well, what do you know? in today's Salt Lake Tribune, on the front page of The Arts section, an article titled Poetic Injustice? is featured.
the article discusses whether or not "accessible" poetry (or "approachable" poetry) cheapens poetry. it's a ridiculous notion, in my mind, but the article is well-written and includes the thoughts of Billy Collins (ex-Poet Laureate) and a number of local Utah academic poets.
as you'd expect, the academics/teachers argued that "accessible" poetry (i.e. poetry that can be understood) is "lesser" poetry; not as "poetic" as the more academic, unapproachable style that pervades the academic journals.
Billy Collins had a great line about why teachers feel this way: "Teachers tend to present poetry in the classroom that is difficult to understand, and they do it to protect their jobs, because only difficult poems need a teacher to help explain them." now, that's beautiful. Mr. Collins also said he gets a lot of flak, and is a sitting-duck, because he sells more books than most of the inaccessible/academic poets, and also because he doesn't have a tortured, misery-ridden persona, which seems to be a prerequisite for much of poetry.
he did say (and this is something i agree with even more), "I think more people should be reading it but maybe fewer people should be writing it."
amen.
read the article. it's pretty good and is pretty damn typical when it comes to what the academics think about poetry of non-academics. the fact that Billy Collins was ever Poet Laureate is rather amazing, if you think about the style and voice and "accessibility" of his poems.
i received the 18 poems that Eric Dejaeger of Belgium translated into French. it's pretty wild to see your own words in another language. he said some will be published in his journal Microbe and others will likely appear in other French-language journals in France and Belgium. what's even cooler is that i will receive a copy of each journal and magazine in which one of these translations appears. man, this is so exciting.
4 comments:
justin,
I am printing it now and will read it later on. Very interesting. I totally think you should understand poetry...But then again, what do I know? ;)
let me know what you think of it.
it's not a bad article. doesn't really cover anything new, nor give any major insights into the whole academic vs. non-academic poetry thing, but the comments from Billy Collins are great.
i agree with you. poetry MUST be understood, else what the hell point is it? anyone can write random accumulations of words. here's one:
this fucking poems sucks
sparks from a
radioactive outlet
inside/outside
fall fall fall fall
unravleing sweater
under a
spatula sky
sparks from a
radioactive outlet
outside/inside
fall fall fall fall
there. there's your fucking poem. what does it mean? hell if i know. why don't you figure it out, then tell me.
the scary thing is this fucking "poem" i just extemporaneously wrote can probably be published in some "experimental" poetry mag and people would consider it good.
whatever.
I did read it...I don't want to take up yourwhole blog with my thoughts. I'll email them! :)
And how cool is it to see your stuff in French. I cannot even imagine...
Emma said go to Fish Babble? Babble Fish?
:)
Kat-
thanks for the comments. i'll reply soon. some good points.
Casey-
yeah, i think Billy Collins was in the band Genesis. though, ironically, he played bass guitar and not drums. he's Phil's brother.
yeah, i noticed the misspelling of Louise Gluck's name, too. the umlauts are missing. it's quite possible they've never heard of umlauts and just thought the little dots were smudges of ink.
as for Ohio poets, they're the absolute worst! ;)
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