I’ve heard it called “Some Kind of Language Poetry,”
“Neo-Poetry,” “Out Poetry,” “That Tripe Younger Poets Are
Writing,” and (my favorite) “Sudsy Rubbish.” I’ve heard it criticized as “recycled Ashbery,” “self-referential,”
“deliberately unclear,” “inward and evasive.” I’m not sure what to call it (or if the poets who write it have
given it a name), but it’s definitely putting the screws to the contemporary
poetry we’ve come to expect as standard fare. I admit that, initially, I found it daunting and
off-putting; but I’ve come to see it as a style that’s compelling and strangely
convincing.
The “new” poetry’s closest association to a particular
“school” appears to be to the New York School, which began during the 1960s
with poets John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara. Heavily
influenced by surrealism and modernism, New York School poetry is serious but
also ironical, and incorporates an urban awareness into the body of work. I
also see a closeness to Language Poetry, which is formed on the premise that
language dictates meaning and stresses the reader's role in determining what a
poem is about. There is, of course, always some margin-blurring, and one school
leads into (and borrows from) another. This one, so far at least, eludes
definition; hence, my generic term “new.”
The “new” poems are often quite cleverly acrobatic (and I
write that as a former gymnast and gymnastics choreographer). Their cartwheels and
back-flips are charged with inventive intelligence that can be playfully
deliberate and teasingly ambiguous. They suggest a freestyle
performance of handsprings and leaps propelled by wordy miscellany and oblique content,
all choreographed into line breaks and stanzaic arrangements that are
characteristically tight. Clearly, the voice is unique and, whether
current and streetwise or deep in antiquity, the “new” poets know how to nail a
dismount.
I might accuse the
“new” poets of using too many adjectives; but, most of the time, the
adjectives, though abundant, are startling, memorable, and used in unique
combinations, curious admixtures of words and allusions (and even when they
defy conventional understanding, they still sound very cool).
I’m drawn to the “new” poems’ longer lines, occasional
absences of terminal punctuation, syntactical negotiations, and disregard for
levelheaded “sense.” I’m persuaded by the poems’ tendency toward the romantic
and surreal (dreaminess rather than poetic muscularity), a sense of longing
(perhaps even neediness), and a sharp edge (honed by linguistic acuity). The
poems offer drama, tonal turns, and the dazzle of written language. I see in
them, as well, a sense of Hart Crane’s optimism and something of the same
social and artistic longing for redemption. There is also a sense of the futility
of it all. This “new” poetry is nothing if not powered by passion for words and
buttressed by an energy that’s dynamic and fresh. I’m reminded here of a line from Adam Fitzgerald's “The Dialogue” (The Late Parade, W. W. Norton/Liveright, 2013): “It’s extraordinary. It is extraordinary.”
The “new” poets ramp up language’s natural music with
alliteration, assonance, consonance, anaphora, and scattered rhymes. Edgy
(sometimes intellectual without being academic), the “new” poems are typically
lyrical in their movement away from the linear progression of narrative poetry.
Reading them is like walking through a city in which all the windows are open, and
conversations converge.
There is about
this style a sense of entitlement, but that’s not intended as uncomplimentary or pejorative. Every era has its
share of entitled poets, that is, poets who break and change the rules and do
something important. Remember (among other schools and movements) the Beats
(Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso), the Surrealists (Breton, Baudelaire, Rimbaud,
Éluard), and the Imagists (Pound, Williams, HD)? Lately, when I read poems by
Adam Fitzgerald and Timothy Donnelly (among others), I can’t help thinking
about previous game changers such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, and e.
e. cummings.
I don’t always understand the “new” poetry, but I’m
intrigued by it and find it substantially more interesting than some of the rambling
narratives, dreary lyricals, and technically perfect but ordinary sonnets and
villanelles that we often find in journals and online. It would appear that
poetry needs, from time to time, a reorientation, a readjustment—the shock of
some discovery—and this “school” of poets is providing just that.
This week, read the example poems very carefully, and then try to write a poem in a similar style.
1. Break a few rules.
2. Write something different, step out of your poetry
routine (rut or comfort zone).
3. Play with language, work on lushness and texture in your
phrasing.
4. Make some magical music (internal and off rhymes,
alliteration, assonance, dissonance, anaphora).
5. Don’t, whatever
you do, simply tell a story, but “tell” something.
6. Start with a theme or mood in mind and let that “concept”
power the poem.
7. Include startling images and unique combinations of words
and phrases.
8. Do something different with punctuation.
8. Make up a word or a quirky expression.
10. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
11. Remember that every poem should make a reader gasp at
least once (in appreciative amazement).
12. Surprise yourself.
