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Thursday, April 18. 2013

The state of poetry today


Not many people read poems these days, unless they happen to also be song lyrics. Without the lyre, poetry must make its own music somehow. Furthermore, poetry is written to be heard, not read. Just as with Shakespeare's plays, the words on paper are dead and only voice can bring them to life.


(The reading of Milton's classic On Time on Dr. Merc's sim-gaming post here this morning is a perfect example.)


Here at Maggie's, we have always posted a Saturday Verse, with the general advice to read them out loud. One poem per week, like one masterpiece of art, is about all most people can or are willing to process. We might be tempted to read more poetry if they were Juvenal writing poems from the standpoint of a Roman switch-hitting prostitute servicing both his master and his master's wife to good and profitable effect. The wife first, one might hope.


Via Never Yet Melted's Contemporary Poetry: High-Minded and Evolved, a fine mini-essay by David Yezzi: The Bitter Fool.

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, Saturday Verse, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 17:26 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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Marianne Moore in the '20s I think, from Poetry:

"I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important
beyond all this fiddle."

She wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the future held more of the same.

There was some good stuff being written in the first half of the 20th. Then came the "Meh" years decades.
#1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-04-18 17:54 (Reply)
I love the Saturday Verse!! My DH may not appreciate listening to me read it out loud, but - Oh well!! I recommend Helen Vendler's analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets. Very thorough discussion on each of them.
I recently purchased (from Amazon used books) The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse, which is a bit hard going, as the 16th C poetic language is even more difficult than 16th C prose. It can't be picked up and put it down easily, because the rythems of the language are so different from our own, so I'm trying to immerse myself in it for several hours at a time - to really FEEL the forms and conventions of 16th C English. Imagine my surprise to find a few poems that seemed familiar, especially the cadence. Upon some consideration, I dug out a CD that Sting had recorded - a volume of Elizabethan poems to music, (Songs from the Labyrinth), which included several poems from the above mentioned volume! Great fun!
Susan Lee
#2 Susan Lee on 2013-04-18 21:37 (Reply)
Keep reading, and re-reading that old stuff. Once you get used to the language, it really opens up & the reward is immense. You'll find you don't have to rely so much on the footnotes.
#2.1 T.K. Tortch on 2013-04-18 22:29 (Reply)
I am posting selections from the poetry of John B. Tabb all year at Catholic Lane. I am also posting my own recitation of the poems, but I don't know if I'm any good at that.

http://catholiclane.com/author/john-b-tabb/

I'd appreciate some feedback. Thanks.
#3 ELC (Link) on 2013-04-21 07:55 (Reply)

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