In the Abdomen of Literature
I haven't for some time thought I was anything like an authority on writing or reading poetry. Certainly, there have been moments of enthusiasm during which I thought I might have a valuable contribution to make either in the form of a body of poems or in the form of some great pronouncement about the nature of the art. But those moments have been few and far between, and the more I try to read the stuff -- especially since having finished school -- the more difficulty I have sitting through even short poems. My intellectual attention span has waned in part as a result of my entering a post-university world in which speedy results on the job are necessary; rather than taking the time to enjoy articles I read as a copy editor, I hurry through them as mechanically and as quickly as possible. The practice has extended to my reading of poetry as well, so that rather than taking my time to read a piece, I feel pressed instead to get through it quickly. Light essays lend themselves to this sort of reading -- most poetry does not.

But my occupation is only part of the problem. My difficulty reading poetry is a symptom also of a general frustration with the genre. (Other symptoms include the lack of any ability of late to write any poems.) The basic problem is that poetry is the appendix in the abdomen of literature. Hundreds of years ago, verse served the purpose of aiding memorization. Then along came printing, which resulted eventually in the easy reproduction of written works, which eliminated the need for poetic conventions that aided the memory. Without those conventions, the poetic line was worthless -- imagine an appendix existing long after the esophagus was swallowed up in obsolescence upon human beings' development of photosynthetic nourishment. Yet we continue to huff and puff about the importance and the grandeur of poetry. Despite the diminished need for the genre, more people than ever are indulging in it. Of course, part of the reason is that there are more people than ever. But the other part is that poetry, in its atrophied and formless form, is something most people can do badly under a cloak of mystique without other people knowing it's bad. It's something like a poor student of physics spouting incorrect figures and formulas to a student of English who is unequipped to determine the accuracy of the figures and formulas.

So poetry is a kind of expression the inept can hide behind while pretending to have some aptitude at something reserved at least in romantic history for deep thinkers. Thus the profusion of poems. As more and more poems pass back and forth among the inept, more and more bad poems are called good; the writers of those bad poems, heartened, write more bad poems, and the production of tripe grows geometrically.

It doesn't stop, however, with these poetic circle-jerks. Not the poet, but the egotist in a person thinks it a good idea to share bad poetry with the public. The public apparently has never read a cliché-filled platitude about the dark feelings the poet has when he thinks about the girl who broke his bleeding heart. And so the bad poet deems himself entitled to publication. What he doesn't understand is that publication is not a validation of his feelings. Outright lies (some call them fiction) are published daily, but their residence between two bound covers does not render them true or wise.

That someone might feel entitled to publication because he has endured and scribbled about a bit of pain (as is most frequently the case) points in its own way toward a trend of the past decade or two. A restaurant gives you steaming hot coffee, you spill it and sue that dirty corporate giant for your own negligence: Something unpleasant hurts your feelings, you write some crap about it and expect the world to pay you with praise and respectable publication. It's absurd, really.

It seems pointless to bother reading poetry anymore, much less writing it. I used to think that I read others' poems of the past as a roadmap toward my future in poetry, but I don't believe there is any valuable future in it. Poetry in any serious capacity is a dwindling appendage of our literature soon to be confined to the jar of formaldehyde as a curiosity only. The bad poetry that will persist we might even equate with the formaldehyde itself -- an agent whose volume exceeds that of the appendage; an agent that keeps the appendage looking about as good as it ever did and by which the appendage is surrounded; and an agent that stinks up the place.

The poetry of the past will not prepare me for the impo(e)tent future, and writing my own new work will neither improve the respectable canon nor detract from the atrocious poems committed every day.