Among my personal list of “most overrated books” is Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I regularly force myself to teach those poems; they’re very popular, for whatever reason, with my students. I dislike Sylvia Plath's poetry; her poems are full of self pity and full of accusation at that poor father who “abandoned” her so selfishly by dying on her. So much blame. And so much of today’s poetry is the same. Every year I read the latest award winners--the Breadloaf Prize, the Whitman Prize--and every year I gag at what I read. I don’t want to hear about some guy’s adulterous wife. I don’t want to know what her nipples looked like. I don’t care if she left him for his best friend. These are things you don't want to discuss with people, if, say, you’ve just met them at a neighborhood party. Too Much Information, you shriek! But if it’s a poet, then hey! All that personal garbage is right out there for everyone to wallow in.
I recall one instance in a certain well-known MFA school--the name of which, of course, will remain a secret--in which some poor instructor tried to turn the tide: a female student came in with an Ariel-like poem lamenting the “three lost pearls” which somewhat leadenly symbolized her three lost babies, lost through her three abortions. “Three abortions!” the instructor scoffed. “What idiot could have so little self control as to need three abortions? It’s not even believable!”
Even as he spoke students in the class were gesturing wildly to him to stop, to no avail. The would-be poet’s eyes filled with tears. She refused to speak further. It was all so true, don’t you know.
And this is why I loathe contemporary poetry. Whatever happened to imagination? To art, for god’s sake?
And it's all Sylvia Plath's fault.
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5 comments:
Hi,
I just wanted to say I couldn't agree more about the state of contemporary poetry. Things will change though, we can't wallow forever...?
Cheers,
Lauren
Well actually, at least one of those lost pearls was through a miscarriage, which is well-documented!
Poor Sylvia Plath. But well yeah, you're right. Art, imagination and inspirations are kinda lost somewhere in the rubble of people painting their personal lives.
I kinda smirked at your poet. It was plain good humor. ;)
I think your missing the point here.
Good poetry is good poetry, whether it is overly "confessional" or just a basic description of a natural scene, whether or not the poem is good is not dependant on whether or not it is one of these things, but whether or not the poem is good.
I agree that most ameteur poets these days are too concerned with cathartic self expression to be bothered with refinement and the actual art of poetry, but this is a problem of the individual, it is not to say something cannot be highly personal in detail but still subtle enough that the reader is not inundated with lines of facts.
In other words saying you hate Plath's poems because they are full of self pity and accusation seems weak criticism, though a valid opinion. (The irony is this aspect of her poetry drives me insane too purely due to the excessive descriptions of relatively basic things) In other words it seems to imply all poems which are concerned with self pity are bad.
While it seems easy to point to narcissism as the engine behind a lot of ameteur poetry, this is perhaps unfair in that there is a certain beauty to the plight of the individual, to study a human from that perspective which poetry affords is a beautiful thing, WHEN it is done properly. And I truly believe it can be. I'm thinking of Vita Wests "beechwoods at Knole" or
I think it's just your taste. You don't like this kind of poetry, that invloves self pity and negative emotions. But it doesn't mean this poems were poeticly bad which are not at all. I think her poems reflect human emotions. It's very humane. And so strongly expressed with skill.
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