On Poetry as Self-Expression

 

Nobody

Why is poetry less popular than it used to be? Until the 1960s, poetry outsold prose in Canadian Literature. Newspapers used to feature a daily poem. Prose was hardly considered worth publishing until about the early 18th century.

There are no doubt several reasons. One is our devaluation of memory and memorization. One is that poets no longer seem to understand poetry’s musical character. They have abandoned rhythm, rhyme, assonance; and somehow think this is clever. One is that, since television and now the internet, we are more visually and less aurally oriented than we were. So we do not appreciate the sounds of words so much.

But one is surely the influence of Freud.

Almost everyone has gotten the idea that a poem is a matter of self-expression. That it must be confessional, autobiographical, and in the first person.

I once submitted a poem to a competition that had complex rhyme, including internal rhyme, and rhythm--and a story line. 

And it was actually rejected outright, not allowed in the contest, “because it was a story, not a poem.”

Imagine how little interest there would be in prose, or in film, or in YouTube videos, if they were all about self-expression.

If it is self-expression, there is no particular reason why it should be of interest to an audience. Unless perhaps your personal experience is somehow sensational, or gruesome, or rarely expressed. It is then just therapy for the poet.

And that is what has happened. Nobody comes to a poetry reading any longer to listen to poetry. There is always an open mic. They come to read their own poems. They have to listen to others as well, out of politeness.

In fact, true poetry is the exact opposite of self-expression. John Keats wrote that the “chameleon poet” is “the most unpoetical thing in existence.” Through “negative capability” he takes on whatever comes to him. There is no self left.

Leonard Cohen described himself as simply an antenna for poetry. Irving Layton referred to his poems as “my dead selves.” WB Yeats said, “you can either live the life of a poet, or write poetry. You cannot do both.” 

I think they are all saying the same thing. In poetry the self must disappear.

And most modern would-be poets are doing the opposite.