The problem with poetry

[busker]

The problem with art in general is that it’s all been done before
I find myself unable to appreciate any modern poetry, even the very well written examples thereof.

Geoffrey Hill was a far better craftsman than Shakespeare, and moreover knew things an almost medieval bard (yes, yes, Renaissance and voyages of discovery but also beheadings galore and no baths) with his utterly destitute and practically illiterate world view couldn’t have imagined, but we can see Geoff Hill. He’s on a hill, you know where he’s going. You know the setup. You can expect the revelation at the end of the poem.

It’s so formulaic it’s rubbish.

And this is craft, mind you - not anyone can write like Hilll or Ted Kooser. But you, the reader, are tired of being manipulated.

And so the only poetry worth reading is primitive poetry. Even Chaucer, because he was a hack. But from before the internet.

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Maybe one way to salvage poetry is to write about other planets

[milo]

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The problem with art in general is that it’s all been done before
I find myself unable to appreciate any modern poetry, even the very well written examples thereof.

Geoffrey Hill was a far better craftsman than Shakespeare, and moreover knew things an almost medieval bard (yes, yes, Renaissance and voyages of discovery but also beheadings galore and no baths) with his utterly destitute and practically illiterate world view couldn’t have imagined, but we can see Geoff Hill. He’s on a hill, you know where he’s going. You know the setup. You can expect the revelation at the end of the poem.

It’s so formulaic it’s rubbish.

And this is craft, mind you - not anyone can write like Hilll or Ted Kooser. But you, the reader, are tired of being manipulated.

And so the only poetry worth reading is primitive poetry. Even Chaucer, because he was a hack. But from before the internet.

---

Maybe one way to salvage poetry is to write about other planets

Not really sure what your specific gripe is about but how ironic it’s been griped before. For sure the modernists and even more strongly the Dadaists and that was a century before.

There has been a movement, nnuts (nothing new under the sun) that is older than either of us.

That being said - I would love if Chaucer came back in vogue. We really have reached a point he reads as if from another planet

[busker]

I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

[milo]

I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

For sure it puts a burden on modern poets - you cannot just write about pretty birds and trees or love loss and death. It is almost enough to make you want to mine the avant garde if they weren’t so dreadfully dull

[busker]

I was having a bit of a rant but yes, the weariness is not new, it dates back to the late nineteenth century. The search for freshness that drove Gauguin to Tahiti (apart from the freedom to have multiple wives) was born of the same sense that there’s nothing new to say.

That’s why literature from the late nineteenth onwards reads so fresh still. Maybe even the mid. But pre French Revolution, the britches are over starched.

For sure it puts a burden on modern poets - you cannot just write about pretty birds and trees or love loss and death. It is almost enough to make you want to mine the avant garde if they weren’t so dreadfully dull

So how do you deal with that?
I find that dentists have an unfair advantage in that they have a captive audience in a chair for a length of time all the time. And unlike with surgeons, the patient is conscious yet powerless to resist.