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    Modernism

    A broadly defined multinational cultural movement (or series of movements) that took hold in the late 19th century and reached its most radical peak on the eve of World War I. It grew out of the philosophical, scientific, political, and ideological shifts that followed the Industrial Revolution, up to World War I and its aftermath. For artists and writers, the Modernist project was a re-evaluation of the assumptions and aesthetic values of their predecessors. It evolved from the Romantic rejection of Enlightenment positivism and faith in reason. Modernist writers broke with Romantic pieties and clichés (such as the notion of the Sublime) and became self-consciously skeptical of language and its claims on coherence. In the early 20th century, novelists such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf (and, later, Joseph Conrad) experimented with shifts in time and narrative points of view. While living in Paris before the war, Gertrude Stein explored the possibilities of creating literary works that broke with conventional syntactical and referential practices. Ezra Pound vowed to “make it new” and “break the pentameter,” while T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land in the shadow of World War I. Shortly after The Waste Land was published in 1922, it became the archetypical Modernist text, rife with allusions, linguistic fragments, and mixed registers and languages. Other poets most often associated with Modernism include H.D., W.H. Auden, Hart Crane, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. Modernism also generated many smaller movements; see also Acmeism, Dada, Free verse, Futurism, Imagism, Objectivism, Postmodernism, and Surrealism. Browse more Modern poets.

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    It has been my experience that by and large about 85% of modern poetry, if one narrows it down to just the last 50 years, is only barely average poetry at best ... with at least 60% of that 85-- being sup par..
    The other higher 15 % goes in as 10% above average and the highest 5 % breaks into about 2% great, 2% very fine, 1% fantastic and worthy of the golden Era of Poetry and its Legendary masters, IMHO--
    which to me is very sad and truly shows the downgraded education system in this nation...,.. Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

  2. #347
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    Default Just Found This, Thought The Moderator Of This Forum Might Like

    Trying to keep the poetry forum going, while the moderator is absent. I'm not the best at poetry, but do have my favorites. Hoping that Tyr returns or maybe @SassyLady would step in? I'll do what I can in the meantime.

    The Four Steps to Making Poetry Discussions Accessible
    For students of all ages, discussing poetry can sometimes seem intimidating. Poetry often comes off as more abstract than prose, and students tend to get the impression that it will be more complicated than other types of literature. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. This poetry month, I think it’s time we open our minds to some new ways to make poetry more accessible for our students.


    When I discuss poetry with my (sometimes resistant) undergrad students, I ask specific questions that pull intuitive insights from them. And even though I follow these steps for college-age students, this methodology makes poetry more approachable for students at all levels, especially middle and high school students who are more likely to have critical discussions about literature in the classroom.


    Here's the question guide I use when discussing poetry with my students:


    1. Open with a discussion about the title and form
    To get your students’ wheels turning about a new piece of poetry, start with questions they can answer without hesitation. These can be simple yes or no questions about their first impressions. Then, you can ask them to dive a little deeper into why they had those impressions.


    These sorts of questions dust off the cobwebs and help students feel more comfortable speaking out loud about their ideas. Once they’re at ease expressing their opinions about their surface-level observations of a piece, they’ll be more willing to dive deeper.


    Ask questions like:


    Were you intrigued by the title of the piece?
    Did the poem match your expectation after reading the title?
    Do you notice anything interesting about the structure or form?
    2. Encourage students to focus on an emotional, gut reaction
    Ask students how a piece of poetry made them feel. If you find your students are hesitant to be a bit more vulnerable and discuss their own emotions, consider rephrasing your question to focus on the mood of the piece.


    Once your students have articulated the mood and tone of a poem, encourage them to explore any emotions they felt while reading the piece and why they may have felt that way. The “whys” are the most important part of these discussions and encourage deeper levels of critical thinking from your students.


    Ask questions like:


    How did the piece make you feel?
    Were you surprised by anything?
    How would you describe the mood or tone of the piece?
    If there were characters in the piece, how did they seem to feel?
    3. Draw connections to other pieces or experiences


    Make comparisons between other pieces of literature and real life. Students often make connections to songs, movies, and TV shows and sometimes to their own lives, and you can help them connect these dots.


    In a recent discussion, some of my students had interesting interpretations of "Summer Solstice, New York City" by Sharon Olds. A scene in the poem where police officers are trying to save a suicidal man reminded some of them of a procedural drama like Law and Order. This comparison helped them better visualize the scene and dig into its meaning.


    Then, at the end of the poem, in a moment of kindness and sympathy, the police officers offer the man a cigarette. The students were surprised by this and cited TV shows and media to show how their expectations were subverted, which helped the poem have an even deeper impact.


    Ask questions like:


    Did the piece remind you of any other literature?
    Did it remind you of other popular culture like music, movies, or TV shows?
    Were you reminded of any of your own life experiences?
    Does anything about the poem’s similarities or dissimilarities to those things surprise you?
    4. Finally, ask the tough questions
    Now that the group has fully warmed up, go into higher-level, open-ended questions. These questions encourage deeper thinking and help students consider the larger ideas at hand. Again, ask them “why.” If students can express why they believe a poem is making an important observation about the world, their analytical skills will be improved.


    For example, in the poem “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams, the speaker describes how “delicious,” “sweet” and “cold” plums he ate were, and he apologizes for eating them because the reader was likely saving them for breakfast. In this instance, you might ask your students why the speaker describes the plums the way he does, and what he might be saying beyond a strictly literal interpretation––about life and being human.


    Exploring big picture topics, like the theme and message, is a strength developed with practice. So even if students struggle to find those deeper meanings in early discussions, don’t give up. The more you discuss poetry with your students, the better they’ll get at analyzing it.


    Ask questions like:


    What is it saying about the world as a whole?
    What does it say about being human?
    What is the theme of the piece?


    Through my work with the Great Books Foundation and their Shared Inquiry method of discussing literature, I discovered the value of collaborative discussion. This method can and should be applied to every poetry discussion. Don’t just ask the questions, but also encourage students to ask questions of one another, even questions they may not know the answer to. This will spark broader conversations and deeper thought from everyone in the classroom, pushing them to think about poetry through a lens of open-ended curiosity exploration instead of black-and-white analysis.


    "The government is a child that has found their parents credit card, and spends knowing that they never have to reconcile the bill with their own money"-Shannon Churchill


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  4. #348
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    Death
    You are here: Home » Death
    Daniel Tiffany: On "In a Station of the Metro"
    What difference would it make to the history of Anglo-American poetic modernism if we were to read Pound as a poet whose progress begins and ends in the realm of the dead, the author (and protagonist) of a literary odyssey culminating in a political inferno haunted by his earliest poetic principles? What if we were to read Pound essentially as a poet of mourning—not elegiac precisely, but fetishistic and transgressive. . . .

    [. . . .]

    Pound is unable. to part with the. "cadaverous dead," to complete the task of mourning. The. poet's lost male companions become remote and inexorable fathers to his writing. In a very real sense, death both quickens and captures Pound's writing. "The work of the phantom," Nicolas Abraham writes, "coincides in every respect with Freud's description of the death-instinct" ("Phantom" 291). Haunted by a series of ghosts, Pound continually seeks to return to a place he has never been, to converse with the dead. His experience of the dead (which is the experience of the unknown or the impossible) and his conception of memory converge with the poetics of the Image. If, indeed, Images and the phantoms of memory are analogous in Pound's mind (as in the phrase "resurgent EIKONES"), then we should view the poetic Image as the return of a lost or dead object, a moment in which the subject is haunted by reality .The Image is life imaged as death, a living death) as the Egyptian Book of the Dead taught Pound and others (including Yeats and Wyndham Lewis) around the turn of the century.

    [. . . .]

    Pound's infatuation with the dead was not lost on his contemporaries, or on his later critics. Wyndham Lewis, for example, wrote of Pound, "Life is not his true concern . . . His field is purely that of the dead . . . whose life is preserved for us in books and pictures" (Lewis, Time 87). Elsewhere, Lewis described Pound as "a bombastic galleon " with "a skull and crossbones" flying from its mast. Richard Aldington's parody of the famous "Metro" poem also registers Pound's necrophilic bias:

    The apparitions of these poems in a crowd:

    White faces in a dead black faint. (SC 191)

    As tor Pound's critics., Hugh Witemeyer has described "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" as aIl "elaborate autopsy" ( Poetry of Ezra Pound 162 ), and Humphrey Carpenter describes Pound's fifth volume of poetry,Canzoni, as "the last twitch of a poetic corpse, the body being recognizably that of the Pre-Raphaelites" (SC 157).

    [. . . .]

    Distilled to a handful of syllables, the Imagist poem derives its power from its resistance to language, from the perilous condition of its own medium—a form that is inherently self-destructive. Thus, the influence of ]apanese haiku on Imagism, for example, can be understood as an exotic means of formalizing and dignifying a poetic suicide. The remains of Victorian poetry assume the haiku form as a cipher of ritual death (hence the arduous and protracted deletion of "In a Station of the Metro"—reduced over a period of six months from thirty lines to fourteen words).

    [. . . . ]

    Imagism's entanglement with the idea of death portrays allegorically the mortality of poetry itself, as well as the essential negativity of the Image: language is consistently deployed against itself in the name of the Image.

    [. . . .]

    Pound worked on the poem sporadically from 1911 to 1913, a period of tremendous ferment and change in his poetry ( and, incidentally, the period in which he produced his translations of Cavalcanti ). Pound reprints the poem in his memoir of Gaudier:

    The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

    Petals, on a wet, black bough. (GB 89)

    Bearing in mind Pound's affection for medieval concepts of memory, the "station" of the metro can be compared to the locus of memory in which the "apparitions" (imagines) appear. What's more, Hugh Kenner argues that the poem records a descent "underground," and recalls Odysseus' encounter with the souls of the dead in Hades. The "faces in the crowd," like the "EIKONES" of memory, are "apparitions": they emerge into visibility (as images), yet they are also phantoms. Obviously, this poem, which is cited by Pound (and everyone else) as a paradigm of the modern, formalist Image in poetry, is haunted by other conceptions of the Image. Indeed, Pound portrayed the "Metro" poem as a crucial turning point in his career, a work that forced him into an "impasse" ( GB 89). He struggled during a period of a year and a half to complete the poem, and cut it down from thirty lines to a single sentence. Pound leaves no doubt that the "Image" of the poem is ultimately a product of shaping and carving resistant materials. The Image is made, not received. Yet the content of the poem alludes to the Image as phantom, even as its mode of creation identifies it as an artifact. Hence, we can understand the "Metro" poem as the moment in Pound's career when the Image as phantom begins to assume the artifactual properties of the formalist Image.

    [. . . .]

    Images pieced together like mosaics, "in little splotches of color" (as Pound described the genesis of the "Metro" poem), arise from a place that hides its identity as an Image, a place that is no place: the crypt.

    [. . . .]

    One discovers in Pound's "Metro" poem (the most famous of all Imagist poems) a striking illustration of the principle of sublimation informing the Image. In his "Vorticism" essay, published in the Fort nightly Review in September 1914, Pound offers his readers a detailed account of the origins and compositional history of the "Metro" poem, as an exposition of Imagism in practice. He dates the genesis of the poem to a moment three years prior to the writing of the "Vorticism" essay, which would be 1911—the same year he wrote "Silet," the opening poem of Ripostes. Following what Pound calls "the impasse in which I had been left by my metro emotion" ( GB 89 ), he writes a series of drafts of the poem, each more condensed than the previous one. By eliminating what he calls material of "second intensity," Pound shrinks the poem from thirty lines to a single sentence. Clearly this process, whose principles Pound formulates during the "impasse" between 1911 and 1913, represents the essential negativity of the Image—that is, the regime of elimination and prohibition that I have described as fundamental to the "objectivity" of Imagist poetics.

    The sublime aspect of the Image derives from its irrepressible "substance"; indeed, the negative practice of Imagism serves not to eliminate but to preserve the "life" of the crypt: its elegiac feeling, its eroticism, its fatality. The remains of language—the Image—render the volatile materiality of the crypt; the ascetic mode of the Image draws attention to the body by making it disappear. Though Pound presents the "Metro" poem as a paradigm of modernist practice, its reference to an apparitional event in an underground "station" quite obviously links it, as I indicated in the previous chapter, to the Decadent properties of Pound's crypt poetry. Indeed, the archaic dimension of the "Metro" poem is more pronounced than Pound suggests. He dates the origin of the poem to 1911, without indicating any possible precedent in his earlier published poetry. K. K. Ruthven has demonstrated, however, that the specific "image" of the "Metro" poem derives from a very early poem of Pound's, "Laudantes Decem Pulchritudinis Johannae Templi," published in Exultations (1909). One section of the poem, addressed to "my beloved of the peach trees," describes "the vision of the blossom":

    the perfect faces which I see at times

    When my eyes are closed—

    Faces fragile, pale, yet flushed a little,

    like petals of roses:

    these things have confused my memories of her. ( CEP 119 )

    The essential features of this vision" survive intact in the "Metro" poem:

    The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

    Petals, on a wet, black bough. ( GB 89)

    It is essential to emphasize that the original "vision" occurs with eyes closed, and that the visuality of the Imagist poem must therefore be described as highly ambiguous, if not dependent on a kind of blindness.

    By 1913 (if not from the outset) the "vision of the blossom" becomes associated in Pound's mind with Japanese poetry (haiku). Indeed, the "vision of the blossom " continues to circulate in his work in a manner that eventually discloses its specifically archaic, or nostalgic, dimension. An early manuscript of Canto 4, composed in 1918, contains the following lines: "the thousand-year peach trees shed their flakes / into the stream, out of a former time." These lines suggest that the apparitional petals of the "Metro" poem should be viewed as drifting "out of a former time," as ghosts. The "peach trees in magical blossom" appear in yet another context, in Pound's essay on Remy de Gourmont, published in March 1919: "I do not think it possible to overemphasize Gourmont's sense of beauty . . . His pays natal was near to the peach-blossom fountain of the untranslatable poem" (L 343). The "vision of the blossom," which we now understand to be an apparition of the dead, is described here by Pound as "an untranslatable poem." Indeed, we could argue that the "pays natal" of the modernist Image is an "untranslatable poem"—a poem encrypted in the Image, a vision preserved and concealed by the negative praxis of Imagism. Yet the phantasmic "substance" of the "Metro" poem differs not at all from its antecedent, its forgotten ancestry, in Exultations. Thus, the "Metro" poem emerges as the nucleus of a constellation of apparitional poems spanning the entire Imagist period, from 1909 to 1919.

    The figure of the crypt mediates the divergent symbolic economies that lay claim to the modernist Image. On the one hand, the crypt is the symbolic site of modern literary positivism, and the Image is what lies within the crypt: corpse, fact, word-thing, symptom. The irreducible materiality of the Image, in this case, poses a challenge to the hermeneutical concept of meaning itself, which is based on a distinction between surface and depth, the manifest and the latent, history and divination. Yet the Image, like the figure of the crypt, harbors figurative debts to this hermeneutical model, and must therefore also be understood as reviving the phantom of meaning from the dead letter of the crypt. That is, the Image, as an emblem of hermeneutical understanding, is not an inscrutable yet all-too-obvious "thing" in the crypt, but the crypt itself and its spiritual "content."

    From Radio Corpse: Imagism and the Cryptaesthetic of Ezra Pound. Copyright © 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. [Note: This little collage of passages is meant only to suggest the outlines of a more complex argument detailed in Tiffany's book.]

    Read more about Daniel Tiffany: On "In a Station of the Metro" Log in to post comments
    Paula Bennett: On 465 ("I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--")
    Like many people in her period, Dickinson was fascinated by death-bed scenes. How, she asked various correspondents, did this or that person die? In particular, she wanted to know if their deaths revealed any information about the nature of the afterlife. In this poem, however, she imagines her own death-bed scene, and the answer she provides is grim, as grim (and, at the same time, as ironically mocking), as anything she ever wrote.

    In the narrowing focus of death, the fly's insignificant buzz, magnified tenfold by the stillness in the room, is all that the speaker hears. This kind of distortion in scale is common. It is one of the 'illusions' of perception. But here it is horrifying because it defeats every expectation we have. Death is supposed to be an experience of awe. It is the moment when the soul, departing the body, is taken up by God. Hence the watchers at the bedside wait for the moment when the 'King' (whether God or death) 'be witnessed' in the room. And hence the speaker assigns away everything but that which she expects God (her soul) or death (her body) to take.

    What arrives instead, however, is neither God nor death but a fly, '[w]ith Blue—uncertain--stumbling Buzz,' a fly, that is, no more secure, no more sure, than we are. Dickinson had associated flies with death once before in the exquisite lament, 'How many times these low feet/staggered.' In this poem, they buzz 'on the/ chamber window,' and speckle it with dirt (# 187, F, 152), reminding us that the housewife, who once protected us from such intrusions, will protect us no longer. Their presence is threatening but only in a minor way, 'dull' like themselves. They are a background noise we do not have to deal with yet.

    In 'I heard a Fly buzz,' on the other hand, there is only one fly and its buzz is not only foregrounded. Before the poem is over, the buzz takes up the entire field of perception, coming between the speaker and the 'light' (of day, of life, of knowledge). It is then that the 'Windows' (the eyes that are the windows of the soul as well as, metonymically, the light that passes through the panes of glass) 'fail' and the speaker is left in darkness--in death, in ignorance. She cannot 'see' to 'see' (understand).

    Given that the only sure thing we know about 'life after death' is that flies--in their adult form and more particularly, as maggots--devour us, the poem is at the very least a grim joke. In projecting her death-bed scene, Dickinson confronts her ignorance and gives back the only answer human knowledge can with any certainty give. While we may hope for an afterlife, no one, not even the dying, can prove it exists.

    Like 'Four Trees--upon a solitary/Acre, ' 'I heard a Fly buzz' represents an extreme position. I believe that to Dickinson it was a position that reduced human life to too elementary and meaningless a level. Abdicating belief, cutting off God's hand, as in 'I heard a Fly buzz' (a poem that tests precisely this situation), leaves us with nothing. Not just God, but we ourselves are reduced--a fact that has become painfully evident in twentieth-century literature. . . .

    From Emily Dickinson, Woman Poet. Copyright © 1990 by Paulk Bennett. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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    Caroline Rogue: On 465 ("I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--")
    Emily Dickinson's "I Heard A Fly Buzz When I Died" should be read, I think, with a particular setting in mind—a nineteenth-century deathbed scene. Before the age of powerful anodynes death was met in full consciousness, and the way of meeting it tended to be stereotype. It was affected with a public interest and concern, and was witnessed by family and friends. They crowded the death chamber to wait expectantly a burst of dying energy to bring on the grand act of passing. Commonly it began with last-minute bequests, the wayward were called to repentance, the backslider to reform, gospel hymns were sung, and finally as climax the dying one gave witness in words to the Redeemer's presence in the room, how He hovered, transplendent in the upper air, with open arms outstretched to receive the departing soul. This was death's great moment. Variants there were, of course, in case of repentant and unrepentant sinners. Here in this poem the central figure of the drama is expected to make a glorious exit. The build-up is just right for it, but at the moment of climax "There interposed a fly." And what kind of a fly? A fly "with blue, uncertain stumbling buzz"—a blowfly.

    How right is Mr. Gerhard Friedrich in his explication . . . to associate the fly with putrefaction and decay. And how wrong, I think, is Mr. John Ciardi . . . in calling the fly "the last kiss of the world," and speaking of it as one of the small creatures Emily Dickinson so delighted in. She could not possibly have entertained any such view of a blowfly. She was a practical housewife, and every housewife abhors a blowfly. It pollutes everything it touches. Its eggs are maggots. It is as carrion as a buzzard.

    What we know of Emily Dickinson gives us assurance that just as she would abhor the blowfly she would abhor the deathbed scene. How devastatingly she disposes of the projected one in the poem. "They talk of hallowed things and embarrass my dog" she writes in 1862 in a letter to Mr. Higginson (Letters, 1958, II, 415).

    Read more about Caroline Rogue: On 465 ("I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--") Log in to post comments
    Thomas H. Johnson: On 258 ("There's a certain Slant of light")
    [Emily Dickinson's] dread of winter [is] expressed in one of her remarkable verses, written about 1861 [,"There's a certain Slant of light"]. It is, like the somewhat later "Further in Summer than the Birds," an attempt to give permanence through her art to the impermanent; to catch that fleeting moment of anxiety which, having passed, leaves the beholder changed. Such moods she could catch most readily in the changing seasons themselves. . . . /89/ Winter to her is at moments intolerably dreary, and she here re-creates the actual emotion implicit in the Persephone-Pluto myth. Will spring never come? Sometimes, winter afternoons, she perceives an atmospheric quality of light that is intensely oppressive. The colloquial expression "heft" is especially appropriate in suggesting a heavy weight, which she associates with the weight of great bells or the heavy sound that great bells create. This might be the depressing chill and quiet preceding a snowfall. Whatever it is, it puts the seal on wintriness. Coming as it does from heavens, it is an imperial affliction to be endured ("None may teach it—Any"). Even the landscape itself is depressed. When it leaves, she fe....................
    *****************************************
    much more at link given...--Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    8 Reasons Why Poetry Is Good for the Soul
    By: Robert Lee Brewer | June 16, 2016

    Here’s a guest post from KM Barkley, a writing coach and editor from Lexington, Kentucky, in which he shares his eight reasons why poetry is good for the soul. If you have an idea for a guest post too, just send an e-mail to robert.brewer@fwcommunity.com with the subject line: Poetic Asides Guest Post.

    *****

    The Digital Age is booming. That means attentions are shrinking and focus is altering. With 140-character communication on Twitter, picture and visual postings on Pinterest, and classrooms shying away from difficult material in favor of easy reading and easy grades, poetry has become one of the most underutilized, and underestimated, mediums in modern culture.

    I think Phyllis Klein from Women’s Therapy Services said it best: “Turning to poetry, poetry gives rhythm to silence, light to darkness. In poetry we find the magic of metaphor, compactness of expression, use of the five senses, and simplicity or complexity of meaning in a few lines.”

    **********

    1. POETRY IS GOOD FOR DEVELOPMENTAL LEARNING
    In child education, children’s verbal and written skills are somewhat underdeveloped. Poetry helps by teaching in rhythm, stringing words together with a beat helps cognitive understanding of words and where they fit. Additionally, it teaches children the art of creative expression, which most found highly lacking in the new-age educational landscape. In essence, poetry gives them a great tool for developing one’s self.

    2. POETRY IS GOOD FOR DEVELOPING SKILLS
    Writing, speaking, and understanding can all be greatly influenced and nurtured by the use of poetry. Learning rules for writing, and then breaking them with poetry, can give writing alternative beauty. Speaking poetry aloud with its beat, rhythm, and rhyme can loosen the tongue and craft a firm foundation for verbal communication. Learning to understand poetry also gives the mental fortitude, as well as the drive, to understand written communication (an invaluable trait in business, from my perspective).

    3. POETRY HELPS IMPROVE IDEAS
    Have you ever sat there and not known what to write? Picking up poetry, reading through different excerpts from classic poets can blossom ideas you never knew existed. Reading and writing poetry makes you think of new ideas, but can also dramatically change the way you perceived old ones. It is a way to process experiences, visual descriptions, and emotions.

    4. POETRY IS THERAPEUTIC FOR THE WRITER
    Biblio/Poetry Therapy is a creative arts therapy using the written word to understand, and then communicate, feelings and thoughts. Poetry is typically short, but largely emotional. Writers get in touch with sentiments they might not have known they had until it was down on paper. Depression and anxiety are among the top two mental illnesses being treated with Biblio-therapy, and through poetry, one can start to understand the hindrances and blocks being formed around their mind. Expressing how one feels is difficult. I’ve found that poetry is one of the best outlets.

    5. POETRY IS THERAPEUTIC FOR THE READER
    For those who have a harder time expressing themselves, reading poetry can have a similar positive effect as writing it. Reading poetry allows one to see into the soul of another person, see what is weighing on their minds and on their hearts, and can open doors to feelings that are sometimes suppressed until that door is opened. Reading can shine a light on all those dark and hidden crevices of the heart and mind once thought permanently closed off to the world.

    **********

    6. POETRY HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS THEMSELVES
    By design, poetry is broken into short, but strategic sentences. By doing so, writing and reading poetry makes one understand the significance of every single word and their placement. Sometimes, without a single word, it can change the entire rhythm and meaning of the poem itself. Writing poetry forces the person to consider, and reconsider, each piece and length of their verses. In poetry, words are magic, moods, depth, and difficult. One gains the utmost appreciation for them when handling delicate sentence structures provided in poetry pieces.

    7. POETRY HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND PEOPLE
    One of the hardships of the current age is the ability to understand one another. Miscommunication and misunderstandings lead to mass amounts of frustration. Reading and writing poetry actually gives people the improved ability to understand others. From a writer’s prospective, you have to be able to convey the true nature of your writing to an unknown reader. That means diving deep into what parts you want them to understand, what you want them to feel, and what to take home with them that will resonate long after reading. For a reader of poetry, it gives you the patience to look into someone else’s mind and cultivate empathy for another person. Both conveying personal opinion and the ability to empathize are tantamount to respectable communication.

    8. POETRY HELPS YOU UNDERSTAND YOURSELF
    Ever felt out of place? Have you ever wondered why you are thinking or feeling a certain way? Ever been frustrated because your friends or partners couldn’t ever possibly understand you because you don’t even understand what is going through your head? I have found that the best way to grasp internal turmoil is to write poetry. It slows the world down around you. It streamlines your thoughts to short, direct sentences, while soothing the anxiety out of your body with the lyrical style. It makes you think. It puts a spotlight on what the issues might be and forces you to logically and methodically answer to it. Poetry can give you insights into yourself that you never knew existed but always wanted to understand. There is no greater sadness than not knowing one’s self-worth, but there is no greater power than complete understanding of one’s identity. Poetry can give you that power.

    *****

    KM Barkley
    KM Barkley

    KM Barkley is a writing coach and editor from Lexington, KY. He has written articles for professional corporate HR training and has edited novels as well as scripts and screenplays for The Art Institute of Houston. He is an active member of Writer’s Digest and The Warrior Forum.

    Barkley launched http://WriterIntellect.us – a hub for writing tips for Aspiring Authors, Bloggers, and Corporate HR Business.

    Find him on Twitter @writeBarkley
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Well Versed: Why Teaching Poetry Matters
    In this era of short attention spans and 40-word tweets, poetry may be the ideal vehicle for enticing students to learn.


    APR 19, 2014· 3 MIN READ Suzi Parker is a regular contributor to TakePart. Her work also appears in The Christian Science Monitor and Reuters.
    Bio

    In classrooms across the country, Emily Southerton witnesses the magic of poetry and its ability to transform kids.

    As Teach for America’s digital initiative specialist, Southerton is part of the organization’s Poet Warriors Project, a nationwide program that helps kids write and publish poetry on tough issues they face, such as poverty, gangs, and peer pressure. The idea is to generate positive changes in their lives. More than 50 classrooms around the country, and more than 2,500 students, have written for it.
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    “Poetry ignites students to think about what it’s like to share their opinion, be heard, and make a difference in their world,” Southerton said. “Students can let go of traditional writing rules with poetry. I tell the kids the most important thing about poetry is that people feel differently after reading it.”

    RELATED

    Want Kids to Embrace Books? Tell Them to Read to a Dog
    For centuries, poetry has enlightened students in classrooms and, yes, occasionally bored them to tears. In 1996, the Academy of American Poets inaugurated National Poetry Month; it's held in April, “when schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets throughout the United States band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture,” according to its website.

    Literature teacher Andrew Simmons lamented, in a recent story for The Atlantic, that many schools no longer teach poetry and that it often gets a bad rap for being boring. He wrote: “In an education landscape that dramatically deemphasizes creative expression in favor of expository writing and prioritizes the analysis of non-literary texts, high school literature teachers have to negotiate between their preferences and the way the wind is blowing. That sometimes means sacrifice, and poetry is often the first head to roll.”

    Simmons, however, said that teachers shouldn’t shy away from poetry because it can help students become more versed in writing and literature. He’s not alone. Throughout the country, teachers and academics say that poetry should be a curriculum priority in English classes.

    “Writing poetry remains one of the best tools we have for knowing what we think and what we really feel,” said Anna Marie Hong, a published poet and a visiting writer at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa. “Writing provides a way for us to process experience, which is often difficult for young adults, to understand it better, to connect our lives with the experiences of others, and to change events through this new understanding.”

    Schools and programs are striving to expose students in every grade to poetry and not just during the month of April.

    In New York, P.S. 163, a public school in the Bronx, launched a haiku program last fall for second graders that brought to life the haiku of Sydell Rosenberg, a public school teacher, an ESL teacher, and a published American haiku poet who lived in New York City before her death in 1996. The haiku program, which continued this spring, was led by Arts for All, a nonprofit in New York City that offers accessible artistic opportunities to inner-city children who face socioeconomic, physical, or emotional barriers to exploring the arts.

    Resident artist Vidho Lorville led six visual arts workshops that used Rosenberg’s haiku as a teaching tool. The students painted landscapes inspired by the short poems. Students drew and colored animals that were mentioned in the haiku and then put them on scenic backgrounds. The children were taught that they should see haiku and poetry everywhere and then turn those moments into poetry by writing down their thoughts and creating art.
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    “I am neither a teacher nor a poet, but I think children need poetry in their lives—poetic language that engages them…words that can open up worlds and help them not just to ‘see’ and to imagine in a heightened way but to interpret what they see artistically,” Amy Losak, Rosenberg’s daughter, says. “Every observation, no matter how seemingly mundane or ‘small,’ can be turned into a haiku poem, and the images conjured or captured in haiku can be ‘translated’ into a highly personal piece of art. The art the kids create brings the words to tangible life.”

    The Poet Warriors Project gives students from low-income neighborhoods an outlet through which their voices can be heard about the issues that affect them.

    “Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, and Gwendolyn Brooks wrote for their communities and wrote for the purpose of the nation hearing about their communities,” Southerton says. “Not just for the joys of writing, but they had the drive to change the national dialogue. They try to imitate that and try to speak for their communities honestly.”

    The project’s website publishes poems by students, including many in ESL classes; it also offers National Poetry Month activities and a year-round curriculum for teachers.

    In this era of short attention spans and 40-word tweets, poetry may very well be the ideal vehicle for enticing students to learn.

    “The fact is that poems are short to read, and that makes it less intimidating to read and write one,” Southerton says. “The shortness is something that students really, really connect to. We’ve had an overwhelming positive response. So many students have said they feel like a writer and also see what their purpose is in life. They say, ‘I am a person who has something to say to the world.’ ”

    This article was created as part of the social action campaign for the documentary TEACH, produced by TakePart's parent company, Participant Media, in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    ARTS ENTERTAINMENT
    The Importance Of Poetry
    by Adeline Fecker University of Oregon Oct 10, 2016

    Quote fancy

    Poetry is an art form that has survived for thousands and thousands of years. We study it in school and we hear quotes from poems scattered thorughout our life. But do we ever truly make meaning of it? Does it even matter? My answer to you is yes it does. Reading poetry and or writing poetry can drastically improve your life, because it has improved mine. In this article I will attempt to articulate why poetry is important to read an

    Reading Poetry

    Poetry is one of the most powerful forms of writing because it takes the english language, a language we believe we know, and transforms it. Suddenly the words do not sound the same or mean the same. The pattern of the sentences sound new and melodious. It is truly another language exclusively for the writer and the reader. No poem can be read in the same way, because the words mean something different to each of us. For this reason, many find poetry and elusive art form. However, the issue in understanding poetry lies in how you read poetry. Reading it logically results in an overall comprehension, rigid and unchanging. However, reading it emotionally allows the nuances and paradoxes to enter our understanding. Anyone who writes poetry can attest, you have to write it with an open heart. So as a reader, we must do the same. All poems are insights into the most intimate inner workings of the writer's mind and soul. To read it coldly and rationally would be shutting the door on the relationship that the writer is attempting to forge with you. Opening your heart to poetry is the only way to get fulfillment fr

    If you imagine poetry as a journey, you must be willing to trust the writer to guide you. Unwilling readers will never experience every part of the adventure in the same way open minded readers do. The journey may be filled with dead ends and suffering or endless joy and happiness. And still, you go. You pick up the poem, you read, you listen, and you feel.


    In our culture we are experiencing a crisis where American people are the unhappiest people in the world statistically. How do we solve this? I answer: Mindfullness, gratitude, and poetry.

    Writing Poetry

    From a writer’s perspective, writing poetry can be equally elusive as reading poetry. When I first started writing poetry, the advice I always heard was practice, find your voice, keep a journal. I did all these things but still my poems were flat and inert. What was I missing? I poured over poems by Angelou, Shakespeare, Austen, and Wilde looking for a pattern, something I could emulate. This was the problem. I was unwilling to open my heart. I thought poetry could be a mask I could craft. But no matter how beautiful I made it, it would never come to life. It would never fit on another person’s face. It did not eve fit on mine.

    My first poem that came alive was written in the dark late at night. I was lying in bed and I felt something stifling me. I could not sleep. I let the thoughts stew in my head until they could not remain locked away forever. I reached for my journal and I wrote.

    Vulnerability was the key. Poetry is about expressing those thoughts and feelings we keep the most suppressed. We must be honest with ourselves about what we feel in order to write anything worth reading. It’s stopping and grabbing a thought by the tail and pulling it up into our conscious mind. It’s trying to express the beauty, and wonder we see. It’s about connecting our hearts and our minds to ourselves and our surroundings. It’s about finding peace.

    Poetry is perhaps a more effective stress relief than working out or meditating because it forces you to express your feelings through words, which helps you not only understand your feelings but also communicate them more effectively. Furthermore, it is a skill that will remain in use for your entire life no matter what you end up doing professionally.

    So reach for the pen, and let go of those things that have been burdening your freedom. Read poetry with your heart and let it affect you. The answer to our questions about the meaning of life, and the purpose of pain were written in poems. They have always been there.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Is Free Verse Killing Poetry?
    By William Childress
    PUBLISHED: September 4, 2012
    William Childress

    Editor’s note: After VQR’s Spring 2012 issue released, I received an e-mail response to Willard Spiegelman’s essay, “Has Poetry Changed?” from former National Geographic photojournalist and published poet William Childress. I asked him to elaborate further on that commentary, to which he sent the following.

    –––

    When Willard Spiegelman, noted scholar, critic, and editor of Southwest Review,wrote a penetrating essay in the Spring 2012 Virginia Quarterly Review, “Has Poetry Changed?”, I wanted to reply, “Not fast enough to suit me!” However, the change I wanted was to step back a century and start re-assessing rhymed and metrical poetry.

    Free verse has now ruled the poetry roost for ten decades, and its record for memorable poetry is spotty. Catching on around 1912 when Harriet Monroe was starting Poetry,the apparent writing ease of vers libreattracted millions of poetasters, not to mention the support of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and other important poets. No more struggling to find le mot juste,or create original images.Just sit down and write.

    As you may have guessed, I’m a formalist, but I’ve written and published a lot of free verse—mainly because of editorial bias against form poetry. In the hands of the right poet, which is true of any form, vers librecan shine—but we’ve had a steady diet of it for way too long. We are, unofficially at least, a one-poetry nation, and various editors, publishers and hidden agenda-ites seem determined to keep us there. As David Orr points out in Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry,“There is complete avoidance and disdain for the kinds of poetry pre-Baby Boomers were raised on.”

    Well, I’m a pre-Baby Boomer, and I think such favoritism is stupid, petty, and demeaning to poetry. Form poetry is the kind of poetry a third of living Americans grew up with. A nation that discards its traditions and history is a nation without pride in itself. When I was a youth in the 1940s, most poetry was gentler and more pleasant in tone, but powerful in effect. As a migrant worker and the son of a sharecropper, my schooling was sporadic and interrupted. But somewhere I came across a poem by John Crowe Ransom, “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter.” The way he used words to paint pictures was so powerful, it was like a stonecutter engraving them in my memory.

    The lazy geese, like a snow cloud,
    Dripping their snow on the green grass,
    tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
    Who cried in goose, Alas …

    A few years after reading the lyrical beauty of a poem that could make me feel good, even about death, came Howl,Allen Ginsberg’s nihilistic free verse oral diarrhea—and suddenly the world was supposedly singing the praises of Ginsberg’s drug-poisoned pals, who

    let themselves be fucked in the ass
    by saintly motorcyclists
    and screamed with joy
    who blew and were blown by those human seraphims, the sailors

    Howlin’ Allen has the right to describe the rotting sowbelly of life, but I have the right to say it’s pointless, and as far from real poetry as shit is from Chanel #5. Beat poetry went far toward making ordinary Americans see poets as drug-crazed society-wreckers who wrote only for themselves. By definition, that makes them elitists.

    I researched a large stack of Beat poetry magazines from the 1970s and 1980s for this post, ranging from Doug Blazek’s Olé Anthology to Kumquat 3 and E.V. Griffith’s highly touted Hearse (“A Vehicle for Conveying the Dead”). Not only were 95 percent of the poems free verse, many of them hewed to a core of societal destruction that in another era would sound like fascism. It was an argument for too much freedom encouraging anarchy. Vitriol was plentiful, but ways to improve things were not.

    A blind person can see that American society is in turmoil, with a fractured government and enormous debt. Both political parties are to blame—but shouldn’t poets be trying to change things instead of writing chaos-poetry or “woe is me” diaries? Who will read poetry when they can’t find a common bond in a poet’s writing? Who likes ruptured grammar, twisted syntax and what my grandpa called flapdoodle? There’s at least a partial consensus that free verse these days consists of a lot of badwriting. I forget who said, “Poets should learn to write before they try to write poetry.” Many of today’s poets don’t seem to realize that all writing is connected.

    Here’s another example of free verse:

    Clench-Watch:
    Fear-spores in-coil taut
    (and calm) as copper-snakes
    or-springs—before they cause.

    From the sweeping grandeur of The Iliad and The Odyssey to this unfinished fragment in less than 3,000 years. God bless progress. This techie poem is tighter than post-Preparation-H hemorrhoids, but is it poetry, or what we called, back in the day, doodling? It was written by a pleasant-faced young man named Atsuro Riley, and is being hailed as a breakthrough for free verse. Breakthrough to what? This is the amazing shrinking poem. Soon we’ll be gone. Can modern poets be poeticidal?

    I agreed with Spiegelman in several areas. Like him, I don’t read much modern poetry. Of today’s writing students he said, not unkindly, “Only a small percentage can satisfy the technical prosodic demands and also write a syntactically accurate English sentence.” And they want to be poets? Free verse must be sending students a message that form poetry does not: beginning poets don’t need “syntactically accurate sentences” to write free verse.

    At 80, I won’t spend time trying to fathom the Rubik’s Cube verse of Atsuro Riley, although I wish him well. His poetry just doesn’t move me, and movements are important to octogenarians. I’d rather read Lewis Carroll than Atsuro Riley.

    Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
    The jaws that bite, the claws that snatch,
    Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
    The frumious bandersnatch!

    ***

    In 2006 John Barr, head of the Poetry Foundation, wrote: “American poetry is ready for something new, because our poets have been writing in the same way for a long time now. There is fatigue and stagnation about the poetry being written today.”

    Who determines what’s poetry and what’s not? Who are the grand taste-makers? I have always heard, and understood, that poetry has no definition—an argument that goes back to at least the 17th century. If true, how is it that critics, reviewers, and bureaucracies can give awards, prizes, and accolades to certain poets and poetry? How do they define the best of an indefinable art? And why do the rest of us sheep go along with it?

    How about something old, Mr. Barr, instead of something new? Really good poems, like wine, improve with age. But free versers have welded shut the doors to the past. Where once we recited favorite poems (always rhymed), or had them taught in school, we now ignore the orphan art in droves. We’re trying everything but free coupons, and the results are a combination circus (slam poetry) and coldly mechanical poems that verify the nature of our earplug-wearing, neighborless, push-button society. Where are the sabot throwers when we need them?

    Poet Dana Gioia wrote in his 1992 essay “Can Poetry Matter?”:

    American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life, it has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group. Little of the frenetic activity it generates ever reaches outside that closed group. Like priests in a town of agnostics they still command a certain residual prestige. But as individual artists, they are almost invisible.

    Not only a telling comment 20 years ago, but an accurate prophecy of our current malaise. Poets should also be aware of a report from the University of Florida at Gainesville, which followed MFA graduates for a decade. Only ten percent landed writing or editing jobs. The rest found jobs in real estate, insurance, or McDonald’s. Memphis State University’s Thomas Russell wrote, “Ninety percent of the MFA students are never going to publish a word after they leave the program.”

    Poetry needs readers, not writers, but how many poets read any poetry but their own? As one editor said, “All poets should stop writing for a year.” When I was studying poetry in Philip Levine’s class in 1962, he made a point of telling us, “Poetry is the most useless art.”

    Yet poetry has been discovered by commerce. The dean of American verse magazines, Poetry, turned 100 in 2012, and is trying to avert a poetryless future. In 2003, it received a $200 million dollar bequest from Ruth Lilly, and has become a kind of Sears Roebuck for poets and readers. That’s fine with me. I grew up with Sears Roebuck, and not just in our outhouse. Christian Wiman’s inking of all kinds of poetry means there’s now something for everyone. The fact that Wiman’s editorship has increased Poetry’s readers from 11,000 to 30,000 is a hopeful sign. He also says poets should be well-grounded in form poetry before leaping into vers libre. Even that ol’ fascist Ezra Pound announced: “Poetry should be at least as well-written as prose.”

    When Germaine Greer declared, “Art is anything an artist calls art,” she probably didn’t mean Thomas Kinkade, who painted for more plebian tastes and died very rich. The gulf between what is and is not art has been debated forever—the blind leading the blind into a kind of elitism. If no definition exists, why are critics, reviewers and the American Academy of Poets tripping over each other to laud the hottest vers libre poet in years? Perhaps I’m unkind—but everyone else is so laudatory, I felt that at least one ordinary mortal should challenge the gods.

    What goals do modern poets have? At least during the Viet Nam War, poets wrote antiwar poems and marched. I was among the 225,000 anti-Viet Nam War marchers in 1969, when Nixon watched football in a White House surrounded by a protective ring of buses. A former student of mine, Danae Walczak, contacted me not long ago to remember that march. Why have there been no major demonstrations against Afghanistan, when our government can’t even say why we’re there? As a Korean War veteran in the Washington march, my goal was to get our guys home. In August 2012, a young marine, murdered by one of our “Afghan allies” did come home—in a casket. The turnout for his funeral was enormous, with hundreds lining highways and bridges. How many poets will be concerned enough to write poems? Or will they be too busy entering contests and seeking easy recognition?

    I’m not advocating control of vers libre, which has been around since the Book of Kings,just that its adherents stop stifling rhyme and meter poems. If poetry is to survive, it needs to use everything in its armory, especially metrical rhymed poems—serious, humorous, nonsensical, satirical, even insult poems. Variety, as Christian Wyman found, is the spice of life, and it’s absurd to think that vers libre should be the only form American poetry should take. No wonder John Barr found stagnation in American poetry. So loosen up, vers librists, and ask formalists to join you. Poetry needs all the help it can get. Or can’t you write good rhymed and metrical poems? Walt Whitman couldn’t.
    ************************************************** ****

    I’m not advocating control of vers libre, which has been around since the Book of Kings,just that its adherents stop stifling rhyme and meter poems. If poetry is to survive, it needs to use everything in its armory, especially metrical rhymed poems—serious, humorous, nonsensical, satirical, even insult poems. Variety, as Christian Wyman found, is the spice of life, and it’s absurd to think that vers libre should be the only form American poetry should take. No wonder John Barr found stagnation in American poetry. So loosen up, vers librists, and ask formalists to join you. Poetry needs all the help it can get. Or can’t you write good rhymed and metrical poems? Walt Whitman couldn’t.
    This snippet is pretty much my take on modern poetry. And yes I have written free verse myself and see some merit in it when it is done well, with heart, depth and a message within. Which seems about 95% of today's free verse, lacks entire entirely, or lacks at least enough to make it a sad excuse for poetry, IMHO..
    Chaotic ramblings do not real/true poetry make..
    Great rhyming, depth , message and at least some clarity does.
    Or isn't the reader supposed to understand or get some benefit from reading it?
    Majority of free verse seems to be written by the poet/author as if its reminder note themselves about themselves and others be damned if they dont see it or agree with it as magnificent writing!! .-Tyr
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 07-16-2019 at 11:32 PM.
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    Default Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important The oft-neglected literary form can help students


    Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important
    The oft-neglected literary form can help students learn in ways that prose can't.


    ANDREW SIMMONS
    APR 8, 2014


    Poetry is far more than Dead Poets Society .
    16 years after enjoying a high school literary education rich in poetry, I am a literature teacher who barely teaches it. So far this year, my 12th grade literature students have read nearly 200,000 words for my class. Poems have accounted for no more than 100.

    This is a shame—not just because poetry is important to teach, but also because poetry is important for the teaching of writing and reading.


    High school poetry suffers from an image problem. Think of Dead Poet’s Society's scenes of red-cheeked lads standing on desks and reciting verse, or of dowdy Dickinson imitators mooning on park benches, filling up journals with noxious chapbook fodder. There’s also the tired lessons about iambic pentameter and teachers wringing interpretations from cryptic stanzas, their students bewildered and chuckling. Reading poetry is impractical, even frivolous. High school poets are antisocial and effete.

    I have always rejected these clichéd mischaracterizations born of ignorance, bad movies, and uninspired teaching. Yet I haven’t been stirred to fill my lessons with Pound and Eliot as my 11th grade teacher did. I loved poetry in high school. I wrote it. I read it. Today, I slip scripture into an analysis of The Day of the Locust. A Nikki Giovanni piece appears in The Bluest Eye unit. Poetry has become an afterthought, a supplement, not something to study on its own.

    In an education landscape that dramatically deemphasizes creative expression in favor of expository writing and prioritizes the analysis of non-literary texts, high school literature teachers have to negotiate between their preferences and the way the wind is blowing. That sometimes means sacrifice, and poetry is often the first head to roll.

    Yet poetry enables teachers to teach their students how to write, read, and understand any text. Poetry can give students a healthy outlet for surging emotions. Reading original poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills that are often neglected in high school literature classes.

    Students who don’t like writing essays may like poetry, with its dearth of fixed rules and its kinship with rap. For these students, poetry can become a gateway to other forms of writing. It can help teach skills that come in handy with other kinds of writing—like precise, economical diction, for example. When Carl Sandburg writes, “The fog comes/on little cat feet,” in just six words, he endows a natural phenomenon with character, a pace, and a spirit. All forms of writing benefits from the powerful and concise phrases found in poems.

    I have used cut-up poetry (a variation on the sort “popularized” by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin) to teach 9th grade students, most of whom learned English as a second language, about grammar and literary devices. They made collages after slicing up dozens of “sources,” identifying the adjectives and adverbs, utilizing parallel structure, alliteration, assonance, and other figures of speech. Short poems make a complete textual analysis more manageable for English language learners. When teaching students to read and evaluate every single word of a text, it makes sense to demonstrate the practice with a brief poem—like Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.”

    Students can learn how to utilize grammar in their own writing by studying how poets do—and do not—abide by traditional writing rules in their work. Poetry can teach writing and grammar conventions by showing what happens when poets strip them away or pervert them for effect. Dickinson often capitalizes common nouns and uses dashes instead of commas to note sudden shifts in focus. Agee uses colons to create dramatic, speech-like pauses. Cummings of course rebels completely. He usually eschews capitalization in his proto-text message poetry, wrapping frequent asides in parentheses and leaving last lines dangling on their pages, period-less. In “next to of course god america i,” Cummings strings together, in the first 13 lines, a cavalcade of jingoistic catch-phrases a politician might utter, and the lack of punctuation slowing down and organizing the assault accentuates their unintelligibility and banality and heightens the satire. The abuse of conventions helps make the point. In class, it can help a teacher explain the exhausting effect of run-on sentences—or illustrate how clichés weaken an argument.



    Yet, despite all of the benefits poetry brings to the classroom, I have been hesitant to use poems as a mere tool for teaching grammar conventions. Even the in-class disembowelment of a poem’s meaning can diminish the personal, even transcendent, experience of reading a poem. Billy Collins characterizes the latter as a “deadening” act that obscures the poem beneath the puffed-up importance of its interpretation. In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” he writes: “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it./They begin beating it with a hose/to find out what it really means.”

    The point of reading a poem is not to try to “solve” it. Still, that quantifiable process of demystification is precisely what teachers are encouraged to teach students, often in lieu of curating a powerful experience through literature. The literature itself becomes secondary, boiled down to its Cliff’s Notes demi-glace. I haven’t wanted to risk that with the poems that enchanted me in my youth.

    Teachers should produce literature lovers as well as keen critics, striking a balance between teaching writing, grammar, and analytical strategies and then also helping students to see that literature should be mystifying. It should resist easy interpretation and beg for return visits. Poetry serves this purpose perfectly. I am confident my 12th graders know how to write essays. I know they can mine a text for subtle messages. But I worry sometimes if they’ve learned this lesson. In May, a month before they graduate, I may read some poetry with my seniors—to drive home that and nothing more.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Writing-Poetry-Takes-Courage


    BUSINESS IN RHYME
    THE POET’S MANIFESTO
    E.E. Cummings
    Writing poetry takes courage and a dash of craziness (and how is that good for you, as a writer)
    May 15, 2016 by maja todorovic,
    posted in business in rhyme, write, create, innovate!, writer's creative bites
    e.e. cummings

    Confronting blank page takes courage? It might sound silly to many, but if you are a writer, especially a poet, you probably know what I mean:

    It takes courage to spend time with yourself and dig deep, to the darkest and scariest parts of yourself and let them shine through your poems.

    Only very few are brave enough to go somewhere place quiet, shut down the noise of the outer world and start listen to themselves; to hear who they truly are, and with open heart receive what ever they encounter. All experiences full of disappointments, grief, hurts, desires and happiness live and expand in each of these verses that we can read in the poems of those brave enough to write about their feelings. And they give us opportunity to live them also.

    It takes courage to accept who you are and be honest about it.

    Poetry is so personal on the one hand and universal on the other, that you simply can’t fake it. In every poem, your writing is like stripping your soul to the bare bones, where you become even more vulnerable. But that doesn’t make you anything more weak – that brevity adds up to your uniqueness that world is hungry for.

    It takes courage to write, despite all the negative connotation that majority of people hold against poetry and simply not to care.

    Some people simply don’t like poetry. There maybe many reasons for that. But also, there are not very supportive of those who does enjoy writing poetry. And it takes courage to continue to write and share our thoughts, no matter the impressions. I love what Jesse Graves, an assistant professor of English at East Tennessee State University said on the topic in this article:

    For me, poetry expresses more about what it is like to be alive in the world today than any other art form. For a poem to work, it needs to address matters of the heart and of the head in almost equal measure. Since there is no interference between the reader and the text, poetry can deal with emotions in an intellectual way, and deal with abstractions in a way that evokes feelings.

    It does take courage to try writing poems, especially if you are going to share them with others. Students also have to be willing to enter an unknown territory, even if I give them an assignment to write about, or a form, like a sonnet, they still have to find their own way into the subject matter. There is no real blueprint for how to write a poem..

    It takes courage to write poetry and constantly juggle between loving and hating your own writing.

    There are days when writing for you is like breathing – that without it you simply couldn’t live. But there are also days when you are unsatisfied with anything you write and you simply need a break. And that’s completely O.K. Actually that distancing yourself from writing can reignite your passion and it takes courage to do that also.

    And someone might just call you crazy because you see world a bit differently: you see the joy in the heavy autumn storm, the warmth in the cold winter day or beauty in your teared bag and spilled groceries on the street. For me personally, writing poetry brings the opportunity to see and embrace life’s little imperfections in humble, and sometimes humorous way: instead of dwelling on how everything is wrong and complain – just to accept it, make the best of what I can in given situation and write a great poem about it 🙂

    Poetry is everywhere, it just needs editing.

    is what James Tate once said, and we are not even aware how much truth there is in those words.

    All these aspects, contribute to forming one, in my opinion, a divine process that happens while you write poetry. It shapes you into a person you are supposed to be, the writer you strive to be. And for that kind of growth you do need courage – to accept your weirdness and just enjoy the ride.

    It is in the small things we see it.
    The child’s first step,
    as awesome as an earthquake.
    The first time you rode a bike,
    wallowing up the sidewalk.
    The first spanking when your heart
    went on a journey all alone.
    When they called you crybaby
    or poor or fatty or crazy
    and made you into an alien,
    you drank their acid
    and concealed it.

    Later,
    if you have endured a great despair,
    then you did it alone,
    getting a transfusion from the fire,
    picking the scabs off your heart,
    then wringing it out like a sock.
    Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
    you gave it a back rub
    and then you covered it with a blanket
    and after it had slept a while
    it woke to the wings of the roses
    and was transformed.

    Anne Sexton

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    In "Writer's creative bites"

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    23 THOUGHTS ON “WRITING POETRY TAKES COURAGE AND A DASH OF CRAZINESS (AND HOW IS THAT GOOD FOR YOU, AS A WRITER)”
    Elusive Trope
    may 15, 2016 at 7:23 pm
    I am reminded of Tyler Joseph’s (of the band twenty one pilots) song “Car Radio” – discussing life after someone has stolen his car radio:

    Sometimes quiet is violent
    I find it hard to hide it
    My pride is no longer inside
    It’s on my sleeve
    My skin will scream
    Reminding me of
    Who I killed inside my dream
    I hate this car that I’m driving
    There’s no hiding for me
    I’m forced to deal with what I feel
    There is no distraction to mask what is real
    I could pull the steering wheel
    …..
    I ponder of something terrifying
    ‘Cause this time there’s no sound to hide behind
    I find over the course of our human existence
    One thing consists of consistence
    And it’s that we’re all battling fear
    Oh dear, I don’t know if we know why we’re here
    Oh my,
    Too deep
    Please stop thinking
    I liked it better when my car had sound............

    more AT LINK.........
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Default Poetry is more popular than ever – but not all poets are happy about it

    Poetry is more popular than ever – but not all poets are happy about it
    January 29, 2018 7.21am EST
    Author
    JT Welsch
    Lecturer in English and Creative Industries, University of York

    Disclosure statement
    JT Welsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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    University of York provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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    The joke among poets is that it’s never a good thing when poetry makes the news. From plagiarism scandals to prize controversies, casual readers would be forgiven for thinking the so-called “poetry world” exists in a state of perpetual outrage. In a recent article, The Guardian reported that an essay published in the magazine PN Review “has split the poetry establishment”.

    Rebecca Watts’ contentious essay, The Cult of the Noble Amateur, first appeared in the magazine’s print edition in December. In it, she laments social media’s “dumbing effect” on recent poetry, and a “rejection of craft” that is fueling the success of what she calls “personality poets”. In particular, Watts criticizes Rupi Kaur, whose bestselling verse initially found an audience on Instagram, and Hollie McNish and Kate Tempest, whose performances have garnered millions of YouTube views.

    To some extent, the only surprise in this latest debate is the wider media interest. Within days, what might have passed like so many online squabbles had prompted further coverage in The Guardian and Bookseller, a segment on Radio 4’s World at One, and an interview with Watts herself on BBC’s Front Row. It’s with no small irony, of course, that the essay’s viral spread came only after it was posted on PN Review’s website, then shared on Facebook and Twitter.

    But by focusing on the false opposition of quality and popularity, both sides have been reluctant to see the debate itself as a symptom of the media’s growing interest in the art form. As Watts’ essay admits, poetry is more popular than ever. And over the past few years, news of scandals has increasingly been replaced by celebrations of its renewed relevance.

    Within days of the 2016 US presidential election, for instance, the LA Times, CNN, Buzzfeed, Vox and dozens of other outlets were offering what The Guardian called “poems to counter the election fallout”. The Atlantic declared “Still, Poetry Will Rise”, and Wired warned: “Don’t Look Now, But 2016 is Resurrecting Poetry.”


    Is Trump unwittingly behind some of the surge in poetry’s popularity? JStone / Shutterstock.com
    The political impetus for poetry’s media “resurrection” has also fed into a more general sense of its coolness. In the same week that inspired so many election poems, “London’s new generation of poets” were seen “storming the catwalks of Fashion Week”. Meanwhile, Teen Vogue offered a slideshow of young poets who “are actually making the genre cool again” and a Guardian columnist who has written in the past about coconut water trends assured us that poetry is now “the coolest thing”.

    For some, this visibility might seem to justify Watts’ worry that poetry like Kaur’s (which featured among The Guardian’s “coolest things”) has become a form of “consumer driven content”. Like some jazz or comic book devotees, certain poetry lovers remain uncomfortable with its widening fanbase. Indeed, in his mapping of the cultural field, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggested that poetry’s economic priorities are “reversed”, and that relative obscurity has long been part of its caché.

    Desperate to preserve that, perhaps, Watts begins her attack by suggesting that poetry’s “highest ever” sales over the past two years are to blame for declining standards. But she’s not the only one to bristle at poetry’s growing currency, or to assume it proves that “artless poetry sells”.

    After Patricia Lockwood’s Rape Joke went viral in 2013, Adam Plunkett, writing for the New Yorker, sneered at her “crowd-pleasing poetry” for its appeal to the “lowest common denominator” online. A similar cycle of praise and censure was repeated last month, when Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person earned a seven-figure book-deal after going viral in the New Yorker itself.

    Celebrities trying their hand at verse have been another easy target for the preservationists. The Independent declared that Kristen Stewart had written the “worst poem of all time”, after her piece appeared in Marie Claire in 2014. And in November 2016, Cosmopolitan called on Harvard professor Stephanie Burt to explain why the poems included in Taylor Swift’s new album didn’t really work for her as poems.

    Yet, beyond poetry’s appearances at Fashion Week or in financial adverts, there are signs that hang ups over its popular appeal are losing their grip. Beyoncé’s use of Warsan Shire’s work in 2016’s Lemonade, for example, was met with few claims that it was dumbing anything down. Just as tellingly, the week that saw such heated battles over the PN Review essay also saw the singer Halsey’s moving Women’s March poem go viral to unanimous praise. And there was hardly a peep from the “poetry world”.
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 10-07-2019 at 06:28 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot View Post
    Poetry is more popular than ever – but not all poets are happy about it
    January 29, 2018 7.21am EST
    Author
    JT Welsch
    Lecturer in English and Creative Industries, University of York

    Disclosure statement
    JT Welsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
    Partners
    University of York
    University of York provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

    View all partners
    CC BY ND
    We believe in the free flow of information
    Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.


    The joke among poets is that it’s never a good thing when poetry makes the news. From plagiarism scandals to prize controversies, casual readers would be forgiven for thinking the so-called “poetry world” exists in a state of perpetual outrage. In a recent article, The Guardian reported that an essay published in the magazine PN Review “has split the poetry establishment”.

    Rebecca Watts’ contentious essay, The Cult of the Noble Amateur, first appeared in the magazine’s print edition in December. In it, she laments social media’s “dumbing effect” on recent poetry, and a “rejection of craft” that is fueling the success of what she calls “personality poets”. In particular, Watts criticizes Rupi Kaur, whose bestselling verse initially found an audience on Instagram, and Hollie McNish and Kate Tempest, whose performances have garnered millions of YouTube views.

    To some extent, the only surprise in this latest debate is the wider media interest. Within days, what might have passed like so many online squabbles had prompted further coverage in The Guardian and Bookseller, a segment on Radio 4’s World at One, and an interview with Watts herself on BBC’s Front Row. It’s with no small irony, of course, that the essay’s viral spread came only after it was posted on PN Review’s website, then shared on Facebook and Twitter.

    But by focusing on the false opposition of quality and popularity, both sides have been reluctant to see the debate itself as a symptom of the media’s growing interest in the art form. As Watts’ essay admits, poetry is more popular than ever. And over the past few years, news of scandals has increasingly been replaced by celebrations of its renewed relevance.

    Within days of the 2016 US presidential election, for instance, the LA Times, CNN, Buzzfeed, Vox and dozens of other outlets were offering what The Guardian called “poems to counter the election fallout”. The Atlantic declared “Still, Poetry Will Rise”, and Wired warned: “Don’t Look Now, But 2016 is Resurrecting Poetry.”


    Is Trump unwittingly behind some of the surge in poetry’s popularity? JStone / Shutterstock.com
    The political impetus for poetry’s media “resurrection” has also fed into a more general sense of its coolness. In the same week that inspired so many election poems, “London’s new generation of poets” were seen “storming the catwalks of Fashion Week”. Meanwhile, Teen Vogue offered a slideshow of young poets who “are actually making the genre cool again” and a Guardian columnist who has written in the past about coconut water trends assured us that poetry is now “the coolest thing”.

    For some, this visibility might seem to justify Watts’ worry that poetry like Kaur’s (which featured among The Guardian’s “coolest things”) has become a form of “consumer driven content”. Like some jazz or comic book devotees, certain poetry lovers remain uncomfortable with its widening fanbase. Indeed, in his mapping of the cultural field, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggested that poetry’s economic priorities are “reversed”, and that relative obscurity has long been part of its caché.

    Desperate to preserve that, perhaps, Watts begins her attack by suggesting that poetry’s “highest ever” sales over the past two years are to blame for declining standards. But she’s not the only one to bristle at poetry’s growing currency, or to assume it proves that “artless poetry sells”.

    After Patricia Lockwood’s Rape Joke went viral in 2013, Adam Plunkett, writing for the New Yorker, sneered at her “crowd-pleasing poetry” for its appeal to the “lowest common denominator” online. A similar cycle of praise and censure was repeated last month, when Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person earned a seven-figure book-deal after going viral in the New Yorker itself.

    Celebrities trying their hand at verse have been another easy target for the preservationists. The Independent declared that Kristen Stewart had written the “worst poem of all time”, after her piece appeared in Marie Claire in 2014. And in November 2016, Cosmopolitan called on Harvard professor Stephanie Burt to explain why the poems included in Taylor Swift’s new album didn’t really work for her as poems.

    Yet, beyond poetry’s appearances at Fashion Week or in financial adverts, there are signs that hang ups over its popular appeal are losing their grip. Beyoncé’s use of Warsan Shire’s work in 2016’s Lemonade, for example, was met with few claims that it was dumbing anything down. Just as tellingly, the week that saw such heated battles over the PN Review essay also saw the singer Halsey’s moving Women’s March poem go viral to unanimous praise. And there was hardly a peep from the “poetry world”.
    Poets that are informed about poetry's rich history. legendary poets and can both write, understand and delve into its infinite depths, view most of this modern poetry as shallow, too oft chaotic, emotionally stirred ramblings that are so highly praised by modern poetry critics as more proof that modern critics are themselves shallow, liberal, snooty morons that out of intensive jealousy and abject hatred, infinitely loathe the past golden age poets, IMHO...--Tyr
    Last edited by Tyr-Ziu Saxnot; 10-07-2019 at 06:36 AM.
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Categorized | Essays, This Month

    “Is That Really the Best You Can Do?” Quincy Lehr on Poetry and Personal Style
    Posted on 17 January 2012
    When Solon declared that he learned something new every day (or was it Pericles?—some dead Greek guy, at any rate), he perhaps was not thinking of the utility of the Pratt-Shelby Knot when trying to keep a leather tie proportional enough that the thin end does not emerge at an inconvenient and insistent angle. However, after futzing around with the Windsor and half-Windsor (which rather vitiate the point of wearing a leather tie, don’t they?), I am quite convinced I’m right. I make no apologies for that.

    The tediously ubiquitous Seth Abramson recently wrote in an essay on corruption in poetry that: “If you spend even 10% of the energy you spend on your writing on efforts to be a hipster in dress or manner or behavior or social proclivities, you may be a tiny bit corrupted.” And sure, everybody hates a hipster, but one suspects that Abramson, who still looks like the defense attorney he once was, means something else. That is, he means that excessive attention to one’s own appearance, social manners, and activities will distort one’s artistic output. This may well be true if one is the sort of little conformist shit who clogs the pipes of the poetry system in the U.S., but in such a case, the problem isn’t the ten percent of one’s energy that one spends adjusting one’s narrow-brimmed pork pie hat to exactly the right angle—the distressing thing is the ninety percent spent on poetry.

    If Balzac is right that clothes “are the most tremendous modification social man has experienced,” then far from it being a question of dead time better spent cranking out the verse, one’s sartorial proclivities are important indeed. There is an amiability to Richard Wilbur’s ugly sweaters that is somehow the same amiability that suffuses his poetry, whereas there is a rumpled elegance in both Mark Strand’s verse and in his wrinkled white suit. They would be hard to mistake for anyone else (though Wilbur has a depressing number of imitators in the middle-to-upper echelons of New Formalism), not only in the way they write, but in the way they look and the way they act. Sadly, the same does not hold true for most contemporary poets. Indeed, there are some broad types, each of whom tends to be associated with certain kinds of verse.

    One of the most depressing things about poetry is that it seems to attract preps to a far greater degree than most of the arts, though I suspect orchestral music may come close. You know the sorts—the “classic” American tailoring in the khakis and blazers (which unless you have linebacker shoulders or a huge case of being… well… huge, make it look like you’re wearing the collected sails of the Spanish Armada), the knit sweaters, the non-distressed, preternaturally tidy trousers, etc. And with the women, an older version of that girl in Advanced English II with the brown hair pulled back in a ponytail who’d never talk to you. (Okay, I imagine Chelsea Rathburn would have spoken to me in high school, but I wouldn’t have liked her tone.) Indeed, the prettier female examples can provoke some rather pathetic drooling and awkward jump-start conversations at poetry conferences.

    And much as it happens in the Homo Prepiens species more generally, one gets a fair bit of gender demarcation. The women work their way through the Loeb Classics, interspersed with slightly saccharine words of thirtyish wisdom about… you know… relationships and feelings and shit. (All of this being naturally foul-protected as “women’s poetry,” even though it frequently reflects and perhaps even reinforces traditional gender roles.) As for the guys… Oh, you hated them in high school, and you hate them now. It’s either smug cleverness or slightly embarrassing earnestness, more typically the former, though the latter is often filtered through a gauze of WASP nostalgia. It’s bad enough when W. S. Merwin writes about Martha’s Vineyard. For the under-fifty crowd, it should be punishable by death.

    As for the hipster dipsters, oh please. Anyone with a mustache that stupid has no right to be in the arts in any capacity whatsoever, and the sartorial gimmickry of depressing po-mo pastiche finds a mirror in the verse. Any resident of Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, or Fort Greene here in Brooklyn knows the type of poet I mean, the sort who looks like a walking advertisement for American Apparel and writes poems with titles like “Godzilla Battles the California Raisins.” If you don’t know what I mean, wander into readings at the Union Pacific on Fourth Avenue or Pete’s Candy Store on Lorimer. You’ll probably not have heard of the poets in question—they tend to be legends among the recent graduates of the Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, New School, and NYU MFA programs more than the general public. There are often flashes of brilliance in phrases and images, but, as is the way with hipster culture, they get buried in the worst kind of affectation—the “I don’t give a fuck, but I do, but you can’t know that, so I’ll make sure that I do whatever I do shittily” sort.

    The end result is poetry that sounds like Michael Robbins knock-off—and Robbins (who’s based in Chicago, but same difference in this case) has the look down, though his receding hairline does ruin the effect somewhat. But look at his picture on the Poetry Foundation web site. The stubbly near-beard, the wink-nudge Slayer t-shirt (an indie band would be too obvious, see; metal is less cool and therefore more cool, if you follow), the glasses with thick, shitty frames, and the “retro” headphones around his neck—he has it all. May God have mercy on his soul. Oh, and his debut collection (named after a poem of his in The New Yorker) is Alien vs. Predator.

    One could go on—the blah suburbanites and slubbish shapeless crowd, that thugged-out slam shouter, etc., but the point is that predictability in costume and verse too often march in tandem. An artist should craft one’s art from every fiber of one’s being, so why in the name of flame-broiled Jesus on a Kaiser roll would one coat that being in stereotyped, uninspired dress? The insistence that life imitate art is not an escape—it is a polemic against the homogenized late capitalist banality that surrounds us. Granted, there can be a certain pathetic holdover from the Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and while Jorie Graham looking a bit like Judy Collins’s nightmare of herself may in fact say something, I’m pretty sure I’d as soon not listen.

    Of course, the Godmother of Suburban Hausfrau Ennui, Oprah Winfrey—whose forays into poetry publishing and promotion remind us that our art’s waning popularity has its upside— has stepped into the breach. The March 8, 2011 issue of Oprah Magazine featured “rising poets” saying ridiculous things about poetry (even while looking quite female and photogenic). Here’s the bit on slam poet Suheir Hammad:

    The author of Breaking Poems, and an original cast member of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Hammad writes about “how people maintain their humanity in difficult circumstances.” She likes her clothes to tell a story, too: “I don’t always look the way people expect a poet to look. Onstage, you’ll find me in sequins.” For spring, a to-the-ankle skirt and sweeping chiffon duster make for a dramatic entrance. “Materials and shape interest me,” Hammad says. “There are no rules—just, ‘How am I going to make this work?'”

    In the interests of “keeping it real,” one should note Hammad is pictured in a duster, flowing skirt, and dress that cost $582—never mind her shoes and accessories. Sarah Lawrence professor Rachel Eliza Griffiths is pictured in clothing worth in excess of $5,000. While the whole thing was a somewhat hokier (if more subdued) version of runway stereotype, it nevertheless indicated that one can be a poet and look good rather convincingly—even if, well, some of the outfits were a bit fucktarded and, as David Orr remarked in The New York Times (March 25, 2011), some of the models “are rising poets mostly in the ‘I get up in the morning’ sense.”

    Despite this, though, and despite Winfrey’s magazine’s generally ham-handed handling of poetry (contrary to fashion’s generally ludic nature, much of the remainder of the poetry coverage focused on poetry’s putative moral and psychological benefits—YAWN!!!), its pairing of poetry and fashion was nevertheless by no means without merit. One is no less an artist for wearing good clothes—and $582 is not that much money where dressing up is concerned. (At the time of writing, I’m wearing $735 worth of clothing—which does, however, include shoes, underwear, etc.) But look, if you’re not an MBA poet like John Barr or Dana Gioia, money probably is a bit of an object for you, and besides you’re not an Enemy of the People, so why dress like you want that job laying off people in the Midwest in order to nudge stocks up by half a point?

    Why is this even controversial? It’s probably rather deeply rooted in our culture. In the first place, there’s that tripe one hears from less responsible school teachers and workshop leaders about how “everyone is a poet” if they can only be inspired enough (“O Captain! My Captain!”). The concomitant is that if everyone is a poet, then everybody looks like everybody, and looking too different is a mark of… elitism perhaps. That people like me make hopeless accountants and operatic tenors never seems to even the ....
    --- more at link...
    ************************************************** *****

    Gleaning truth and light from the piece -it helps if one has a solid base in understanding of the true definition of the words , 1.snob, 2.arrogant elitist. 3. blind self-worship 4. crying for fame and 5. bullshit
    Yet some small bits of gold were hidden within.
    Tho' it takes a keen eye, developed sense of humor and dancing irony along with the courage to say- even fools sometimes find favor -if the lights are dimmed just right!-Tyr
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Of Modern Poetry
    by Wallace Stevens Buy Study Guide


    Of Modern Poetry Modern Poetry in the World War Eras
    By 1942, when "Of Modern Poetry" was published, Modernism as a literary movement had evolved significantly from its roots in the 1910s. In Modernism's first years, World War I was an unavoidable influence on writers everywhere, even if indirectly. Industrialization and world war were the major factors that led poets like Stevens, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams to vigorously break down and reinvent poetic standards that they saw as insufficient to make sense of the changing modern world. These poets responded to the war in their own ways, largely in that their aesthetics reflected a notion of a shattered or upended world order—"The Waste Land" of modernity, to use the title of Eliot's masterpiece.

    World War I did generate a group of visceral war poets, primarily British, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and John McCrae, all of whom served in the war—a group who form something of their own canon apart from the overall Modernist greats. However, a degree of ambivalence prevailed among many major poets on how to address the war itself, if at all: William Butler Yeats, a precursor and paternal figure to many Modernists, offered his non-commentary bluntly in "On being asked for a War Poem," writing, "I think it better that in times like these / A poet's mouth be silent."

    Between the wars, Modernist poetry grew and changed. The fiery, experimental poets established distinct careers as each pushed the genre in different, new directions: perhaps it is most accurate to say that Modernism was revealed to have never been one cohesive movement, but a diverse array of writers with vastly differing techniques. When Stevens published Parts of a World in 1942, he had the vantage point to look back on Modernism as a movement. The decades of distance from modern poetry's origins make it all the more striking that Stevens chose at that time to write a "Modern Poetry" manifesto, defining the genre and essentially issuing commandments for it.


    In many ways, World War II forced Stevens' generation of poets to reflect anew on their past work, as they found themselves in a dire global situation similar to when they were starting to publish. In this context, it is impossible not to read "Of Modern Poetry" as Stevens' response, in his own intellectual way, to the horrors of World War II. 1942 was a particularly bleak moment in the war, especially for America: Pearl Harbor had just been bombed, launching the United States into the war, and Nazi Germany was reaching the height of its domination over Europe. This apocalyptic turmoil is contained within Stevens' simple line, "It has to think about war / And it has to find what will suffice," emphasizing poetry's vital duty to help people find meaning, solace, or "satisfaction"—anything that "will suffice" to keep life bearable. Though this context is not addressed directly by Stevens, it is invaluable in clarifying why he writes so adamantly here about the need for poetry to face the real world, reach people, bring them together, and give them happiness......................
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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  16. #359
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    Default Reasons for Poetry

    Reasons for Poetry

    The Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco, in a poem called "Dissertation on Poetic Propriety," asks for "a new definition. . . a name, some term or other. . . to avoid the astonishment and rages of those who say, so reasonably, looking at a poem: 'Now this is not poetry.'" I too want to argue for a broader definition of poetry, a definition which will increase our sense of the multitudes that poetry contains. For those of us who care about poetry in this time of widely diverging definitions are apt to be consciously limited in our tastes and churlish in our distastes. We often have more precise ideas, based on these distastes, about what poetry is not than about what it is.

    If I cannot come up with the new definition Pacheco asks for, what I say is at least intended to turn aside the easy negative response in myself and in others to poems which are not immediately congenial. For whenever we say, "Now this is not poetry," we are adding to the disuse of all poetry.

    Perhaps the most useful definition, in fact, would begin with a statement about expectation: the expectation with which a reader engages a poem, and the reasons for which a poet may have undertaken the poem, and the possible discrepancy between these two. We have all had the experience of fighting a work of art because it was not doing what we were asking of it. John Ashbery said in an interview: "My feeling is that a poem that communicates something that's already known to the reader is not really communicating anything to him and in fact shows a lack of respect for him." Since what is communicated in a work of art is also how it is communicated, a false expectation is almost certain to produce a false reading. And often we confirm this by the happy surprise that comes when a work we had been defeated by suddenly opens itself to us—we find that it performs very well the job of work which was its reason, once we stop asking it to perform some other service which was no part of its intention.

    A word here about liking a poem. This should of course be our primary objective and motive. But to like is a function of the critical intelligence, as this passage by W. H. Auden makes clear:

    As readers, we remain in the nursery stage as long as we
    cannot distinguish between taste and judgment, so long,
    that is, as the only possible verdicts we can pass on a
    book are two: this I like, this I don't like.

    He goes on with the lovely, schoolmasterly, and abashing accuracy of an Audenism:

    For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five; I can see
    this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don't
    like it; I can see this is good and, though at present I don't
    like it, I believe that with perseverance I shall come to like
    it; I can see this is trash but I like it; I can see this is trash
    and I don't like it.

    My argument is that we should use the third option as often as possible, when the first response is not spontaneous with us. When we can't say of a poem, especially of a poem that comes recommended, "I can see this is good and I like it," we owe it to ourselves and the poem to try to say, "I can see this is good, and though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance, et cetera."

    Poems seem to come into being for various and distinct reasons. These vary from poem to poem and from poet to poet. The reason for a poem is apt to be one of the revelations attendant on its making. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader, Frost said. The reason for a new poem is, in some essential, a new reason. This is why poets, in the large Greek sense of makers, are crucial to a culture. They respond newly, but in the familiar tribal experience of language, to what new thing befalls the tribe. I shall have some comments to make here about three generic reasons for which poems seem to come into being, but even within these genera, the occasion of a poem is always a new thing under the sun.

    And poets don't respond as one, they respond in character, with various intuition, to the new experience. What each maker makes is poetry, but why he makes it, his reason, is his unique intuition. The reason determines the proper mode of apprehension. It is part of the purpose of every poem to surprise us with our own capacity for change, for a totally new response. For example, David Wagoner’s lines called aggressively, "This Is a Wonderful Poem":

    Come at it carefully, don't trust it, that isn't its right name,
    It's wearing stolen rags, it's never been washed, its breath
    Would look moss-green if it were really breathing,
    It won't get out of the way, it stares at you
    Out of eyes burnt gray as the sidewalk,
    Its skin is overcast with colorless dirt,
    It has no distinguishing marks, no I.D. cards,
    It wants something of yours but hasn't decided
    Whether to ask for it or just take it,
    There are no policemen, no friendly neighbors,
    No peacekeeping busybodies to yell for, only this
    Thing standing between you and the place you were
    headed,
    You have about thirty seconds to get past it, around it,
    Or simply to back away and try to forget it,
    It won't take no for an answer: try hitting it first
    And you'll learn what's trembling in its torn pocket.
    Now, what do you want to do about it?

    The resilience such a poem asks of us is a reader's first responsibility. To assume one knows what a poem is going to do is (to turn John Ashbery’s statement around) to show a lack of respect for it. I think it is chiefly a lack of resilience that has kept the poetry public so small in our country, and has divided what public there is into dozens of hostile sects. We say of our own chosen poetry—Olsen or Frost, Lowell or Bly—the poetry whose reasons strike us as reasonable, "Now this is poetry," and then generally, of everything else, loudly, airily, and with great conviction, "and this is not." Criticism, which is at its most perceptive when most appreciative, is thus often narrowly appreciative. It divides and rules and does little to promulgate the astonishment, the larger force of poetry.

    And it is very easy to reject poems whose reasons do not declare or recommend themselves to us. Take an extreme mode of recent poetry which Robert Pinsky has described in The Situation of Poetry. This school, he says, has "a prevalent diction or manner" which embodies, "in language, a host of reservations about language, human reason, and their holds on life." He quotes a poem by W. S. Merwin and says of it: "It moves in a resolutely elliptical way from image to atomistic image, finally reaching a kind of generalization against generalizing in the line: "Today belongs to few and tomorrow to no one."

    Pinsky concludes: "This poem presents a style well suited to a certain deeply skeptical or limiting vision of the poetic imagination and its place in the world."

    To appreciate a poem conceived in these terms—conceived for what many readers would consider non-reasons—is not easy for most of us. What kind of poem harbors "a host of reservations about language, human reason, and their holds on life," and with a "deeply skeptical or limiting vision of the poetic imagination and its place in the world"? Aha! says the part of our mind that waits with a club for what is not a poem. How can anything call itself a poem if it mistrusts language and the power of the poetic imagination? Is not all mystery made lucid to the poetic imagination, and precisely in language? But the often ill-advised left side of the brain is wrong to thus object. Let us ask it to consider a poem whose last line proclaims this heresy, whose last line in fact is, "There are limits to imagination." This is Robert Hass’s beautiful "Heroic Simile." It purports to be a simile about how a soldier falls in a certain Japanese movie, and it likens him chiefly to a great pine tree, an image which does not appear in the movie:

    When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
    in the gray rain, in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
    he fell straight as a pine, he fell
    as Ajax fell in Homer
    in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge
    the woodsman returned for two days
    to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing
    and on the third day he brought his uncle.

    They stacked logs in the resinous air,
    hacking the small limbs off,
    tying those bundles separately.
    The slabs near the root
    were quartered and still they were awkwardly large;
    the logs from midtree they halved:
    ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood,
    moons and quarter moons and half moons
    ridged by the saw's tooth.

    The woodsman and the old man his uncle
    are standing in midforest
    on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.
    They have stopped working
    because they are tired and because
    I have imagined no pack animal
    or primitive wagon. They are too canny
    to call in neighbors and come home
    with a few logs after three days' work.
    They are waiting for me to do something
    or for the overseer of the Great Lord
    to come and arrest them.

    How patient they are!
    The old man smokes a pipe and spits.
    The young man is thinking he would be rich
    if he were already rich and had a mule.
    Ten days of hauling
    and on the seventh day they'll probably
    be caught, go home empty-handed
    or worse. I don't know
    whether they're Japanese or Mycenaean
    and there's nothing I can do.
    The path from here to that village
    is not translated. A hero, dying,
    gives off stillness to the air.
    A man and a woman walk from the movies
    to the house in the silence of separate fidelities.
    There are limits to imagination.

    At one critical point in the narrative—and the simile is offered as a story—the poet heightens the mystery of metamorphosis by dramatizing the process itself:

    They have stopped working
    because they are tired and because
    I have imagined no pack animal
    or primitive wagon. . .
    They are waiting for me to do something
    or for the overseer of the Great Lord
    to come and arrest them

    . . . I don't know
    whether they're Japanese or Mycenaean
    and there's nothing I can do.

    We are asked to believe that the poem takes place at the limits of imagination, where the poet's debilitating reluctances threaten to overpower his fancy and drag it back into the territory of the literal. And the poem shows us, by exhibiting its own process, how the energy is to be found, in the process of...

    more at link given........
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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    Probing Question: Is poetry relevant in American society today?

    Despite the minuscule national marketplace for poetry books, the American public still longs for the kinds of insights that only poetry can deliver.IMAGE: ©ISTOCKPHOTO / LESZEKGLASNER
    By Melissa Beattie-Moss
    November 02, 2015
    Can you name a television talent show with over 100 million viewers worldwide, huge studio audiences, hundreds of people vying to perform, and a prize worth up to $13 million?

    If you're thinking of The Voice or American Idol, think again. Since 2007, one of the world's most popular reality TV shows has been Million's Poet, a program from the United Arab Emirates that invites contestants to recite their own poetry, composed in a traditional Bedouin style called Nabati, which dates back to the fourth century. The poets are judged both on the quality of the poetry and on the skill of their recitation. How popular is the show? Its ratings are a runaway success, soaring past those for soccer, UAE's national sport.

    If we can't imagine such a phenomenon in the U.S. (and who can?) should we conclude that poetry is less relevant than ever in American society? Not so fast, says Erin Murphy, professor of English and creative writing at Penn State Altoona.

    Murphy -- the award-winning author of six collections of poetry, recipient of several teaching awards, and recent inductee into the Blair County Arts Hall of Fame -- believes that, despite the minuscule national marketplace for poetry books, the American public still longs for the kinds of insights that only poetry can deliver, and poetry still has an important place in our schools.

    "For me, teaching poetry is not about turning all of my students into poets," says Murphy. "It's about economy of language and concision, and there are so many applications. An engineering major who is now getting his Ph.D. at MIT took my intro to creative writing course and credited poetry with teaching him how to explain the technical elements in his field using narrative and metaphor. I also met an attorney who said the class that best prepared him for writing legal briefs was a poetry writing class. So is poetry relevant? Yes, for poets and also for anyone who needs to write or express himself or herself."

    We should also take care not to measure the place of poetry in American life by book sales, notes Murphy, nor should we pose television, the Internet, or other technologies or venues as being opponents of poetry.



    "There is something about a human truth expressed in poetry that has the power to reach us on both an emotional and intellectual level."



    While we may not have tens of millions of viewers tuning in to watch televised poetry recitation contests, Americans still have come up with a variety of creative ways to weave poetry into our culture and daily lives. For instance, says Murphy, the Favorite Poem Project, founded by our 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky, gives ordinary citizens the chance to upload videos of themselves reciting their favorite poems.

    "Poetry has its roots in oral culture, of course," says Murphy. "At special occasions on both a personal and national level, when people celebrate and when they mourn -- think of our Presidential inaugurations, weddings, funerals, and commemorations of tragedies, such as September 11 and Hurricane Katrina -- they turn to poets to provide the words that are difficult to summon."

    In the aftermath of 9/11, W.H. Auden's poem September 1, 1939 went "viral" online, with countless readers finding meaning in the poem, written in response to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, and the almost prophetic feeling of lines such as:

    Into this neutral air
    Where blind skyscrapers used
    Their full height to proclaim
    The strength of Collective man

    At the crossroads of the poetry slam movement and YouTube, the topic and performance of a poem can touch a nerve and captivate millions. As Jeff Shotts, poetry editor at Graywolf Press, put it, "The Internet is basically one big poetry audiobook." A YouTube video of Neil Hilborn's poem "OCD" -- performed during the 2013 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam -- has been viewed over 10 million times and generated almost 10,000 comments. The sheer volume of poetry audio files online is staggering and a very positive development, says Murphy.

    Poetry also turns up frequently in our public spaces, she adds. Since 1992, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority has displayed poems (chosen in association with the Poetry Society of America) in its subway cars, on the sides of MetroCards, on touch-screen kiosks, and other transit venues, all as part of the city's beloved "Poetry in Motion" project. The project proved so successful, says Murphy, that it was replicated in many other cities across the nation.

    Other examples of public poems abound. "I love the Poetry in the Zoos project," says Murphy. Providing permanent installations in zoos across the country, the project does double-duty to raise the public's awareness of environmental issues as well as foster an appreciation for the beauty and power of poetry, she explains.

    Poetry even has a place in our current world of technological security, says Murphy. "I heard a piece on NPR recently about how the new passwords will be poems -- 'passpoems' -- because they are longer, and therefore more secure, than traditional passwords but easier to remember since they are based on the oral tradition."

    The way we share and access poems may change as society and technology evolve, says Murphy, but the drive to explore and express our lives through poetry is a constant. "There is something about a human truth expressed in poetry that has the power to reach us on both an emotional and intellectual level," she adds. "It can be a bold and transformative art form."

    Hissa Hilal might agree. She is the Saudi Arabian poet who, in 2010, was the only woman to become a finalist on the TV show Million's Poet. She came in third, won the equivalent of almost a million U.S. dollars, and stretched the boundaries of visibility for Arab women in public life. In a video interview, Hilal said (imagining she is speaking to her own poems), "The people who love you will love you because truth and transparency is enough."

    "Truth and transparency -- that's something that will always be relevant in any country and any time period," concludes Murphy.



    Erin Murphy is Professor of English and creative writing at Penn State Altoona and can be reached at ecm14@psu.edu.

    Erin Murphy
    Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, says the drive to explore and express our lives through poetry remains despite vast changes in society and technology. IMAGE: MOLLY DEPROSPO
    Knowledge is key to life and the complexities, mysteries and general course one must take to wade through this world's pyramid of obstacles and
    high and low ebb tides given unto us all..
    Without it (or far too little of it) far more darker elements prevail and life is far less peaceful , happy, successful , and worth living etc., for most people... -RJL...
    18 U.S. Code § 2381-Treason Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

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