[New-Poetry] Against National Poetry Month

[JforJames at aol.com]

I had a chance to reread Bernstein's amusing diatribe. National Poetry  Month 
is certainly just a promotional gimmick cooked up by the Academy of  American 
Poets. But, then again, that's mission of the Academy, to find ways to  
promote poetry and poets in this country. That the wrong poets or  poetries, from 
Bernstein's point of view, are being promoted is  probably not surprising to 
anyone either. Although, as we know, these days,  poets like Lyn Hejinian and 
Nathanial Mackey and Michael  Palmer have been or are currently Chancellors of 
the Academy.  So I guess his allies haven't yet got the numbers or upperhand 
enough to  nix Nat'l Poetry Month or to move it in a direction that would meet  
with Charles' approval.
 
There have been many other poetry marketing initiatives over the years  (some 
silly, some serious, some modestly successful). Poetry in the Schools  
programs, Poetry on Subways/Buses, Jos. Brodsky's project to buy poetry  anthologies 
and to slip them into hotel rooms next to the Gideon  Bibles, etc. Most of 
the National Poet Laureates over the last  decade have initiated various poetry 
promotions: Pinsky's Favorite Poem  Project, Billy Collins' Poetry 101, etc. 
And there have been many  guerilla marketing campaigns too: Individual poets 
printing chapbooks of  their work and smuggling them into doctor's waiting rooms 
 alongside the glossy mass distribution magazines or pasting  broadsheets 
over the glass fronts of newspaper boxes (verse vandalism). 
 
A couple of thoughts: It doesn't surprise me that controversial or  difficult 
kinds of poetry are not represented in the promotions of  Nat'l Poetry Month. 
It's not meant to be an effort to stir controversy or  engender befuddlement 
among the populace at large, nor is it an effort to expand  the boundaries of 
what the 'man on the street' might recognize as  poetry. It's simply an effort 
to create a bit more awareness that  poetry is an art form that is alive and 
well (it didn't die  out sometime in the last century) and that people ought  
to pay a little more attention to it. For example, many city Symphony 
Orchestras  have free summer series and Pops concerts for much same purpose. To 
promote  awareness, to hopefully drag in a few audience members outside their core  
demographic (older, wealthier). I think the hope is that if your  symphony 
plays "Bolero" in the park on a nice summer evening,  then maybe, just maybe, 
someone who attends will hestitate the next time  his/her car radio hovers over 
the classical station, and maybe listen to  something more challenging, and 
possibly get hooked on classical music.  Whether the world really works that way 
is an open question. 
 
If we think of poetry as pharmacological language, then  some poems may be 
better 'gateway drugs' than others. If I  were trying to get a kid hooked on 
Stevens, for example, I might start him  with an Art Deco ditty like "The Emperor 
of Ice-Cream" before  introducing "Comedian As The Letter C.  Both as a 
matter of  length (attention span constraints must be considered) and as a matter 
of  difficulty to apprehend.
 
Finnegan
 
 
 
 



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