Poets in 2016

Introduction

Poets in 2016 are continuously dealing with challenges and reveling in the successes much the same as their poetic ancestors have done throughout the ages. While the form and speed which these challenges and successes come in may have changed, their essential nature is the same. The relevance, and the value of poetry in 2016 is a supremely personal question, and as such the community of poets sustains itself through mutual appreciation of each other’s delicate and fierce gifts. 

Poets to Watch this Year

The vetted and respected National Book Foundation curates the emerging new poetical talent each year. This year they have singled out ten poets for the consideration of their special awards: 

• Daniel Borzutzky, “The Performance of Becoming Human” (Brooklyn Arts Press)

• Rita Dove, “Collected Poems 1974 – 2004” (W. W. Norton & Co.)

• Peter Gizzi, “Archeophonics” (Wesleyan University Press)

• Donald Hall, “The Selected Poems of Donald Hall” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Jay Hopler, “The Abridged History of Rainfall” (McSweeney’s)

• Donika Kelly, “Bestiary” (Graywolf Press)

• Jean Mead, “World of Made and Unmade” (Alice James Books)

• Solmaz Sharif, “Look” (Graywolf Press)

• Monica Youn, “Blackacre” (Graywolf Press)

• Kevin Young, “Blue Laws” (Knopf). (Kellogg)

During the closing decades of the 20th century there was a slight lull in poetry production and demand as the literary community decried that poetry was irrelevant in the postmodern world. However, it is not the literati, but the artists themselves who choose which art forms live on, and this death fad soon passed. Due to the connectivity of the Internet poets from around the world are sharing their work, self-publishing, organizing poetry festivals and celebrating this beautiful art. For instance, 

(Anna Yin is an award-winning poet, Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate and the representative for Ontario for the League of Canadian Poets.  She has six poetry books and her poems in English & Chinese and ten translations by her were in a Canadian Studies textbook used by Humber College. She was a finalist for Canada’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrants Award in 2011/2012. CBC Radio, Rogers TV and China Daily interviewed her about her poetry. Her Poetry Alive Program/ Poetry Education Program in local libraries, high schools and colleges has helped people to study and appreciate poetry. (Yin)

Due to the many increases in opportunities and rights for women in the recent past many more women have become poets than in past decades. However, also due to the multiplicities of opportunities for expression and new form, poetry in 2016 is rather adrift, without boundaries, and a rather disparate community. Poets are one of the largest groups to bemoan the current state of poetry, as 

hardly a year has gone by over the past quarter century without a poet or critic publishing an essay bemoaning the state of American poetry—from Dana Gioia’s “Can Poetry Matter?,” which appeared in this magazine in 1991, to Mark Edmundson’s 2013 lament, “Poetry Slam: Or, the Decline of American Verse.” And the sentiment dates back further. When Marianne Moore wrote a poem titled “Poetry,” she began with the words “I, too, dislike it.” (Kirsch)

(Figure omitted for preview. Available via download).

Much of the feeling-tone which resounds in more universally beloved poetry is bittersweet reminiscence, and this tone can only be accomplished with the passing of time. Even W.B. Yeats did not find the type of success in his time as he does today precisely because his bittersweet laments are all the purer as the distance between his time and now grows. Many poets know this, and lament instead the cynicism which poisons the capacity for the bittersweet in work being made today. This is because innocence is a key note of the poet, and innocence is in short supply nowadays. 

Many poets in 2016 are very familiar with the greats that have come before, but attempting to write in the style of the Romantics (or even the moderns) is out of place and awkward for the 21st century poet. Rather than style, poets of 2016 would do well to revisit the philosophy and heart of poetry which can carry them into the garden of new poetic forms. As Emerson points out in his essay “The Poet”:

it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.” The metaphor of growth cancels out the old metaphor of craft. For Horace, a poem was something you had to learn how to make, at the expense of great effort. For Keats, “if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.” (Kirsch)

This last statement from Keats no doubt continues to enrage poets of 2016, for whom little comes as easy as leaves in spring. Many poets in 2016 are keenly aware of their demographics, understanding the rates of who reads and who does not (as shown in the graph below). Poetry is one of the least read forms of literature in an age of stagnating literacy rates. While poets have always faced the challenges of obscurity, the fast-paced culture of today’s commodified society have added many new challenges to their field-not only in their appreciation leading to inspiration, but in having an audience with the time and attention to appreciate what is created. 

However, there remains a strong and impassioned poetry community in 2016 who are working to maintain equilibrium in this time of fast change. Writer, and host of the Poetry Out,

(Figure omitted for preview. Available via download).

Loud National Finals, Elizabeth Acevedo advocates that poetry is still alive, and a vibrant source of art:

I've always loved that a poem can be carried in the body. That unlike a novel, or a song that might require musical accompaniment, reciting a poem needs nothing but a willing voice. Not even a microphone, or clapping, or a melody. It can travel with you, it resides in you. (Beete)

The versatility and the transformative power of poetry remains. Acevedo points out, “I think some poems sound really good out loud; they can be lifted off of the page. I think some poems are better read to oneself; they require the reader to pull it apart and grapple with the subtly. But they're all still poems” (Beete). Poetry is one of the most free formed and lyrical forms of writing, much like a song, and the value of this contribution can only be truly measured in the heart. 

Many poets today are also educators, and the sensitivity and capacity they bring to their instruction is the encouragement to find one’s own unique voice while contributing to the larger conversation of humanity through time. As Avevedo emphasizes, we tell students to be unique, to share their voice, but then we give them specific rubrics and expectations that make them think a poem can only be one thing. So I try to remember myself, and remind my students, that there are specific experiences, and constraints, and intersectional dynamics that make us particular kinds of beings. (Beete)

Conclusion

Poetry has lost none of its relevance today even as it seems to move underground in the bustle of technologic fascination. The poets of today will be the legends emergent tomorrow seeding the creativity of future generations to expand their capacity to envision themselves and their world with brighter, more innocent eyes.

Notes

1: Chart retrieved from: http://www.vidaweb.org/the-count-2012/

2: Chart Retrieved from: http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/resize/st_20160319_newjhread_2151444-1536x2604.jpg

Works Cited

Beete, Paulette. “Art Talk with Poet and 2016 Poetry Out Loud Host Elizabeth Acevedo.” Art Works, 12 Apr. 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2016/art-talk-poet-and-2016-poetry-out-loud-host-elizabeth-acevedo

Kellogg, Carolyn. “The 10 poetry contenders for the 2016 National Book Award.” Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-national-book-poetry-20160913-snap-story.html

Kirsch, Adam. “Why (Some) People Hate Poetry.” The Atlantic, Oct. 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/why-poetry-misses-the-mark/497504/

Yin, Anna. “Poetry Alive.” Annapoetry.com, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.annapoetry.com/poetry-alive-event-2/