The American Spectator : Poets Galore and Subsidized Poets

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Poets Galore and Subsidized Poets

By Tom Bethell from the March 2009 issue

Anyone still remember Elizabeth Alexander's performance at the Obama inaugural?

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built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

work inside of. Imagine ending a line that way and daring to call it poetry. Imagine being so culturally secure and cushioned by privilege that you can present that as inaugural poetry without fear of embarrassment. The artistic career of Elizabeth Alexander suggests that the self-esteem campaign has gone on for long enough.

In the past, some of those inside the poetry citadel have responded to criticism by saying: "Oh, you just don't like modern poetry." Joseph Epstein had a good riposte, and he also identified the underlying problem, or one of them.

Lots of modern poets have been well appreciated and honored, even those considered "difficult." He mentioned T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams. Auden, Yeats, Pound, Frost and others. The point is that they were amateurs—in the best sense of the word. They wrote poetry for love whether or not they were paid. They had day jobs: banker (Eliot), doctor (Williams), insurance executive (Wallace Stevens), librarian (Philip Larkin). As they say: subsidize something and you get more of it. And boy, we have whole anthills of poets today. As Epstein summarized the field, poetry "flourishes in a vacuum." More than 250 universities had creative writing programs when he wrote, all with a poetry component. Dana Gioia, in an excellent Atlantic Monthly article in 1991, put the figure at 200. With 10 students in each section, he wrote, unreassuringly, "these programs alone will produce about 20,000 accredited professional poets over the next decade."

More recently Gioia became chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. I believe he has done what he can to rein in grants for individual poets.

The Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers listed over 6,300 poets and other writers. Donald Hall, who was Poet Laureate of New Hampshire and more recently of the U.S.—his aggrieved response to Epstein was published in Harper's—said that 1,000 books of poetry are published every year. About 7,000 volumes of poetry were published from 1990 to 2001.

By comparison, in 1941 there were said to have been 151 American poets.

The market for the poetry tsunami is not strong, consisting mostly of other poets. It's wise for a publisher to anthologize 100 poets in one volume; that way it will at least sell 100 copies. Dana Gioia memorably noted his own reaction to the "several dozen journals" that print nothing but verse.

The heart sinks to see so many poems crammed so tightly together, like downcast immigrants in steerage. One can easily miss a radiant poem amid the many lackluster ones. It takes tremendous effort to read these small magazines with openness and attention. Few people bother, generally not even the magazines' contributors. The indifference to poetry in the mass media has created a monster of the opposite kind—journals that love poetry not wisely but too well.

CREATIVITY UNACCOUNTABLY waxes and wanes at different times and places. Our own time has every appearance of being bad for poetry. I personally would advise a creatively inclined youth to stay away the fine arts altogether. Standards have collapsed so completely—perhaps I should say deliberately undermined by what Philip Larkin called "the aberration of modernism that blighted all the arts"—that only political criteria now seem valid when it comes to deciding what's good or not. Malcolm Muggeridge once said that real creativity in our time shifted from those fields where you are encouraged to do your own thing and innovate without regard to tradition or "rules"—poetry, painting, academic music—into fields such as technology and engineering where the created machine imposes its own discipline. Compare, for example, the abstract paintings of a Mark Rothko or a Barnett Newman with the Golden Gate Bridge or a Boeing 747. Where do you think the aesthetic impulse of our time found its true outlet?

"The crowds in London once stood on their toes to see Tennyson pass," Joseph Epstein wrote. Today, however,

a figure like Tennyson probably would not write poetry and might not even read it. Poetry has been shifted—has shifted itself?—off center stage. Literarily, poetry no longer seems in any way where the action is.

But might there not be some good and serious poets out there, amidst the careerists? Poetry's appeal to its creators and to its audience is potentially so strong that there will always be those who will try to achieve something great in verse, difficult though it is. Some are surely trying now, and one or two may even be succeeding. But how would we know?

There is little coverage of poetry in the general press. Leading critics rarely review it. "In fact, virtually no one reviews it except other poets," Dana Gioia wrote. Most editors run poetry "the way a prosperous Montana rancher might keep a few buffalo around—not to eat the endangered creatures but to display them for tradition's sake."

The subsidized poets themselves have complained about the critical void, because they well know that as long as all their efforts are received with an equal and democratic deference, the whole notion of distinction (in both senses—distinguished and differentiated) will be lost. When modern criticism is occasionally found, Gioia said, it is uniformly obsequious, whereas until a few decades ago it was often sharp and even embarrassing to the poet at the receiving end.

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About the Author

Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).

Letter to the Editor View all comments (25) | Leave a comment

frost| 3.3.09 @ 6:16AM

Un-huh, I recall myself shaking my head, almost giggling, that this weird exhibition should be a part of a presidential inauguration? Pathetic!
Aside from its other ingredients (or the lack thereof), there was one sage who said words to the effect that: "Poetry which doesn't rhyme is like playing tennis without a net." Even worse when loaded with Pabulum Puke crap...

Robbins Mitchell| 3.3.09 @ 7:08AM

You want real poetry?...I'll give you real poetry....I once heard a recording of British Poet Laureat John Masefield reciting his poem 'Sea Fever'....."I must go down to the sea again,to the lonely sea and the sky...and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.".....made me want to climb the rigging right then and there

Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:03AM

Elizabeth Alexander should have recited the poem, "The poet and the jackass."

Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:04AM

Elizabeth Alexander should have recited the poem, "The poet and the jackass."

Melvin| 3.3.09 @ 8:06AM

My apologies for the dbl. posting, bad fingers, bad fingers.

Wankel| 3.3.09 @ 8:26AM

Oh well, at least it was a step up from the mutterings of Maya Angelou. Then again, maybe not...

Trotter| 3.3.09 @ 9:16AM

I'm still laughing at Laura Ingraham's spoof of the Alexander "poem".

Seriously, how have we gotten to this point in our Nation's history that Angelou's and Alexander's works are deemed worthy of presidential inaugurations? Good grief, talk about dumbed-down. If Barry wins a 2nd term, it should simply play the clip of Eddie Murphy on SNL doing his "Landlord" poem. At least that made sense.

Gene Schmidt| 3.3.09 @ 9:23AM

The popularity of the singer/songwriters of the 1970s was, I think, a reaction to the underwhelming emtions that modern poetry aroused in most individuals. Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell may or may not have been creating significant art, but at the very least their lyrics addressed recognizably human concerns---love, family, place in society, etc. Modern poetry, in contrast, had simply become murky and incomprehensible during this time.

Appleby| 3.3.09 @ 9:31AM

Obama? Inauguration? When was that?

Oh, right, I took that day off from work, where they were fawning and fainting (and we are in Kanukistan, with our own government trembling on the edge of the abyss -- slated to collapse in 7 days) and after my charity stint in the morning, I took my computer into the shop for a tune-up, shut off all my electronics save the stereo, put on some new CDs containing love songs of the 1930s and 1940s, and spent the day reading a Dorothy Sayers mystery.

Oh, and as an English major, had I been paying attention to that farce, I would have read something from Matthew Arnold.

Or possibly "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff," with its trenchant couplet:

"Thus malt doth more than Milton can/to justify God's ways to man."

frost| 3.3.09 @ 9:37AM

The demise of a Great America?
I read somewhere that it may have all started some years ago when the hapless (but best-selling) “poet” Rod McKuen was the Howard Cosell of verse, during the dawn of Political Correctness…
There again, perhaps it was Richard Bach and J. L. Seagull.
Or Barbara Hershey renaming herself Seagull...?
Anyway, am reminded that one bad poet's 'work' doesn't make sense, 'cept to another bad poet... or, as Michael Moorcock said: "The ideas of Byron and Shelley have probably caused more young men to lose their lives in hopeless, idiotic, romantic causes than the ideas of Karl Marx. Romanticism is the disease of the Modern Age."
Your witness...?

Mimi Evans Winship| 3.3.09 @ 9:39AM

As a versifier of conservative mien,
I know my readership is lean.
I don’t aspire to modern poetessness.
My goal is merely to repossess

Some modicum of whimsy, some tiny scrap of wit.
Am I a P.J. O’Roark of poesy, or perhaps a little bit
Of R. Emmett Tyrrell in rhyme serene,
Skewering the modern scene.

I flounder in a PC sea,
Determined to recapture poetry.

Mimi Evans Winship

whiterb| 3.3.09 @ 9:43AM

I wish somebody would ask Obama if he was inspired by the poem.
And if so why? Would somebody just ask basic questions please ?

whiterb| 3.3.09 @ 9:47AM

When I grow up and become president Mimi will be asked to give the inauguration poem.

frost| 3.3.09 @ 9:49AM

I check back to see if any new interesting inclusions may have been added/offered... and, lo-and-behold, already: Mimi, I love you. Great stuff.

Mike | 3.3.09 @ 11:05AM

Let me see if I have this right: the DOW sank below 7000 wiping out 50% of its former value, AIG posted the largest loss in U.S. corporate history, we still don't know if we are going to avoid going into a world wide depression and Mr. Bethell is worrying about a poem. You wonder why I consider AmSpec the right wing equivalent of Comedy Central?

Mike| 3.3.09 @ 12:15PM

What hideous drivel! Elizabeth Alexander is a poster child for the anti-affirmative action argument. When she finished the crowd had no idea the fat lady had sung, and it delayed its obligatory applause for several uncomfortable seconds. Pathetic.

Jim| 3.3.09 @ 3:08PM

None of us wonder Mike and quite honestly do not care. Mi Grandiose Amigo

Why, I wonder, would one find a diversion, respite if you will, from the daily mantra of "the sky is falling," bothersome.

Ben| 3.3.09 @ 3:24PM

I taped the inauguration ceremony as a matter of historical significance. During the reading, there is a kid sitting near Mrs. Obama. The look on his face is classic. It was the same as mine was. It said "huh?"

Mack Hall| 3.3.09 @ 5:32PM

Yes, I worry about a poem. Humans live because of economic activity, but not FOR human activity. We life for truth and beauty. Keats shows us beauty; government-approved poets show us drivel.

Niel Rosenthalis| 3.4.09 @ 1:14AM

As a current college student (english and spanish double major, creative writing minor), and as a writer of poetry, I'm concerned with this article's claims. Part of me wants to agree with the skepticism of this article. I mean--this inaugural poem WAS really pathetic. A huge letdown, especially since it was an opportunity to show poetry to a huge audience, get them interested in poetry. And that's what the poetry community gives the country as a good example of poetry? The head of the Poetry Foundation (bless them) called the selection of Alexander "perfect."

I'm in a poetry workshop class now--should I not be? I'm refusing to not publish; in order to not be cynical about writing, you must be cynical about publishing (to paraphrase Alan Shapiro). And I'm working on learning the tools of the trade, so to speak. I'm trying to become a meaningful poet--well, I'm trying to be the best I can be. I completely agree that there is a lot of crap floating around that passes for good poetry. That it passes for poetry makes me quite nervous about the future of poetry. And if given the same opportunities, would Eliot and Frost have applied for all these grants and fellowships (et cetera)? Or would they have stuck to their day jobs?

Thank you for writing this article, though I wish I could come away from it with a clearer sense of what to do about the problem. I guess I'll just keep reading the masters (Keats, Bishop, Plath, Eliot, Frost, maybe Rich) and learning all I can from them.

I hope this ship rights itself again.

Hammer of the Dogs| 3.4.09 @ 10:31AM

There was once a young man from chicagya,
who wanted the US to be just like Kenya,
Where we live in mud huts, eating berries and nuts,
and use cowchips to warm our rear endsya.

irv| 3.5.09 @ 7:07PM

I recently read a book of personal letters written by Raymond Chandler. He complained in the early fifties that critics couldn't tell quality, they just liked whatever was about the correct subjects. It could have been written today.

Chandler was not a very good poet but having had the benefit of a classical education, he knew it.

Alan Brooks| 3.11.09 @ 3:13PM

then why come here Mikey boy, if you want SERIOUS doom and gloom? what's wrong with a poem now and then?
don't stay up at night worrying about AIG, the 50 percent losses, or the possible depression--
you need your beauty sleep.

Bill Boyd| 3.22.09 @ 12:15PM

I was a fiction writer in a writer's workshop back in the 70's. The poetry side of the shop was where the real competition lay. Those who failed to get into the poetry workshop but who did gain admission to the English graduate program were especially suspicious of the accomplishments of those who had supposedly made the poetical grade. Among all those struggling poets, I can recall only one who really stood out. As for me, I have yet to produce even the mediocre American novel, much less the great one. My unfinished latest attempt sits in a memory card on my Pocket PC, and all I regularly produce are emails which occasionally inspire criticism from my boss for being too sarcastic and or praise from a co-workers for an insightful turn of phrase regarding some controversy in the IT department.