“I have defined poetry as a ‘passionate pursuit of the Real.’”

After finishing The Witness of Poetry, I found myself mourning the loss of a man I never met and mourning, most importantly, a mind and spirit so capable of characterizing the poetics of the past century–and thereby helping us understand a bit more of ourselves. Milosz seems to have defined the major dialectic forces at work in twentieth century poetry: language versus mimesis, classicism versus realism, science versus imagination, alienation versus “the human family” and West versus East. Owing to Poland’s unique, liminal situation in the interplay of so many of these forces throughout Europe, Milosz speaks with a kind of visceral authority about such broad characteristics of poetry in the past century.

He is not without bias in describing these dynamics. Fortunately for me, his biases run along similar veins to my own, so I frequently felt he was expressing many of my own latent thoughts and beliefs in a much more articulate and compelling way. Regarding science supplanting imagination as an organizing principle for our lives, he points out:

… science not only contributes to the perfecting of ever more lethal means of conducting war. It also penetrates the very fabric of our collective life, causing transformations whose range still eludes our comprehension. The pollution of the mind by certain images, those side effects of science, is analogous to the pollution of the natural surroundings by technology derived from the same science.

and much later, in relating to the horrors of the twentieth century–from the holocaust to the atomic bomb–he points out the stakes in such a dynamic are not merely aesthetic, but that, “It is possible that we are witnessing a kind of race between the lifegiving and the destructive activity of civilization’s bacteria, and that an unknown result awaits in the future. No computer will be able to calculate so many pros and cons–thus a poet with his intuition remains one strong, albeit uncertain, source of knowledge.”

Milosz points out that a defining characteristic of or time is not so much that life is harder now than in the past, but that we are more keenly aware of it en masse. He points out, “People have always suffered physical pain, died of starvation, lived as slaves. Yet all that was not common knowledge as it now is because of the shrinking of our planet and because of the mass media.” I have often related to poetry as a kind of antidote to the linguistic dissolution brought on by mass-media and technology, but Milosz goes further in framing poetry as a means to interpreting this new circumstance and therefore a kind of hope for humanity in the coming age:

Instead of presenting man through those traits that link him to higher forms of the evolutionary chain, other of his aspects will be stressed: the exceptionality, strangeness, and loneliness of that creature mysterious to itself, a being incessantly transcending its own limits. Humanity will increasingly be turning back to itself, increasingly contemplating its entire past, searching for a key to its own enigma, and penetrating, through empathy, [emphasis mine] the soul of bygone generations and of whole civilizations.

Milosz points out many other dynamics unique to modern poetics, though all of them are necessarily subordinate to this overarching struggle between science and imagination.

One other dialectic progresses between classicism–which Ellen Bryant Voigt and others might more recently call “lyricism”–and realism (also known as “formalism”–the rendering of the real). Milosz defines this struggle very clearly: “If I cross out a word and replace it with another, because in that way the line as a whole acquires more consciousness, I follow the practice of the classics. If, however, I cross out a word because it does not convey an observed detail, I lean toward realism.”

This struggle is further defined by somewhat newly introduced dimensions in contemporary poetry, including the move toward language poetry and its more traditional counterpoint–mimesis–the representation of the tangible in art. Of this, Milosz says, “Of course there are poets who only relate words to words, not to their models in things, but their artistic defeat [?!] indicates that they are breaking some sort of rule of poetry.” Though Milosz admits, “all attempts at enclosing the world in words are and will be futile,” he concludes from this, “let us respect the rules of the game as adopted by consensus and appropriate to a given historical period, and let us not advance a rook as if it were a knight. In other words, let us make use of conventions, aware that they are conventions and no more than that.”

By defining the trends, themes and limits of poetry, Milosz has given me a remarkably well articulated view into much of what I have already sensed: that poetry, in its capacity for empathy, in its ability to be so much more than an exercise from the neck up, can help us to understand our unique human condition in this particular time–and that all the the trends toward nihilism and deconstruction ultimately either must come to an end–or else we must follow them all the way down. That is, the choice between poison and medicine still rests with the “unacknowledged legislators”–as does the choice, with each word, line and verse–about which of the two will flow from our pens.

“Like priests in a town of agnostics, [poets] still command a certain residual prestige.”

The main problem I have with Gioia’s classic 1991 indictment of the health of the art, and all its subsequent aftershocks, is that this view of poetry still comes from within the tribe. Gioia blames the cushy life afforded by academia as well as tit-for-tat publishing and reviewing practices as the primary killers of poetry’s public appeal. But his article does not take into account other forces outside the scope of contemporary poetry and, owing to this fault, seems more inflammatory than revolutionary–adding another loud gripe, in fact, to the endless squabbling among poets.

Art has always required its benefactor. Were it not for the Catholic church, for example, we would not have painting as we know it today. The church employed countless artists and kept them (and their art) alive. Poetry has never been practical, and the fact that it has now drawn inward to thrive primarily at the university level–like a tree pulling in its sap toward the trunk during a freeze–only leads me to be grateful that there is, in fact, some refuge for the impractical-but-necessary–for art–in our world. Universities are killing poetry? More like providing the last bastion to save it.

While Gioia admits that other art forms have suffered, he does not venture outside of the world poets occupy to hazard a guess as to why. Poetry has gone the same route as classical music, and from what Valerie tells me, their debates about “accessibility and difficulty,” among other topics that baffle non-artists as exceedingly trivial, seem to run along parallel lines. A lot of contemporary classical music, like contemporary poetry, has indeed become little more than an academic exercise.

That said, the relationship between university and audience strikes me as a bit chicken-and-egg. Gioia argues poetry has become seemingly irrelevant to non-poets’ lives because academia has coddled them in doing so. I would argue the other side–that poets (and classical composers) have retreated into avant garde cliques because they have been ostracized from mainstream culture and, like the weird kid we all knew in school, are somehow managing to take perverse pleasure in this situation–and even pride.

But why have poets been ousted from the culture? By far the simplest way to examine why poetry, like classical music, has been on the slide since the ’40s is to take a look at what has taken its place. Enter television. Enter pop music. Enter video games and the internet. Popular culture has superseded intellectual culture more and more in the past sixty years. Since the age of automation, being cultured, literary or musically astute is less of a means to upward mobility than ever before. People respect actors far more than poets, rock stars far more than great violinists. And with the advent of reality television, American Idol and social networking, people are, more than ever, simply becoming famous for their fame.

Poets like to pretend that the decline of poetry is their fault, because if that were entirely true, then it would be entirely within their power to revive it as a major cultural force. While it is true that acting like the weird kid hasn’t helped poetry, there are much larger forces at work than even the off-putting avant garde and its main backer, academia. Even really great poetry has a hard time standing up to the video-game-like attention span of the most recent generation. And even thinking people in my own generation are much more likely to listen to popular music or see a film when they want stimulation–than to open a book of poems.

Mass media has altered our sensitivity to language, making us far more likely to seek entertainment (or “edutainment” at best) delivered through a rich multimedia experience–than to sit down and just read a poem on the page. It is high time we faced up to this reality. Because in doing so, we can stop squabbling and pointing fingers at each other, and get back to promoting poetry the only way it can continue to succeed–from one person to another, showing, sharing and explaining why we love this particular form.

Neither do we have to garner large “market share” nor revel in our marginalization. Read, write and share with those who get it. And give the rest a chance. Gioia’s six-point call to action is good advice. Just don’t expect the ground to shake. It is, after all, poetry–a hope for all humanity, but only as humans declare it so.

“Every word was once a poem”

In this so-called information age, we live among language more than ever before. For example, one of the latest fads drawing hype to itself faster than a black hole sucks light is Twitter: a web-based social networking site predicated on “tweets”–brief text messages uploaded to a web site that others subscribe to, follow and read. Thus, the blogging concept of writing for a perceived audience is accelerated to a dizzying pace.

I tried Twittering for a day, sending tweets when I changed my activity or mood. Between the web-based, software-based and cell-phone-based options, I was never disconnected from a sense that I could and perhaps should send an update in case someone out there might actually really care about the excruciatingly mundane details of my life. This is the fundamental promise of the internet, and social networking in particular: the audience that cares. It has been the impetus, since the beginning, for a mind-boggling number of words, from the early days of IRC and BBS systems to a shiny new rehash of the same fundamental drivers and mechanisms, which is now being called Web 2.0.
The trend here is toward quantity–the mythic and sometimes actual possibility of high volumes of reader traffic drives a proportionate amount of new content. This quantity-focused approach to generating textual content can actually change language itself. What, for example, does the word “friend” mean when you can have hundreds, even thousands of them by hustling links to your MySpace account? If the word friend was once a revelation signifying some meaningful connection, it has now, more than ever, become a kind of currency. None of this is unique to Web 2.0, however–such frenzy for words comes as a direct extrapolation from traditional media outlets, which push sound bytes and statistics at a likewise numbing pace.

When I wilfer the internet (new word, thanks Ceri) or channel surf TV, I am in a hyper-browsing mode–scanning and skimming. So, it comes as little surprise that on my own site, a fairly high volume of global daily traffic translates to only a micro-fractional number of comments. Like me, most visitors probably bounce off this site in a matter of seconds. (Especially if they are just looking for material for their next school essay.) This is the major obstacle online creative writing journals have to contend with, and why experiments like Twitter poetry will probably only ever remain as such.

We care about poetry precisely because it exists outside this frenetic word-space. We care about poetry because it represents a kind of necessary antidote to the soul-draining quantification and commoditization of language the information age has brought. All good poems, no matter their style, share this: an enforced attention to language, and some degree of innovation upon it. This runs contrary to the bigger/faster/more pervading everything from network news to the blogosphere. It also helps us to reclaim some of the erosion of nuance caused by the diction of, for example, mass-scale popularity contests (from American Idol to Facebook) which wear away our relationship to any kind of actual self and, in the process, any hope of connecting deeply with one another through words.

Poetry demands attention and subtlety in both reading and writing, and forges a necessarily intimate relationship between reader and author. At its best, it pushes our understanding of the most fundamental element of thought–language itself–in new directions. In this way, it can affect how we understand ourselves and help us to reclaim some awareness of the still small voice that tells what it means to be human. In a world echoing with tweets and stats and sound bytes, our need for poetry has never been greater.

That’s why there will never be a poetry 2.0. The first version still works fine. And when the new has finally worn off all our technobabble, poetry will still be around.

• Health Awareness Month

• National Blood Donor Month
• National Oral Health Month

Notice a pattern? I do. National months are only declared for causes that socially-minded people think ought to receive more attention. That is to say, they are things we should pay more attention to–like our health, giving blood, recognizing the plight of others–good, noble causes that would simply get swept by the wayside were it not for (and sometimes still in spite of) assigning this cause to one of the twelve calendar months in an attempt to raise awareness.

In marketing there is the taxonomy of medicine, vitamins and candy. Any product is usually most like one of these three. Plumbing services to fix a broken pipe, for example, are medicine–fulfilling an immediate, expressed need. Cable Television is mostly candy–entertainment that looks and tastes good. A gym membership would be like vitamins. And poetry, unfortunately, by virtue of having been trotted out in classrooms on its national month once a year for the past eleven years, has proved itself to also be perceived most like vitamins–good for you, and you know it–but an awful lot harder to sell than medicine or candy.

There are, of course, some exceptions. In some instances, poetry is combined with dramatic performance and/or music to essentially sugar-coat the pill. Most vitamin companies bring out colorful, fun-shaped chewable vitamins for the same reason–because what is seen as candy is easier to sell. Still, while added dramatic and musical elements may create greater excitement in the moment, rarely do the texts of such poetic performances actually stand up on the page. And no matter how loudly the audience cheers, the content of such performances tend to be forgotten almost immediately after the show. Like candy, they are designed to excite–not nourish–and the bursts of energy they provide are often equally short lived.

After September 11th, 2001 a number of poetry compilations came out trying to offer words of comfort for troubling times. Publishers saw an opportunity to reposition poetry as medicine to the mainstream culture. The ripple, however, was slight. Increasingly, people seem to have replaced any genuine sense of the need for poetry with a sense that they ought to at least appreciate it (heaven forbid actually liking the stuff). Generally, those that do regard poetry as medicine have come to it their own way, and do not represent the majority.

The exception to the rule of an individual and minority relationship to poetry as need rather than should can be seen in the steady rise in MFA programs all over the country–a vote of confidence for reading and writing poetry that is being backed by cold, hard tuition money. And I doubt very much that students are enrolling in MFA programs because they feel, like taking vitamins, that they “ought” to get an arts degree. Getting an MBA is something you “ought” to do as a sensible career move. An MFA, to its students, is more likely either medicine or candy. I know which one it is for me.

So, maybe there is hope brewing yet that poetry can emerge from the vitamin shelf and figure more prominently in people’s lives. Mark Twain called a classic, “A book which people praise and don’t read.” Poetry has too long been an entire genre of writing which people likewise respect but rarely read. Given how much poetry matters to the health of human culture, here’s hoping for a time when every month can be poetry month and poems are generally regarded as more palatable than swallowing a large, jagged pill.

Stephen Nachmanovitch’s Free Play is one of the best books on the inner game of art I have ever read (Mastery and The War of Art being others). So when I came across a transcript of the lecture he gave to the National Association of Poetry Therapy in 2000–available on his web site–I was keen to read it.

He relates to the therapeutic power of poetry, through theories of Gregory Bateson, as a kind of anti-solipsism and anti-myopia. That is, “there is a pathology inherent in all conscious thinking, and that pathology comes from taking a small linear segment of a circle of causation and taking it to be the whole thing,” which is, “related to our illusory notion of the self–to our view of taking that which we are able to consciously scan, in our own processes, in our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own memories … to be the whole.” Furthermore, he says activities like poetry “help us to perceive that the self is a provisional, illusory construct that’s useful for certain limited kinds of activity–but it’s not the whole Self.”

He later points out that cathartic or therapeutic poetry does not necessarily make for lasting or meaningful art. I would go further in pointing out that not all contemporary poetry necessarily strives, even unconsciously, for some awareness of the Self. Yet, at the same time, I still think one of the highest potentials of the form is this quality of encompassing. After all, one of the most fundamental properties of poetry is its ability to encompass qualities of perception and “truth” unavailable in the linear thought patterns of prose. Therefore both the reading and writing of poetry is an exercise in plumbing some nonlinear depth (or transcendental height) and is, by definition, this reconnection to a larger circle of consciousness, a less segmented, fragmented truth. And, as I have said before, such truths matter now more than ever.

“Poets and intellectuals–who are paid little, and who are usually ignored by the general population–have this consolation, at least: they are the ones the tyrants go after first.”
-Frederick Smock, “Poetry & Compassion”

“If I keep listening to it, I won’t finish the revolution.”
-Lenin, regarding Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata
  (as recounted in “The Lives Of Others”)

I read Frederick Smock‘s article, “Poetry & Compassion,” in the February issue of The Writer’s Chronicle just before going to see the German film “The Lives Of Others.” Thought is the pairing of different experiences together into new understandings and relationships. The insights issuing forth from pairing these two profound experiences together have propelled me toward a deeper understanding of the power, purpose, and significance of poetry.

It all began with this: according to Smock, “The U.S. Treasury Department–which, among other things, handles cases of treason–recently warned American publishers against translating poetry from Iran. Such translations, they avowed, would be considered ‘trading with the enemy,’ and would be punishable by fines and jail time.” Since World War Two, strong cryptographic algorithms have been classified as munitions and banned from export outside the U.S. Why, going further, would the import of a different intellectual commodity with seemingly far less practical application be considered treasonous? Why ban poetry?

It is not true, as Ossip Mandelstam believed, that, “only in Russia poetry is respected–it gets people killed.” The so-called “self-murder” of countless (and deliberately uncounted) poets and other writers in Eastern Germany is brought close to home in “The Lives Of Others”. The similarities between their climate of fear and ours are striking–from unscrupulous wiretapping to simple, insidious acts like regulating the import of Western literature–an act not too different than banning the translation of “enemy” poems.

Yet Iranian poems are produced in a sovereign nation against which we have declared no formal war. They are not officially “enemy.” So, why the ban? Because people can not be made into an enemy, Smock points out, if they move us as deeply as, for example, the great Persian poet Rumi. Poetry, in its ability to embrace and elevate all that makes us human, runs contrary to the demonization and divisiveness required to engage in any war against a nation or culture. Humanization is enmity’s undoing. Poetry is one very powerful instrument.

The crux of “The Lives Of Others” is the idea implied by Lenin that great art puts us in touch with the very humanity we must harden ourselves against in order to continue a course of action like the establishment or maintenance of an oppressive Communist regime. Imagining what happens when just one person is inspired by great art to make humane choices in a climate of terror and oppression–and doing it with sensitivity, spareness, and captivating pathos–is what makes this film a masterpiece.

Furthermore, this film is not an Orwellian vision of the future–it is a look at the very recent past, and a warning against our own potential future. Banning the humanization of any group of people–silencing our ears to their voices–is an act no less dangerous and terrible than any other act in the systematic dismantling of free expression that went on in the Soviet Bloc. The ability to capture a people’s imagination is more powerful than any munition. Because an essential humanity exists in every citizen, sounding the note of truth can cause it to resonate further, faster and wider than any propaganda. It can turn us back into men and women, save lives, stop wars.

Though we live in a country founded on principles of free speech and free exchange of ideas, such privileges can only continue to the extent that we remain vigilant and awake. Poems can keep us awake. Films like this one can keep us awake. Truth demands a kind of insomnia. And in an age of soporific sound-bytes and the collusion of government and media toward distraction, divisiveness, and war–both poetry and compassion have never been more important.

My mother, a public school teacher, was explaining last night that her school can’t afford to give her more than one small stack of post-its per year. After all, they can run up to ninety cents per pack.

It never ceases to amaze me how profoundly our culture undervalues the things we need to remain human–like good teachers and good poems. Yet we have always needed them, and always will. So people do it anyway, through almost comic undervaluing.

I guess those moments when a child learns something or a person takes in a poem make it worthwhile. I guess those moments must have been happening continuously for centuries, to carry us through adversity and give hope. If so, the best thing we can do is to keep noticing.