Poetics

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Poetics

Glennis Hobbs

Modernism in Poetry

Recently as my husband and I were driving to Winnipeg, we listened to the CBC Poetry Face-off—this being the final 20 of 70 Canadian poets who had been invited to participate in this poetry event.

This was a current event and allegedly the best of new Canadian poets. Subjects of the poems ranged from street life to a poet’s heritage from the Caribbean to a tribute to another poet through a nature poem. Reading styles ranged from colloquial conversational to overstylistic declamatory. This was supposed to be a representation of modernist poetry.

I had started thinking about what modern poetry is to it after reading “What is bad poetry?” by Kayt Davies.

In this article, Davies says:

Because the main aim of the game is now expressing the contents of the inner world, the writing of poetry has been deregulated. The inner world resists following rules and so the rules of grammar and structure are often abandoned in the attempt to express inner chaos. This irritates literature lovers who respect the talent it takes to write a precisely structured poem, just as much "modern art" bothers those who appreciate the fine art of accurate representation with paint.

If writing "shit shit shit" a thousand times is a really honest expression of what’s going on in my inner world, does that make it a good poem? I’d be the first to say "No"—from a literary perspective. But if writing it makes me feel better, and if I put that piece of paper away and find it a month later and laugh because I no longer feel that it is a representation of my inner state, then that piece of writing has served a valuable function. It has been a progress marker. You could challenge it and say that it was not grammatical or well expressed, but if it made sense to its audience, then it worked, even if it only had an audience of one.

It seems to me that much of current poetry seems to be in a state of chaos. The main rule seems to be that anything goes in poetry and that it is okay to write about anything, be it the way you puke, the way you put your shoes on, the way one does drugs or makes love or even one’s heritage.

To me, it seems as though the effect of a poem takes precedence over the format and the message presented in a poem.

Today’s poetry seems to push back boundaries for the sake of shock effect as well as demolishing boundaries, e.g., this poem by bill bissett, they cut back sew much on th backs uv th poor.

they cut back sew much on th backs uv th poor

whats missing from my poetree is th stink n slime
n th toxik pools surrounding us mooving closr in
2 our sereen psychik oases

whats missing from my poetree ar th smells uv our
habits 2 endors hierarkeez uv hurt n denial ego
victoreez resentments rot n stench uv ekonomik
boundareez konstrukts we create allow punish

wher onlee munee mattrs th top middul n bottoms
uv th work munee stupid klass destroying evree
thing whn nowun is bettr n evreewun can have worth
if onlee we cud evolv 2 beleev n see that can we

its a ring toss echo uv our fleeting wishes we take
evreething with us we can how much is that

In his article “Does Poetry Matter?" Dana Goia argues that poetry survived in the 20th century because of the academic world.

He goes on to say:

American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group. Little of the frenetic activity it generates ever reaches outside that closed group.

Yes, there is still a literary world with elitist poetry, but today, more than ever before, poetry is available to everyone. Through poetry websites on the Internet and through the hundreds of poetry books that are being self-published, a plethora of poetry is accessible.

I think that every generation goes through its own form of rebellion, be it music, art or poetry. In the 20th century, we have jazz and swing and rock and roll. At the same time, Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” caused a riot when it was first performed because it was considered too controversial. In art, we have Picasso and his experimentation. The Canadian Group of Seven who returned to nature and painted its colours. Consider also the chimpanzee who won first prize for her bold use of colours.

In poetry of the First World War, we see at first the Romantic style of Rupert Brooke in his poem, The Soldier:

“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.”

Later on, in Wilfrid Owens’ poetry, e.g., “Mental Cases,” we see the brutality of war.

“Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,-but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?”

There is a continual struggle between fantasy and reality throughout the 20th century. Shirley Temple and the extravaganza musicals provide an escape from Depression reality. Beat poetry and folk music represent a return to grassroots.

In the early 21st century, we live in a world that is constantly changing. We can sit in our living room and watch war being waged just as easily as watching a concert special.

We hear over and over again how important it is that rules of poetry don’t count and to try new things. Before we can break those rules, we need the basic building blocks of poetics and poetic devices. Pound, Moore and Williams dared to break the rules, but they also knew what the rules were in the first place. Out of their breaking the rules came a new and stronger poetry.

Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” reduces poetry to a single simplistically complex image:

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough”

Williams’ “Red Wheelbarrow” is disputed by some as even being a poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

To me, these poems represent the crystallization of the essence of poetry.

Flouting conventions may work for a while in poetry, but I believe that out of this chaos comes a sort of order. But with this order comes a type of freedom and courage: the freedom to explore new vistas in poetry and the courage to try them. For many of us, the new vistas may be a return to trying the old ways, such as writing sonnets, but it also may be by trying to write old forms in a new way, such as the unrhymed sonnet. It may be trying to leave our version of history, e.g., the poems of 911, for future generations to read. I don’t see us returning to the hypocrisy of the Victorian era where form and message take precedence.

But as I said before, in this age of e-mail and computerization, poetry is more readily accessible. At WVU, the Senior Poets of P123 who live on three different continents can find a common meeting ground that is not limited by geographical barriers. We are linked together, not just through our love of poetry, but through our willingness to challenge each other to try new things and to stretch as poets.