Our Voices Raised, A Choir of Stones Breaking Glass
An essay by Joseph Armstead
"Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild."
-- Denis Diderot
"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."
-- Robert Frost
"A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."
-- Salman Rushdie
"The End is Nigh."
Uh-huh, yeah, we already know all about that. The End of Days. The Rapture. The Prophesies of Nostradamus. The Apocalypse. The Mayans and 2012. Got it. That's not really what I'm talking about. This is about the current state of modern literature in our fast-paced, everything’s-disposable society, the spotlight shining on Poetry in particular.
Poetry is danger of being taken off life support. And it's going to die unless we can start regularly manufacturing miracles.
Poetry, you see, is dying. Not because it isn't being written, not because its practitioners aren't passionate about it, and not because of any restrictive politicization by the stuffy Literary Powers-That-Be. Poetry is dying because it has fallen prey to that most common of delimiters in the natural order of things -- it refuses to EVOLVE.
Really.
You know it and I know it, don't pretend it's otherwise. Folks, it's time to start talkin' 'bout a Revolution.
We need to start breaking windows.
Listen, let me explain.
I’m not famous. I’m not a scion of academia. I’m not a genius, undiscovered or otherwise. I’m a writer. As a writer, I am a non-traditionalist, meaning I don't write rhyming poetry, confessional poetry, poetry about poetry or poetry about tending my garden or love poems per se. I work beyond the borders of the map of the conventional. I have many times bemoaned the somewhat straight-jacketed, narrow channel into which most new poetry has been forced to fit. I don't like having my work pigeon-holed.
To me, poetry in this modern age is supposed to be more than just an exercise in sonnets, quatrains, villanelles, ballads, pantoums, damantes, acrostics, et al.. There are necessary rules of style and structure that are definitely important in determining the true pedigree of a written work, but these are guidelines for channeling creative expression -- not walled prisons in which to confine and segregate lyrical flow. Poetry has a mission.
Connect. Communicate. Inform. Transform. Challenge. Inspire.
If it's not doing any of those things, then no matter how structurally well-crafted the work is, the poetry is nothing more than an intellectual exercise, bloodless, detached, a passing curiosity devoid of lasting impact.
And no, I'm not going to get into a discussion about the postmodern art and science of impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. I know. But everything changes.
Poetry is dying. We, its priests and acolytes, need to become soldiers. We need to take up arms and impudently, unapologetically challenge the literary status quo and bring the art form into The Future. We need to help it to EVOLVE. And to do that, we'll need to be dedicated, brave and ingenious.
And we'll need to dump a lot of preconceptions that are going to strangle the Art.
There are a large number of poets who take great pride in presenting themselves as "serious" (meaning literary, scholarly and institutionally conventional) and seem barely able to handle the intricacies of computer technology. To them, technology has become a necessary, and most unwelcome, evil. These are not folks who stay up-to-date with the latest Web/Social Networking advancements and I honestly think that is by choice. They don't want to know. They look down their noses at most Social Networking sites. Twitter absolutely frightens and confuses many of them. Instant Messenger services and Mobile Phone Texting? I don't think so. When it comes to presenting their work in electronic format, they just want the equivalent of an online notebook in which to post their poetry. Additionally, they are leery of the literary "legitimacy" of electronic poetry postings (as in "How would this enhance my reputation as a 'real' poet? Is a poem posted through Twitter actually considered as 'published'?").
Too, there's the whole ecumenical/populist nature of the Web, the whole "mingling with the Great Unwashed" thing. Everyone thinks they're a writer or a poet these days. It's not my intent to insult anyone by any means, but I don't think there's any argument that there's a lot of garbage seeing electronic publication on the 'Net. God save us from the million-headed beast that is the Blogosphere. If one aspires to be a poet of some gravitas and renown, the last thing you'd want is for your work to be lost in the internet's torrential floodwaters of bad rock song lyrics, exhibitionistic self-confessionals, home-made written erotica, and political screeds trying to masquerade as "poetry".
That stuff is crap. No other word to describe it. Crap.
Well, then what about chapbooks? There is a great literary tradition with chapbooks. Poets have often made use of this medium to collect and transmit their work into the larger world beyond the bastions of academia. Chapbooks? Not so much these days. Apparently no one, meaning no financially-viable corporate entity with access to nationwide or international commercial distribution, publishes poetry chapbooks anymore. They exist mostly as a by-product of contests and competitions sponsored by colleges or university literary programs. Chapbooks live now courtesy of the courage, ingenuity and stubbornness of the small press, God bless them. A sad state of affairs nonetheless.
The WAY in which we, poets and writers, present the Art isn't nearly so important as how we GROW the Art. Please refer to that earlier statement about The Revolution. It’s time to break with tradition. Raise a middle finger at the glowering face of institutional literary authority.
What is it that you, as a poet, want most to say? And when you say it, do you want to whisper apologetically or do you want to shout and rage or do you want to proclaim and frighten?
When next you sit down to your laptop or desktop computer, when you pull out your spiral-bound notepad or loose-leaf journal, don't give in to the urge to create the same, safe "Gosh, I hope my friends/teachers/nepotistic-ring-of-fellow-poets like this" garbage you've been writing for the past several years. Take a moment and think, really think. What form should this take? Should I editorialize, be surreal, be metaphorical, be cynical, be absurd, be haiku-ish or elegiacal or Fibonaccical, or should I risk a venture into DaDaism? Maybe this is a passion play? Maybe it should be post-postmodernism? Maybe all of the above.
Or maybe I’ll invent something NEW.
Pick up a stone and start breaking windows. Throw down the gauntlet. Do something outrageous. Zig when you would normally zag. Don't self-censor. Scare yourself.
Connect. Communicate. Inform. Transform. Challenge. Inspire.
EVOLVE.
There is no alternative, not if you, as a writer, want to keep using this venue, this art form, as a means of expression. Imbue what you create with honesty and meaning and to hell with the restrictions of the format. Don’t aim your work at The Critics -- you don’t need their approval, assent or praise. Be idiosyncratic. Create something of consequence.
"The End is Nigh." No it isn't, damn it, not by a long shot.
Raise your voice. Break some glass.
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Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock, "Fearless" by Spaceheater, dreamstime_m_5160243.jpg
