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

Friday, October 31, 2014

Would bees mourn?

     Like pollen, poetry cannot be stolen because it is designed to be taken.  Flowers provide sweetness to encourage this "theft", along with a compact size to facilitate carriage, whole and intact.

     No bees?  No pollinization.  No flowers.

     One of my favorite parlor tricks exercises is to ask people to go to a particular webzine edition that includes ten fine pieces, one of which is among the best poems of this century.  I ask participants which individual work they liked most and why.


Earl the Squirrel's Rule #16

    All things being equal, we'd expect tastes to be rather evenly distributed, averaging 10% for each of the ten published poems.  In practice, favorite subjects and genres (e.g. humor, romance and drama--in that order--beating out lectures, diatribes and diary entries) will affect, if not determine, the results.  Indeed, one of the poems is arguably the best romantic verse written in this century.

     The results?  The love poem does, indeed, beat the average but not by much, probably because the poet was more erudite than most readers.  It is another poem that consistently gains more than 60% of the overall vote.  Almost 70% of non-academic poets settle on the same selection.  More than 80% of academic poets agree.  Among geeks, the consensus¹ is in the high 90s.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #43
     It is a choice that surprises even the choosers.  "I don't usually like this sort of thing" is a familiar refrain.  What is more, the result is reliable and predictable.  Anyone who has studied the craft could bet that every significant demographic would come to the same conclusion. 

     What does this prove?  Contrary to Convenient Poetics doctrine, quality exists, such that it isn't "just a matter of taste."  Contrary to Content Regents, poetry isn't evaluated by its subject matter or purpose.  Contrary to fetishist assumptions, great art defines its genre, not vice versa.  Contrary to conventional academic thought, quality does not require degrees to produce or explanations to appreciate.  Finally, contrary to critical theory today, reviewers aren't asked for their opinion.  Rather, they face an impossible task:  predicting the reaction of audiences that don't exist.




Footnotes:

¹ - This is the Egoless Effect:  The more people know about a subject the less their evaluations differ.


Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Problems We Ain't Got

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #135
     In "The Capitalistic Quandary of Poetry", L.L. Barkat begins with a sentence as provocative as the title:  "What if access trumped ownership?" Access.  Capitalistic quandary, moorings and thinking.  Poetry's need to "turn us on our heads", moving toward a "shared economy of human wholeness, life, and love." (WTF?)

     The catch is that not one of the problems mentioned actually exists.  We don't live on a planet where millions look for poetry to read and find their paths blocked.  Quite the opposite.  The Internet provides us with millions of poems, some of which weren't written by L.L. Barkat.

      Later, we see the same dull question reiterated, without respect to its obvious answer:

     "Who owns great poetry?"

      The copyright holder until expiration, then everyone.

     "Who is allowed to handle it, invest it, mint it, spend it without question?"

      The copyright holder until expiration, then everyone.

      "I am not asking who has the rights to mediocre poetry."

      Doesn't matter.  Same answer.

      The zeal to shove poetry in front of people--called "access" in Ms. Barkat's idiolect--leaves no one safe.  It bubbles over as she asks:

     "What about the prison system?"

      What about cruel and unusual punishment?

      Nowhere does Ms. Barkat involve an audience in the selection processes.  Some committee makes a choice and plasters its idea of poetry across the landscape.  That's not "cart before the horse";  that's cart without the horse.  Chicken without the egg.  Nevertheless, her "solutions" to poetry's nonproblems are well worth addressing:

1. Teach it like it's alive.

     Pretending poetry is alive is the problem, not the solution.

2. Bring it home.

    "...what are the chances [poetry] will be truly accessible to the mind and heart?"

     What are the chances of us barfing here?

3. Transport it.

    "Poetry can come along. Radio programs, placards, posters."

     Yes, that's the ticket.  Make poetry as annoying as possible.

4. Paint it in the public square.

    "That which we value and seek to preserve and communicate, we highlight in our public spaces."

    "We", kemo sabe?

    "Why not paint poetry on buildings (without resorting to a night-time spray can)?"

     If my only choice is between the poetic tastes of bureaucrats versus vandals I'll take the taggers.  Every time.

5. Take it to work.

    "Celebrations like Poetry at Work Day..." are puerile and embarrassing.

     Let me conclude by saying I would never suggest that "it's time for (many) experienced writers to stop blogging."



Monday, October 20, 2014

A World Without Poetry?

Dateline:  2211

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #134
     All of us are familiar with the Press Paradox:  "News is what doesn't happen."  Planes make headlines only when they don't land.  We rarely think of the sun until an eclipse.

     I pondered this while working on my magnus opus:  a chronology of English language poetry since 1066.  The "eclipse" in question was the disappearance of poetry¹ during the Cocoon Era, between 1966 and 2026.  We know how and when poetry vanished:  it was replaced by songs on the radio, starting in the 1920s.  We know how and when it reappeared:  the publication of Humorist Skancey Brown's "Everything Butt" PoVid in 2026.  Fascinating theories abound as to why poetry died in English-speaking cultures but not in others--most of which had popular tunes on the radio as well.  What intrigues me at the moment, though, is how a society operates without poetry.  This isn't like French speakers ignoring the past perfect tense or Russian lacking articles (i.e. "the", "a" or "an").  We're talking about losing an entire mode of speech--of which there are only two!  This was unprecedented in human history.

     What was it like living in a world without poetry¹?  Did the entire population turn into soulless, mindless, unromantic drones?  Did civilization collapse?  Did men die miserably every day for lack of it?

     Oddly, no.  Humanity survived, taking solace in song, video, fiction, and sundry other sources.

     It is difficult to imagine a time when no single poem would be familiar to any four randomly selected compatriots--not even four poets!  Few people can recite one measly line, let alone an entire poem, written in their lifetime.  Despite our sophisticated 23rd century search techniques, we cannot find any significant samplings of non-poets quoting verse from this period in any context.  The only popular verser from this era was a Mother Goose stand-in, Dr. Seuss, who outsold all of his contemporaries combined.  From surveys found online we estimate the average college graduate could name two living poets but could quote none.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #19
     As always, many people mistook themselves for poets, an error few others committed.  Reviews were little more than blurbs.  Not surprisingly, criticism disappeared entirely.  The prevailing sentiment was that such candor might hurt the poet's chances of getting a teaching position and, besides, why excoriate something that no one is going to read? 

     The taboo against quality was baffling.  Identifying one or two poets as "best" was deemed offensive--worse than bring up sex, politics or religion among strangers--because it implied that all poets weren't equal.  Technical discussions were almost as rare.  People discussed poets, not poems.  Put another way, the one thing missing from most poetry discussions was--you guessed it--poetry.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #113
     There was a fad called "slam", which we might call "animated speech".  Indeed, many hard core organizers avoided the expression "slam poetry", lest it be too closely associated with a moribund art form.  Slam appealed to the young and appeared to be a rare instance when participants left their homes.  (E-Tourney championships didn't appear until the 2030s;  before that, all videogaming was done at home.)

     We know the Internet obsoleted books and magazines but it took longer than many would expect.  The last public library was closed in 2061, twelve years before the Library of Congress became a museum where we can go to touch actual pages, just as our great, great, great, great grandparents did.

     Given sales and lending statistics, it is hard to see how print publishing had much success promulgating poetry.  Lest we think cost and inconvenience was the problem, poetry e-zines and e-books were equally ineffective.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #24
     Paradoxically, while Nobody Read Poetry, many expropriated it.  Because of a quirk in the crude scripting language of the time ("HTML"), one could embed pictures but not text.  That is, one could include a photo from another site directly (i.e. without copying it and posting it to one's own server).  One could "hyperlink" to another site but a user would have to click on the link and go to that secondary source.  If one wanted to incorporate the text into one's own document, though, copying and pasting was the only option...and that violated the copyright laws of the time.  It wasn't until 2024 that browsers provided this feature, and 2031 (Britain), 2033 (United States), 2034 (Canada) or 2036 (Australia and South Africa) before lawmakers got around to fixing the problem.
Earl the Squirrel's Rule #115

     It is a challenge for us to envision an environment where one doesn't hear so much as a commercial jingle in the course of a day, week or month.  This was the case despite the existence of three different media:  print, pixel and performance.  Today, only the latter survives (except for analytical forums and treatises).

     We may never understand how thin poetry's lifeline was.  At the turn of the millennium the number of geeks² may have been under 100 worldwide.  They served the same purpose as 7th century Irish monks, keeping classic literature alive during the Dark Ages.

     It is remarkably easy for literary scholars to ignore an epoch without poetry.  It produced no major poets and no iconic poems.  While most verse is extant online, only a handfull of Cocoon Era pieces rose above their own obscurity and, at that, only in anthologies.  Nevertheless, it was during this period that poetry experienced its greatest move toward modernity and democratization.  Before it, the vast majority of recognized poets were male.  During the Cocoon, three of the four most revered³ poets were female.  That trend, if not that ratio, has continued ever since.

      In the end, I believe that this peculiar time, 1966 to 2026, lies beyond our 23rd century comprehension--even beyond our imagination.



Footnotes:

¹ - Lest there be confusion, by "poetry" we mean "[the market for] poetry", excluding song lyrics.  After all, if no one is listening then "we might as well be barking." 

² - During this period, anyone who understood even the rudiments of scansion could be considered an "expert".  Many of these self-identified as "geeks", a term that didn't seem to have the negative connotation it has today.

³ - Most revered in 2211, at least.


Friday, October 17, 2014

Soft Rhythms

     "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

     "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

     Between the perfect rhymes and iambic rhythm this line proclaims "This is poetry!"  Reciting it and knowing it is intended as verse, people who have never had the benefit of an acting coach are liable to overstress the preposition "on".  This misapprehension (called "promotion") that poetry uses unnatural speech patterns survives among too many non-performing poets today. 

     Of course, competent versers would not write such doggerel in the first place.  Instead, they would concentrate on softer rhythms:  more substitutions (e.g. anapests, spondees, pyrrhics, double iambs instead of metronomic iambs), far fewer proximate/exact rhymes, and more variety in the stress levels.

    "Your face was always saddest when you smiled."

    The words "face", "sad-" and "smiled" are accented more strongly than the first syllable in "always".  Using Otto Jespersen's 4 levels of stress, "al-" is a three while the other three are fours, just as natural speech leaves "when" unstressed (i.e. 1 or 2).

    Compare Shakespeare's lines to rap lyrics and the differences between soft and hard rhythms and between natural and metronomic speech become abundantly evident.  Softer cadences, then, are associated with more sophisticated poetry while stronger beats identify more popular verse, including song lyrics.  That's one view.  Another is that if you want your words to be taken seriously by contemporary or future audiences they should be wrapped lightly, not tightly, in rhythm.