The poet walks hand and hand
with his choice of words, as poet
and words tread out the lines of the poem.
They walk in harmony (sometimes only
after difficult negotiation), and the poet
never needs to wave attention to himself,
as the poem is best when he is in the mind
of the reader, only because he is the artist,
not because he parades through the poem
with a banner bearing his name!
Stephen Dunn is one of my favorite contemporary American poets. I wrote this after reading one of his illuminating essays on the art of poetry. It’s just an observation I want to share.
Dunn does not take the extreme position that the poem is never about the poet, as some critics and academics do, but his idea is that the poem has to be larger than a simple narrative recalling some aspect of the poets experience, and that the poem’s language must engage the reader on a level whereby both the poet and the reader are mutual participants in defining the meaning of the poem. This mandates that the poet “communicate” and not just think out loud in a vacuum, as if he alone were the speaker and participant in the content and context of the poem. I kind of like these ideas, and I’m constantly trying to define what they really mean as I develop my art and craft. Well, so much for my babble of the moment!
what is a poem without a reader? - a dead thing - it’s the reader that brings it to life.
that’s why i dont like deliberately obscure & difficult poems where the poet is just showing off some kind of intelligent superiority -
which actually stems from insecure inferiority - over the masses - whom he considers as lesser mortals
but the masses are very sharp - no work of art has survived - or has been immortalized without their consent.
your poem here throws a number of ideas & thoughts - very enlightening.
parading through the poem with a banner bearing his name! that’s very well said.
poem is best when he is in the mind of the reader! that’s excellent!
i like the way your work - poetry / prose - throws open a chance to think / ponder / debate - taking the reader along.
Hey Jr.! I agree — eminently readable, imminently obscure… But, Clem, I gotta say them academs sure enough try (and have for some time now) seem sometime to succeed in preserving the life of someone who does not have the pass of the masses — witness Nathaniel Hawthorne who bemoaned the popularity of the women writers of his day (many re-exposed by Rutgers 1990’s series of books on 19th Century Women Writers, but sure enough academics have kept him alive lo these many years, not as some historical oddity but presumably as an icon of 19th century amerlit, no less! Then, of course, in the 20th entury we have two prominent examples in the execrable academic de-compositions of T.S.Elliot and that southern white apologist - Faulkner. Fast forwarding to the sixties, there is Thomas Pynchon only ever an underground phenom in academia…
What popular collections of literature do any of them appear in, eh? What masses gave them passes to immortality, say?
Tho, clem, Wat yu mean wen yu say No work of “Art” has survived. Ya gotta be careful clem how yu says dem things, y’know alrighty? I’m tinkin’ Art has lotsaworks out here….
Hi Art, Poetry is difficult but must remain clear as to communicate with everyone…..Great poets are understandable by all people, poetry is not for the college professors even if they read it and can make accurate (but sometimes wrong and too intellectual) comments…The necessity of the poets to write is in balance with the necessity that some people have to read poetry…. no reader, no poet…
And good morning, clematis and Roy and yann! I enjoyed your well thought out essays—really learnt me something!—and they gave considerable credence to what I think Dunn was trying to say, and what I was trying to summarize in my poem.
art
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Comments (8)
August 6th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Stephen Dunn is one of my favorite contemporary American poets. I wrote this after reading one of his illuminating essays on the art of poetry. It’s just an observation I want to share.
art
August 6th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Dunn does not take the extreme position that the poem is never about the poet, as some critics and academics do, but his idea is that the poem has to be larger than a simple narrative recalling some aspect of the poets experience, and that the poem’s language must engage the reader on a level whereby both the poet and the reader are mutual participants in defining the meaning of the poem. This mandates that the poet “communicate” and not just think out loud in a vacuum, as if he alone were the speaker and participant in the content and context of the poem. I kind of like these ideas, and I’m constantly trying to define what they really mean as I develop my art and craft. Well, so much for my babble of the moment!
art
August 7th, 2008 at 1:59 am
right art i totally agree.
what is a poem without a reader? - a dead thing - it’s the reader that brings it to life.
that’s why i dont like deliberately obscure & difficult poems where the poet is just showing off some kind of intelligent superiority -
which actually stems from insecure inferiority - over the masses - whom he considers as lesser mortals
but the masses are very sharp - no work of art has survived - or has been immortalized without their consent.
your poem here throws a number of ideas & thoughts - very enlightening.
parading through the poem with a banner bearing his name! that’s very well said.
poem is best when he is in the mind of the reader! that’s excellent!
i like the way your work - poetry / prose - throws open a chance to think / ponder / debate - taking the reader along.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Hey Jr.!
I agree — eminently readable, imminently obscure… 
But, Clem, I gotta say them academs sure enough try (and have for some time now) seem sometime to succeed in preserving the life of someone who does not have the pass of the masses — witness Nathaniel Hawthorne who bemoaned the popularity of the women writers of his day (many re-exposed by Rutgers 1990’s series of books on 19th Century Women Writers, but sure enough academics have kept him alive lo these many years, not as some historical oddity but presumably as an icon of 19th century amerlit, no less! Then, of course, in the 20th entury we have two prominent examples in the execrable academic de-compositions of T.S.Elliot and that southern white apologist - Faulkner. Fast forwarding to the sixties, there is Thomas Pynchon only ever an underground phenom in academia…
What popular collections of literature do any of them appear in, eh? What masses gave them passes to immortality, say?
August 7th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Tho, clem, Wat yu mean wen yu say No work of “Art” has survived. Ya gotta be careful clem how yu says dem things, y’know alrighty? I’m tinkin’ Art has lotsaworks out here….
August 7th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Sorry, Art — bad joke, couldn’t help it…
August 7th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Hi Art, Poetry is difficult but must remain clear as to communicate with everyone…..Great poets are understandable by all people, poetry is not for the college professors even if they read it and can make accurate (but sometimes wrong and too intellectual) comments…The necessity of the poets to write is in balance with the necessity that some people have to read poetry…. no reader, no poet…
yann
August 7th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Sometimes “bad” jokes are the most goodest!
And good morning, clematis and Roy and yann! I enjoyed your well thought out essays—really learnt me something!—and they gave considerable credence to what I think Dunn was trying to say, and what I was trying to summarize in my poem.
art