Earl Gray

Earl Gray
"You can argue with me but, in the end, you'll have to face that fact that you're arguing with a squirrel." - Earl Gray

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Sonics

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #13
Introduction

      Sounds are the last thing most newcomers think about while writing poetry and the first thing that a skilled editor seeks while reading poetry.  The first stanza/strophe may be all that such an editor needs to know whether or not the rest is worth examining.  A verser may be able to sustain interest through scintillating content, as a prose writer might, but insofar as poetic appreciation is concerned, even the most untrained ear will tune out if it doesn't detect pleasing sounds in the first few lines.  That is how important sonics are.

      A listener, even if not an English speaker, will hear repetitions in our poems:  rhythm/meter, lines (i.e. repetends), phrases (e.g. anaphora), words (e.g. identity, anadiplosis), syllables (e.g. rhymes), vowels (e.g. assonance) and consonants (e.g. consonance).  More than anything else, then, repetition is the difference between poetry and prose.  

Phonemes

      The sounds that characters and some groups of characters (e.g. "sh", "th", "kh", etc.) make are called "phonemes".  Every language has a set number of these.  To this day, African dialects have over 100, many of them taken from nature (i.e.
onomatopoeia).  As humankind spread out many phonemes were lost.  Mandarin has 67.  English 44, Proto-Algonquin 23, Hawaiian only 13.  Think of it:  when we speak we echo the sounds of animals, some of which might have gone extinct thousands of years ago.
 
      These utterings make up syllables which, in turn, make up words and feet in verse.  Thus, phonemes are the building blocks of language and poetry.  These are divided into consonants, which involve a closure of mouth and/or tongue, and vowels, which are sounded by expelling air from an open mouth.  The repetition and pattern of consonantal (called "consonance") and vowel (called "assonance") sounds are as important as the repetition of similar syllables ("rhyme").  Alliteration occurs when sounds that begin stressed syllables, usually but not always at the beginning of words, are similar.  This is true whether they are vowels (e.g. ocean/aura, ask/reanimate), consonants (e.g. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers") or a combination of both (e.g. honest/awning, reconstitute/caustic).

Consonants

      Consonants are measured in two dimensions:  time and substance.

Time

      The faster consonants and vowels are sounded the quicker the pace of the poem.  If follows naturally that sections of a poem that constitute a buildup may use progressively faster consonants.  Periods of relaxation might be marked by longer consonant sounds.  We begin by looking at the various types of consonants, beginning with the fastest and working our way down to the slowest:

      As the name suggests, an "unvoiced plosive" occurs with an explosion of sound without help from the vocal chords.  The "t" in "top" and the "p" in "pot" are examples.  By contrast, a "voiced plosive" involves the vocal chords more:  the "b" in "bought" and the "d" in "dot", for example.  Plosives raise the level of excitement.  As a general rule, voiced sounds tend to take longer than unvoiced ones.

      "Glottals" are similar to plosives except that they originate further back in the mouth, somewhat like gargling.  The "k" in "kit" and the hard "g" in "get" are often used to underline strong negative emotions.

      "Unvoiced fricatives" involve a slower release of air than a plosive.  Sibilants like the "sh" in "ship" and the "s" in "sip" are unvoiced fricatives but so are the "f" in "fit", the "h" in "hip" and the soft "th" in "thin".  "Voiced fricatives" drag the vocal chords into the effort.  The "z" and "zh" sounds in "close" and "closure", the hard "th" sound in "the" and the "v" in "vim" can calm not only the pace but the mood of your poem.

       "Nasals" can be enunciated with the mouth closed.  These include the "m" in "mitt", the "n" in "knit" and the "ng" sound of "sing".  These can be elongated indefinitely, as in the Campbell's commercial:  "M-M-M good!"  The "m" and "n" tend to create a sense of relaxation but "ng" is often used to create the opposite effect.

       Like "w", the "r" is a special case.  It is a consonant (i.e. we say "a rip", not "an rip", just as we say "a whim" as opposed to "an whim") but if untrilled, as in North American English speech, "r" is a vowel sound.  By contrast, anyone who has heard a Scot trill an "r" will understand that it can be a long consonantal sound. 

       The sound of "l" (as in "liquid") involves pushing air past the tongue as it is held to the upper palate.  It connotes fluidity, relaxing a listener as a gentle mountain steam would.

       Among the slowest and harshest sounds are the "affricatives":  a cluster of consonant sounds slammed together into a cacophony:  the "ch" it "chip" and the "j" in "jest" (a sound so harsh that few other languages use it) can be used to shock a reader.

       Note:  You don't have to remember any of this nomenclature.  Just be aware of the concepts, after which you can let your ear do what your memory cannot.  That said, I recommend that you click here to read Rachel Lindley's definitive article, "The Sound of - um, well - Sound" on this subject.

Substance

       Consonant sounds can be described as "hard" or "soft".  In general, we want to map out our poems so that the harder/harsher sounds occur when we want excitement, softer sounds during more relaxing, contemplative or pastoral moments.  In this way our poem can resemble a symphony with the pleasing vibrations of cello, violin and wind instruments leading to the climactic brass, cymbals and gongs.

       It is important to note that consonants with vowels directly after them will be sounded more distinctly than those followed by another consonant sound.  Thus, the "g" in "go" will be more conspicuous than that in "glow".  The harder that ensuing consonant is the more it detracts from the sound of the first consonant.  The "p" in "play" is more pronounced than the ones in "stopped".  Similarly, consonants are the beginning of a syllable will be more salient than those at the end of a word.  The "t" in "tore" is more prominent than the one in "rote" even if the word after "rote" begins with a vowel sound.

       Here is a list of consonants in approximate order from harshest to softest:

Sound       Example

j, g        judge
ch          chap
k, c        kin, cap
g           get
p           pet
t           tin
b           bin
d           din
zh, j       pleasure, jejeune
th          then
z           zen
s, c        sop, cede
v           vast
f           fast
sh          shop
th          thaw
ng          sang
h           hip
l           lip
r           rip
n           nip
m           mitt


      The Spanish "horta" or gargled "kh/ch" that we hear in "ojala", "Khartoum"  or "chutzpah" and the trilled "rr" of "perro" would both rank high on this list.

Vowels

      If you open your mouth and give your tongue the day off the sounds you'll be able to make will be almost exclusively vowels.

      As with consonants, vowels occupy the dimension of time by being either long or short.  The first problem is that "long" and "short" have two entirely different usages, depending on whether we are speaking of phonics or sonics.  The "o" in "rote" is long in phonetic terms but doesn't take a particularly long time to say;  thus, it is of medium duration in sonic terms.  Conversely, grammarians call the "o" in "rot" short while prosodists call it long.  To avoid this confusion, we'll call vowels that take a long time to say "slow", quicker ones "fast".

      What about the "w" in "what"?  It is clearly a vowel sound--a very fast "oo" sound--but, unfortunately, English lexicologists didn't follow the Welsh example and allow "w" to be a true vowel (i.e. the only vowel in a word).

      Here is a list of vowel sounds in approximate order from fastest to slowest:


Vowel     Example

shwa      batter       - The "e" is a very fast "[c]oo[k]" sound.
i         kit               
w         when
e         pet
u         putt
oo, u     book, put
o         rote
e, y      peat, risky
u, oo     fruit, boot
a         cat
a         Kate          - Like a dipthong of "eh-ee" sounds.
i, y      kite, sky     - Like a dipthong of "ah-ee" sounds.
a, o      paw, pot
u         cute          - Like a dipthong of "ee-oo" sounds.

      True dipthongs such as "oi" (in "coil") and "ow" (in "cowl") are so slow as to constitute two syllables in some cases.

      As with consonants, slow vowels attract attention to themselves and, obviously, slow down the read.  In common speech we often elongate vowels for emphasis.  The guy who just cut us off in traffic isn't a "jackass", he's a "ja-a-acka-a-a-a-ass".  In close linebreaking decisions free versers and curginators will often break on the word with the longer vowel sounds.

      Like consonants, vowels do have substance.  The "a" in "cat" is more noticeable than the "i" in "kitty", maybe even more so than the longer "aw" sound in "caught".  For the most part, though, vowel sounds derive their substance from their duration.

      Vowel length plays a role in promotion and demotion of syllables.  Consider the third line of "Wintakan Eulogy", where the poet has to choose between "out to [sea]" and "to the [sea]":


We've come to where eternity
now stands, its gateway arched.

Another drop flows out to/to the sea
and leaves the land more parched.

      For most reciters the word after "flows" will become stressed.  Which is a better candidate for promotion?  "To the" or "out to" sea?  Both use the same consonant.  Because the word is going to be accented the poet goes with the longer vowel sound:  the dipthong "out".  Thus, we see the line as:

Another drop flows out to sea

The Repetition of Sounds

     Rhyme generally involves syllables in poetry but, in song, will often rely on assonance.  Alliteration, consonance and assonance usually refer to individual phonemes or combinations thereof that may be shorter than a full syllable.  Aside from adding a skeletal structure to your lines, alliteration, consonance and, to a lesser extent, assonance can create a psychological, topical or structural link between thematic words.  A structural link involves similarities between sounds near the end of one phrase, sentence or stanza and the beginning of the next.  For example, in "Looking for Lorca" Stanza #1 ends with the word "light" as Stanza #2 commences with "Let".  The repetition of a word or part of a word in this manner is a very effective rhetorical device called "anadiplosis".  In DPK's "Beans" we see:

Your face was
always saddest when you smiled.  You smiled as every
doctored moment lied.  You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.

Alliteration

     Consider these lines from Sara Teasdale's "There Will Come Soft Rains":

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire

     The repetition of "f's" at the beginning of "feathery fire" and "fence" are an example of alliteration.

   William Blake's "Tyger, tyger, burning bright" is one example of alliteration, but so are "premeditated meddling in Mexico" and "Ask another anteater!"

     As we mentioned in the previous article ("Forms"), an eon ago alliteration played much the same role in Anglosaxon accentual poetry as rhyme does in today's accentual-syllabic verse. 

     Consider this excerpt from "Ekaterinburg", a poem about the execution of the Romanoffs:

In this room
of bullet and body,

in this room
of bayonet and bodice,

in this room
there was no bog
or lime

     The reference to "bog or lime" comes out of the blue to anyone unfamiliar with history, but if we link "bog" with all of the other "b-words" we should infer that the bullet-ridden, bayonetted bodies were [eventually] thrown into a bog [and, at some point, covered with lime].

Consonance

     Any repetition of consonant sounds within words is "consonance".  Overconsonance, especially if it involves unvoiced plosives (e.g. "Peter Piper picked a peck...") or fricatives ("She sells sea shells..."), can create unwelcome tongue-twisting humour.  Properly used, though, even overconsonance can create a wryly dramatic effect:

Twin tumbleweeds roll past and part
the dirt to sketch in chicken tracks,
so soon obscured: convectional art
mandalas till the winds
relax.

     The harsh "t", "p", "ch" and "k" sounds are blended with some sibilance to create an almost absurd level of tension before we run into the ironic one-word line:  "relax".  (The linebreak before "relax" also serves to highlight the pun on "till the winds".)

     Consider the psychological link that the consonance of "d" sounds produces here: 

The brown skinned girl
views dark July
days through a chador,
her body reduced
[etc.]

     The string of "d-words" (skinned...dark...days...chador...body reduced) creates a parataxic subtext, suggesting that the chador may have something to do with these "dark...days" and with her "body" being "reduced".  A reader would likely overlook this entirely because, as with poetry in general, this needs to be heard.  A listener could miss this consciously but it will hit their subconscious like a bus.

Assonance

     Assonance involves the repetition of vowel sounds.  In the mournful "Why We Never Met Grandpa" the audience encounters this quatrain:


A mobile home, a tortoise god,
her snapshot caught a gray adieu.
Too old for Rome, she'd hoped to plod
along the beach on Peleliu.

     These four lines of iambic tetrameter contain no less than seven "oh" sounds ("mobile", "home", "tortoise", "old", "for", "Rome", "hoped") and seven "aw" sounds ("god", "snapshot", "caught", "adieu", "plod", "along", "on").  Could the poet be tapping into the fact that "oh" and "aw" are common expressions of grief?

Distance, Proximity and Prescience

     "Distant" repetitions of sounds involves spacing most of the iterations apart.  "Proximate" repetition suggests a closer clustering such that the recurrences are bound to draw attention (e.g. the overassonance in "the cat in the hat came back").  To avoid being conspicuous it may be good technique to either "presage" the repetitions with an iteration beforehand or "confirm" them with a reiteration later.


Come autumn, combines comb the fields
to harvest gold canola oil
for toast before November yields
its cold.

     The hard "c" alliteration of "Come autumn, combines comb" crowded into the first four words are confirmed subsequently via "canola" and, later still, with "cold".  Compare this to "Trophies":

before leather nights
bring the button-on-washboard slide

      If the second line contained the only instances of "b" sounds it would seem like the poet said "time for some of that fancy alliteration stuff".  The presence of a "b" in the previous line makes the alliteration less protrusive.

Conclusion

      What happens when all of this comes together?  What does perfection look like?  Let us examine these remarkable lines from "There are Sunflowers in Italy" by Didi Menendez:

     You wrote your verses
     with your veins,
     cold against the wall.

      The assonance of "oh" sounds ("wrote", "your" twice, "cold") and alliteration of "v's" are obvious enough.  Let's not overlook the rhythm:  hard-driving iamb, skipping a beat only where our hearts might, at the comma after "veins".  Even before we factor in the startlingly wonderful trope we can see why, IMHO, these three lines rank among the finest written in the last half century.




     Notice how all of the vowels are fast until we get to the first word that will surprise the reader:  "veins".  Assuming we pronounce "against" as "ag-enst", we don't see another slow vowel sound until we get to the word that informs us of the execution by firing squad:  "wall".  Like a "slow traffic" sign on a highway, these vowel sounds (along with the enjambment) force us to decelerate and examine those critical words more carefully.  Through their vowels these words underline themselves.

      Look, too, at the consonants.  Those in the first two lines are either soft or softened (i.e. the "t" in the end of "wrote" is less pronounced than in, say, "tore").  This sets us up for the second surprising word, the time-shifting "cold".  Just as "too much emphasis is no emphasis at all", the hard sounds in "cold" work best because they are surrounded by so many softer ones. 

      A shout seems louder in a library than a crowded stadium.





Addendum:  Scansion Maps and Sonic Graphs

     If we've been writing for a while we likely have a poem that, judging from critiques, fared better than we expected.  We also have a poem that met with a disappointing reception.  Chances are good that the answer lies in the rhythm(s) and sounds.  What we need, then, is a way of analyzing scientifically what our audience is evaluating instinctively.

Scansion Maps

     A scansion map involves highlighting our stressed syllables.  One way to create a scansion map is to print your poem out and circle the accented syllables, underlining any lightly accented syllables.  Another, paper-saving method is to bold the stressed syllables and italicize the lightly accented ones before hitting "Preview" (don't post!) them using the interface here.  For example, here is a scansion map of that marvelous sentence from "There are Sunflowers in Italy
":


     You wrote your verses
     with your veins,
     cold against the wall.

     This will allow you to see if your words are forming rhythm(s).  Scansion maps may not be necessary for verse, since you are already forced to pay strict attention to meter, but such visuals can be extremely helpful if writing vers libre.

Sonic Graphs

     Sonic graphs are useful whether you are writing verse or free verse.  The method is the same as scansion maps except that you have to do it twice:  once for your vowels and once for your consonants.  For vowels, you might circle/bold the long vowel sounds and underline/italicize the medium length ones.  This will give you:

     You wrote your verses
     with your veins,
     cold against the wall.

     For consonants, you might bold/circle the harder sounds and italicize/underline the softened ones.  This gives you:

     You wrote your verses
     with your veins,
     cold against the wall.

     Examine the results objectively.  Are your vowels lengthening and your consonants hardening at the spots you wish to emphasize?  For the experienced ear these considerations, along with other elements of sound, can make or break your poem.


     Once you have your outline in place you can choose words with sounds that reflect the mood and pace at that point in the narrative.

     Here's some good news:  read this article about sonics, this one about scansion, sprinkle in some jargon and, in the space of a few hours, you will become more knowledgeable on the subject of poetry technique than most editors, contest judges and English or MFA graduates.

     I wish that were hyperbole.
 


 Learning Poetry - 3. Sonics  (in three minutes)


 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Everybody is a Poet?

     Marjorie Perloff's "Poetry on the Brink - Reinventing the Lyric" begins with an engaging question:

   "What happens to poetry when everybody is a poet?"

    "It thrives, of course!" was my kneejerk response.  The last time poetry was part of people's lives, such that even grade six graduates understood the difference between an iamb and a trochee, poems were quoted everywhere and poets were rock stars.  The average 12 year old in 1913 had a far better claim to the term "poet" than the average MFA grad in 2013.

Giles Coren
     The problem with my viewpoint is that it presumes we're talking about poets who actually care about poetry other than their own.  (In fact, given their lack of interest in craft, make that including their own.)  As Giles Coren makes clear in "Let us go then, and feign our love of verse", poets today rarely read poetry, especially from outside their own aesthetic.  Beyond the PoBiz echo chamber we encounter Adrian Mitchell's causation spiral:  "Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."  In short, all the parameters have changed since 1913.

     Ms. Perloff has a much narrower perspective.  Even in transcribing a reference by Jed Rasula (i.e. "to say nothing of all the Web-zines" [sic]), she reveals her lack of awareness of the more audience-oriented, technically informed poetry produced and published by onliners.  Her interest begins and ends with the PoBiz where, paradoxically, no audience is evident or sought.  Given this specialization, it shouldn't surprise us that her description of that milieu's output is spot on: 

Marjorie Perloff
     "Whatever the poet’s ostensible subject...the poems you will read...will, with rare exceptions, exhibit the following characteristics: 1) irregular lines of free verse, with little or no emphasis on the construction of the line itself or on what the Russian Formalists called 'the word as such'; 2) prose syntax with lots of prepositional and parenthetical phrases, laced with graphic imagery or even extravagant metaphor (the sign of 'poeticity'); 3) the expression of a profound thought or small epiphany, usually based on a particular memory, designating the lyric speaker as a particularly sensitive person who really feels the pain, whether of our imperialist wars in the Middle East or of late capitalism or of some personal tragedy such as the death of a loved one."
Jed Rasula

      Next came another startling statement, this one regarding Rasula's estimates of how many poets academia is spitting out:  "What makes Rasula's cautionary tale so sobering is that the sheer number of poets now plying their craft inevitably ensures moderation and safety."

      First off, Rasula is concentrating on those with degrees related to literature.  Anyone who has attended a slam, an open mic or an independent online forum knows that these grads are a small part of the total poet population.  This diversity is true even at the highest levels.  Of the five best poems written in this century only one was produced by an academic.  For what it's worth, that resonates with my anecdotal experience:  I estimate that no more than a fifth (Henry Gould estimates a tenth) of those who like to think of themselves as poets have a degree in related studies.  If Ms. Perloff finds Rasula's numbers "cautionary" and "sobering" how would she feel about quintupling them?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #17
     Even more counterintuitive is her statement that this abundance "ensures moderation and safety."  This may strike onliners as odd, akin to the silly notion that critical forums develop their own in-house style.  In fact, impatient Internet critiquers and editors will react negatively to the same-old-same-old, such that the variety in forms (which is quantifiable) and styles is inevitably wider online than elsewhere.  Nevertheless, again, Ms. Perloff's point is well made and isn't limited to her section of the poetry community.  Even absent concerns about editors, critics and potential employers, slam poets fall into the same trap.  After hearing the previous dozen slammers scream non-stop, unattenuated angst for their allotted time there is a natural apes-mimicking urge to follow suit.  The bad scores one incurs for not doing so will hasten this conformity.

     Before trailing off into examples, Ms. Perloff makes one final incisive, defining point:

Ezra Pound
    "Poet X has produced two or three successful books and keeps on writing in the same vein, but somehow the fourth book, no better or worse than the previous ones, gets much less attention for the simple reason that, in the interim, so many new poets have come on the scene. The newcomers are not necessarily better than their elders, nor do they write in an appreciably different mode, but the spotlight is now on them. Ezra Pound’s 'Make it New' has come to refer not to a set of poems, but to the poet who is known to have written them."

     Because the object is to find teaching/editing jobs the focus is on poets, not poems and certainly not audiences.  If a graduate has attained suitable employment in the field the problem is solved;  no more need for writing, publishing or promoting their business card poems.  If no position has been attained the graduate has missed his or her shot;  perhaps they should find work elsewhere.  The online environment operates as the real world does:  one's efforts benefit from one's previous triumphs.  Why else would anyone have purchased Bob Dylan's "Planet Waves"?  Again there is a parallel in the slam world, where attention spans are short, impressions shallow and glory fleeting.  Naming last year's Individual Champion would be a challenge even among avid slammers.

     No doubt, history has produced stranger bedfellows than the PoBiz and slam communities.

     Offhand, I can't think of any, though.


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Next Poem

    In "Anniversary" we noted the passage of a half century since the last iconic poem.  It is fun to speculate what the next one will look like.  Chances are good that it will start out as a pivotal scene in a television show or feature film or as a funereal or inaugural poem.  Production values may vary from someone hitting a webcam "ON" button up to the professional quality seen in the VidLit Contest entries.  Of two things we can be sure:  it will appear on YouTube sooner or later and it will be well performed.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #35
    It's quite likely that the writing technique won't be very good, especially to purists like myself.  The three best known poems of the 20th Century certainly weren't:  "In Flanders Fields", "High Flight" and the last iconic poem, the aforementioned Nantucket limerick.  If we look at the six best contemporary poems we can infer what would prevent their success in a sound-byte, instant gratification culture steeped in reality melodramas and solipsistic generational narcissism.  That the pieces aren't performed is, itself, a deal breaker.  Some involve events that occurred more than 5 days ago.  Terms like "limn", "ichor", and "fasces" as well as places like Mapocho [River] and Valparaiso may be a little too esoteric for many anglophones these days.  All six poems and their presentations are too subtle for today's impatient viewer.  All might make good second exposures to that poet's work, though.

     Poetry is what the audience sees and hears, not what authors and editors are unable to write, perform or produce well.  Having expended almost a century demonstrating that poetry without performance goes nowhere, it strikes me that many poets don't understand what this arcane skill involves.

     Consider Andy Garcia's excerpt from "La Cogida y la Muerte", the first part of "Llanto por Ignacio SĂ¡nchez MejĂ­as":



    Do we really need to speak Spanish to appreciate the distinction between the above and this:



    ...or, heaven forfend, the following assault on sensibility and taste?



    Poets are hardly the only offenders, as I saw in a recent thread on Facebook.



    Alison Krauss's rendition of Bob Dylan's "I Believe In You" is pitch perfect singing but there is a world of difference between a song well sung and an experience well imparted.  No other renditions involve better singing, including the orchestrated SinĂ©ad O'Connors version, but some are better performances, even though none comes close to Bob Dylan's original


     It pains this fan to criticize Alison Krauss, especially since I seem to be echoing every teenaged Corazoner who ever screamed "Speak from the heart!" in the forlorn hope that high volume angst might cover up ghastly material.  Frankly, if the singer's voice doesn't crack, as Dylan's did in studio, and if no one else tears up during this song the singer should be ass-kicked off the stage.

    Hey, if you can't do passion, then don't.  Or learn.  Seriously.  Singing may involve nothing more than hitting the right notes but performing is another matter entirely.


Sunday, March 3, 2013

Anniversary

    Earl the Squirrel's Rule #32
    Half a century ago a bawdy limerick about a man from Nantucket appeared in Playboy magazine.  No one could have guessed that this was the most significant event in the history of poetry.  Barring song lyrics and Dr. Seuss nursery rhymes, it was the last iconic English language poem for fifty years.  And counting.  Is this how a popular poetry tradition that included Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, and Frost will end?

    What other culture in history could envision, let alone produce, such a lull?  Who among us could imagine a similar drought in any other art form?  Five decades without an iconic painting, book, film, play or song?  Unthinkable.

    An entire mode of speech, of which we have but two, currently finds no audience beyond song lovers and sleepy children.  The only thing more amazing than this obsolescence is the apathy it generates, even among the overproducers.

    Very strange.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Novels versus Poetry - Part IV

     From "Novels versus Poetry - Part III":

    "Once the work finds its audience reader discussion, critics and the passage of time will separate the Timothy Findleys from the Stephen Kings."




Earl the Squirrel's Rule #9

     This is a point that prose publishers understand but that completely escapes poetry promoters:  you can't have a little good without a lot of bad.  Sturgeon's Revelation must be allowed to run its course.  Fiction editors who fail to comprehend that we don't get a Carol Shields without a lot of Danielle Steels don't keep their jobs long.  By contrast, poetry editors don't seem to grasp the notion that you don't get a Robert Frost without a lot of Edgar Guests.  The latter brings them into the tent;  the former benefits from the comparison.  You can't grow watermelon in an area that won't support an abundance of weeds.  No less a critical and technical authority than Peter John Ross--yes, Peter John Ross!--defended the existence and role of failures:

     "A poem may have twenty windows and no doors, and its roof may let the rain in, but sometimes that's part of the fun. Too narrow an adherence to high principles might ensure that one never writes a poem that be described unequivocally as bad, but a lot of interesting poems might also never be written."


Earl the Squirrel's Rule #34

     Precious little poetry is art (i.e. "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance") by any useful standard.  In the past, most of it was doggerel;  today we see prose with linebreaks published by people who think "The Red Wheelbarrow" is free verse.  (As an aside, do not overlook the point that the most trivial, poorly written verse did have a popular following once;  the same cannot be said of prose with linebreaks.)

    The idea is that poetry, good or bad, needs to be read, not just published.  It must become part of the common culture, mentioned by non-poets in everyday conversations and quoted in social media.  Before radio music took over in the early 1920s poetry was part of everyday life:  political slogans, newspaper columns, travelling entertainers, parlor performances, books, [writing and] recital contests, quotes embedded in prose, etc.  Much of this was contemporary verse and 99% (Sturgeon was an optimist) of that was wretched.  The 99% supported the 1%.  In ditching the goose we dumped the golden egg, leaving us with 0%:  not a single iconic line, let alone poem, in the last half century.

    How might we get bad poetry to support good?  Consider this example/idea:

    Suppose you got some funding for prizes and held an annual agency contest for commercial poetry:  advertising verse, including jingles, for whatever company or product the poet chooses.  No entry fee, the "catch" being that, in exchange for your promotional efforts, you will take, say, 5% of any proceeds from the finalist poems.  Another 5% will go to a videographer willing to work on spec (almost any film student would do).  Once you have enough innovative verse for a short-list, get the appropriate contracts signed, make videos (setting the verse to music where appropriate) and approach the companies (or their ad agencies), telling them that, with their permission, you will feature the ad for their product in your winner's circle.  No charge!  That is, no charge until and unless they decide to air commercials based on the poet's verse, at which point...KA-CHING!

    Imagine what 5% of the proceeds from this would be:




    As your event gains recognition year to year, more companies will consider using your winners' verse.  If so, this will more than pay for whatever artistic poetry you hope to publish.