In recent times my senses have been battered in many directions by collections of words that masquerade their clutter as poetry. I do not wish to sound harsh and authoritative on the matter-- after all, every person has a right to express, in their own way, their seething emotions-- but I believe people have the right to be considerate to the artistic endeavour we term as poetry, and not degrade its form to something crude, misshapen, inartistic.
Needless to say, I am hardly a poet myself, and I have taken care to hide many of my obtuse ramblings in the far reaches of my closet and drawers where they would never see light again; then again, one does not need to be a professional soccer player to pass comment on a soccer player who is infinitely better than us. One needs only to be a fan of soccer or a journalist. And since we are often both in one way or the other, I believe the following points I am about to make would not come across as wholly unqualified; your agreement with them is another thing, of course. The reader should at this point note that I am not against weak poems that are displayed publicly if the display is for want of comment and critcism-- this is precisely what I shall provide in the following few paragraphs.
In considering what constitutes a good poem, I have noticed that the demerits of a bad one are more prevalent and easier to identify with, and by doing away with them, I realised that one's art is improved tremendously almost by default. Hence I shall concentrate on the unwanted ingredients as opposed with starting with the best.
1) Abstractions.
People guilty of it: Semi-mature youths, rash people, people who don't put effort into communicating their feelings, several established poets, Edgar Allan Poe.
What I suspect here is that many people confuse imagery with senseless abstractions. Imagery is what gives readers a picture, an image. It embeds itself into the reader's mind, and very often it is so strong it elicits powerful emotions within us. An abstraction, on the other hand, is merely a pretty word or phrase. It is often the product of strong emotions, but it never gives us strong emotions. Imagery is a tool of communication, abstraction a distasteful tool when placed in the wrong hands.
Here are two stanzas from two different poems for example:
This repetive pain, self inflicted misery
Can't you see I have tried
I have tried over and over
Now the will is gone
My soul and eyes,
Simultaneous tears.
-
I sat upon a disintegrating gravestone.
How can I continue, I asked?
I longed to whet my senses, but upon what?
On mud? It was a desert of raw mud.
I was tempted by fantasies of the past,
but my body rejected them, for only in the present
could it pursue the promise,
keeping open to its fulfilment.
I would not, either, sink into the mud,
warming it with the warmth I brought to it
as in a sty of sloth.
The first stanza, I believe, appeals because it looks and feels sad. The second appears more indirect and hence less intense, but leaves the taste of warm, raw mud in our senses. The image of the narrator seated on a 'disintegrating gravestone', asking himself questions of how to proceed on is striking, particularly when he is in a 'desert of raw mud'. The last few lines paints a possible scenario in which the narrator may find himself in should he falter, and by highlighting his resolve the lines at the same time highlight the direness of the crisis the narrator is in. The first is by an amateur poet, the second by thom gunn in his poem 'A Sketch of the Great Dejection'.
Here is a full-length poem:
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
The poem, Alone by Edgar Allan Poe, contains several images-- but they are abstract images, and hence they are no better than verbose abstractions. Phrases such as "My Passions from a common spring" and "a most stormy life", in my opinion, elucidate the boy's life in no useful manner. If anything, they add more questions: What Passions? What common spring? What 'stormy life' did you experience exactly?
Compare this with William Blake's "The Little Boy Lost":
Father, father, where are you going
O do not walk so fast.
Speak father. speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost,
The night was dark no father was there
The child was wet with dew.
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
And away the vapour flew.
The child's loneliness is felt.
At this juncture we may want to note that not all abstractions should be shunned. There are complex themes in life that poems--and indeed, many forms of art-- attempt to deal with. Take the following excerpt from Wordsworth's
The Prelude:There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct preeminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight
In trivial occupations and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.
Wordsworth here is reflecting on the healing nature of memories, and while this is not grounded in any concrete image whatsoever ('spots of time', though, is an exception, but it is a complex exception) the excerpt still makes much intellectual sense. I dont advise such displays of maturity be attempted by any save those who have an extraordinary grasp on the subject matter, lest the shower of words turns into a hailstorm of painful abstractions.
2) Prose Expression
People guilty of it: People who don't realise that not everything must be arranged in the form of a poem, people with very weak or no poetic acumen, experimental poets, modernists and postmodernists.
We excuse the last two categories of guilty parties, but such pardon should hardly be handed out for the first two. A poem is, well, a poem, and its form should never be imposed on by the forms of prose and dialogue. There have been, of course, considerable success with the latter kind of imposition, but we should note that the dialogue found in those poems are very often arranged poetically, meaning to say that the dialogues themselves possess such literary characteristics as wealthy imagery, rhyme and rhythm, syntactical enjambment, and so on, and we will not find trouble with those.
I dont really know how to describe and elaborate on what I mean by poems which are better off in prose, so I shall provide some examples straight off.
My legs are tired
So very tired
But I need to continue on walking
I have no choice
I need to have faith
And complete the distance
That seems so long.
First things first, the lines are disconnected from each other. They stand for themselves--and that is bad. Second, they can be better arranged, with some deletions and additions, in prose form, to greater effect:
My legs felt tired--so very tired. I told myself I have to go on, I have to push forward. It wasnt a matter of choice, I told myself that, and I grasped the faith I needed to complete the distance that seemed so long.
Or, if you dont like the passive voice, you can have it in the active one:
My legs feel tired--so very tired. I tell myself I need to go on, I need to push forward-- it isn't a matter of choice. I need faith. Where is it? Is it around? I need faith to complete the distance that seems so long.
Second example:
The action of air
passing from the lungs
into the balloon
was continuous.
It felt like the life
in that small, thin
and frail man,
was slowing going away
to give life to it.
It grew big and big and big;
till all the air transferred
into it from him.
And as if the life
of the man
was passing out
the balloon burst.
Everyone grouped around
to see the man.
I shan't disclose the title or the author's name because I dont wish to embarass her; besides, I didnt ask permission for posting this here, so I shall have to remain sneaky and discreet. If you're interested in any details pertaining to this poem or its writer just talk to me personally; if you're that writer yourself dont.
On serious matters this poem does have some poetic merit-- its content definitely is quite unique, if not rather deep in meaning. What we are concerned here, however, is the style of writing. In particular, notice that most of the poem is essentially prose broken into lines: The action of air passing from the lungs into the ballon was continuous. It felt like the life in that small, thin and frail man,was slowing going away to give life to it.. And so on. Poetically speaking it simply isnt musical, and that's that.
Note that we can actually rearrange the whole piece to make it more musical, but I dont have the license to do that here.
3) Clichéd content and expressions
People guilty of it: People who dont read widely enough, stubborn kids, people who dont bother thinking of new perspectives on the same issue, satirical poets
To use clichéd items in one's piece to hit against the banality of it all is pardonable. Then again, there would come a time when hitting out against banality would become a trite affair, and I hope then we dont regress to hitting out against the triteness of hitting out against banality...But that is not our primary concern here.
This point of hackneyed content and expressions is, come to think of it, quite an unfair one. For, after all, we started living in an age where men had affairs with poetry for centuries on end, and it is inevitable that many major themes and subjects--and even sub-subjects-- have been touched on extensively already. Hence talking about summer love and April showers and stars that glitter like diamonds and forlorn autumn leaves and fountains of youth and flying kites and big round moons and nights of solitude seem ordinary to the point of distaste.
The issue here though shouldnt be to continually employ such content and continue spreading the plague to others; the issue is to rethink, remake, reinvent. Content such as death and life, heaven and hell, separation and unification are, I believe, inexhaustive in the sense there are so many different ways of displaying them, talking about them. And because such themes are so important in our lives and imagination their appeal to readers would be here to stay insofar as the poet makes the effort to appear original.
On another note we are living in quite a different age from our forefathers. We have experiences and theories unique to our consciousness--global warming, mass (really mass) society, the internet, our idiotic lifestyles and fashion senses, amongst other things, greater knowledge in all areas ranging from evolution theory to the birth of our universe. All these have contributed to an evolution in poetry, both in terms of style and content. The latter is self-evident, and the former can be seen in the modernist shift from the ballads and sonnets of past ages to the free verse of our era.
Here is W.H Auden in "The More Loving One", as a representative for modern poetry:
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
The poem shifts from the very common take on the grandeur, romance and mystical qualities of stars to a new--and very refreshing-- viewpoint. The narrator, instead of reflecting spiritually or philosophically on the stars, is in fact reflecting upon that reflection itself. In his meta-reflection he realizes that he is not the 'Admirer' that he thinks he is, and ultimately draws upon the same apathy stars have toward us selfcentric humans. Hence if 'stars' were to 'disappear or die' it would 'take' him 'a little time' for their absence to be felt. At the same time he resents our keen admiration of the cosmos, as seen from the question he asks in the second stanza. Essentially if the situation were reversed stars would not like it that we do not return its 'passion' for us--hence in the real situation, where stars do not return our passions, we should not like it (and yet we do).
The poem is a simple and effective poem that subverts a past preoccupation. Writing on the beauty of stars is banal, reflecting on those writings is not. The poem also demonstrates that one does not need to draw out new content to be original. One needs only to be diligent.
4) Poor showmanship
People guilty of it: All beginning poets, selfcentric people, people who have no sense of an audience.
Poor showmanship is a very prevalent problem amongst most amateur poetry, so much so that every first lesson on poetry should immediately seek to eradicate the habit. Show, not tell--that is probably the 1 single piece of wisdom that most people ignore, or dont understand. This last point is related to point 1 and very often if one were to find meaningless abstractions in a poem one would be equally apt to find a host of telly expressions. This is, I assume, because both points relate to a poor understanding of poetry as a form of art, and most if not all forms of art need to be mindful of an audience.
So, what exactly is telling? Telling is merely communicating pieces of info directly to the reader. "My mother cared for me very much/And my love for her was unequalled/Even after her death" is telling, and while it may be appropriate for prose it qualifies as poor showmanship for poetry. What would be more appropriate--and effective-- would be to draw on specific instances which shows your mother as a kind and lovable soul, as well as specific instances which display a profound love for her. For the former one could draw upon the idea of her carrying you and your bag to school every morning when you were young; for the latter one could draw upon the idea of buying medication for her and rubbing her back every day, when you were older, or, as a parallel, an instance where you carried her on your back to the nearest hospital when she got a stroke.
Take another example:
We looked each other in the eyes and
Realised that they were not truthful
And that there would be nothing
Left between us
Anymore.
There is nothing in the above lines that communicate a concrete feeling between the reader and the poem. True, they may be what you intensely experienced in one of your most heartache moments in your life, but to write upon your own experience is a diary entry, not a poem.
How then, you may ask, should one write about a lovers' separation? In answering the question, and as a form of closure to the points I have just made, here is "Neutral Tones", by Thomas Hardy, a poem that embodies much of what a poem should have:
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird-a-wing...
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
