the cartography of poetry
chris ransick
denver poet laureate
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People who assert the tired old phrase that poetry is dying are really
saying that their engagement with the art has atrophied and they aren't up
to the task of recognizing the present shape of the art. Contemporary poetry
is dynamic and difficult to categorize. That elusiveness means people who
have locked into their minds what "poetry ought to be" find it easier to
pronounce the art dead than to look closely and learn how it lives.
Poetry is often unique to its locality, flowing through a community the way
a river flows through its banks, nurturing the deep roots of trees in a
narrow zone. Define any poetry community-urban, rural, street, academic,
east, west-and you identify the riverbanks that define the community and
create borders. And while poetry may not leap its banks easily, it can flow
to other communities since it's all poetry and it's all connected. The sea
gives up moisture to clouds that drop rain to rivers flowing back to the
sea. Cartographers map the globe and say it has seven oceans, but you know,
there's really only one.
Unfortunately, short-sighted people often label someone else's poetics
irrelevant or illegitimate, failing to grasp how an unfamiliar voice serves
its community. This is especially true when the viewer looks at a different
style from afar, without rolling up his pant cuffs and wading into the
stream. This theory suggests why some academics can't appreciate street
poets and vice-versa. It's why any sub-group is suspicious or dismissive of
any other. Poetics mirrors the larger fragmentation of our society. I don't
see poetry as polarized because that very concept presupposes but two
perspectives, hence it's the realm of fools who desire or expect the entire
scope of the art to conform to a certain dogma, to triumph over all the
non-joiners that are lumped together as "imposters."
Mark Twain once said, and I paraphrase, it is not best that we should all
think alike. So contemporary poetry's greatest strength may be its diversity
of voice and style-a strength perceived by small minds as a weakness. Poetry
is this unkempt, fractious, elusive set of expressions and the resultant
tension irritates some specifically because it encourages diverse voices to
develop. Rules bind creativity and drive it to dormancy. Art exhibits over
time an ebb and flow, the imposing of rules and then a series of reactions
against those rules, leading to development and growth. The Egyptians locked
into a rigid formality in their visual art for 3,000 years and little
changed; the Greeks made marvelous, fascinating leaps of imagination in a
comparatively short period, and oh my, isn't that tasty stuff.
I say we're in a dynamic time for poetry. Excellent work is flowing. Yes, a
certain amount of hacking goes on everywhere, but when things are
decentralized and democratized, as they seem to be now, you cede mass appeal
to gain quirky, idiosyncratic, unique expression. None of us can see the
future perhaps at some point these braided channels of poetry will flow back
together for a time and cohere, if only briefly, in a realization of the
present renaissance. Maybe we'll only be able to grasp the present
renaissance once it's over and we can look back at it.
Any sense of polarization may be driven by the zeitgeist of the early 21st
century. We're in an age of corporate media that seeks gross profit by
grinding down all diversity into a single product for sale to the largest
number of people at the lowest common denominator. It's like songwriter Greg
Brown says: "There'll be one corporation/selling one little box/it will do
what you want and tell you what you want/and cost whatever you've got."
So even as this mainstream impulse tries to squish poetry, or dismiss it as
dead, the best American poetry breaks free in a wild spirit that resists
control, that rolls and changes, reinvents itself, circles back and leaps
forward, splits and reforms. The best of it may burn you or freeze you but
it won't bore you, which only happens when an art dies and fossilizes. Screw
those knuckleheads who say the art is dead. They're just isolated literary
critics who desperately want to believe their views dominate. They're
sitting under the Big Top, acrobats flying above them while they stare into
their own navels and say, "Ain't no circus in town because all I see is my
own belly button."
Meanwhile, poetry acrobats fly in communities everywhere, far from the
critics and poseurs, and audiences cheer. People write about things that
matter to members of their community on the street, in the halls, in the
valleys and on the plains. In the best cases, these poems make the leap to
other readers, other communities, so the whole healthy, wonderful dance of
connection goes on.
Apart from the "quality" of any poem, the act of making it typically
benefits both the individual maker and the community into which it is
released. Some poetry-the very best of it-manages to be transcendent,
exquisitely and profoundly connecting present moment to ancient wisdom. I've
been swinging through this whole spectrum lately-I teach poetry in college
classes and independent workshops, working with people as young as 10 and as
old as 80. I work part of the time in academia, and then I travel around to
community centers and hear people recite oral tradition poems, and then I
sit in "gourd circles" and hear everything from new-age mysticism to
poem/song/dance fusion. I go from recitations at Holocaust memorial events
to swinging jazz improvisation recitations. Then I visit high schools and
hear the urgent, lithe voices of young people on the cusp of becoming men
and women. I go to slams and revel in the rants, and I attend events where
school kids recite from memory classic works. Then I go home and get out
several different translations of Beowulf, with the Old English for
reference, and pore over single passages for the nuances to be found in the
versions of language moving over 13 centuries.
Poetry is dead? I don't think so. One kind of poetry-my kind of poetry-is
the right kind? I don't think so. When I hear people arguing that this is
real poetry or that is real poetry, to the exclusion of all others, I see a
bunch of little generals in silly hats waving rubber swords at one another.
My sonnet is better than your asyntactical experimentation is better than
your slam rant is better than . . . blah, blah, blah. In the end, what are
they fighting over? What does "the winner" hope to attain?
In the moment, we write and send that writing out into a world where the
noise from so many competing things tends to obfuscate the issue and make
any judgment suspect. I think many writers take their instruction amid all
this chaos I've discussed; at a certain point, when their own voice calls
them away, they go to another place where they can hear that voice most
clearly and they work the rest of their days in exploration and expression
of it, hoping that some of their poetry makes it back to the world and
connects with readers. If this isn't true for others, then at least it's
true for me. I've found my voice and I'll keep tracking it while I
appreciate as many other voices as I can, hoping to change and grow as long
as I can hold a pen.
Chris Ransick took up the post of Denver Poet Laureate in March 2006,
embarking on an adventure through the city's very-much-alive literary
landscape. A Colorado Book Award winner for poetry (Never Summer) and a
finalist for fiction (A Return to Emptiness), he has just published a new
collection of poems, Lost Songs & Last Chances. Learn more at his website
www.chrisransick.com.
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