He has it wrong...
Mayhew seems to be suggesting that because the audience is savvy/jaded in some way, and can't hear poetry divorced from the ironic tone... it becomes impossible to write sincere poetry, poetry without self-awareness, the wink-wink...
He isn't saying that, but he is. Which raises the question we all worried about at 19, when an undergrad prof first asked us, "How much does the author's intent matter?"
I call triple bullshit on this line of thought. Because the poem I write is the poem I write, even if you can't hear it. The poem you hear is a different poem altogether. Sometimes what you hear is smarter than what I write. We call that luck.
I definitely write poems that are free of irony. I border on sentimental. This is why, when I am feeling ironic or self-aware, I abuse italics so badly. Because the words that aren't in italics, AREN'T in italics! I use exclamation points too!!!!
I mean my punctuation!!! I want my poems to touch you, make you swallow hard.
If you don't believe me, go read some of your ironic poems to a little kid and find out what they really mean.
He isn't saying that, but he is. Which raises the question we all worried about at 19, when an undergrad prof first asked us, "How much does the author's intent matter?"
I call triple bullshit on this line of thought. Because the poem I write is the poem I write, even if you can't hear it. The poem you hear is a different poem altogether. Sometimes what you hear is smarter than what I write. We call that luck.
I definitely write poems that are free of irony. I border on sentimental. This is why, when I am feeling ironic or self-aware, I abuse italics so badly. Because the words that aren't in italics, AREN'T in italics! I use exclamation points too!!!!
I mean my punctuation!!! I want my poems to touch you, make you swallow hard.
If you don't believe me, go read some of your ironic poems to a little kid and find out what they really mean.
11 Comments:
My poems are not ironic.
___
Yeah right.
But seriously, I think if the audience is jaded by anything it's by the persistent irony that never moves out of a narrow emotional range. The solution is not the Louise Gluck woodenness, but a poetry that is both self-aware and emotionally open. Not the kind of irony that denies affect and simply flat-lines. That's ok for a poem or two but quickly becomes old.
Go ahead and be sentimental. That doesn't exclude some self-awareness and intelligence.
I absolutely agree! It;s a challenge to everyone as writers.
But it's also a challenge to us as readers, to shake off habits.
And by "you" I don't mean anyone specific.
Except when I say, "you are the bomb diggity" which could be directed at eaither of you.
The "bomb diggity"? What's that? I'm not up on the slang of young people nowadays. Is it good or bad? have I been insulted or complimented?
Speaking of little kids, look at Julias's pencil poem. The speaker of the poem is sad, yet the poet is being funny, having a good time writing it. There are two levels going on. You sympathize with the pencil, but you know it's all a joke. Or "Tigers helping the sick." (Tony knows what I'm talking about.)
"Bomb diggity", circa 1995.
i heart triple bullshit.
See, though, "Tigers helping the sick" is funny because it's an unusual juxtaposition--Tigers and sick people. It's also funny because the poem imagines tigers--known to most of us as "ferocious beasts" doing very human things. That's not just funny, but it's kind of touching. If that's "irony" fine, but to say "it's all a joke" downplays the real intelligence and feeling of either poem (tiger or pencil). In these poems the affect is not flattened or affected...it's real. OR Julia is a brilliant ironist who ironizes so stealthily that I just don't pick up on it.
Help me out.
"the poem I write is the poem I write"
What is the spirit behind this statement? Who is your audience and how, if at all, are you accountible to them.
er...accountAble
I guess I mean a simple tone. I can't control what you hear, only what I hear as I'm writing. You write for a target audience, and I hope my target audience can hear my poems in a forthright clear way when that's what I want.l But I can't control it, can't force a particular way of listening. I ahve to accept that, but I can't try to please everyone.
Like, if every time I say the word "bone" you giggle becasue it makes you think of hardons, should I not use the word bone?
I like to use the word "cock" because it makes me think of chickens.
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