WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.960 align:middle line:90% On poetry and accessibility. 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:07.530 align:middle line:84% Summer before last, amid all the recession and jobs 00:00:07.530 --> 00:00:10.500 align:middle line:84% talk on Capitol Hill, Bill Keller, 00:00:10.500 --> 00:00:12.600 align:middle line:84% the Executive Editor of The New York Times 00:00:12.600 --> 00:00:14.670 align:middle line:84% wrote an article for the Sunday magazine, 00:00:14.670 --> 00:00:18.060 align:middle line:84% musing that if Congress read some poetry, quote, 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:21.600 align:middle line:84% "it might make them a little more human," unquote. 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:23.430 align:middle line:84% Not that it would improve them morally, 00:00:23.430 --> 00:00:27.630 align:middle line:84% but that it might help them to, quote, "think outside the box." 00:00:27.630 --> 00:00:30.060 align:middle line:84% Earlier in the article, he confesses, 00:00:30.060 --> 00:00:33.240 align:middle line:84% quote, "I prefer craft to spontaneity, 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:36.030 align:middle line:84% accessible to esoteric, and poems 00:00:36.030 --> 00:00:41.480 align:middle line:84% that engage both head and heart, but that's just me, unquote." 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:45.170 align:middle line:84% This is the paradox of poetry for the intelligentsia today, 00:00:45.170 --> 00:00:49.250 align:middle line:84% to be implemented as an anodyne to business as usual 00:00:49.250 --> 00:00:51.680 align:middle line:84% in the marketplace, but please don't 00:00:51.680 --> 00:00:54.410 align:middle line:90% be esoteric in your verse. 00:00:54.410 --> 00:00:58.880 align:middle line:84% In other words, poetry should be fresh and irreverent, quirky, 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:04.519 align:middle line:84% even, but never out of reach, never just spontaneous. 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:07.670 align:middle line:84% What folks like Keller seem to want from poetry 00:01:07.670 --> 00:01:12.950 align:middle line:84% is a poem deprived of its force, a poem captured like a leopard, 00:01:12.950 --> 00:01:17.960 align:middle line:84% listlessly stalking behind bars at the zoo, if not declawed, 00:01:17.960 --> 00:01:20.160 align:middle line:90% then sufficiently caged off. 00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:24.050 align:middle line:90% Indeed, a poem without poetry. 00:01:24.050 --> 00:01:26.840 align:middle line:84% Yet, what Keller says, I think, is actually 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:31.760 align:middle line:84% indicative of poetry's power, its vivacity, its otherness. 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:36.110 align:middle line:84% When we want poetry to behave, it will not. 00:01:36.110 --> 00:01:39.350 align:middle line:84% When we want poetry to body forth and somehow improve 00:01:39.350 --> 00:01:43.190 align:middle line:84% the hearts and minds of our elected officials on contact, 00:01:43.190 --> 00:01:44.750 align:middle line:90% it cannot. 00:01:44.750 --> 00:01:47.750 align:middle line:84% We are told again and again that for poetry 00:01:47.750 --> 00:01:50.840 align:middle line:84% to be digestible in a broadly appealing way. 00:01:50.840 --> 00:01:55.040 align:middle line:84% Apparently, it must be poetry paired up with something else. 00:01:55.040 --> 00:01:57.990 align:middle line:84% For Natasha Trethewey to be invited to Fresh Air, 00:01:57.990 --> 00:02:02.480 align:middle line:84% there must be a pitch, poetry beside a familiar topic. 00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:06.890 align:middle line:84% Poetry "plus" is what Marjorie Perloff calls this. 00:02:06.890 --> 00:02:11.030 align:middle line:84% For Trethewey, that means poetry plus her biracialness, which 00:02:11.030 --> 00:02:14.420 align:middle line:84% allows Terry Gross to ask, quote, "what does 00:02:14.420 --> 00:02:17.150 align:middle line:90% Obama's election mean to you?" 00:02:17.150 --> 00:02:21.410 align:middle line:84% For former poets laureate, it is poetry plus the homelessness 00:02:21.410 --> 00:02:24.140 align:middle line:84% of a brother, Robert Hass, or poetry 00:02:24.140 --> 00:02:27.200 align:middle line:84% plus the death of a parent, WS Merwin. 00:02:27.200 --> 00:02:30.560 align:middle line:84% And really, why should this surprise us? 00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:33.050 align:middle line:84% It just exploits the fact that poetry can 00:02:33.050 --> 00:02:35.750 align:middle line:90% speak to literally anything. 00:02:35.750 --> 00:02:39.380 align:middle line:84% And so long as the host sticks to the topics we're safe with-- 00:02:39.380 --> 00:02:42.890 align:middle line:84% politics, death, family-- then we 00:02:42.890 --> 00:02:46.400 align:middle line:84% will avoid having to talk about what animates poetry, 00:02:46.400 --> 00:02:48.560 align:middle line:90% the language itself, of course. 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:51.710 align:middle line:84% So much so, perhaps, that for Billy Collins, 00:02:51.710 --> 00:02:55.700 align:middle line:84% it is poetry plus accessibility itself. 00:02:55.700 --> 00:02:59.720 align:middle line:84% Poets on Fresh Air are treated like 21st century mystics, 00:02:59.720 --> 00:03:02.960 align:middle line:84% with specialized access to their own experience. 00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:06.410 align:middle line:84% There is so little mention of language in these interviews 00:03:06.410 --> 00:03:11.000 align:middle line:84% that you might forget that poets work with words at all. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:15.080 align:middle line:84% Yet, even Collins, the author of a book called The Trouble 00:03:15.080 --> 00:03:19.490 align:middle line:84% with Poetry, says that this talk of accessibility is now like, 00:03:19.490 --> 00:03:23.160 align:middle line:84% quote, "nails on a blackboard to him." 00:03:23.160 --> 00:03:26.010 align:middle line:84% Isn't this the double bind of poetry? 00:03:26.010 --> 00:03:28.920 align:middle line:84% In order for it to command a popular audience-- 00:03:28.920 --> 00:03:31.170 align:middle line:84% and Collins's books have, indeed, 00:03:31.170 --> 00:03:32.490 align:middle line:90% sold millions of copies-- 00:03:32.490 --> 00:03:35.850 align:middle line:84% it must deploy what we call accessibility, 00:03:35.850 --> 00:03:39.210 align:middle line:84% in terms of ease of access or lack 00:03:39.210 --> 00:03:42.480 align:middle line:84% of any apparent difficulty, which is to say, 00:03:42.480 --> 00:03:47.580 align:middle line:84% familiarity, recognizability, even avuncular friendliness 00:03:47.580 --> 00:03:52.410 align:middle line:84% in tone, form, and diction, the very qualities for which 00:03:52.410 --> 00:03:55.590 align:middle line:84% his poems are lauded, sometimes even to Collins's 00:03:55.590 --> 00:03:57.400 align:middle line:90% own consternation. 00:03:57.400 --> 00:03:59.910 align:middle line:84% But more on Collins's curious response 00:03:59.910 --> 00:04:03.340 align:middle line:84% to being the poet of accessibility later. 00:04:03.340 --> 00:04:05.140 align:middle line:84% The question comes back to our assumptions 00:04:05.140 --> 00:04:10.180 align:middle line:84% about clarity, which is no more a metaphor for reading 00:04:10.180 --> 00:04:13.510 align:middle line:84% than the term "accessibility," as Rae Armantrout asks, 00:04:13.510 --> 00:04:16.870 align:middle line:84% quote, "what is the meaning of clarity? 00:04:16.870 --> 00:04:19.610 align:middle line:84% Is something clear when you understand it 00:04:19.610 --> 00:04:23.112 align:middle line:84% or when it looms up, startling you?" 00:04:23.112 --> 00:04:26.040 align:middle line:90% Myung MI Kim puts it this way. 00:04:26.040 --> 00:04:30.000 align:middle line:84% "I think the question here is, can the broad masses actually 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:34.260 align:middle line:84% have a lot more to say about what's scrutable, and readable, 00:04:34.260 --> 00:04:36.120 align:middle line:84% and intelligible than what someone 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:40.410 align:middle line:84% else external to the broad masses has determined. 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:42.750 align:middle line:84% That's really the question, to some degree. 00:04:42.750 --> 00:04:45.300 align:middle line:84% In other words, who has the privilege to say, 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:47.730 align:middle line:90% this is transparent?" 00:04:47.730 --> 00:04:49.080 align:middle line:90% Unquote. 00:04:49.080 --> 00:04:52.440 align:middle line:84% Of course, each poet must ask and re-ask, 00:04:52.440 --> 00:04:55.530 align:middle line:84% what should a poem be, What should it 00:04:55.530 --> 00:04:59.520 align:middle line:84% do, how should it sound, what should it look like, 00:04:59.520 --> 00:05:01.320 align:middle line:90% and how should it behave? 00:05:01.320 --> 00:05:03.570 align:middle line:84% At the moment we concede the terms 00:05:03.570 --> 00:05:07.350 align:middle line:84% of what form a poem should take to a reader new 00:05:07.350 --> 00:05:12.060 align:middle line:84% to poetry in service of readability and access, 00:05:12.060 --> 00:05:15.270 align:middle line:84% the discussion shifts to accommodating or pleasing 00:05:15.270 --> 00:05:20.350 align:middle line:84% somebody who doesn't now read or necessarily care for it anyway. 00:05:20.350 --> 00:05:23.140 align:middle line:84% Am I naive to be confident that poetry doesn't 00:05:23.140 --> 00:05:26.530 align:middle line:84% need to be diminished to attract new readers, 00:05:26.530 --> 00:05:31.580 align:middle line:84% having endured as it has for at least a few thousand years? 00:05:31.580 --> 00:05:34.460 align:middle line:84% And anyhow, to quote O'Hara, "nobody 00:05:34.460 --> 00:05:36.530 align:middle line:84% should experience anything they don't need to. 00:05:36.530 --> 00:05:39.420 align:middle line:84% If they don't need poetry, bully for them. 00:05:39.420 --> 00:05:42.900 align:middle line:90% I like the movies too, unquote." 00:05:42.900 --> 00:05:46.410 align:middle line:84% When we reduce the discussion to the terms of access 00:05:46.410 --> 00:05:49.350 align:middle line:84% and accessibility, what is implied through these words 00:05:49.350 --> 00:05:54.480 align:middle line:84% is that entry has been barred, that we are prevented 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:57.810 align:middle line:84% from experiencing the meanings of these difficult poems, 00:05:57.810 --> 00:06:01.440 align:middle line:84% despite the fact that many of us are literate adults. 00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:04.140 align:middle line:84% When the word "access" is used in this way, 00:06:04.140 --> 00:06:08.160 align:middle line:84% rhetorically it stages the poem as the esoteric structure 00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:11.220 align:middle line:84% of a willful obscurantist, who would prefer 00:06:11.220 --> 00:06:13.200 align:middle line:84% that you don't even bother until you have read 00:06:13.200 --> 00:06:15.060 align:middle line:90% your way through the library. 00:06:15.060 --> 00:06:18.960 align:middle line:84% But this is not the way of poets I know. 00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:22.110 align:middle line:84% Most of us crave some small readership, 00:06:22.110 --> 00:06:24.750 align:middle line:84% without having to dilute or summarize 00:06:24.750 --> 00:06:30.650 align:middle line:84% the verses we've worked solitarily to invent. 00:06:30.650 --> 00:06:34.850 align:middle line:84% Last night, I googled the word "poetry." 00:06:34.850 --> 00:06:39.590 align:middle line:84% Of the 260 million entries which contain that word, 00:06:39.590 --> 00:06:43.910 align:middle line:84% the first three links are to the following sites. 00:06:43.910 --> 00:06:45.500 align:middle line:84% The Academy of American Poets, which 00:06:45.500 --> 00:06:48.590 align:middle line:84% boasts entire subcategories of poetry 00:06:48.590 --> 00:06:52.280 align:middle line:84% devoted to teenagers, sharks, and drinking, 00:06:52.280 --> 00:06:54.180 align:middle line:90% among dozens of others. 00:06:54.180 --> 00:06:57.080 align:middle line:84% The second link directs you to the Poetry Foundation 00:06:57.080 --> 00:07:01.940 align:middle line:84% in Chicago, which to date has 10,426 poems 00:07:01.940 --> 00:07:05.540 align:middle line:84% online, searchable by theme, title, and author. 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:09.470 align:middle line:84% And the third is to something called poetry.com, 00:07:09.470 --> 00:07:14.510 align:middle line:84% which boasts, quote, "14 million poems and growing" 00:07:14.510 --> 00:07:15.650 align:middle line:90% under its heading-- 00:07:15.650 --> 00:07:17.900 align:middle line:90% 14 million. 00:07:17.900 --> 00:07:21.800 align:middle line:84% Do we really believe that there is some drought of poems 00:07:21.800 --> 00:07:24.420 align:middle line:90% that we might call accessible? 00:07:24.420 --> 00:07:28.250 align:middle line:84% In fact, this call to poets to be accessible, 00:07:28.250 --> 00:07:30.890 align:middle line:84% which is most commonly made in its opposite form 00:07:30.890 --> 00:07:33.230 align:middle line:84% to dismiss a poet out of hand because 00:07:33.230 --> 00:07:35.450 align:middle line:84% of their so-called inaccessibility, 00:07:35.450 --> 00:07:38.780 align:middle line:84% is levied like there is some basic shortage of poetry 00:07:38.780 --> 00:07:42.410 align:middle line:84% written in the English language and that the obscure as well 00:07:42.410 --> 00:07:44.780 align:middle line:84% as established poets out there jauntily 00:07:44.780 --> 00:07:47.000 align:middle line:84% writing their strange verses better 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.850 align:middle line:84% shape up so that common readers can actually 00:07:49.850 --> 00:07:55.630 align:middle line:84% begin to understand some of this especially scarce stuff. 00:07:55.630 --> 00:07:59.140 align:middle line:84% Randall Jarrell and his 1953 lecture, 00:07:59.140 --> 00:08:01.720 align:middle line:84% The Obscurity of the Poet, put it like this. 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:05.950 align:middle line:84% Quote, "people who have inherited the custom of not 00:08:05.950 --> 00:08:08.890 align:middle line:84% reading poets justify it by referring 00:08:08.890 --> 00:08:12.730 align:middle line:84% to the obscurity of the poems they have never read, 00:08:12.730 --> 00:08:16.030 align:middle line:84% since most people decide that poets are obscure, 00:08:16.030 --> 00:08:20.710 align:middle line:84% very much as legislators decide that books are pornographic, 00:08:20.710 --> 00:08:23.050 align:middle line:84% by glancing at a few fragments someone 00:08:23.050 --> 00:08:28.150 align:middle line:84% has strung together to discuss them," unquote. 00:08:28.150 --> 00:08:30.880 align:middle line:84% It seems to me that there are very few things 00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:35.590 align:middle line:84% quite as accessible, in the material sense, as poetry. 00:08:35.590 --> 00:08:38.470 align:middle line:84% As far as I know, there is no library bereft 00:08:38.470 --> 00:08:42.760 align:middle line:84% of at least a few beat-up anthologies replete with poems, 00:08:42.760 --> 00:08:44.740 align:middle line:84% oftentimes with helpful introductions, 00:08:44.740 --> 00:08:47.920 align:middle line:84% biographical sketches, and even discussion questions 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:49.060 align:middle line:90% accompanying the work. 00:08:49.060 --> 00:08:53.590 align:middle line:84% If you mean literal access, as in entry, admittance, 00:08:53.590 --> 00:08:57.730 align:middle line:84% and permission to use, well, there are a few things as 00:08:57.730 --> 00:09:00.130 align:middle line:90% accessible as poetry. 00:09:00.130 --> 00:09:03.190 align:middle line:84% Funnily enough, never has the overdeveloped world 00:09:03.190 --> 00:09:06.710 align:middle line:84% had more access to learning how to read, understand, 00:09:06.710 --> 00:09:09.040 align:middle line:84% and appreciate what a poem can do, 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:11.500 align:middle line:84% as every year more scholars, and critics, 00:09:11.500 --> 00:09:13.510 align:middle line:84% and poets themselves publish works 00:09:13.510 --> 00:09:19.180 align:middle line:84% devoted to courting intimidated or perplexed would-be readers 00:09:19.180 --> 00:09:20.890 align:middle line:90% of poetry. 00:09:20.890 --> 00:09:23.620 align:middle line:84% Recent titles devoted to reading, and understanding, 00:09:23.620 --> 00:09:26.290 align:middle line:84% and enjoying poetry, whether by David Orr, 00:09:26.290 --> 00:09:29.740 align:middle line:84% Stephen Burt, Harold Bloom, or Charles Bernstein 00:09:29.740 --> 00:09:31.330 align:middle line:90% come to mind here. 00:09:31.330 --> 00:09:35.020 align:middle line:84% Yet, suddenly, the poet herself is an elitist 00:09:35.020 --> 00:09:39.520 align:middle line:84% if the poem's language resists immediate familiarity. 00:09:39.520 --> 00:09:44.950 align:middle line:84% Poiesis means "to make," not "to make familiar." 00:09:44.950 --> 00:09:48.490 align:middle line:84% And this charge of elitism is possibly the saddest failure 00:09:48.490 --> 00:09:50.090 align:middle line:90% of imagination. 00:09:50.090 --> 00:09:51.760 align:middle line:84% And I hear it often from my students, 00:09:51.760 --> 00:09:56.020 align:middle line:84% students who've voluntarily registered for a poetry course. 00:09:56.020 --> 00:10:00.940 align:middle line:84% If elitism is the practice or belief in the rule by an elite, 00:10:00.940 --> 00:10:05.110 align:middle line:84% select, or favored group, I hope I don't need much time here 00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:09.620 align:middle line:84% to convince you that poets are hardly part of any elite class. 00:10:09.620 --> 00:10:12.710 align:middle line:90% So what is it that we fear? 00:10:12.710 --> 00:10:14.660 align:middle line:90% Susan Howe responds this way. 00:10:14.660 --> 00:10:19.670 align:middle line:84% Quote, "why should things please a large audience? 00:10:19.670 --> 00:10:23.240 align:middle line:84% And isn't claiming that the work is too intellectually demanding 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:26.630 align:middle line:84% also saying a majority of people are stupid? 00:10:26.630 --> 00:10:29.330 align:middle line:84% Different poets will always have different audiences. 00:10:29.330 --> 00:10:32.630 align:middle line:84% Some poets appeal to younger people, some to thousands, 00:10:32.630 --> 00:10:36.990 align:middle line:84% one or two to millions, some to older people, et cetera. 00:10:36.990 --> 00:10:40.430 align:middle line:84% If you have for readers who you truly touch and maybe even 00:10:40.430 --> 00:10:41.900 align:middle line:90% influence, well, that's fine. 00:10:41.900 --> 00:10:44.030 align:middle line:90% Poetry is a calling. 00:10:44.030 --> 00:10:48.160 align:middle line:84% You are called to write, and you follow," unquote.