So opens Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, arguably one of the oldest poems in the Western literary tradition, and certainly one of the most representative. One could also argue that the poem is still as alive in the popular consciousness as it was when it was told around shepherds’ fires and in the warriors’ halls of Mycenaean kings almost 3,000 years ago by the blind poet who earned his bread by its recitation. Retold and re-imagined countless times over the centuries, it is still read by generations of school children today. James Joyce’s Ulysses adapted the tale for life in early 20th century Dublin. Ezra Pound retold the ancient tale in his Cantos. Most recently, the Coen brothers gave the story of wily Odysseus new life in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film released in the year 2000. It is a poem of remarkable endurance.
Poetry as an art form, I fear, has not been as lucky, nor aged as well, as its representative. It was not so very long ago that poets could see tangible results on the collective consciousness through their works. In Victorian England, poets such as Tennyson and Kipling profoundly defined for the citizenry the way in which the British Empire ought to conduct itself. A generation of young men died under the guns in World War I believing that “Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do & die [Charge of the Light Brigade].” I am not arguing any perceived rightness in this statement; merely that the effects of poetry had a resonant impact on the society in question. On our own shores, Whitman changed the way in which Americans thought about themselves as well. Dr. Kenneth M. Price, in his scholarly work To Walt Whitman, America, has said that Walt Whitman is a “foundational figure in American culture.” The poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and Langston Hughes in particular, were influential writers whose works had a major cultural impact. Though there have been numerous other influential poets (in fact, far too many to name), probably not since Robert Frost has any single poet wielded such mainstream cultural influence, excepting perhaps Maya Angelou or Allen Ginsberg. Frost, of course, has been dead almost fifty years.
That’s not to say there have been no influential poets since Frost. Each new generation builds off of the work of the last. But the artistic community, and poets in particular, have become more insular. Their words do not resonate throughout the culture (that is assuming one could even argue that there is some thing or group of things that could be called an ‘American culture’) as they did in the past. As a nation, we have ceased to define ourselves in poetic terms. The words of the new poets do not resound throughout the culture; rather, they exist as whispers in coffee shops, writing workshops, and English departments.
How then does modern poetry fit into the current cultural and artistic dialogue? Is it some obsolete curiosity, gone the way of the grandfather clock or the Victrola? W.B. Yeats suggested that he thought poetry “aged… a paltry thing/ a tattered coat upon a stick… a form as Grecian goldsmiths make/ of hammered gold and gold enameling/ to keep a drowsy emperor awake [Sailing to Byzantium].” Donald Hall, fourteenth Poet Laureate of the United States, wrote on Poets.org that poetry in modern culture means:
- a vacuous synonym for excellence or unconsciousness. What else is common to the public perception of poetry?
- It is universally agreed that no one reads it.
- It is universally agreed that the nonreading of poetry is (a) contemporary and (b) progressive. From (a) it follows that sometime back (a wandering date, like "olden times" for a six-year-old) our ancestors read poems, and poets were rich and famous. From (b) it follows that every year fewer people read poems (or buy books or go to poetry readings) than the year before.
Other pieces of common knowledge: - Only poets read poetry.
- Poets themselves are to blame because "poetry has lost its audience."
- Everybody today knows that poetry is "useless and completely out of date"--as Flaubert put it in Bouvard and Pécuchet a century ago [Death to the Death of Poetry].
Perhaps people wonder why poets still write at all. That seems to be the real crux of the question: after all, we know that poets are still writing; this issue of our little review being a testament to that fact. But what to do about the loss of cultural influence? If one subscribes to Oscar Wilde’s philosophy of ‘Art for Art’s sake,’ then the question is irrelevant. And, as Hall notes, “the American climate for poetry is… generous. In the mail, in the rows of listeners, even in the store down the road, I find generous response.” It is not that no one is writing or reading poetry, or even that fewer people are today than had done so in the past. It just seems as though the roar of the mainstream culture drowns the words of the poets.
It is easy to fall into the trap with Flaubert, to imagine poetry is a dead thing. People have been saying so for decades. And it is apparent to nearly everybody familiar with the form that it is clearly alive and well. But the poet of today has more in common with that first poetic inspiration, wily Odysseus, than with the more culturally influential poets of the past 150 years, or with the wandering troubadours of a bygone age. It is hard to earn one’s bread, so to speak.
The poet of today must survive by wits, tossed about by an indifferent cultural sea. They must resist despair for the art—so often bandied about in the press—or, as Hall so eloquently puts it, they “must warm themselves by the gregarious fires of their solitary art.” They must resist the temptation to consider what they do unimportant, to rest comfortably upon a plateau, sure that all their labors lack meaning, like the tired sailors on the island of the Lotus Eaters. They must continue sailing, even with no shining shore in sight.
The future is not grim for poetry. It is more humble, to be certain, remaining at once both simple and complex, elemental almost—something from our collective past that will always be with us. It can still invoke community. It remains one of the great pleasures in life, exposing the beauty in the ordinary. It may appear, as Yeats wrote, “an old and paltry thing,” but to its adherents it remains something more mysterious, deeper, a way to reach out to one’s fellows. Perhaps Yeats knew this too. Poetry may be,
“A tattered cloak upon a stick, unless
Soul claps its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence.”