Introductions

Reading as much poetry as I do I can’t help but notice the lack of introductions in contemporary poetry books.  When you consider how many of today’s poets teach for a living its odd that there aren’t 3 to 4 pages of background on the poets in their given collections.  Of course I’m not saying all but definitely most.  I suppose a first collection might not have an introduction but a second or third should.  (If a poet is so lucky as to publish multiple books but still I wouldn’t mind seeing an introduction in a first offering.) 

What school of poetry informs their poetic choices?  Which poet most shaped their poetic identity or provided inspiration?  What poet do they hate or strongly disagree with?  What do they think about smoking in public?  Don’t we readers require something? 

I find introductions to be a great way for aspiring poets and writers to search within themselves for their own literary aesthetic by learning from the poet in their hand.  For example, I read that Paul Celan was a practitioner of “absolute poetry” or true poetry, a school of thought rampant in France after Mallarme.  Mallarme believed in the absolute manipulation of everything associated with the work to arrive at that truth.  Truth and more truth but like his contemporaries Celan would not allow that doctrine to compromise his truth in experience.  Most of his experience involved death and war.   His muse was clear, the truth and purity of his poems came from those terrible experiences. Celan wouldn’t compromise that element of his work.  That’s such a wonderful thing to know about a poet.   To know how he navigated the popular movements of the day and kept to his style.

An introduction I read on Rene Char discussed his absolute commitment to the mystery of poetry.  Char didn’t believe a poem should be spelled out for the reader and he was “radically opposed to limits”.  He was also the type to rock the boat, “The person who comes into the world to disturb nothing is worth neither consideration nor patience”.  Well, I know where he stands.  This is missing in today’s books of poetry.  These introductions that tell us so much, that help us to distinguish poets and find out a bit more about what we like.

William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite poets. He might be the last poet to actually be fanatical about the art of poetry.  I know that he disliked TS Eliot's 'high' verse, which, though I can’t decipher most times, I still enjoy.  Williams questioned everything that wasn’t direct or clear.  He pissed people off and sometimes even made enemies.  I wonder if today’s poetry is purposely skirting the danger.  Where is the danger?  Why aren’t these poets rocking the boat?

Several articles are floating around the internet pitting the MFA literary organ against the non-MFA literary organ.  These articles allude to the ‘art of playing it safe’ that is being ingrained in today’s writers and poets and that they are being kept in line.  This uniformity is supposed to bring jobs and “opportunities” etc.  Is that it?  Are today’s poets playing it safe so they don’t piss of any potential suitors?  I suppose I can’t blame them.  There was a time, believe it or not, where you could be a writer/poet and not work.  Poets, many moons ago, survived on bread crusts and cheap wine.  They got by on help from friends, parents and the meager sales of their work.  A poet’s life was one of poverty but for the most part they managed to survive.  Today’s world is very different.  No one, especially not poets can survive for long under the same circumstances in today’s world.

But does it have to be that way?  Aren’t the same institutions that allegedly control the minds of our writer/poets supposed to be full of rebels like Williams, Char, Celan, and Ginsberg?  I suppose we are left to wonder. 

I for one am curious about the schools of poetry today’s poets are members of.  I don’t mean boxed terms like urban poetry, gay poetry, spoken word poetry, social or conscious poetry etc.  Let’s talk Modernist, Dadaist, Beat and down the line.  These are still relevant.  The industrial machine has been born again as the technology age.  Globalization is another word for internationalism isn’t it?  Do the same stigmas apply?  Why aren’t we writing about it? 

I guess in the end we are always left with more questions and most importantly more discussions to be had.

P.S.

The renewed anger and resulting protests of Tony Hoagland’s poem “The Change” was refreshing.  The poem sucked but it got people talking about race and questioning themselves on many levels.  That takes balls.  It takes extremes doesn’t it, to shake us out of our comfort zones?  Hmm.