The State Of Poetry, As I See It
June 7th, 2006
By Archived Story
When Keats states this epic line in “Ode to a Grecian Urn” he is demonstrating the power of literature; something that is taken for granted in our society. In this quote, Keats is announcing the ability of the image-poem-lie to speak a truth more powerful than the truth itself.
The writer of today looks upon poetry as a way to “vent”, as if its greatest power lies in the personal. All the memoirs and self indulgent poetry take up the majority of our literature. Why? Is it because people are now incapable of thinking about what they are reading or is it because writers are incapable of writing universal truths?
Writers are lazy. They (and by they I mean we) don’t take the time anymore to learn the art. No one writes in form anymore; it seems most people couldn’t pick out blank verse from free verse.
Poetry is hard; when I think of the amount of sugar and caffeine it took for me to get through a sonnet I want to vomit. But the struggle is necessary. We as writers cannot expect to write universal truths greater or equal to our predecessors if we don’t understand where art has already been and where it can go.
On the topic of placing the talent of the poet, T.S. Eliot wrote, “You cannot value him (the poet) alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead” (Tradition… 1919). No one can become a great poet without reading the great poetry of the past and learning from it.
I’m sorry to all you “experimentalists” out there but, being different doesn’t mean you’re writing anything worthwhile. I’m sick of this “looking in on a personal entry” poetry. You’re writing for other people! It should make sense to others, or at least hold enough power and relation to the world that makes the reader react in some emotional/intellectual way.
I heard a fellow student in my writing class say that poetry is dry, that everything has already been written about. Poetry has been around for hundreds of years, and now, in 2006 poetry is dead? Think about it, poetry can’t dry up as long as people exist and continue changing. That’s the problem with personal poetry; writing has to find a place in society to grow.
Free expression is the basis of all the arts, but an unfocused, self-indulgent, journal entry doesn’t teach anyone anything worth remembering. It is in connection with society and the relation to the past that we learn. So please, if you’re going to write for others, spare us your break-up story unless we can learn something about suffering or sadness or whatever. Poetry is too influential and penetrating to waste on anything less than beauty and truth.
