![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
And Now for Some Poetry That is Not Mine.
Aug. 31st, 2007 10:31 amIf I am going to write poetry than I must begin reading poetry again, preferably the good kind. I went into the SLC Library yesterday and checked out to random poetry chapbooks by two authors I'd never heard of, only because Beth Ann's latest won't be coming out until Spring 2008. I read the first twenty pages of Jean-Paul Pecquer's The Case Against Happiness and found them impenetrable. They were so frustrating I had to pull out my copy of Nicole Blackman's Blood Sugar in order to counteract it.
I bought Blood Sugar right after I graduated from Knox and I never read it all the way through because after spending five years absorbing the poetic conventions most favored by the academic elite I found her style, which I had once loved, underdeveloped and juvenile. I deposited it on my bookshelf in 2004 and didn't pick it up again until last night. I read the final poem in the collection, "Fifteen, She Learns." It is a blatantly spoken word piece. I loved it.
This, of course, is just a round about way of saying what we already knew, but that I seem to have forgotten, that, in general, conventional poetic techniques do not jive with me. I do not like poems so dense with unrelated imagery that I can't get a firm idea of what's being said. I do not appreciate the ridiculous skirting of issues by shrouding them in symbolism. This type of poetry is written and read by literary snobs interested in maintaining an elite community of intellectuals whose ability to decipher poetic code allows them the luxury of calling themselves experts.
I go for poetry that is accessible. I think inner-city kids should be able to get it, mid-western housewives, prison inmates, high school drop outs. Poetry should not be confined to academic and literary circles. Opaque verse only serves to push readers away, and considering how few Americans actually read these days, that's not something we can allow to happen. I am also of the opinion that if an interest and love of accessible poetry is cultivated it will naturally lead to a broader understanding and interest in poetry of the more intellectually challenging variety.
Like Miguel Algarin, I think everyone needs a little poetry in their life. So, I offer you a couple of poems by one of my favorite writers on the planet, Sherman Alexie. He is a rare breed in the poetry community; a slam poet whose work is whole-heartedly embraced by the academic community. This is a guy our great-great grandchildren will be studying in Am. Lit. II. His work has become canon. His poems are direct and narrative. See for yourself.
( Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World )
( How to Write the Great American Indian Novel )
I bought Blood Sugar right after I graduated from Knox and I never read it all the way through because after spending five years absorbing the poetic conventions most favored by the academic elite I found her style, which I had once loved, underdeveloped and juvenile. I deposited it on my bookshelf in 2004 and didn't pick it up again until last night. I read the final poem in the collection, "Fifteen, She Learns." It is a blatantly spoken word piece. I loved it.
This, of course, is just a round about way of saying what we already knew, but that I seem to have forgotten, that, in general, conventional poetic techniques do not jive with me. I do not like poems so dense with unrelated imagery that I can't get a firm idea of what's being said. I do not appreciate the ridiculous skirting of issues by shrouding them in symbolism. This type of poetry is written and read by literary snobs interested in maintaining an elite community of intellectuals whose ability to decipher poetic code allows them the luxury of calling themselves experts.
I go for poetry that is accessible. I think inner-city kids should be able to get it, mid-western housewives, prison inmates, high school drop outs. Poetry should not be confined to academic and literary circles. Opaque verse only serves to push readers away, and considering how few Americans actually read these days, that's not something we can allow to happen. I am also of the opinion that if an interest and love of accessible poetry is cultivated it will naturally lead to a broader understanding and interest in poetry of the more intellectually challenging variety.
Like Miguel Algarin, I think everyone needs a little poetry in their life. So, I offer you a couple of poems by one of my favorite writers on the planet, Sherman Alexie. He is a rare breed in the poetry community; a slam poet whose work is whole-heartedly embraced by the academic community. This is a guy our great-great grandchildren will be studying in Am. Lit. II. His work has become canon. His poems are direct and narrative. See for yourself.
( Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World )
( How to Write the Great American Indian Novel )
