The State Of Poetry

When I got home tonight and turned on the TV, it occurred to me that I never really used to watch much TV growing up or even in college. None at all for a few years even, save for common areas on tiny sets in various undergrad dorms or in my grad school flat. I’ve always loved radio, NPR, the BBC, and those shows that were cool to watch or be involved in I watched with the group. But, in the last few years, firmly residing and working in one location, I do watch more than I used to. Sports are always important and I love a good dvd, but sadly I have also started watching a little more TV.

Yesterday I purchased a new television, an investment of sorts, which tonight brought to mind the buyer’s remorse existential question: Who am I, a reader/writer or a watcher? Will I give up books and pens for the boob tube altogether?

Pondering this over steamed quinoa and a packet of Trader Joe’s “Punjab Eggplant,” (which took exactly 15 minutes to prepare), ABC’s The Bachelor popped up on the screen. I watched the inaugural season of this show with my mom in one fall years ago after I moved back from grad school and really loved watching it with her. So, I’ve always had a soft spot for the show. While I’ve not watched every season, the downward progression has been embarrassing for me to see, even privately, to the point where episodes became so cringing I had to look away. It hit me last week that this show is no longer even trying to obtain the objective—for the Bachelor to find a wife. Instead it’s about running a high end brothel whereby women throw themselves at one man (more a boy) on episode one and just care about being the first to bag him…or a member of the show’s crew, as it turns out.

What does this have to do with poetry? Not much unless you think to when men used to court women with ink from their quills.  Actually, that's not what I was thinking either.  The larger question is, in what ways has the quality of poetry lost its importance, its quality, its existence in the last 10 years? What is the State of Poetry in 2010? 

These are questions I want to get to, but first, for all of you women on the bachelor, please don’t ask amongst yourselves “what rhymes with wtf? (Sorry, my error, “girls” now that we have to call women even in their ‘20’s, ‘30’s and ‘40’s “girls” on TV shows like Bachelor, the suitcase swingers on Deal or No Deal, etc.) However, based on their behavior, reading skills and writing acumen, I can’t really make the case they demand to be considered women. In that regard, they are girls being willingly or honestly unknowlingly exploited by us.

When the media says this is what the viewers want, I really doubt it. And then I realized I was replaying dialogue from "The American President in my head"—the exchange between Lewis and the POTUS:

Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

On the eve of the delivery of my new television, this will be my final episode of The Bachelor, especially after I realized the women (sorry, girls) on the show were, on average in their early to mid teens when the show began and have probably coached themselves to be their own agents as an audition for The Heff. And if they’re looking for a reality show promoter, I’m sure the balloon boy’s dad will be single again after his stint in jail.

Is this the best television programming we can do? Won’t giving people water rather than sand result in quality programming, better viewers and viewing minds? Obviously there’s a reason I am not a television executive. Because if I were, I’d be asking the opposite: what’s the least expensive, most ratings-grabbing piece of crap I can air in every market at every time slot? This coming from someone who can love a meal made in a microwave in 15 minutes.

I’m not belittling the merits of business models, and so, in honor of poetry, I propose an audit of the current writers, the old writers, the best sellers and the entire market in print and online. What do people like, what do people want to contribute to and participate in? And I don’t mean local “open mic night’s,” rather things people who like poetry enjoy doing—reading and writing and sometimes sharing. I love research with a passion so let’s brainstorm together…have ideas?

While the date is yet to be announced, the Presidential State of the Union will occur near the end of January—my money is on the 26th. Until then, this website will host a conversation on what poetry means today and hopes to publish that very day our own state of the union.

In honor of this new conversation, today's offering comes from perhaps one of the best well known inaugural poems ever, from the then 87 year old legend, Robert Frost. I did not know this until recently, but those who were in attendance confirm that the glare of the January sun that cold day in 1961 caused Frost to stumble in reading his new poem, “Dedication,” for the new President, JFK, so he recited another from memory. Here is his original poem in full length, a real gift.

Dedication - The Complete Text

by Robert Frost

Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.