Poetry Is Everywhere(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
Poetry Is Everywhere
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/08/when-poetry-isnt-poetry/567571/?single_page=true
9 comments
[deleted]
You seem to have forgotten about the existence of rap music.
I don't think of rap as poetry. I love both, and to me the claim that rap is a form of poetry seems more like an unnecessary attempt to coopt the legitimacy of poetry than anything.
I cannot agree that rap lyrics are any sign that the contemporary poetry scene is open to a real breadth of approaches. It is extremely difficult to find rap lyrics that completely lack the tropes of braggadocio, social commentary, and/or disparagement or one’s rivals. (I myself have searched for years with little success, though I have nothing against hip-hop as a purely musical genre, and I welcome recommendations). Yet, there is a whole world of other subjects and forms to explore out there in poetry.
Furthermore, how longform can one reasonably go in a recorded or live-concert medium like hip-hop? I suspect that any artist that tried to pen a single composition as long as many longform poems in the canon, would either reach the limits of the recording medium, or of his audience’s patience.
Furthermore, how longform can one reasonably go in a recorded or live-concert medium like hip-hop? I suspect that any artist that tried to pen a single composition as long as many longform poems in the canon, would either reach the limits of the recording medium, or of his audience’s patience.
[deleted]
I read and occasionally translate poetry.
I find that, as a programmer, reading poetry strikes some of the same chords within me as reasoning about code: expressiveness, attention to detail, finding the perfect way to convey complex ideas.
As Norwid puts the latter:
I find that, as a programmer, reading poetry strikes some of the same chords within me as reasoning about code: expressiveness, attention to detail, finding the perfect way to convey complex ideas.
As Norwid puts the latter:
Beyond, above all your charms,
You! poetry, and you, speech! Behold,
Ever the highest will be – this aim:
*To name each matter by its rightful – word!*
In our time poetry might “flourish” on Instagram, but is the social media format capable of giving us a long poem like Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” or A. R. Ammon’s Hibernaculum? It seems to me that one would at least have to split things up into multiple posts, but then there is much less likelihood that readers will follow the entire thing, or at the very least simply be aware of how long it is. Is the social media form of virality capable of spreading such introverted work as Paul Celan’s late period starting from Atemwende to the point that it could even register culturally?
Such poetry has never been terribly popular, of course, but in the past it could at least receive steady support from academia. Nowadays, academia is a less sure friend of that poetry, because being socially engaged (overtly socially engaged) is often considered a requirement.