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Poetry For the People: Signs of Hope in an Un-Poetic World

The world is an emotional place these days, and Americans may well be experiencing and expressing their feelings more than anytime since the turbulent Sixties.

by Jim Barnes (April 2002)

But these postings and many other fleeting expressions may be the equivalent of sound-bytes, and indicative of our society's taste for the fast and "lite." Books of poetry aren't selling very well, and college students don't have tattered volumes of McKuen in their back pockets these days. The only poetry book I could find in the Amazon.com top 1000 was eleven year-old Mattie Stepanek's new book Hope through Heartsongs, ranked 839 at the time of this writing. Another of Amazon.com's leading poetry sellers is The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (ranked 2514). One would have to admit the popularity of these books is due to publicity and personality, more than poetics. And now, with National Poetry Month is upon us, we must ask,"Why?" When poetry was such a huge part of the American life not so many decades ago, why is it such a small blip on the cultural radar screen today?

Victor di Suvero is one of the original founders of what was originally called Poetry Week. The effusive author of seven books of poetry and editor and publisher at Pennywhistle Press in Santa Fe, NM, thinks the problem with poetry is that it has abandoned its audience. "Poetry has gone in two divergent streams: there's the Academic, the New Formalists, and there's the folk extensions of Hip-hop and Rap music. So there's very little middle ground, and no one is communicating with the general public."

"The original motto of Poetry Week was, "Many Voices, One Heart." There was a real 'Of the People, By the People, For the People' spirit about it. At the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress last September, none of the featured speakers were poets, nor was poetry mentioned. Why has Maya Angelou been criticized for promoting poetry through the Hallmark greeting card company? Poetry is magic. It is an ongoing celebration of the world we know. But until we serve a function and provide the public with something they can respond to, poetry will remain in this kind of disrepair."

Thankfully, there are some signs of life in the world of poetry: the aforementioned Poetry.com website claims to feature the work of 4.6 million poets. Sponsored by the International Library of Poetry and billing itself as "by far the largest and most comprehensive poetry site on the Internet," the site has become a POD-style, democratic "poetry for, and by everyone" clearinghouse, offering everything from contests to publishing services.

"Our mission is to eliminate the traditional barriers that prevent most people from having their message heard," says the site's introduction. "We believe that poetry is a valid form of expression no matter who writes it, that poetry is not just for a chosen few. We know that everyone has his or her own individual style and point of view. We're here to encourage the expression of your unique vision."

The first Day's Night had come by Emily Dickinson

The first Day's Night had come--
And grateful that a thing
So terrible - had been endured--
I told my Soul to sing--

She said her Strings were snapt--
Her Bow - to Atoms blown--
And so to mend her - gave me work
Until another Morn--

And then - a Day as huge
As Yesterdays in pairs,
Unrolled its horror in my face--
Until it blocked my eyes--

My Brain - begun to laugh--
I mumbled - like a fool--
And tho' 'tis Years ago - that Day--
My brain keeps giggling - still.

And Something's odd - within--
That person that I was--
And this One - do not feel the same--
Could it be Madness - this?

* * * *

This poem appears in the new book, Out of the Ruins: A New York Record, Lower Manhattan, Autumn 2001 by Jean Holabird. The images on this page are among the 67 watercolor illustrations in the book. Published by Gingko Press and due for release in June 2002. National Poetry Month, (NPM) sponsored by The Academy of American Poets, "brings together publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools, and poets around the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture." Inaugurated by the Academy in April 1996, NPM encourages thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations to participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events. (See press release. )

Another ongoing program, developed by the Poetry Society of America and the MTA New York City Transit, Poetry in Motion(r) was established in 1992 to make bus and subway riding a more pleasurable and enlightening experience. Inspired by a similar program in the London Underground, the program places poem-placards in the spaces usually reserved for advertisements in subway cars and buses. The program has since expanded to ten cities across the country, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago and Portland.

Poetry book sales may not be breaking any records, but one book is at the center of some juicy publishing gossip, as the University of Pittsburgh Press recently refused to sell Random House the rights to re-publish some poems for Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, the new book by current U.S. poet laureate, Billy Collins. Sailing...(ranked 1,971 at Amazon.com), is his first major-publisher project, following his Picnic, Lightning, The Art of Drowning, and Questions About Angels, all published at Pittsburgh. Sales were buoyed by Collins' appearances on NPR's "A Prairie Home Companion" and "Fresh Air," along with several readings by Garrison Keillor on his "Writer's Almanac" show. Pittsburgh feels releasing poems to a "collection" could dilute sales of their Collins books, all of which remain in the Amazon.com top twenty in poetry.

Some critics have admired Collins' accessibility and use of common language, saying that his work appeals to people with both simple and discriminating tastes. Christian Science Monitor reviewer Elizabeth Lund says Collins attracts a wide audience "by offering a pleasant tune sung in a pleasant way."

* * * *

The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins

I wonder how it all got started, this business
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away
for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand
turning the pages of an album of photographs-
you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?
Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?
Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?
Your whole existence going off in your face
in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-
nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance
here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,
an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,
dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.
But if something does flash before your eyes
as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,
having nothing to do with your life or your death.
The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all
as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,
leaving behind what you have already forgotten,
the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds.

* * * *

Accessible poetry such as Collins' is what is needed, says Victor di Suvero. "Poetry is the ancestor of language, and when it is presented properly, it can make things happen. Take, for example, the current Rap and Hip Hop explosion in music. Look back in history, and see how it started the French Revolution. In our country, why was FDR so strong and beloved a president? Because he could express himself in a poetic way. Where are the poetry appreciation classes in the schools? There are programs for 4-5-6 graders, but they should be maintained for higher grades. Poetry teaches you how to speak responsibly -- learn to speak Shakespeare before you go and speak before your City Council."

In his home area in New Mexico, Suvero initiated a program in conjunction with the Espanola public library to help students and the general public to explore and develop their inclinations toward poetry. Seven area poets shared in readings and conversations on the theme of "Where We Live." Suvero says he was adamant about having the program involve people and the community, and that it not be an egocentric event. "Poets are already seen as withdrawn and hermetic. It's time for outreach and involvement."

"To use a metaphor: I say it's because the cooks do not prepare their food in ways that will serve their public, boring food and fancy cooking schools with post graduate courses in party pastry preparation are as much to blame as their master chefs. It's been a long time since Ginsberg 'Howl' came into the eyes and ears and minds of a people hungry for that kind of clarity and accusation and it's fine for a red wheelbarrow to evoke a particular taste in the palate of someone who knows, who's walked the talk and talked the walk and yes there are the Poetry Slams and the eagerness, the pride, the swagger can be seen at the State Fair where twelve year olds show off their raspberry pies, their angel food cakes and where their parents can be proud. It's all food, isn't it? And it's even food if it is cooked in a prison kitchen or on an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean."

"Take cooking out of the schools, I say and put it out in the street, out where the people are, where there's baby food and old folks' food, baby go to sleep rhymes and lullabies, there's singing in the rain that makes old men smile and Danny Boy that makes the whole nursing home cry. A time for each and all of those poetries, for each and all of those foods that give one strength to go on, face the next day or the lover gone berserk and the unexpected 9/11s that come in our lives, large or in miniature."

"Prayers and poems are food and sustain us, no matter the belief or the religion -- and yet most of us starve our souls. There is a lot of good poetry out there, and until we wake up to the fact that all of us are better off if we feed our spirit we will continue to walk around with our souls starving and not be aware of it. Yes, poetry as food - necessary as air, as light."

* * * *

The Business of Poetry by Victor di Suvero

The business of poetry

Is more than the arrangement of readings, the trading of favors, the wooing of audiences, or the management of notices, of schedules and publications.

The business of poetry

Is more than the evocation of feelings, the confrontation of falsehoods, the creation of visions of order and the promise of bountiful pleasures.

The business of poetry

is more than a transaction for dinner, or solace, or recognition or even of vengeance.

The business of poetry

is more than an advertisement for love discovered, uncovered, appreciated or lost.

is the recognition of that which is true, which brings us face to face with ourselves in the morning and with laughter at noon.

The business of poetry

is the flight of the kestrel, the throat of the jaguar and the sound of a frozen river breaking to run in the spring.

It is the recognition of the child by the father and the song of the mother at evening.

It is that which makes the heart glad, the harvest bountiful and permits hope to rise up once more in the throat of the weary.

The business of poetry is poetry.