{"id":976,"date":"2010-04-23T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/04\/can-21st-century-poetry-matter.html"},"modified":"2010-04-23T09:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T16:31:00","slug":"can-21st-century-poetry-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/04\/can-21st-century-poetry-matter.html","title":{"rendered":"Can 21st Century Poetry Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

OKAY, okay, I’ll admit it’s a bit corny to post on verse during National Poetry Month, but I couldn’t resist. I turned to some distinguished friends of The Misread City, from different walks of life, to tell my readers which recent books they’re excited about. (I’m eager, too, to have some new titles to augment my on-again, off-again collection of Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, James Fenton, Philip Larkin and Rilke.)<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>Let\u2019s start with the fact that most educated people \u2013 including many literary people \u2013 read little or no poetry, especially recent poetry. It\u2019s an issue that two members of my kitchen cabinet, poet\/critic Dana Gioia<\/a> and poet\/ book publicist Kim Dower, have very different takes on.<\/span><\/p>\n

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“When people tell me — and this is what they always tell me — that they don’t like\u00a0most new poetry, I agree,\u201d Dana says. \u201cMost new poetry isn’t very good. Poetry is one of those odd arts in which the work either has to be wonderful or it isn’t worthwhile. \u00a0A mediocre movie might be watchable, but no one wants to spend two hours with a mediocre book of poems. It’s like striking a book of soggy matches. None of them ignite.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kim, whose first poetry collection, Air Kissing on Mars<\/i>, comes out in October on Red Hen, says this: \u201cThe state of poetry is so alive it’s hyperventilating,\u201d thanks to\u00a0 an \u201cabundance and variety of voices, styles, ways of seeing the world. Poetry is indeed the highest art and needn’t be difficult or esoteric. Poetry should be enjoyed, read aloud, felt, inhaled.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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My third enthusiast has inhaled a lot — maybe too much. \u201cSee, I can\u2019t seem to stop myself,\u201d Jeff Gordinier, a jet-setting Details writer and author of the Gen-X manifesto <\/span>X Saves the World<\/span><\/i>, wrote on <\/span>this piece<\/span><\/a> for the Poetry Foundation. \u201cA compulsion to feed my poetry fix as soon as I hit town \u2014 any town, <\/span>every<\/span><\/i> town \u2014 seems, at least on the surface, like a safe indulgence.\u201d But is it? (Read Jeff\u2019s piece to find out.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Here are a few recommendation from Dana Gioia:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Kay Ryan, <\/span>The Best of It: New and Selected Poems <\/span><\/i>(2010). \u00a0Kay Ryan is funny, weird, and wise. \u00a0Her poems are very short, intricately written, and interwoven\u00a0 with hidden rhymes. \u00a0This is not just one of the best books of poems this year.\u00a0It will be one of the best books of the decade and beyond. \u00a0Ryan is the brilliant outsider looking at life from the odd and revealing angle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Katha Pollitt, <\/span>The Mind-Body Problem<\/span><\/i> (2009). \u00a0This is Pollitt’s second collection of poems. Her first appeared 27 years ago. \u00a0This book is smart, witty, and consumately urbane — depicting the highs and lows of the smart middle-class in middle age. \u00a0It is one of the few recent books that I have read cover to cover. \u00a0And then I read it again. Maybe more poets should wait 27 years between volumes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A. E. Stallings <\/span>Hapax <\/span><\/i>(2006). Stallings is a Southern gal living in Greece, and she has a classical turn to her imagination. \u00a0Over the past ten years she has published so many ingenious and memorable poems–from the comic to heartbreaking–that she has become one of my favorite poets now writing. \u00a0If you doubt me, read her “First Love: A Quiz,” a multiple choice poem that simultaneously tells the story of Persephone and a potentially murderous white-trash date in rhymed free verse.<\/span><\/p>\n

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David Mason,<\/span> Ludlow: A Verse Novel<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2007). \u00a0There are very few good book-length\u00a0contemporary poems. \u00a0If the story is good, the poetry is usually missing. \u00a0If the language is strong, there is often very little happening. \u00a0Mason is a compelling storyteller who recreates the the violent Ludlow Massacre of 1914 when hired guns attacked striking Colorado miners and their families. This book reads better than most novels but adds the particular power of poetry to hit our emotions and imagination. \u00a0I was delighted to see the book belatedly featured a few weeks ago on the Lehrer News Hour–proving that poetry really is news that stays news.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Here are Kim Dower\u2019s recs:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Frank O’Hara<\/span><\/b>, Selected Poems, A New Selection Edited by Mark Ford, published by Knopf (2008) – no one beats O’Hara when it comes to a fresh and original voice, New York school, the one poet who inspired and influenced so many. Everyday stories that linger for life. \u00a0Every word and beat is an exciting experience to cherish! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Move right into <\/span>Billy Collins<\/span><\/b> who takes an ordinary experience and stretches it into a whole other way of seeing life. Any one of his books will toss readers into the appealing and unprecedented joys of poetry, and his latest, The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems is as accessible as the others, with poems that show us ordinary moments as ways to explore ourselves and the world around us: lying in bed, eating a ham sandwich, the heads \u00a0of roses beginning to droop . . . \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

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Denise Duhamel<\/span><\/b> is an exciting and vibrant poet and KA-CHING published last year by the University of Pittsburgh Press is an invigorating and smashingly original book about luck. Funny and twisted, one of Denise’s poems is also in a great new anthology that all poetry lovers — old and new — should have at their bedside: The Best American Poetry 2009, edited by David Wagoner, published by Scribner. \u00a0Her poem, “How It Will End,” is a provocative and humorous look at relationships and takes the “he said, she said”\u00a0theme into a divine dimension. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Thomas Lux’<\/span><\/b>s newest book, GOD PARTICLES, published in 2008 by Houghton Mifflin is gorgeous, dark heartbreaking and funny. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Zen monk <\/span>Seido Ray Ronci<\/span><\/b>, winner of this year’s PEN Award for his marvelous book, THE SKELETON OF THE CROW, Ausable Press, 2008, offers readers his life’s work, a book rich and simple, beautiful and intimate. \u00a0<\/span>

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And <\/span>Kim Addonizio<\/span><\/b>, delights with her newest, LUCIFER AT THE STARLITE, published by Norton – imaginative, luxurious, intimate and kickass.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Finally, these are some picks from Jeff Gordinier, who goes book shopping with Keanu Reeves here<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Take It<\/span><\/i>, by Joshua Beckman (Wave Books, 2009) Beckman surveys the fractal dementia of our landscape (“The neighbors were going at it \/ with gas plungers again” and “Big eaters of America, I join you in your parade”) with the eyes of a doomed and displaced Romantic.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Wind in a Box<\/span><\/i>, by Terrance Hayes (Penguin, 2006) Living, breathing, swiveling, shape-shifting poems about (or not) Michael Jackson, Dr. Seuss, David Bowie, Jorge Luis Borges, Melvin Van Peebles, and picking up a woman in “deep blue denim” at a bus stop.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I Was the Jukebox<\/span><\/i>, by Sandra Beasley (Norton, 2010) The wispy mists of contemporary poetry tend to make you yawn? Beasley is the bracing antidote. Consider the opening lines of her poem “Osiris Speaks”: “I left my heart in San Francisco. \/ I left my viscera in the Netherlands. \/ I left my liver on the 42 Line, headed \/ from Farragut Square to the White House.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rain<\/span><\/i>, by Don Paterson (FSG, 2010) Paterson is a Scotsman who is skilled at writing vibrant, exquisite poems in just about every emotional and intellectual mode: He can be brusque and tender (consider “Why Do You Stay Up So Late?”) and scholarly and sexy and hauntingly mystical and uproariously funny, sometimes all at once. His poems are so alive that it can feel as though they might start crawling across the page.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum, London<\/a>

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OKAY, okay, I’ll admit it’s a bit corny to post on verse during National Poetry Month, but I couldn’t resist. I turned to some distinguished friends of The Misread City, from different walks of life, to tell my readers which recent books they’re excited about. (I’m eager, too, to have some new titles to augment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,123,90],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-gen-x","8":"category-poetry","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}