The Atlantic Magazine How Poetry Came to Matter Again

#1 08-15-2018, 07:42 AM

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...oldier/565781/

#2 08-xv-2018, 08:12 AM

I sometimes like the poems of Sharif, Chen Chen, and Danez Smith, though I notice the latter 2 often anti-intellectual, bigoted, and Americentric. The less said most Sharif's propagandist "Farsi Letters" poem the ameliorate. Recently a friend, who lives in Abu Dhabi and travels widely, was speaking to me about how American writers take identity politics as a universally acknowledged fact, when actually it is accepted past a small pct of people and but within the Anglosphere.

Identity politics tin exist dismissed on Marxist grounds (Asad Haider explains it well hither, though he is definitely non the starting time to do and so). In literature, i reason I dislike the poetry of identity is because identity deals in the general�beingness gay or brownish�and not in the specificities of the private, which cannot exist reduced to identity. Identity is what you call yourself because of other people and order; the reverse would be what the cat at the end of T. S. Eliot�due south The Naming of Cats is doing: �When you observe a true cat in profound meditation / The reason, I tell you, is ever the aforementioned: / His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation / Of the thought, of the idea, of the thought of his proper noun: / His ineffable effable / Effanineffable / Deep and inscrutable singular Name.�

The current movement will laissez passer. I am not surprised that poetry is more pop than in times by, only then once again, more than people are in writing programs at present than ever earlier. Nearly of the poets mentioned I find unimaginative; and I already know what it'due south like to be gay and brownish, and then I am not sure what their poetry offers me.

#3 08-15-2018, 05:42 PM

Walter,

I practice like the Haider article. As an ardent lefty myself, and someone who constantly tries to be an abet in my school, I notice some some of the contempo Twitter explosions (say, surrounding Anders Carlson-Wee's non great poem in The Nation) interesting and challenging.

I find some stuff to enjoy in all iii--though, in the example of Smith almost entirely when I hear him read his ain poems and most never on the page. (In the case of Sharif, is this the verse form you lot're talking almost: [Western farsi Letters]).

I think for a long time poetry ceased having "popular" poets. There wasn't a way in for people who had 1 major talent just not another. When you lot think of almost every major era--even Modernism--there was a popular poetry that was really, you know, popular. Sometimes popularity coincided with talent. Byron is an easy example. Very oftentimes it didn't. But those popular poets allowed an entryway into the adept poets--it kept poetry both imperceptible and of import. That strikes me as something the industry has lacked pretty much since the novel took over. Our civilisation (and I'k generalizing) with it's lac of attention bridge, should ultimately have a similar reading market to the eras where could read: shorter pieces that engage and depict people in. I remember the popularity of poets--even if it's based solely on racial/sexual/gender identity at first--is what, at first, draws people in, it helps poetry in general.

#**four** 08-xv-2018, 05:48 PM

Howdy Walter,

Interesting post. Turning to civic engagement, protest in the US oftentimes seems to me to choose consumer paths: purchasing choices, production boycotts, sooner than demonstrations or organizing for elections. I take a little experience on this topic, having run a presidential campaign in Monroe Canton, IN back in 2003-04, and done door to door canvasing oft enough. This paw in manus with the slow death of the American wedlock movement. Perchance the US does a better job of producing informed consumers than informed citizens.

On a parallel rail, what people refer to every bit identity politics feels to me suited to just this cultural moment. I'm non sure I can limited this ameliorate; I'g simply trying to situate the movement in terms of political theory. Conspicuously it has improved the world in its role as a continuation of civil rights. What is that quotation - ane person oppressed is everybody oppressed? The sum of man happiness has increased in measurable ways through the piece of work of identity politics, such every bit marriage equality in the US.

All this quite independently of any aesthetic question, though those are worth asking. But I'chiliad interested in the political theory, and the consumer question.

Thanks,
John

Update: cross-posted with Andrew, who does a much better job of addressing the aesthetic questions than I do. I'd argue though that pop poesy is alive, well, and quoted daily by tens of millions in the guise of music lyrics...

#v 08-sixteen-2018, 01:15 AM

Hi Walter,

I call up I pretty much agree with you. Of course, it sounds better and more palatable coming from you (gay and brownish) than it would from me (white and straightish). And I can't think of a better way to put it than from the voice of Eliot'southward cat haha.

Similar Andrew I'g an 'ardent lefty', or instinctively experience I am, though having looked into the Anders Carlson Lee controversy I do begin to wonder what that means. I didn't observe the debate around his and the magazine'south forced apologies interesting and challenging, I but institute it pretty unequivocally agonizing that they felt it necessary to brand them. I wonder (Andrew) why you felt it necessary to add the editorial 'not great' to your link, equally if this softens or justifies the ridiculous handling the poem/poet received.

Generally, yet well-intentioned, I tend to look on poetry (or annihilation for that matter) which claims/seeks to speak for a 'group identity' with some skepticism. I'd far rather be invited into a unique and private universe.

Edit: having said this, I should too say that I'm not familiar with the 3 poets mentioned in Walter's opening paragraph. I did spotter the youtube clip Andrew linked to of the Danez Smith poem ('Dinosaurs in the Hood') which, like a lot of spoken word, seemed more akin to good political stand up-upwardly, which seems a better medium to me for cathartic collective identity.

#**six** 08-xvi-2018, 04:03 AM

OK, I read the Atlantic article. It'southward difficult for me to get any sense of the poets discussed in that location other than from the extracts cited, since the whole piece reads like a long publishers' blurb. Forget William Wordsworth�south �emotion recollected in tranquillity�: Guzm�n�south poem was an about instant eulogy - this does not inspire the sense that we are reading an impartial witness to the scene.

Cheers,
John

#7 08-16-2018, 06:44 AM

Well since Eliot and Wordsworth are getting some play, I guess I'll quote some Auden. He said what I would.

A poet�s hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.

#**eight** 08-16-2018, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell View Post

I wonder (Andrew) why you felt it necessary to add the editorial 'not neat' to your link, equally if this softens or justifies the ridiculous treatment the poem/poet received.

Hullo Mark,

I found the argue interesting considering I saw a lot of it on Twitter. Some of it really was brought up points that I hadn't thought of. I found it challenging because I withal couldn't bring myself to recollect that Carlson-Wee did something that he needed an apology, and yet he still did. As did Stephanie Burt and Carmen Gim�nez Smith.

I specifically mentioned the quality of the verse form because that should be the foreground of a reading: the poem was raised up and published in the journal, despite information technology's mediocrity, in part because of identity politics; for that very same reason it was torn downwards.

As for the treatment, I recall there are interesting questions, and specifically Americentric questions, about greasepaint and minstrel-shows. All the language of appropriation is, to my heed, unconvincing; I'yard more interested in the erstwhile, and what those lines might exist. Hither's John McWhorter on information technology.

(The "ableist" language Burt and Smith apologized for, given the context, is frankly absurd.)

#9 08-16-2018, 06:58 AM

Andrew, well why didn't you say all that? But thanks for the clarification. I conspicuously read things other than your intended meaning into 'interesting', 'challenging' and 'non corking'.

Cheers.

Fwiw I quite like the verse form. Information technology's an amusing irony that many of the professionally offended (white) people who caused the furore on social media would no incertitude happily describe themselves as 'woke'.

#10 08-16-2018, 07:58 AM

Hi Andrew,

Interesting link. It ends "JOHN MCWHORTER teaches linguistics at Columbia University", which does a fair job situating the frame of reference he brings to touch the question of Blackness English language. Similarly, I was at a Chomsky talk some years ago where he described Black English as in linguistic terms an independent linguistic communication with an independent set of rules.
So much for neutral linguistic ascertainment. Every bit for the sociological question, well, it's fascinating, and McWhorter does a fair task reviewing it to my heed. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, the selection between Spanish and English is similarly fraught. Some people will be happy to hear Spanish, some offended; getting that choice right requires feel and focus. For case, in my classrooms, students are startled when I brainstorm referring to Spanish to explain French or German; it takes a moment to break the ice of stereotyping and testify that these are globe languages from a common family unit, and learners volition in fact larn quicker if they accept Spanish under their belt and bachelor. But with the ice cleaved, then that choice tin can get a thing of conviction and pride.
Equally McWhorter indicates, what the Dalai Lama calls insight certainly helps when faced with questions similar these.

Cheers,
John

Update: Found my quotation. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" - Dr. Martin Luther King.