You Won't Read This

You Won't Read This
by Mike Madias, Clinical Sociologist and Columnist

January 6, 2003

Columnist Mike Madias You won't read this. And it does not matter whether you do or not. Because, in writing this, people who write poetry and read poetry will benefit. My wife, who writes poetry, will benefit. Perhaps, she will smile sweetly upon me. Perhaps she will forgive me a minor transgression.

I am sorry, but, most of the contemporary poetry that I hear at readings or read in literary magazines is of low quality. I am no master poet. My best efforts at the craft are mediocre. And yet, when I am asked to read at a salon or a public library or a university, my readings are met with waves of undeserved applause. It must be my karma. After all, l I have showered equally mediocre poets with my applause. It is almost a matter of don't ask; don't tell. Don't ask me for quality in poems, and I won't tell you what I really think of your poems.

This is a sad state of affairs, because I am honestly talented as a poet. I know that the material I write is crap. Others who read are also talented. I am dazzled by their talent. I am just unexcited about their poetry. I suspect that I am not the only person who feels this way. I don't need the ghost of Walt Whitman to tell me that there is something rotten in the state of contemporary poetry. Something is missing. Were that not the case, I could not look at poetry I wrote five years ago and be able to say, "Hmmm, this old stuff is good! It is every bit as good as the poetry I am currently writing. I have been a consistently good poet for five years."

Do you see the self delusion here, you who are not reading this? Compare this to other things I do. I work a computer better than I did six months ago. I cook better potato pancakes now than I used to. Even my journalistic prose is better than it used to be. I have learned and I have improved there. But my poetry has not improved in five years or more. I am no poetic prodigy, no literary Mozart, who was writing sonnets from the age of three. The desire is there. I want to write better poetry. I grew up having wonderful verse read to me. I remember and still love A.A. Milne. What I wouldn't give to be able to write:

"James James Morrison Morrison,
Weatherby George DuPree,
took good care of his mother,
though he was only three.

James James said to his mother,
"Mother," he said, said he,
"You must never go down to the end of the town
if you don't go down with me."

I doubt that A.A. Milne was a poetic prodigy. He was just a kid with a teddy bear. But one day, in a proper British public school, some elder said to him, "Mr. Milne, what you have written is not poetry. It is pure drivel. Now go back to your desk and write me some proper English verse." And after practice and criticism and more practice and criticism, Milne learned to write wonderful poetry. It is unlikely that the headmaster would have liked the subversive poetry in "Now We Are Three" much less the social commentary and satire in the original, pre-Disney, Pooh books.

It did not matter whether the headmaster was correct or not. The critical presence and discipline he imposed helped bring about poetry, real poetry. There are poetic prodigies. Emily Dickinson was one. But for the rest of us, a critical presence from a disciplinarian, would be helpful. Perhaps good for nothing else than being an authority figure that we might rebel against and revile later. Poetry suffers because there are too few of us who are willing to be reviled by the young. It is a definite moral lapse in the older generation. Poetic criticism is necessary. It doesn't have to be correct, nor constructive, nor kind.

What is the alternative? A thousand poetry workshops, where never is heard a discouraging word, gave us coffee houses filled with people who put their names on open microphone lists; shuffled through their papers and did not listen to the poetry read by others; strutted and fretted for five minutes on the makeshift stage; and then left the place; intoxicated with caffeine and thinking they were worthy of the name poet. If there were discipline and criticism in those thousand workshops, we might have some real emerging poetic voices in the coffee houses.

Now, I am not a critic of poets or poetry. My credentials are in sociology and journalism. Major market daily newspapers publish my editorials. So I do have credentials to criticize organized social situations, scenes. Slam poetry is a scene. It is formal, and a loud, beer drinking, saloon audiences gives honest, if crude feedback to the slammers. I have heard that slamming is vicious, and unfair. How wonderful that is. Academic poetry is a scene. It is supported by the university English departments with a number of post-modern theoretical ideas. Some types of it are absolutely jibberish, but I think that's what they are supposed to be. They eschew "meaning" in their "language". And so their language is meaningless. Criticism is built into academia. Most PhD. programs are nothing but criticism.

Hip hop poetry is a scene. It is extremely formal, including hand gestures, costumes, jewelry, hairstyles, and weapons. It is down with urban reality. It is a major myth making machinery and is criticized, marginalized and dissed by folks who should know better.

I am not a fan of slam, academic, or rap poetry. I read lyric poetry, and I want to write better lyric poetry. And lyric poetry does not have a viable scene. This open mic, coffee house thing could be a scene. A few years ago, I used to go to a coffee house that had an open mic that started at 9:30. People would show up with manuscripts at 7:00. They would sit at a table, and between hands of eucre, would read each other's scribblings, and mark them up with possible ideas and edits. I swear, some of those annotated scribbles started to sound like poems. We were not supportive of each other's sentiments or egos. Writing was most important, not catharsis. Oh yes, we read poetry as well: Spencer, Pope, Byron, Blake, and Matthew Arnold. Not just Ginsberg and Kerouac. And we read Walt Whitman. It was a scene, my friends.

All good things pass, and the coffee house became home to people from dysfunctional love affairs who wanted to express their pain, rather than their craft. It became a therapy group. People would show up at 9:00 with a blank notebook, scribble something precious and bloody on the page. They would read it, and sob as they did. They would get the same kind of tender understanding applause that happens in meetings of twelve step groups. And the poetic scene died, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Surely we're made of sterner stuff than that. We apprentices in lyric poetry who read in churches, libraries, and yes, in coffee houses should criticize each other. Poetry is not for sissies. Everybody with a broken heart isn't a poet. Those who wish to elevate autobiographical confusion to something in the vicinity of art: read, practice and accept criticism. ***

Photo of Mike Madias courtesy of the author

A clinical sociologist living in the Metropolitan Detroit area, Mike's work has appeared in The Detroit News. He may be reached by e-mail at DetroitHardball@hotmail.com.