Poetry Doesn't Howl Anymore

Allen Ginsberg

Another blow against contemporary poetry surfaced in Mark Edmundson's essay "Poetry Slam" in the July issue of Harper's Bazaar.  He complains that today's poets  are not ambitious enough.  Ambitious in the sense that they lack a big vision and are concerned only with small themes. They are writing in the sound of their own voices---their own uniqueness, rather than speaking expansively. He bemoans the missing 'we and our' in poems.

 

I think, to a degree, he has a point.  Art does reflect the times in which it lives. The times they are narcissistic, which causes poets to draw inward and be focused on their own experiences, rather than facing outward.  It is easier to ruminate and stay in a circumscribed comfort zone, rather than take on the world and the future.

 

Edmundson misses some of the 'outward facing' poets of the past like Shelley, Yeats, Williams, and Ginsberg, to name just a few mentioned in his article. This is a call for poets to speak more often about our common experiences.

 

I think there are contemporary poets that do speak to larger, universal themes, among them Natasha Trethewey (appointed for a second term as poet laureate) and David Whyte.To quote David… "A good poem, is a brave intuition of what could be or what could have been, it looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain."

 

So poets…write whatever you want, however you want, but on certain days summon your courage to think big, look life in the face and howl.

 

Poetry as Cultural Force

Photo by Kathleen Tyler Conklin
 

I attended Natasha Trethewey's closing lecture May 1st at the Library of Congress. Rather than quote directly, I will paraphrase her last words as poet laureate and write some thoughts that she left for me to absorb and to share with you.

 

Natasha focused her remarks around the theme of poetry as a cultural force.  Poetry gives us something that cannot be found elsewhere.  We as individuals and a nation turn to it when we need it.  Poetry then becomes a collective container for the profound experiences of our lives---birth, love, commitment, loss and grief.  It illuminates these experiences and gives them a necessary utterance.

 

To support these ideas, Natasha read from some of her favorite poets so that we as a group could "revel in the pleasure of poetry."

 

This pleasure was followed by another…standing in the Great Hall of the beautiful Thomas Jefferson Building…then walking out into the cool May evening and seeing the dome of our nation's Capitol glowing against a darkening, cerulean sky, illuminating for all the hope of freedom and the freedom of hope.  Symbol as cultural force.

 

("Thrall", Natasha Trethewey's newest poetry collection was published in the fall of 2012.)