As usual, David Alpaugh articulates with absolutely unfailing accuracy the problems facing poetry in America. Someday, everyone writing PhDs about the history of American poetry will be referencing his beautifully-written essays.
Judith Offer
Loved this article. Thought provoking and vigorous in its bite! I love the idea of a poetry revolution. Perhaps it will be the poets who help us navigate the complicated world in which we find ourselves. This isn't the first time that the end of poetry has been announced. I'm writing a biography about Ina Coolbrith, California's first poet laureate (and America's first state laureate). In the book is a scene (built on a newspaper article) where a group of California poets are discussing the state of poetry at the end of the 19th century. Writer Adeline Knapp says that all the great poems have already been written. "Our poets strive after the weird, the grotesque, the uncouth in their agonies at what they are wont to call their self-revelations, but which are rarely more than painful exposures of their cranial caverns." The rest of the group branded her a heretic, but she continued anyway. Referring to the revolution of free verse, she said, "Look over the field of modern poetry and say what sane man can tell what our poets are driving at. They talk about 'lewd stars' and 'mounting waves.' They tear the language from limb to limb in their efforts to express what is inexpressible, unexistent. They give us words, words, words, wrenched from their natural meanings, and arranged in all sorts of unnatural forms." She believed that prose would better serve the new century. Poet Edwin Markham countered, ""Poetry will exist so long as the world exists. Prose cannot express all that there is to be expressed. We need poetry to express that fleeting, elusive song of life that is as real as anything in life." He also said something else that I love: "Like some airy and invisible architect, [poetry] shapes character. The poet in his highest aspect may be considered a seer." Could that be the face of a new revolution? According to Alpaugh, we may soon find out.
Aleta George
I love the trouble David Alpaugh is stirring up for the future of American poetry and how he frames this discussion with opera. I was pretty disturbed this past week when I started reading my copy of Poet & Writers magazine which is focused on MFA programs. And, yes, this is not a new subject about how too many people are being churned through these programs with degrees that for the most part are meaningless. Just for the record, the Steiny Road Poet does not have an MFA and has never seriously considered getting one. Supposedly these degrees are for people who want to teach or scale that rickety ladder of publishing success. This poet has done and led her share of poetry workshops on the inside and outside of universities to know they can be done anywhere and some have good value but at the end of a university program, what does the degree get -- a certified poet? What does this mean? However, what bothers me about Mr. Alpaugh's fine essay is what is missing. He has the older end of the poets' world covered but not the younger side which includes the controversial language poets led by such older poets as John Ashberry. Like the work of Gertrude Stein, too many people discount the work of language poets. Sure, there is a lot of so-called language poetry that is uninteresting, and this poet thinks that the MFA programs contribute to that, but just like any art form, the more you immerse yourself, the better you can judge the new stuff. So bring on the poetry theater -- there is no end of the world coming for poetry as long as we keep those sharp pencils moving.
Karren Alenier
This is a wonderful look BACK at poetry lane. And the points made on mass production of poets is a common one these days. What is not accounted for is the POETRY REVOLUTION from the CULTURAL REVOLUTION (STILL GOING ON) that not only gave us the BEATS but women, blacks, gays, minorities -- those whose voices had been oppressed for so long they were like diamonds coming from the earth. These voices still vitalize the American scene. We should check out the work of MFA poets and separate the good ones from the mediocre, for having gone to writing college does not necessarily make one an awful poet. Rita Dove came out of Iowa. Not mentioned also is the way publishers curried poets in the mid century. Not so much today. This is a very interesting article and read with respect. Grace Cavalieri: Producer "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress." (check out the stunning poets on our website.) Thanks!
Grace Cavalieri
read David Alpaugh's article
-----------------------------------------
A clarification: As I said above - "Going to a writing college does not
necessarily make one an awful poet."
QUITE THE OPPOSITE: "Rita Dove came out of Iowa." Some of our most important contributors to poetry have education from writing programs. In fairness, this should be said.
David Alpaugh's article sniffs at the heels of the Poetry Dilemma. Because the Poetry Machine in the United States has become so huge, it has become outrageously controlling. Only poets approved by the Poetry Machine receive any national coverage. The issue of actual quality in poetry is ignored or unknown.
Marvin R. Hiemstra
Kudos to you for publishing another commentary by David Alpaugh. I admire his insightful assessment of the situation of contemporary poetry, and his examples. His essay addresses young, current writers (even writing program survivors) as well as those unschooled who ply their art from a long love of the pleasure of sound put to meaning. His comments are not meant just for "old" writers. The point he makes is all inclusive: age-free, gender-free, race-free, class-free. Timeless. This morning I heard a bright & funny young woman on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" (NPR) explain what it means to speak in "abreves", ie: abbreviations. Her phrase sounded close to code - a code dictated by the character LIMITATIONS of Twitter messaging and texting. (Ah corporate domination...!) I'm sure it gets the job done, like being able to decipher the dits and dahs of Morse code. It's functional, in a weirdly atavistic way. But does it sing? Inspire? Soothe. Teach? No. It abbreviates...sucks blood out of language, music out of winds, birds out of trees. How's that for corny... will there be a place for "corny" in "abreves"?
Kathleen Lynch
I'm not so sure of even this: And music is something poets do not have in their arsenal. Or do they? To be sure, poets cannot rely on actual musical tones. It may seem like musical tones are out of bounds, but this, I think, often has to do with the fact that many poets reading voices modulate between about four tones. Developing a wider away of notes, inflections, intonations can make a reading sound every bit as musical as the musical phrase in a song.
Tim Kahl
Wonderful article! I like how Mr. Alpaugh directs us to learn from lyrics as well. Although melodies can add to the meaning of songs, I love song-writers' lyrics that beg to be repeated in my memory. Likewise, poetry that calls for the same.
Jan Olszewski
Right on, David! Well put. I heartily agree. However, Frost in introducing a book of New England ballads noted this difference between poems and songs: "The voice and ear are left at a loss what to do with the ballad till supplied with the tune it was written to go with. That might be the definition of a true ballad [or song?] to distinguish it from a true poem. A ballad does not or should not supply its own way of being uttered. For tune it depends on the music of music--a good set score. Unsung it stays half lacking..."
John Ridland
This is something I can chime in on wholeheartedly. I've written on the topic and try, as a teacher, to bring the tools of metrics, parallelism, repetition, enjambment, musicality in language itself to poetry learners. Most people are never taught these skills. To write music, one must learn the symbolic system of notes, rests, rhythm. Many poets neglect the analogous training for writing verse that "sings" and bears reading time and again. Free verse includes many musical attributes but so much of what I hear is musically numb. Thank you to Mr. Alpaugh for raising this topic. I like a lot of the points made.
Jannie Dresser
Please lock every practicing poet in Solitary Confinement with a copy of What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters and a bottle of champagne. Alpaugh's resplendent perception shines again!
Marvin R. Hiemstra
Alan Bates in the title role of Simon Gray's BUTLEY turns in one of the greatest performances I've ever had the pleasure to view. I did not see Bates onstage in London or New York (where Clive Barnes called his 1972 performance "perhaps the single greatest he had ever seen on stage"). Fortunately, Ely Landau's American Film Theatre adapted it to film in 1974 (with Harold Pinter directing) and though unavailable for many years, it was released on DVD in 2003 and is now available on Netflix. I've watched it with awe a half dozen times. Bates, who said Ben Butley was a more demanding role than Hamlet, manages to play this charismatic English Professor, whose career, marriage, friendships are all crumbling, with wit, anger, pathos, and vindictiveness that one would think more appropriate to larger than life figures like Hamlet, Antony, or King Lear. I'm not sure how Gray's play would fare with any other actor; Bates brings it as close to tragedy as any 20th century drama I've seen.
David Alpaugh
Many thanks to Scene4 for bringing us the eminently sensible, wise and salutary poetry columns of David Alpaugh. I find myself in almost total agreement with everything he says about poetry and the current poetry scene. Above all I agree with what he says in his current column: that poetry is an art, not identical but closely allied to song, that is meant to enchant and enlighten us. It is not supposed to be a credit on a resume, or a sacred mystery to be guarded zealously by the few hundred keepers of the flame.
Alpaugh's latest column reminded me of an argument I had a few years ago with two poet friends. I argued that a poem should reveal something of itself, but not all, on first reading; they insisted that a poem must be absolutely opaque the first five or six times you read it, and that anything less was a sacrilege.
Needless to say, these same friends regard the name "Billy Collins" as being in the same class as "Paris Hilton." The real tragedy is that my friends--whatever our differences in esthetics--are no more of the academy than I am. How deeply the poets have drunk of the Kool-Aid!
Miles David Moore
As a poet attuned to the musical line, I want to say before the November issue of Scene4 hides the incredibly well thought out essay What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters by David Alpaugh that there are new ways to hear some of the poetic songwriters whose lyrics are surprising and get into your head when you least expect them to. For example, the Pandora app that brings tailored radio according to your favorite singer. I personally have tapped into Madeleine Peyroux radio which delivers to my ear Nellie McKay and other new songwriters as well as those from the past like Billie Holiday.
If you don't know the lyrics of Peyroux & McKay, see my review at
The Dressing titled Don't Pick Fights with Poets
Karren Alenier
A brightly glazed conceit! (And I don't mean hubris). Congratulations to David Alpaugh for having something new to say about this old chestnut of English classes. I myself have published a wheelbarrow poem in partial response to Williams':
THE LAZY MAN'S HAIKU
Out in the night
a wheelbarrowful
of moonlight.
(The Lazy Man was too lazy to find the full complement of syllables--5,7,5--for his haiku.
John Ridland
David, I love William Carlos William's "Red Wheelbarrow". It doesn't need more than those few lines. What you did with your interpretation is brilliant. No more need be said.
Thanks,
Selma Soss
Excellent explication, David. So much depends on setting and time. Perhaps if the object was glazed with the image of Michael Jackson or Steve Jobs, it might be worth more today.
Kay Renz
More fine words from David Alpaugh that make me think...and the ebay rip at the end, outstanding!...(jeez, and all along I thought WCW described how much a kid depends on his wheelbarrow just to get by this youth thing).
C.O. Mccauley
Thank you for giving a whole new meaning to this poem and to writing the story behind the
story. Fascinating!
Liz Koehler-Pentacoff
Once again, Alpaugh fires his comedic genius across our bow to awaken creative insight into the cannon balls of his poetry and essays. A brave new look a poor Richard's legacy. (Although, it always seemed to me that Cory was a "wannabe" defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team.)
C. O. Mccauley
Great article. Poetry is not a dying art, but it does feel as though it's been pushed way off to the side. Audience sustains creation. The answer is not to just throw out a bunch of trivial repetitions or to totally reject them. Style is not the only issue, and bad poems in any style need to be called out. My idea is that the poem should give the reader an experience that is not available anywhere else, not even from another poem. That's like the great Dickinson saying that she knew it was poetry if it felt like the top of her head had been taken off. We practice an essential art, but our own weight condemns us to obscurity. Poets are not better people than non-poets. Our art is what it is. It'd be damn nice if people saw more of the heights and less of the flat plains of the "work". We, I, need/needs a true audience. Especially loved the idea of a good poem needing to be heard over and over. Hell yeah! It being in my blood/now yours.
Richard Benton
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