tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post5814612071757096980..comments2023-11-12T13:22:30.358+01:00Comments on andrewjshields: From Tennyson to todayAndrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-8571672810285530412011-03-29T06:52:43.644+02:002011-03-29T06:52:43.644+02:00Mark Granier was unable to post this comment for r...Mark Granier was unable to post this comment for reasons unknown, so I am posting it for him:<br /><br />'...even if there is little market for poetry in the contemporary English-speaking world, there is a huge market for verseāit's called pop music.'<br /><br />This is something I've often thought about Andrew, the dichotomy between pop music and contemporary poetry. Larkin remarked on something similar (the dichotomy between pop music and modern jazz) and realised where the new zeitgeist lay.<br /><br />The best popular music I'm aware of (Dylan, L Cohen, Radiohead, Talking Heads, Crash Test Dummies...), while possibly being influenced by the aesthetics of Postmodernism etc., has rarely attempted to overtly ferry such things into an audience's auditory canal. I imagine there are at least two very obvious reasons for this reluctance; the audience would likely dry up immediately and, perhaps more importantly, the ancient challenge still holds good: the desire to get your song to live on, a chord resonating in peoples' heads for at least a generation. To achieve such a thing, you need to strike an answering chord in the popular imagination, tread one of those tightrope-thin lines between passion and bathos, felt emotion and schmaltz.<br /><br />Contemporary poetry is rarely up to this task, as the most intelligent poets would readily acknowledge (the sillier ones will insist on having their pomo cake and expecting others to eat it). I have quoted Muldoon before as saying, of some of Cohen's songs, that they 'are much better constructed, are built to withstand more pressure per square inch, than most poetry we meet in most magazines and, alas, find collected in most slim volumes. . . .' Whether or not you agree, there is no denying Cohen's (or Dylan's) popularity right across the spectrum, with everyone from sentimental teenagers to hifalutin poets and critics, such as yours truly.<br /><br />Ironically, I suspect a good many NMS poets fail to see this dichotomy, or choose to ignore it. It must be embarrassing to acknowledge that the old or new favourites on your iPod avail of (nay, positively revel in) such detestable anachronisms as rhyme, meter, narrative, 'the lyric I'...<br /><br />'But poets who feel tensions between the privacy of aestheticism and the possibility of a public voice might well consider the ways in which pop lyrics, the contemporary verse with the broadest popular appeal, relate to the audience that consumes them.'<br /><br />To be fair, musicians DO have a big advantage, beyond the fact that their aesthetic 'does not impose itself on its listeners': they have the music; so their words (or lyrics) have very tried and trusted propellers to boost the flow into that coveted canal. Beyond my teens, I never much cared for Cohen's poetry (I confess I haven't read much of Dylan's), but his songs still do it for me big time. But popular MS poets, such as Armitage, Oliver, B Collins and CAD, whom you mentioned, also share some of the advantages of pop musicians. If they do not have resonant chords, they certainly have plenty of resonant phrases and images. And such phrases and images are heartily despised by NMS poets, and perhaps quite a few MS ones too, many of whom would sing the praises of Dylan, Cohen, etc.Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com