World Class Poetry Blog

I’d never heard of the Xyiwa poets until I got a shout from a Digger. It seems they wrote in the 1960s. And the interesting thing is, they wrote on cave walls.

A new blog dedicated to the Xyiwa poets has only two blog entries. I’d be interested in seeing where this goes. This school of poetics is so small and obscure that I’m not sure that a blog wholly dedicated to it could hold onto enough material to keep it running long term. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

The blogger is calling himself Caveman Doug. Cool name. But I wonder if he himself is one of the Xyiwa poets or if he is just an admirer.

On May 7, Caveman Doug made his first blog post:

In the 1960’s, Ziohat held poetry readings for a few select followers in secret caves. Like the impressionists in painting, the early poets were scorned. A few rich patrons financed the building of a luxury cave complex where wild parties were held and poety was written on the cave walls. They called themselves the Xyiwa poets.

I tried researching Ziohat, Xyiwa poets, Ricgadax School, and Jack Chelka, but I couldn’t find any information on them. I wonder if this is a real poetic movement or is this fiction?

Does anyone else have any insight into this?

(Source) For many Broadway buffs, the idea of pairing poetry and song starts and stops at Cats, The Musical. But composer Louis Rosen and Broadway vocalist Capathia Jenkins prove the possibilities are endless.

Actually, the possibilities are endless. This is the message of Millennial Poetics.

I have in mind, actually, something similar and have had for a long time. Instead of using Jazz as the musical score (which seems to be the music genre of choice), I’d like to use rock music, original creations by a contemporary band, or classical music from the public domain, in conjunction with video in order to create a multimedia poetic experience with my own original poetry. Since I am not a musician or an expert video technician, this would have to be a collaborative project. But I do think the world is ready for such an experiment.

What I see of poetry videos today is merely a beginning. I remember when MTV first came into being. The videos were very primitive and with some exceptions many of them were simply concert footage from bands on tour. Over time, music video producers got more creative and sophisticated. The songs began to be written with the video in mind and attractiveness, as well as the ability to act and perform in front of a video camera, became more important to music artists.

I see something similar happening to poetry and I’d like to be there in the forefront. But I need partners. I can’t do it alone. I actually have a few projects I’d like to start on but I don’t have all the resources available to me as yet.

The videos I see on YouTube are good, but they are primitive in the way that MTV videos were primitive in 1984, the year I graduated high school. Even my own attempts to produce video are modest compared to the possibilities. I get frustrated trying to create my own. Tonight, for instance, I was hoping to have created something that might be worth sharing with you on this blog, but before I could finish I hit a snag and Windows Movie Maker crashed on me before I could save what I had. It was a simple video of me reading that I was going to mix with photos of a vacation to Germany that I took with my wife.

I’m confident that as my video making skills increase I can produce a video worth sharing, but how long will that be? Meanwhile, I keep dreaming ….

It’s time to review the Millennial Poetics philosophy once more simply because I’ve thought of another principle that should be added. It’s the 10th, but I’d prefer to call them columns.

There’s a reason I want to call them columns. In architecture, a column has a specific purpose; really, it is a dual purpose. On the one hand, they are decorative. On the other hand, they offer support to a building’s roof. But the distance between the foundation and the roof can depend on the length of the column, the style of architecture, and various other factors. In certain historic cultures, a column could also bear a certain mythological significance. It could serve as an archetype as much as anything else. I think when you are building a magnificent structure for which there is no duplicate you must consider its structural support, its design, and its cultural (or mythological) significance. Such is the case with Millennial Poetics.

To review, the previous 9 pillars, or columns, of this school of poetics are:

1. Craft is of utmost importance
2. There is no room for prejudice
3. Form is just another element of craft
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand
5. No topic is taboo
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic
7. All poems are individuals
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry
9. All convention should be shunned

I won’t elaborate on them here. You can read about each column, previously referred to as principles, by revisiting my blog series on that subject here. What I’d like to do now is discuss the 10th column, which is, namely: Technology may be used to enhance the poetry experience.

Technology May Be Used To Enhance
The Poetry Experience
With A Brief History Of The Internet
New technologies always advance old art forms. Gutenberg’s press took the art of writing in all media to a new level of mass communication. The advent of the computer allowed artists and writers, creators of all sorts, a new kind of ability. The personal computer made accessible to the average man and woman what before was available to only those who could afford a computer. The PC was affordable to all.

The Internet is really not that new. It’s been around for a half century, but was very primitive in its natural, or original, state, and was only available to researchers and military personnel. In fact, the ARPANET was created specifically to allow researchers the ability to communicate with each other in ways that before were unheard of. For nearly 40 years, the ARPA community grew into a vast network of researchers, government agencies, and military personnel, who were able to share information across long distances without having to use unsecure phone lines or pay large amounts of money on communication systems.

People have been able to communicate by e-mail by as early as 1971. FTP, File Transfer Protocol, has been available since 1973. In the 1970s, the ARPANET flourished and communications between computers across long distances became even more prevalent. In order to participate in the network, a station had to have a node, a special way to connect to the Net. Otherwise, access was not possible. In 1983, the U.S. military took part of that ARPANET and created the MILNET.

Also during this time, several independent networks developed that allowed their users to communicate with each, but they were more limited than the ARPANET or MILNET. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to connect these networks and that led to the development of The Internet in the 1980s. When commercial interests began to find applications for this new mode of information delivery, widespread use picked up speed and by the mid-1990s, almost everyone in the U.S. had heard of the the Internet and many of them were connected at least by e-mail.

What’s Poetry Got To Do With It?
So what does any of this have to do with poetry? Well, we’re talking about new media, correct? Specifically, this discussion is of the Internet and Internet-delivery systems. There is technology available to the average man and woman today that was not available even 10 years ago. I remember when Yahoo! was a simple directory. In 1995, you could go online and search Yahoo! for poetry websites. There were a ton of them.

It was around that time when serious-minded businessmen started figuring out ways to market themselves online. By the time Google got its start in the late 1990s, there were people making serious money online. And they had no idea about search engine optimization back then.

Since that time, new technologies like Flash, web-delivered video, podcasts, and e-books have emerged. These are all great delivery systems for poetry and all have been used to a degree of success by online poets. We have yet to tap into their full potential. I believe the future looks bright for poetry online and new technologies that have not yet been imagined can take poetry into unheard of directions. Already, online poets are experimenting with hypertext poems, Flash video poetry, and poetry radio through podcasts. Some of these are very creative endeavors.

Poets in the 21st century have available to them resources that the majority of humanity prior to 1950 would never have imagined. If Gutenberg could see what we are tinkering with today he’d go ape over it. Many great thinkers of the past could have extended their influence way beyond what they were capable of if they’d had access to these same tools. Poets today are blessed. I see further specialization and nichefication among poets occurring as a result of technology. That’s not a bad thing. It means that poetry is on the rise and new media means new modes of delivery. It also means new ways to be creative. Technology and poetry go hand in hand; the question is, How will we make the best use of them?

Algernon Charles Swinburne hails from the Victorian era. Unlike other religious poets of that era, however, he was not pro-Christian. “Hymn to Proserpine” is a narrative that includes a fictional character representing the virtues of paganism. I think you’ll like it:

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that
    weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?
I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
For the Gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.
O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
New Gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the Gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things ?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years ?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy
    breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all ? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the
    tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods !
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted Gods !
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.
All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the
    sea:
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made
    bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with
    rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
    things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for
    kings.
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our
    forefathers trod,
Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.
Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she
    is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.
Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night
    where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the
    heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is
    white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the
    night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.l
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

I have been meaning to purchase a copy of Mark Jarman’s new book of prose poems titled Epistles. It was my desire to bloviate, I think, but I put it off. I was hoping to share one of the poems on this blog this month in honor of religious poetry, but I have still not purchased the book. So I instead sought poems of his already published that might appear online. Lo and behold, I was successful. Found them (where else?) at the Poetry Foundation.

There I found four sonnets from his collection Unholy Sonnets.

Perfect, I thought. I’ll use one of those.

I’ve never bought a Mark Jarman book so I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never read any of his sonnets. It was a new experience for me. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed and I’ll tell you why.

A sonnet should rhyme. Enjambment is fine; each line need not end with a complete thought. I’m OK with near-rhyme even and rhyme that doesn’t look like rhyme or that forces the reader to move over the words from one line to the next so quickly that the rhyme isn’t noticeable until you stop to examine the poem word for word. All of that is fine. It’s what poetry is made of. But a sonnet, after all, is a sonnet. It is defined by two things: rhyme and meter. Leave one out and you no longer have a sonnet. Well, wouldn’t you know it: This New Formalist, a school of poetics that believes the old forms are still valid, writes a doggone sonnet that doesn’t rhyme. I don’t like it.

No. 1 wasn’t the first one I read. It wasn’t the last either. I read all four sonnets, and I’ll likely never read another poem from Mark Jarman. I won’t be buying Epistles. But it isn’t because of that one poem I didn’t like. I’m not fond of any of his sonnets.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 4″ rhymes. And I almost like it. My favorite lines are the first two - especially the first one - of the second stanza:

Not Dante’s rings, not the Zen zero’s mouth,
Out of which comes and into which light goes,

The allusion to Dante and alliteration with Zen zero’s mouth was impressive, but not elegiac, as one would expect of a religious poem. No. 4 isn’t his best of the four that I did read.

I found “Unholy Sonnet No. 13″ rather intriguing, but I’m ambivalent. I was put off at first by the repetition of the word drunk. Simply put, I found it unnecessary. Then he referenced Americans. I nearly puked. It seems out of place.

Nevertheless, No. 13 nearly succeeds. I do not like the repetition. I do like the near rhyme of some of the end words: bread, breed; stars, stirs. I do not like another/forever. I like the time and wine, and even the off-rhyme of moon. But the repetition of end words in place of rhyme is unnerving to me. It seems like a cop out.

Then there’s the juxtaposition of the divine with the mundane. I actually appreciate Mark Jarman’s attempt to employ this device. It’s one that I’m rather fond of in my own poetry and hope that I succeed at to some degree. The use of the word “Umbrian” in the first line sets me up for an expectation of something extraordinary, but I am let down by “two young Americans”. Why so parochial? It took me out of the poem despite some beautiful imagery in the pink cloud and marble smile. As I said, it almost succeeds.

I think the best of the four poems that I read was No. 1. It’s the one that I think is best crafted and it’s surprising because I wasn’t sure that I liked it when I first read it. I’m still not sure, but I do appreciate the craftiness of the poem. It was the first one I read. Reprinted below, analysis follows:

Dear God, Our Heavenly Father, Gracious Lord,
Mother Love and Maker, Light Divine,
Atomic Fingertip, Cosmic Design,
First Letter of the Alphabet, Last Word,
Mutual Satisfaction, Cash Award,
Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line,
Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine,
Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward.

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,
Black Hole, White Hole, Presidential Jet.
But what’s the anything I must leave out? You
Solve nothing but the problems that I set.

I like this poem best of all because it carries a simple idea from beginning to end. It starts out and finishes with that idea and is easy to follow. No. 1 reads like a prayer. It should. For that is essentially what it is. You know right away that the speaker is talking to God. He uses words that one would expect a person praying to God to use: “Dear God”, “Heavenly Father”, “Gracious Lord”. That’s a wonderful first line. It sets me up for the rest of the poem perfectly.

“Unholy Sonnet No. 1″ reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins in so many ways. The meter is a little bit uncommon. Unlike many sonnets, the iambic pentameter isn’t a sing-song twittering of musical simplicity. Each expression of divinity is capitalized - very reverent. Each is set apart as a clause, broken up by commas. Appropriate. And as you get further into the poem, the speaker begins to use names for God that are very uncommon and almost irreverent except that you know they are expressions of contemporary sanctity.

• Atomic Fingertip
• First Letter Of The Alphabet (Alpha - I like this one)
• Cash Award
• Auditor Who Approves Our Bottom Line
• Examiner Who Says That We Are Fine
• Oasis That All Sands Are Running Toward

Like traditional sonnets, the first stanza sets up the situation that the second stanza answers. It is sometimes defined as problem/solution, or question/answer. In this case, I think the proper characterization should be dilemma/cure.

The problem can be stated thus: What do we call God? Answer: Anything; it doesn’t really matter. What really matters is that He is there and we can call on Him. Cool.

The second stanza moves. I love how it starts:

I can say almost anything about you,
O Big Idea, and with each epithet,
Create new reasons to believe or doubt you,

The word “epithet” is perfect, and unexpected, because until now all we have heard from the speaker is words used to describe God in rather uncanny ways. They are really offensive. If I were God, I’d be offended. “Mutual Satisfaction”? I think not. But the names are not totally offensive. They just are not wholly reverent, and that’s the problem. It’s what makes the poem so believable.

The rhyme scheme of No. 1 stays true to the form. Thanks Mark! But there is something about that fourth line in the second stanza that bugs me. Why “Presidential Jet”? Of all the names for God, that is perhaps the most obtrusive. Still, he follows that rather awkward line up with “But what’s the anything I must leave out?” and I know it’s the perfect follow up line. It’s a good question, for one thing, but it also points to the dilemma: Who is God? Why is He there? And that last line is the zinger, the whopper, the big squeeze. No matter what you call Him, he’s the Divine Problem Solver, The Eternal Cure For All Things, The Answer To The Questions I Didn’t Know I Should Have Asked.

I love the feminine rhyme in that second stanza - about/you, doubt/you, out? You. It shows Mark Jarman’s playfulness and attentiveness to language. But it also makes me wonder why we don’t see more of that. If he can do that in one poem, why can’t he do that in the others? I’m not prepared to say versatility for that would imply skill, and I don’t see that. What I see is sloppiness, a criticism he has lobbied against others. It’s odd, but that’s probably what he seeks most to avoid for I know that his poetic philosophy is defined by attentiveness to language, to words, and to craft. To some degree, he has it. So why aren’t I impressed?

The premise stood out like a stubbed toe. I couldn’t help but read the rest of the declaration. Bloggers do not typically write so well. And long. I thought I was nearly the only one.

Strong Verse at Blogspot is the literary blog of G.M. Palmer, the editor of an online journal by the same name. The journal can be found at http://www.strongverse.org. This is just the type of literary journal we need.

I am impressed with Strong Verse, both the blog and the journal, because the poetry is accessible. But it isn’t accessible hack. It’s actually well written, mostly narrative, accessible, and poetic. It is the type of verse that I would put squarely into the Millennial School of Poetics.

In Palmer’s view, poetry is sick because the poets producing it do not make it accessible to the audience. I think he is partly right. I believe there is a dichotomy in modern poetics. There is the type of poetry that Palmer describes, which is largely academic lyrical pabulum, as accessible to the man on the street as the Pentagon’s Top Secret security clearance. On the other hand, there is the quite accessible, sometimes profane, always hackneyed poetry of the lazy-bodies who want to be poets but do not have the ear for poetry. You’ll find these poets at your local open mic poetry readings overstaying their reading limit and heaping praise upon praise of others in hopes of attaining a return sentiment. On the one hand is the ivory tower and in the other is the oily garage. Strong Verse falls in the middle.

Palmer says poetry must rescue itself from the arcane by doing three things:

• Shift production from lyrical to narrative verse
• Change its distribution model
• Working toward canonization

I certainly appreciate where he is coming from. I am fully on board with point No. 2, which breaks the distribution of poetry down into five models:

• Emails
• YouTube
• Blogs
• Forums
• Websites

While I certainly appreciate the effort, the list is incomplete. He left out social networks and social bookmarks as well as audio distribution by podcast. MiPOradio is very popular, though I believe it can be improved upon.

Curing Poetry’s Ills: My Two-Fold Response
The issue I take with Palmer’s essay is two-fold: First, poetry must be accessible as he says, but it need not tell a story. I love narrative verse and I certainly think there should be more of it, but I would not dispense with the lyrical. In fact, I’m perfectly OK with the mixture of the two in some form and fashion. The second issue that I have with Palmer’s thesis is the bit about canonization. I see no need to desire it. In my mind, the public canonizes what it likes. The academy spurned Robert Service, but he made millions on his poetry and today is loved. The academy still won’t let him in.

It’s not that I don’t think we should offer analysis and literary criticism. I do. We should publish. Widely. We should have intelligent things to say about poetry and those who produce and publish it. Yes, we should give it new forms. We should distribute it through new media - YouTube, HTML, RSS, and future technologies.

I for one am totally in agreement that poetry videos hold a lot of potential for new developments in poetic presentation. I’m looking forward to those developments. But poets who are worth reading, listening to, and watching on video will be canonized in due time. Maybe not by the academy, but they will be appreciated by the audience that they attract.

I’m all for marketing poetry. The academy doesn’t do that. Not only do academics not produce accessible poetry, but they do not even work to make poetry accessible to an audience. That’s why it has no audience. If poetry is in need of any change, that is where it needs to go. We need to divorce ourselves from the acceptance of meaningless grants by meaningless institutions. They are killing us, and we are killing them. Instead, poetry should be offered on a barter and sponsorship policy. Poets must learn to market their products - individual poems, chapbooks, audio recordings, videos, multimedia presentations, etc. We have a powerful new medium at our disposal, a new kind of Gutenberg’s Press; the question is, what will we do with it?

Charles Dickens rose to fame largely because he was able to market himself. Whitman marketed himself. Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti promoted themselves. Those who learn to market their products survive. Those who don’t live in poverty by taking hand outs for verse that no one reads. If poetry is to have a future then poets must pick up new skills. We should learn to craft our poetry out of knowledge, experience, and pure grit and understand who our audience is then work to bring our product to the audience in a form that they will understand. That is the challenge. But are we up to it?

I believe Palmer is on the right path. We are largely in agreement and we have something in common. There is a longing in poetic circles today. A longing to be heard, to be understood, to be loved. But those things cannot be begged for with dignity. They must be earned. And it is we, the poets, who must cast aside our egos, our stolen jewels of superiority, and don the mask of humility as we speak to our audiences from the heart and not from the sleeve.

The final principle of Millennial Poetics, that conventions should be shunned, is almost identical to Principle No. 2, that there is no room for prejudice in poetry. The difference is one of angle of perception. Whereas prejudice refers to an internal reality within the poet, convention refers to an external force upon the poet. It can be stated “Let no one enforce their own prejudices upon you,” or “Rules made by others are not applicable to oneself.” It is time to set the poet free from external conventions that make no sense.

These conventions arise from various fronts. One poet does not like long poems. Well, that’s fine, but does that mean Paterson, The Iliad, Paradise Lost, Inferno, The Aeneid, and other long poems, particularly epic poems, are wrong? Every poet is welcome to his own prejudices, though I don’t see why a poet should limit herself by them, but no poet should be allowed to foist those prejudices upon others. The poet who prefers short poems to long poems has no right to require that all poets write short poems. Nor does the poet who prefers epics have a right to require that all poets write epics.

In my short life I’ve encountered the following prejudices, all of which I consider irrational, that other poets have tried to impose upon others:

• No rhymes - Early on as a poet, in the 1980s, I encountered this prejudice, which was widely held among my generation (and still is). Someone decided that rhymes were out. Period. It was also during this time that New Formalism began to take off as a school. Obviously, it was a backlash against the irrational prejudice of the anti-rhyme crowd. The New Formalists insisted that poetry should adhere to the established forms, including rhyme. I take issue with both sides. Poetry is a broader matter than the inclusion or exclusion of one element. Whether or not a poem includes the element of rhyme should depend on the poet, the form chosen, subject matter, and the rules set forth by the poem itself.
• All lines should begin with a lower case letter unless it begins a sentence - Why? For hundreds of years poets began each line with a capital letter. Why, all of a sudden, should that change? Admittedly, some poems are hard to read because capital letters at the beginning of the lines make them so. But that does not apply across the board. Again, this is an irrational prejudice that has to go. Whether or not a letter is capitalized should depend on the poet, his preferences, form, subject matter, and other elements of craft.
• Poems should fit on one page - I don’t get this one. A poem should be as long as necessary to be complete, but no longer than it needs to be to say what it has to say. If that means a poem must be 5,000 lines in length then that is the length of the poem. If it means a poem is only three lines long then that’s how long the poem should be.
• No soul - I once met a publisher who ran a poetry journal and refused to publish any poem that used the word “soul.” That’s his right, of course. He can do whatever he wants with his journal, but why would a publisher, or a poet, limit himself? Furthermore, why impose an irrational poetic upon everyone you encounter? Yes, there are other words to use for soul, but they may not be the right word. The word “soul” means a particular thing and it bears significant meaning to American culture, so why refuse the word its natural power? Soul or no soul, it should be the choice of each individual poet and his poem.

There are other prejudices, of course. I’m sure there are some that I’ve never heard of. I do not subscribe to them. There are no rules in poetry. If there are, they should be broken. And not only should be broken, but they should be broken with a long middle finger extended.

Poets are the most unconventional people I’ve ever known. Why then should we disgrace our profession by inventing conventions that should not be? All conventions should be shunned; prejudice has no place in poetics. Preferences, yes; prejudices, no. All convention must go.

Millennial Poetics Review
Let’s review the 9 principles of poetics:

1. Craft is of utmost importance - Poets cannot, and must not, forget craft. This is the crown of the principles. Without craft, there is no poetry. It is the beginning of all things poetic. Craft should never be ignored. It should be pursued relentlessly.
2. There is no room for prejudice - Poets must end all prejudice with regard to craft. The elements are all equal. Which one applies to a particular poem or a particular sentence or line depends on the poet’s knowledge of craft and skill in employing that knowledge.
3. Form is just another element of craft - Form is not the most important thing, nor is it so unimportant that it should be ignored altogether. Form is simply one more element of craft. No more. It should be considered along with the other elements. In some ways, form determines the other elements, but in other ways, it does not. A sonnet, for instance, is not a sonnet if it does not adhere to the 14-line rule or rhyme scheme. A haiku is not a haiku if it does not follow the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern. Apart from the necessary enforcements, form should be considered as equal with all the other elements of craft.
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand - A poet must exercise creativity. Don’t just write poems that follow a rigid form and do not tap into imagination. Make them unique in some way. Employ new elements never thought of. Create new forms, modify old forms, establish a new rubric. A poet cannot be a poet without imagination. Creativity and craft go hand in hand.
5. No subject is taboo - Every poem has a subject and all subjects are good for poetry. Nothing is taboo.
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic - This could fall under the shunning of convention, but I separate it from convention because it deals with poetic language and language is an inherent art of poetry. Poets should use the language that is most appropriate for the poem. If a poem requires the use of words or language that is out of use due to subject matter, form, and other elemental considerations then archaic language can be appropriate. It is a poetic choice of the author.
7. All poems are individuals - All poems are individuals and as such should be judged by their individual merits.
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry - There are no formulas for writing poetry. Poetics is an art, not a science. The craft of poetry requires a thought process, not formulaic assertions. Methods do not work. Poets who are looking for a method are forgetting the craft.
9. All convention should be shunned - Unless poets take craft seriously and shun convention of all sorts, we will keep seeing the same things over and over again. Poetry will lose its meaning if poets get too complacent, forget about craft, put method over creativity, and choose prejudice and convention over the study of craft. All poetics should be placed under the crown of craft and convention should be shunned at all cost.

In this series on Millennial Poetics, we’ve covered a broad range of topics. So far we’ve discussed:

1. Craft is of utmost importance
2. There is no room for prejudice
3. Form is just another element of craft
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand
5. No subject is taboo
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic
7. All poems are individuals
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry
9. All convention should be shunned

No Single Method Will Do
There is no acceptable method to writing poetry. One can’t design a mathematical formula, there is no algorithm that will generate the perfect form, and one can’t follow a recipe to arrive at the best poem for your genre. Writing poetry is an art, not a science. There is no metaphor-to-idea ratio or a certain number of verbs to nouns formula. Such things tend to take away rather than add to a poet’s creativity.

But that doesn’t mean that one can’t generate excellent poems by following a routine or adding ritual to your writing time. There is nothing wrong with having a favorite location or time to write. Many writers wake up early and compose their poems before work. Others write just before going to bed. Some poets write at lunch break while at work. Whatever works for you is acceptable.

Writing poetry is a skill. Like any skill, it can be developed. That development takes place in practice, through exercises, in discussions with other poets about technique, and through workshops where a poet can receive valuable feedback from other poets who will read your poem as both a writer and a reader. Non-poets are incapable of that. They can read a poem and tell you whether they like it or not, but most non-poets are not able to pick your poem apart and read it as a writer in order to tell you whether your structure is effective or whether your metaphors fall on their faces. It takes a certain amount of training to be able to see nuances in word and phrase interaction and to be able to discern the music of a poem and identify whether a stress is on the wrong foot or syllable. These are special skills that are developed over time. They do not happen naturally.

Since writing poetry is a skill and since every poem is an individual, there cannot be a method to doing it. There can only be craft, an ability to discern nuances in language and rhythm.

When a poet approaches his craft from the standpoint that his skill in being a poet is contingent on how hard he works at improving his skills, his knowledge of the techniques and devices available to him, and his ability to employ those techniques and devices then he will begin to write poetry that is worthy of publication and acknowledgment. The poet who attempts to write according to some method will only churn out mediocre verse at best.

A method presupposes that you can simply plug in an element and your poem is ready for consumption. That can never be the case. Poetry is not some mad lib game where you fill in the blank and all is well. It is a skill, a craft, a profession. There is no other way to see it if one wants to be a respected poet.

Just as all poets are individuals, so too are all poems individuals and should be judged on their own merits. Just because a certain poet has written 500 great poems doesn’t mean that she won’t pen the occasional bad one. Just because a bad poet has written and published over 1,000 lousy excuses for poetry doesn’t mean that he can’t finally produce a masterpiece. Every poem is an individual and must be judged on its own merits.

Millennial Poetics Review
Let’s review the 9 principles of Millennial Poetics one more time:

1. Craft is of utmost importance
2. There is no room for prejudice
3. Form is just another element of craft
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand
5. No subject is taboo
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic
7. All poems are individuals
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry
9. All convention should be shunned

Today, we’re discussing the individuality of poems. If you haven’t read the earlier posts in this series then I encourage you to back up and read them all and return here when you are done.

All Poems Are Individuals
There is no sense in treating a body of work as a whole unless you are willing to look at each individual poem in the group to see how it fits in with the whole. This is true whether we are talking about a chapbook, a set of poems within a specific time period within a single poet’s life, an entire collection of poems from a poet’s life, a school or movement, or a set of poems surrounding a specific theme. There is value in analyzing poetry as a group and how that group is structured could depend on any number of variables, but no matter how the grouping is accomplished, every poem within the group is still an individual and should be analyzed on its own merits.

This may seem like it should go without saying and, for the most part, it does. But there is a tendency in poetics to see the whole and forget the singular. Poetic analysis can center around a single poet and so analysts discuss the poet’s contribution to literature, but then fail to discuss each individual poem. At the bottom of every group of poems is the whole set of individual poems within the group. Without the individual poems, there is no group.

This speaks to the liberty of poetics. The freedom of poetry analysts to judge poems on their own merits as individuals as opposed to complete bodies or groups of poems. Instead of judging the Beats as good or bad, or “homosexual misogynists”, we should judge each individual poet on his own then each poem by each poet on its own before arriving at a general conclusion regarding the entire school of Beats. There is a long range and variety of personalities to discuss with regard to that movement and many poets still living consider themselves Beats, or at least influenced by the Beats.

This principle is true and applies to all schools and movements and groups of poets. There are no exceptions. Instead of discussing the Nuyorican poets, why not discuss individual poets within the Nuyorican movement and read each poem by those poets as a single unit? The movement itself certainly has an identity, but that identity is wrapped up in the aggregation of the individual poets who identify with the group. Those poets in turn have individual poems that serve to define, or defy, or add to the aggregate definition of the group itself. It is possible for a poet to break with his or her poetic tradition and identify singularly with another group at a different point in his life, or with no group at all. This has been the case with Amiri Baraka, former poet laureate of New Jersey.

Why Is This Important?
Why should we concern ourselves with whether individual poems, or poets, are a unique identity unto themselves? I believe this is important because it speaks to the nature of poetics as well as the nature of the human condition. Poetry is an individual exercise, although some poets have joined together for collaborative projects. Even when poets collaborate, poetry is still handled at the individual level. There may be dialog, interaction, to be sure; but the internal reaction to what a poet writes and reads is an individual experience. That is true of the audience as well.

Because life is experienced as individuals living within community, and poetry is intrinsically about life, it is necessary to discuss poetry in the way in which it is experienced: As individuals within community. Community is not necessarily the closed community of poets. It is all of humanity. It is one’s identity group, one’s race, one’s local community, one’s nation or state, and one’s poetic school or movement. Community is all of those things, individually and collectively. The test for any poet is to write a poem that reflects the frame of reference with which he identifies. Does he do that well or does he fail? All poetics is centered around that question, but the question applies differently to each individual poem as it pertains to what it sets out to be as a poem.

A group of poems, and consequently a group of poets, cannot succeed in that endeavor. This can only be accomplished on a poem-by-poem basis. T.S. Eliot may have captured the zeitgeist of his era in “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Wasteland,” but did he do so in “Four Quartets”? The same poet who succeeds today can fail tomorrow. Just as a man in business may build a successful enterprise in one decade and fail to do so in another, so too can poets succeed in producing poems that attract an audience one day and fail in the same endeavor in another. This is the reason why the individuality of poems is a necessary component in Millennial Poetics. It could be said to be a central tenet. All poems must be analyzed on their own merits. Accept nothing less.

There’s no such thing as language too archaic for poetry. I know there will be some disagreement on this point, primarily from people who don’t understand the point I’m going to make any way. But if you’ve ever been in a poetry critique group or workshop and someone has said, “That word seems too archaic,” or “Modern poets don’t write like that,” then you’ll know where I’m coming from.

What people usually mean when they say a word is too archaic is that they don’t know what it means so you shouldn’t use it. You could use a brand new word and someone could just as well say, “That word is too intellectual; I don’t think you should use it.” Can you imagine that? “I don’t think you should use anthropomorphic. It’s too big a word.”

Whine, whine, whine.

Here’s a clue: Pick up a dictionary. Poets use words. Sometimes we use big words. Sometimes we use words that aren’t in use much longer. Archaic to a non-poet means something like “bobby socks.” Since people don’t wear bobby socks any more, it’s too archaic. It shouldn’t be used.

Any word in the English language, past, present, or future is fair game. The only issue is whether a particular word is the right word choice for a particular poem based on tone, voice, style, subject matter, etc. That said, there are two poetry terms that every poet needs to be familiar with.

• Onomatopoeia - Onomatopoeia should not be confused with archaic, or ancient, usage. This poetry term signifies a word that poets use to illustrate a sound. The word itself sounds like the sound it’s supposed to signify. For instance, squish is a word that sounds like squish, the sound your boots make when they step in a mud puddle. It has nothing to do with archaic language, but it is a poetic technique that uses odd words to make a point. Language, or word play, is the fairground of poets. The cool thing about onomatopoeia is that you can make up words, and if people don’t understand what the words that you make up mean then you were either ineffective in portraying the effect you were going for or they just don’t understand the poetic technique you are employing. You can fix the first problem, but the second problem isn’t yours to fix.
• Anachronism - An anachronism may actually have something to do with archaic usage of words. It could also be anything that is misplaced in time. For instance, a medieval knight that whips out a cigarette lighter to light the fuse of an artillery gun is anachronistic. That could be a useful effect in a poem, but to employ it successfully, it has to make sense. A serious love poem that involves a medieval knight in the 21st century may not make much sense, but that doesn’t mean that some poet couldn’t pull it off successfully. Maybe it’s satire and the knight is there for comic effect. Poetic techniques that involve archaic uses of language are permissible if they make sense for the poem based on tone, style, voice, subject matter, form, and other poetic elements.

Other poetic techniques may be useful as well. Suppose a poet were to use a metaphor comparing a 21st century idea that people are familiar with with a historic artifact or piece of equipment that is no longer in use. The Internet is like Gutenberg’s press would be an example of that. Of course, Gutenberg’s press is an ancient piece of equipment. Does it belong in a poem? Maybe; maybe not. If it doesn’t, it isn’t because it’s ancient and no longer in use, but it would be because it just doesn’t fit in the poem that the poet is trying to place it in. That’s really the most important thing.

I’ve met poets who say they don’t like it when people use the word “O” or “Oh” at the beginning of their lines and stanzas. That’s not the way people write any more. Shakespeare used the word effectively, as did many of his contemporaries. At one time, that was the way everyone wrote. People don’t write that way any more. The poetry is more conversational and consistent with the way that most people in our society think and use language. That doesn’t mean that these expressions do not have their place in poetry. I’d be judicious in putting an “O” or an “Oh” in a poem, but I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out completely because of some modern prejudice. I would take special pains to make sure that if I did use it that it wasn’t done in the same way that people today are familiar with. I wouldn’t want to remind anyone of John Donne in a negative way. I’d want people to think I was doing something original, and if a poet can’t do that, no matter what technique he uses, then he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.

Archaic language should not be ruled out. But it should be done in a manner that makes sense for a particular poem, a particular voice, a particular style. Perhaps you want to write a lyric ballad about a French troubadour being wooed by a dominant chain-mail wearing courtesan/warrior in the court of Marie Antoinette. Let’s say you want your poem to be a sestina. Well, you might very well use language of that era because it is appropriate for the subject matter. You must also consider voice. Whose voice will that poem be told in? The troubadour’s? The courtesan’s? Marie Antoinette’s? A court jester’s? A friend of the courtesan’s commanding officer, who thinks she is a man in the French army? All kinds of things can take place in a poem. You have to work out the details and use language that is appropriate for your narrative.

To summarize, there is no such thing as language that is too archaic, too futuristic, too (fill in the blank). It is either effective or ineffective, appropriate or inappropriate to your poem. Think along those lines and your language should speak like the song of angels.