By Judson Jerome
Completely Revised and Updated
To Jenny -- whose poetry has no language
Acknowledgments
Most of this material appeared in Judson Jerome's monthly column in WRITER'S DIGEST. "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop, Copyright Houghton Mifflin Co.; "The Second Coming" reprinted Contents
(Webmaster's Note: Page numbers shown are those in the book. This Web page is continuous.) PREFACE............................................................................................................................... viii
PART ONE: FOOTHILLS OF PARNASSUS --- or WHY BOTHER................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: ARE YOU A POET?...................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER TWO: THE VANITY 0F PRINT............................................................................. 21 CHAPTER THREE: SOME PERSONAL NOTES..................................................................... 39 PART TWO: MAKING POEMS............................................................................................ 55 CHAPTER FOUR: SIX SENSES OF THE POET..................................................................... 58 CHAPTER FIVE: METER........................................................................................................ 74 CHAPTER SIX: LINE UNITS................................................................................................... 90 CHAPTER SEVEN: RHYMES.................................................................................................113 CHAPTER EIGHT: DICTION................................................................................................128 CHAPTER NINE: SOUND VALUES.....................................................................................149 CHAPTER TEN: IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM.................................................................164 CHAPTER ELEVEN: TONE..................................................................................................181 CHAPTER TWELVE: STATEMENT.....................................................................................209 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LIFE AND ART...............................................................................229 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE WHOLE POEM......................................................................252 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: POETRY AND THE MARKET...........................................................276 PART THREE: POETRY AND CULTURE........................................................................295 CHAPTER SIXTEEN: METAPHYSICAL
AND CAVALIER.................................................299
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC........................................................311
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TYPE OF THE MODERN..............................................................328
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE NEW ERA..............................................................................338 CHAPTER TWENTY: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?.................................................354 Preface
Books, conferences, magazines, courses, even degree programs in colleges, intended to teach people It would be interesting to know what percentage of those who eventually make a name as writers Most who read such books and magazines and attend conferences and take courses never, of course, Some, especially some writers, repeat too glibly that cliché that writing cannot be taught. They may I call it the myth of talent because the innate differences between people are remarkably slight, once When the Editor of Writer's Digest asked me, in 1959, to begin a monthly column on writing poetry, To my astonishment, both the readers and editors showed an appetite for these bleak views; and I am not likely ever to know; but the opportunity offered by the column, eventuating in this book, But modesty allies itself with realism and sloth to encourage us to settle for publication rather than Curiously, the prospect of the heights is not so discouraging. We can live in the shadow of Chaucer, We know the conventional responses. "I do it for money," one says, disclaiming thus any responsibility I have lived with these attitudes both as poet and editor. As the first I know the temptation to let a line People believe what Edison said about genius--that it is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent To become a poet a person must change--radically, to the roots. The sweat required is the cold sweat The term vision describes that complex of personal outlook and style and grasp of wide significance Such vision cannot be deliberately acquired, yet, paradoxically, it can arise from work, thought, What one can do--and what I have tried to do here--is continually raise the kinds of questions Nothing in this book is elementary. My fear is, rather, that I haven't sufficient profundity to PART ONE: FOOTHILLS OF PARNASSUS--OR WHY BOTHER? Poet . . . and the world don't know it
Horace drew attention in verse to a problem which has existed as long as there has been such a There is no way to avoid the problem, for, surely, everyone must start somewhere, and that means To be a poet is, of course, to transcend such categories as "amateur" and "professional." A professional Becoming a poet is, however, another matter. Experienced writers talk a lot about discipline, but they The questions one must ask himself open up chasms: Why am I doing this? What am I looking for? At a writer's conference I heard John Frederick Nims tell how to become a poet. "It's easy," he said, It is perhaps a dangerous habit of mind for anyone, ever, to think, "I am a poet." You are a poet at Part One explores the questions surrounding that discovery of stance (and distinguishing it from mere CHAPTER ONE
Are You a Poet?
Of course, you think you are.
I have never met a person who has never written a poem.
Scratch your cowboy, you will find a Sandburg; scratch your engineer, you will find Hart Crane; He doesn't write jingles, by the way. Jingles require too much skill. He writes, almost invariably, free And he has faith in the value of expression for its own sake. He doesn't save his nail parings in his An exceptionally able pianist I know practices for pay in bars. He hears there some of the premises The first of these attitudes underrates the natural differences between people (I am avoiding the But these are the ways many amateurs look on professionals. They consider their own innocence and A hack is more nearly a poet than that kind of amateur. Like courtesans, poets come in all degrees So far, his qualifications are exactly those which were essential to Homer, Dante, Chaucer, an ear for poetry
Aside from these essential attitudes, the most important qualification you must have as a poet is When you sense that something about a line or a passage is particularly compelling, that its effect is Was this the face that launched a thousand ships Listen to the sounds one by one in their interweaving patterns: the s's, l's, t's, the nasals, but, above Now look at the rhythm. It is perfectly regular through the first two lines until the last light beat SWEET HEL/en, MAKE/me imMOR/tal with/ a KISS.
In conventional terms, the five feet are a spondee, iamb, anapest, pyrrhic and iamb--not a particularly Don't panic at these terms, which will be explained in Chapter Five. For now just listen to the interplay One's ear for rhythm is not an ear for regularity: anyone hears a metronome's steady throb. Rather, it These lines, of course, are spoken by Marlowe's Dr. Faustus at his moment of triumph before his Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! The meaning of the play is crystallized in this passage: he does indeed lose his soul for Helen, and That is a poetic ear--the ability to hear and select language for its sound--not pretty sound, but I have suggested other aspects of poetic talent which are just as essential as the ear, but they are Form is the poem; form cannot be paraphrased. And form is as simultaneously rigid and supple rivalry with madmen
I take that title from Plato, who, in the Phaedrus, speaks of "the madness of those who are If what I write is poetry, if my experience is that of a poet, what I say may have some relevance. No one sits down to give a public performance on a piano unless he has had some instruction and A character in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men says something to the effect that one should never That a little child shall lead us is one of the great delusions of Western civilization. Idiots, dogs, The popular view is that intelligence is regarded as an absolute disadvantage to emotion; whereas, Most poets--indeed most artists--begin their careers with a spurt of talent which is somewhat AUBADE
That is dawn, that light in the west, or atomized. Across the new white land in that white land of final dawn. If we, that day of terrible mind. In a granule, borne by Or will some draftsman, coat on a nail, searing the skyline with a flameless fire, Some years later, writing for The Yale Review, I tried to reconstruct the impulses which led to it. We were discussing inspiration. Was I seized to become the mouthpiece of the supernatural? The emotion is approached, I think, rationally. For example, there is throughout a conscious, The title has suggested a love song, but it is not until the third stanza that the theme of love emerges, The fifth stanza suddenly drops back several notches of emotion. The word draftsman is quite I still like that poem--like reading it aloud, making it thunder. But it offers two serious problems. If you depend upon inspiration to strike, as many poets do who adopt and try to maintain a style of I can't imagine that Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton or Dryden could have afforded to have Now, of course, craft isn't ever everything. There are differences among people. Shakespeare had amateur, tradesman, professional
I have talked about three kinds of poets--amateurs, hacks (or, more kindly, tradesmen), and There is little help or guidance one can give an amateur, since his own satisfaction with his work I do not mean to imply that the professional route is the only valid one; it simply has a different Payment for poetry in the quality magazines seems to have compared favorably with Madison Cawein was a popular poet of the time. In the early decades of this century quite a number As a result, most serious literary publication moved over to the little magazines and small presses, And, of course, the profession is riddled with corruption. Because the number of poets who are I am sure the same conditions exist in professional music, art, theater--and, indeed, in professional Nor does the Establishment do its job really well--i.e., the job of selecting and promoting poetry of All these disclaimers are intended to help you feel better if you do not really care to join the I know very little about writing verse for "the trade," as opposed to "the profession." Most of the
Other material, in slightly different form, has appeared in YALE REVIEW, COLORADO
QUARTERLY, WRITER'S YEARBOOK, THE ANTIOCH REVIEW, and CONTACT.
Poems by Judson Jerome have appeared in BELOIT POETRY JOURNAL, COASTLINES,
A HOUYHNHNM'S SCRAPBOOK, and SHENANDOAH.
with permission of the publisher from Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats, Copyright 1924
by the Macmillan Co. Renewed 1952 by Berthta Georgie Yeats; "Leda and the Swan" and "Among
School Children" reprinted with permission of the publisher from Collected Poems by William Butler
Yeats, Copyright 1928 by the Macmillan Co. Renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats; "For Once, Then,
Something," "Mowing," and "Directive," from Complete Poems of Robert Frost, Copyright 1916,
1921, 1923, 1934, 1947 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., Copyright 1936 by Robert Frost.
Copyright renewed 1944, 1951, @ Copyright 1962 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.; "Naming of Parts" by Henry Reed reprinted with permission of
Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.; "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," and
"Gerontion" by T. S. Eliot reprinted with permission of Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.; "For A Dead
Lady" and "Miniver Cheevy" reprinted with permission of the publisher from The Town Down the
River by E. A. Robinson; Copyright Charles Scribner's Sons; "Fern Hill," "Altarwise by Owl Light"
and "Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines" by Dylan Thomas, Copyright 1957 by New Directions;
"anyone lived in a pretty how town" by E. E. Cummings; Copyright Marion Cummings; "The Red
Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams; Copyright 1938, 1955 by William Carlos Williams.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishers; "Blue Girls" from Selected Poems, revised
edition by John Crowe Ransom; Copyright 1927 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Renewed 1955 by John
Crowe Ransom; "The Return" Copyright 1926, 1954 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of
New Directions, Publishers; "Digging For China" by Richard Wilbur reprinted by permission of
Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc. Howard Moss, "Waterfall Blues" lst and 2nd stanza, Modern
Poetry, American and British, Appleton-Century Crofts 1951; James Tate, "Amnesia People"
first 8 lines, Yale U. Press; W.S. Merwin, "The Animals," from The Lice, Atheneum, 1967; James
Dickey, "The Beholders" 1st stanza, Poems: 1957-67, Wesleyan U. Press, 1967; Peter Viereck,
"Kilroy Was Here" 1st stanza, Terror and Decorum, Scribner, 1948; John Crowe Ransom,
"Equilibrists" Selected Poems, Knopf, 1963; E. E. Cummings, "plato told," Poems 1923-1954,
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959; Robinson Jeffers, "The Purse-Seine" Collected Poems, Random
House, 1965; Amy Lowell, "The Taxi," Selected Poems of Amy Lowell, Houghton-Mifflin, 1927;
John Ciardi, "Thoughts on Looking Into a Thicket," As If, Rutgers U. Press, 1955; Gerard Manley
Hopkins "Spring and Fall (To a Young Child)," Collected Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Oxford U. Press, 1931; Stephen Spender, "The Express" Poems by Stephen Spender, Random
House, 1954; W. B. Yeats, "Easter, 1916," lines 17-20, "Sailing to Byzantium," The Collected
Poems of W. B. Yeats, Macmillan, 1951.
Poet . . . and the world don't know it........................................................................................... 2
an ear for poetry.......................................................................................................................... 7
rivalry with madmen................................................................................................................... 10
amateur, tradesman, professional................................................................................................ 16
enter the critic............................................................................................................................ 26
the publisher's role...................................................................................................................... 32
the search for form and meaning................................................................................................. 39
the use of experience.................................................................................................................. 47
first, stretch a cable across the canyon........................................................................................ 56
sense of self................................................................................................................................ 58
sense of fact............................................................................................................................... 60
sense of language....................................................................................................................... 62
sense of art................................................................................................................................. 64
sense of the age.......................................................................................................................... 69
sense of mystery......................................................................................................................... 70
the strain of stress...................................................................................................................... 74
some definitions......................................................................................................................... 77
feeling your pulse....................................................................................................................... 85
where to draw the line................................................................................................................. 90
the use of silence......................................................................................................................... 94
free verse.................................................................................................................................... 99
blank verse.................................................................................................................................104
rhyme or reason.........................................................................................................................113
off rhymes...............................................................................................................................117
bad rhymes..............................................................................................................................120
feminine and comic rhymes......................................................................................................121
some exercises for review........................................................................................................124
words, words, words................................................................................................................128
poeticisms................................................................................................................................130
obscurity..................................................................................................................................135
clouds of meaning....................................................................................................................141
the visible voice.......................................................................................................................144
the isness of the art...................................................................................................................149
the dancer and the dance...........................................................................................................154
he who has an ear.....................................................................................................................159
doublevision and doubletalk.....................................................................................................164
shadows of heaven...................................................................................................................170
varieties of logic.......................................................................................................................174
shades of humor.......................................................................................................................181
dramatic complexity.................................................................................................................190
wit and tragedy........................................................................................................................196
counterstatement......................................................................................................................202
the pain of amputation..............................................................................................................209
how to stop a war.....................................................................................................................216
the philosophic impulse.............................................................................................................223
experience and significance.......................................................................................................229
from thing to thought...............................................................................................................234
born dead.................................................................................................................................239
expression and communication..................................................................................................243
starting in the middle.................................................................................................................252
man bites dog............................................................................................................................258
false starts and new beginnings..................................................................................................264
revision and re-vision................................................................................................................269
how it looks from here..............................................................................................................278
the mail bag..............................................................................................................................279
how to read a rejection slip.......................................................................................................284
tradition and the individual talent..............................................................................................296
alternative futures....................................................................................................................338
language..................................................................................................................................340
form........................................................................................................................................342
the social context.....................................................................................................................343
the new romanticism................................................................................................................345
toward a new poetry................................................................................................................349
our bruised and battered middle class.......................................................................................354
the next great American poet...................................................................................................359
how to write are a peculiarly American phenomenon. Perhaps this has something to do with the value
Americans place on individual experience. We seem to believe each person has a book in him, and
we set about helping him get it out. If we stopped searching out and encouraging writing talent, our
literature might lose much of its breadth and depth and crazy vitality.
have been helped by the plethora of "how to" resources available. I know I had courses in journalism
and creative writing in college, subscribed to a writer's magazine for a while, and though I never went
to writers' conferences until I was invited to them as a staff member, I can see how they would have
helped at critical stages of my career. First-hand contact with established writers, even in brief conver-
sations, was immensely influential in my development. Some writers dismiss such help as useless--but
that may be like climbing up on the barn and kicking the ladder away, making it seem that one flew.
publish a thing, but their time and energy are not necessarily wasted. One teacher said that in any of his
creative writing classes there might be four or five learning to write and another fifteen or so learning to
read--a valuable end in itself. Similarly, I hope this book will be useful for readers as well as for writers
(and that it will help writers become better readers). Another often disguised motive is personal therapy:
many study writing as a means of psychological development, a way of coping with inadequacies they
cannot name. Some simply enjoy reading and talking about literature, and find the workshop atmosphere
less stultifying than books of literary criticism or courses in literature. Some like to associate themselves
with the glamour and gossip of writers (as others read movie magazines). Some are escaping a vacancy
and weariness in their lives. Such motives are neither superficial nor ignoble.
feel honestly guilty about participating in exploitation of the lonely housewife in Duluth who retains her
grasp on dignity by believing that after the diapers, after the dishes, after the vacuum that trails along
the floor, she will somehow discover meaning in her life and express it in poems to go on the shelf
alongside those of Keats and Miss Millay, evidence that she, too, lived and felt and mattered. But the
myth that talent is purely God-given is also part of the writer's bag of tricks. As the ballet dancer
learns through long and sweaty hours to appear at ease, so the poet labors to seem spontaneous,
possessed of a mystery beyond his comprehension. A magician might say magic cannot be taught.
He for damned sure doesn't want it taught to all and sundry. Someone has to sit out in the audience.
we correct our measurements for whatever cultural bias or snobbery colors the test and makes it
easy for the privileged to come out on top. Whether writers are born or made, they are at least
susceptible of growth.
I suffered most of the misconceptions I have mentioned here. I accepted the offer in what I now
recognize was a spirit of defiance. I couldn't quite believe that the magazine really wanted an honest
discussion of what writing poetry involved--writing good poetry, I mean. I thought such magazines
were concerned only with breaking into markets, with gimmicks, trends, slickness and success.
Well, I would show them. I'd write a column or two which did not show you how you and your
Uncle Ebenezer could write poetry and sell it, but which argued, instead, that to write good poetry
was nearly impossible and offered almost no chance of success and less of profit. I thought a dose
or two would be too much for the editors and readers, and I could resign with a fine gesture, my
cynicism intact.
as I warmed to the task, I became, if not less bleak, at least passionately concerned to discover
whether it were possible to say anything really sensible about the mysteries of the art. I had read
handbooks giving verse forms and the rest; but how do you get from knowledge of what iambic
pentameter is to Lycidas?
has allowed me to explore rather unremittingly the highest standards we can bring to bear on poetry,
assuming my readers to be in some sense in competition with Shakespeare. No one sets out to be
second-rate, but many exposed to success and disappointment learn to accept that limited objective
as not only sufficient but even itself beyond all reasonable hope of fulfillment. For the poet, adjustment
to his own insignificance can be chastening--if it is not absolutely debilitating.
poetry. Consider the second-rate poets--the Surreys and Shelleys, the Patchens and Pounds--and
tremble. Which of us thinks he has more to offer the world than these, and that he has the energy,
skill, connections, luck, and vision to hope ever to measure himself against them? Why go on?
I find myself tucking my manuscript back between my legs and asking the way to the third-class
compartment.
Shakespeare and Milton (so old, after aIl, and so permanent), of Keats and Yeats and Frost, with the
fond indifference of Alpine peasants for their surrounding peaks. It is hills that make us nervous--or
even hummocks like the poet next door. Someone (worst of all we ourselves) might expect us to work
at such altitudes. You can break a leg in a ten foot fall--never mind the crevasses beyond the timberline.
for quality (and ignoring for the moment that there is no more inefficient way to make money in the
world). Or, "I want an audience," as though the way to get one were by speaking through a garden hose
into a tomb. Or, "Look at the junk that gets published," as though the domains of poetry were best
conquered by contempt. Or, "Poetry, after all, is just writing," as though it were. Or, "I'm not a poet;
I just write verses," as peeping Tom said when he was hauled down from the lamp-post. Or, with
endearing giggle, "I just write light verse," as though your squibbles were not to be compared (they
will not be) with comic masterpieces such as "The Miller's Tale," or "Absalom and Achitophel,"
"The Dunciad," or Byron's "Don Juan"--or even with the work of Phyllis McGinley or Ogden Nash,
whose brows were sometimes threateningly high. In abysmal states of self-hatred one utters the most
pathetic rationalization, "I don't write for anybody--just for myself," (demonstrably true: look at the
rejection slips).
go which "will do," a word which may fit but suggests little, a lame rhythm which I know most readers
won't hear anyway. On the other hand, as editor, I have waded in the sea of manuscripts to which we
all contribute, and I have wished that stamps cost even more than they do. I suppose that one should be
astonished that sheer creativity manages to make verses from nothing, that so many thousands of people
can start with a blank page, without an idea, observation, emotion, or cleverness, without a sense of
language or knowledge of technique, without even the skill to come out of a complex sentence right
side up, and emerge some moments later (I can't believe it takes long) with a composition they are not
embarrassed to post successively to every professional judge of poetry in the country. But astonishment
wears off. I wish poets would apply one minimal criterion: that they refrain from sending poems which
they themselves would not be interested in reading, if the poems had been written by someone else.
perspiration--and think they might be willing to put in the perspiration if they could be assured they have
the essential one percent inspiration--or what is commonly called talent. They come to us asking to be
told: "Have I got it?" I think the most painful thing I have to say might as well be said at the outset.
I do not believe in that one percent. I believe it is all perspiration--but of a quite different sort than
Edison meant.
of terror, among other things. At times it is a more passionate sweat of love. By dint of application you
may learn to write verse that meets all technical specifications, but the difference between published and
unpublished poets (aside from luck) and, more importantly, the difference between merely published
poets and those who have some lasting significance in literature, has to do with their most intimate
personal psychology, their world view, their social and political attitudes, their willingness to take risks,
to explore, to permit their imagination to pursue the anguishing and difficult and forbidden.
which characterizes the work of a Dante or Whitman or Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath. It is not
necessarily what the world regards as a state of sanity or health (though it is not necessarily insane
or unhealthy, either). It is what is meant when we speak of a person as being "very together," which
does not mean "well-adjusted." It means having discovered some source of inner coherence which
enables one to function--minimally to survive in an all too intensely vivid world, maximally to achieve
greatly, as in great art.
suffering, ecstasy, willing surrender, courageous engagement, and solitary facing of self. When
achieved it may impel a person to reject all I say here--and that may be exactly the route one must
follow to become a poet. When people say that writing cannot be taught they mean that one cannot
give another person vision. It must be discovered in and wrought of self.
which lead to (perhaps the word is provoke) such metamorphosis. In discussing poetry I have
tried to show that there is no way it can be separated from philosophy, faith, politics, social
criticism, personal and social psychology, individual experience and commitment, from all the
rest of human culture. Simultaneously I have tried to offer specific, realistic, and practical advice
about how to make poems work once one has achieved something like personal vision.
respond to the staggering question of what it means to be a poet and thus to participate in
building the most towering yet most delicate edifice in human history. I have sat spellbound
contemplating the imagination, technique and expenditure of resources involved in sending our
astronauts into space. Yet when I see those intricate craft drifting beyond gravity I want to ask
the spacemen, have you read Shakespeare's Sonnet 129?"
thing as a literary reputation and a horde of aspirants desiring one: the plague of nonprofessionals
descending on professionals in search of attention, advice, and promotion (much more of the first
and third than of the second). Along with tales of losing one's virginity or learning about Pearl
Harbor or the assassination of President Kennedy, almost anyone might tell about his experiences
trying to get well-known writers to read and comment on work. It seems that everyone has at one
time or another thought he might be a writer; in some fashion he tried to get an authoritative judgment
on his chances of success. On one hand are the stories of the rudeness, vanity and fallibility of the
professionals; on the other are the complaints (such as that of Pope in his "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot"
about the naivety, persistence and self-centeredness of neophytes who line up outside the homes
of writers like bill collectors.
getting someone to read his work. The opinions of family and friends are eventually unsatisfying (no
matter how encouraging). Rejection slips are uninformative. Teachers of English are undependable as
sounding boards. Inescapably beginners haunt published poets with their sad and desperate question:
"Shall I go on?" Dryden told his cousin Swift that Swift would never be a poet (and, in spite, Swift
became a good one). But no matter how confident we may be of negative predictions, they serve little
purpose. The question permits only one answer--and one may give it without ever seeing the beginner's
work: "Of course you should go on, if you really want to. But do you know what you're in for?"
poet is, in a sense, a contradiction in terms. In the first place poetry is not something at which one can
make a living. There is no agreed-upon body of knowledge, no set of methods or principles, nothing
much to profess. But it is possible to make a career of sorts out of writing poetry and engaging in the
activities which pertain to or grow out of writing poetry--giving readings and lectures, editing, teaching,
engaging in scholarship and other kinds of writing. A reputation as a published poet opens doors
which lead to other things which generate a little income. And in spite of coy denials and the lack
of absolutes, there is more agreement than we often admit about necessary knowledge, techniques,
bases of judgment, goals and steps of advancement. Knowing all that will not make one a poet, but if
one becomes a poet there is a high probability that he will learn these things.
do not often talk about the motivation which underlies discipline. A young man shared my study
recently for a couple of days and marveled at my capacity for staying right here at my typewriter hour
after hour. I said it was easy--easier than doing anything else--because I loved it. It is like fly-fishing
or skiing or sailing or making love: one does not do it primarily to get somewhere. One does it out of
commitment to the activity itself. Getting results is satisfying, of course, but one learns (particularly
in writing poetry) to minimize that motivation. The time and uncertainty between writing a poem,
revising it, sending it out, having it accepted, seeing it in print, and having it read by others, and the
goal--having it influence their lives--all this is too tenuous to operate effectively as a driving force.
How will I know when I have found it? What would I consider success? What relation has my opinion
to that of others? Those who become poets find ways of answering or coping with such questions
which motivate them to dedicated work. They discover appropriate stances toward themselves and
their art. All the practices and lore and rewards of the nonprofession are secondary to discovering
motivation.
"to tell you. It's like teaching you to ride a bicycle across the Grand Canyon on a cable, balancing
bowls of fish on either end of a long pole. First, stretch a cable across the canyon. Get a bicycle which
will roll on the cable. Balance the fish bowls on the pole and mount the bicycle, being careful not to
spill the fish . . . ." The audience was breaking up with painful laughter. "No," he said, "that's wrong.
To become a poet, get a bottle of whiskey and go off in the woods and drink it in one evening. Have a
tragic love affair. Converse with God . . .." Though both lines of advice are reductions to absurdity of
the question, both contain much truth. There is no formula. It sounds impossible, but clearly it is not.
the time you are writing a poem. The next moment you may be a carpenter or diaper-changer or movie-
goer or something else. The announcement, "I am a poet," may lead to dark nights of the soul in which
you wonder whether that is really true. What if you are not? What if someone should find out? The
panic during dry periods--when no poems come, and you are not sure whether they ever will again--
leads to bottomless despair if you have fastened your identity to the label. Whether (or not) you are a
poet is not, after all, for you, but for the world to say. But it is true enough that in order to write with
a certain confidence, submit work, evaluate rejections and acceptances, set goals for future work,
some kind of poetic stance, some way of regarding yourself and your work, is essential.
posturing--as those would-be poets engage in who buy their wardrobe and start practicing their autograph
without undertaking the preceding steps). How does one acquire the readiness, the strength, the serious
purpose? I can't tell you--but I can say something about what these questions have meant to me and to
others I have dealt with.
scratch your mother, you will find Millay. The bourgeois gentleman may have spoken prose all his
life, but he writes poetry, saves it for years and then sends it to me. He goes at it like Don Quixote
at the windmill or, in a more American spirit, he gets in there and tries.
verse. He isn't superficial; he is always fantastically profound, as he will explain, and what looks like
foolishness is simply more advanced than the reader. He isn't childishly simple; he is always obscure
and difficult. No poetry is more obscure and difficult than amateur poetry. He has unshakeable faith
in the validity of his thought and the significance of his emotion; if he writes it down it must be so.
jewelry box. If he expresses himself into a Kleenex he doesn't hang it on the wall. If he belches, he
does not record it and play it on hi-fi. But if he finds what seem to him verbal equivalents for internal
exudations, he has a touching confidence that he has produced something to be revered and shown
in public. I speak of the amateur, but there should be a more accurate word. Amateur comes from
amare, to love, implying, true, that there is more infatuation than wisdom, more enthusiasm than
skill, about what he does. But, unfortunately, many amateur poets hate poetry, never reading any
except their own, never thinking about it, hearing it, seeing it, above all never buying it. Poetry is
their personal vengeance on the world of literature, or, more specifically, on their high school
English teachers. Such a poet preserves his amateur standing with vicious jealousy. Poetic license,
for him, is tacit permission to indulge in an emotional range from infantile display to adolescent
sentiment. His inspiration excuses all; he believes Art is Divine--by which he means it is free from
the ordinary considerations of common sense, utility, improvement by practice, decency, relevance
and intelligence. Poetry is, by definition, thus: lacking in common sense, impolite, useless, of no
conceivable importance to human life, and produced by a half-wit without much preparation,
effort or care. An amateur of this kind does not want to lose his inalienable right to participate
in such an orgy.
ordinarily suppressed or more carefully disguised. He recognizes two basic attitudes toward his
profession. The first goes, "I took piano lessons when I was a kid. Wish I had kept it up, but you
know how it goes--no time." This can be translated or expanded: "If I were to practice I would be as
good as you are. But I have important things to do." The second attitude is expressed as, "You don't
know how lucky you are to be given a talent like that." This means, roughly, "The only difference
between you and me is luck. You got it; I didn't. I am not too lazy to practice six hours a day for
fifteen or twenty years, nor too dedicated to other satisfactions to give my time to so unprofitable
a pursuit. Only the rare person is gifted--as it were like a divine teacher's pet. We normal folk can
be thankful we aren't queer."
abused word talent, which smacks of the mysterious); the second underrates the slow, onerous
development of skill. Neither, notice, gives any credit to the artist nor to his art. Both are rational-
izations of nonartists, and they are born of a curious but common mixture of envy and contempt.
spontaneity as at least the equivalent of knowledge, probably superior in the long run. Moreover, they
feel there is something corrupt or evil in art if one knows what he is doing. They look on professionals
as sweethearts look on courtesans. (And, actually, the analogy is illuminating in many ways.)
of competence and natural endowment; only a few are great. But the hack, unlike the amateur, has
cleared his mind of basic distortions of the artistic process. He knows, for example, that his first
obligation is to make himself understood. He does not confuse carelessness with creativity. He
recognizes external demands on his work, the necessity of making his product fit into a pattern of
needs and interests outside himself. He values sensitivity less than sense. He is not an intellectual
hoodlum, attempting to browbeat his audience with pedantry or haughty subtlety. He would rather
be wrong than be dull. He may have more craft than conscience--but that hardly matters, for, above
all, he is an artisan, concerned with doing a job well. He has little interest in expressing himself.
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden or Goethe. Our hack may lack the largeness of mind of the great
ones, their depth and scope, their dedication, their capacity for hard work, their capacity for life.
But he is straight on many of the basic principles; he differs more in degree than in kind.
what is called "an ear"--a sense of rhythm and sound relationship. Like most talents, your ear for
poetry is partly gift and partly acquisition. The best training for it is analysis of great poetry. Much
of what I have done in this book consists of analyzing passages of poetry in great detail, as I hope
to encourage readers to insist upon a sensitive and detailed understanding of what goes on in poems.
At this point perhaps the nonconformist rebels. He wants to do something different. But he would
probably not be concerned with poetry at all unless he had developed a love--based on knowledge--
of the fine points of the art. Analysis (which is sometimes seen as the opposite of creativity) can be
tender as well as penetrating. It requires learning to care about the right things.
indelible, stop, take it apart and examine the pieces.
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
all, the short i's in this, ships, Ilium, immortal, with and kiss. The powerful climactic effect of that
word kiss arises partly from this repetition of the vowel sound, particularly as it rhymes with the
first beat in the passage, this, and strongly echoes the last word of the first line, ships (which, by the
way, suggests lips--but more of that later.) Outright alliteration (topless towers, make me immortal)
is a rather obvious device, but much subtler are the modulations from one sound to another and the
playful and minute echoes. For example, in the last line, the long e's in sweet and me, subdued because
me is unaccented, or the consonance of the k in make with that in kiss, or the movement from the high
bright vowel in sweet down to the dark o in immortal back up the scale to the two short i's at the end
of the line.
in Ilium (and note how the light beat on um pulls against the voice which is rising to complete the
question). Then the astonishing third line:
unusual line of iambic pentameter.
of accents with unaccented syllables, the dramatic appropriateness of the initial surge, the stagger of
unaccented syllables before "MOR," then the succession of three unaccented syllables.
is the ability to hear the dance of variation, the pulse and lag of beats syncopating over the established
base. Poetry is order threatening to become chaos--just as the best prose is chaos threatening to
become order. You have an ear if you hear both the order and artful disorder simultaneously.
commitment to Hell begins to press its horror to his heart. No amount of management of vowels,
consonants and metrics could make the lines as imperishable as they are if it were not for their
dramatic setting, for their tone of exuberance shaded with poignant irony. This is the face for which
the towers were burnt, the Greeks were embroiled all those years, and for which Faustus will
willingly go to damnation. Immortal he wants to be? He cannot avoid an immortality of punishment.
With a kiss? That briefest of experiences is cast against the yearning for timelessness--and, additional
irony, the kiss does make him immortal, for the fictional Dr. Faustus steps with these three lines into
the permanent memory of the world and assumes a reality no actual magician could ever achieve.
He goes on to say (and notice here the double occurrence of the word lips for which the previous
lines have prepared us):
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
for the other pleasures which he has bought by his contract with Mephistopheles. But the moment is
exquisite--and Marlowe almost convinces us that for such a moment we would also sell our souls.
How much (given the situation) that experience owes to the handling of the short i sound, to the
surge and limp of a meter in a single line!
right sound; not stability, but pattern always seeming to dissolve.
equally essential in all writing. I mean control of language, drama, of idea, of tone, of fictional
reality. The difference is that in poetry every element is so much more intense, has so much
attention thrown onto it, that the demands are incomparably heavier on the poet than on the
writer of prose. Unless you care as much or more for your syllables and sounds, for your beat,
for your line shape, for the details of your pattern, as you do for your meaning, you may as well
write prose. You are not a poet.
as a skeleton. Nothing about the poet can be soft: poetry is the toughest of arts, and you must
be tough to practice it. Lines will go dead on you if you relax, your words will drown if you
water them. The plunk of hard syllables, knuckles of sound, ribs of meaning--these are the stuff
of verse. You must yearn for the solid, the irreducible, for the hard and lasting. I am not speaking
of hardness in the sense of being difficult to comprehend: such difficulty grows more often in
fuzziness, confusion, the smog of thought, than it does in the weathered language of poetry. Your
concern is not to be difficult, but rather, to give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, to
put real toads in imaginary gardens, to discover bone and build outward. Have you the courage
to be a poet? To step beyond the easy answers?
possessed by the Muses." This madness, he says, "enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and
there inspires frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers; with those adorning the myriad
actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the
Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by
the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all
when he enters into rivalry with madmen."
But there is a risk in the assumption; my frenzies do not produce poetry; when not frenzied I am,
I hope, sane--which is to say, if Plato is right, I am nowhere at all as a poet.
practice, unless he has learned something about the craft. Seizure, frenzy, he considers not enough--
just as it is not enough to enable one, for example, to pilot an airplane. I used to sneak into cockpits
of airplanes at an airfield near home and pretend to fly. I wanted to fly, as badly as can be. I was
inspired to fly. But I had so little faith in my inspiration that I would not turn the switch. Faith about
poetry comes more easily, though. Thousands of people turn the switch every day producing
writing ranged irregularly down the page, and preparing any captive reader with the proud preface
that he never wrote poetry before, doesn't know anything about poetry, and, in fact, doesn't read
and doesn't like poetry. Unembarrassed, proud of their innocence (or, as Plato says, their delicacy
and virginity), such poets consider ignorance positively a recommendation. The results are usually
comparable to what would have happened if I had turned the switch in the airplane, or if I were to
sit before you in my musical ignorance and attempt to entertain you on the piano.
fight with little guys; they are excused if they lose and get too much credit if they win. The novice
approaches art, I think, as a little guy, knowing he is insured either way. If he loses, he expects
patience, understanding, and praise for a noble attempt. If he wins, he expects immediate immortality.
Although no art is immune from him, he usually tries poetry.
children, monks, and condemned men share with poets and other artists a reputation for uncanny
wisdom. It is our favorite story: how one learns about life by being cut off from it. God appears to
the blank mind. It is popular to praise the barefoot or backwoods artist, the unspoiled child of
nature, because it is assumed he has a freer access to his subconscious than other people; that is,
that he lacks the controls of behavior and expression which are induced by civilized commerce.
He is like the child, untarnished, nearer truth than those of us who have labored to discover it.
in good art they are not only compatible but intensify one another. Art, insofar as it is a celebration
of or uncritical indulgence in feeling, is one of the most attractive forces of anti-intellectualism at
loose in the world. We may be glad so few people pay attention to it.
mysterious even to them. One of my early published poems was of this sort. It appeared in
The Nation in 1955:
brighter than lead dropped scalding on the eye,
breaking the day of silence on the nest
untenanted--and strewn from the naked tree
no bough holds any dew, nor leaf, nor must
any angled arm of wood make shadow; wind
must not stir the unreflecting, hanging atom dust
my loving flesh, could but prolong our night!
But no cloud crosses the coming of the light;
no birdsong shrieks that instant breaking,
a wheel grunt? Shield clank? Clatter of chariot wheel?
on covert piston slipping steady lechery?
Will silver hollow whistling sky fish carry it?
switching his steel-beaked compass, setting a thumb-screw,
drain the last black drop? What bestial hand, like mine,
will turn the last dial to the point marked TRUE--
powdering all the antique ways of blood,
cauterizing bed and loin and mire
and drying dark in dawn's pure, pure still flood?
(The Nation, September 10, 1955)
I explained that the poem is about the atomic bomb--a deep concern of intellectuals of those days.
Light is a familiar symbol for intelligence or reason. The West is not only the Pacific bomb range;
it can be taken as both death and the Western world. The speaker is singing a traditional love song
on parting from his mistress at dawn. In this case his mistress is his flesh. The dawn which separates
them is the enlightenment of Western culture, which reaches its apotheosis in the explosion of the
bomb: both the height of achievement and the end. For it is still a bestial hand which turns the dial
of the machine produced by the mind; enlightenment cannot come to the body. The results are
inevitable as truth. The body, when products of intelligence have final sway, is obsolete, antique,
and the landscape is that of a waste land, without foliage, shadow, or dew. Life is, as it were, a
darkness, a disease, an imperfection, which enlightenment will cauterize. The speaker sees the end
of life tragically, preferring the disease to the cure.
Did I plumb my subconscious, ripping through the barriers of my civilized overlay? Well, I
remember very clearly that I was scrubbing my back in the shower when it occurred to me that it
would be amusing to see the sun rise in the west rather than the east. I began, soap in hand, orating
to the shower curtain, "That is dawn, that light in the west," delighting in the absurdity of the
pronouncement. Then I began to take myself seriously, as I frequently do when absurdities engage me.
"Brighter than...," I added, and tried to think of intense brightness, blinding brightness, and imagined
the sensation (note: sensation) of burning out an eye. With a poker; with boiling oil; finally, with
molten lead. My notion was of something like a prisoner in a movie thriller tied to a table with
Chinese pirates dropping hot lead, drop by drop, into his eye. What is that bright? An image came
to me of people watching a bomb test through smoked glass, and then I was off. All the humanitarian,
social concern of the poem came as an afterthought. I needed a "subject" strong enough to justify the
startling beginning I had conceived. Still dripping I began working on the poem. Although I wrote
the poem very quickly (it was substantially as it stands in half an hour), I was not, I underline,
inspired. I was working, consciously and carefully on the symbolic meanings of light, darkness,
flesh, dawn, the West; consciously varying meter, searching for discordant rhymes, hunting for
dramatic hesitations for line endings--all the conscious concerns of craft. If I worked quickly it was
because I had been preparing for the job for several years: reading, analyzing poetry, and practicing
its composition. I had a reservoir of skill to draw on. A farmhand milks a cow faster than I do
because he has developed the muscles, and, besides, he knows how. I do not accuse him of
inspiration. It is an activity of sanity, not of madness.
careful imitation of oracular statement, the rhetoric of prophecy, vision, dire revelation. I did not
have such a vision; I created it. Let me call your attention to some of the details of organization
you might not have noticed. The poem opens with a paradox stated as a simple fact. Dawn
usually has good connotations, but these are immediately reversed by the second line, and an
ominous sense is (or should be) created by the phrase "day of silence" and the stark images. The
final word of the first sentence, atomized, comes, I hope, as something of a surprise, dropping
down into the second stanza. This word suggests the meaning of this dawn, at least on the level of
the bomb. There follow more stark images, negatives, in the next sentences, and repetitions of the
word must, suggesting "do not disturb"--as though things were as they should be, or inevitable, final,
and to be respected.
and then in a single, futile apostrophe. No use. And the next line, beginning with a series of heavy
stresses and ending with a hard and sudden rhyme, hinges the poem, turns us immediately back to
desolation. In the fourth stanza a series of short questions is meant to suggest the steady implacable
steps of progress, stages of civilization, one means of war after another. The third line, the machine,
the combustion engine, is associated with sex; not love but lechery, and with the cyclical untiring
movement with which machines replace human functions. The final horror in this gallery of horrors
is the jet, with its spinning turbine, deadly in the sky, and associated with a fish, another sexual
symbol. If this stanza works, in evoking the full sweep of civilization and progress, the poem has
moved to another level of abstraction; it is no longer merely the bomb we are talking about, but
all civilization which threatens "my loving flesh." "That day of terrible mind," we see now, means
not only "terrible to think of," but the day when our mind triumphs over flesh entirely.
different from those used so far in the poem; it is more familiar, more technical, more specific,
closer to everyday experience, and "coat on a nail" reinforces this homey tone. We should relax
for a moment with that line, but "steel-beaked" in the next line sounds sinister, and, though a
draftsman's compass has a "thumb-screw," that term should recall a device of torture. Innocent ink
in the next line becomes "the last black drop," suggesting the last drop of blood, and the significance
of this relaxation to a conversational level now should be clear. The innocent act of the technician
in a complex, interlocking, impersonal civilization may, with no one's knowledge, be the final detail
in the blueprint of disaster, as a sailor punches a button in the belly of a battleship, firing a gun on
deck which destroys a plane in the air, a plane the "gunner" never saw. Another function of the
draftsman image is to imply a fellow like you or me; and this is picked up by "bestial hand, like mine"
which in its hairy-fisted way turns some scientific knob, and bang: truth is horribly, inevitably upon
us. The last stanza employs closed lines, complete (that is) in themselves, describing the results
1, 2, 3, 4, recapitulating the themes, symbols, and ironies established earlier in the poem. The
rhyme pattern which has been trying to assert itself in the other stanzas materializes here, and the
assertive, final lines work against the question-mark; is there, at this point, any question at all?
One is that it makes no sense to most readers. Like many other poets who emerged in the fifties, I
was then in love with what is called "explication," elaborate analysis of difficult poems. We picked
apart, in those days, poems by Donne or Eliot, finding treasures overlooked by the ordinary reader,
and then wrote poems to be explicated--conveniently forgetting that ordinary readers were not
about to take the time and care with our work that they might with poems by Donne or Eliot, if,
indeed, they bothered to look twice at Donne or Eliot. The second problem is for the poet--one
that you may have faced yourself. It is a hard act to follow. One of the difficulties presented by
those early spurts of talent in an artist's career is that they are not easily repeated. Many writers, as
they age, look back on their earlier published work with a kind of poignant fear and regret. The fear
is that they can never again approximate that early surge of power. The regret is that they set up such
a dazzling standard for themselves--and, if they have any following, for their readership. Robert
Frost ruefully admitted in his old age that most of the work published throughout his long career
had been written when he was a young man--before his first published book--and then dribbled out
in volume after volume as "new" collections. It took a certain amount of critical acceptance before
he could get the public to look at what he was writing as a young man. But his own regret was that
he no longer had it in him--at least not often--to write as he wrote then.
violent intensity (e.g., the work of Sylvia Plath), you may find yourself moving toward suicidal despair
and disillusionment, a sense of impotence. Some have put real heads into real ovens (e.g., Sylvia Plath)
when life and maturity do not measure up to one's expectations. The public has a romance with art as
tragedy, with the 1ives of artists as burning themselves out by living in unbearable intensity. Dylan
Thomas may have died as a result of trying to live out his image. Others decide, as Marianne Moore
did about poetry, "there is something important beyond all this fiddle." If Plato is right, they move
away from rather than toward art.
what is called artistic sensibility. They were busy turning out useful products for which, like
professionals, they were sometimes hired. They could tell a story you wouldn't mind reading, or
damn or praise or comfort or unsettle or advance ideas or defend values. They learned their craft
and worried less, I think, about their integrity as artists than about the integrity of their products;
if the damned thing won't hold together it won't sell.
something I haven't got. Whatever it was, I suspect it was more nearly intelligence than madness.
He was smarter than I am, and worked harder than I do. How much easier would it be for my ego
to pretend that he was more inspired.
professionals. All, of course, start as amateurs--but some aspire to no other status and, in fact,
associate their integrity with their freedom from the contamination of trade or the profession. Many
amateurs publish--in newspapers, organizational publications, or in the many little magazines
sponsored by "poetry lovers," appearing and disappearing like seasonal flowers. If they decide
to go into the trade or the profession (and there is a distinct difference), they begin to seek
remuneration or honor in ways that are fairly clearly established.
is the only relevant criterion of judgment. If a poet wants to go into the trade, there is much
material available about writing light verse, greeting-card verse, and other verse for remunerative
markets. The only relevant criterion here is whether--and how much--it pays. This book may interest
all three, but I assume that the reader's primary concern is with the profession. Professional poets
publish in the quarterlies and periodicals read by literary intellectuals, bring out books which will
be reviewed in those periodicals, and seek recognition by other professionals and by the reading
public through the medium of anthologies. To put it operationally, a professional might aspire to
be represented in the next anthology of modern American poets--those efforts to sift out the poets
who will make up the literary canon in years to come.
destination from the other routes. One cannot make a living from it, for the most part. To get
some perspective on this problem, note what David Perkins says in A History of Modern Poetry
(Harvard University Press) about the turn of the century:
English standards. A dollar a line was high, but the rate could go much higher. Kipling
was paid nine dollars a line for some poems. The average short poem seems to have
been sold for five to twelve dollars. These sums may seem picayune, but they are not
despicable. Cawein told the Louisville Courier-Journal that his returns from "magazine
verse from the year 1900 were about $100 per month," at a time when the salary of
university professors was likely to be $1,500 to $2,000 per year.
of popular poets such as James Whitcomb Riley, Eugene Field, Edgar Guest and a smaller number
of literary poets such as Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, E. A.
Robinson, Robert Frost, Edwin Markham, Stephen Crane, Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie and Edna
St. Vincent Millay, earned enough from poetry through book sales, magazine sales and readings to
sustain at least a modest life-style. (Some, such as Amy Lowell, didn't need or live on this income.)
Poetry had a broad public before the so-called "modernist" movement. One of the "little magazines"
of the era bore as its motto, "the public be damned." And the public responded in kind.
most of which paid nothing at all. (Many were--and are--supported by the writers themselves.)
Far from "picayune," the rates cited by Perkins are almost the same as today's, when the salaries of
university professors run ten times higher. Few poets today earn as much as a dollar a line. None that
I know of earns a hundred a month from magazine publication. First editions of new books of the
poets listed above were likely to run ten to twelve thousand copies; those of Robert Lowell, by
comparison, were likely to run five thousand or less. In the 1960s I was publishing about as widely
as any poet in America--and I was lucky if the proceeds from poetry ran $200 per year. Many of
my poems--perhaps a half-dozen per year--were in the highest-paying magazine markets, such as
Harper's, Saturday Review, Atlantic, Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, and the checks ran from
$10 to $100 per poem at best. The rates are not substantially higher today. If a poem is picked up by
an anthology, the poet may reap another $10-$50 as a permission fee. If a major publisher brings out
a book (professionals tend to publish a book about every five years), the poet may get an advance--
say $500. But he is unlikely to get any royalties, as few poetry books sell enough copies to make up
the advance. On the other hand, his publications may bring him grants (e.g., a Guggenheim award,
enabling him to live for a year), may bring him advancement in a professorial job, may bring him
reading engagements (at $200 or more per performance). Most poets write prose as well--e.g.,
criticism, personal essays, fiction--which brings them more than their poetry, but it may be their
stature as a poet which brings good prices for their prose. Many of them today are or have been,
in one way or another, professors; the academy thus supports creative work in the way the Church
supported creative monks in the Middle Ages. I do not pretend that this is how it ought to be; I am
telling you how it is. If you are thinking of becoming a professional, that is what you will be getting into.
more-or-less "recognized" at any given time is very small (perhaps a hundred in the United States
might claim that status today), they tend to know one another and to favor one another, to prejudge
one another, to give their critical attention--which helps, even when abusive--to one another. Thus,
whether they like the idea or not, they constitute an informal Establishment. It is their opinions which
are sought when awards are given, books are published, appointments are made.
medicine, law, teaching and the ministry. But where the numbers are smaller, as in poetry, the effects
of personal relationships are likely to be more intense--and more bitterly resented by those who are
not "in." In a gathering of poets there is likely to be enough buttering up and putting down, jockeying
and back-stabbing to make the National Association of Manufacturers seem a convocation of saints.
enduring merit. The world of poetry is very nearly as subject to fads as the world of fashion. In
market lists, magazine editorial statements, contest rules, criteria for grants, you will continually hit
upon the term "good poetry" as the most specific indication of what the Establishment is looking for.
The term seems to come from Plato's Heaven of Absolutes, but it actually refers to what is fashionable
or what is recommended by those recognized as having made it. When poets go out marching and
demonstrating, suddenly "statement" is "in," and the poetry in the literary quarterlies takes on a clearly
propagandistic edge. The next year some cultural leader retreats into surrealism--and the code word
becomes "strange" for the most acceptable style. Later generations will have to sort out the quality in
our changing fashions--and, alas, judging from the history of poetry, they will do that according to
their own fashions. One of the greatest poems in American literature--and certainly most materially
successful--was Edwin Markham's "The Man With the Hoe," first published in the San Francisco
Examiner in 1898, reprinted to popular acclaim in papers all over the world. It is said to have earned
the author over $250,000 during his lifetime. And is it some piece of stodgy Victorian pomposity? No,
it is a radical poem of social protest calling for worldwide revolution. Just try to find it in anthologies
of American poetry edited in more recent eras, when taste has been running to obscurity, irony,
artiness, indirection and sensational imagery.
professional rat race. If that is the sort of thing you like--or can tolerate along with your private
search for excellence--the professional route may interest you. But I would not be surprised if many
find it too repugnant to undertake it.
trade market for verse is in greeting cards and posters. I know there are many competent and
clever versifiers who make good livings at this work--mostly on salary, working in offices (not
freelancing). The trade is to the profession as commercial art is to fine art, or as pop music is to
classical. The lines dividing them are never very distinct, and high quality is possible in either.
Sometimes the same practitioners produce both. But the aims are quite distinct. Verse writers
are often talented verbal craftsmen; often better craftsmen than are the professional poets. But they
do not expect verse written for trade markets to appear on the library shelves alongside Keats
and Chaucer.