In the February 22, 2009 New York Times, poet David Orr wrote a long and thoughtful essay titled “The Great(ness) Game” about poetry. Quoting from diverse sources, Mr. Orr sounds the alarm that with the passing of John Ashbery and his generation, “American poetry may be about to run out of greatness.”
“The problem is,” Orr continues, “that over the course of the 20th century, greatness has turned out to be an increasingly blurry business.” To put a date on it, he quotes from Donald Hall’s 1983 essay “Poetry and Ambition,” in which the poet accused American poets of playing small ball, when they should be trying to “make words that live forever…to be as good as Dante.”
Actually, I think poetry became especially blurry after the death of W.H. Auden in 1973, (see my Auden essay) the last of the Big Three in English-speaking literature, including Eliot and Yeats, and maybe also Robert Frost, to make it the Big Four. Roughly speaking, that was the end of the Shakespeare Standard and the rise of factionalism: postmodernism, political correctness/diversity/multiculturalism, anti-poetry, the triumph of the rock lyricist over the lyric poet and consequent retreat of official poetry into the university. Murky business, indeed.
Some of these trends, such as the rise of the rock lyricist—Bob Dylan over Dylan Thomas—began earlier in the 1960s; while political correctness didn’t gain steam until the 1980s. But it all started to hit the fan in a big way in the 1973-1984 era.
So, what to make of all of this?
First, I would say that we are now living in historical times, when the forces of anti-poetry are in retreat. I would include Mr. Ashbery in this crew, so, rest assured, poetry will not run out of greatness with his passing. It is now fashionable in some quarters to write rhyme and reason, that is, verse that resembles, to the eye and ear, historically great poetry. Whether any of the poets now writing in this vein will attain the exalted rank of Great Poet remains to be seen.
Mr. Orr asks the question: “Is being a ‘great’ poet the same as being a ‘major’ poet?” Good question. Which of the factions would give up literary turf to acknowledge a Great Poet? How many women poets and critics would acknowledge a Not Boring Live White Male genius? How many newly minted establishment minority writers would yield market share to same? Or are we all one big, happy family?
Without historical guidelines and references to historical standards, what we have is the dominion of politics. And politics we have aplenty today. But the times keep a-changing, and, as I say, we are now living more with traditional standards. This includes oral poetry, an ancient practice, which today is reinvented in the open mic and collaborations between poets and musicians. Slam poetry, which is hugely popular in live performances and on the Web, ultimately fails John Keats’ Truth & Beauty test. Slam poetry is energy added to art minus beauty. Just as there were rock lyricists who were giants on stage, and great hell raisers, who looked puny in print. Jim Morrison belonged to this category.
It is not easy to do away with the book standard augmented by spoken word performance. One cannot ignore the popularity of poet-performers such as Billy Collins, a middle weight with a gift for phrase making, who make big bucks from readings. Ultimately, we will all be subject to the book standard for quality. Whatever their personal weaknesses, keepers of books, of the written word, will have the last say on great vs. non-great, even as books become digitalized.
David Orr mentions Samuel Johnson’s phrase “exquisite in its kind” as one of poetry’s enduring legacies. He is right in this. Being best in show is what we poets can aspire to today and in the foreseeable future, if we get noticed at all in this new Web-based universe of millions of artists and writers, blogs and workshops. This means a new intellectual honesty is required.
You gatekeepers and empowerers, stop giving the prize for the Shelley Award, say, to someone who in no way resembles Percy Bysh Shelley. We’ve had enough of this 60s-era contrarianism already, this favor- giving based on race, gender and political affiliation. We have plenty of poets, be-ribboned like Soviet generals, who have never written a line that will live on the lips of the common reader. It won’t end, I know, favoritism. We could do with less of it. And less of the cult of ugliness that Modernism has fostered.
We don’t need new definitions and new categories except as they arise naturally in the culture. What we need is new readers with open hearts and minds eager for what smells and sounds and looks like a great poem. You might agree on that.
By Hudson Owen. All Rights Reserved.
Hudson Owen's Blog 
March 16, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Oh, Hud.
First, I must correct your misspelling. It’s Percy BYSSHE Shelley.
Second, I must correct your characterization of Billy Collins. He is not a spoken word poet. In fact, his readings are quite even, not dramatic at all. Further, his poems stand alone on the page very successfully. I read five of his books before I ever went to hear him read; his delivery and smooth golden voice are an added bonus for the audience, not the reason people read his poetry. To put him in a category anywhere near slam poets is just wrong, man. It ain’t right. Something just wrong about it; y’know? Just ain’t right.
March 17, 2009 at 2:49 am
summer girl, Oddly, there are many spellings to Shelley’s middle name. The one I used apparently was how he spelled it in his will. Spoken word is reading out loud, live or on recording, with or without text. Billy Collins’ poems do stand alone on the page, as you say. I do not say or imply that spoken word is the same as slam poetry.
March 16, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I began listening to you reading a poem on You Tube, just for comparison. You read in sing-song rhythm. That could be due to your acting background. But poets like Billy, man, just read it straight, and it works.
March 20, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I think part of “greatness” is whether the item in question (person, idea, piece of art) stands the test of time. That being the case, “greatness” will always seem increasingly blurry as we view items closer to the present. What writers of the 20th century will be regarded by the 22d the way we 21st-ers regard the great writers of the 19th? Too soon to tell.
March 21, 2009 at 3:35 am
Tiel Aisha Ansari, the “test of time” is a good one, although art that survives from older times is not necessarily good or great, unless it comes with praise from contemporaries. I also agree with R. Frost that one knows at first reading whether a poem has that thrill of greatness to it. The 22nd Century is beyond my imagination. I think getting to the mid-point of this century will be a struggle.
March 20, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Billy Collins is very good, in the way Frank Rich (or George F.Will) are good newspaper columnists; the craft employed has more to do with professionalism than trying to alter the way a reader might approach the world. He is not a poet , though, in a way I would find interesting , let alone “great”, although he performs the conventional free verse tricks with a virtuoso’s ease. Greatness lies elsewhere, and I suspect Orr’s motive was to stir the pot to garner some web views for the NY Times. The thesis seemed phony. It is phony.
March 21, 2009 at 3:40 am
Ted Burke, I don’t know what Mr. Orr’s motives were in writing his piece other than, as you say, to stir up buzz for the Times. He sure put a hot poker in a hornet’s nest.
March 21, 2009 at 8:14 am
Why even make an effort to retain the “good old days” of poetry? Heck, Shakespeare and the rest of the people you have mentioned sparingly honoured the “rhyme and reason” of the poets centuries before them. They tried to create something new, although in this regard they created something popular.
I do believe this is just sentimental rubbish. Its like longing for the days when everyone had to be uber-educated and highly ranked just to write, or longing for the time of using a quill when writing. It’s simply like you’re angry that the time of the quill has passed and that people are creating documents out of MS Word.
Oh, and don’t tell me that you love Old English poetry. I simply won’t believe you.
March 21, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Peter, you don’t put your cards on the table and say who you admire and why. I use paper to take notes, but compose in the same software you apparently do. Poetry is not something that progresses like technology. You can’t say that all poems written in 2009 are better than poems written in 2005 because they are more “modern.” Poets rise and fall with their civilizations. So it is that I can read Dante, or Shakespeare, or any poet from history, and compare them to the present.
March 23, 2009 at 2:59 am
There is only so much that can be said with a limited set of forms about a limited set of subject matter.
I love realist oil paintings of sunset over the ocean, but is anybody ever going to be considered one of the great artists of all time for painting them?
And why is producing historically great poetry the objective? Who decided that the purpose of writing poetry is to be the best at some socially agreed on standard, and that that standard was Shelley?
I would never write, review, or publish poetry that was trying to be Shelley. That was Shelley’s job. Good job. Well done. What’s next? Hopefully somebody being authentically themselves writing something I haven’t read before, or even thought before.
To propose a dichotomy betweey rock lyrics and Shakespeare, as though those were our only two choices, is ridiculous. It presupposes a purpose for poetry in which there is obvious success and obvious failure. There’s poetry that works for me and poetry that doesn’t work for me, writings that I consider poetry, not poetry, and borderline.
March 23, 2009 at 5:36 am
Christopher, I don’t believe I say or imply that Shakespeare and rock lyrics are our only two choices in poetry. Of course, everyone has likes and dislikes. You might prefer Emily Dickinson over Walt Whitman, for example; or think that your next door neighbor is better than the current poet laureate. Fine. I do think that history helps to inform our ideas of art, especially very old art forms like poetry. I think that art forms demand more than simply being yourself; like any discipline, they demand knowledge, practice, judgment as well as inspiration. They demand submission. And from that submission comes accomplishment in the wider cultural sphere–at least, sometimes it works out that way.
March 24, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I must have missed the time machine being invented, because how did we get to the 1850s so suddenly?
Scared of a little rock and roll? Or just the fact that, at present, ‘rock lyricists’ as you call them have been impacting people just as much (if not more) than the written word?
I certainly don’t deny that the classics (however you define them) are worth reading. To me, the modernists, beats, and new york school constitute classics that I include in the foundation of my poetry. But believe me, this post has nothing to say about what greatness even constitutes, or why it may be that people born into different generations, races, sexualities and cultures might have different notions of how to attain it. All of that comes into play when discussing form, be it free verse, rhyme, or rock lyrics.
Though your intent might be sincere and encouraging of great new classics, your approach does nothing but underline whiteness, political conservatism and aesthetic old-fashionedness.
Phooey.
March 25, 2009 at 2:48 am
Michael, Of course, I have my own point of view in this piece. I write in the Anglo-American tradition, yes, but that does not mean I exclude from worthy consideration women or authors from different societies and cultures; I’m simply not, generally speaking, their advocate. Nor are they, with exceptions, mine. Over the years, I have found that my range as a poet is larger than that of my would-be critics. The one thing I liked about the Beats was the fact that they were non-academic writers. The New York School can be quite nasty and intimidating when it feels that it is being threatened, as I have experienced.
March 25, 2009 at 9:13 am
Thank you for pointing that out. The way you frame it, as “I’m simply not, generally speaking, their advocate. Nor are they, with exceptions, mine,” is certainly not something that myself, as a white male american of moderate privilege can deny identifying with. I simply worry that such an attitude can turn to apathy or dismissal, especially when our privilege allows us to conceive of poetry as art-object, when the politically disenfranchised generally write double-duty.
God bless O’Hara, but I hope I never write a line like “pick up an ugly New World Writing to see what the poets in Ghana are doing these days.”
I apologize for the prickliness of my first response, my hackles were raised prematurely. I honestly haven’t read much poetry older than Eliot, having come into poetry through mostly fringe writers, so I tend to be skeptical when greatness is framed entirely around the older canon.
March 25, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Michael, thank you for your additional comment.