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rinueIf you like contemporary art, you’ve periodically encountered a guy proclaiming that he doesn’t understand modern art except that he understands it’s awful and a monolith. Usually he makes this declaration in a museum with many other wings full of other art he might prefer. But he is here, in the contemporary art wing, demanding you pay attention to him instead of prioritizing your own experience of the art you came to see, which really gives the game away.
If you are in the US, he is almost always a straight middle-aged white man. I don’t think he’s particularly representative of straight-middle aged white men, plenty of whom are contemporary artists, but I think if you’re in any other category, you’re less susceptible to the nostalgic idea that the past was unambiguously better. For instance, I enjoy having property rights.
You run across the same old sawhorse complaining that hip hop isn’t the 1812 Overture. That sweatpants aren’t four piece suits. Imagine that you have brought a plate of chocolate chip cookies that you baked over the weekend, and I have complained that the microgastronomy restaurant Alinea would have presented me with chocolate chip flavored smoke breathed out by a mechanical bird. You get the idea.
When people complain about contemporary poems, there seems to be less of a category error: a poem is a poem. It isn’t, though. If I could support a family on a couple of poems a year, I wouldn’t necessarily write better poems, but my ambitions would be different. There are plenty of things I don’t ever attempt because I know I don’t have the time.
But mostly what you’re seeing is survivorship bias combined with selection bias. If you compare A Great Poem of All Time to almost anything else, Great Poem of All Time is going to win. And it already exists. We don’t need to write that one again. You can re-read it whenever you want, just like I can sit down and watch Casablanca or listen to Fleetwood Mac. Lots of people do.
Older poems, back when they used to all rhyme (they didn’t) and used to all have strict meter (they didn’t), are not universally great poems. You can read a 1920s issue of Poetry Magazine for free online right now; it’s archived and out of copyright. Most of the poems are dreadful. Try this yourself. You don’t have to trust me; it’s all in print. You’re going to find more you like in a contemporary issue, because the editors are now selecting from a much larger and more competitive pool of authors (and in the case of Poetry Magazine specifically, they’re paying better rates than they used to).
But let’s not let actual knowledge of the field get in the way. Any of these complainants is perfectly allowed to write a sonnet with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address. (I’m a contemporary poet and I write sonnets all the time.) But no, he’s not a poet himself. He could commission poets to write sonnets with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address. (I’m a contemporary poet and I write sonnets all the time.) He could type the phrase “a sonnet with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address” on an index card and pin it on the wall as conceptual art. He does not. It’s almost as though his chief interest is not the creation or discovery of more sonnets with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address.
In conclusion, I don’t understand why all my neighbors aren’t my best friends, and why they don’t constantly throw masquerade balls where we drink amari and dance the foxtrot. I blame the schools.
If you are in the US, he is almost always a straight middle-aged white man. I don’t think he’s particularly representative of straight-middle aged white men, plenty of whom are contemporary artists, but I think if you’re in any other category, you’re less susceptible to the nostalgic idea that the past was unambiguously better. For instance, I enjoy having property rights.
You run across the same old sawhorse complaining that hip hop isn’t the 1812 Overture. That sweatpants aren’t four piece suits. Imagine that you have brought a plate of chocolate chip cookies that you baked over the weekend, and I have complained that the microgastronomy restaurant Alinea would have presented me with chocolate chip flavored smoke breathed out by a mechanical bird. You get the idea.
When people complain about contemporary poems, there seems to be less of a category error: a poem is a poem. It isn’t, though. If I could support a family on a couple of poems a year, I wouldn’t necessarily write better poems, but my ambitions would be different. There are plenty of things I don’t ever attempt because I know I don’t have the time.
But mostly what you’re seeing is survivorship bias combined with selection bias. If you compare A Great Poem of All Time to almost anything else, Great Poem of All Time is going to win. And it already exists. We don’t need to write that one again. You can re-read it whenever you want, just like I can sit down and watch Casablanca or listen to Fleetwood Mac. Lots of people do.
Older poems, back when they used to all rhyme (they didn’t) and used to all have strict meter (they didn’t), are not universally great poems. You can read a 1920s issue of Poetry Magazine for free online right now; it’s archived and out of copyright. Most of the poems are dreadful. Try this yourself. You don’t have to trust me; it’s all in print. You’re going to find more you like in a contemporary issue, because the editors are now selecting from a much larger and more competitive pool of authors (and in the case of Poetry Magazine specifically, they’re paying better rates than they used to).
But let’s not let actual knowledge of the field get in the way. Any of these complainants is perfectly allowed to write a sonnet with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address. (I’m a contemporary poet and I write sonnets all the time.) But no, he’s not a poet himself. He could commission poets to write sonnets with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address. (I’m a contemporary poet and I write sonnets all the time.) He could type the phrase “a sonnet with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address” on an index card and pin it on the wall as conceptual art. He does not. It’s almost as though his chief interest is not the creation or discovery of more sonnets with the gravitas of the Gettysburg Address.
In conclusion, I don’t understand why all my neighbors aren’t my best friends, and why they don’t constantly throw masquerade balls where we drink amari and dance the foxtrot. I blame the schools.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-08-05 11:42 pm (UTC)