Content used effectively in my definition is inclusive and dissolves social boundaries of class, culture, gender, race, and age-- when used improperly content creates them. Yusef Komunyakaa, in the introduction to The Best American Poetry 2003, unpacks this by pointing out what is not poetry and who are not poets in this context.
“Are some American poets writing from a privileged position—especially after the fiery 1960s and 70’s—from a place that reflects the illusions of class through language and aesthetics, and is the “new” avant-garde an old aspect of high-brow and low-brow divide within the national psyche?...Are there poets who have purposefully set out to create work that (doesn’t matter) only matter to the anointed, those who might view themselves as privileged above content?”(11)
Komunyakaa’s answer to his question is yes, and I agree. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are examples of writers who widened social-class gaps, in the style of “art for art’s sake”. Eliot’s 1922 piece (which Pound edited), “The Wasteland”, is a prime example of how content can draw a line in the sand between the elite- educated and everyone else. He has to put footnotes in this literary piece for those who do not have such an extensive education (or immediate access to the internet when speaking of current audiences), which alienates his audience. In doing so, the message sent in “The Wasteland” is passively telling the majority of its readers that they are not at all like Eliot. So why should they feel the need to extensively follow up on his footnotes if they feel as if they will not benefit personally from it?
PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea 315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you. – (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland/death by water)
Eliot’s fourth stanza of “The Wasteland” is an example of the tone of his work, as it is disconnected with the vast majority of the society he was writing to. The vast majority of society lacks the level of elite education that this particular piece requires to fully comprehend all of the historical, literary, mythological and biblical references.
Looking at literary works that qualify as poetry under the concept of content used to connect with their audiences by building erasing social lines, I am confident in naming Nikki Giovanni’s “Desperate Acts (For 9-11)”(Quilting the Black Eyed Pea: poems and not quite poems [2002]) as an example.
It’s not easy to understand
Why angry men commit
Desperate acts
It’s not easy to understand
How some dreams become
Nightmares
Those who wish
And those who need
Often feel alone
It’s easy to strike back
But hard to understand -- (45)
Giovanni’s response to the terrorist attacks on America on 9-11 feeds off of the nation’s emotional tension of the time, which was connecting the majority of the American population. By reflecting the fear, confusion, mourning, and outrage that the attacks catalyzed, she is able to engage her readers by appealing to the emotions that were already crossing the American social boundaries. Empathy is the intellectual tool used to guide her message, and can be understood by the vast majority of society without the need of an elite education. Giovanni is inclusive, rather than exclusive like Eliot. Though the roaring 20’s and the early 2000’s societies owned different faces of public tension, there are always issues in every era that can be turned into content used to make connections with an audience. Poems such as T.S. Eliot’s are still defined as poetry by the majority of the literary community, but my personal definition of what poetry is holds more current works in a higher regard because of how differently content is used in Giovanni’s time in comparison to Eliot’s.
Voice of a poem is meant to be physically heard, and can also be heard directly from printed or written form. As with content, the voice of a poem is directly connected with the poet and can be used to further the connection between the poet and the poem’s audience. I mean a poem by my definition should be able to be read or recited in a way that verbally appeals to the audience through an easily understood flow. If I read you a poem of mine aloud and your ears have difficulty grasping the tone or message due to lack of flow or feeling, then I would consider that piece to be rubbish in the context of what I consider to be good poetry. Voice in a written poem should work together with form on page, intriguing both the readers’ or listeners’ eyes and ears (depending if the poem is being read to or by the audience). Poetry should work effectively voiced aloud as well as read on paper. Post-modern poet James Fenton gives an example of this sensory harmony in his poem “Dead Soldiers” (708-709), found in Carolyn Forch`e’s anthology Against Forgetting (1993).
Each diner was attended by one of the other ranks
Whirling a table-napkin to keep off the flies.
It was like eating between rows of morris dancers—
Only the didn’t kick.
Fenton does not use rhyme in this stanza of “Dead Soldiers”, he appeals to his readers’ sense of vision by using sensory details such as: “whirling, like eating between rows of morris dancers/ only they didn’t kick”. Hyphenation insinuates a pause in the reading, and makes it flow more easily. Techniques such as this, coupled with the use of active verbs, appeal more to the ears of an audience. Form and voice mesh together in this example of a poem written in response to the Vietnam War, which needs to engage the senses of its audience in order to effectively succeed in communicating Fenton’s war-response message.
Form in my definition of poetry is the characteristic that can be argued against the most, but I maintain that form of poetry and prose are different—I state that form in a poem is much more thought-out and hold much more meaning in relation to the poem itself. Poetic prose in my definition is prose that has content and voice of poetry, yet lacks the form that distinguishes poetry. Poetic prose, such as Lyn Heijinian’s My Life (1993), enforces the difference between poetry and prose. Heijinian’s autography is considered poetic prose because it’s telling the story of its writer through fragmented pieces of creativity woven together intelligently. Voice in My Life is strong and content is present, but needs timely analysis to make linear sense of it because the form is in that of paragraphs and chapters. “Are all statements about unicorns necessarily metaphysical. Many maybe, window a light. In the dark we went out on the lawn to watch the satellite go by, now four years in the sky. It always gets darkest before it gets absolutely black.”(101). As a segmented example form My Life, this memory of lying in the dark to watch a satellite is tinted with the poetic style of posing a question as statement and thought provoking thought processes of enlightenment.
Heijinian’s own definition as to what poetry is, as found in her introduction to Best American Poetry (2004 edition) concludes that there is no conclusion when it comes to poetry, that it cannot be defined. “Dynamic, ever-changing, poetry…is a site of perpetual transitions and unpredictable metamorphoses, but there is no end point in poetry…the fact that there are no final answers is one source of the vitality of the art form.”(9) I disagree with Heijinian in this because if we follow this thought on a linear path, the conclusion is that any form of art is poetry and vice versa. Unpacking this statement can use an example of Michelangelo’s David; as it is certainly poetic through the process of it having been carved by hand and the statue’s mythological symbolism, it is not a poem. Concluding this observation I state that; though some forms of art and literature are “poetic”, having that quality does not earn them the title of “poem”.
Form and structure on paper are a poem’s skeletal mold. Poetry’s tangible form tells its readers how it should be read— like DNA instructs organisms how to form within an egg or womb. It is the defining characteristic that places My Life inside the “poetic prose” box, and not in the one labeled “poetry”, because its form lacks any easy sense of flow. Form and structure are not limited to rhyme schemes or other recognized poetry definitions, but determines what poetry is if it has the ability to work cohesively with voice and content in a common goal of getting the poet’s point or meaning across.(Noted that it is also another characteristic that T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” lacks.) Punctuation, capitalization, syntax, italic, bold print, hyphens, and spacing are used to created form and structure in poetry, with each word, comma, and stanza length selected for the purpose of aiding and strengthening effects that voice and content of a poem has on readers’ senses.
G.C. Waldrep gives excellent examples of strong form and structure in poetry that compliments voice and content in his anthology Disclamor (2007). “Battery Bravo (first)” (69-71) incorporate punctuations, spacing, capitalizations, and italics that fuse the content of the words and the voice of questioning remembrance.
“Once I wrote
I will be a poet of broken things.
But what claim have I trampled
into these bare hills?
What fragment have I prised?”
Spacing and line placement are used in this stanza to draw the focus on what he wrote, while italics is purposefully used to articulate exactly what he had “written”—“I will be a poet of broken things.” Waldrep uses the punctuation of the question mark as a tool that voices a contradiction to his prophetic written statement. Combined like ingredients in a chocolate-chip cookie recipe, form and structure, voice and content interdepend in order to produce a poem.
All home-made chocolate-chip cookies are unique in the way each one crumbles a little differently on your tongue, but all chocolate-chip cookies need the necessary binding and levening ingredients for them to be considered a chocolate-chip cookie—no substitutes. Form and structure cannot be substituted in poetry, when taken away the literary work becomes another “poetic prose” piece.
Poetry has the power to influence readers through form, content, and voice—and on a larger linear scale of thought, society. Appealing to senses through these characteristics provokes human emotion by bridging directly what the poet’s purpose of writing the poem is to its readers’ empathetic psych. Many post-modern poets utilize this in calling for humanitarian rights, remembrances of history, and societal change on a large scale. Giovanni expresses this in a stanza of her poem “Poetry”,
“a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not deligh discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious”~ Nikki Giovanni
Bibliography
Fenton, James. Anthology. Carolyn Forche, Against Forgetting. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1993. 708-709. Print
Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.
Hejinian, Lyn. Autography. My Life. Green Integer, 2002. Print
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
