30 Poems in 30 Days: Courting Controversy

This is Day 11 of 30 Poems in 30 Days

The Big Tent

While I like to think of the poetry community as one big family, I don’t necessarily think of it as one big happy family. Just because you are in the same family doesn’t mean you have to like each other.

Alexander Pope was an insufferable little man (At 4 foot 6, I do mean little) who was loved by half the literary world and despised by the other half. Any poet his disliked, he insulted and parodied within his poems. Even poets that were his friends rarely escaped his poetic wrath. He was perhaps the best poet of his age, and he had no humility about that fact whatsoever.

In modern times, one of my poetic heroes, Charles Bukowski, was forever insulting the beat poets, and took great offense whenever his work was lumped in with theirs. On the surface, their work had many similarities, but Bukowski felt as if the beats were conspicuously trying to embrace the lifestyle of the poor and downtrodden, while for him that was simply the reality of his life.

Some people believe that you cannot have poetry without meter. That patterns are the very heart of poetry and that meter is the way of determining and defining those patterns. For most of the history of poetry, few poets questioned that poetry and meter were inextricably intertwined. In the twentieth century, however, poets began to reconsider the idea of meter. Poets such as William Carlos Williams began to focus image over meter. They wrote poetry in which line length was determined by the image or impression the line was meant to create rather than patterns of syllables, word lengths, sounds or stresses. This was a controversial act.

My point is that you will never please everybody. Some people will like your poems and others will, most decidedly, dislike them. You have to write what feels true to you. Embrace the pasts of your voice that you like, whether they are popular or fit in with the rest of the crowd.

Today’s Poetry Assignment

Read a poet you don’t like. Try to figure out what they do that upsets you and determine whether or not this assessment is fair. Try to think of ways that you would approach the same subject matter using your style. Write a poem that addresses some of the same subject / style / tone of the poet you dislike but do it in your own style.

Today’s Recommended Poet

I personally find this poets work to be interesting, but I find many of his word and pattern choices to be frustrating. Thats my opinion, but this review of “Selfwolf” from Kirkus has several more complaints:

The third book by the author of a critical study of Wallace Stevens anticipates critics by admitting its sentimentality and flat, demotic speech of course, the poems that indulge Hallidays delusions of greatness, though meant to be ironic, are closer to his sense of self-importance. Far too many of these colloquial narratives concern Hallidays anxieties about his academic career, and the poetry biz: Loaded Inflections mocks all critics, leaving true judgment only to God and the future; two poems resent other poets who don’t sufficiently praise his genius; and The Halls bemoans the indifference of the building where he failed to get tenure.

Selfwolf 1999