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On Walt Whitman, Bette Davis,
and the Neglect Of Poetry
Trey N. Magee
In the contemporary world of poetry, there is a debate regarding
the relationship between the poet and the public, a relationship where the
poet is torn between the need to find an audience and a desire to write,
uncompromisingly, the best he or she can with a total disregard for the
consequences of critical opinion. In his essay “On the Neglect of Poetry
in the United States,” Louis Simpson contends that the poet should
neither be constrained nor corrupted by trying to please the public. Only
by disregarding the public can the poet remain true. He goes on to insist
that poetry itself should stand alone, that to incorporate it with other art
forms, especially performance art, in a quest to broaden poetry’s appeal is
useless. Great poetry, he says, needs no assistance.1 While certain
aspects of Simpson’s argument certainly have merit, it is in his negative
assessment of the role other art forms play in expanding poetry’s appeal
that he falters. Today, great poetry does indeed need assistance.
To begin with, the intellectual audience of today grew up with poetry as a fringe element of its education and, as a consequence, poetry became increasingly esoteric and lost its relevance as an art form of much
importance to the educated public. Second, the great poets of the past to
whom Simpson refers, Chaucer, Milton, Whitman, et al, unlike the poets
of today, never had to compete with the new artistic mediums of modern
culture—a competition Simpson admits the poet would lose. Finally, no
matter how great a work of poetry may be, it cannot regain its cultural
importance if it remains locked within the confines of academia.
Today’s audience of general intellectual interest, of which I am a
part, grew with the notion that poetry was a noble and beautiful art form
but never seemed to get past that point. We were not schooled in
poetry’s history, rhyme, or meter and could not venture to tell you why a
poem was good, fair, or poor, much less great. We simply were not
exposed to poetry enough to acquire the skills needed to appreciate what
was deemed “great.” Poetry mainly seemed “difficult” at best and
downright bizarre at worst. Basically, it was something that had to be
slugged through and endured. Robert Frost was an exception whose
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening “ gave a glimmer of hope to
the poetically challenged fifth grader. That same fifth grader was soon
thrown hopelessly back into apathy with Wallace Steven’s puzzling, yet
whimsical, “Bantams in Pine-Woods,” a great poem in our young minds
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for no other reason than that our teacher said so. No other explanation
needed. And yet an explanation was needed; without one we stopped
caring, and poetry ceased to matter. We tend to neglect things that do not
matter. Make no mistake, other subjects were deemed just as dull and
difficult by our preoccupied little minds, yet they, unlike poetry, were
meant to be mastered. We couldn’t make it to the sixth grade without our
math and English language skills. And while we were being escorted to
“art” class, where the wonders of painting awaited, or being read to from
Dickens and Twain, I can venture to say that our sixth grade teacher
could not have cared less whether we knew the difference between a
sonnet and a nursery rhyme. This indifference was indoctrinated then
and remains now. How can we overcome it? How can we re-ignite an
interest in something that has the capacity to touch us deeply and speak
so eloquently about our lives? In short, how can we begin the process of
rediscovering poetry?
In his essay, Mr. Simpson thinks that great poetry alone will set us
on the road to rediscovery: write it, and we will come. It is both
simplistic and quixotic to believe that “the way to overcome the present
neglect of poetry is to write great poems.”2 He does not take into
consideration that the majority of the educated public no longer knows
what great poetry is. That knowledge was not part of our education. He
seems to think that we inhabit the same world he does—a world in which
the neglect of poetry has more to do with mediocrity than with ignorance.
Sadly, we are not part of his world, and ignorance plays a bigger role in
poetry’s fall than Mr. Simpson may realize. I do agree with Simpson in
that we must be exposed to great poetry in order to start caring. That is
not the issue. The issue is what, exactly, has the capacity to bring us back
to this great poetry? A great poem, written by a poet with no concern
other than beauty, meaning, and truth, is not going to miraculously
appear at our bedside. Something has to get it there; something has to
pique our atrophied interest. This is where other art forms can have a
positive effect. Dana Gioia expressed this issue in his essay “Can Poetry
Matter?” Gioia writes that integrating poetry with the mediums of other
art forms, such as music, has the potential to reach that critical, culturally
influential audience which would otherwise remain distant to poetry.
This audience, representing “our cultural intelligensia,” is comprised of
the people who support the arts and concern themselves with their
influence on our society. It is also the audience poetry has lost but which
remains faithful to other art forms. The possibility of manipulating the
relative popularity of these other art forms to bridge the gap and bring
poetry back into the world of influential art is a repugnant idea to
Simpson. While declaring it a noble thought, he ultimately dismisses the
idea by saying you can’t make people like poetry simply by exposing
them to it—kind of like the old adage, “you can lead a horse to water, but
you can’t make him drink.”3 Simpson insists that “only a great poem, a
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poem it remembers” can do that. That may be, but no one will be able to
remember a poem unless he or she can first encounter it.
Simpson and I do agree upon the role of poetry as performance
art. I too, believe that a great poem does not have to rely on gimmicks to
find or keep an audience. Poetry and theater are distinct entities and one
has the tendency to distract from the other when combined. My purpose
here is to suggest possibilities of creating a broader appeal for poetry by
utilizing other, more popular art forms, and not to advocate the fusion of
poetry with those art forms. Integrating poetry with these other art forms
can expose individuals to its beauty in ways that poetry alone has failed
to do. I am lucky enough to have benefited from such a situation. One
sleepless night many years ago, I was watching an old Bette Davis film,
Now Voyager. At a turning point in the film, a Whitman poem was read.
It was a very short, seemingly ephemeral poem, and yet I was struck by
its message and beauty. The classic film itself paled in comparison to
Whitman’s haunting poem. Unable to forget it, I soon found myself
scouring the shelves of the public library in search of a poem whose title I
didn’t know. It wasn’t long before I stumbled upon an old edition of
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There, buried in the middle, was “The Untold
Want.” I had found it. With that single poem, I discovered the
possibilities of poetry. But it was film that got me there. I discovered
Whitman through Bette Davis. Go figure. Simpson would say that my
sentimental little story, touching as it may be, is irrelevant. So what if one
or two converts to poetry are found? It’s nice that someone is listening,
but that is secondary to the true purpose of poetry: greatness. I ask what
good is greatness if it has no impact?
Another interesting aspect of Simpson’s essay is his reverence for
the great poets of the past and their secondary consideration of the public
to their writing. He says that to Dante, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth,
Whitman, Yeats, and Eliot, among many others, the act of writing reigned
supreme over important matters such as politics, philosophy, and
religion. The concern of public opinion was of secondary importance.
But poets and their great works were read and discussed at a time when
poetry made an impact—a time when poetry was a staple of the
intellectual diet.
They had the luxury of not being completely
overshadowed by television, movies, rock and roll, and the computer
revolution. While the audience for poetry still consisted mainly of a
group of educated, intellectually interested individuals, poetry had not
yet been reduced in its cultural importance, as it has been today; thus, it
had a greater impact on the world around it. Great poets, such as Lord
Byron and Walt Whitman, could be subjects of great and heated debate
within the higher circles of society as well as being relatively well known
to the general population. Those days are far behind us. Today, would
they be great poets? Most assuredly so. Would they be famous? I doubt
it. Would the “audience of general intellectual interest” be thrilled or
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shocked by their poems? Highly doubtful. Today, we do not care. The
phrases “created a literary sensation” and “turned the poetry world
upside down” are almost comical in their innocuous implications for our
culture.
Poetry has become stuck in a world whose access by an interested
audience is limited. Academia has created an isolated, specialized world
of poetry where a “sub-culture” exists with an audience consisting
primarily of poets and critics. Dana Giola aptly observes that however
healthy this subculture may seem, it has lost the larger intellectual
audience “who represent poetry’s bridge to the general culture.” This
audience is essential if poetry is to rid itself of its elitist trappings and
forge a new and meaningful relationship with our culture. Without it,
poetry, no matter its greatness, will remain inconsequential to anybody
other than the poet and the critic, “imprisoned in an intellectual ghetto.”4
A great poem, unread by those who could benefit most, will never reach
its full potential. Does this matter? I think it does. If it did not, there
would be no objection to poetry remaining exactly where it is and the
issue of the neglect of poetry would be moot.
Today, poetry lies in the shadow of other art forms in its cultural
importance, unable to reach a society incapable of listening. It must break
free and show its splendor to more than its creators, more than its critics.
It must find a way to be heard again, for if it does not, it is doomed to
remain locked away in the institutionalized confinement Louis Simpson
abhors, tragically resplendent in its unheard beauty.
Levitt Prize, 1999