The Plight of Modern Poetry

In my second-to-last English 315 (The Lyric Poem) class this term we read an article talking about the decline of poetry in the modern day. What is ironic is that through the lucrative publishing world, we are at a time in poetry's history that has never been seen before: mass-publishing of poetry. Pretty much any grad student or professor these days can get their stuff published, and the sheer outpouring of poetry into modern society means that poems that are actually quality get shoved under the rug, buried beneath the mass.

The internet has done wonders for the world of poetry - letting people access poems at the click of a mouse - and more people are reading poetry now than ever before. This is a good thing; in my opinion, anything that gets people reading is good.

But there's also the fact that we have no way of determining what is "quality poetry" - there are so many contemporary styles, many of which are, frankly, bullshit, that the market is just flooded with crap. In fifty years, looking back, how will people determine what was a "good" poem, and what was just a stylistic nightmare?

To finish up this post, I'll share a favorite poem of mine by Mary Szybist, who in my opinion is one of the few semi-famous American poets who deserves her fame. I also studied under her my sophomore year of college in a poetry workshop, which was arguably my favorite class ever.

"The Troubadours etc." by Mary Szybist

Just for this evening, let’s not mock them.
Not their curtsies or cross-garters
Or ever recurring pepper trees in their gardens
Promising, promising.

At least they had ideas about love.

All day we’ve driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads
Through metal contraptions to eat.
We’ve followed West 84, and what else?
Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields,
Lounging sheep, telephone wires,
Yellowing flowering shrubs.

Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them,
The violet underneath of clouds.
Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up:
There is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled up—
Darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of
their wings.
After a while, it must have seemed that they followed
Not instinct or pattern but only
One another.

When they stopped, Audubon observed,
They broke the limbs of stout trees by the sheer weight of their numbers.

And when we stop we’ll follow—what?
Our hearts?

The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love
Only through miracle,
But the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through,
How to make themselves shrines to their own longing.
The spectacular was never behind them.

Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you.
Think of me in the garden, humming
Quietly to myself in my blue dress,
A blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms,
Though cloudless.

At what point is something gone completely?
The last of the sunlight is disappearing
Even as it swells and waves.

Just for this evening, won’t you put me before you
Until I’m far enough away you can
Believe in me?

Then try, try to come closer—
My wonderful and less than.