Several days ago, Laurie MacKellar sent me a link to this article by David Alpaugh in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In many ways, “The New Math of Poetry” can be read as just one more diatribe against MFA programs, small magazine publishing, and the glut of mediocre poets that keep the truly brilliant out of print. I’m not much interested in that point of view. For one thing, though I don’t have an MFA, I’ve often in my life been one of the poets advised to stop writing and get a good job. Not, however, in academics. Academia kicked me to the side of the road many years ago. It was a blow that hurt for a long time but I did get over it.
But I see the other side of the argument that poets should have “real” jobs, not cushy academic “professional poet” jobs. I’m here to tell you that a “real” job takes a lot of time and energy and training. It is not easy to be a poet when you have a 40-hour-a-week job. Not, mind you, that college writing teachers have it all roses either.
So I figure that any poet, MFA trained or not, who thinks, as Alpaugh argues
that writing and performing “poetry” is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame
will soon be disabused.
Dave Bonta calls Alpaugh‘s article rubbish, saved only by the refutations in the comments (of which there are, at this wriitng, 53). He points, in particular, to comment 22 which refutes this statement:
You can’t pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a “chapbook” for sale. The new math of poetry is driven not by reader demand for great or even good poetry but by the demand of myriads of aspiring poets to experience the thrill of “publication.”
by pointing out that anybody who owns a guitar and knows maybe three chords can play at an open mike any time they want to but nobody’s gonna invite them to Lincoln Center. In short, comparing any open mike to a performance at Lincoln Center is just bad logic. The kind of thing I would have failed in freshman comp. Open mikes are open, whether you be a violinist or a poet. Or should that be Alpaugh’s usage, “poet.”
On the other hand, as one who has judged a fair number of local contests and read for local small publications, I’m here to tell you that there is, indeed, a lot of mediocre poetry to plow through. And a friend I have who shall remain nameless is wont to say that, while bad fiction is unfortunate, bad poetry is deadly.
This argument goes on. It’s not going to be settled by one definitive article in The Chronicle. And I have poetry to write. So, as I said, big yawn.
What does interest me, though, about Alpaugh’s article are statements such as this:
For those who protest that most of these thousands of journals can be dismissed as marginal—that we need pay attention to only a handful of “prestigious” ones, like Poetry and The New Yorker—may I suggest that there could be a few Blakes or Dickinsons swimming with the guppies in that wide prosodic sea? If a truly titanic poet were to appear, wouldn’t one of the less visible but more adventuresome journals—Retort Magazine, say (“we favor the cutting edge over the blunt of the handle, the avant-garde over backward walking”)—be more likely to be his or her publisher than would status-conscious professional journals like Ploughshares and American Poetry Review?
or this one:
Such “anthologies” are less harmful, however, than those that actually pretend to select the “best.” David Lehman and the guest editors of Scribner’s Best American Poetry (hereafter known as BAP) have been protesting for years that they are just trying to publish a bunch of decent poems. Yet year after year, their title continues to make its glittering promise, with a cynical wink at sales.
The notion that a guest editor or team of screeners would read 100,000 poems is absurd. A look at the journals BAP routinely draws from gives a good clue as to methodology. In BAP 2008, for example, just 10 of the 2,000-plus journals and magazines available for consideration accounted for 37 of the 75 poems selected—49 percent. As in past issues, BAP 2008 privileged Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and a dozen or so other recurring publications. The probability that such a sliver of journals would continue to yield the lion’s share of the “best” American poetry year after year were objectivity in play is unlikely.
I am not much interested in the relative merits of poetry by Ted Kooser or John Ashbery (see comment 26 on elitism).
What I read here is that the old gatekeepers are no longer in control. That maybe, in some sense, there no longer are any gatekeepers. The game preserve is wide open.
For some people this concept, with its implication of chaos, is frightening. It leads them to conclude, as Alpaugh does:
Every now and then someone asks me, “Who are the best poets writing today?” My answer? “I have no idea.” Nor do I believe that anyone else does. I do have an uneasy feeling that a Blake and a Dickinson may be buried in the overgrowth, and I fear that neither current nor future readers may get to enjoy their art. That would be the most devastating result of the new math of poetry. The loss would be incalculable.
This statement strikes me as somewhat naive in its belief that in the past the best poets have always been saved. I always have to wonder, for every Dickinson saved, how many were lost?. Maybe my point of view is skewed by my feminism and the lack, until recent years, of women’s names in those great anthologies of the past that Alpaugh mentioned.
On my desk is a worn college anthology titled Seventeenth Century Poetry and Prose. Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Jonson, Marvell, Milton—all of the great poets of that century, and all of the minor ones (as well as some now considered unreadable) are represented there.
(See all the women included? Aphra Behn?)
Or naive in its implication that somehow if there were fewer people — more courtiers maybe? — writing poetry, they’d be writing better poetry.
I’ll admit to being old enough myself to wonder whether I can ever break through the chatter and find readers.
But in fact I do have readers. And oddly enough I have influence, in a limited sphere. As Dave Bonta is fond of pointing out, he gets more readers posting his poetry on his blog than he would get were he published in many prestigious print magazines.
And just this morning, a commenter told my friend Mark Brown how grateful they were that he posted one of his poems, “Kissing the Ugly,” on Facebook. The commenter said:
Years ago when we met at a . . . reading I asked you for a copy of it, which I kept in my wallet until the paper fell apart. Now I can print it out again for my bulletin board.
Small fame, yes. And I’m sure we’d all dance like Snoopy to get into a volume of Best American Poetry. (Well, maybe not Dave.) But even BAP is no guarantee of immortality. Do we write for some mythological future or for the now?
What some of us may see as a breakdown of standards, a loss of the old gatekeepers, others of us may hear as the tinkling of the glass ceiling as it shatters.
(Yes, I mixed my metaphors but I didn’t compaire open mike at Al’s Bar to the stage at Lincoln Center.)
(No offense meant to Al’s Bar. I’ll read at their open mike.)
I’ll leave you with this quote, which as far as I’m concerned, redeems Alpaugh’s whole article:
BAP editors recognize the need to throw in a maverick journal or obscure poet or two each year to make it look like they are fulfilling the grand promise of their title. Although Scribner wants readers to believe that they are purchasing the “best,” David Orr, in The New York Times Book Review, could be describing the entire series when he writes that the poems selected for 2004 “run the usual gamut from very good to slightly dull to what-were-you-thinking.” Pinning the word “best” on such a “gamut” could win an award for Best Chutzpah.
Thanks for the mention! I was very happy to get that comment. As I told the commenter, what more of a poem could the author ask then that it be tuck away in a wallet for future reference?
Yes, the gatekeepers are changing. My friend Harriet Leach commented that she thought it was cool that I was making my work available online and I replied: Harriet, I’m happy you think so cause “I can see the future, and it’s a place about 70 miles east of here,” as Laurie Anderson has said. Here’s my prediction: The internet will become the main source for poetry. Younger poets aren’t going to play the wait 3 months for your reject game & will use their affinity with technology to innovate. The sells… See More of poetry books will continue to be a worsening case of diminishing returns. The perceived value of a $15 book of poetry versus a $15 book of prose will always favor prose. B&N, Borders, Amazon are going to back the winning horse. MFA programs are further bottlenecking the slush piles with quality work. The growth of MFA programs is producing a larger pool of professional poets with the expectation of an audience. More professional poets creating more quality poems means a flooded market for a product that was never in demand. Best answers: Learn your craft well. Write for an audience you know. Find your audience through internet social networking, blogging, podcasting. Take control where you can. I think I’m raving.
I have found that the “glut” of poetry doesn’t have to overwhelm my life. And when I want to be exposed to all manner of poets, it’s easy. And there are always wonderful discoveries to be made. I think the huge superiority of the Blakes and Dickinsons is exaggerated and just because we can’t name 2 greatest of the great of contemporary poets and just because there are poets who write great poems but not so consistently that we can enshrine their life work… doesn’t mean this is a bad time to be living in as a poet or reader of poetry,.as opposed to the time when there were fewer poets. I don’t think it’s necessarily important to be certain who the best are, just fun to know who you like, But it was interesting to think about this, thanks.
Speaking strictly as a reader, not a writer, of poetry, the web fills a huge void for me. In print it’s difficult to sample a wide variety of poets to find those whose work most speaks to me because, to be honest, I don’t have access to many sources other than by subscription, and they are often too expensive for an amateur like me to indulge in more than a couple every few months. My library only carries the Big Name poetry mags, like The New Yorker, and never chapbooks, not even by local poets.
Instead, I’ve found favorite poets haphazardly, by acquaintance at workshops, through word of mouth, and through e-zines. If I knew of these poets had books coming out I would buy them, but if they don’t have a website that’s linked to from a zine, how would I know about it? I can’t order them from my bookstore. Only now are a few becoming available on Amazon.
This is the real failing of modern publishing, I fear. Amazing work isn’t reaching its audience because the audience doesn’t know about it. The web is great for exposure, but after I’ve found a poet I hope they have a book I can buy so that I can share it with friends.
The key, I think, in reviving poetry is getting it into libraries. I would devour it if I had access to it.
Hey, I’m blushing. Thanks for citing me.
This statement strikes me as somewhat naive in its belief that in the past the best poets have always been saved. I always have to wonder, for every Dickinson saved, how many were lost?
Exactly. Do you have that book Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Women’s Verse? A lot of good poets there who aren’t in his canonical anthology, I’ll bet. And I’m sure if you could go back to Tang Dynasty China, you’d find the critics bemoaning the decline of poetry and the glut of bad poets then, too.
I’m very encouraged by people like Terry, the previous commenter. Dale Favier, who blogs at mole, is another great example of someone who only rediscovered poetry because of blogging and the internet, and I can think of many others. I’ve enjoyed watching several newer poets who have advanced from the beginner to the journeyman stage in just two or three years of intensive involvement in online poetry exchanges and critique forums, which suggests to me that the internet may be replacing MFA programs for some people, too. Why does all this encourage me so much? Because by and large the web is a social medium. We read each other’s work and respond, too (though we’re hampered by the fact that most online magazines don’t have comments, so for now blogs and blogzines seem a bit more vital in this new online poetry culture). I’m hopeful that over time the huge imbalance between poets and poetry readers might be corrected. (Alpaugh was right about that. His article might have been rubbish in its alarmism, but it wasn’t absolute rubbish. I enjoyed his description of how the Pushcart process works, too.) Because while it’s important to try and reach non-poets, my ideal society would be one in which every educated person at least dabbles in poetry. I think that’s achievable.
Sherry – I couldn’t bring myself to comment on the original article or on many of the debates afterwards but your thoughts on this and the thoughtful comments here are the best I’ve seen.
Mark – “Find your audience through internet social networking, blogging, podcasting. Take control where you can. I think I’m raving.” I think I am going to use this as my own new personal mantra!
I obtained an MFA because I wanted to dedicate myself to writing and that was just my way of saying this is something I love to do. And, heck, I wanted to the teaching credential although I doubt I’ll ever use it cause, yes, the market is flooded.
I think there is room for all the voices that want to be presented the only things I worry about are the people who do produce poetry that don’t really read contemporary poetry and who then go out and self-publish because they aren’t succeeding even with online zines. There might be a reason your poetry is not finding an audience if you are not participating in the world of poetry. I go to far too many websites with mediocre poetry and comment praising it, then again there is an audience for the Twilight books so to each his own.
Didn’t John Donne develop his reputation from poems circulated in manuscript? I like to imagine you and Dave and Mark and all the other poets I’ve discovered on the Internet passing around their work like Sir Phillip Sydney and the Countess of Pembroke did, perhaps because that makes me part of some inner circle of literacy.
Thanks for posting this interesting stuff, and thanks, everyone, for the interesting discussion.
Jessie, use quote with my blessing. I also went for an MFA for the reasons you talk about. I had no illusion of its vocational value. I had been writing for years before I got the MFA and knew that I was doing it simply because I could, and it would possibly improve my writing and indication dedication. Being credentialed was bonus.
Pingback: Linking UP « 58 Inches
Sherry – I found you though Jessie Carty’s blog. You’ve written such an excellent piece here. I feel, for lack of a better term, *educated* after reading it. Great cites, great support for your positions, and a damn good read. Very possibly the best blog post I’ve ever read, and I mean that sincerely.
Mark – You are my new hero. You’ve won a fan on the strength of your comments here. I can’t wait to discover you for myself.