A voidable heart - the danger of poetry

Much has been written about whether poetry is flourishing or decaying in our consumerist technology-addicted culture. Trends in poetry are generally agreed to be towards the opaque, the intellectual, the poetry-as-game. Humour and references to other texts are frequent. While formalism has made a small come-back, free verse and the excuse it provides to the lazy not to examine line structure and length still predominate. This is a contrived excuse, of course. Good poetry is good poetry and there is plenty of good poetry in free verse being written. And the increase of poetry with Pasifika roots and other cultures than English can only be a good thing.

What puzzles me though is an attitude I have come across time and again in online forums, interviews, readings, generally the panoply of literary culture. Where writers treat poetry - their main creative endeavour - as a source of comfort, a tamed pet that usually behaves itself, and if it wees on the carpet is given a telling-off. A safe environment where the good poetry of today is read and applauded, but not attacked, and where purpose and meaning of the poetic effort is never discussed.

Maybe this attitude is assumed for the purposes of communal events, to boost the writer's self-esteem, or to play along with the etiquette of being confident about the worth of your own work or the work being displayed.

But the problem of this attitude is that it avoids the possibility of deep emotional connections, which are never safe, and always change the people involved. Connections to the works you read, and to works you are writing. How can your poems possibly attain greatness if you are fundamentally untouched? Would you recognise it and be affected by it if you see it? Greatness, which is not about how well the poem is written, but the purpose of the poem itself.

The classic essay by Donald Hall "Poetry and Ambition", talks about the difference between good and great poetry and the worthy aim (if difficult and unsure) of writing great poetry. He is right to say the poem, not the poet, will be what remains, one of "the stars in the sky". And it is entirely reasonably and even probable to think that all our efforts are for nothing, and that we haven't succeeded.

But we still need to question, rigorously and continually, the purpose of our poetic efforts, and of each poem we write. What does it contribute? This is a hard question to answer, striking as it does at the root of our self-esteem as writers. And difficult as these things are to discuss publicly, we need to discuss them for writers like myself, still an apprentice, to understand that greatness, rather than publication or fellowship, is the ultimate aim. That technical skill is only an intermediate step.

As a writer, this is the first danger of poetry. It throws into question the focus I have put on my life and ensures I can never stop questioning it.

The second danger of poetry is as a reader. If I don't feel that what I am reading is somehow dangerous to me, challenging me in some way fundamental to how I live, it can only be a comfort in the way pulp fiction is a comfort, or junk food. It can't be art.

Of course in this relationship the reader must play their part, or even the greatest poems will go unnoticed. To read poetry attentively and openly means taking your time, rereading, registering the twitches of your sensitive nose-hairs to the fluctuations of allusion, metaphor, rhythm, structure. Thinking about what you have read, and thinking whole-heartedly, that is with your mind and your heart open.

This is demanding stuff, and no wonder people select the things they put their energy into. But it is still essential for the great works to live. Will we look back at the poetry of the 21st century and be able to pick out the great poems from the wealth of published material? Critics and poets and academics perform this function by praising, reading, referencing, and teaching, and by these means some work survives in our culture, and some doesn't.

So be a reader that demands greatness as well as skill. Be a writer that demands these things from yourself. Strive for what you can never achieve, and you may achieve something worth reading.

What good are the arts?

Learn a poem by heart, and you have it forever.

Comments on and quotes from John Carey's "What Good Are the Arts?", a 2005 book mentioned in my previous post.

What is a work of art?
Carey begins with a very interesting chapter how how we define a work of art and gives his own definition - that is "A work of art is anything that anyone has ever considered a work of art, though it may be a work of art only for that one person." Here his balloon-pricking is hilarious - what things cannot be works of art? Excrement, perhaps? Empty space? An unmade bed? Unfortunately not, according to the activities of artists and acceptance by museums and galleries.

My favourite story was Aaron Barschak, who was charged with criminal damage for splashing red paint on a work of art in an art gallery, the gallery walls and the artists in 2003. His defence was that he was creating his own artwork, just as the artists had done by using etchings by Goya, and that he "intended to enter his work for the Turner Prize".

Other interesting points - "high art" vs "low art" as "what I feel (in response to high art) is more important, special & interesting than what you feel (in response to low art)." But the point Carey hammers in all the way through the book is that we can't know what other people feel, only guess. Sometimes, in some ways, that guess is pretty good. But it's never complete because we can't literally feel what they feel, only what we imagine they might feel based on what we know about them. Relativity is all. Which makes his focus on literature in the second half of the book very interesting, though he admits it's a personal bias in just this way, to prefer one kind of art over another.

Debunking some pro-art arguments
Art as religion : "Artists, as Jacques Barzun has observed, are popularly credited with the divine powers formerly attributed to religious figures. They are expected to be 'demanding' and obscure, like ancient oracles. They are always 'ahead of their time' like Biblical prophets."

Art in the community, not imposed on them but part of all our lives. Art as a part of the usual tasks we do - decorating our homes, for example, tatooing, and other times when by making something special we are creating : "Arts research needs to change direction, to look outwards, and - following the example of Laski and Bourdieu - investigate the audience not the texts."

Literature & self-criticism
"Literature is not just the only art that can criticize itself, it is the only art, I would argue, that can criticize anything, because it is the only art capable of reasoning."

You could argue that self-criticism is present in an ironic installation piece taking the piss out of an artistic theory. Carey says : "Pieces of music can parody other pieces, and paintings can caricature paintings. But this does not amount to a total rejection of music or painting. Literature, however, can totally reject literature, and in this it shows itself more powerful and self-aware than any other art." And goes on to name a number of pieces in literature that reject writing and reading. That the coherent argument against something can only be present in literature (or words borrowed by opera and film). Music is empty of meaning, consisting of sensations that may or may not be interpreted similarly by different listeners.

Literature & indistinctness
The vital element in literature, indistinctness, which forces the reader to use their imagination and effectively create the story in their heads. As in Blake's Sick Rose:

O rose, thou art sick:
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

What or who is the worm, why is it invisible, and since a worm does not fly in the night, what does it mean? Carey argues that this indistinct imagery forces us to create the story for ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Most interesting here is that he traces the flowering of indistinctness in literature to Shakespeare.

More books on reading and writing poetry

After a long hiatus (study commitments..) I needed some poetry back in my life. Blackmail Press #28 came out recently in which I modestly appear; a kind gift by a family member means I'm attending a 2-day poetry course over the summer - so I picked up a few books. Okay, that's not always necessary, but who could resist?

When considering buying books (not just on poetry), I always think in terms of what I would want to refer to again and again. A short term read is better coming from the public library rather than a bookstore, unless I plan to pass it on in some way, or want to support the author.

There are some recommended books by the course tutor which I bought, not because you have to have them but because my poetry collection is looking a bit sparse at the moment. I've weeded my books twice in the last year or two and try to borrow rather than buy, as I've just said. I also picked up a few others that looked intriguing...

The distinction between books on poetry and books of poetry isn't clear-cut, in my mind. If you want to learn more about writing poetry you need to read poetry. If you're not reading poetry, why on earth would you bother trying to write it?

So here are the books sitting on my desk at the moment, waiting to be read properly, and later joined by a couple of others I'm waiting on from Fishpond.

Strand, Mark. & Boland, Eavan (eds). The Making of a Poem : A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York / London : W. W. Norton & Co., 2000
"If example is the best teacher..." I'd never heard of this book before I came across it in Borders yesterday. But I'm always interested in learning more about forms, and when I opened it I realised it was chockful of poems arranged by form, and not just sonnets, villanelles, heroic couplets etc, but also the elegy, the ode, the pastoral, and a section on open forms. Less technical perhaps than other books but all the basics are here and then some.

Fry, Stephen. The Ode Less Travelled : Unlocking the Poet Within. London : Arrow Books, 2005
I'd knocked around buying this one for a while but was always put off by the author. Why would I want to learn about poetry from Stephen Fry, despite his perfect performance as Jeeves? But looking through it again in Unity Books recently, I realised how unpretentious and downright funny he was about poetry - and we all need that. I certainly do. How about his 3 Golden Rules for reading his book?
1. Take your time
2. Don't be afraid
3. Always have a notebook with you.
Rules for life, in fact. And he isn't afraid to talk technically. So a breath of fresh air.

Harvey, Siobhan (ed). Our Own Kind : 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals. Auckland : Godwit, 2009
Recommended reading for the poetry course, whose tutor incidentally is Harvey herself. I do come at this book from a strong animal rights perspective, being a vegan for ethical reasons. On the whole I thought I couldn't pass this one up, and when browsing it I came across several poems that prompted me to bring out my notebook and pen - a sure sign of success. In particular the strong bitter ending of Brian Turner's Pig, Fleur Adcock's Crab which talks about eating the "permitted parts of the crab" (I doubt the crab permitted it), and Our Cow by Cilla McQueen, which after reading a couple of times unfastened itself for me and began to spread in lots of possible directions, including a respect for the cow itself. Plus the book has lots of cute black & white pictures of animals (and people interacting with them) by Mark Smith.

Green, Paula. & Ricketts, Harry. 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry : over 85 key poems plus 25 poets talk about their work. Auckland : Vintage, 2010
Recommended reading again. Anthologies about New Zealand poetry are frequently published, with different slants (spirituality, animals, Auckland, Wellington etc) but this book intends, according to the preface, to open up rather than fix, celebrate rather than criticise, and introduce rather than assume. When looking through it I'm struck by how little I know about the poetry scene in New Zealand. This book covers the usual suspects like form and effects, but also has significant sections looking at the history of poetry in NZ, and other ways to look at poetry by "identities" - ethnic identities, New Zealandish, women, children. These aspects are what most interest me at first glance.

Carey, John. What Good are the Arts? London: Faber & Faber, 2005.
This is a question I ask myself often. Carey also had some controversial reactions to this book, and when I began to read I found out why. He does prick the balloon of pretentiousness that exists around (seems chiefly the visual) arts. Claims of spiritual eminence and elitism etc. He also has a great sense of humour, particularly when talking about what a work of art is. I want to write about this more in a later post, and I'm only half-way through, so all I'll say here is that he starts by asking what a work of art is, then examining the usual arguments around the arts (high art vs low art, scientific work on arts, do arts make us better, art as religion), and then talks specifically about literature (including poetry), and why he thinks literature is better than all the other arts. A couple of interesting concepts here are - literature's ability to criticise itself, and the idea of indistinctness (see my comment on Cilla McQueen's poem from the animals anthology).
Not specifically poetry, but very relevant.