This issue of formalism relationship to poetry's memorization and recitation
is important, I think. Maybe it signifies something more nostalgic than
aesthetic, though. The original connection between poetry and memory was
entirely functional, after all, and since we are not living in oral-cultural
times or places, the forms that served as mnemonic devices no longer
_serve_. What that says about the value of any poetry now being written in
those functionless forms must be at the very least something to do with a
difference of value as much as a different poetics. That some poetry lovers
get a great deal of pleasure from memorizing and/or reciting poems which
lend themselves to those practices says nothing more about their value than
that they lend themselves to those practices, and vice versa obviously, as
it does not reduce the value of a poem that lacks appeal for
memorizers/reciters of poetry either. The value to this extent is all in the
form, and surely poetry of any kind must be held to a higher standard: one
that recognizes poetic thought, for instance, and distinguishes among poems
(and maybe poets) on that basis.

Candice



on 7/11/01 3:30 PM, sevanthi ragunathan at [log in to unmask] wrote:

>> From: Michael Snider <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
>> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Poetry in PROSPECT
>> Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 23:12:54 -0400
>>
>> The readers I have in mind are the people who have no special training
>> in poetry but who nevertheless carry around and have memorized lots of
>> poetry because it moved them in one way or another, my carpenter,
>> mechanic, and toolmaker friends. My musician friends. My programmer
>> friends. Some of what they like is really not so good, but some is
>> excellent. Very little of it, outside Bible verses and a bit of
>> Whitman, is free verse.
>>
>> "Buying" doesn't have to mean buying with money, though that is one
>> measure. It's really secondary to the meaning I had in mind: as in,
>> you're not buying my argument right now.
>
>
> But I'd ask, to what extent is having memorized something an index of its
> worth or the extent of it's been appreciated? Sure, poems in fixed forms
> are easier to remember than poems in open forms. For that matter, tv ad
> jingles are more memorable (in a literal sense) than poems, and I have
> plenty of poems I loathe in my head and plenty of poems I love not
> memorized. I don't know that memorization is the right index... by that
> measure, limericks are probably the favorite poems of all!
>
> I'd also ask who the best selling poets of recent times have been. My guess
> would be Allen Ginsberg and Maya Angelou. I'm actually fascinated by which
> poets people who don't read much poetry have on their shelves, and I'd say
> the results are: Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Nikki Giovanni, Audre
> Lorde, Maya Angelou, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sylvia Plath. Now, I can't bear
> any of them, for the most part, but these are the poets I see ordinary
> people actually reading (outside of school). When you talk about people
> "buying" poetry, I have no doubt that more people bought (in whatever sense)
> Allen Ginsberg than bought Anthony Hecht, though my own tastes are
> Hecht-ward. And certainly, I've seen a marked preference for contemporary
> poetry over pre-20th century poetry.
>
> So, I'm not sure I buy your argument, even though I as a reader (I glance at
> my bookshelves), have an incredible bias towards poets who use form.
> Frankly, I'd take James Lasdun over Levertov, and Marilyn Hacker over pretty
> much everyone alive, but my sphere of influence is negligible. : )