(no subject)
On November 29, 2007 I attended a campus event called "Poetry After the Storm, III." It advertised several student poets, and a California Poet Laureate, and some musical acts. This is all an effort to raise money to build a library in New Orleans (hopefully they'll build this one on stilts).
This event was in the Heller Lounge, which was nice because there are several couches to choose from. Before the event began, someone was blasting a version of Martin Luther King Jr's "Dream" speech set to hip-hop. Someone began fiddling with a videocamera pointed at the empty podium. This event, I could sense, was going to be a little different than the one I previously attended in the Maude Fife Room with the Irish "modernists," which was austere in comparison.
The poetry started a half-hour late. The student poets all happened to be presidents of literary magazines around campus. The video camera began to roll. Unfortunately, what the videocamera picked up was a lot of bad poetry that will probably embarrass these people when they apply for their MFA programs. Why was it bad, you may ask?
First of all, some student (a figurehead of some group) would introduce a poet: "He's an AWESOME poet and a GREAT GUY , etc etc etc," and the "poet" would stand up and read ONE poem. This process repeated several times so that one could never gain a coherent sense of the poetry. But everyone has to get their 2 cents in and make an appearance on camera. Second, the poetry itself was too abstract, and I got the feeling that a lot of it was not genuine. There were a lot of grand gestures and wild imaginings going on... for example, some white guy read something he wrote after "hearing what happened in New Orleans." What, while you were sitting in your living room, watching CNN, heating up a hot pocket in the microwave?
A few lines:
"winds that do not destroy, but create. we must find a trajectory."
1: If you can tell me what that means, I will give you $100.00. 2: This is what i mean by abstract -- wind, which is something that is not abstract, is used in a very incomplete way. Wind does several things in reality. It blows things around. It can make you cold. It can remind you of something. It certainly can "destroy" things, if you want to speak of its corrosive properties as being destructive..... but if the metaphor had been paid attention to --- which poetry is Supposed To Do, it might have been considered that the "destructive" capacities of wind are not one-sided, but contribute to a larger generative process. Consider the sand dune. The wind blows the sand so that new sand dunes are constantly being reformed. Now, if that very simple property of wind had been properly utilized, it would have actually been a very different suggestion for a poem about hurricane katrina, a suggestion that this poem did not want to make. In this sense, it would have implied that the hurricane was part of a larger natural phenomenon, perhaps a cycle of destruction and renewal. This would be touchy because it would seem to disregard the "human tragedy" aspect... and that's not why they're collecting $3 from everyone.
The problem with not paying attention to words, especially when writing political poetry, is that it cheapens your cause. Even if you believe that poetry has political clout, it is less likely that people will take you seriously if your poetry is flippantly constructed.
One poem that was actually good, called "My First Night in New Orleans" was good for two reasons. (1) The person who wrote it actually went to New Orleans. It was genuine and it was based in reality. (2) The poem made its point by grounding itself in imagery and other sorts of things, and even explored in depth the feeling of "being trapped" in unique ways -- a can of sardines, trapped on the top floor of a building, boarded windows, slave quarters, trapped by the dependency on technology -- and came up with a solution: Voice. The poem itself, being written, and being good, counteracts the very complaint it is waging, of feeling trapped. This was a good poem. It was thorough, it was serious. It was self-aware.
Overall, I think the goal of political student poetry is for it to feel "raw." But, like fraying your own jeans, it takes work to achieve that sense - it does not mean vomiting words and concepts out on a piece of paper at random. I would check myself for being harsh -- after all, as they say, it "takes courage" to stand up in front of people and read a poem -- but the overall benefit of the event can never be separated from the ulterior motives of resume-building college students. If the cause is really that important, mediocre poetry would not be acceptable.
This event was in the Heller Lounge, which was nice because there are several couches to choose from. Before the event began, someone was blasting a version of Martin Luther King Jr's "Dream" speech set to hip-hop. Someone began fiddling with a videocamera pointed at the empty podium. This event, I could sense, was going to be a little different than the one I previously attended in the Maude Fife Room with the Irish "modernists," which was austere in comparison.
The poetry started a half-hour late. The student poets all happened to be presidents of literary magazines around campus. The video camera began to roll. Unfortunately, what the videocamera picked up was a lot of bad poetry that will probably embarrass these people when they apply for their MFA programs. Why was it bad, you may ask?
First of all, some student (a figurehead of some group) would introduce a poet: "He's an AWESOME poet and a GREAT GUY , etc etc etc," and the "poet" would stand up and read ONE poem. This process repeated several times so that one could never gain a coherent sense of the poetry. But everyone has to get their 2 cents in and make an appearance on camera. Second, the poetry itself was too abstract, and I got the feeling that a lot of it was not genuine. There were a lot of grand gestures and wild imaginings going on... for example, some white guy read something he wrote after "hearing what happened in New Orleans." What, while you were sitting in your living room, watching CNN, heating up a hot pocket in the microwave?
A few lines:
"winds that do not destroy, but create. we must find a trajectory."
1: If you can tell me what that means, I will give you $100.00. 2: This is what i mean by abstract -- wind, which is something that is not abstract, is used in a very incomplete way. Wind does several things in reality. It blows things around. It can make you cold. It can remind you of something. It certainly can "destroy" things, if you want to speak of its corrosive properties as being destructive..... but if the metaphor had been paid attention to --- which poetry is Supposed To Do, it might have been considered that the "destructive" capacities of wind are not one-sided, but contribute to a larger generative process. Consider the sand dune. The wind blows the sand so that new sand dunes are constantly being reformed. Now, if that very simple property of wind had been properly utilized, it would have actually been a very different suggestion for a poem about hurricane katrina, a suggestion that this poem did not want to make. In this sense, it would have implied that the hurricane was part of a larger natural phenomenon, perhaps a cycle of destruction and renewal. This would be touchy because it would seem to disregard the "human tragedy" aspect... and that's not why they're collecting $3 from everyone.
The problem with not paying attention to words, especially when writing political poetry, is that it cheapens your cause. Even if you believe that poetry has political clout, it is less likely that people will take you seriously if your poetry is flippantly constructed.
One poem that was actually good, called "My First Night in New Orleans" was good for two reasons. (1) The person who wrote it actually went to New Orleans. It was genuine and it was based in reality. (2) The poem made its point by grounding itself in imagery and other sorts of things, and even explored in depth the feeling of "being trapped" in unique ways -- a can of sardines, trapped on the top floor of a building, boarded windows, slave quarters, trapped by the dependency on technology -- and came up with a solution: Voice. The poem itself, being written, and being good, counteracts the very complaint it is waging, of feeling trapped. This was a good poem. It was thorough, it was serious. It was self-aware.
Overall, I think the goal of political student poetry is for it to feel "raw." But, like fraying your own jeans, it takes work to achieve that sense - it does not mean vomiting words and concepts out on a piece of paper at random. I would check myself for being harsh -- after all, as they say, it "takes courage" to stand up in front of people and read a poem -- but the overall benefit of the event can never be separated from the ulterior motives of resume-building college students. If the cause is really that important, mediocre poetry would not be acceptable.