It exists (and existed) to entertain, to inform, and to promulgate cultural traditions and values. Daisy Fried: Why not a summation made up of parts? Ranked poetry on Social media, by famous & modern poets. Emerson thought poems could change reality because they uncover its hardwiring, then jimmy with it. I hope this does not sound like an exercise in ambiguities. I'm not pooh-poohing poetry of witness, quite the opposite. Stephanie (also Steph; formerly Stephen) Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. Such poems come forth from a comparatively minor—yet compulsive—desire. Culture grows from roots more enduring than those of the political state. Her full-length collections of poetry include The Leaf Path (1982), The Novice Insomniac (1996), and Shadow Architect (2008). A ceremony allows us to acknowledge a transition or a rite of passage – a new beginning or sometimes, as a conclusion to an event in our lives. She has been... Major Jackson's books of poems are Holding Company (2010, Norton) and Hoops (2006, Norton), both finalists for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (2002, University of Georgia Press), which was awarded the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems and was a finalist for the National Book... Emily Warn was born in San Francisco and grew up in California and Detroit. For her, the poem has value and purpose because it says something meaningful to her. Yes, of course, but poetry is especially adept at helping us experience, and so understand, celebrate, mourn, curse, or philosophize about our relations. Housman did not know A Shropshire Lad would speak to people suffering the horrors of WWI. If you're crawling to poems on your hands and knees, as I once heard a famous poet remark—in my view, you're not crawling to poetry. Anne Winters's "The Mill-Race," about office workers in lower Manhattan, contains virtuoso description of the urban scene: workers, weather, light, limos of the bosses, buses of the employees. Poetry can leap across and charge the synapse between us and the world, altering both. Stephen Burt: A clarification for Daisy Fried: I meant what plumbers do (fix pipes), not who they are or what they read. I doubt most poets, good and bad, political or not, put these demands on their own work. I'm also disturbed by Emily's romantic scenario relating to Guantanamo prisoners. Personally, I find the cynicism and disdain for such poets, even mildly detected here, overly familiar and somewhat nauseating. This volume brings together research papers on the poetry of modern Indian poets, particularly those whose poetry is less explored. It is my antidote to despair, tiredness and loneliness; a thread that runs through my life. The only kind of poetry that doesn't have social function is that which tells us how to think about X, Y, or Z, or tells us to buck up, or that the world is a wonderful place. The function of poetry is that it does not have any function beyond its own construction and being-in-the-world. Such ontological feelings of fragmentation and alienation, which often led to a more pessimistic and bleak outlook on life as manifested in representative modernist poems such as T.S. Even when the Establishment posthumously highlights a poet such as June Jordan, whose poetics and social vision coalesce into a rich model of the best of art created in a democracy, and whose poetry never suffers from mere narcissism, it does so patronizingly (see Dan Chiasson's review in these pages, November 2005). The poem is all about how culture is always changing and adapting. Some of the best topics to write social issue poetry about are: education, drugs, crime, racism, population control, government, neglect, abuse, war (political, religious, societal), sexism, violence, censorship, welfare, eating disorders, same-sex marriage and disease. Burt seems to be stacking and storing different types of poetry in a container ship, removed and protected from the world as it journeys across the sea. This in turn incites the animosity of normal people who feel they are being looked down upon by people who do not work for a living(work meaning physical labor and commerce). True revolutionary poets are stripped of their laureateships or never reviewed in these pages, for some reason probably having to do with the worn-out argument of lack of aesthetic worth or little merit. They would likely be committed to mental institutions for claims of having visions, of the socially relevant and supernatural variety; at least one would be labeled a terrorist or terrorist-sympathizer for speaking against the state and/or professing anti-Christian beliefs; another ostracized for brazenly exercising self-proclaimed, progressive forms of natural love. Late Merrill—the Merrill of "Self-Portrait in Tyvek Windbreaker"—wonders whether his poetry might resound beyond that social group. Why is poetry called to duty during these crises (Major Jackson)? A.It is used negatively in the poem, but it usually has a positive connotation. In a highly thought-provoking piece, the Poetry Foundation interviewed a few poets to probe their thoughts concerning the societal role of poetry. Because I am a woman, working class, Native, writing about my life is instantly political.So it is for anyone who isn't white, male, able-bodied, straight, middle-class... For those of us whose history is not represented, or is distorted, or downright lies, poetry is a place to say what is true. That's personal—and therefore social. We are more likely to experience great visual art in the presence of others (in museums); we might say such experience connects us more evidently than can the silent reading of verse whose authors we have never met. I believe 9/11 solace poetry has given support, however indirectly and unintentionally, to the Bush administration. So too poetry. When you read a lot of contemporary poetry, you discover that the presumed or stated, implicit or explicit, social function of poetry (if any) varies wildly with the poet. Ceremonies are held to celebrate a new life or in honour of a life well […] Asking whether poetry is social is like asking if poetry can be political, a question which is raised regularly every 5 to 10 years or so. Why do we, as poets, find this function of poetry so regrettable? I liked how it compared culture to a flowing river, not stagnated water. The difference between solace porn and sex porn is that solace pornographers seldom seem aware that they're making pornography. Dmitri Shostakovich faced (and sometimes tried to satisfy) the demands of Soviet musical realism. Powell's poems about living and loving with HIV, or A.R. Good 9/11 poems sustain the possibility that America was both victim and guilty. 2 Words matter. And when, on the carved lapis lazuli, a man "asks for mournful melodies;/Accomplished fingers begin to play;/...their eyes,/Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay." Ceremonies are filled with ritual. Prozac would probably work better. The title poem of Howl and Other Poems is key, and its opening line famously defines the Beat Generation: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked." It's not as though it's optional. That's pretty social. Now it is the poets who soldier on; they have, after all, paying jobs to perform, not for the republic, but for the realm of the personal which has subsumed it. Such a position is necessary to our communal health. So it makes it even harder, if not impossible, in poetry. 3 Poetry matters. Cultural relationship. "Them" seldom includes "us." It is truly another language exclusively for the writer and the reader. (Even those that you hide, drown, or burn are social in the sense that the poet who's written them has discovered or resolved or expressed something, and will take that into social interactions...). If that is what Emily means, I accept her claim, with two demurrers. Poetry can make none of these happen. Questions of word choice or even the language of the poetry are often informed by social values or, following Jillian Cavanaugh (2009) , social aesthetics (see also Webster 2009 ). From something you hear or read about that can spark a new poem, about everything to life's situations and the emotional responses it triggers. They were revolutionaries opposing the system. Rae Armantrout's poetry, for example, seeks—at times, it seems to despair of finding—a social function we might identify as the inculcation of skeptical thinking. (One reason we keep seeking a "social function" despite this lack of agreement: those of us who make a living through poetry—by teaching other people how to write more of it, or by writing about it—often feel a bit guilty for getting paid.) Why should we make them of poetry in general? B.It is used positively in the poem, but it usually has a negative connotation. What is the significance of the word "Nobody" in the poem? Poetry teaches us how to live. There are good 9/11 poems. Lewis, literature not only describes reality but also adds to it. How can its content not matter? An aubade is a poem about the arrival of the morning. But this doesn't explain why the superfluous demands are often made by educated poetry experts. I still love these quotes that inspired me as a young poet: Louis Turco says that poetry is "saying something superbly" -, Galway Kinnell says that poetry "cultivates a tenderness towards existence", Joy Harjo says that "if I believed poetry made nothing happen, I wouldn't write it.". Oral poetry is a wide subject that ranges from American 'folk-songs', Eskimo lyrics or popular songs, to the heroic poems of Homer and distinct epic composers in Asia and the Pacific. Poetry is fun! Whitman did not know his work would inform a gay liberation movement. High school seniors Sam and Catherine will tell you what they have gotten ou… Yes. Some people devote their lives to Art Song. This is poetry's social value. It is a place to witness. are some things you could consider in placing a text in ‘context’: Although any or all of these features can be important when writing about a poem, the poem itself should be at the centre of your discussion. Our social reality is thus enlarged to include relations and facts that have been obscured (not yet discovered) or repressed. I have no desire to insist on such protection, nor to deny that poems have social functions. "I run a weekly group for abusive men," he said. The stacks of poetry can be referenced by poet-engineers, not of the sacred or the social, but of the aesthetic. The oral tradition can take many forms, including epic poems, chants, rhymes, songs, and more. Plenty of things need to happen in this country, like impeaching George Bush, nationalizing health care, legalizing same-sex civil union, and bringing the troops home now. Major Jackson: Daisy Fried wonders why poetry is called to duty, why it "is asked to do more than be itself," especially during moments of political or national crisis. This in turn would give literature a true social function and not cause offense. An epigram, is a poem that is meant to be funny or satirical. They may enact, for example, an obsessive rhythmic movement in the body onto the page, or explore the significance of a gripping image. I agree with Stephen Burt that if we prescribe a single ethical purpose to poetry, if we write toward an ideal, then we stymie the possibility that each poem can address a question raised by particular conditions. It is great to be in such a diversifed group.Needless to say, for those 2 hours, once a week meetings are mind opening to new thought patterns of how the individuals process their creativity.A full range of emotions it encompasses.Inspiration from the spoken word can come from everyday conversations. Does it disclose the pathos of other human beings and the source of their suffering? Students often go wrong by writing more about the historical background or the life of the poet than about the poem itself. Indeed, as Daisy says, "we are all on the bus." The work, "the curse-gift" of the poet, is to tell the story of a person who has no story other than the story of relations. For this reason, poetry makes everything (and, yes, nothing) happen, especially in a consumer society prone to assessing and dispensing value to everything from lap dances to teachers' salaries. Emily Warn: Stephen Burt's logic is airtight. Daisy Fried: People who talk about poetry's social utility often concentrate on content. The poem captured the imagination of writers and artists who were alienated from the dominant social forms of Dwight Eisenhower's America. Stephen Burt: I hope I share Emily Warn's passionate optimism about the scope of our art form, but I either fail to understand, or cannot believe, her argument. The next morning Israel bombs a Lebanese village and more than fifty people, most of them children, die. If so, let me add another: one of poetry's chief aims is to illumine the walls of mystery, the inscrutable, the unsayable. Since then, travelling at least a small portion of this world and living abraod, indulging myself in the languages and literatures of the wider part of East Asia, as well as talking with a great many people, I have come a realization. The claim that the Romantics weren't interested in politics or society (Major Jackson) can be disproved by anyone who reads Shelley, Byron, or Blake. I used to write poetry. They take it quite seriously and expect a small audience, without worrying about whether their obsession is useful or that their audience is small. 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