Does Poetry Have Street Cred?

Ari Meermans

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That's the title of a new article in The Paris Review blog: "Does Poetry Have Street Cred?"

When we think of poetry, we often cringe and whinge "it's so dense", "it's incomprehensible", "it's boring". A lot of that, I think, has to do with the way we were introduced to poetry in school. We were taught structure—using near-incomprehensible terms—rather than being given full rein to the exploration of how the poems speak to us individually. We were introduced to the Romantic poets and the American fireside poets exposing us to "beautiful language"—and primarily in a language that seemed archaic and had no application to our modern lives. Seldom, and for only the few lucky among us, was the exploration of the Renaissance poets encouraged, the satire of Alexander Pope or John Dryden. We learned Shakespeare's sonnets and we devoted some little time to the ancient epics such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey and The Iliad. And we yawned through it all.

And prose writers suffer because of it. We can't find the words, we struggle against clichés instead of developing the ability to create the perfect metaphor. Our writing has lost cadence and, sometimes, meaning.

Poetry was the predominant form of literature—the earliest forms were spoken and sung—for thousands of years and it spoke to everyone. When did the shift occur and what caused it?

. . . the late Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz—who defined poetry as “the passionate pursuit of the Real”—pinpointed the source of division to the moment in the nineteenth century when, just as the physical laws and equations of science began to assert themselves aggressively as the only relevant language to explain phenomena, poets with an eye on posterity (Ars longa, Vita brevis) resolutely glorified the poem as “Art” for its own sake (L’art pour L’art), with no grander aims than to serve as a vehicle for their fame. The result? A weakening if not a loss of the poet’s divine imagination, through which humankind once profited from the ability to provide consoling metaphors and language that explained our passage from life to death. And thus, says Milosz, the bond between the poet and the “great human family” ruptured, leaving us with no more than slim “volumes of poems incomprehensible to the public” amounting to a collection of “broken whisper and dying laughter.”


So, in an age of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan can poetry regain its street cred?
 
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Enlightened

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Poetry has different meaning to different people. Andrew Dice Clay considered himself a poet ("I'm a poet and I didn't even know it"). John Hughes had a crack at poetry in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (when the call girl paid Ferris a visit at his house).

Because of this, the question is loaded (regarding street cred). It depends on context and whom one asks the question to.

If you refer strictly to classical poets and their craft, it must be specified when asking the question.

For me, I have my favorite poems, such as "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (Dylan Thomas). I was not raised on poetry, outside of hack writers implementing crude poetry in the 70s, 80s, and later. I mostly studied literature rather than poetry in school. I think certain songwriters are poets (Bernie Taupin and George Michael).

I think it's unfair to strictly refer to classical poets as practitioners of poetry (not that I am accusing anyone of that). I think good poetry spills into other forms, such as song writing. I also think certain instrumental work as poetry (because the instrument tells part of the story of songs).

Will classical poetry ever make a comeback (in popularity)? Depends if the market demands it. For now, I don't see it coming back in the era of immediate gratification, video, technology, and so on.
 
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Ari Meermans

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Poetry has different meaning to different people. Andrew Dice Clay considered himself a poet ("I'm a poet and I didn't even know it"). John Hughes had a crack at poetry in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (when the call girl paid Ferris a visit at his house).

Because of this, the question is loaded (regarding street cred). It depends on context and whom one asks the question to.

If you refer strictly to classical poets and their craft, it must be specified when asking the question.

For me, I have my favorite poems, such as "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (Dylan Thomas). I was not raised on poetry, outside of hack writers implementing crude poetry in the 70s, 80s, and later. I mostly studied literature rather than poetry in school. I think certain songwriters are poets (Bernie Taupin and George Michael).

I think it's unfair to strictly refer to classical poets as practitioners of poetry (not that I am accusing anyone of that). I think good poetry spills into other forms, such as song writing. I also think certain instrumental work as poetry (because the instrument tells part of the story of songs).

Will classical poetry ever make a comeback (in popularity)? Depends if the market demands it. For now, I don't see it coming back in the era of immediate gratification, video, technology, and so on.

You do realize we're in the Contemporary Lit room, yes? We're talking about poetry. Period. Not "classical" poetry per se. Poetry as literature or as spoken or as sung. Does it have street credit today? Can it ever again have street cred? I say yes and that there's a whole world (literally) of contemporary poetry out there. With cadence. With meaning to contemporary life. And, by golly, we prose writers should be exploring it if we ever want to up our games.

I never know whether to be amused or disgruntled when someone proffers an opinion when it's so very obvious they haven't read an article or fully digested previous posts.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Being that I am at a job that allows me to see what 'The Kids' are up to and also somewhat involved in zine culture, I'd say that poetry is poppin' fresh right now.
 
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frimble3

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Poetry still has it's time
As long as man can force a rhyme.
They may not be words that purists know,
But ho and bro and whoa still flow.
 

ironmikezero

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When once asked about poetry's cred,
A greedy lit agent reportedly said,
"From limericks to rap,
It earns or it's crap.
Cash flows to me or this poetry's dead."
 

William Haskins

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thank you for sharing the article and for kicking off this discussion, ari.