Books Nov 27, 2008 at 4:00 am

Why Does Seattle Promote Dumb, Bad Poetry?

Kris Chau

Comments

101
@ Zan: I think that the reading Bob mentioned at the Library in January would probably be a good time for everyone interested to meet up and drink afterward and talk about poetry. It'll be in the reading calendar, in any case.

@ Adam Hadem: Sorry about the Huey Lewis. Consider me chastened. Must be my inner French-Canadian-ness, wanting to claim him as a Louis.

@ cnd: Just out of curiosity, not trying to be antagonistic (I love that you have to say that on the internet sometimes): Why don't you come and teach in Seattle so poets learn who they need to pay attention to? I think the scene is small enough that one person can make a pretty large impact. Leaving town due to a weak/uneducated scene seems pretty severe. And, yes, I am a big fan of Lunch Poems, too.
102
Paul- I agree with you; it is severe to leave town due to a weak scene. It was a hard decision for me to make. I think about moving back often. I would like to see my parents more than once a year. I would like to eat good Pho every day. It's funny to read about Georgetown in the New York Times- I realize that Seattle really is an actual city that changes. If I ever see a job teaching poetry in Seattle advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education or the AWP Job List, I will apply (there seem to be very few creative writing jobs in Seattle- maybe 10 tenure-track poetry teaching gigs total? Maybe if I win the National Book Award before Heather McHugh officially retires I'll be able to slip in there!)

In the meantime, this youtube clip of Frank O'Hara reading "Having a Coke With You" goes out to all the good people of Seattle- I'll see you around Christmas!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpF…
103
You know, I'm really heartened to see this conversation play out.

I've been a literary drop out for the last 8 years--when I returned to Seattle I expected the poetry scene of the 90s, with an open mic every night of the week. Somehow I still feel it was more vibrant at that time. (and NOT just because I miss the Seattle Poetry Festival, though I do!)

But at least here are over 100 empassioned messages that prove people at least still care, and yes, One person can still make a tremendous difference in the Seattle scene. Definitely.

I give thanks to those of you who do still tirelessy produce/promote/publish Seattle authors. Bravo.
104
Ok, I will be the first to say it.

Jay-Z & Little Wayne have no business being compared to Shakespeare & Chaucer. None whatsoever.
105
Ha! who says the winners of those literary magazine contests are objectively "good" poets?
106
A complicated issue, for which lambasting a particular group, style or event of poetry isn't very useful.

Instead of focusing your energy on yelling at "bad" poetry, you should be putting to the forefront that which you think is good poetry. As you said in your piece "lord knows I haven't done enough to support Seattle poetry in the pages of this paper." And with the writing of this article, you still aren't supporting it.

We all need to gravitate toward that poetry which inspires us, not the stuff that irritates.
107
Everyone should admit that 99% of all poetry is terrible, and therefore 99.99% of performed poetry will be terrible (since the odious factor increases among people who enjoy performing live anything other than music (sorry theater and improv)).
108
Everybody has probably moved on from this discussion. But I have a few last comments to make, partly b/c I was addressed directly. I swear this is my last post.

What some of you call bullying and wankery, I call Push Back to Power. If you want to give me some Push Back for being boring, I can accept that. If you want to give me Push Back b/c you are defending the Powerful, you should really check yourself.

Re: Poetry on Buses - we should move away from the good/bad thing. It goes nowhere. Let us dust off this little chestnut : do we need better poets or better audiences? It's like a koan. Not science. Think about it for about 15 mins. It's fun!

Re: Poet Populist - Lighten up! You'll live longer. Hell, I voted for a dead guy twice. Here are some ideas for you to consider.
Nominate a rock and say it is doing Performance Poetry.
If the nominee need be alive, nominate a hamster.
If the nominee need be a person, nominate Richard Hugo.
If the nominee need be alive, nominate my mom reading Richard Hugo poems.
If the nominee need read original work, nominate my mom telling stories from her childhood and call them Post-Modern Improv Prose Poems.
See, using your imagination can also be fun.

Criticism is not for the weak? How about this: Ignorant, mean-spirited spew from a well-circulated alternative weekly is not to be tolerated in an intelligent, compassionate city like Seattle, WA.

That is all.

Nunya
109
@Nunya: Not to make you reconsider your last post statement, but is "the dead guy" you voted for Harvey Goldner? Because if so, we actually agree on something. Harvey was always a joy and a pleasure at poetry readings, and one of the finest compliments I've ever received in my life is when Harvey said that I was "a freak, like me."
110
I'll never tell.
111
I'd like to thank Paul for a putting forth the brave opinion that poetry ought to be good, and much like CND, I grew up here too and thought the exact same things about what poetry was supposed to be. I was lucky to attend an MFA program in New York and and read something beyond Hugo and Gary Snyder. I long ago came to the conclusion that Seattle's (and perhaps any city's) good poets aren't out there doing open mics and spoken words-- they're at home writing. Anyway, good job Paul-- I'm happy to hear someone take a stand in defense of good poetry.
112
Paul Constant you need to get laid, that is all.
113
Most spoken word poetry is drivel.
Most printed poetry is drivel.
Most art of any sort is drivel.
It is the nature of the beast. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a beautiful witch.

Tolstoy was a wonderful novelist, but he was less successful as a theorist. Great art is often popular, but not always. When Tolstoy wrote "Good art is always understood by everyone," he was just plain wrong.
Art has always - or at least for a very, very long time - been a battleground, both in terms of aesthetics and politics. To give one trivial example from well before Mallarmé... The flatted fifth, known as "the devil in music", was banned by the Catholic church in the Middle Ages.
Should artists be "beholden to their audiences"? Yes and no. To quote myself (well, i am a performance poet, pomposity is my birthright), "You respect the audience, you don't p-u-l-e-e-e-a-s-e it."

While I'm on my high horse, will someone please take a few sticks of dynamite and blow up every "Do Not Touch" sign in the Seattle Sculpture Park. Picasso's giant sculpture in downtown Chicago is designed to also function as a slide for children to play on. Now THAT'S public art.

David Morgan
London England
www.davidword.com
114
Re: "elitism"--having standards is NOT elitist. Or you just eat anything, read anything, watch anything?

Re: Mr. Redmond.
In Greek times, only a few could have revelled in the Odyssey's marvels. Slaves and the heavily impovrished could not make heads nor tails.

The Canterbury Tales are not cute anecdotes--hidden within are commentaries on writing, language, and injustice that MAKE IT the masterpiece it is, which would, once again, go unnoticed by the majority. Which, by the way, was composed of illiterate peasants.

Paradise Lost used not only latinized syntax, but vocabulary. Piece a' cake for, again, the average illiterate peasant.

Emily Dickinson, the agoraphobic hermit with the prolific use of dashes and the unfinished clauses? Blockbuster indeed.

You're right, Mr. Redmond, poetry is not meant to be a mensa test. However, it's not meant to be akin to coffee table books. Poetry is about keeping language interesting, being conscious (whether intuitively or intellectually) of how language works, by giving it shape. Not just any old vase is art, and not just any beat is music.
115
Whatever your opinion is on this, you have to agree that it’s great to see a dialog on poetry. This should be a regular thing. I think Nunya should do a regular blog about Seattle Poetry. It would be a great place to make announcements as well as arguer over all the issues Nunya feels like talking about. I’d read it.
116
Poets, or proseists, as it were, should have a feel of the subjects they are writing about. most do not. they are simply trying to copy a great poem, like "pull my daisy", conforming it into words, that make very little sense. poetry, like great artwerk, should have a premise, a soul of purpose, an enlightening moment.
117
I don't know anything about the Populist thing and I've fallen out of vogue with the Finnyfrock scene, but I do know that the desire to express poetry should never be suppressed. What appears to be the lame exercising of poets of the sort you find bad is the gearing up of skills to confront the future calls of expression. Poetry already is a hard sell that gets a bad wrap. You should work hard to be constructive with your criticisms.
118
You say that most public poetry is bad. That is true. Writing poetry is very difficult, so a lot of bad poems must be written before something good emerges. And it cannot be denied that most poetry is not worth the breath that it takes to make the words public. But there are a few poems that are flowers of great value. And their opening would be ever rarer without all of the bad poetry, which enriches the ground around the good like so much manure. So the question becomes, are you willing to endure the odor of the bad to experience the wonder and beauty of the good?
119
I appreciate this article and the discussion it is has generated.

I was interested in know-it-all's final remark that he/she is planning on looking up the work of Nufer, Finnyfrock and Austen. A little bit of text in The Stranger may have earned these authors at least one new reader. Wouldn't it be nice if The Stranger gave even more space to books (I know, not cost effective) especially since it is the only weekly in the city that gives any print time to the printed word. There are a lot of amazing writers whose work far outstrips anything most people stumble across, but these writers are struggling to publicize their own works because these have been published by one of the many excellent small presses across the country and these presses have no money for publicity.
120
@jdc: There is an amazing amount of work being produced in Seattle. A lot of it isn't worth celebrating. What do you think is worth celebrating?
121
After spending a good chunk of time sifting through these comments I feel compelled to add one.
So these are my three dominant thoughts for what they're worth you who do not know me:
1) Ultimately, this conversation is heartening because it shows that people actually do care about writing. Yay!
2) It is indeed pretty awful to call out some local kid for writing bad poetry. Shame!
3) I agree with zan rad on most points and am glad to hear someone still sees seattle that way.


I've lived outside the country for the last 3 years and i try to keep close to seattle by reading the stranger but a lot of times Last Days just makes me feel dirty and ashamed and it's hard to get passionate about irony anymore. But thank god people are still writing poetry. We don't have to call it "poetry" if that offends people and I'm sure they are sorry for whoever didn't enjoy it.

What I've noticed in art scenes that I find attractive and inspiring is that the people who are good push the other people to be good. And that most of the time if you really want something to exist you have to do it yourself.

From over here, Seattle seems so self-conscious and so stuck in self-ironicizing (?) that it's hard for me to imagine really exciting moments of people sharing their poetry. Slam poetry can be sexy with upright bass and improvised accordion. I guess all the hipsters in olympia are singing and that's not so bad as an alternative.

I guess my point is: good, keep having readings and contests and all that because even if they suck the people who really want to help create some kind of better literary "scene" will probably reluctantly come until eventually the standard gets raised and that's better than the alternative of not having anywhere for good writers to share their work, which is what will happen if everyone keeps spitting on everyone all the time. It's good to provoke people with articles like this but I too would much rather read a thoughtful article that explained to me what was so great about the yellow sweater and what was so bad about the biscuit duckling.

Probably the elephant in the room is Seattle is kind of provincial-- that's why it vacillates between self-aggrandizement and self-hatred-- it can't help it. Everyone knows there's a lot of bad poetry. It is frustrating. But the article doesn't help to promote anything except these provincial attitudes, it just makes me cringe remembering what a sad excuse for a literary scene there is. Couldn't you just hide that elephant for me and try to make me believe in seattle, kind of like zan rad did? Without self-aggrandizing? Seattle is not New York, it doesn't need to think it's so cool or expect too much from its literary venues at this point. Seattle is Seattle. Yay! Shame!
122
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Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Parking Attendant: Roger Weaver

Second Tuesday of Every Month we reconfigure the chairs and sofas so that parking becomes available and rides can be taken, free of charge.
Sandwiches and beer available for purchase. No fear of DUIs while parked.

Park Opens: 7pm
Ride Begins: 7:30pm

Faire Gallery/Cafe
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www.fairegallerycafe.com
123
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124
Thanks to Mr. Redmond. Brilliant response.
125
Since there is no way to comment on the current new column devoted to getting submissions to the Stranger's Poetry on Buses, I will come all the way back to this article to make a comment.

Mr. Constant, I feel sorry for you. After writing this piece claiming that an open submission, populist program was not the way to discover good writing but only promotes 'dumb, bad' poetry, The beloved Stranger now has its own call for submissions. They have made a fool of you. While I may have issues with your logic and abilities, I don't like to see anyone who is so earnest made a fool.
On the other hand, you may have caused the vacuum to be created so that The Beloved Stranger can usurp the concept. After your article, support for the program must have surely diminished. And in the economic situation we have been in for years, any reduction in support can result in total collapse. So maybe it is just desserts.

Yours Truly,
Nunya

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