Kathryn Hinds's Blog - Posts Tagged "poetry"
One of my Facebook friends posted a link this morning to an article called "The New Math of Poetry," The Chronicle of Higher Education. (http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-...) The author, poet David Alpaugh, makes some trenchant observations about the current state of poetry publishing in the United States. Here are a few of them with, in some cases, my comments:
"The new math of poetry is driven not by reader demand for great or even good poetry but by the demand of myriads of aspiring poets to experience the thrill of 'publication.'" ["Reader demand"--there's the crux of one of the biggest problems I see in poetry. It all too often seems that everyone wants to write it, but very few people want to read it. I have met an awful lot of self-styled poets who never read poetry, not even the classics, let alone contemporary poetry.:]
"Fifty years ago, the Yale Younger Poets was the only poetry-book contest in America. If this year's 330-plus contests continue to grow at the rate of just a half-dozen new ones per year, more than 50,000 prize-winning volumes will have been published by the end of this century." [Don't even get me started on the subject of contests. They're a bane, and a fitting subject for a future blog post all their own.:]
"Were a conscientious anthologist of this year's poetry to spend just 10 minutes evaluating each published poem, he or she would need to work 16,666 hours, which means it would take eight years to assess the eligible poetry for a 2010 anthology."
"In BAP [Best American Poetry:] 2008, for example, just 10 of the 2,000-plus journals and magazines available for consideration accounted for 37 of the 75 poems selected—49 percent.... Given that guest editors are faced with the impossibility of reading even a fraction of the poetry being published, it should not shock us if they favor the work of students, friends, and colleagues."
"BAP editors recognize the need to throw in a maverick journal or obscure poet or two each year to make it look like they are fulfilling the grand promise of their title. Although Scribner wants readers to believe that they are purchasing the "best," David Orr, in The New York Times Book Review, could be describing the entire series when he writes that the poems selected for 2004 'run the usual gamut from very good to slightly dull to what-were-you-thinking.'" [This has always been my own reaction to BAP--in fact, I've read very few poems in these anthologies that actually impressed or moved me in any way.:]
"Online, the most visited anthology (millions of hits per month) is Poetry Daily, which reprints a poem each day from books or journals.... Much impressed by prizes, university position, and po-biz power, the site's editors routinely ignore excellent poems by independent poets in favor of weaker ones by M.F.A. pros and po-biz heavies."
"... when it comes to the new math of poetry, we can see only the tip of the iceberg. Unfathomable are the countless self-published chapbooks and collections printed each year, to say nothing of the millions of personal Web sites, blogs, and Facebook pages where self-published poetry appears. I remind readers who believe that such poetry can be dismissed unread that William Blake self-published his Songs of Innocence and Experience, Walt Whitman his Leaves of Grass, A.E. Housman his A Shropshire Lad, and that many of the poets who appear in prestigious journals today routinely self-publish their chapbooks." [I hadn't known that about Housman--cool! But I do know that self-publication has a very long and distinguished history in poetry--another subject deserving of its own blog post.:]
Much of what David Alpaugh has written here is not exactly news, but he has backed up his critiques with a lot of specific data that I haven't seen before. Yet for me the greatest takeaway from this article is one brief, almost offhand comment: Alpaugh's definition of poetry as the art of "exercising language at its highest level." (In context: "Exercising language at its highest level is an absolute good, and [Plato be damned:] in an ideal society everyone would write poetry.") In fact, it's so fine and concise, I think I'll say it again:
Poetry: the art of exercising language at its highest level
If we can really get more people both writing and reading poetry that meets that definition, then yes indeed, the more the merrier!
"The new math of poetry is driven not by reader demand for great or even good poetry but by the demand of myriads of aspiring poets to experience the thrill of 'publication.'" ["Reader demand"--there's the crux of one of the biggest problems I see in poetry. It all too often seems that everyone wants to write it, but very few people want to read it. I have met an awful lot of self-styled poets who never read poetry, not even the classics, let alone contemporary poetry.:]
"Fifty years ago, the Yale Younger Poets was the only poetry-book contest in America. If this year's 330-plus contests continue to grow at the rate of just a half-dozen new ones per year, more than 50,000 prize-winning volumes will have been published by the end of this century." [Don't even get me started on the subject of contests. They're a bane, and a fitting subject for a future blog post all their own.:]
"Were a conscientious anthologist of this year's poetry to spend just 10 minutes evaluating each published poem, he or she would need to work 16,666 hours, which means it would take eight years to assess the eligible poetry for a 2010 anthology."
"In BAP [Best American Poetry:] 2008, for example, just 10 of the 2,000-plus journals and magazines available for consideration accounted for 37 of the 75 poems selected—49 percent.... Given that guest editors are faced with the impossibility of reading even a fraction of the poetry being published, it should not shock us if they favor the work of students, friends, and colleagues."
"BAP editors recognize the need to throw in a maverick journal or obscure poet or two each year to make it look like they are fulfilling the grand promise of their title. Although Scribner wants readers to believe that they are purchasing the "best," David Orr, in The New York Times Book Review, could be describing the entire series when he writes that the poems selected for 2004 'run the usual gamut from very good to slightly dull to what-were-you-thinking.'" [This has always been my own reaction to BAP--in fact, I've read very few poems in these anthologies that actually impressed or moved me in any way.:]
"Online, the most visited anthology (millions of hits per month) is Poetry Daily, which reprints a poem each day from books or journals.... Much impressed by prizes, university position, and po-biz power, the site's editors routinely ignore excellent poems by independent poets in favor of weaker ones by M.F.A. pros and po-biz heavies."
"... when it comes to the new math of poetry, we can see only the tip of the iceberg. Unfathomable are the countless self-published chapbooks and collections printed each year, to say nothing of the millions of personal Web sites, blogs, and Facebook pages where self-published poetry appears. I remind readers who believe that such poetry can be dismissed unread that William Blake self-published his Songs of Innocence and Experience, Walt Whitman his Leaves of Grass, A.E. Housman his A Shropshire Lad, and that many of the poets who appear in prestigious journals today routinely self-publish their chapbooks." [I hadn't known that about Housman--cool! But I do know that self-publication has a very long and distinguished history in poetry--another subject deserving of its own blog post.:]
Much of what David Alpaugh has written here is not exactly news, but he has backed up his critiques with a lot of specific data that I haven't seen before. Yet for me the greatest takeaway from this article is one brief, almost offhand comment: Alpaugh's definition of poetry as the art of "exercising language at its highest level." (In context: "Exercising language at its highest level is an absolute good, and [Plato be damned:] in an ideal society everyone would write poetry.") In fact, it's so fine and concise, I think I'll say it again:
Poetry: the art of exercising language at its highest level
If we can really get more people both writing and reading poetry that meets that definition, then yes indeed, the more the merrier!
I just came across an interview with one of my favorite poets, A.E. Stallings, in which she says:
Rhyme is not an “ornament”—it is essential to a rhyming poem; without it, the poem would not have happened. That is, the poet does not “know” exactly what the poem is going to say and “translate” it into rhyming verse—or shouldn’t, in my book. On the contrary, it is the strange dream-logic connections of the rhymes themselves that lead the poem forward, perhaps into territory the poet herself had not intuited. Rhyme is a method of composition.
I just love this, and it perfectly articulates the experience I have when I'm composing a sonnet--and why I so love writing in that form.
The full interview is here:
http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/v12n1/v12n1p...
Rhyme is not an “ornament”—it is essential to a rhyming poem; without it, the poem would not have happened. That is, the poet does not “know” exactly what the poem is going to say and “translate” it into rhyming verse—or shouldn’t, in my book. On the contrary, it is the strange dream-logic connections of the rhymes themselves that lead the poem forward, perhaps into territory the poet herself had not intuited. Rhyme is a method of composition.
I just love this, and it perfectly articulates the experience I have when I'm composing a sonnet--and why I so love writing in that form.
The full interview is here:
http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/v12n1/v12n1p...
In honor of today's new moon and the coming spring and returning life, here is an old poem/hymn/prayer from Scotland (Carmina Gadelica #305):
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Guiding jewel of gentleness!
I am bending to thee my knee,
I am offering thee my love.
I am bending to thee my knee,
I am giving thee my hand,
I am lifting to thee mine eye,
O new moon of the seasons.
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Joyful maiden of my love!
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Joyful maiden of the graces!
Thou art travelling in thy course,
Thou art steering the full tides;
Thou art illuming to us thy face,
O new moon of the seasons.
Thou queen-maiden of guidance,
Thou queen-maiden of good fortune,
Thou queen-maiden my beloved,
Thou new moon of the seasons!
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Guiding jewel of gentleness!
I am bending to thee my knee,
I am offering thee my love.
I am bending to thee my knee,
I am giving thee my hand,
I am lifting to thee mine eye,
O new moon of the seasons.
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Joyful maiden of my love!
Hail to thee, thou new moon,
Joyful maiden of the graces!
Thou art travelling in thy course,
Thou art steering the full tides;
Thou art illuming to us thy face,
O new moon of the seasons.
Thou queen-maiden of guidance,
Thou queen-maiden of good fortune,
Thou queen-maiden my beloved,
Thou new moon of the seasons!
The new issue of 14 by 14 has just gone live, and it's got one of my sonnets. :-)
http://www.14by14.com/Sonnets/March20...
http://www.14by14.com/Sonnets/March20...
I'm so happy to have a poem in the new issue of Canary, one of my favorite online literary journals! You can read it here: http://www.hippocketpress.org/canary/...
The new issue of Goblin Fruit went live today, and it's got two poems from my sonnet sequence "Eurydice Variations"!
http://www.goblinfruit.net/2011/summer/
http://www.goblinfruit.net/2011/summer/
My poem "Pomegranate" is in the premier issue of Dead, Mad, or a Poet (http://www.deadmadorpoet.com/issues/). I think this is the first time I've been in the very first issue of a magazine--I love this energy of newness and beginnings!
“IF WE DON’T TURN THE WHEEL, IT WILL NOT TURN”
Our ancestors in their simplicity,
we hear, believed the spent midwinter sun
would die at last and never rise again
without their rites—so every turning of
the seasons had its keeping and its forms,
and failure in them meant the end of all.
“Now we know better”—or do we know less?
In the pattern’s loss, what have we gained?
The days we set aside to mourn the sun
or drive the cattle through the fires or bless
the fields joined our spirits, bodies, minds
to the moving heart of all. We did not turn
the earth upon its axis—what we turned,
and still might turn, was purely our own souls.
(by Kathryn Hinds)
Our ancestors in their simplicity,
we hear, believed the spent midwinter sun
would die at last and never rise again
without their rites—so every turning of
the seasons had its keeping and its forms,
and failure in them meant the end of all.
“Now we know better”—or do we know less?
In the pattern’s loss, what have we gained?
The days we set aside to mourn the sun
or drive the cattle through the fires or bless
the fields joined our spirits, bodies, minds
to the moving heart of all. We did not turn
the earth upon its axis—what we turned,
and still might turn, was purely our own souls.
(by Kathryn Hinds)
