On Poetry

At The Guardian, Stuart Evers, in describing his recent re-discovery of poetry: 'The dominance of the novel and the expectations it has engendered, [Michael Symmons Roberts] argued, have left a large readership unable to view a poem with the care, diligence and patience it requires. Like music, he went on, poetry gains from repeated experience and it has more in common with songs than novels. I appreciate this is hardly breaking news, but it did crystallise for me where I'd been going wrong in my approach to poetry. [. . . ] Poetry's image, I think, is its great barrier. Poetry means hard work, school and possibly university, time — what it isn't is the easy option. For this reason it's tempting to leave it to those who write it, to those who wish to be known as poets. Essentially this is how contemporary poetry has managed to survive into the 21st century — it's become a self-sufficient industry that requires no one from outside its borders to keep it going.'

I'd been trying to think of an appropriate way to phrase exactly what Evers writes here, without offending too many of my poetry colleagues. We're pretty much just talking to each other, folks. And the authority we give to echo-chamber theorists like Ron Silliman aren't opening it up to the general reader. Plenty of verse is fun, funny, enjoyable, etc. It doesn't have to contain a master's thesis or a world-changing affectation. Yet, reading enjoyable poetry for the sake of amusement has a serious stigma about it: how many times has a table of poets scoffed at Billy Collins, or judged someone foolish for loving Mary Oliver? It's time to get down off the high horse, I think. We wildly undervalue enjoyment in poetry.

That being said, I still assert that a good collection of poetry can and ought to be as varied and variously moving as any prose novel, memoir, essay, or story (I laughed, I cried; that old song and dance). One of my all-time favorite poems, 'Crusoe in England', by Elizabeth Bishop, has a liveliness to it, and tones that run the gambit from outright silliness to lonesome mourning. It might not be the best poem of all time (although I think it a very very good poem), but I enjoy reading it time and again; and at the heart of my love for difficult and challenging poetry lies the foundation of that affection in simple, unadorned enjoyment.