Natural language or don't bother

[matsunosuperfan]

The older I get, the more I read, the less patience I have for affectation in poetry. Even a lot of what I used to think was great poetry, I now think is just okay, mostly because it can't exist without the aid of artifice, without the reader wilfully suspending that particular disbelief and agreeing to indulge with the speaker in the obviously false fantasy that the diction before us on the page is anything the speaker might actually utter in any context other than "poem on the page." 

It is harder to write poetry with plain language because now you actually have to just go find compelling ideas and images. There's no "I don't have much to say but it SOUNDS like I have something to say." You either bring an offering or an empty dish. None of this fancy-Tupperware-holding-a-single-dry-chicken-tender shit. 

Go read some James Tate, a poet who had the nerve to actually explore what a poem is at its essence, with all the emperor's decidedly not-new clothes stripped off. It's good for what ails, we swears, frodo bagginses.

We are 40 years deep in the "natural language" poetry movement and to be honest - a lot of it bores me now as it all sounds the same.

No I totally feel you, I mean that's the risk, right? Hopkins got to be like "look, a fucking bird, praise the Lord and shit" and it was cool that he actually didn't have anything else to say because it sounded like creme brulee in word form. If you're actually operating in the contemporary vernacular, then unless you come up with a captivating, original gesture or thought your poem will just be kind of drab. 

Pick yer poison, I guess!