Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry 118 Poems 323 Pages
Each year Quill and Parchment dedicates the April issue to “Poets
on Poets”. My assignment this month was to review Billy Collins’ latest
collection of poetry but I decided not to do so. Having neither the intellect
nor the self confidence of Harold Bloom I decided that I will critique Billy
Collins some other day. This day and in this issue of a magazine dedicated to
poets, I will write instead of a poet’s vision and our own need as poets to
make that vision live.
Billy Collins was Poet Laureate of
the United States from 2001 – 2003.For those of you who aspire to this
position, supposedly the epitome of recognition of an American Poet by our
government, you should know that the position differs from other countries who
extend this same honor. The Poet Laureate is not expected to write poems for
occasions as they do in the UK. However, while not expected to write an ode
praising trickle down economics, the Poet Laureate is expected to raise the
awareness of the general public to poetry, usually by undertaking a project
with that aim. The Croesian reward for this work is a stipend of $35,000 and a
budget large enough to throw a small wine and cheese party, but only once a
year. On the positive side, the resources of the Library of Congress back these
projects.
“Poetry 180: A Turning Back to
Poetry” was the result of Billy Collins’ project. During a series of readings
at a high school, he was presented with the school newspaper that had an
article about poetry. The writer stated: “Whenever I read a modern poem it’s
like my brother has his foot on the back of my neck in the swimming pool.”
Billy Collins has been writing poetry since 1977. Like nearly all of us, he is
averse to inflicting abuse of this type on children so he looked at the poetry
that was being assigned in today’s literature curricula with a particular eye
toward “modern work”. Essentially, he found the usual list of suspects, (Yeats,
Eliot, cummings, Frost) and little else. Essentially, these high school
students were reading the same poetry that was assigned to their grandparents
forty years earlier.
Collins decided to put together a
collection of “short, clear contemporary poems which any listener could
basically ‘get’ on first hearing – poems whose injection of pleasure is
immediate. He collected 180 poems, the amount of days in a high school year,
and placed them on the Library of Congress website (www.loc.gov/poetry/180). The website is available to all high school teachers and
the intent is to read a poem a day during the daily announcements that are
broadcast over the public address system. Students hear poetry without the need
to critique, parse or in any way respond. The poem is there for the pleasure of
the student, no more, no less. The website is still active and after “Poetry
180” appeared in 2003 in print, it was popular enough to launch a second
publication, “180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day”.
So how accurate was Billy Collins’
perception about the state of American poetry in the classroom? Were the
student’s comments about the pain of reading modern poetry exaggerated? Who
speaks for what is to be included in the syllabus used by the literature teachers
across this country? Is this book a more progressive look at modern poetry or
simply a “dumbing down” of the required work?
I went to my own library looking for
answers. I found a copy of “The Great Modern Poets: The Best Poetry of Our
Times” by Michael Schmidt (2006, Quercus Press). The book was more recent than “Poetry
180” and collected the works of poets in a somewhat chronological order. It
began with Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928) and ended with James Fenton (b. 1949). Of
the 49 poets in this book nearly half were born in the 19th century
and none were born after 1949. Six were women and two were of African heritage,
Langston Hughes of the United States and Derek Walcott of St. Lucia. The
representative group of poets was overwhelmingly white, male and the youngest
was 61 years old. (For the record, I was in college in the late ‘60s, about the
time that Fenton was there.) This is what the accepted canon of “Modern Poetry”
looks like and to a 16 year old, this can be a bit daunting.
“Poetry 180” presents a very
different face to the reader. Admittedly, there was no pressure to include “recognized”
poets and no fear that a seminal work of the English language was omitted. What
it did do for Collins, however, was to release him from previous collections of
this type and allow him to find a more diverse as well as accessible group of
poets. There are three times the amount of women represented here and a quick
scan of last names reveals Hispanic, Asian and Native American writers. There
is the usual gravitas of writers like Philip Levine , John Hollander and
Charles Simic but they are interspersed among poems such as Thomas Lux’ “The
Man into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball” and Robert Hershon’s “Sentimental
Moments or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?”. Collins could also choose his
poems from such outside-the-box writers like Charles Bukowski and John Updike,
an unexpected choice in a poetry anthology. Probably the most impressive
feature of this anthology is the way much of the poetry speaks about everyday
events. Shoshauna Shy’s “Bringing My Son to the Police Station to Be
Fingerprinted”,Leroy V. Quintana’s “Poem for Salt”. Hal Sirowitz’ “I Finally
Managed to Speak to Her” and Nicholas Christopher’s “Through the Window of the
All-Night Restaurant” give a sharp yet poignant image of what each of us has
gone through. Nowhere in this book is a long ramble on old age a la “Prufrock”
or Achilles pondering the strength of his shield. Billy Collins has thrown open
the windows of the Academy and has
allowed the breeze of contemporary poetry to refresh his readers.
What we have here is, on the face of
it, an anthology of good poetry that is available to the reader without a deep
grounding in the Classics. It seems, though, that between the pages of this
book lies a challenge to all of us. The modern poetry section of our children’s
curriculum in English is an adventure in literary antiquity. Consequently,
exposing our children to POETRY with a capital “P” is tedious for them. Is
Robert Frost important? Yes, definitely. Should we still teach the giants of
literature? Yes, but as a stepping stone. Poetry did not stop in 1940. It is
alive and well on the web and in small journals slowly yellowing on the book
racks. Is Dorianne Laux more important than Marianne Moore? I don’t know but I
think our children should be exposed to both. They should learn the basics from
the established masters but they should see as well that poetry plays with
language and can be light hearted as well as serious.
Each state has a Board of Regents
who establishes the curriculum that is taught in schools across the state.
Admittedly, they are dedicated people who devote their lives to education. But
sometimes they get it wrong. Just
recently the Board of Regents of the State of Texas decided to drop Thomas
Jefferson’s name from those who were part of “The Enlightenment”. Whether the
decision was politically motivated or not, it was not correct and will have an
effect on students of Texas. Updating the syllabus in poetry would require that
the Regents of each state keep abreast of the state of poetry in order to make
an informed decision. There is no reason why good, established poets like Ted
Kooser or Bob Hickock or Rita Dove need to be kept secret.
Billy Collins’ nomination to the
position of Poet Laureate was not without comment from some critics who thought
him too frivolous. I speak as a native New Yorker when I say that there was
nothing frivolous about his poem “The Names”, a tribute to the people who died
in the World Trade Center on September 11th. Billy Collins believes
that poetry should be an enjoyment and accessible to every one of us. If it is
kept in The Academy, it becomes more archaeology that literature. Each one of
us, especially those of us with children in high school (or grandchildren, for
that matter) should make ourselves heard on this issue. Contemporary poetry is
a vibrant art. We need to tell this to the educators making the choices for our
children in this field.
The “Poetry 180” program is still
available on the Library of Congress website. Let your local school know about
it. It is free and the only investment is an additional two or three minutes
during the daily announcements. On our part, it requires a passion for the art
of writing and a willingness to display that passion. As Collins himself says: “Clarity
is the real risk of poetry. To be clear means opening yourself up to judgement,
The willfully obscure poem is a hiding place where the poet can elude the
reader…” It is time for poetry to come out into the sunlight.
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