Dreaming in Iambic Pentameter

Sometimes, Pobiz seems to be simply a matter of scale.

Wednesday was a poetry packed day for me. I prepared for, and taught an hour’s class, and I gave a featured reading in the evening. Sure, the class was my daughter’s fourth grade homeroom, and we studied that lofty verse form, the limerick. And yes, the reading was a twenty five minute set in a cosy suburban library. Still, the structure of the day felt very similar to that of a ‘proper’ poet, so why am I out of sorts?

It certainly wasn’t the fourth graders, who were simply great; they threw all their energy into the project of discovering the limerick beat. How better to learn the basics of meter? And by the end of the hour they collaborated on four surprisingly good limericks. Here’s my favorite, by Nelson, Eric, John, Devon and Tyler.

There once was an ape in my closet
It needed to go on a diet
It wanted a hat
But its head was too fat
So we told the fat ape to be quiet

Note the slant rhyme. Way to go boys!!

The reading was also an excellent experience. First of all, Tom Kelly, the head of Skin Radio, had come with the express intention of meeting me. He was very complimentary about the poems I have currently playing on the station and told me they seem to be the ones people remember. (Of course, that’s mainly the accent.) He asked me for some more, and also outlined a plan he has to host an event in Philadelphia this summer combining poetry and music, which he would like me to attend.

Then I read my poems. As it was a new venue for me I was able to put together a strong reading of all my favorites, including the Pushcart Prize nominations, the Howard Nemerov sonnet and the Writer’s Digest winner, as well as more recent stuff. This was particularly important because I had prevailed upon my husband to video the reading. (I am applying to be a Dodge ‘Poet Among Us’ for 2008, and they requested a video of me reading.) I felt like the audience was rapt, and I sold three chapbooks immediately after the reading, which just about cleaned me out. I have re-ordered from Maverick Duck Press.

Tonight there is even more poetry. It’s the Release Party for the 2007 issue of Up & Under, the journal of the Quick & Dirty Poets, and I am m/c’ing. We always like to have a bit of fun at the party so we read each other’s poems rather than our own. I have chosen several of Kendall’s and am looking forward to delivering them in his unique, self-deprecating style.

So why am I sitting here, on what promises to be a warm spring day, feeling like the middle of January?

I guess it is because, although poetry IS a matter of scale, it seems to me that the different universes have no overlap, rather like the way you can’t hook up the railway tracks of different gauge models.

I AM a ‘poet among us.’ Although it would be gratifying, I don’t need the Dodge Festival’s approval to confirm that. But can I ever be a ‘poet among them?’ Probably not, MFA notwithstanding. It feels like I’m the big, plastic engine the toddler can play with, and ’proper’ poets are the finely detailed die-cast metal trains the collectors have in their attics.

In fact, the very idea is just laughable, isn’t it?

A new war could well be erupting between those aristocrats of high brow journalism, the New Yorker and Poetry. More accurately, it is a new skirmish in an ongoing war, the first salvos of which were fired in the 2006 essay American Poetry in the New Century, written by John Barr, President of the Poetry Foundation. 

Last month an article by Dana Goodyear, attacking the Poetry Foundation for its supposed “consumerization” of poetry, appeared in the New Yorker. I remember reading it at the time and finding it a little unnecessary, given that Mr. Barr’s article, five months old at that point, had already generated so much comment and discussion. Sure, $200 million (the Ruth Lilly bequest to Poetry) is a large sum to entrust to one journal. Yes, Mr. Barr said some unsupported things about MFA programs that MFA teachers and graduates did not find very palatable. But hadn’t we all agreed to disagree and get on with writing the poetry?

The New Yorker was good enough to print a response from Mr. Barr in their most recent issue, in which he defended the work of the Poetry Foundation but managed somewhat impressively to avoid escalating the conflict by offering any direct criticism of Ms. Goodyear or the journal for which she works. And that, I thought, would be that.

Not so. In this weekend’s New York Times Book Review there appears another defence of the Poetry Foundation, written by David Orr. It is a fine and incisive critique of Ms. Goodyear’s article, calling the piece “a slick production whose craftsmanship any critic would respect.” Unfortunately, it sprays around a few bullets of its own. Even more unfortunately most bystanders would probably admit under pressure that some of those bullets are right on target.

I have had a subscription to the New Yorker for about six months now. It is an excellent magazine, and I feel infinitely better informed about current affairs since I started reading it. I confess I have noted in the poem selections what Mr. Orr calls an “even more questionable…preference for its own junior employees.” One of these is of course Ms. Goodyear herself, whose poems since 2000 have apparently appeared in the New Yorker more than those of “every living American poet laureate except for W.S. Merwin.” The poems in the New Yorker rarely appeal to me, with some fine exceptions. I don’t buy the journal for the poetry, but I find the presence of poetry within its pages very reassuring.

It is easy for me to be sanguine about an unsurprising nepotism in the upper echelons of poetry publishers, because I have realistically no chance of having a poem published therein. However, I am less sanguine about the escalation of this debate. I fear it is far too likely to turn into a bloody shooting match between the New Yorker and Poetry, which can only harm poetry’s image among our non-poetry oriented intelligentsia, while at the same time alienating both journals further from grass roots poets.

Today I read at Espresso Joe’s in Keyport, NJ for the Traveling Poets, a series hosted by the admirable Reena Heenan. Maybe the fact that there was standing room only in the coffee shop was down to Ms. Heenan’s habit (recommended first, I believe, by Dana Gioia is HIS seminal essay “Can Poetry Matter?”) of billing one music act with three poets. However, it is worth noting that I sold three chapbooks (and could have sold four had I brought more than three with me) and one poem. Yes, someone came up to me after the reading and insisted on ‘buying’ my reading copy of “The Giant Walk-Through Heart” for $1, after ascertaining it wasn’t in the chapbook. One of the women who bought a chapbook told me breathlessly that she felt every word I had written was as she would have written it for herself.

So in conclusion I would like to make these statements:

To Mr. Barr: I believe at a grass roots level poetry does have its public and is addressing it.

To Ms. Goodyear: $200 million spent on poetry in any way, shape or form is better than $200 million spent sending more young men and women to Iraq.

To Mr. Orr: I believe you are an excellent critic. Could I ask you to consider whether poetry would be better served if you refrained from applying that critical talent so wholeheartedly to one of the few mainstream current affairs journals who still regularly publish it?