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understanding "Modern" poetry - Richard Jordan's Blog

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I live in rural New Hampshire with my wife (Tracie) and two Mini Dachshunds. The kids are grown and on their own. Tracie is an intensive needs special education teacher (K to 2) and I am a retired insurance executive and attorney, and now a house husband. I love to cook, but don't much care for lawn work- so it gives me an excuse to try writing poetry!

In college I majored in English with an emphasis on poetry (no composition). Most of my courses were on the Romantic poets but I had the wonderful opportunity to study modern poetry under Richard Eberhart. We'd meet at his home on Monday evenings, his wife would serve cider and cake donuts, and he would share his memories of Yeats, Auden, Frost, Gibran and many others. He loved the poetry of GM Hopkins, and would read with vigor the last six lines from "Gods Grandeur". I loved those days and always wanted to try writing poem, but never did.

Well, it's now been almost 50 years, so it's time to start! If I could write one poem of note, it would be like Frost's Birches. But if I could write two, the second would be like Tennyson's Ulysses.

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understanding "Modern" poetry

Blog Posted:5/6/2015 11:22:00 AM

I am just starting to write poetry and, as part of the process, am reading as much as I can. I subscribe to Poetry Magazine, supposedly the leading poetry magazine in the US. It is available free on line. Unfortunately I don't understand most of the poems published. Take for example the six poems from the May 2015 edition by Tomaz Salamum. He is recognized as a world renown poet. I read the introduction and follow the logic. But, take the last tercet from the poem "The Window of Death". Can anyone out there tell me if it has any meaning (even subliminal)? I sometimes think it is like "the Kings Clothes" parable. Or how about "Hard Core"? I wouldn't even know how to go about trying to imitate that style.

I have been delighted to find that there are quite a number of really good poets on this site, and some of the blogs reflect, in my humble opinion, a real understanding of the craft of poetry. So, am I all alone in not understanding poems such as those written by Tomaz?

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Cyndi
Macmillan

Date: 5/7/2015 8:39:00 AM

Don't give up, Richard. Keep stretching, exploring, reading. I liked your blog very much. I hope you continue to post more of these blogs. You are not alone in wanting to push past comfort zones. Many here are willing to try and try again. Thanks for sharing! Don't stop!

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/7/2015 9:18:00 AM

Thanks, Cyndi. And, yes, I am a Star Trec fan (starting with the originals in 1960) Still love Sci Fi (try China Mieville). I'm still working on "hard core". Perhaps a spoof on genius being caused by environment using a metaphor of a dirty refrigerator?

Robert
Lindley

Date: 5/7/2015 7:48:00 AM

Want to read great poetry written for the common man by a great poet? If so then read the poems of Frank L. Stanton, any Google search will give satisfying results on that. Poetry needs to be written to be understood. If one wanted secrets , then why write and put them on public display. Being intentionally "high falootin" and obscure in writing seems to be a self-defeating agenda IMHO.

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/7/2015 9:24:00 AM

Thanks Robert. Just read "Keep A-Goin". A good start for the day!

Roy
Jerden

Date: 5/6/2015 7:02:00 PM

In Tomaz's case, some of the obscurity is almost certainly due to inadequacies in translation. So much of language is culture that it requires an extraordinary effort to render all the allusions, metaphors and intentional ambiguities that might be in a poem. When I read "Hard Core", I was immediately taken by its Italian-like phrasing. In fact, I wonder if it might not have been written in Italian, considering that the last word was "Basta". If so, I saw some badly translated phrases. "In files" would be "In file" in Italian, which means "in rows" not "in files". That's just one example.

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/7/2015 6:38:00 AM

Thanks Roy. I think you are right. It's probably, as you suggest, both a cultural and a translation issue. I believe he both wrote and lived in many countries. As Cyndi suggests, poetry itself is like a second language. All those things combine for me to leave the poem incapable of comprehension.

Andrea
Dietrich

Date: 5/6/2015 4:35:00 PM

I do not even have to see this writer to understand what you are talking about. I enjoy lucid poetry. (try out the magazine Lucidity if you want to see well written poems the average layman can understand). The eggheads rule the world today for "paid publishing". But in the end, the masses want poetry they can understand! (RHyme has a bad name today because too many poets are forcing their rhymes and being trite, but many good ones are out there). I long for a day when the world might return to traditional forms that are well crafted. And of course, those who write in that popular surreal or abstract way also have their value. It's "each to his own" on the worldwide web of poetry.

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/9/2015 12:41:00 AM

“Poems are never finished - just abandoned” ? Paul Valéry. My published poem was revised a dozen times. I combed it and combed it and combed it. If it had come back with a rejection, I'd have combed it again. I'm about to add a quote to my board: Never discourage growth.

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/9/2015 12:38:00 AM

Fine tooth comb=publication.

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/9/2015 12:36:00 AM

;)

Andrea Dietrich
Date: 5/7/2015 9:50:00 PM

And I don't need any special devices to understand YOUR poetry, Craig. Also, you do not need any people going through your work with a fine tooth comb either. Maybe if I tried really hard, I could find one minor suggestion to make on any one of your poems. Same goes for any of the other writers here that i truly admire. That is another issue of course, but I think I have been misunderstood on that issue, and I best just keep my nose out of it.

Andrea Dietrich
Date: 5/7/2015 9:45:00 PM

thanks, Craig, for your thoughts on this. I feel the same way about abstract painting as I do about poetry and glad to see someone else feels that way. Hogwash indeed! You said it!

Andrea Dietrich
Date: 5/6/2015 5:23:00 PM

There are many magazines out there. Unfortunately, the fun ones are mainly vanity press. You have to actually pay just to be in them (to support the interest of all the group, but ones like Lucidity had a "pot" that would go to the winner of the best poems. That is why I liked that magazine. they actually were rather selective in what they printed!) Bells' Letters, if they are still around, had many challenges that were so fun and prizes.

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/6/2015 5:02:00 PM

Thanks, Andrea. It's discouraging when you look at what is being published and have trouble liking it. I'll look at Lucidity. Good to know there is still an interest in poems like Frost wrote! Thanks for the tip.

Cyndi
Macmillan

Date: 5/6/2015 12:31:00 PM

I gave it a quick once over... he is a L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poet and likes to push the boundaries of each word. His work is intentionally ambiguous, but I can see the intent and like it very much. What he is saying is what is real death? For example, To clear the field and to run to the ends of the earth = nothing left to accomplish, no dreams unfilled is a death. Now the last tercet cabbage is like... hmmm... like bread and water, right? There are myths about cabbage. Supposedly wine grapes can not grow beside cabbage. Sooooo... cabbage = merely surviving versus truly living. To lie down on cabbage is to give up

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:59:00 PM

Gotta fly. Hugs to you! I'll check back tonight. Break time over, back to teaching my daughter to read. (She was playing lego with her dad, who works afternoons and is about to leave for work ) :)

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:57:00 PM

Star trek? Are you a trekkie? There is an episode, with Captain Picard, and he is stranded on a planet with someone born of a race who speaks only in metaphor. Picard had to learn how to speak in metaphor. It is an analogy for poetry. Brilliant episode.

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:55:00 PM

Thanks Richard for showing me this cool online poetry mag! I will definitely read it. And the effort disappears once you learn the dialect ;) It becomes a second or third language. It was difficult for me, at first. But now it is becoming easier and easier.

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:55:00 PM

Now you have done it- hooked me back into the poem by your 12:46 insight. Looks like I'll have to spend some more time on this. Thanks so much!

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:49:00 PM

Well, its a language onto itself, poetry. Were you a fan of the next generation of star trek?

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:48:00 PM

To be dead is to be devoid of senses-- sight, sound and smell, all those things that makes being alive so wonderful. The blood of flowers is perfume. To live without perfume, all those scents, is a form of death, barely alive if living! The sensuality of life...

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:46:00 PM

OH, that line!!!! to look back, and how he repeats it!!! We've all done this. Oh, it the hurt of saying you will not look back one more time as you leave, a home, a friend, a lover... we look because we can't help but look, and yet that last glance is a death. We are seeing something die in us... OUCH!!!

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:43:00 PM

Thanks. I think you've got it. Looks like you would have to work as hard at understanding as he did writing it. I think Frost said that. I'm going to join FJ in deciding I don't care to put in that much effort for this type of poetry.

Cyndi Macmillan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:36:00 PM

Okay, inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART_II/food_history_and_facts/cabbage ... can't put in the h t t p or h t m l

Cyndi
Macmillan

Date: 5/6/2015 12:14:00 PM

I'll try to help you out tonight, Richard. I subscribe to CV2, Grain and FREEFALL, here in Canada. I've also been picking up copies of ROOM, Malahat Review, Carousel, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review ... and others. All Canadian. I will go to Poetry Magazine (online? Right?) tonight and read the poem. I can only interpret it, as all readers interpret poems. Each brings their own experiences into a poem. Just like a song. Everyone hears a song differently. Poetry is the same thing. Once the poet lets it go, puts it out there, it belongs to the readers. Cheers, Cyndi

Richard Jordan
Date: 5/6/2015 12:27:00 PM

Thanks Cyndi. You can find it at poetry foundation.org/ poetry magazine, or Google Poetry Magazine. I'm not really sure if the poem lends itself to explanation. But, it is obviously viewed by experts to be of the highest quality. Good luck!

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