Trying to Define Contemporary Poetry

James F. Lewis IV
ENGL 550
April 1st, 2007
Essay: What is Contemporary Poetry?/Nature in Poetry: A Reconstituting of the Term


“The Newest of the New”: Trying to Define “Contemporary” Poetry

When, exactly, does it begin? The shift in an artistic period? In fact, though dates are determined and assigned for textbooks, there are no distinct “lines in the sand,” no division drawn capable of being delineated by dates; similar to shifts in other artistic forms of expression, what can be defined as “contemporary poetry” has gradually emerged, establishing its identity though the voice of a broad range of poets throughout the later half of the twentieth century. Familiar voices, such as those of Theodore Roethke, Silvia Plath, Jim Harrison and Mary Oliver, occupy an esteemed position of notoriety within the milieu of contemporary poetry, their names conjuring up literary remembrances of confession, depression, and redemption through a reconstituted understanding of nature, and sensibilities that shatter the banality of our overly-codified contemporary existence, revealing to us a life mysterious and, in this understanding of mystery, a sense of healing, an exhalation to arrive at an essential connection with our own existence. Therefore, implicit in contemporary poetry is a letting go of, even a rebellion to, abstract theoretical constructs of postmodernism which leave us groundless and disconnected from a complex and profound existence.
It is in arriving at this sense of being that contemporary poets deconstruct previously held positions on Nature, jettisoning romantic ideas perceiving “Nature” as a sacred and exotic “Other” into which we travel for redemption, escape, and purification and reconstituting the concept as a dynamic and essential manifestation of existence of which human beings are–intrinsically and inescapably–a part.
Along with freshly conceived understandings of nature, contemporary poetry seems to establish and, correspondingly, define itself by means of that by which contemporary poets struggle in a healing process which is, itself, unstructured, more of an adjustment and a coming to terms with what is rather than an idealization and subsequent attainment of what should be. It is this transformation (which really isn’t a transformation so much as a coming into awareness of what already is), that is, essentially, natural.
Nature, therefore, and what we experience as human beings is not transcendent, as in the notion of the term established by the American transcendentalists of the 19th century (e.g. Thoreau and Emerson), rather it is who and what we are. In fact, there really is no “essential” component to it, as for there to be something essential there must be that which is artificial or superfluous. In other words, our “essential” self, it seems to be suggested in much of the work of contemporary poets, is just our complete self, us as we exist. It may even be argued that our abstract and theoretical notions of reality, though overly intellectualized and alienating, are natural in and of themselves (the act of thinking being as natural to a human being as swimming is to an amoeba).
And, so, you might say that a hallmark of contemporary poetry is a moving away from am emphasis upon highly glossed alienating structural forms familiar to the high-brow work of a modernist poet like T.S. Eliot towards a heightened importance placed upon the experiential element of life manifesting itself in both joy and depression, understanding and confusion, mystery and profundity, feeling and sensation.

Mugs

mugs

The coffee pot
arranged last night
brews below me,
and I open the cabinet door.

Tentatively,
I begin my selection,
the first decision of the day.
It’s 7:38 a.m. What mug is the right one?
Is there any logic to this decision at all?

Too big, too plain, too uninspiring, too colorful, too small, natural, unnatural...
fearing myself neurotic and defying my idiosyncratic sensibilities,
reaching directly for a mug,
“I–heartshape–NY staring back at me.

Why is this the one? Do I love NY?
Does this mug rings true with my identity?
Filling the chosen one with steaming hot water (no cold mugs need apply for morning coffee)
I am...content with my choice?

Quirks and quirkiness.
My wife enters the kitchen,
yawning,
I am distracted with the feeding ritual of dogs.

Oblivious to my eccentricities or neuroses,
she has filled a mug with hot water,
emptied it,
and now both are filled with coffee.

One mug–not mine–is filled to the top,
for me.
I–heartshape–NY in my hand anyway,
and my wife with no room for cream, no idea why.

To her, just a mug,
something you pour coffee into
early.
To her, always just a mug.


Two different people.
Coffee mugs, sensibilities, neuroses, characteristics, traits, behaviors,
–stupefied.

All this at 7:38 in the morning.

Meditations

Meditations

Springtime and today,
for me, an inspiration.
Red-Winged Blackbird chirps

and radio on.
Lawnmower is loud outside;
breaks the peaceful sky.

Type, Type, Type, and a
monitor with dust no seen
staring back at me.

Sun seeping in seems
permanent; yet, soon gone down.
All will change and so

will I. Not seeing,
remembering. No, not just
remembering, but

sensing. No dust now.
Sky, tree, air, scent, sound, breeze, sense,
all around me here,

always. So where am
I? Macbook Pro, walls, door, screen,
poetry, bird, scent

of dinner. Kitchen
toddler, stairs, lamp, house, carpet,
Body a surface.

Physiology,
and psychological, mind,
substance. My beard, nails,


hair, growing. Alive.
Consciousness passing
by. Observed. Right now.

Paper #4: Alcosser Review

Sandra Alcosser and Women beyond Constructs

What is it to be a woman? A female and, particularly, a human female within a hungry universe? And why these cultural falsities adorning women? In Alcosser is a female poet who relishes her own essence, the same essence that draws a mountain lion toward her as well as her hungry husband. Alcosser, neurotically, wishes to feel the breath of the lion on her face, his intense desire for her living flesh, even if the end result of this passion is death. Along with exploring her female essence, what makes Alcosser’s poetry more widely accessible is her corresponding exploration of human essence. Whether female or simply human, both are intrinsically linked to what Alcosser defines as “nature” ; and, the reader gets the feeling that Alcosser is struggling, like the rest of us, to feel herself part of something beyond the mechanization of Western culture and the economic and social dictates which our culture imbues us with. Possibly, it is a sense of desperation that emerges from this struggle which engenders Alcosser’s neuroticism.
Alcosser states vehemently that “Except by nature–as a woman, I will be ungovernable.” The question raised by this statement–and by Alcosser’s collection of poetry under review–is what is this concept of “nature,” exactly, and why is Alcosser so drawn to it? Indeed, willing to be governed by it? In an ironic twist, “nature” a Western concept identifying the universe and our life in it as a dualistic and separate construct, acts to still govern the govern less poet by use of the very term. Perhaps, Alcosser, to make her point, should focus more upon creating a feeling of epiphany in the reader through a contextualization of “nature” that serves to deconstruct the term as a defining and isolating concept, thereby, making communicating to her readers through epiphany rather that the rationality and explicitness of text. It seems this approach of connection through insight and epiphany is the only way a poet can operate within a limited and confining language which possesses no words or terms for what is at the heart of the poet’s expression.
Despite the few startling lines in which Alcosser connects with the reader and reveals for her or him a universe and existential experience transcendent or, maybe not “transcendent,” but grounded in something more profound that our current cultural construct, Alcosser’s collection, in its entirety, fails to achieve this necessary experience. It is difficult to put my finger upon it, but I found Alcosser’s work too dreamy, too distant. It was almost as if the poet was making a hyper-conscious effort to express a detached and transcendental state rather than being in that state and simply writing it out. Alcosser’s overly-conscious effort just gives an air of artificiality to it, leaving this reader, anyway, with a sense of a woman who is so far removed from a grounding reality that her voice carries no sway. Really, it strikes me here that her poetry (what I dislike about it) corresponds with how the poet seems to live her life. That is, Alcosser makes a overly-conscious attempt to live her life in a transcendental poetic state and by doing so, appears phony, too far self-removed from the universe in which lion kill prey to survive.
Thematically, I really appreciate Alcosser’s work, what she is attempting to convey. But as a poet she needs maturity, a letting go of strained poetics and, in their place, a raw expression that transcends language and poetics, arriving at our heart and a more arresting understanding.

Surrealist Poetry

Dog

A large White and Black Head of and English Pointer
with an overly exagerated muzzle,
cocked at a slight angle¬,
about twenty-degrees–

Notice how the above is not a sentence.
Why am I being so precise?

The canine-head outmeasures its body,
which is non-existent against a dusty buckskin background,
seemingly coming towards me, into me
and, then, gone. My mind’s eye looking at nothing.

Running and panting,
galloping through grass’
the intestines shiny and slimy and alive.
Yes, by God, alive on the inside as well as out.

Heart pumping blood,
food digesting,
energy emanating from some magical source into the field and my field of vision.


Wife

Sensuous and desirable
kindness, kind-hearted,
looking a me with startled eyes,
now focused and coming towards me like my dog.

Young, younger maybe than what is real.
Supple curves and an image of how I might paint her,
art imitating art.
Nothing. Blank.

Wife. Part of me, forever.
Wife. Wife. Wife.
Naked and serpent-like,
moving through the firmament with head thrown back and mouth agape,
flying and moving away from me
amidst tumultuous storms with hair like I’ve never seen before, like I’ve never imagined.


Technology

A new world for me
from the imagination
¬–possibilities.


Foot

Sexy to me, yes.
Now to walk upon.
Gone¬–diabetes.


Ocean

Let loose, the mind.
No technical fixations here.
Deep and submerged, but comfortable.
Something above and a substrate below.
Where does it go? What about above?

But my reality in the middle,
here with midnight blues and reds
pasted like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
Suspended and swimming,
a heavy matrix, like being buried right-side-up in powder snow.
Unable to put my foot down or even breathe.