The "P" word

There’s no shortage of problematic “P” words in the English language  – "pope", "paedophile", "patriot", "psychotic" . . . the list goes on. But the most problematic of all is “poetry”. It’s fair to say that the word “poetry” – what is it? what does it mean? – strikes more fear into the hearts of both the general and particular populaces than the thought of Anne Tolley in the nip. But how can this be?

This woeful scenario is too often blamed on Poetry (the verbal art) or poetry (examples of that art), when really it is the Western Poetry Establishment that is committing the most heinous crimes. Now most of you will have seen a poet before – some of you may even have met one – and for most of you the kind of “establishment” affordable by the poetry industry would look more like a trapper’s hut than an ivory tower. Alas, if only it were so. The Poetry Establishment is actually housed in a luxuriously appointed and heavily guarded fortress, whose only claim to supporting good poetry is the graffiti sprayed on its walls.

I am about to show you the kind of thing the Poetry Establishment tells us is Poetry; if you don’t like it or don’t understand it, the fault unquestionably lies within you, not the Poem, because this Poem has been written by a Poet, whose claim to the name in this case has been endorsed by that peerless arbiter of literary taste, The New Yorker. The following appeared in the issue dated 30 August 2010:


“Men at Work”
 by Julie Bruck

I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.
                                                            —“Down Under.”

We middle-aged sense them immediately:
four brittle pop stars sprawled across
the rigid fibreglass chairs at the airport gate.
It’s not just that they’re Australian, that gorgeous
thunk of English, the stacked electric-guitar cases
draped with black leather jackets, or their deep
tans on this Sunday night in midwinter Toronto

that holds everyone’s attention, drawn as we are,
pale filings to their pull. Even their rail-thin
lassitude attracts us, as it must Doug, the portly
Air Canada gate manager in his personalized jacket,
who arrives to greet the band, cranking hands
and cracking jokes. Doug, who must live in

Mississauga with the wife and a couple of kids

and who insists the boys come back to play Toronto

next year, when we clutchers of boarding passes
will have abandoned our carry-ons for tickets
to a midsized arena and a resurrected band
whose lyrics never did make sense but
which are laced to a beat that won’t let go—
propelling us down the carpeted ramps
of late-night flights on feeder airlines, hips
back in charge of our strange young bodies,
now shaking down runways in rows.
Answers on the back of a Men at Work album cover to . . . seriously, yes seriously, this is Poetry in the 21st century. Julie starts well by using the name of an exotic Australian (imagine!) band for her title and filching a couplet from their most famous song. You would think Julie would be somewhat deferential to both the band and their work after such shameless appropriation, but no. Julie is a Poet, which means she can say with impunity (except within the pages of New Zealand Gerald) that Men at Work's lyrics "never did make sense". Speak for yourself, dear.

And so we come to two more problematic "P" words: "patronizing" and "pretentious". The New Yorker seems to go out of its way to publish the most patronizing and pretentious poets practising  (lots of "P" words there, aren't there?) – they've been doing it for years. In this example, Julie can't seem to stop herself from condescending to everyone she populates her "poem" with.

How about "portly" (now that's a poetic adjective, isn't it?) Doug, who has a personalized jacket (bless) and "crank[s] hands" as if he's trying to start a Ford Model A. He does this because he's "cracking jokes" at the same time – if you look carefully both verbs begin with "cra", a sure sign that this is Poetry (not The Electric Company). Julie feels particularly superior to cuddly Dougly: he "must live in Mississauga". Why? Is Julie clairvoyant as well as condescending? But wait, her crystal ball is clearing: "with the wife and a couple of kids" (my emphasis). Whatever this is, it isn't poetry. It's pretentious, patronizing piffle.

The rest of "Men at Work" is heavy-handed "observation" on middle-age, lost youth and – wait for it – resurrection, all couched in the tritest "poetic" language imaginable. If you're still with me, I hope this little exposé has helped some of you realize you have nothing to fear from Poetry. And remember: if you're having trouble understanding poetry that's printed in esteemed literary publications like The New Yorker, the fault is more likely to be on the side of the so-called poets than yours.   

Headlining Acts

Anyone who's ever been published, whether in print or pixels, has striven long and hard for the perfect headline or title. We've all had our precious handfuls of pregnant words aborted by an uppity editor convinced they can do better -- and herein lies the peculiar attraction of headline coining.

Every writer's quest for the perfect headline is the equivalent of the hole in one in golf. The odds against them achieving it are huge, but it can be done. Some headlines are so good that they render the actual article utterly redundant. Their small, perfectly formed punning perfection is the story; the rest is silence.

Grail-questing journalists often spend just as long formulating a headline as they do writing their stories, sometimes even whiling away the hours before deadline coming up with fantasy headlines. I once met an obituary writer in the QF Tavern who, after bumming a cigarette and the 50c he needed for another pint of Guinness, exclaimed: "I can't wait for that Maggie Barry to kick the bucket, I really can't."

This not being entirely apropos of our foregoing charity-based conversation, I pressed him to explain, but he blustered on with: "But she's got to have a heart attack or a fatal stroke . . . " His sentence ended in a deep draught of Guinness, leaving me none the wiser. After an equally deep drag on my too mild cigarette, he said: "And it's got to happen in a park, or even better, in some botanical gardens . . . "

After another Guinness and smoke coupling, I attempted to recap: "You can't wait for Maggie Barry to die of a heart attack in the botanical gardens?" "Zigackly!" was his response. "Why?" was inevitably mine. "Because I have the perfect headline for her obituary!" he triumphed. "'Live by the sward, die by the sward'!"

*****

But there is one publication that seems not only to have abandoned the quest for the journalistic Holy Grail but also lost all self-respect. The best measure of any publication's self-respect is the quality of its proofreading. The New Zealand Herald's proofreading has been a joke for so long that Aucklanders accept the paper's daily errors as a fact of life, like Auckland's high humidity. 

One would be hard pressed to find a high school newspaper with more incompetent proofreaders than the Herald's. Below is just one of the more recent fiascos to have slipped through the newspaper's proofing net (if such a thing exists):

As one of my colleagues quipped: "It takes forever to get there . . . but when it does, it's terrible." For God's sake, Herald, grow some coglioni!

Re: "Lyrical Poetry in Popular Music"

Popular published collections of poetry in the modern age are not as common as they were a century ago. But we are still finding a way to express ourselves, and to enjoy others' poetic writings through the medium of music. Timeless tales of love, longing, betrayal, and electric passion are woven into lyrics of the songs we listen to on the radio and download onto iPods.

So true, stephhicks68 from Bend, Oregon, so true. This opening paragraph hits all the buttons prescribed by the more reputable how-to-write guides, and its sentiments, while dabbling in human conditioning, are scarcely objectionable. No doubt 16th century balladeers were the poetic rock stars of their time, writing timeless tales of wenching and quaffing with a profligacy more than equal to Messrs Jagger and Richards'. stephhicks68 is indeed weaving timeless truths into her own writing -- but what comes next?

Obviously, the most successful artists and the songs that climb the charts are those that provide insightful observations of human nature that connect with the audience on an emotional level.

Whoa Nelly! Leaving aside the fact that our author goes on to profile the lyrical genius of Alanis Morissette, Sir Elton John (despite acknowledging that he doesn't write his own lyrics), Sting and Sade, what's all this about the most chart-dwelling artists and songs all "provid[ing] insightful observations of human nature"? Presumably stephhicks68 has in mind the lyrics of Des'ree's chart-topper "Life", which includes the oft-slammed, all-too-mortal lines:

I don't want to see a ghost
It's the sight that I fear most
I'd rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news

Of course it was this lyrically poetic song's ability to "connect with the audience on an emotional level" that saw it reach No. 1 in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain in 1998. Hopefully most of Des'ree's fans in those countries were not cursed with enough English to comprehend her timeless insights into human nature. Equally hopefully, the notion that all popular (i.e. widely read/heard) poetry (what this is exactly will be covered in 100 subsequent posts) is insightful (this adjective has been misused so often that it should be proscribed) will one day be abandoned, instead of blithely evangelized by the likes of stephhicks68.

In principio erat Verbum . . .

. . . and then the Word was mutated, all too commonly in The New Zealand Herald. But enough about that would-be rag; I've seen her face and now I'm a believer. Whose face, I don't hear you ask? The face of Bloggea, Goddess of Blogs, which looks something like this lassie's (no sculptor has yet dared to represent Bloggea's features; should she deem it a poor likeness she could ruin their reputation via the blogosphere in seconds).

This small offering to Bloggea aims to provide remedial reading for a sick age -- there has never been so much to read and so little worth reading. Identifying and diagnosing this sickness is New Zealand Gerald's mission and he'd be delighted to have you along for the ride.