're trying to create something new that works better for us.

[Sigulbard]

If it ain't got rhyme, it ain't a poem. It's a story.

Well anyways. Anything with the word 'modern' before it makes me wary, except when the topic under discussion is technology. Modern 'art' is especially horrible.