August 1: Emily Dickinson, Modern Poetry Rant, Piece of Mind

...I remember Allie once asked him wasn't it sort of good that he was in the war because he was a writer and it gave him a lot to write about and all.  He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then he asked him who was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickinson.  Allie said Emily Dickinson...

Both D. B. Caulfield and Allie Caulfield identify Emily Dickinson as the best war poet.  Catcher in the Rye was published around 1951.  The first edition of Dickinson's Complete Poems was published in 1955.  Before that, Dickinson's work was "cleaned up" by editors and publishers.  So, J. D. Salinger thought Dickinson was great in 1951, even though he only had access to her highly edited poems.

Emily Dickinson published less than twelve poems in her lifetime.  One of the reasons for this paucity is, undoubtedly, Dickinson's tenuous mental health.  However, Dickinson was also very aware of the poetry scene of her time.  She knew what was being published, who was being published, and where it was being published.  So she knew her poems did not "fit the mold."  Slant rhyme.  Common meter,  Dashes.  Weird capitalization.  Strange imagery and word choice.  She had to know her poems wouldn't be received well.

Instead of publishing, Dickinson sent her poems in letters to friends and family.  And she also assembled her own little chapbooks out of paper and thread.  These "fascicles" preserved the bulk of Dickinson's eighteen hundred poems.

Why am I talking about Emily Dickinson?  Because I'm tired of "modern poetry."  As the poetry editor of a literary magazine, I see my fair share of current poetry, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not that impressed.

The poetry culture is an inbred little community, full of secret words and handshakes.  Like the Masons, sort of.  In my experience, people on the inside are really smart, really elitist, and really exclusionary.  If you don't speak four languages (including ancient Greek and Urdu), know the difference between Shakespearean and Italian sonnets, and make snarky comments about popular poets like Billy Collins, you won't be issued your membership card.

I don't mind working a little bit to understand a poem or poet.  My issue is with poetry that's intentionally obscure, with work that abandons all conventions of communication in order to confound readers.  It's poetry for poets.  Period.  Gone are the days when people memorized their favorite poems to share with family and friends.  When poetry used to be for the huddled masses.  Now, poetry is reserved for things like presidential inaugurations and high-brow literary journals.

Scoff if you want, but I'm a big fan of narrative poetry.  I like stories.  I like poems I can chew, that have meat on their bones.  Unfortunately, modern poetics emphasize language over story.  Language poetry has been all the rage for quite some time, to the point where a good portion of the poetry grad students I encounter these days can't even punctuate a grammatical sentence.  And there's something very wrong with that picture.

I may sound like the grouchy next-door neighbor who doesn't want kids on his lawn, but keep your rotten Gertrude Stein tendencies off my grass.

Until language poetry goes the way of the passenger pigeon, Saint Marty's going to get some thread and paper and make himself some fascicles with his poems.  And that's a piece of his mind.

Fascicle anyone?