The Atlantic Magazine How Poetry Came to Matter Again

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

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

#ii 08-15-2018, 08:12 AM

I sometimes like the poems of Sharif, Chen Chen, and Danez Smith, though I notice the latter two oftentimes anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, and Americentric. The less said about Sharif'due south propagandist "Farsi Letters" poem the better. Recently a friend, who lives in Abu Dhabi and travels widely, was speaking to me about how American writers have identity politics as a universally best-selling fact, when really it is accepted by a small-scale percentage of people and only within the Anglosphere.

Identity politics tin can be dismissed on Marxist grounds (Asad Haider explains it well hither, though he is definitely not the first to practice so). In literature, i reason I dislike the poetry of identity is considering identity deals in the full general�being gay or brownish�and non in the specificities of the individual, which cannot be reduced to identity. Identity is what you call yourself because of other people and society; the reverse would exist what the cat at the stop of T. Due south. Eliot�s The Naming of Cats is doing: �When you lot notice a cat in profound meditation / The reason, I tell you, is always the same: / His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation / Of the thought, of the idea, of the idea of his name: / His ineffable effable / Effanineffable / Deep and inscrutable singular Proper name.�

The current move will pass. I am not surprised that poetry is more popular than in times past, simply then over again, more people are in writing programs now than e'er before. Most of the poets mentioned I discover unimaginative; and I already know what information technology's similar to be gay and brownish, so I am not sure what their verse offers me.

#**iii** 08-xv-2018, 05:42 PM

Walter,

I do similar the Haider article. Every bit an ardent lefty myself, and someone who constantly tries to be an advocate in my schoolhouse, I notice some some of the contempo Twitter explosions (say, surrounding Anders Carlson-Wee's not smashing poem in The Nation) interesting and challenging.

I find some stuff to enjoy in all three--though, in the case of Smith almost entirely when I hear him read his own poems and almost never on the page. (In the instance of Sharif, is this the poem you're talking nigh: [Western farsi Letters]).

I think for a long time poetry ceased having "popular" poets. There wasn't a way in for people who had one major talent but not some other. When you think of well-nigh every major era--even Modernism--in that location was a popular poetry that was actually, y'all know, popular. Sometimes popularity coincided with talent. Byron is an like shooting fish in a barrel instance. Very frequently it didn't. Just those popular poets allowed an entryway into the proficient poets--it kept poetry both ephemeral and important. That strikes me as something the industry has lacked pretty much since the novel took over. Our culture (and I'grand generalizing) with it'southward lac of attention span, should ultimately accept a similar reading market to the eras where could read: shorter pieces that appoint and describe people in. I recall the popularity of poets--fifty-fifty if it's based solely on racial/sexual/gender identity at first--is what, at first, draws people in, information technology helps poetry in full general.

#**four** 08-15-2018, 05:48 PM

Hi Walter,

Interesting post. Turning to civic engagement, protest in the US frequently seems to me to choose consumer paths: purchasing choices, product boycotts, sooner than demonstrations or organizing for elections. I have a little experience on this topic, having run a presidential campaign in Monroe County, IN dorsum in 2003-04, and done door to door canvasing often enough. This hand in mitt with the slow death of the American union move. Perhaps the US does a better chore of producing informed consumers than informed citizens.

On a parallel track, what people refer to as identity politics feels to me suited to just this cultural moment. I'grand non sure I tin can limited this improve; I'one thousand just trying to situate the movement in terms of political theory. Clearly information technology has improved the world in its function every bit a continuation of civil rights. What is that quotation - one person oppressed is everybody oppressed? The sum of human happiness has increased in measurable means through the work of identity politics, such as marriage equality in the US.

All this quite independently of whatsoever artful question, though those are worth request. But I'm interested in the political theory, and the consumer question.

Cheers,
John

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

#5 08-16-2018, 01:15 AM

Hello Walter,

I think I pretty much hold with you. Of class, it sounds improve and more than palatable coming from you (gay and brownish) than information technology would from me (white and straightish). And I can't think of a meliorate style to put information technology than from the voice of Eliot's cat haha.

Similar Andrew I'm an 'ardent lefty', or instinctively feel I am, though having looked into the Anders Carlson Lee controversy I practise brainstorm to wonder what that means. I didn't notice the argue around his and the magazine's forced apologies interesting and challenging, I just found information technology pretty unequivocally agonizing that they felt it necessary to make them. I wonder (Andrew) why yous felt it necessary to add the editorial 'not corking' to your link, as if this softens or justifies the ridiculous treatment the poem/poet received.

Generally, however well-intentioned, I tend to look on poesy (or anything 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 likewise say that I'thou not familiar with the three poets mentioned in Walter'southward opening paragraph. I did watch the youtube prune Andrew linked to of the Danez Smith verse form ('Dinosaurs in the Hood') which, like a lot of spoken word, seemed more alike to good political stand up-up, which seems a better medium to me for cathartic commonage identity.

#6 08-16-2018, 04:03 AM

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

Cheers,
John

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

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

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

#8 08-16-2018, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell View Post

I wonder (Andrew) why y'all felt it necessary to add the editorial 'not keen' to your link, as if this softens or justifies the ridiculous handling the poem/poet received.

Hi Mark,

I institute the debate 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 establish it challenging considering I still couldn't bring myself to think that Carlson-Wee did something that he needed an amends, and yet he nonetheless did. As did Stephanie Burt and Carmen Gim�nez Smith.

I specifically mentioned the quality of the poem because that should be the foreground of a reading: the poem was raised upward and published in the journal, despite information technology'south mediocrity, in part considering of identity politics; for that very aforementioned reason it was torn downwardly.

As for the handling, I recollect at that place are interesting questions, and specifically Americentric questions, well-nigh greasepaint and minstrel-shows. All the language of appropriation is, to my mind, unconvincing; I'thou more interested in the former, and what those lines might be. Here's John McWhorter on it.

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

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

Andrew, well why didn't you say all that? Merely thank you for the description. I conspicuously read things other than your intended meaning into 'interesting', 'challenging' and 'not great'.

Cheers.

Fwiw I quite like the poem. It'due south an agreeable irony that many of the professionally offended (white) people who caused the furore on social media would no doubt happily depict themselves as 'woke'.

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

Hi Andrew,

Interesting link. It ends "JOHN MCWHORTER teaches linguistics at Columbia Academy", which does a fair job situating the frame of reference he brings to impact the question of Black English. Similarly, I was at a Chomsky talk some years agone where he described Black English as in linguistic terms an independent language with an independent set of rules.
So much for neutral linguistic observation. Every bit for the sociological question, well, information technology's fascinating, and McWhorter does a fair chore reviewing information technology to my listen. Here in the Rio Grande Valley, the option between Spanish and English is similarly fraught. Some people volition be happy to hear Castilian, some offended; getting that choice right requires feel and focus. For example, in my classrooms, students are startled when I begin referring to Castilian to explain French or German; it takes a moment to break the ice of stereotyping and bear witness that these are world languages from a common family, and learners will in fact learn quicker if they accept Spanish under their belt and available. But with the water ice cleaved, then that pick can get a matter of confidence and pride.
As McWhorter indicates, what the Dalai Lama calls insight certainly helps when faced with questions like these.

Thank you,
John

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