Undead Poetics

The death of poetry has been greatly exaggerated. Time and time again.

Every five to ten years, a new article comes out proclaiming “The Death of Poetry” and poets rise up and collectively sigh and collectively try to explain that poetry is not dead, will never die, is always dying, is happy to be dead, prefers to remain in a quiet corner of society, and so on and so forth.

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Seth Abramson’s article ‘Ten Ideas That Could Save American Poetry’ caught my attention by displaying a large image of Bo Burnham from his amazing comedy special INSIDE (2021). It helped that Abramson doubled down with a link to Burnham’s ‘White Woman’s Instagram’.

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From the get go, I was suspicious…

Abramson writes: “This article is therefore more vigorously intended for non-poets…”

This doesn’t feel true because there are limited non-poets who are concerned with the realm of poetry.

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In Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ (1985), he writes:

“My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content—in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.”

Postman, in 1985, is already taking jabs at the written word being overtaken by tv, let alone poetry. “We are now a culture whose information, ideas and epistemology are given form by television, not by the printed word. To be sure, there are still readers and there are many books published, but the uses of print and reading are not the same as they once were; not even in schools, the last institutions where print was thought to be invincible. They delude themselves who believe that television and print coexist, for coexistence implies parity. There is no parity here. Print is now merely a residual epistemology, and it will remain so, aided to some extent by the computer, and newspapers and magazines that are made to look like television screens.”

The above quote seems maybe a bit premature for 1985 but all too real as the internet took off and, especially, since smartphones hit the market and put the internet in our hands. The easy argument is that time previously dedicated to the medium of television has now been overtaken by time siphoned into other forms of screen time.

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In writing about “The Problem with Poetry”, Abramson writes, “The poetry you’ve read… [is] whatever contemporary poetry was able to get through a complex subcultural system exquisitely designed to keep you permanently uninterested in poetry.” I’ll use ONE ART as an example. I think the poetry that I publish [in ONE ART] is generally democratic. Here, I’m purposefully not using the word “approachable” as some wield that word in a derogatory manner at poems they feel are somehow too accessible and not high-minded enough.

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Abramson writes: “The fact is, most non-poets hate poetry about the same way I hate bluegrass: I haven’t really heard any of it, and I didn’t like what little I heard, and I didn’t give much thought at all to what I did hear, so I’ve decided not to hear any more—which seems reasonable given that there are so many things to do in life.”

This is a bad argument and Abramson is admitting as much. You can’t hate something you don’t really know about. “Hate” isn’t what you’re feeling. Hate takes effort and intention. In interviews with people that truly hate other people, apart from how deeply disturbing their hatred is, you can tell that the act of hating is not without effort. These people spend their days sitting around and talking about how much they hate [insert scapegoat]. They are fixated on hatred and that is extremely scary.

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I’m going to address Abramson’s ten ideas one by one.

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#1: “Understand that poetry isn’t a genre of Art.”

So, basically, if I understand correctly, it sounds like Abramson is saying – “don’t put poetry in a box”. I agree, there are all sorts of poetry and it comes in many forms. Poetry on the page is doing something different than slam poetry. Just looking at work on the page, there’s a big difference between avant garde or “experimental” work that fits well at home in POETRY Magazine or DIAGRAM but is not likely to appear in ONE ART.

ONE ART is named, of course, after the famous Elizabeth Bishop villanelle. But the name was chosen, too, because I see all Art (with a capital “A”) under a single umbrella. The Arts are a unified force in society. All great societies support The Arts or perish. This is well-known and historically backed.

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#2: “Don’t feel obligated to connect with poetry that’s not as meaningful to you as your favorite music, comedy, cinema, or visual art is.”

First thought, best thought? My instant gut reaction to this is… “Well, duh.” It’s the same argument for not wasting your time finishing a novel that you aren’t enjoying. That’s a sunk cost fallacy. Same applies here.

There’s a time and a place for all of your interests.

What’s the best time of day for you to read? This is especially true for physical books/texts. If you know when you’re most able to read and pay attention to what you’re reading and process/synthesize what you’re reading, by all means do your best to block time in your day to allocate for this.

It’s long been a goal of mine to read for at least 15-minutes per day from a physical book. For many years, this has proved rather difficult. Why? Well, presently I’m typing on a laptop, there’s a giant menacing television screen about a meter away from me, and I have an iPhone in my pocket.

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Abramson: “When it comes to art, we all like about 5% of what’s out there.”

Yes, it’s fun to make up percentages. Abramson has a point here. Being discerning about what you enjoy is part of the joy of engaging with art (in all forms). If you like everything or you simply like what other people have said is “the best” (or otherwise worthy of engaging with), your failure to have agency in the situation is a huge disservice to yourself.

Going to the art museum and talking trash about famous works is at least 50% of the fun. (Just speaking for myself.) I do so to a lesser extent when I go to local art center exhibitions and galleries. Why? I see this much like writing reviews.

While it’s fair game for William Logan to trash name recognizable poets; it would be an act of cruelty to write harsh takedowns of poets who fly under the radar. Ask around, many would say it’s an honor to be taken down by Logan. I would certainly feel that way. It’s worth keeping in mind that Logan has earned his position as a notable critic over years of close reading. It’s like being a real deal Subject Matter Expert. If someone isn’t an expert, a mean-spirited review is going to hit different.

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Abramson: “The upshot here is that you should hold poetry to the same standard you do any other artform…”

This is a tough one. Let me begin by saying that when I look at Top lists (for example, Top 100 Songs of 2023), I always find the fact that genres are competing for spots to be a problem. I’ve said this plenty elsewhere— rock is not hip hop is not country is not indie is not R&B is not jazz is not classical is not metal is not shoegaze is not pop is not punk and so on. Sure, there are crossover genres. The point I’m trying to make is that these Best Of lists have a false premise—comparing apples to oranges (so to speak). Similarly, I find it problematic to start comparing poetry to forms that it can’t possibly contend with in respects.

We’d need an elaborate rating system to determine what you should do with your time. I can imagine Alexa (or another AI assistant) asking me a series of questions about what I’m in the mood for. What would be super interesting is that if at the end of all these questions the AI assistant landed on— “You are in the mood to sit and read poetry.” Better still, “Poetry by X.” Or, “This curated list of poems”. This concept of AI curated results, like with GPT or related Large Language Models (LLMs), is slippery and you can see how the algorithm could take you in a direction that was not intended or not desired the same way Google is currently in trouble for accusations of manipulating search engine results. Or the way YouTube sends people down radical rabbit holes.

You are what you eat.

Garbage in, garbage out.

We know a lot of sayings like this. Cliches exist for a reason. Because they are at least partly true. 

We also know a lot of sayings that have been sold to us…

Got milk?

Where’s the beef?

A diamond is forever.

Just do it.

The breakfast of champions.

The last one is funny. Funny because:

(a) most of us do not agree

(b) most of us have forgotten what the product is

It should be Cheerios, right? But no, that’s the alleged “heart healthy” choice.

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Let’s go back to holding artforms to standards. All artforms need to be held to higher standards, right? That we can agree on.

In Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, he talks about how it’s not junk tv that he’s worried about. It’s not the junk that’s going to destroy us. The things that are going to destroy us have arrived. It’s the stuff that’s too good to look away from.

When we’re engaged with certain technologies, we don’t blink enough, we don’t breathe properly, and we develop addictions. We experience withdrawal. We experience FOMO. We know some of what we are experiencing, but not all of it. Postman talks about this, too. We can’t comprehend how a particular medium is acting upon us while we’re engaging with us. Our brains aren’t wired for metacognition in that fashion.

When we’re using Twitter (X) or Meta (Facebook/Instagram/Threads) or TikTok or Snapchat or YouTube (Google-owned), we don’t really know what these apps are doing to our minds. All we know is they are grabbing our attention and fighting over our engagement. Welcome to the cesspool that is the Attention Economy.

We should never forget when Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings infamously said, “You get a show or a movie you're really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep.”

Poetry doesn’t stunt. In all seriousness, poetry is never trying to put one over on you. Not directly. Maybe a poet is playing around and trying to mess with your head. Sure, sure. But, poetry has no agenda to keep you up past your bedtime or steal your attention away from your loved ones. Poetry is there when you want it and need it and when you have the mental bandwidth to engage. After all, what you bring to poetry is yourself in the current moment. Your becoming self. The poem is only halfway finished. The other half requires you, the reader/listener/witness, to experience and interpret the language as it melds with your particular vision of consensus reality at a given moment. A beautiful thing.

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#3: “Poets are charged more than any other type of artist with torching language and all its conventions.”

Poetry does do this and so does philosophy. When I took a step back from lit theory and philosophy, post-undergrad, I realized, in hindsight, just how obnoxious some of the antics are. Certain materials/writers/thinkers were annoying even while immersed in lit theory (Deleuze, for example). Schelling’s philosophy is one that rubs me the wrong way looking back. I remember having to learn a ton about this guy’s private language system he developed in order to enter his world of philosophy and have any chance of understanding the ideas he was trying to unpack. Now, this feels very pretentious and downright unnecessary. There is this tendency to over-complicate matters in philosophy. Feel free to disagree.

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Abramson: “My point is that as and when you find yourself looking for examples of humans using language to decimate the chains that bind them, you’re in search of poetry.”

This statement I like. See, it’s not all bad. We don’t disagree about everything.

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#4: “Poetry is more forgiving of “error,” and more celebratory toward what makes you a weirdo, than anything else. Why? Because it’s worthless—that is to say, price-less (without price; thus, without quantifiable worth).”

Pandora’s Box right here. Yes, as William Carlos Williams’ once said, (at least I think it was WCW), poetry has no value. And then of course he points out, “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."

Poetry saves lives.

Really, it does.

There are poetry anthologies about kindness, gratitude, hope, joy, love, and all the best of our better angels for good reason. Here’s an excuse to encourage checking out James Crews’ anthologies, the Poetry of Patience anthologies, and what Joseph Fasano is up to on social media (and look forward to his forthcoming collection of poetry prompts).

Rachel Zucker embraces “error” and has ideas for new directions to take poetry in her recent collection of essays bundled into ‘The Poetics of Wrongness’.

Poets are notoriously allergic to money. As I always say, we [poets] would do just fine starving a little less.

In discussing the “price” (vs. value) of poetry, I must refer you to discussions Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (Editor of Rattle) have had on The Poetry Space_. In early episodes, there is a good deal of conversation about NFTs and how it feels very problematic to many to have money and commerce intersect too closely with poetry.

Not everyone agrees with me that we could use a few more centimillionaires or a billionaire (though billionaires should not exist at all if we lived in even a semi-just world) with an interest in sustaining poetry, the poetry community, and The Arts. Why? There’s this sense that the kind of people who have large amounts of money will bend everything to their whims. And there’s something to this. It’s a real worry. That being said, artists have been given money (through grants and awards) and in some cases this has allowed them to continue making art.

As an interesting aside, there is data on what happens when mid-career artists who receive large financial incentives such as winning a major award or grant (like the MacArthur “genius” grant). Statistically, individuals who receive these grants do not always “follow through” with the expectations of how much they will achieve over the rest of their career trajectory. Correlation, of course, does not equal causation; so, with that in mind, it’s not necessarily evident that having more money derails a person’s research or artistic efforts. Let’s compare this to how giving more money to films often does result in a decrease in quality. David Foster Wallace documents this well in his essay about Terminator. It’s possible you already felt the aura of DFW earlier, when talking about Neil Postman and the improvements in our media—television, internet, “A/V crack”, essentially—like Doritos only we tend not to have rapid enough physical issues to realize what’s happening to us after we metaphorically binge on too on too much highly processed (read: highly curated) snacks.

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There’s some talk in Abramson’s essay about MFA programs.

I’m inclined to agree with Abramson’s decree that MFAs have developed into a system that is, as he puts it, “an actual evil”. Basically, he’s pointing to the statistical improbability of getting a good teaching gig after graduating with an allegedly terminal degree. This leaves students in debt and in a powerless position where they are often flailing from my experience of witnessing situations firsthand.

If you haven’t read it, I strongly encourage checking out Raymond P. Hammond’s book ‘Poetic Amusement’. You can get some insight into the book from this interview Brian Fannelli conducted with Hammond about the book. I remember having terrific conversations with Brian leading up to this interview during my time as Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

An excerpt:

Hammond: “Poets are forced into this political space of academia and publishing by capitalism – this is the belief in poetry: book sales, acceptances, jobs, publications. Poets need to move away from a belief in poetry and towards a faith in poetry. This inward spiritual place of faith is where the Muse dwells. As long as poetry remains holed-up almost entirely in academia, it will remain political (this school versus that school, published versus non-published, schooled versus un-schooled, etc.).”

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Abramson: “Or you can turn the Nirvana album Nevermind into an epic book of poetry with one line of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics per page, as has also been done recently.”

This is not entirely true. Check out ‘Mr. West’ by Sarah Blake. Due to lawsuits over fair use, Blake (and Wesleyan University Press) were forced to redact quotes by Kanye West (picture how material is blacked out when the government releases excerpts of FBI files).

I’ll admit I’m making a somewhat trivial objection here.     

Abramson seems to be saying that he believes you can do whatever you want in poetry so long as you do it “mindfully” and I’m inclined to, generally, agree with that statement. I would hope that “mindfully” implies you have good intentions and are not “mindfully” creating artwork simply to enrage others, encourage outrage culture, or otherwise go negative when you could be putting something thoughtful and generous into the world.

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#5: “A poet knows better than anyone that words are just words.”

It’s true, poets operate with words and within the confines of language.

And yet…

Words are powerful. We know this to be true.  

Back to Neil Postman for a second. In ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, he talks about how we (as a society) have given up our commitment to oral language is preferable in most instances. Postman points out that one notable exception is taking the witness stand.

“Testimony is expected to be given orally, on the assumption that the spoken, not the written, word is a truer reflection of the state of mind of a witness.” He continues, “Jurors are expected to hear the truth, or its opposite, not to read it.” Finishing the thought, Postman writes, “Thus, we may say that there is a clash of resonances in our concept of legal truth. On the one hand, there is a residual belief in the power of speech, and speech alone, to carry the truth; on the other hand, there is a much stronger belief in the authenticity of writing and, in particular, printing. This second belief has little tolerance for poetry, proverbs, sayings, parables, or any other expressions of oral wisdom. The law is what legislators and judges have written. In our culture, lawyers do not have to be wise; they need to be well briefed.”

Okay, so, that was a little harsh on the poetry subject. Leaving that aside, Postman articulates his position artfully. I find this deeply fascinating.

Reflecting on “witness” as it relates to poetry, is one inroad to further consider what it might mean to “hear the truth” as opposed to “read the truth”. We are living this out in real time now. This question of what is “Truth”. I’ll expound on this more elsewhere.

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#6: “Poetry is not just the best but perhaps the only way to authentically “perform” your life.”

My “first thought, best thought” response to this is—what about autofiction?

My second thought is, yes, sure, Neo-Confessionalism. And let’s lean into it.

The use of “perform” bothers me, here, because it sounds like you’re “doing it for the gram” or making content (like I’m doing now) for TikTok (etc.)

I keep running into the concept of “Self” as “Brand”. Human as Brand. It’s disturbing and it’s the world we live in post-, well, post- I’m not exactly sure. Influencers have been around for a while. Certain platforms made the rise of amateur influencers (seemingly everyday folks) to rise to the top and find a foothold in a form of celebrity. Most of these ways of celebrity are not desirable for your average person. This somehow feels important to point out. You probably don’t actually want to be an influencer, it just looks like an easy lifestyle. After all, making things look easy is part of what pros do.

I have an essay on influencers and InstaPoetry. It was a MASSIVE undertaking and I highly recommend the deep dive (though of course I’m biased).

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Abramson: “There’s a reason poetry is one of the oldest art-forms: it’s something you can create alone and without possessions on a deserted island…”

Agreed. This is important. This has allowed poetry to persist even in the darkest times. When people are unable to write down words because they live under hostile and oppressive leadership or cultural oppression, they are able to orally share poems. This is part of the Afghan tradition of landays.

Even if a person is not oppressed, but simply living in a rather destitute situation, they can write poems. Robert Francis chose to live a life without. His work lives on.

And of course the haiku masters. They incorporated haiku into their daily life. Poetry as ritual. Poetry as a source of joy. Poetry is inspiration. Poetry as fun. Poetry as a pastime. Poetry as a humble lifestyle.

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#7: “No other artists need years of groupthink-oriented, aesthetically essentialist “workshopping” to become what they need to become, and neither do poets—so the poetry “workshop” can safely be detonated.”

The sentiment is easily belabored. Basically, you cannot teach poetry. That’s not what workshops and critique circles are about though.

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself." - Galileo Galilei

I believe in a variation of Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. You have to simply put in the time. I’ve quoted James Longenbach many times saying in an interview how hard it is for poets/writers to sound like themselves on the page. It’s a great feat. A major success. Not easily accomplished. The brain to hand to pen to page does now flow naturally. It flows with practice.

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#8: “Poetry is something you chase—not something you do.”

This makes me think of repetition. People say, “You’re always writing the same poem.” There is some truth to this. Stephen King has often been accused of writing the same book over and over. But that’s not what he’s doing at all. He wrote a version of the concept in head. That version was acceptable…for the time being. Then, you keep on living and you realize that, in fact, you did not say what you wanted to say previously. You thought you did, but you didn’t. So, now, you have to go back and try again. This time, you’re a different person and the concept has inevitably evolved in your mind as well.

Poets are always circling the subject. We write circles around what we’re “trying to say”. “Trying” here is annoying but there’s some truth to this as well. We’re doing our best to suss out the situation with our current poet’s toolkit and our current ability to reflect on a situation with proper distance, seeing all the angles, feeling all the feelings (that we can emotionally allow ourselves to engage with). Poets are often dealing in difficult terrain— trauma, grief, loss, death, despair, loneliness, longing, melancholy, tragedy, weltschmerz (because of course there’s a German word that tries to describe feelings of having the weight of the world on your shoulders).

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If you call it a poem, then it is a poem.

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If someone else says what they wrote is a poem, then it is a poem.

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Privately, if you read something and think, “This is not a poem.” That’s fine. Privately.

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Abramson: “When radio changed poetry, that was registered in Ezra Pound’s Cantos, which was celebrated in its time if not as much as it would be after Pound’s death. In certain respects, television entered printed poetry with the documentary, peripatetic poetics of The New York School. Today, poets are struggling to accommodate the internet because it feels technocratic rather than bohemian, is too large and invasive a sea change in human culture to readily grasp, and is much harder to market in the book-publishing milieu that American poetry’s rigid subculture still idolizes.”

This is again, what Neil Postman is writing about in ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’, back in 1985. A very different time and yet not so different at all in certain ways. Television was already infiltrating everyday life in insidious ways and those who were careful observers were realizing that we were in dangerous territory. Think about AI concerns at the present. We’re standing on the edge of a cliff. People who know what’s going on are encouraging stepping back from the edge. These are people who can profit from pushing ahead, from going with the “move fast and break things” mentality. Still, some of them want to pause and take a breath. Because they know we are at risk. Thankfully, a few people with power have not completely lost their minds.

Postman: “Marx understood well that the press was not merely a machine but a structure for discourse, which both rules out and insists upon certain kinds of content and, inevitably, a certain kind of audience.”

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Abramson: “So when I say that one “chases” poetry, what I mean is that the role of the poet is as much to determine where poetry is headed and to inhabit and explore that space as it is to perform over and over what poetry was in some past moment. Poetry became a knowledge base—a skill-set that is teachable in the academy—in part to justify its positioning in the academy, not because poetry-as-art is actually static and knowable. […] In fact, poetry exists now, and is being permanently inflected now, in the technologies of tomorrow (e.g., advanced biomodification, nanotechnology, cryptocurrencies, and haptic VR tech) even as poets are regularly publishing work that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1950s. But that’s where poetry was; we should neither celebrate nor hold up as the Platonic “poet” one who simply reproduces a form first perfected over a half-century ago. Being a poet is, in this respect, as much about a spirit of adventure, critical and creative thinking skills, and a superlative degree of self-knowledge (up to a poetics) as it is about distinguishing between a couplet and a quatrain.”

There’s a lot going on here. I read the importance of stewardship of poetry (and broadly The Arts) as something Abramson is getting at.

I can’t tell if he’s more terrified of technological advancements or excited about encouraging poets to embrace them. I think he might be on board with NFT poetry based on the above statements. This seems counter to #4 where he talks about poetry being “worthless” and “priceless”.

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#9 “The fact that nobody will buy, read, teach, or enjoy your poetry means that it’s the one thing that is totally yours. And that matters.”

Here, we reach an important point about the significance of publication. What does it mean to publish? In short, why publish?

First and foremost, as I’ve come to believe, your book is going to be on your bookshelf. With that in mind, publish to please yourself. After yourself, publish to please your friends and loved ones and the poets you know and love. After that, the poetry community at large. After that, perhaps, the arts community at large. If you’re lucky, your work may find its way into the mainstream in some capacity. Way to go work that has legs. But let’s not count on that. That’s not what any of this is about. It’s always been about the writing. Write for yourself. Publish because you have work that feels appropriate for a public audience.

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Abramson: “A little-known secret—even poets hush it up—is that the average book of poetry sells about fifty copies, mostly to the family and intimate friends of the poet. Even a “best-selling” poetry book (say, a book among the top 1% of poetry-book sellers in a given year) sells 1,500 to 2,000 copies, which means it’s owned by 1.5% to 2% of the 100,000+ working poets in the United States.”

This sounds fairly accurate. If you sell a few hundred copies of a poetry collection that is a big deal. You should pat yourself on the back. If you sell hundreds of copies of your book, folks aren’t just saying “Congratulations!” on social media; there are readers out there who actually want to read your words. Feel good about this.

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Abramson: “What I’m saying is that American poets have found innumerable ways to hide from themselves that no one’s listening…”

He goes on to basically describe the annual AWP conference and talk about how no one talks about their actual book sales figures.

Abramson believes poets are deceiving themselves into believing they have readership when really what they have are nice friends and polite family members.

I don’t agree. I think his points have merit, but I believe we [poets] actually do have an audience. It may be small and, in spite of what Abramson says, I think many poets are semi-aware of the size of their audience and have relative comfort with that knowledge. Deep down, a feeling that—Hey, there are at least a few people out there in the world who really get me.

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#10: “If poets steal a page from their perceived adversaries—professional writers—they may start to save poetry by habit rather than design.”

In his final gesture, Abramson sets up his solution to “save poetry”… from poets? Or save poets from themselves. Maybe a combination.

Abramson seems to be arguing for writing with intention. Writing for an intentional audience.

Abramson: “Much like musicians don’t want to sing only for other musicians, or painters paint for other painters, poets who wish to be read by non-poets need to be less, rather than more, constricted by what poets consider appropriate and artful.”

His argument seems to be that we should push ourselves and push the abilities innate to poetry to the brink—a kind of futurism.

Whitman comes to mind as Abramson evokes “delight” in a kind of marketing mindset… Whitman delights in himself.

Whitman: “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (Song of Myself) & “I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.” (I Sing the Body Electric)

Humorously, Abramson then nods to Whitman noting that some of us have fond early memories of his work. Humorous because he seems to be arguing in the face of Whitmanesque desires for what poetry is and can be. Whitman was, at the end of the day, extremely navel-gazey. He literally rewrote the same book over and over throughout his life. Whitman didn’t seem to be in “the game” (old school po biz) for money or pride or fame or glory. Whitman wanted to “loaf” like he said. And he did.

Whitman and Dickinson (and Poe in a side lane) are the grandparents of American Poetry for a reason. They gave us groundwork. But they are the past. I thought were talking Futurism?

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A Brief Outshot—  
Abramson: “Poetry is animated by life, but often must traffic in destruction and reconstruction to do the difficult work of constantly refreshing what it means to be alive.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “New arts destroy the old.”

Emerson’s essay ‘Art’ is likely the work I have both read and listened to more than anything else. It is one of the great works. It informs more with each read. I cannot recommend this to poets/writers enough.

I’m going to leave you with Emerson as a guide.

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