Sunday evening I came across this Open Letter to POETRY magazine from Charles Ries.
A few years ago I felt it was my duty to subscribe to POETRY. I was curious. I wanted to see the top of the mountain. I wanted to see what the best writers wrote. And for two years I read most or all of the issues you sent me. I looked into their pages and asked, “What makes this poem great?” “What makes this writer unique–exquisite?”
That said; I struggle to feel engaged with most of the work you publish.
I have mixed thoughts and emotions about what he wrote in his open letter. My initial thought was kinship in regards to feeling engaged with some of the content POETRY publishes. However, after reading the October 2004 issue (which I purchased from a local retailer), I decided it was time to subscribe to one of the flaghips of academic poetry. Frank Bidart’s poem “The Third Hour of the Night” captured my attention (and my few remaining dollars). I guess I agree with Mr. Ries in that POETRY is a journal for the academic writers and their readers. But isn’t that the point? If you were looking for well written non-academic poetry there are plenty of small press poetry magazines you can find and enjoy.
I suspect the real issue is high art versus subculture. By no means is poetry considered part of the American mainstream. However, it’s more likely the subculture of small press poetry will be less than a footnote in American literature. Whereas the subculture of POETRY magazine will provide notable poets like Hecht and Gluck. The reason the American consciousness remembers Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg is because they devoted most of their life to the high art of letters. Equally passionate are the small press poets who bleed their life into their noteable yet mostly unrecognized works.
For better or worse, I am part of the second category. Yet I struggle to be challenged by the work of most small press poets. That’s why I decided to subscribe to POETRY. I consider it part of my ongoing education in crafting poetry. That’s why I read the academic writings of American poets like the late Anthony Hecht. In his last published book The Darkness and The Light, he wrote:
Nothing designed by Italian artisans
Would match this evening’s perfection.
The puddled oil was a miracle of colors.
“The Onslaught of Love,” pg 4
Coffeehouse Junkie 
Good post. I will, however, disagree with you on the following statement: “By no means is poetry considered part of the American mainstream.”
Since you left out the “who” doing the considering, I’m not sure exactly what you mean. But, I believe that poetry is indeed part of the American mainstream.
Poetry is an ad jingle for “Lucky Charms, they’re magically delicious.” Poetry is saying “If you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” in a country song. Poetry is laughing your way through lunch with zingers from “The Princess Bride.”
The issue is not so much that poetry is not considered part of the American mainstream as it is that we have perhaps too narrowly defined poetry and consider anything without oozing erudition to be nothing more than the doggerel of day.
Then again, I could simply be obeying the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
Good comment. An ad jingle is an ad jingle, song lyrics are song lyrics, and a good one-line zinger is a good one-line zinger. I agree that they contain poetic elements, but they are not poetry.
The Richard Wilbur profile in the January/February 2005 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine addresses this issue to some degree: “Almost anything can get into print nowadays,” he says. “If publication is what you want, you can get it.” Just because the lowest common denominator is poetic elements does not make it poetry.
Ok, so you believe poetry requires more than a loose coalition of poetic elements. Reasonable. How then do you define poetry? You. Not some course you took or a book you read.
Poetry defined (in my own words)
“Arranging characters and words,…
Collecting truths that define my experience,
arrest my attention, edify my soul.”
from my poem “Between the Lines” (Late Night Writing, pg 30, 31)
A prose definition of poetry would include literary form, meter, rhythm, balance, harmony, rhyme (if necessary), line break composition, stanzas (as opposed to prose paragraphs), lyricism, and narrative (even a haiku can tell a story).
Do you think that’s too narrow of a definition?
I guess I am reacting (maybe over-reacting) to the trend in an over-generalized definition of poetry. If everything can be dubbed poetic then poetry on the whole is devalued. For example, it seems everyone who has a computer think they can design a promotional brochure using clip art and true type fonts. That devalues me, a professional graphic designer.
I have never been able to figure out what people mean when they say “soul” –
truth &
What do you mean, Matt, by “American Literature” “high art” and so on?
Is “poetry” then a series of well-written sentences which fit smoothly into a column with line breaks and brilliant pauses?
This perhaps a diminuition of what otherwise might be radically broadened.
Wanting enough verb
Should we perhaps doubt those who propose to write with “American Literature” in mind?
It, as a category, is already defunct, and I, for one, am thankful for that –
I have a box of Poetry mags – a two year supply – for anyone who wants it – gotten once not by my own design – they just started arriving – and I have yet to decide what to do with them –
Matt! Anybody! these mags are yours for the taking with the exception of one full of French translations of doubtful parentage.
So what do you think of the poem as a discrete object?
As something to trade on for a teaching position (and so on)?
Is that what poetry is “for”?
Why or why not?
Supposing one ceases to think of the poem as a discrete object, how might that shift the attention to what poetry accomplishes?
And so on…
the problem with defining poetry is that we need to use words –
and that is always a removal –
I don’t say this to sound cute or clever –
by its very nature and then we be damned –