What is poetry? Well, I used to think I had some sort of idea and could at least distinguish a poem from ordinary prose when I saw one, but apparently such attitudes belong back in the Ark.
This, to me, is not a poem. But by the canons of modern taste, it sure is one! Some better and more astute critic referred to "chopped-up prose" in the context of modern poetry, and that is what this is (at least, to my eyes). Remove the line breaks, and you have a bog-standard piece for online space-filling. It'd fit perfectly in one of those cooking or hobby blogs where the producer is semi-professional and needs page scrolling to generate income, so they fill up the spaces with tons of reminiscences about Grandma in the kitchen on those summer/autumn/winter days cooking up the recipe, and tons of filler blah, until you eventually get to the recipe or knitting pattern or advice on how to embezzle from your employer.
I'm not expecting modern poetry to neatly rhyme and fit into the patterns of past poems, but I do at least expect a poem. Not a 'pome'.
Irish Linen, by Lane Shipsey
Pure Irish Linen
a phrase from long ago
woven into those plain tea-towels
that smoothed away wet suds
from Mother’s wedding set
Her good linen cloths
were kept to buff glass and china
or left safely in the drawer
while gaudier prints took on the grime
and stains of daily wear
I teased her for it then,
not knowing the grown-up equation
of good with expensive
And you didn’t buy Pure Irish Linen,
it was a thing you were given
A cloth spun and woven
from flax pulled and scutched
across the border, a fact on which
we did not dwell much, in Dublin
where we never called it Ulster linen
The words Pure, Irish, and Linen
no longer form an automatic cluster
Instead we buy the best fabrics we can muster
regardless of origin
whilst a machine blows our dishes dry.
As I said, remove the line breaks and you have a twee, faux-folksy piece of musings suitable for anything from a mommy blog to a chin-stroking piece on Norn Iron and how we down South approach it to a meditation on modern living and/or cottagecore aspirations, applicable for print or online media, traditional or social.
Edition version below and you look me in the eye and insist "No, that is a true real poem", I dare you.
"Pure Irish Linen" - a phrase from long ago, woven into those plain tea-towels that smoothed away wet suds from Mother’s wedding set. Her good linen cloths were kept to buff glass and china or left safely in the drawer while gaudier prints took on the grime and stains of daily wear.
I teased her for it then, not knowing the grown-up equation of "good" with "expensive". And you didn’t buy Pure Irish Linen, it was a thing you were given.
A cloth spun and woven from flax pulled and scutched across the border, a fact on which we did not dwell much in Dublin, where we never called it "Ulster" linen.
The words Pure, Irish, and Linen no longer form an automatic cluster. Instead, we buy the best fabrics we can muster regardless of origin, whilst a machine blows our dishes dry.
This has been a howl into the abyss on behalf of dinosaurs everywhere.
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Notes -
Looks like a poem to me. I don't personally connect with it, and would prefer it if a bit more effort were put into the sound of the piece, but even the condensed version looks like some kind of poem.
I don't think that this it getting at the same thing as chopped up rose parading as poetry. These criticism seems to be gesturing toward writing that is both too exclusively domestic, with an aesthetic you don't like, and too wordy for its content. But the Pure Irish Linen poem is not too wordy, just maybe not as rhythmic as one might like from a poem. These seem like quite different complaints.
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Of course it’s a poem. Just not a very good one. I’d rank the line-broken version as marginally better; it disguises the banality. There is a mode to reading poetry, a gravitas which cultivated from generations of somber Englishmen. It is most easily imported via a line break—or perhaps an emdash. That’s the signal to suspend one’s disbelief and prepare the 😔 emoji.
Apparently it appealed to enough people to get a couple articles in news blogs. And at least one paraphrase, worthy of a teenager reminded of his English homework only by the teacher’s arrival. (Let’s play “was this AI?”)
Its not an amazing poem but definitely a poem, clearly understood as such.
I have some nitpicks, the last stanza is terrible and there are some poor other lines, I don't like "while gaudier prints took on the grime and stains of daily wear" not sure how I'd rewrite it (remove the "on" or a more dramatic surgery).
Yes, older poetry has structure and rhythm as well as words, and it is fine to prefer a clear rhyme, a clever structure to this, but modern poetry is still poetry. More about mood and image than language play.
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Last year I republished an essay I'd written called "Unfalsifiable Aesthetics", in which I sort of argued that art which has no rules (and hence in which it's impossible to fail) isn't "real" art. Poetry in which the poet is expected to rigidly adhere to a rhyming scheme and metre (or at least one of them) is falsifiable: free verse isn't, there's no way to do it "wrong".
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I've been to quite a few poetry readings over the years, and in much the same way that I wish modern spoken-word performers/lecturers/sermonisers would stop pretending that what they're doing is actually a more advanced and experimental form of standup comedy, too intellectual for mere mortals (who expect to laugh and feel entertained by comedy, the plebs) to grasp - I likewise wish that amateur "poets" would just drop the facade, stop pretending that they're writing poetry, and have the balls to get up onstage and say "I'm going to rant impassionately and inelegantly about my interpersonal grievances for a few minutes."
It looks to me like both of those links are just stand-up. Dry humor is a thing. Some of the critics seemed to think that it wasn’t funny enough, not that it didn’t have any jokes.
Is including a message pretentious award-bait? Is it an attempt to grab an expanding market niche? Perhaps. But it’s also not unique to modern comedy, let alone the broader field of performance art.
No, Nanette was quite explicitly marketed and received as "post-comedy" i.e. standup without jokes. My understanding is that it's structured as a conventional standup act for the first few minutes before abruptly pivoting to intentionally humourless confrontational lecturing for the remainder. "[Gadsby] realised the self-deprecating humour common to standup comedy is doubly painful for marginalised people because it adds another voice to the chorus of people who already insult and belittle them.This led them to conclude that they can no longer do standup comedy and so they structured the piece around claiming that they are giving up comedy." (See here for more information: https://theoutline.com/post/5962/the-nanette-problem-hannah-gadsby-netflix-review)
There's a big difference between dry humour and an erstwhile standup comedian announcing that they're not going to do comedy anymore because it's traumatic to marginalised people - in the middle of a recording explicitly marketed as an experimental form of standup comedy. This isn't even a criticism of Gadsby's ability, she's a good public speaker and very passionate, but this is quite clearly spoken word performance, not comedy (not dry humour) and it would be far more sensible to market it appropriately.
Minhaj is the same basic deal. In this six-minute clip, I had to wait 1:45 until Minhaj said something that sounded like it was intended to be a joke ("hate crime barber shop"). Everything prior to that, and a great deal after, is an entirely earnest monologue about his (probably invented) experiences as a Muslim growing up in a racist USA. It's political commentary, it's spoken word performance, it's performance art - it's not stand-up, or dry humour. The audience aren't laughing, they're applauding. Of course standup comedy can be political, but when you take political comedy and subtract the comedy, all you're left with is a lecture.
Come on, 17 seconds into this he jokes about rubbing off his skin color. It's a dumb joke but it's clearly supposed to be a joke and the audience laughs too.
Of course then it's another minute and a half of seriousposting.
Edit: I realize you posted this a month ago but I ran into this again following another link.
Okay, fair enough. I still think it's fair to say that what Minhaj is doing is quite different from political stand-up comedy in the traditional sense (and not in a good way).
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Why is it
That so much
Of modern poetry
Is just
A series of sentences
With line breaks thrown in
Seemingly arbitrarily
With zero regard for
Rhythm
Rhyme
Or metre
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To me, poetry is something that packs more sense, more intent into its lines than the constituent words themselves have. Either by playing with the sounds the words make (why is a run cadence so unlike Dulce Et Decorum Est?), or by playing with their meaning (why are the thousands of rooks like charred pears, to quote one Nobel laureate?), or by skipping the clarity rule of The Motte (why is it better to live in a backwater seaside province if your lot was to be born in an empire, to quote another?).
This piece about Irish linen, on the contrary, just says what it wants to say.
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Setting aside the question of whether it is or is not a poem for a moment, reading this really drove home to me how much my appreciation of works of art is context-driven.
My opinion of whether or not this writing was worthwhile was entirely wrapped up in how how old it was- you summarized some of the main thoughts as
And there's a big difference to me between someone putting down those thoughts during/shortly after the boom in modern household appliances and globalization versus last week. My opinion of the piece dropped precipitously when I found the date it was published.
That's not to say that art only has value if it is truly novel, but if you're doing something that has been done a million times before, you have a higher bar to clear and if you're trying something brand new you'll be cut more slack.
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I suppose arguing about what counts as poetry is a different and higher brow spin on the "Culture" in CW haha
Honestly, as long as it's better than typical slam poetry, I don't particularly care what anyone calls it.
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I consider meter and rhyme to contribute heavily to the crafting of good poetry. Linguistically, I probably lost that battle before I was born; the word "poetic" is easily ascribed to beautiful prose, after all. But when I taboo the word "poem" I am left wondering how to describe such writings. I conclude approximately this: words that have meter and rhyme are more beautiful than words that do not. But beauty demands effort, and sometimes effort is better spent elsewhere, and other kinds of beauty can also be crafted into words.
If I could spontaneously make all the points I needed to make by singing immaculately metered-and-rhymed improvisations, I would absolutely do so, and it would be a superior way of speaking. I'm just not that smart.
Is "Irish Linen" a poem? Sure, if you like. No one will be confused if you call it that. Some effort has been put into refining its beauty.
Is it a good poem? Eh, it's okay.
My plaint here is that it's not a poem precisely because it can be converted so easily back into prose, and conversely it reads like a prose piece chopped up into "poem" length units.
There's a lot of modern poetry that can be blamed for the same fault, including William Carlos Williams' famous "This Is Just To Say". But I do think there is something more to a poem than just "throw some lines on a page". It's the difference between a song and an instrumental piece. You could probably hum Beethoven's Fifth (or at least the famous opening) but that doesn't make it a song.
Photographs can be art, but a photo and a painting are not the same thing. "Here's a bit what I scribbled out" is not a poem.
Well, yes--but what's to delineate "a bit what I scribbled out?" I still think this is a taboo-your-words problem. Is a haiku a poem? Well, whether it is a poem or not, you can still call it a haiku. You could also call a haiku an instance of "blank verse" (metered-but-not-rhymed) though this might be confusing since the tradition of blank verse arose quite separately from the tradition of haiku. "Free verse" is blank verse without the meter. We can describe all these things without the word "poem," if we want. So what words you use will depend a lot on what you're trying to do; the categories were made for man, not man for the categories.
One of my favorite poems is Phyllis McGinley's "The Doll House." She was certainly a poet; she wrote many metered-and-rhymed poems. I think this one is also a poem; I think it is a good poem. It has some rhyme, albeit only limited instances of meter. It would not quite be the same if you just converted it to prose.
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(Looks you in the eye) This is a true poem.
I'd agree here with @omfalos. Still, I would suggest no one has to like the same kinds of poems. That you dismiss this one is your good right.
This poem has some nice evocative imagery, and various types of rhyme, including in some cases eye and slant rhyme.
Consider the play of wet with wedding; grime with china; were, drawer, wear; then, linen, given; Dublin, linen, origin; scutched, much; cluster, muster. Even in the final stanza linen, origin, and, yes, machine.
Now not everyone loves free verse, which I would say this poem is an example of. And it's true I am not as close to the material (the context, whatever) as you may be. I might have a similar response to something written about, say, the rural South of the US--and I am, for example, not a big fan of folk art for perhaps this reason. It's too close to me, or I am too close to it (not physically). You probably know everything I'm saying already, maybe even better than I do. Without knowing who I'm writing to it's hard to know what to write.
Below is one of my favorite poems, by Anne Sexton, who taken alone
would have beenwas a fantastic poet, but who unfortunately was mimicked by enough writers that the whole dubious subgenre of so-called "confessional poetry" ended up producing a lot of poor writing. When I first read this one--about thirty years ago--I was blown away. I could try to explain why but I don't know how good a job I would do. Poems are like jokes--you either get them or you don't, or you get them and they're still not funny to you. Either way, explaining them never works. (I have put little dots between stanzas because I don't know how to get them to separate.)Some Foreign Letters
I knew you forever and you were always old,
soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold
me for sitting up late, reading your letters,
as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me.
You posted them first in London, wearing furs
and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety.
I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day,
where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes
of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way
to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones.
This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will
go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I
see you as a young girl in a good world still,
writing three generations before mine. I try
to reach into your page and breathe it back...
but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
This is the sack of time your death vacates.
How distant you are on your nickel-plated skates
in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past
me with your Count, while a military band
plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last,
a pleated old lady with a crooked hand.
Once you read Lohengrin and every goose
hung high while you practiced castle life
in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce
history to a guess. The count had a wife.
You were the old maid aunt who lived with us.
Tonight I read how the winter howled around
the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious
language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound
of the music of the rats tapping on the stone
floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone.
This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne,
Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn
your first climb up Mount San Salvatore;
this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes,
the yankee girl, the iron interior
of her sweet body. You let the Count choose
your next climb. You went together, armed
with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches
and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed
by the thick woods of briars and bushes,
nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo
up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated
with his coat off as you waded through top snow.
He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled
down on the train to catch a steam boat for home;
or other postmarks: Paris, Verona, Rome.
This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue.
I read how you walked on the Palatine among
the ruins of the palace of the Caesars;
alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July.
When you were mine they wrapped you out of here
with your best hat over your face. I cried
because I was seventeen. I am older now.
I read how your student ticket admitted you
into the private chapel of the Vatican and how
you cheered with the others, as we used to do
on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November
you watched a balloon, painted like a silver ball,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.
Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come
here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose
world go drunk each night, to see the handsome
children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close
one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you,
you will tip your boot feet out of that hall,
rocking from its sour sound, out onto
the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall
and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by
to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.
(1960)
But that which you give me here, that is a poem. You can't easily reduce it back to a prose piece. And rhyme alone doesn't make something a poem. That linen piece isn't free verse, which has its own form and structure; it's a set of words which could be prose for a magazine article on various topics.
I didn't expect you to change your mind about "that linen piece " Chacun à son goût.
Apparently this is a common quebecois saying? I think this phrase should die immediately, it’s a phonetical chimera.
Either go with :
“chacun a son goût” – each has his own taste
or:
“à chacun son goût” – to each his own taste
You're probably right. Please ignore my accent grave, my French sucks.
I mean it's correct, both in the sense that it's written this way usually, and grammatically, but it's ambigous if you say it, so I don't like it.
How about "To each, his own." Her. Her own. I refuse to say "To each, their own." I will die on that hill. Thus, the attempt at French.
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I skipped your introduction and read the poem first. I didn't check to see whether it was supposed to be an example of good or bad poetry until after I had finished it. It's a perfectly good poem—not outstanding—and it fits comfortably within the category of poetry. Removing the line breaks turns the poem into prose, but the resulting prose is hard to read because it is very information dense. The line breaks are not just there to be cute. They guide the reader to add pauses while reading to themselves or out loud. I imagine the pauses represent thoughts that lead into each other, as though the author is pausing to think of the next thing they are going to say to finish their sentence. Each line break is the transition to a new thought, and stringing them all together without line breaks makes the resulting prose hard to read. Normal prose has only one or two thoughts per sentence, while this poem has five thoughts per sentence.
You think? It reads to me more like the commonplaces of recipe and mommy blogging. 'Pull out some anecdote of childhood/family life; reference older female family member doing something, preferably invoking a tradition; bring it forward to today and me; put relevant Way We Live Now twist on it".
(1) I remember when Mum used to wash the good china (2) She used the wedding present linen for it and only for that, for ordinary dishwashing she used cheap polycotton (3) I didn't make the connection then but today as a grownup I realise why: 'good' meant 'expensive' and not for everyday (4) Today we have dishwashers! And buy products that come from all over the world! And can easily afford them so what was exotic or scarce in the past is now something to be had everyday, here follows my [recipe/other thing] with a modern take on the traditional version
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You're probably preaching to the choir more than screaming into the void. I'm extremely fond of poetry, but I definitely prefer poetry that rhymes and scans. Allowable rhymes, fine; occasional lapses from proper meter, OK. But if you ask me, a lot of what is called poetry is really just a hodgepodge of essays with wide margins.
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