What About Poetry?

[poliphilo]

What about poetry? asks my friend goddlefrood

 Poetry is always with us but great poets are few and far between. Much of the 18th century was a great poet-free zone. There's Pope and after Pope no one of the first rank until the romantics. 

Was Gray a great poet? A minor poet who wrote one great poem, I think.

So the contemporary dearth of great poets doesn't necessarily mean that poetry is dead. 

To be a great poet you need  to get into the book of quotations,  to add something to the language,  to "purify the dialect of the tribe". The last British poet to achieve that was Larkin. The last American poet to do it was Ginsburg. 

There are those who say  the great poetry of our age is in our songs.  I'm not convinced.  Words for music are usually too loose to look well on the page. 

I adore Dylan. I think he's a great artist. I don't think he's a great poet.

Of course I may be overlooking someone. I've got to admit I don't read much contemporary poetry. Does anybody?

i used to be a reviewer. I gave it up because it was making me angry.

So many poems about what I did on my hols. So many poems about dying relatives.

The great poet of our age may not have been published yet, or not published prominently.  Blake, Dickinson, Hopkins all went unnoticed by their contemporaries. 

The first half of the 20th century was a great age for English language poetry- perhaps the greatest. How do you follow Yeats, Eliot, Auden et al?  It's as if everything that can be done has been done.  

There were over fifty years between the death of Pope and the publication of the Lyrical Ballads. That's how long it can take  a culture to recover from a golden age.

So, no, on reflection I don't think poetry is finished. A great poet will come along eventually. They always do.

Comments

Maya Angelou?

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise

I rise
I rise.

Re: Maya Angelou?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a stirring poem. I don't think it's a great one. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Maya Angelou?

[jubal51394.livejournal.com]

I think maybe you have to be a black, American woman to think it's great. Maybe?

Re: Maya Angelou?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Maybe?

But if it were absolutely great wouldn't it cut across things like gender, color, nationality etc?

I think it's stirring. I think it's good. I just don't think it's great. Great poetry is very rare.