A narrow view of art

kw: musings, poetry, art

I work the puzzles in the daily newspaper, including a feature titled Cryptic Byword, compiled by Luis Campos. A few days ago the deciphered quote was this:

"The best poetry jolts and shocks; it mines language for what we have not seen, have not heard" —Canadian Poet Dionne Brand.

My first reaction was, "What a stupid statement! This 'poet' lacks imagination." Of course, I had to look her up. Ms Brand has impressive credentials, including a term as the Poet Laureate of Toronto (9/2009 - 11/2012). From the bits of her writing available on various web sites, I find she is indeed an very talented writer. She has also, as a past Professor of Women's Studies and now a Research Professor of Theater and English Studies, ensconced herself in a narrow academic setting in which perpetual outrage is encouraged and rewarded. She is doing great work in her chosen field, so I do not blame her for the view expressed above, though the adjective "polemic" should be inserted before "poetry".

Before looking up her vitae, I mused about poetry, and about art in general, and its purposes. I like poetry, but I don't obsess over it as some do. I have bought precious few of the multitude of poetic anthologies, and most of those I own were gifts. According to the accepted taxonomy, poems come in three species:

• Structured verse with meter and rhyme. For generations this was "poetry," whether the heroic couplets of so much English verse including Shakespeare's frequent rhymed couplets, the dactylic hexameter of Homer and classical Greek poetry in general, or the tight structures of the few subspecies of Sonnet. Even Limericks and Clerihews, which the "serious" literati might despise, have solid structures that require creativity.
• Blank verse. This is a specialty of playwrights of the Elizabethan theater. There is the metrical structure (variously violated, particularly by Shakespeare) of the ten-syllable iambic line, but with no rhyme scheme.
• Free verse. This is the prevailing genre of the Poetry Slam, where jolts and shocks abound. I look upon most free verse as prose with the lines broken in sundry places. Some free verse is very well written. Some.

Whichever species a poem belongs to, what functions does it perform? Must it shock? I have at hand Sonnets From the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The turns of language may induce the occasional jolt, but such is not the poet's aim. She was expressing her emotions during her courtship with Robert Browning, before they married. A simple view is that her aim was to express Love. In a more nuanced view she was working through the cloud of feelings surrounding her growing love, first her doubt and fear and then affection and awe, and finally acceptance and comfort. They show her growth until, in the 43'd of the 44 sonnets, she could pen one of the most famous lines in English: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." She goes on to enumerate seven, with clear indications that she is just beginning, but has run out of "sonnet space"!

My all-time favorite books of poetry are When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. I have the 1956 editions, given me by my parents when I was about ten years old. Surprised? Although I love Frost and Dickinson and Stevenson (I have A Child's Garden of Verses), it is to Milne I most frequently turn…for what? For humor, for insight into the child within, and for their lovely sound! I read them aloud. Our son used to love it when I would recite "Disobedience", which begins

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree
Took great care of his mother, though he was only three.

Opening each line with a dispondee (two long, stressed syllables) is genius personified! The following anapestic feet, and variations on them, keep the poem galloping along. Although there is a shock when a reader realizes the boy's mother is not returning, the light tone of the poem indicates it is an object lesson, not a report of a tragedy. It is a poem of turning-the-tables.

A.A. Milne's children's poems remind me to smile, to slow down and smell the flowers. I have a rather dour personality, and therein I find balm for my soul.

While I prefer rhyming verse, I can be stirred by blank verse…but it has to be very good! There is nothing better than the inspiring speech from Henry V by Shakespeare known as "St. Crispin's Day", which brought "band of brothers" into the English vocabulary. This is poetry that both ennobles and motivates.

Do I have any favorites among the lengthy ranks of purveyors of free verse? Not a one. Having read a few poems by Professor Brand, I can admire her skill, but I am otherwise left cold. I have also partaken of portions by Tony Morrison; though she was not a poet, her prose has poetical power (I have read only portions, no complete novels, because they go places I don't wish to go), and is frequently polemical also. I can analyze a work and discern its polemical intent—and so far, everything of Brand's I have seen has polemical intent—but I am not motivated. Polemics are for motivating, but you have to hit the right buttons. Sorry, Ms Brand!

And what of the other arts? There are painters and sculptors who make it their business to jolt and shock, but they are generally inferior, if not in craft, then in vision. There is "art" that demeans, and I don't mean only pornography. In the performance arts in particular, a few modern comedians carry on the uplifting tradition of Jack Benny or Red Skelton, but they are few. Far more must be "blue" to be funny, although they elicit mostly snickers rather than honest laughter.

In my folk-singing-in-coffee-shops years, I was sometimes asked why I sang certain songs. I would reply that I wished to raise my audience up, not knock them down. Every artist, of any genre, has this choice: ennoble others, or debase them.

I would agree with the second half of the quote above, that poetry ought to "mine language". To what purpose? Here is my shorter proverb (and you can substitute "art" for "poetry"):

The best poetry helps the reader grow.