Obsessive-compulsive poetry disorder
Diagnosis: Obsessive-compulsive poetry disorder (F03.080.642)
Disorder characterized by recurrent obssesive thoughts or compulsive acts. Obsessive thoughts are poems, lines of poetry, poets, or impulses that enter the patient's mind again and again. They are almost invariably misunderstood or met with extreme confusion/distress on the part of those around the patient. They are, however, recognized as his or her own preferences, althought they are involuntary and often overdone. Compulsive acts or rituals are behaviours that are repeated again and again. They are not inherently enjoyable, happy, or limited to any mood/genre/school. Common compulsive acts include quoting obscure/dead/unpopular poems or poets if a similar feeling is triggered by the situation or repeatedly talking to those with an obvious disinterest in their current obsession.
Includes: scholar's neurosis, poetigraphia, echopoetica
You know, I thought earlier that it'd be good if, y'know, I actually finished Prufrock. So I could get my head out of the Eliot and breathe some fresher air, so to speak. But then this thing came along and I got to researching... and I found the audio for Howl... and To Whom it May Concern... and we're doing Vietnam in Civ which is that...
It's a bad. I love them all, but firstly - Eliot and Ginsberg? Like, how does that even work? It's just so incompatible my mind can't quite wrap around it. Eliot's this sort of but not really traditional-type (but not in form! usually!). And Ginsberg... well, he's not just a beat. He's the Beat. That says everything, really. (Although, somehow, Pound and Eliot were like BFFs for a long time. And Pound was also buddy-buddy with Williams even though WCW hated Eliot's stuff even though they worked in Blast together and... let's not go there. That's something else.)
Secondly: Howl is not appropriate for school. No. Ever. There's a reason there was an obscenity trial. Now, I really love that thing - Part III is definitely on my "Possible Poems to Memorize" list 'cause there's just something about Rockland that gets me - but dear holy lord do I not need to be quoting things like "mother finally ****ed" and the saintly motocyclists bit.
Thirdly: I fell in love again. How is it that it always ends up that they're dead? Aren't there any poets I admire that are still alive? (This is also another rant.) Adrian Mitchell is brilliancy. Just - pure. I've had bits of To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam) stuck in my head all day, along with Howl. (Someone please tell me this is not abnormal, that other people also have poetry floating in their brain like most people have music there?) And I totally think Mr. Davis ought to look it up. It's completely relevant, and Mitchell also did a sort-of-sequel subtitled Tell Me Lies About Iraq. And Davis is always making connections from then to the present, especially with Vietnam. Maybe I ought to print it out for him.
Are the poets I fall in love with right away better? Or do those like T.S. Eliot - who I abhorred for the longest of times, excepting The Hollow Men because that freaks me out more than a poem should - whom I have to study and work with deserve more? William Carlos Williams was my first true love (poetically), although I loved Cummings's "may came home with a smooth round stone" the second I read it. I have always loved Blake, too, though not like WCW or Cummings - The Tyger is a classic. Samuel Taylor Colridge, also was a one-hit wonder for me. Can't stand the Mariner but love Xanadu. On the other hand, Eliot is one of my greatest loves currently, and I couldn't stomach any of his stuff in the beginning. (Well, before the beginning if we take the WCW timeline, but that's hardly the point.) Dickinson makes my stomach turn - although I'll say that though I prefer Whitman, he's such a heavy egotistic read. (No wonder Ginsberg was so fond... the preface to Leaves! Geez. Similar, much?)
I love Ginsberg because his style/diction is so in-your-face. It's there. It's staring right back at you. He was a really rather egotistical, drug-crazy, slightly screwy man. But that doesn't change that his writing can be brutally honest at times. There's a kind of beauty in that. He dared to challenge social and political norms, writing and publishing a blatantly pro-communist book (re: America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry; America I am the Scottsboro Boys, etc) in the wake of the McCarthy era. Stupid? Maybe. Moving? Definitely.
I love Williams because he's all about the characters. (It's ironic that the leading poet for a distinct American poetry sparked the inter-continental exchange the beats had.) He's got the voice of the people - from the murderer's daughter with the knife-edged smile to the senile, dying Elena.
It's not so much that I want to not read the greats - they're great for a reason, after all. It's more like I want to know what else is out there with the greats, not in spite of or instead of or whatever.
A Thought: Dickinson and Whitman are the keystone poets of America. You might cover a little pre-Civil War stuff in general Am Lit, but then it's them and - boom, we're hitting the 1900s and their followers. I know their lives overlapped, but I never see a date for the late 1890s. (Guess they were all too busy being born that decade...) Anyways, what about Poe? He's one of the most famous pre-modern American poets and I never see him in my anthologies or mentioned. Why? Did his poetry just not impact his contemporaries? Are his stories that much more pressing? But then, what about his impact on today's poetry?
Another thought: Why don't British poets address their country? I've yet to see any poem entitled "England" or "Wales" or "Great Britain". I can name no less than five poems entitled America and many more that are a dialogue with/lecture to a sort of semi-personified country, such as Hughes's I, Too, Cummings's next to of course god america and the like. Is it the overwhelming sense of American patriotism (not nationalism... how'd that come about anyways?) and dissatisfaction with everything? Why do Americans in particular feel the need to converse with their country, either in appreciation or condemnation - or even both (Ginsberg's America)? I think it's just America/Americans. Cutlural thing. (I say this after sketching a poem called Mister America but hey.)
It was also bad that I was trying to remember lines from Howl and, upon not knowing what came after the word naked in its infamous first line, tried to ask "What comes after naked?" The "It's actually what comes before naked," bit after I did remember was hardly an improvement. How does this always happen to me...?
The line reads I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... it's uberfamous. But it's Howl. So.