12-07-2011, 06:53 AM
Meaning absolutely no disrespect to any poet who posts online -- but we are mere journeymen, writing with the benefit of having the works of the masters at our fingertips to inspire us and give us styles to emulate. Poems become famous for a number of reasons, but most often because they tap into the consciousness of a nation or situation and manage to perfectly communicate the thoughts of the many. This is not to say that famous poems are Hallmark lowest-common-denominator stuff -- often we read them and say to ourselves, "I know exactly what he means but there's no way I'd have thought to put it that way myself".
We are very lucky to be writing poems into an already incalculably huge volume of poetry. Perhaps "nothing special" is a symptom of familiarity breeding contempt, and against the number of poems that have since emulated the style of those famous it's not really surprising that they might seem mundane and unoriginal. The reverse is true, however -- it is not the famous poem that should be deemed "nothing special", but all those that follow after.
And "better poetry" might just as easily translate into "more familiar". It's not really possible to properly appreciate a poem after one quick reading -- I very rarely comment on poems posted here until I've let them sink in for a while to make sure that my first opinion was not just coloured by preference or mood. When I first read Blake in school, I hated him -- I thought his poems were far too simple, very rigid and a little bit pompous. I was very impressed with obscurism as a teenager
We are very lucky to be writing poems into an already incalculably huge volume of poetry. Perhaps "nothing special" is a symptom of familiarity breeding contempt, and against the number of poems that have since emulated the style of those famous it's not really surprising that they might seem mundane and unoriginal. The reverse is true, however -- it is not the famous poem that should be deemed "nothing special", but all those that follow after.
And "better poetry" might just as easily translate into "more familiar". It's not really possible to properly appreciate a poem after one quick reading -- I very rarely comment on poems posted here until I've let them sink in for a while to make sure that my first opinion was not just coloured by preference or mood. When I first read Blake in school, I hated him -- I thought his poems were far too simple, very rigid and a little bit pompous. I was very impressed with obscurism as a teenager
It could be worse