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Inaugural Poem
Jan. 20th, 2009 05:58 pmPredictably, I have been somewhat focused on the inaugural poet, particularly the fact that we have one. I do like Elizabeth Alexander, but that's not really the point; it's more that I find poetry valuable, and think there's nothing much better than charged, direct language that encapsulates a moment.
This inaugural poem wasn't particularly good, but it wasn't particularly bad. I thought it was much better than Robert Frost's, and am glad that when Frost spoke for JFK, he lost it and recited one of his old ones last minute. Frost is awesome, and even he had trouble knowing what to say for an inauguration, because as Ciro has said "what are you trying to express?" I think we poets will be able to figure it out once we have some practice, and more examples; it is hard to figure out how to do something when you only get to do it three times in 200 years. Given the opportunity for more ceremonial poems, I think we'll get it together. Surely Congress can give us the floor every once in a while; most of us are quite brief.
I was struck by the way Elizabeth Alexander orated, mainly because while the poem was not bad, the delivery was appalling. I feel this way about a lot of poets when they read aloud - the odd over-enunciation, the rising tone at the ends of lines, the unwillingness to emote. Poets since e e cummings have had a crisis of confidence. They've gotten caught up with the way words appear on the page, and are worried that if you can't "see" what they've written when they read it, you might get confused and not realize it's poetry. So even very highly trained and accomplished people read their poems as "word word word line break word word word" and beyond that try to remove their physical voices as much as possible - to let postmodern you approach it as freshly as you would on the page, without knowledge of the writer, perhaps as visual art.
This is horrible. This removes the charge. This removes the directness. This destroys the point of poetry. Since we are signaling in how we read that "this is poetry, you see" we don't have to be poetic. We can continue to typeset.
There are so many talented people who love poetry and want it to be present in our lives, and they are doing it all wrong by making it sound stilted and unnatural, by telling us there is no particular truth to it, and by insisting there is no difference between bad and good poems other than personal opinion. No, poets. No.
This inaugural poem wasn't particularly good, but it wasn't particularly bad. I thought it was much better than Robert Frost's, and am glad that when Frost spoke for JFK, he lost it and recited one of his old ones last minute. Frost is awesome, and even he had trouble knowing what to say for an inauguration, because as Ciro has said "what are you trying to express?" I think we poets will be able to figure it out once we have some practice, and more examples; it is hard to figure out how to do something when you only get to do it three times in 200 years. Given the opportunity for more ceremonial poems, I think we'll get it together. Surely Congress can give us the floor every once in a while; most of us are quite brief.
I was struck by the way Elizabeth Alexander orated, mainly because while the poem was not bad, the delivery was appalling. I feel this way about a lot of poets when they read aloud - the odd over-enunciation, the rising tone at the ends of lines, the unwillingness to emote. Poets since e e cummings have had a crisis of confidence. They've gotten caught up with the way words appear on the page, and are worried that if you can't "see" what they've written when they read it, you might get confused and not realize it's poetry. So even very highly trained and accomplished people read their poems as "word word word line break word word word" and beyond that try to remove their physical voices as much as possible - to let postmodern you approach it as freshly as you would on the page, without knowledge of the writer, perhaps as visual art.
This is horrible. This removes the charge. This removes the directness. This destroys the point of poetry. Since we are signaling in how we read that "this is poetry, you see" we don't have to be poetic. We can continue to typeset.
There are so many talented people who love poetry and want it to be present in our lives, and they are doing it all wrong by making it sound stilted and unnatural, by telling us there is no particular truth to it, and by insisting there is no difference between bad and good poems other than personal opinion. No, poets. No.
