Granting Legitimacy To Poetry Written Under…Unique Circumstances

So today I did a class presentation in my modern poetry class with Professor Wheeler on a poem titled “Spring” by Anna Jackson. The poet, Anna Jackson, tells the story of how she wrote the poem in under three minutes as a result of e-mail correspondence with a friend, and the poem made it into the anthologized collections produced by Bill Manhire.

For me, this raises the question as to whether a poem’s background story can subtract from the poem’s legitimacy. If we know that a poem was written in a hurry, is it fair to discount the substance and craftsmanship if we have an admission from the author that the poem did not receive much disciplined effort? The history of poetry is filled with variations of this story—whether it be writing a poem about a cat from an insane asylum or writing “Kubla Khan” in the aftermath of an opium-inspired vision—we regularly encounter anecdotes that suggest that a poem was not written under the influence of sedulous thought.

Obviously, some poets put on an act and lie to their readership to bolster their own ego—William F. Buckley often bragged that he wrote most of his New York Times editorials in ten minutes (as opposed to his National Review editorials that he claimed to spend forty-five minutes working on), and this was all a part of his “Look at how brilliant I am, I can do this without effort” schtick. Most likely, WFB spent more than ten minutes writing his editorial columns, but he liked to create the myth to enhance his own reputation for erudite brilliance.

Should we assume that these anecdotes about poetry written in sub-optimal conditions are true? If so, does this add or take away anything from our interpretation of the poem? Or should we let the content stand for itself? If Bill Manhire was sitting next to Anna Jackson and saw her write “Spring” in under three minutes, would he then include it in his anthology? We like to think of poetry as something that can’t be bogged down by context like that—once it’s written, it ceases to be the author’s—but I wonder if it is foolish to discuss literary devices as if the author deliberately crafted them when they happen to be a happy coincidence of quick or impaired thinking.

Follow the link so you can read Anna Jackson’s poem and make your own call

http://www.nzetc.org/iiml/bestnzpoems/BNZP10/t1-g1-t14-body-d1.html


Poetry as Place

One of the English classes I am taking this semester is Twenty-First Century Poetry: Here, Nowhere. The course is taught by the esteemed professor and poet, Lesley Wheeler who is a contributor to the current issue of Shenandoah. In Professor Wheeler’s class we are reading poetry and assessing how the poet describes a real or imagined space. We spent the first part of the term reading works focused on Hurricane Katrina. During the past few weeks I have become immersed in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region, studying poetry by Cynthia Hogue, Nicole Cooley, and Nathasha Trethewey. Although I have never visited New Orleans or its surrounding areas; their poetry transported me to this beautiful, tragic, and unique landscape.

This week, however, we shifted to reading poetry depicting an imagined space, The Hollow Log Lounge by Shenandoah’s very own R.T. Smith, to be exact. I expected that reading poetry about a fictional place would be a completely different experience than reading about an actual place. However, I was surprised by what I discovered. After finishing Smith’s book, The Hollow Log Lounge was just as real of a place to me as the Mississippi Gulf Coast or New Orleans’ French Quarter.

It is the author’s job to transmute a real or imagined space on to the page, so that the place becomes real for the reader. This is the beauty of an immersive reading experience. To me, there are few better experiences then becoming totally engrossed in a poem or work of fiction. What are your thoughts on immersive reading? Do you think it is a detrimental experience? Is it better for the reading to be constantly aware of the author’s artifice?

 


Senior at Washington and Lee University. Originally from Chattanooga, TN. Majoring in English.