Are the words enough to stand on their own, without relying on the way they are performed by an individual artist? (Not a rhetorical question: I’m not familiar enough with rap to be able to answer it, and I’m not sure the same answer applies to all rap.) One possible obstacle to rap and song lyrics being considered poetry is how much of their appeal depends on what the performer (or performance, or accompanying music) brings to them.
I don’t know that West Side Story was disdained by “the literati” of its day; do you have any cites to this effect?
What does it mean to “matter”? Sure, you probably can’t make a living as a poet. But when I’m in an uncomfortable or stressful situation, when life just seems to be too heavy, I find a quiet place and recite poetry to myself. There are poems that last less than a page that have made more of an impact on my life than massive novels or 3-hour long movies. The way I see it, as long as one person on Earth has their life improved or changed by poetry, it still matters. Since when has popularity been the best standard to judge art by?
Also, “never” is a very, very, very broad word. Poetry has existed and has touched people for thousands of years. In the last, say, 50, it has become a bit unfashionable. Do you really feel that’s enough time to judge?
I don’t thing good poetry is written by people motivated by the desire to contribute to a major art form.
True, technology captures what’s going on better than some scribbler. But, by its nature, technology will become dated immediately, and the impact of one message from one era is watered down.
Look at those 1970’s disco bunnies in the grainy film footage. They seem so silly now. How could they have any claim to relevance?
Yeah, yeah, World War One. Grainy black and white of guys who would all be long dead now anyway even if they hadn’t dressed up in those clumsy uniforms and gotten killed. So what?
Though Sigfried Sassoon’s
I’ll go with you, then,
Since you must play this game of ghosts
You raise good points. I’ve had people like/love/be moved and inspired by a poem or two of mine, and that has meaning indeed. That’s why I said “as a major art form” in the title. Something that the whole culture recognizes and celebrates in the moment.
I’m referring to new works. Sadly, while people will be reading Keats 200 years from now, I highly doubt they’ll be reading the poets of 2015, even though there are no doubt many excellent ones. The reason is that their work didn’t make a mark on the culture in its time, so it won’t be dug up and celebrated later, either (I think that’s generally something true about art: if it’s not popular in its time, it’s not enjoyed by a large number of people later. There are relatively few exceptions.)
I don’t agree, if only for the fact that poetry has been a major art form recognized by the culture until the 1950s or so. Most of the poets that we know about were trying to be published and read. A rare few poets like Dickinson were “discovered” and promoted by others.
I think one potential reason is that poets have tended not to choose bold, unique themes for the past 50 years or so. Tended to.
One rare poem that did make a cultural impact in recent years with a strong theme is Rape Joke. I think it’s pretty awesome and you might just remember it.
I think this is a great point. I think one key and very tricky thing about great literature is that it was written to be accessibe to the average literate person. As in Shakespeare, always something for the groundlings (which was also very funny and actually enhanced the artistic effect for the “smart people.”).
I think that’s the curse of almost all modern art except for visual art like painting, sculpture, etc. (Music being a different case: I would say pop music and the music the masses really listen to is our classical music, so to speak.) Poetry and lit fic are in a cul-de-sac from which they just can’t escape. Poets and novelists want to write great art, but the literati demand that their art be inaccessible. Otherwise it’s not real art. This is a burden that people like Dickens, Austen, and Dostoyevsky never knew.
Camille Paglia, love her or hate her (I have tended toward “like”) had a very crucial insight: the standards and expectations of the Classical Era could only be upturned once. Poets, painters, novelists, and so on went cray cray being all avant-garde in the late 19th, and then really accelerating in the 20th century. But by the 50s that was done. Yet artists kept thinking, “Man, I’m going to be really edgy and subversive–I’ll show 'em.” The public went from gasping to yawning.
I mean in 2015 going forward. Our art today is film, TV, popular music, and to a lesser extent visual art like painting/sculpture/etc. (rich people still want art that’s “important” for their collections!) Video games should be recognized as important art in our culture at this point. Note that high production costs and scarcity (in the case of visual art, often but not always only scarcity) characterize these forms of art.
I mostly agree, but I think the novel and to a lesser extent poetry flourished in the pre-WWII 20th century in the US. The 19th century was largely a wasteland, with Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson now virtually the only literary figures accorded respect.
You’ve probably heard of Outsider Art. But that’s really it’s own subculture without a nation- or worldwide impact.
Yes, video games are now an essential form of storytelling, mythmaking, and art in our culture. For example, even though I haven’t played “Five Nights at Freddie’s” myself, I’ve enjoyed talking about it with my daughter, watching Let’s Play videos, and looking at fan art. One creator made something that resonated in the culture and got people talking and telling stories of their own. That’s art! And it’s good art, too. And, as in my case, you can enjoy it and be a part of it even if you don’t play the video game itself.
I must somewhat disagree. I think we’re used to that being the case now, but there didn’t use to be that kind of dichotomy. Dickens was loved by the masses and lauded by the critics. Early in the 20th century, artists started to be “difficult” on purpose, but smart critics could still appreciate them. Thus the divergence began.
I think Jay-Z just totally sucks; I don’t get his popularity at all. But, hmm, will individual rappers be considered “great” in 2115? I have my doubts about that. The reason doesn’t have anything to do with rap as art but for its timing in the arc of pop music. A few fundamental groups like the Beatles and Stones will be remembered, but I think, for simple reasons, most other bands and artists will be largely washed out by the progress of time. There’s only so much mindshare for things past, after all. That said, I absolutely do believe that people will listen to the rap of our time, but it will be a long-tail subculture like everything else.
He definitely was accorded a very high level of respect as a conductor, composer, and all-around knows-music-kinda-guy. The thing is, in his heyday, the 50s people thought the past was going to be like the future. They thought that we’d have our Great Composers in 1950, 1980, 2000, and so on. There would always be someone to fill that slot. He was thought to be one of them back then. West Side Story was extremely popular with both the people and critics. It was indeed a cultural event. Don’t forget that Sondheim did the lyrics!
Great points. The thing is, writing in verse and meter skillfully was a kind of filter for those who were worthy of being called poet and those that weren’t. It’s a skill that is to a large extent objectively easy to assess. If you couldn’t do it, buh-bye.
Whitman changed that. A lot of people don’t know that he started out writing in strict rhyme and meter. His early work suuuucks. Some of his later stuff like “Captain, My Captain” is still mostly in rhyme and meter. But he was of course great at free verse. He was genuinely entertaining in the medium, and people still love it.
The trouble is that a lot of dickheads then came along and thought they could do it. The rhyme and meter shibboleth was gone, the more or less objective standard. Well, there have been a heck of a lot of poets who haven’t been able to do it, and it’s created the aforementioned noisy system where the art itself gets sullied and people get sick of it.
As you said, of course a “real” poem set to music doesn’t cease to be a “real” poem.
But how often have you and your buds taken the little books out of the CD jewel cases and said, “Let’s jam on these lyrics and read them like poems!”
Of course you haven’t. No one does. Side note: I saw this very laughable and cynical PR guide written by the suits to promote Bob Dylan, suggesting that fans could hold poetry readings and read his lyrics. Again, no one ever does that.
So, what makes song lyrics not poetry? It’s pretty simple: they’re designed to be read not off the page but with a certain rhythm in time with the music or beat (in the case of rap).
I’m a songwriter too, and I put a lot of work into my lyrics. I still don’t think they work as poems, however.
OK, how about rap? You have poetry slams that have mostly turned into rap without a beat in the background. Is that poetry? Hmm, borderline. Yes, it’s read off the page without music, but it typically requires a particular rhythm that is not obvious to the reader and must exist in the poet’s/rapper’s head. I don’t think that rap-style poetry really works as poetry and, in any case, the public cares fuck-all about it, as is true of poetry in general, so it’s murky.
But don’t get me wrong, rap is art, and it’s art that is appreciated by millions of people. I just think it requires its beats and music to be effective and loved by the masses.
Well, pre-WWII American Fiction included Cabell, and post included the late great George V. Higgins, so the novel is still one form where America triumphs.
Possibly not the short story any more. But that seems universal.
I’d hesitate to say that poetry will never make a comeback. Forever is a long time, and we don’t know what social changes will happen in the future. We don’t even know what will happen in the next five years.
I disagree with those who say that song lyrics and poetry are the same thing. Song lyrics have to deal with a set of constraints that poems don’t. For one thing, a song has to be singable. Good lyricists favor certain vowels and consonants and avoid others, which is one reason so many songs follow the June-moon-spoon model (although a really good songwriter will avoid cliched rhyme schemes). Oscar Hammerstein II never forgave himself for ending the song “What’s the Use of Wonderin’” with “and all the rest is talk.” The “k” at the end of “talk” isn’t singable.
Song lyrics also get part of their meaning from the music, and vice versa. It’s easy to find songs whose lyrics sound inane when read aloud, but sound great when sung. A poem has to stand on its own.
Rap may be different. A lot of rap is more spoken than sung, so it may not have the same set of restrictions.
I think one of the main reasons interest in poetry has declined is that it got too intellectual. This is something that happened to some other art forms in the twentieth century, such as “classical” music and painting. Even jazz went through a period where it was overly intellectual, which is why so many people find it to be inaccessible. As happened with other art forms, poetry was taken over by people who were more interested in displaying technique, in breaking away from old forms, in showing off how smart they were than in reaching anyone emotionally. Successful art usually has a strong emotional component - it gets you in the gut. Without that, the public loses interest. An art form that’s only about technique appeals only to insiders.
I think the reason why it’s “turned to shit” is not because of the thing in itself being bad but because we have lost the cultural mechanism to celebrate the good and winnow out the bad. Imagine a world in which there were no longer hit songs, but academics held competition to reward “the best of popular music.” It’s not just that Top 40 radio wouldn’t exist to offer you up some earworms; there would no be “corporate rock” for indie music to push against, either. Standards would be gone, everyone would just be doing their own thing. Meanwhile, various people and organizations would try to be gatekeepers in their own self-serving ways. At first, the legacy of “corporate rock” would exist as a kind of de facto guide to either follow or rebel against, but as the decades rolled on, that too would be lost. It’s easy to imagine music seeming like a washed-out wasteland in such a situation. There would be no trends. It would not seem like a part of mass culture. It would seem irrelevant.
Such is the case with poetry. I think the total amount of brainpower and talent behind poetry today far exceeds what existed in, say, the 19th century, but the cultural narrative has been totally lost. There is no way to be an orthodox poet today or an edgy poet today, as there is nothing to follow or push against.
A friend of mine just put together a poetry/art collection in Chicago. Lots of offers from the people who came to the gallery for the poetry as well as for the paintings.
I’m a poet. I don’t have any problem finding people to talk poetry with and celebrate great work. I mentor others in poetry and there are more people interested in learning than I have time to teach.
That can be taken in one of two ways, if I simplify a bit. Do you feel that poetry is working for you and people like you now? Or do you feel that poetry has the status as an art in our society that’s ideal (which would also encompasses the first thing)?
I honestly don’t know what it means for an art form’s status to be “ideal.” I don’t write, read, or think about poetry in order to gain status, and I don’t do it because it’s popular or because it’s not. I do it because I love it and I miss it when I stop.
It’s an astonishingly difficult, complex, and beautiful art form that has some limits to its appeal. I don’t see anything wrong with any of that.
That’s all fine, and I respect your dedication to the craft. I really do. But my OP was about whether it will matter as a major art form in our culture again. I don’t think it will, the dedication of people like you notwithstanding.