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In my post, Poetry in the larger world, Crafty Green Poet commented:
I think the problem with poetry for many people is that although it is short it is often so multilayered that they can’t ‘get’ it straight away and turn to something more digestible. However long novels aren’t exactly immediately digestible either. Interesting thoughts…
Hmmm….
I think this a dangerous conception to have. It says that Poetry is just too hard for most people to “get.” Some of it, yes, is very hard, very convoluted. Some of it is just boring. In high school, when I studies poetry (the most attention Poetry gets from most people), it was largely limited to the classic masters of poetry. We talked about Shakespeare. Shakespeare had some good work, but his use of the English language is (1) British and (2) 500 years out of date. That makes it a bit more complicated. We talked about Byron, Longfellow, Yeats, Keats, Frost. All very talented, yes, but old, talking about subjects that, whatever you feel about it, do not resonate with today’s youth. The percentage of the American Youth that see Grecian Urns or lead horses through wint’ry forests is vanishingly small. So, poetry is hard, because the English teachers chose poetry that is great, classical, and hard. It survived the gauntlet of literary criticism, making it suitable as “literature.”
But not all poetry is “literature.” There has been a huge movement to take poetry out of the textbooks and put it on stage. Part of that movement is to give poetry to people and not poets. My point is that, as poets, educators, and people, we need to get the poetry out there that people can relate to and enjoy, even if it is only at an aesthetic or aural level. Even if the multi-layered meanings skip past them the first time they read or hear a poem, because I think they should be hearing and reading poems AT ALL.
A sickeningly large percent of the American populace does not read. I think this is a bad thing. Art, in all its forms, speaks about the world and informs us of how we perceive and are perceived. Poetry is an art form that can be put into the world in small bites. I think we need to put those bites out there, in schools, in public so they can be consumed, in the hopes that that can ignite a hunger, a passion, in some of its readers. While the classic poets may be really good, I don’t think that’s the message we need to send: that poetry is something done in the past and focused on rules, rhymes, rhythms, and coneeptual forms when that is a small subset of poetry.
We need to entice people to the poetic art form, challenge them to enjoy it. Market it to them on a level they get. Harry Potter is not an example of great literature, even in the fantasy, young adult genre. But it gets people to read. Maybe some of them will go from Rowlings to Pullman to Tolkien, or Martin. There is no reason not to do the same with poetry.
My point was poetry has a history of being seen as hard and taught badly and so people expect it to be hard and can’t be bothered. Accessible performance poetry is great but I’m not convinced that many people who go to performance poetry events then become enthused about the wider poetry, they see performance poetry as the only poetry and expect always to instantly ‘get’ poetry. I think that this means they are less liekly to read poetry. We live in a culture where the easily digested is marketed to the extent that the subtle and multi layered is undervalued and tossed aside. I don’t think this is a good thing.
I agree. Certainly in the way I was taught, Poetry was not taught as something enjoyable, but something that followed the twisted language and rhyme schemes and involved scansion. Blech! It was not taught as an art form. It was not taught as something to be appreciated on aesthetic levels as well as on symbolic levels. But a lot of poetry out there is beautiful even before it’s analyzed. Rainbows and sunsets are beautiful and, even if we know the science about why they are, we can still enjoy them. I find the deeper understanding, of natural phenomenon as well as poetry, allows me to appreciate it much more. But I’m not going to say that someone who doesn’t understand refraction cannot enjoy a sunset, or a sonnet, as being beautiful. And I think we, as poets, should be in the forefront of saying that Poetry is not, in an of itself, hard. Some of it, and not just performance poetry, is accessible and beautiful even if we don’t know an iamb from a trochee.
I’m suggesting we reach out to audiences that do not already enjoy poetry. Even if the tiniest fraction of the American populace decided to give performance poetry a shot, that would be a huge increase in people seeing performance poetry. It’s still poetry. And, undoubtedly, some people would not like it and go on in their life without poetry, but some would. Some would be content to leave it at a pleasant experience. Some might download podcasts or browse the web. Some might become enthused. But the point is we would still be reaching out to a wider audience than we do.
This does not follow. Most Americans do not read. Period. So, people who are not likely to read should not go to see and enjoy (perhaps) performance poetry because they are less likely to read. There is no less likely than not at all. And, I think you’re wrong. I think that once people get this conception of poetry as enjoyable, they would be more likely to read. After all, poetry comes in snack size bites. And, so what if the people don’t read poetry. Maybe they’d rather buy cds. Maybe they’d rather watch videos or just go see poetry. It’s still an audience we didn’t have because they were taught poetry is hard.
Again, I agree. I think we have some major cultural problems in this country. I also think, in terms of the literary arts, Poetry is an excellent ambassador to go out to the world and say “Hey!” I think it is an excellent tool, delicious “sound-meaning constructs” that might be able to nourish and delight. And there is nothing wrong with telling people that poetry is accessible. After all, if we as poets do not tell them that, where will they learn it?
I would rather people hear Beau Sia, than have nothing to do with Poetry.
I would rather people read Collins or Ginsberg, than dislike poetry because they “don’t get” Wordsworth or Longfellow.
I would rather people buy books, cds, download podcasts, go to a slam, than dislike Poetry.