3 ms·

Do you subscribe to any poetry publication? Poetry, New Yorker, three penny review and plenty other big and small publications have great contemporary poems. I

by cgio 5y ago

Do you subscribe to any poetry publication? Poetry, New Yorker, three penny review and plenty other big and small publications have great contemporary poems. I would rather argue we are much worse in reading poetry now.

yanmaani 5y ago
Great contemporary poems, perhaps, but not contemporary great poems. If we look at the current issue[0] of The Threepenny Review, the pathology is quite obvious. The three "poems" in the list all share certain features: - A variable amount of syllables per line (e.g. no metre) - No rhymes - No other discernible differences from prose At that point, why even bother calling it a poem? You might as well save yourself the time by opening up the day's newspaper in a text editor, clicking randomly, and pressing enter. When you feel there's enough line breaks, you're ready to publish. [0]: https://www.threepennyreview.com/current.html https://www.threepennyreview.com/current.html
- kmstout 5y ago
  A poem, by the Washington Post and Emacs auto-fill-mode: Russian warships sailed toward the Black Sea on Tuesday, stoking alarm among U.S. and European security officials who warned that the final capabilities for a large-scale assault on Ukraine appeared to be falling into place. On a day of frantic shuttle diplomacy by French President Emmanuel Macron, who hopped among capitals trying to avert a conflict, Russian officials gave little sign that the French leader’s initiatives had changed their calculations. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russia-biden-putin-macron/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russ...
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Do you subscribe to any poetry publication? Poetry, New Yorker, three penny review and plenty other big and small publications have great contemporary poems. I would rather argue we are much worse in reading poetry now." This is all so subjective. Very few poems resonate with me... maybe something like 1 out of 100, and almost always they're old poems, like those by Kabir, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. It's exceedingly rare for any contemporary poetry that I've read to come anywhere close to being as moving, interesting, or deep as some of these classics. That said, 99% of old poetry doesn't move me either. I'd read a lot more poetry if the signal to noise ratio was higher, but sadly for my taste it's not.
- cgio 5y ago
  So that’s not about relative quality of poetry over time. It is about signal vs noise. Fundamentally this is a strategy of waiting for history to filter out the noise. With 1% you are taking a pretty low pass filter, though. In my experience, I enjoy about 20% of poems I read, the remaining 80% I will quickly skim so signal to noise in terms of my time is more like 90/10.

by cgio 5y ago

yanmaani 5y ago

Great contemporary poems, perhaps, but not contemporary great poems. If we look at the current issue[0] of The Threepenny Review, the pathology is quite obvious. The three "poems" in the list all share certain features: - A variable amount of syllables per line (e.g. no metre) - No rhymes - No other discernible differences from prose At that point, why even bother calling it a poem? You might as well save yourself the time by opening up the day's newspaper in a text editor, clicking randomly, and pressing enter. When you feel there's enough line breaks, you're ready to publish. [0]: https://www.threepennyreview.com/current.html https://www.threepennyreview.com/current.html

kmstout 5y ago
A poem, by the Washington Post and Emacs auto-fill-mode: Russian warships sailed toward the Black Sea on Tuesday, stoking alarm among U.S. and European security officials who warned that the final capabilities for a large-scale assault on Ukraine appeared to be falling into place. On a day of frantic shuttle diplomacy by French President Emmanuel Macron, who hopped among capitals trying to avert a conflict, Russian officials gave little sign that the French leader’s initiatives had changed their calculations. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russia-biden-putin-macron/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russ...

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Do you subscribe to any poetry publication? Poetry, New Yorker, three penny review and plenty other big and small publications have great contemporary poems. I would rather argue we are much worse in reading poetry now." This is all so subjective. Very few poems resonate with me... maybe something like 1 out of 100, and almost always they're old poems, like those by Kabir, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. It's exceedingly rare for any contemporary poetry that I've read to come anywhere close to being as moving, interesting, or deep as some of these classics. That said, 99% of old poetry doesn't move me either. I'd read a lot more poetry if the signal to noise ratio was higher, but sadly for my taste it's not.

cgio 5y ago
So that’s not about relative quality of poetry over time. It is about signal vs noise. Fundamentally this is a strategy of waiting for history to filter out the noise. With 1% you are taking a pretty low pass filter, though. In my experience, I enjoy about 20% of poems I read, the remaining 80% I will quickly skim so signal to noise in terms of my time is more like 90/10.