Concrete poetry is a favourite of mine, but what’s the point when the content isn’t poetic? When the content sounds more like lines in a novel than lines in poetry? Yes, there’s prose and verse novels but prose and verse novels have a different form-different ways to flow. Sure, there are some beautiful shapes in the princess saves herself in this one.
Not “poetry” that uses overused imagery and clichés in the same old ways.
What do contemporary poets have to write to be different from the previous poets? What can they contribute to what would later be a new poetry group or movement? Certainly not “poetry” that has no or near-zero flow-that read like clichéd, stereotypical quotes that you can find on social media within a few seconds. So, it’s clear that contemporary poets have their work cut out for them. Mary Oliver also lists clichés, inversion and informational language as inappropriate. It is written in free verse, like Lovelace’s ‘we made it after all’ but this singular stanza sounds even more poetic than Lovelace’s entire poem. There are rhymes that you can’t immediately pick up by sight. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nursesĪnd my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. I am nobody I have nothing to do with explosions. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietlyĪs the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Read this first stanza from Sylvia Plath’s ‘Tulips’: (‘we made it after all’ from the princess saves herself in this one)ĭoes that even sound remotely poetic to you? To me, it certainly didn’t. Then, you read something like this:Ĭeiling. It flows beautifully off the tongue when read out loud, and there is imagery and phonaesthetic devices of poetry in play as well. At this present time, it’s counted as clichéd–artificial even-but read something like the first stanza of George Gordon Byron’s ‘She Walks in Beauty’:Īnd you can already feel that it’s poetic. Mary Oliver, in A Poetry Handbook, wrote that poetic diction is one of the inappropriate languages for poetry and okay, I do like poetic diction now and then but I agree that it’s been done to death and should stay in the previous centuries. Really, the moment I finished this collection, the only plausible reason I can think of for voters to vote for this collection is its feminist title because I find almost nothing poetic about the “poems” here. Why is it a lie? Because it doesn’t deserve the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award. Published: 2017 by Andrews McMeel Publishing The princess saves herself in this one by Amanda Lovelace
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