Ode to the Minor Poets
While I haven’t properly written poetry for eons, I’ve been reading it all through. Once you start reading poetry you’ll never stop. It gives so much. Life feels weird without reading poems. I’ve been lately reading a couple of books written for poets but I also think that anyone could stand to read them who might like to infuse poetry into their lives and those around them. A book I’ve talked about before here is We Begin in Gladness by Craig Morgan Teicher.
On a chapter on W.S. Merwin, Teicher says:
“Major poets make themselves, with effort; they are not born. I would argue that many major poets begin minor, though the best of them begin with the promise of becoming important voices for their time. They begin weird, out of step in some fundamental way, esoteric, in their own heads. Eventually, their strangeness comes to shape the poetry around them. They give voice to the poetry of their time, and one can no longer understand it without understanding them.”
I like thinking about this even if I’m not sure the world, poetry world, still works that way? Maybe it does. I’m at a distance. Which is to say, can you in this time make an effort, and alter the major / minor situation? Who gets to be the voice of their time? What are the factors, the conditions? What are the obstacles?
The average enjoyer of poems likely just wants to get to the poems. For the average reader, all the poets are minor, perhaps.
Well, I do like the book WBIG very much. Steicher reminds us: “language is humankind’s greatest technology, inexhaustible, endlessly adaptable, a mirror of a poet’s own time and, hopefully, of the endless unfolding of all time.”
We need poetry to say the ongoing unsayable. But it’s good also to remember that “the poem is a megaphone, not a telephone, operating in one direction only. It must accomplish what it hopes to accomplish without having to hear back from the reader.” That’s most writing of course. Even here in this space, I sometimes hear back from readers, but more often not. And mainly I’m okay with that because that’s part of creating a somewhat poetic space. The blog with its stanzas / rooms. Quiet and hopefully meditative.
I recently read my friend Lisa Martin’s academic book (her novel just came out too! more on that soon!). I didn’t expect Creative Writing in Post-Secondary Education to be such a page turner for me, but it was.
I’ve taught a few creative writing classes, and if I had it to do all over again, with this book as my guide, I think I would have stayed with it. While this book is an academic one, there is a memoir line threaded through. And for me, I think anyone teaching anything — this book would be invaluable as a place to think through, think with someone deeply and philosophically and poetically and with such humanity. I would even broaden that to include anyone who is a manager or leader because really it’s all about an approach to interacting with another human who is potentially at a different place than you are.
Poetry is always helpful as a tool of inquiry imho. Anyway, Lisa Martin says, “The idea that poetry is a whole approach to the world — a mode of inquiry that differs from other approaches and modes of inquiry even before language comes into the equation at all — is crucial.”
How do we want to think about the world? She says, “Poetry is a kind of technology of language for relating to the world, for holding ourselves in the world, and for putting things in touch with one another. In this way, poetry is a sort of inverse of trauma: if trauma is an experience of overwhelm and disconnect, poetry is about finding the resources and connections we can make even if the logics we come to in order to make these connections are new, uprecedented, and unforeseen.” Poetry, she says, “is an antidote, a way to keep moving instead of remaining stuck.” If the world has become the traumosphere, poetry can help.
In her practice as a teacher, she makes this central: “who we are as persons matters in the context of learning.” Recognizing who we are as humans should actually be central to anyone interacting with humans, but you know, leave it to the poets to work out how to turn this into a decent practice.
I could go on, but suffice to say if you teach creative writing this one is a must. If you want to think about how the teaching of creative writing might help you navigate the intersection of human and learner, ditto. We can be rigorous in our demands of language and poetry while at the same time light the fire of creativity in souls, yes souls! Sounds like what everyone wants when they go to university, actually. At least I remember that’s what I wanted.
And, as it turns out, still want.
I can’t stop thinking about all the so-called minor poets, for that is what I once was before becoming a “former poet.” (It never really leaves you). Because the thing is, to be a minor poet is magnificent. It means you’re having a really meaningful existence, living in the creative register, alive to the music of language, soul to the ground, heart a storm, heart a-storm, heartstorming.
Remind me some day to tell you why I’m no longer a poet.
