Recently, slammers sponsored by SASE boarded a crowded, rush hour light-rail train through downtown Minneapolis where they proceeded to confront the riders with their poetry. Surprise, surprise, they were met with intolerance. How could it be that their little “happening” didn’t cause people to rush home and pick up books of poetry for the first time in their lives?
Shortly before this occurred, I sat in the Wilde Roast with poet Michael K. Gause discussing the increasing use (and often misuse) of the word archaic as it pertains to poetry. Some editors use it as a tool in order to justify the dumbing down of the language in a piece. Some readers will use it when they don’t understand something they have just read. Others just don’t like anything written in a classical voice. To disregard a current poem with archaic nature is to disregard most classical poetry. It doesn’t matter when it was written as long as it is well written. It was Gerard Manley Hopkins who gave the best definition of poetry, “It is the common language heightened.” In the end we concluded that there is a growing fear of (or, at the very least, an inferiority with) anything deemed archaic.
Now, it’s in conversations like this that the discussion always depreciates into the topic of the novelty of poetry.
For some indefensible reason, certain individuals believe that poetry needs to be presented as something other than poetry itself. There always has to be something more to it, as if the written or spoken word needs to be ornamented.
In the 1994, it wasn’t enough for an open poetry reading to be a simple presentation of poetry. Tanan Cole, the principal organizer of the readings, decided the poems needed to be judged. But that wasn’t even enough. Tanan devised the color wheel. Audience members were instructed to judge each poem based on a color represented on his color wheel. It ranged from white to red. Ultimately what did it mean for a poet to know his poem received a unanimous vote of mauve? I guess it could please him that he received a darker shade than beige.
In the late ’90s at Ginko’s in St. Paul, it wasn’t enough for Brenda Bell Brown to hold an open reading where poetry was read aloud by the authors. She had the audience write a poem using an AA-BB-AA-B rhyme scheme then read their quickly crafted pieces to the rest of the audience.
Everyone has their own favorite stories like this that they’ve come across in their poetic times and it’s not as if the Twin Cities is the only place where such novelty occurs—but we must remember that Minnesota is the birthplace of magnetic poetry. Never has novelty of the art been so blatant. Dave Kapell started it all right here; his journey ends in Hell.
What needs to be addressed next is context.
How much damage is Mr. Cole or Ms. Brown doing? Their audiences were meager and anyone who wished to leave could (and did). And it was all in the context of a poetry gathering. Truly we could look upon it all as silly perhaps but little more.
Mr. Kapell made an out and out mockery of this highest form of art. He is to writing and poetry what the inventor of the Chia pet is to serious gardeners. Granted, I don’t have to purchase it and I can ridicule anyone sad enough to have it on their refrigerators, but it’s just another example of thinking we need to dumb things down or create gimmicks in order to seduce others.
The SASE sponsored clowns irritating people on the light-rail trains went too far. They actually forced people to be the audience of their little show. I love poetry to no end but even I would have been bothered were I on that train. And no one will be drawn to poetry having it forced on them in a packed train car.
Does poetry need this? Isn’t poetry by itself strong enough? I realize that not everyone likes or understands poetry. But to attempt to include them with such devices is unworthy of the art form itself and disrespectful of them. At what point are we mocking this common language heightened? The best poetry readings are those in which the poetry is presented in the great Greek oral tradition. The best poetry books are those that are not “pop-up”.
Of course I realize that this brings up far too many questions. Is having an instrumental jazz backing to poetry novelty? Are open readings following a featured reader a gimmick? Again I defer to that term, context. The answers to these two examples may be “yes”. Being that I happen to enjoy both (at least at times) who am I to embrace one gimmick while attacking another? Yes, I realize the slope has been greased. When are we enhancing poetry and when are we mocking it? We can go further and look at it this way—in the case of Jazz-backed poetry, we are dealing with two art forms; jazz and poetry. These two art forms are able to sustain themselves alone. Together they collaborate, whereas Tanan’s color wheel is nothing without the reading of poetry. Separate the poetry from the action of the kids on the train and you have an insipid affront that cannot stand by itself. Pare it further back and it all depends on context.
Poetry, this common language heightened, deserves more honor and respect than it is often given. I know I take it seriously and, most times, too seriously. Still I am proud to stand in the archaic waters of poetry. I’ve done no harm. Those who would make games of it, they’ve been stripped of anything proud.
I do yearn for the days when people dressed in their best clothes and assembled in sitting rooms to hear new poems written by the poet. Social. Respectful. Honored.
© 2005 by D. Garcia Wahl.