But what I’ve noticed when people use the word ‘free’ in most contexts is that they use it in a loaded way. You’ll often hear people say of government services – education would be a good example – that it’s ‘free’. Actually, it’s not. But it appears to be free so they think it is. That’s what might be called an optical illusion. It should more accurately be called a mental perception illusion.

The nature of free is such that there contains within it a duality that cannot be escaped. All freedom consists of freedom to and freedom from. It can be likened to Kierkegaard’s Either/Or dichotomy. We’ll call it the To/From dichotomy.

The To aspect of ‘free’ (re: freedom) is an expression of liberty within an individual’s range of choices. Being in a state of ‘free’ gives an individual a right to make decisions regarding X without restriction. In other words, all options are open.

The From aspect of ‘free’ is the expression of restraint upon an external force that has the power or authority to restrict an individual’s range of choices regarding X.

Let’s put these definitions into the context of the political realm. If an individual is free then he or she is said to be free to do something yet free from something else. The X factor in the To aspect of free as it relates to the context of politics is the right to perform actions that do not injure another party who is also free. The X factor in the From aspect of free as it relates to the context of politics refers to a legal restraint on the external force of government to restrict an individual’s choices. That is, From freedom stops government from restricting individuals from exercising their To freedom rights.

How about some examples:

• Religion – To: Choose one; From: Congress has no right to respect one religion over another or prohibit the free exercise of any religious practice.
• Press – To: Write what you will; From: Government cannot stop you from writing.
• Speech – To: Speak your mind; From: Government cannot stop you from speaking your mind.
• Sex – To: Pick a partner; From: Government cannot stop you from choosing a partner, even a partner of the same sex or a partner that someone else has not approved.
• Firearms – To: Maintain a posture of self defense through ownership of guns and weapons for that purpose; From: Government cannot stop you from protecting yourself and your family.
• Employment – To: Choose your occupation; From: Government cannot choose your occupation for you.

I hope I have made these distinctions clear with these illustrations. Now, I’d like to turn them over into the context of poetics.

The To/From Dichotomy In The Free Of Poetics

Whenever poets and literary critics discuss free in the context of poetics, as in ‘free verse’, it is usually in the aspect of From. They are most often making a comment that asserts that free verse is free from meter. And it is. To some extent. Not completely.

In actuality, the From aspect of free verse is not a complete break from meter. That is the common conception, but it denies the To aspect of free. What the From aspect of free verse is, and not just on the surface, is a freedom from the constraints of meter. That’s a far cry different than ‘free from meter’.

Meter, it’s raw character, that is, is a constraint. It restricts the freedom of a poet to do as he pleases. The poet may want to write a sonnet that ignores the metrical pattern of iambic pentameter, but if he does so then he won’t be writing a sonnet. The constraint of the form – the meter – restricts the poet from exercising his freedom to do otherwise.

The To nature of free verse, however, allows a poet a full range of choices. It does not close off the choice to employ meter when and if desired. It simply places a restriction upon the constraint of meter just as the From aspect of political freedom places restrictions upon government to place legal constraints upon citizens.

Seen this way, poets who write free verse can exercise more options.

How ‘To’ Freedom Can Make Poetry Better

I believe poets, particularly free verse poets, who consider the ‘free’ in free verse to be an expression of the From aspect of freedom are limiting themselves and their abilities to create. Of course, a poet who writes only in meter isn’t writing free verse. That’s obvious. But a poet that mixes it up, with a little meter here and there thrown in with free verse lines here and there, is exercising a full range of options.

Poets who see themselves as free from the constraints of meter will likely not pay much attention to the traditional modes of expression that made poetry what it was prior to the 20th century. But poets who see themselves as free to exercise all options do not have such a restriction. They have the latitude to be more creative.

This is the basic building block of Millennial Poetics. The ‘free’ in free verse is an expression of To as much as From. The free verse poet does not have to employ meter and may never do so, but he leaves that option on the table. Not just from poem to poem, but from sequence to sequence and from line to line. Free verse is a To/From proposition.

Consider the following lines, trite though they may be:

I dropped my dolly in the dirt
I asked my dolly if she hurt
And all my dolly would she say
Was, “How the hell would you feel asshole?
It feels pretty crappy!”

Silly as these lines are, you can see the obvious metrical pattern in the first three lines. Each consists of four metered feet consisting of iambs – iambic tetrameter. But the last two lines of this sequence do not fit the pattern. The reader is free to emphasize the words of choice. One reader may emphasize “How”, “hell” and “you” while another may emphasize “Was”, “the” and “feel” in the penultimate line.

This is effectively what Ezra Pound meant when he said, “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” The intent was not to break free of meter completely, though that has been the effect in free verse circles.

Poetry is best when it carries a melody. Music. Cadence. Even without the meter. Poetry that has no rhythm is failing to do its job. It’s like candy without sugar.

The poetry of the 21st century needs to move back toward the musical and away from the blandly philosophical. Poets should study meter, not to employ its constraints, but to engage in its possibilities. By re-engaging with the poetry of the past, the poetics of the future can invigorate itself with greater freedom, a higher level of creativity, and an expanded range of choices for the poet. Free will once again be free rather than relegated to the chains of Un.

For this entry, I will focus just on the simulacra of Simulations and Simulacra in the context of the challenges and opportunities we are faced with in this era in which we live. Simulacra is defined as: copies without an original. Baudrillard cites many examples of this phenomenon in his book, but one version of this phenomenon should be quite familiar to all of us -

• An original event occurs.
• The event becomes a reference point of meaning to its contemporaries.
• Time passes (the amount of time that passes can be surprisingly short), and this event becomes an historical reference point.
• The historical reference point gains new meaning with passing time, and the original meaning is lost, distorted, or completely changed (intentionally or not).

The Politics Of Experience
Consider the recent arguments between Republicans and Democrats about how we overcame the Great Depression. As most of us alive today don’t have direct experience with what happened then, we have to rely on the meaning of the event known as the Great Depression being mediated to us. To understand the meaning of this event, we have a wide variety of places to go to get information and analysis of the event: books, newspapers, television, radio, internet, etc. In fact, even to those who still lived through the Great Depression, their understanding of the event can change based on this overwhelming amount of information available with all of the various interpretations of the information.

The process of understanding this event which has taken on a new meaning in our society becomes, in a practical way, more important than the event itself. The search for truth can be endless, and yet can create more questions and ambiguities at each turn. What can we trust? This sense of ambiguity and the mutability of meaning is what I would like to focus on here in the context of writing.

The Poet’s Responsibility
As poets, our task at all times is to tell a story. For a story to have meaning, it must have a context. And this is where understanding how the simulacra works gives us some food for thought in our writing, and in analyzing the writing of others. Here are some things to consider:

1. Even in our own lives, we are prone to creating and recreating the meaning of events. At the depths of this process, we are making many choices. When I read or write poetry, I examine carefully the reference points that are used and how they function.
2. Common reactions to simulacra are irony, rebellion, alienation, and resignation.
3. Mediation is a process that leads toward simulacra. The more steps between the original event and the last interpretation, the more room for difference. (Sidenote – Television is a deceiving form of mediation because we can feel that we are part of an event when we are getting a very distorted, removed view of it.)
4. Identity is increasingly difficult to grasp, as the context of what makes us who we are gets more complex.

Li-Young Lee: A Postmodern Poet’s Simulacra
Look at this excerpt from Immigrant Blues by Li-Young Lee:

[...]Practice until you feel
the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you?

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,
at peace with the body’s finitude,
at peace with the soul’s disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don’t believe you’re inside me, you’re not,
she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,
at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.[...]

Li-Young Lee is an accomplished postmodern writer, tapping into the realm of simulacra regarding his identity as an immigrant and connecting with his fragmented family past. Alienation isn’t new to literature, but what makes it uniquely postmodern in this poem is how Li-Young Lee ironically recognizes the distance and chooses to never reconcile it. The poem ends:

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace
and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”

Li-Young Lee recognizes that resolution isn’t possible. He knows that ending the poem with new understanding, with a concrete sense of direction isn’t as impactful as the ambiguity that is left in the void of context. This void of context is the context. Starting this section by calling it an “ancient story” but ironically from “yesterday evening” he intentionally blurs the lines. He doesn’t have a concrete connection with his family history or himself – but that lack of connection is something that we can connect to.

How Simulacra Can Be Used To Connect Us
Many postmodern poets are very adept at connecting us to these fissures in context that we have in our lives, and turning those fissures around from points of confusion to points of unity between the reader and the poet. We understand and empathize, and thus, we experience relief from the conundrums of simulacra.

The take away point here is that as a writer – more than at any time in history – recognizing the challenges in understanding anything as being definite can be very helpful in constructing a believable poem that others can connect to.

Will B. is a high school teacher and owner of the blog The Search for Health in Decadence.

If you read the Hyperbole Submission Guidelines then you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for. If you need further elaboration, leave me a comment here on this post and I’ll answer your questions to the utmost of my ability. With regard to poetics, I will say that I’m not looking for anything in particular, but it must be forward-looking, not reminiscences of the past. What I likely won’t publish:

• Odes to Ezra Pound’s greatness
• Lessons from the Beats (although I love the Beats)
• The virtues of minimalism
• How Language Poetry has changed poetics
• Why poetry is best suited to Formalistic constraints

You can find these discussions somewhere else. I’m not looking to rehash old discussions. What I will welcome are discussions regarding how different schools of thought can be borrowed from to create poetry today or how new developments in poetics will lead to new forms and modes of expression in the future. Hyperbole is not about the greatness of the past as much as it is about the greatness of the future, but I understand that the future is great because of the work that poets of the past have accomplished. I’d like to see your works fit into that broad discussion.

For a better feel for my own poetics (and you by no means have to agree with me), read my Millennial Poetics series of blog posts. The tenth column can be found here.

For further reading and some examples of types of discussions that I find interesting, try these:

• Modern, Postmodern & Post-Postmodern: Why Poetry Is No Longer In Disintegration Mode
• Why Rhyme Is Back In
• Critique Group Ethics: How Should Poets Help Each Other?

These examples are not exhaustive of the type of discussions I want to have, but they do serve as examples of discussions that fit in to Hyperbole’s directional focus. Qualities I admire in poetic philosophers:

• Intelligence
• Passion
• Deep Knowledge (either broadly speaking or within a specific niche)
• Wit
• Clever Use Of Language
• Ability To Communicate Clearly and Concisely
• Inquisitive Nature
• Exploratory Imagination
• Unafraid To Approach The Controversial
• Innovative Personality

And various and sundry related qualities. All of this can be summed up to say that I like and admire uniqueness. Where Ezra Pound said “Make it new”, I say make it new, but make it worthy of reading twice.

Submit your best work to Hyperbole. I’m looking forward to your submissions.

Poetry is, above all things, about value. The value of words. The value of experience. The value of economy. The value of value. So, too, is capitalism about value and when I say that I mean more than simply the value of money.

To be a good capitalist one must be able to judge value. Intrinsic value. Extrinsic value. Potential value. Future value. It is said that investors who buy real estate to resell, stocks and bonds to hold, or businesses to flip make their money when they buy in – as opposed to when they sell. There is wisdom in this notion. After all, pay too much and the market will be cruel. Pay less than the true value of something then sell it for what it’s worth and you profit. This is the nature of the capitalist mind. Buy low, sell high.

Poetry is set upon the same principle. A poem, like a successful business, is built from nothing. Like the giant spark in God’s mind when he created the universe. Or, if you prefer, the cosmic bang at the beginning of time that unleashed the red shift.

There is no value in nothing. But add something and you have potential value. A word, a phrase, a verse … every act of creation is an act of adding value. Some elements hold more than others, but every poetic element holds some kind of intrinsic value. The extrinsic value comes in the response of the reader and time of the work remaining extant plus other noteworthy attributes such as originality and condition. An item is always worth what one person is willing to pay for it on the open market. The value is what the market will bear.

How Poets Devalue Their Own Work
Every item has value. Poets who claim that capitalism is evil do not understand the nature of value. They are essentially saying their own creativity is valueless. By insisting in equality of condition economically they are denying their own right to receive the fruits of their labor. The creation of poetry is a business. Its publishing is a business. It involves expenses, costs, investment – in time and resources. The return on the investment is directly related to how well the product is marketed and positioned within the poetry marketplace and how capable the product is of building value for itself.

I am amazed at how many “socialist” poets will give an open reading of their work then turn around and sell it to their audiences, thus engaging in acts of capitalism. I once enticed such a poet to trade chapbooks – like kind for like kind, equal value for equal value. He obliged and in doing so betrayed his own philosophy. I chuckled about it later with another poet friend of mine who was well aware of the man’s socialist views. Visit Ron Silliman’s blog, an outspoken socialist, and he offers his own poetic works for sell (and some of them are rather pricey). Do they not believe in their own philosophies?

I rather like to believe that even the socialists see the inherent value in the products of their minds. They know they are creating value with every word, with every phrase, with every execution of thought. Despite this knowledge, they devalue their work by nodding toward the philosophies of men who tear down the rights to ownership with economic heresies.

If poets don’t devalue their own work intellectually then they devalue it practically by “giving away” what can be sold. Imagine a real estate agent just letting people move into homes they are selling and staying indefinitely. When poets post their valuable works of creativity on their blogs for all to see then they are essentially devaluing the work. When poets give away chapbooks without receiving something of value in return they are devaluing their own work and the products of their imaginations. I see this every day.

One more way poets devalue their work is to publish it before it is time. By not honing their craft and patiently waiting for the work to mature, poets ensure that they squeeze out any potential value of their work before it reaches its full potential. This is reputation suicide. Do not end a poem before it reaches the pinnacle of its worth. Otherwise, you destroy any future value it can build extrinsically.

How Poets Can Save Themselves
From Value Oblivion
Invest in yourself.

The surest way to ensure that your poetry builds value is to invest in your education and your craft-building skills. Enhance your knowledge of craft, the history of poetic movements, and the styles and traditions of the past and present. More than that, however, never give away your work. Only trade value for value.

This is not a creed to establish wealth. You do not have to hype up your sales pitch to make yourself seem valuable. You just have to be genuine, unique, and creative. You must study the markets, read other poets to know what the popular trends are (so that you can follow them or rebuff them according to your own theory of poetics), and write to perfection, not satisfaction. Become a nitpicking ass over every poetic minutiae in your work. Guard every breath, every comma, every space.

Sending work out for publication is not giving it away. It is building value. When you are published – every time you are published – you are building your reputation as a poet. Future publishers see past publication credits as a testament to your worth. Future readers see a list of publication credits as value. Often, poets who publish in journals end up with book publishing contracts and those lead to further publication credits. Every new publishing credit is a new reputation- and value-building transaction. Taking this lightly is an act of devaluation in the currency of poetic economy.

The following list of principles are designed to provide a measure of economy with regard to building value – value in reputation and value in poetic execution. They are not rules, but thoughts to ponder:

1. Only send work to publications that have published poets you admire and whose poetic styles and philosophies match, or closely resemble, your own.
2. Don’t send out your poems to every contest that promises publication and a big prize
3. Read at least three times as much as you write.
4. Spend at least twice of much time revising as writing.
5. Do not give away your poems without receiving something of value in return.
6. Get your work published in a few journals before you decide to publish a book.
7. If you self-publish, edit your work violently; become a hack and slash terrorist with your own work.
8. Develop your poetic philosophy and stay true to it.
9. Understand the value of the elements of poetry and know which ones are appropriate for the circumstances.
10. Don’t get in a hurry; true value builds naturally. You can’t fake it.

People who learn to judge value make good poets and good capitalists. No need to apologize for being adept.

Who’s your favorite virgin?

Deborah Ager’s unwritten poetry rules. I like Nos. 1 & 2, and have always obeyed No. 2.

Diane Lockward’s. I like 7, 11, and 12, but I think No. 4 is quickly becoming overdone.

Poetry Hound’s poetry review tips.

The Shepherd on the poetry and criticism split.

And the final word: I’d rather read someone with whom I disagree, but who is capable of making me think, than to read the writing of someone whose premise I find agreeable, but who writes in such a way that even I can find holes in their theories. Kudos to Reginald Shepherd and Ron Silliman.

The problem with didacticism isn’t that you take a position, it’s that you take it from the start — maybe it’s as simple as the reader’s trust, and being suspicious of rhetoric. Although I think it’s more than that — I think it’s hard to write a poem that isn’t dull without surprising yourself.

Bear in mind that didactic poetry is instructional and, as such, its purpose is to teach. Now, I come from the position that there is a place for didacticism in poetry. I think that all poetry is, in some sense, instructional, but the problem with much of the poetry that seeks to be instructional as an end in itself is that its instructions are preachy and detract from the poetry. I believe that poetry must always strive to be poetry first and anything else secondarily.

That said, however, I take issue with Tim’s opening statement here. He likely didn’t intend it the way it sounds, but this is how I took it. Where you start out with a position that you believe and you write a poem to defend that position. Tim’s statement makes me think that he believes that isn’t appropriate, but I think otherwise. There are many great poems that do just that. One such poem is Archibald MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica.”

In “Ars Poetica”, MacLeish sets out to tell us what a poem should be. Right from word one he takes a position and he sticks to it. All the way down to his final line, that poem makes one point. Every line contributes to the point. It’s a fabulous exercise in polemics. He doesn’t say what he needs to say in every way possible, but he does say it in every way that it needs to be said in order for the poem to make its point. And he took his position right from the start.

I think that’s what good poetry does, but I also agree with Tim’s last point. It’s hard to write a poem that doesn’t surprise yourself. I think Archibald MacLeish would honestly say that he did surprise himself in writing “Ars Poetica”. The lines are surprising, not for what they say, but in how they say it. Again, that is a mark of good poetry.

Pardon Me For Being A Wise Ass
I’d like to thank Jim Murdoch for his response to my last blog post. I think anyone who reads my blog long term has figured out by now that I don’t believe that a poem is a poem just because somebody decided to throw some lines on a page and call it a poem. My point for that post was two-fold: No. 1, I just wanted to be a wise-ass and make fun of myself a little bit, and, secondly, just prove that I’m a bit of a contrarian on these matters. I don’t follow rules too well. I prefer to deal with principles because principles are flexible; rules are not. That doesn’t mean that everything is equal. To echo the words of the Apostle Paul, the author of much of the Christian New Testament, all things are permissible, but not all things are profitable. In other words, anyone can call himself a poet and just toss words onto the page, but the real test of one’s work is not what he himself thinks of it, but what the aggregate of posterity thinks of it.

The Many, Many Types Of Poetry
I’d like to issue a third thank you. This one to G.M. Palmer who writes the Strong Verse blog. He’s drawn a bit of a line in the sand over there about what constitutes good poetry and what doesn’t. I certainly give him credit for his passion. I like many of his ideas and agree with them. But he’s got a few as well that I think are a bit stuck in the barn.

What I do like about him is his willingness to promote narrative long-term poetry. I too believe that it’s time to bring back the long form narratives, though not necessarily in the traditional rhyme and meters of old. Nevertheless, his passion is commendable.

Where I do take issue with him is in his insistence that avant garde poetry and Spoken Word forms are not poetry. While my readers know that I’m not preferential to the avant garde, I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss them on the basis that we don’t like them. Just because I don’t like somebody’s style or techniques doesn’t mean that what I do is superior to what they do. Palmer’s polemics leave much to be desired and I’ve found that, by reading his blog, he often contradicts his own principles.

For example:

1. In his “Modern Aesthetics As Sola Fide” post he criticizes contemporary poets for their “it’s poetry because I say it is” position then he turns around in less than one week later and makes the argument that Language Poets, Spoken Word poets, and avant gardeists are bad because he says they are. Well, I think he owes it to us to defend his position with some examples rather than saying Google will lead you to the self-evident truths. Sorry, bad positing.
2. In his bio he says his favorite book is The Divine Comedy by Dante then he says in “Why I am a Skeptic” that he dislikes anything trendy or experimental. This is really quite laughable. Dante himself was an experimenter. All great poets are. Dante’s experimentalism is evident in his use of the terza rima, which was never used before he employed it in The Divine Comedy. Dante’s work went on to inspire Petrarch and Chaucer, who borrowed the form for English literature. Other English language poets followed, all the way down to William Carlos Williams, who is perhaps an iconic figure in the avant garde traditions. Personally, I’ve got no use for any poet who doesn’t step outside of the ranks and do a little experimenting. Who wants to read the same rehashed lines over and over again?

Rather than wear myself out poring over every word of his blog, I’ll just stop right there. I am not setting myself up as opposition to Palmer’s ideas. I simply think he should communicate them better. I like what he has to say in “A Declaration on the Revision of Poetry”, but we can’t get too wrapped up in the language of forms.

To say that no one reads poetry today because “artsy journals” publish crap is ludicrous. People stopped reading poetry when they could just flip on the channel and watch Uncle Miltie wearing a dress and smoking a cigar. Poets have to stop dreaming about the future halcyon days when poetry makes a big comeback. We should instead put our overactive imaginations to work and produce good, imaginative literature for the people who appreciate it. What do I care if my audience is 500 or 5 million? I hope, of course, that it’s 5 million, but I’m not holding my breath.

While Palmer’s declaration has merit, I wouldn’t expect it to revive interest in poetry. People just aren’t going to flock to Borders Books to buy the latest issue of Palmer’s grand opus. They might, but they’ll only do so if their friends tell them it’s good enough to spend their money on. Otherwise, they’d rather watch Homer Simpson.

Poets have got to quit blaming each other for the problems that we find. It isn’t Ron Silliman’s fault that your books don’t sell on Amazon. It isn’t some vaguely-defined School of Quietude’s responsibility to ensure that the avant garde poets are represented in the great poetic pantheon. These kinds of ridiculous assertions are just rhetoric that gets us nowhere. If you don’t like concrete poetry then don’t read it. Someone else may love the hell out of it. That’s their business. Leave it alone.

Today, there are more poets writing poetry than there ever have been in U.S. history. There are also fewer non-poets reading it. Dana Gioia noticed that 20 years ago. He wrote a manifesto and it was widely distributed. Still, even after the New Formalists waged their hostile takeover and ransacked the halls and walls of academe and the NEA, fewer people care about poetry. I’m not going to cry about it. Ultimately, poetry will live on in some form. If it’s a form that I don’t appreciate then at least I’m glad that it’s still alive.

How Many Types Of Poetry Are There?
The answer to the question, “How many types of poetry are there?” is this: As many as people read. The poetry tent is big enough to hold the Language Poets, the New Formalists, and everyone in between. It’s big enough for lyric poetry and narrative poetry. It’s even big enough for a few lyric-narratives. Perhaps we’ll all have to tolerate a little bad poetry in order to enjoy the good, but the good that is there is really good so why let the rest get us down?

This isn’t some “live and let live” manifesto. It’s a hope that poets will take the time to learn from each other. I think you can learn good poetics from bad poetry. I also think you can pick up bad habits from good poetry. The real issue is, What are you doing to make yourself as good a poet as you can be? And don’t spend all your time fixating on the different types of poetry. Rather, take some time out to invent a type of your own.

Allen’s Rules For Writing Poetry

1. First, I have no rules.
2. I don’t follow other people’s rules
3. If there is a rule that I’m supposed to follow then I break it.
4. If I’m expected to break a rule then I follow it.
5. Sometimes I write a rule just so I’ll have one to break.
6. I take risks. Even when I’m not taking risks, I’m planning my next rule break.
7. I don’t shun forms or devices because they’re too hard, too easy, or because I don’t like them. If I don’t try it then I can’t beat myself up for failing.
8. I write like an editor, edit like a writer, and read like a critic.
9. No poems go unrevised, except those that don’t need it.
10. There’s nothing I won’t do in a poem, nothing I won’t write about, and no one I won’t include; but I just might decide to leave things out anyway because I have that option.
11. I always limit my rules to ten.

All questions regarding these rules should be directed to the Department of Poetic Policy at (123) YAM-ETA4. Press 1 for discussing the rules, 2 for breaking the rules, 3 for obedience and submission, and 4 if you don’t give a damn. Otherwise, hold. We’ll be with you shortly.

Seriously, if I were to answer yesterday’s post with a rebuttal, I’d say there are three types of poetry where appositives are a positive. They are:

1. Prose poetry
2. Narrative verse
3. Language poetry

Differences Between Prose Poetry
And Prose Writing
In prose poetry, you essentially are writing in the same manner in which you’d write prose non-poetry. Therefore, the rules are essentially the same, right? Well, it would seem so, but I don’t think so.

I think the purpose and intent of prose poetry is different than that of strict prose. Strict prose writing is usually concerned with thesis, antithesis, synthesis. In other words, you are moving from point A to point B using arguments along the way to facilitate a particular train of thought. At least, that’s what prosaic nonfiction is all about. In terms of prose fiction, you are essentially doing the same thing but using more creative devices and imagination. Facts are still facts, but in fiction those facts may consist entirely of myth and could make no sense to the real world, but make perfect sense to the world of prose that is being created by the author. Prose poetry, on the other, could just be a scene with no particular movement from one point to another. Such is the case with parts of Rimbaud’s Illuminations. Here’s a sample poem:

Antique

Gracious son of Pan! Around your forehead crowned with flowerets and with laurel, restlessly roll those precious balls, your eyes. Spotted with brown lees, your cheeks are hollow. Your fangs gleam. Your breast is like a lyre, tinklings circulate through your pale arms. Your heart beats in that belly where sleeps the double sex. Walk through the night, gently moving that thigh, that second thigh, and that left leg.

Narrative Verse Redeems Itself
Narrative poetry is defined as poetry that tells a story. Robert Service is no friend of academic verse, but if you read his poetry it all does one thing well. There is always a story to tell.

Service was popular among rustic Americans in the early part of the 20th century. It’s easy to understand why. His poetry about the wilds of the Yukon, with their humorous twists and catchy rhyme schemes could hold simple imaginations spellbound for several minutes. And I understand that Service himself was quite a performer and entertainer. To have written the kind of poetry that he did, he would have to be.

The argument that narrative verse, like narrative fiction, should adhere to the same styles and devices is a compelling one. After all, if your aim is to tell a story then you want to use every possible device to help you do that effectively. Appositives are great for helping to vary the sentences, are they not?

Yes, certainly. But narrative verse must also rely on something else which is traditionally the purview of fiction. That is, it must “roll out” the story a little bit at a time. It’s called exposition. I’ll come back to that a little later, but for now, suffice it to say that any narrative writing must rely on exposition for effect and for effectual storytelling.

Language Poetry’s Natural Habitat
Language poetry is one of the most interesting developments to hit the world of poetry in awhile. Firmly entrenched in the avant garde tradition, its aim is simply to “play” with language. The main aim is to allow the reader to participate in creating the meaning of the poem. Therefore, the writer is not telling the reader what to think or how. Rather, he is simply offering the poem for review and analysis and leaving the rest to the reader.

Because of the philosophical underpinnings of the language poets, much of the writing appears disjunctive and unmeaning. That is, anti-meaningful. But the point is to facilitate the reader finding his or her own meaning in the poem. Devices are used to help the reader do that, but those devices are rendered flexible enough that the reader can act as co-creator. Appositives serve a useful purpose in this kind of writing because you can write entire poems with nothing but appositives, or nothing but verbs if you wish. Language poetry tends to “break all the rules”, or rewrite them. And that’s OK.

How The Three Forms Shun Apposition
For Exposition
While appositives can be a positive in any of these types of poetic environments (or any, I suppose), the underlying purpose for the appositive is much more important than simply employing the device to “see what happens.” Even when poets use an appositive, there should be a greater purpose at stake. That purpose should be to “move the poem along.”

Careful, Exposition Doesn’t Mean What You
Think It Means
By exposition I do not mean what is traditionally thought of as exposition. In fictional writing, exposition is moving the story along either through characterization or scene development. In nonfiction writing, exposition is moving the reader to your grand conclusion through a discussion of certain points based on factual findings and research. That’s not what I mean by poetic exposition.

In poetic exposition, it could mean either of the traditional definitions of exposition, but more often than not what it really means is a “driving” of the poem to its final aha! Whether you’re using elements of prose, narrative, or language twittering, the end result is to always get that poem to do what it’s supposed to do. Even if its only aim is to make the reader go, “Huh?”

Sometimes, the purpose of the poem is to get the reader to think. Other times it may be to get the reader to feel a certain way. Maybe it’s to show a traditional element of culture in a brand new light. Or to scare someone. Whatever the case, even if it’s to “redefine the rules”, exposition drives the writer, and the reader, to that place where discovery can be made. If you need an appositive to do that then don’t dig the knife in just yet.

I’ve read through six chapters already and I’ve noticed the book covers a lot of material. The chapters are short and each contains a ton of writing exercises at the end to juice up writers’ imaginations. But what I’ve been looking for, and I’ve found it in a few places since the first chapter, is something that encourages poets to rely on their imaginative faculties and not just get mired in their own experiences. The most blatant example of that encouragement appears in the chapter titled “Witnessing” when the authors opine:

Conversely, there are writers who get stuck in the personal, scarcely looking up from their carefully tended garden of self-absorption. It seems to us that any aware human being is going to look beyond that garden at some point. But a poem about a worker poisoned by asbestos isn’t inherently better than one about a lover. Subject matter is not the issue; depth of imagination, and its articulation in language, is.

Bravo. That’s precisely what I’ve been saying for 329 posts now. And this, the 330th post, confirms it. Imagination is the most important quality for a poet. How poets can write incessantly about themselves, their memories, their experiences, and the world around them and never tap into it is a study for a 21st century anthropology class, but it happens. I’d like to see the imaginations of the world’s poets rise up and cause an earthquake on Mars by sheer force of tesseract clap.

Addendum

But that has changed since those days. Rhyme is back in. But why?

Good question, but before I answer it let me just say that rhyme is en vogue now in ways that you might not imagine. It isn’t a traditional rhyme. We don’t use the ab ab ab iambic pentameter of Shakespeare and Donne, but we do like rhyme. Today’s rhyme, however, comes in one of two forms:

1. End Rhyme Cleverly Disguised – You’ll find writers of Petrarchan Sonnets writing in traditional rhyme schemes, but the poems are so conversational you just skip over the rhymes without noticing them there. Other poets also have learned to cleverly disguise their end rhymes by using enjambment and other devices such as hyphenated words that flow from one line to another where the syllables at the ends of the lines rhyme. These are clever uses of rhyme and I’m glad to see poets using this device more creatively.
2. Internal Rhyme – Another type of rhyme that is very popular now is internal rhyme. Today’s poet is not afraid to rhyme three or four successive words, sometimes separated by punctuation but often not, or twisting the internal rhyme into a near rhyme. And many crafty poets will use internal rhyme and near rhyme together very effectively.

I must say that I like both of these types of rhymes and I’ve been employing these devices since I’ve started writing poetry in the late 1980s. I’m glad to see that other poets agree that rhyme is not so bad after all. So why has poetry started to pick up on rhyme again as a useful device?

Paradigm Shifts: The String Of The
Postmodern Revolution
I think the answer might lie in a parallel to what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm shift, aka a scientific revolution. I believe, as Kuhn believed, that knowledge does not progress in a linear fashion, but that new developments in any field, be it science, philosophy, business management, or the arts, arise as a result of periodic transformations. In other words, it is largely generational.

But these revolutions do not necessarily spring up over night. They are not volcanoes that just suddenly erupt. They are more like seething cauldrons that well up over time. Generally, previous ideas give birth to new paradigms that later become accepted by a few then eventually enter into general acceptance. What was once the enigmatic becomes the cultural norm. But this happens like a slow flood rising.

As an example, Postmodernism rose out of the ideas of Modernism, but it came later really. It was Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams who most influenced the Postmodernists, mostly through the Black Mountain School of poetics. The seeds of Postmodernism in poetry were borne out in the philosophies of Williams. He was a precursor.

While you can measure the trends in poetry and poetics through the 20th century, the underpinnings of Postmodernism are really philosophical. Philosophy has always been the cornerstone to the building of art. Jacques Derrida is credited with being the person who coined the phrase “Deconstruction,” the movement that popularized Postmodernism in art and literature, particularly literature. The year was 1967 and from then on through the 1980s, and perhaps midway through the 1990s, Postmodernism (i.e. Deconstruction) was the dominant theme in literature. That’s about par for the course because paradigm shifts occur about every 20 or 30 years.

But where did Derrida get his ideas from? Largely from philosophers such as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Foucault, and Levi-Strauss. But who were they and when did they reach their peak of influence?

• Heidegger – philosopher, authored Being and Time (1927), field of hermeneutics, existentialist
• Kierkegaard - Christian philosopher, existentialist, authored Either/Or (1843)
• Husserl – Philosopher, phenomenology, authored Logical Investigations (1900)
• Foucault – Philosopher, epistemology, authored several notable books between 1961-1966
• Levi-Strauss – Anthropologist, authored The Raw and the Cooked (1964)

You can see that some of these influences upon Derrida are his own contemporaries, but a few are not. In fact, the most interesting of these are Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Heidegger, who himself was influenced by Husserl, who was Heidegger’s intellectual mentor, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. If you see a common strain here then you’ve done more than pay attention. There is a philosophical string that runs from the unorthodox religious ideas of Kierkegaard and from the nihilistic ideas of Nietzsche through time to Derrida. The seeds of Postmodernism as a philosophy were planted with these two 19th century thinkers and were watered by Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, but they didn’t bear real fruit until 100 years after the planting when Derrida and Foucault reigned and ushered in the era of Deconstruction.

So what happened that led to the acceptance of rhyme again in poetry? If the Deconstructionists were afraid of rhyme then why do their children and grandchildren embrace it? I think it may have something to do with a different philosophical string that has run through the 20th century but from a different list of philosophers.

The History of Rhyme
Even while the harvest of Postmodernism was running its course, there was a more conservative and traditional road moving through the wood, almost parallel to the other fork. That road led to the garden of the New Formalists, who started to gain recognition in the late 1980s and really engaged the culture of poetics and American life in the 1990s. Among these poets were Dana Gioia, Mark Jarman, Frederick Turner, and others who believed that traditional rhyme and meter was natural and the “right way” to write poetry. Dana Gioia has been the most influential of these and currently serves as the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts.

Rather than trace the history of philosophical thought under the respectable veneer of the New Formalists, I’ll simply trace their influences back to a root – not “the” root – who was a contemporary of Williams. Contemporaries to Gioia and Jarman include Howard Nemerov, Donald Justice, and Richard Wilbur. All of these are fine poets in their own right, but they are the core of the modern New Formalists. Preceding them, in the 1970s, was a man is perhaps best known for his children’s verse, X.J. Kennedy.

Wilbur, born in 1921, was the U.S. poet laureate from 1987-1988. Nemerov served in that position from 1988-1990. Anthony Hecht, who was popular from the 1950s through the 1970s and wrote a type of light verse that included double dactyls, for which he is well known. Allen Tate served as poet laureate consultant to the Library of Congress, the forerunner to today’s poet laureateship position, from 1943-1944. He was very popular and widely read in his time and was friends with Robert Penn Warren, Hart Crane, and John Crowe Ransom, previously mentioned as the seed of the New Formalists.

Ransom is not really a major poet, but he influenced some major poets to include W.H. Auden, Tate, and Warren. He founded the school of New Criticism and has been a huge influence upon the conservative literary schools of the 20th century, the type of schools that Ron Silliman calls “The School of Quietude.” Ransom may be best known today for his essays than his poetry, but he has been influential in both regards.

So What? So Rhyme Is ‘Back In’
Today’s poets – and I am one of them – care much less about drawing lines in the sand than do either the New Formalists or the Language Poets, who might be said to be the two opposite extremes of the Right Wing and the Left Wing of American poetics. They are like the Dick Cheneys and the Dennis Kuciniches of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. But poets of the 21st century, at least at this juncture – I’ll say the post-911 poets – which I prefer to call Millennials, do not care about left/right distinctions in terms of what we can read and learn from. Today I might write a sonnet or a sestina, but tomorrow I may relish in a Beat-like political rant. There are no more boundaries.

I see this as a positive. There is no reason to place mumbo-jumbo on a pedestal above everything else. Likewise, it makes equally less sense to catapult rhyme and meter to a level of worship and adoration reserved only for the gods. Certainly, rhyme and meter and fun word games are both very good devices to be used in poetry (sometimes together). What today’s poet must do is study all strings of philosophical thought and poetics and take from them what is best suited for one’s own voice. The primary concern should be to offer something unique, but to do that you must know what has been done in the past, by whom, and for what purposes. When you nail it down (which you won’t) then, and only then, will you be able to offer your own sacrifice to the idols of device, rhyme or no rhyme.