Why is modern poetry difficult? Talk by Professor Geoff Ward

[@jwnich179]

Commenting into a void, writing from 2024 USA as it staves off descending from democracy into idiocracy - man, I needed this. I can’t understand the negative comments below. The breadth, facility, warmth, and stunning insights - it feels stupid to string together inadequate descriptives so I’ll stop. Thank you for your life’s work, which radiates through every sentence here.

[@macdonaldfraser]

illuminating and entertaining. Thank you Professor Ward

[@MrSeanlogan]

A compelling and fascinating talk. I still have a copy of your first slim volume, published by one Frank Whitbourn in Horsham. He was, of course, one of those brilliant English teachers who inspired his students.

[@ethanherschenfeld]

Wow!! Fantastic lecture!!!

[@worldpoetry3161]

I am Brazilian poet, like the poetry of England. Learning English with Cambridge

[@lohkoonhoong6957]

They can hide inside their complexity; Simplicity to them is too messy.

[@Dudlow]

An excellent talk! Science and poetry do need to talk to each other, although as Terry Gifford stresses in 'Green Voices: Understanding Contemporary Nature Poetry', poetry has a responsibility to get the science right. This requires us to avoid the temptation of unquestionably accepting mavericks like Rupert Sheldrake, and being more rigorous in our scrutiny of attractive metaphors, working like scientists to test them against evidence.

[@wordscapes5690]

When modern poetry is difficult (and it very often is) it is because it has moved out of the realms of the countryside bard and migrated to the halls of the university. When one requires a degree or a PhD to comprehend a poem, it becomes a thesis and not a poem. Poetry no longer lives in the public sphere. In our colleges and universities, it is still very much alive - it subsists in small and stuffy rooms over-occupied by academics smugly giggling over brandies at the cleverness of each others’ verse. In short - it is not dead but rather zombified and very much alive in a largely inaccessible limbo.

[@garymelnyk7910]

Perfectly said! Alas!

[@wordscapes5690]

@@garymelnyk7910 I wish it were not so! I really do!

[@eskybakzu712]

You don't need a degree. Modern poetry is difficult to comprehend because the problem of comprehension is at its forefront. Crane never graduated high school yet is very difficult to understand whereas Eliot spent many years at Harvard and Oxford and wrote a PhD on F. H. Bradly and is also very difficult to understand. Not to mention that Yeats isn't any easier than Whitman or Homer (if you'd like to compare it to the "countryside bard").

[@wordscapes5690]

@@eskybakzu712 I think you did not quite get what I was trying say. Poetry need not be understood in order to be comprehended. It is the miscomprehension that bothers me. Misunderstanding something is fine. But the tradition of poetry comprehension has been pulled out of general society, like an unwanted thorn. It has been placed under a microscope and is now analyzed to death by the few, and written about in textbooks that are so deeply analytical that it loses its original intention: something in which everyone partook, from the illiterate twit at the pub, to the brainy pedagogue on campus.

[@spazthespasticcolonel1054]

...small and stuffy rooms... academics smugly giggling over brandies... Where, exactly, did you go to school? It sounds like a dreadful experience (as well as a dreadful school) and I am sorry that you had to endure such things as part of your poetic education. I hope that it was good brandy, at least!

[@yacovmitchenko1490]

It takes great skill to express rich, complex ideas both beautifully and simply, to be lucid yet ambiguous. All good art is ambiguous, as ambiguity allows for multiple interpretations. Yeats once said (roughly) that a fine poet must think like a sage and use common speech. It would benefit poetry greatly if aspiring writers would regard the above as a touchstone or guideline. The public's general indifference to poetry is due in no small part to the fact that many poets don't follow that guideline.

[@neilprocter]

Did the professor answer the question? Did he attempt to answer the question?

[@woozyjoe4703]

The professor did not even make an attempt. This must be Oxbridge clickbait?

[@davidpalmer5966]

I've never heard of the guy. I found the lecture elegant and charming, albeit vacuous and, sadly, elitist. I'm guessing that he was directed by his anticipated audience who may have known perfectly well why some people find modern poetry difficult and who felt rather pleased that they themselves were not among such peasants. Such an audience would have understood that a poem is an intimate conversation between poet and reader, and that since not all poets will speak to any given reader, as a reader you have to find the poets who do. You don't have to appreciate all poets; just one may be enough, if it's the right one. The good professor's audience would have enjoyed his allusive, personal wandering within the general territory of the question without actually confronting it. However, those whom poets were traditionally addressing, ordinary people, would have received little insight from this comfortable, clever, deft and rather smug piece of oratory. It was a performance, not an answer.

[@Tyler-sv4tb]

"English glides, as if dreaming, into German" (5:55) 😍

[@lennydellarocca4992]

Simply superb

[@MrUndersolo]

"Poets muddy their waters to make them look deep." - Friedrich Nietzsche

[@siyaindagulag.]

...and exploit their experiences (also Neitzsche) How else ? I say.

[@garymelnyk7910]

Emily Dickinson patiently waits for the mud to settle and says……….look it’s shallow, it’s sham, it’s brittle like glass.

[@sattarabus]

Dressed as a pontifical don, Prof Geoff disarms you with his lightness of touch while dispensing a wealth of knowledge about the infinite variety of poetry. His style, despite the formidable sheaf of notes on the lectern, is not unlike that of a fleet-footed sherpa escorting you to the sunlit uplands of Mt Helicon and Parnassus while regaling you with the lore of the flora and fauna on either side of the precarious trail. More of Prof Geoff Ward on youtube and podcasts ! He serves you a wholesome libation that makes you thirstier for the heady Hippocrene.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

I am NOT a Poet, Sattar! I am NOT an expert on anything but I have quite a strong knowledge of The Beatles. I have a liking ( being eccentric ) of some of the lesser known British Poet Laureates. Among my favourite poets ( again be eccentric ) are - Thomas Shadwell ( c.1642 - 19 November, 1692 ) Colley Cibber ( 6 November, 1671 - 11 December, 1757 ) Nicholas Rowe ( 20 June, 1674 - 6 December, 1718 ) Thomas Warton ( The Younger ) ( 9 January, 1728 - 21 May, 1790 ) William McGonagall ( c.March, 1825 - 29 September, 1902 ) Alfred Austin ( 30 May, 1835 - 2 June, 1913 ) WH Auden ( 21 February, 1907 - 29 September, 1973 ) J Bronowski ( 18 January, 1908 - 22 August, 1974 ) To quote Byron ( 22 January, 1788 - 19 April, 1824 ) "I dote upon the thoroughbread look!" That is why I feel excited and thrilled to contact a Professor! I love the line by Philip Larkin ( 1922 - 1985 ) From 'The Sea' from 'High Windows' ( 1974 ) "And further off a white steamer stuck in the afternoon." With Best Wishes! Cheers - Mike.

[@sattarabus]

Hallelujah, Mike. Having grazed on a lush pasture of poets, you've been holding one back. Out with it. The Muses are eager to baptise you. ' Lay your sleeping head my love,/ human on my faithless arm,/ time and fevers burn away/, individual beauty from/ thoughtful children...' WH Auden

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

Thanks for the reply, Sattar! "But let me just say before I go, I think it is the most lovely country I know. Clearer than Scafell Pike, my heart has stamped on The view from Birmingham to Wolverhampton. Coal mines, slag heaps, pieces of machinery, They were and are my ideal scenery." From 'Letter to Lord Byron' WH Auden ( 1907 - 1973 ) Although Auden was born in York, I think The Black Country was in its own way as rooted in belonging for Auden as The Lake District for William Wordsworth ( 1770 - 1850 ) or Swansea for Dylan Thomas ( 1914 - 1953 ). Cheers - Mike.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

Professor Geoff says he doesn't like the sardonic wit of Alexander Pope ( 1688 - 1744 ) but I adore Pope's satirical put down of Colley Cibber ( 1671 - 1757 ) in Pope's mock epic 'The Dunciad' in which Pope proclaimed Cibber as 'King of the Dunces', following a back stage spat between the two of them over a crocodile. "In merry old England it was once was the rule, The King had his poet and also his fool, But now were so frugal I have you to know it That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet!" That is what happens when someone messes with genius! Cibber joined in the mockery himself, he adopted the pseudonym 'Francis Fairplay' and called himself a comedian rather than a poet and in his 'An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber' admitted his laureate poetry is so bad that people should drop their trousers in the street to give it the respect that it deserves. "While sits and smarts and smarts and sits, Where hissings not uncivil, Well send thy parts to thy deserts, And send it to the devil!" He was actually no worse a British Poet Laureate than the 4 previous laureates.

[@amelmahmoud8221]

thank you

[@pedwards7274]

Thank you, Sir.

[@rievans57]

What is meant by difficult? What is difficult to me is the need for a certain type of bio in order to be considered a serious poet.

[@reaganwiles_art]

AMEN!

[@user-dj8gt6ik7c]

agreed.

[@Jason-ji4sy]

Right there with you other fine gentlemen and gentlelasses.

[@brahimlh2909]

'A certain type of bio'?

[@blahblahoink]

Most excellent behaviour

[@elizabethfarrell9650]

Thanks lots.

[@ParvezKumar_TheIndianPoet]

Personally, I do not consider Modern Poetry difficult. It is just the angle we look at it. I believe that,​ firstly, we should read it when we are young; secondly when we are in our middle age and thirdly when we are old or on death bed. Just like the novels of Leo Tolstoy. Every time, our point of view of Modern Poetry will be different (I would say more refined).

[@eduardmanecuta5350]

That applys to everything.

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

I hope you don’t mind me sharing the following poem, one of my all time favorite meta poetic poems by a poet named “Howard Dull” titled “Suibhne Gheilt” that I recently chanced upon. When I read it, I became speechless. And most of my poetry friends consider this as one of their all time favorites. It was published in a 1970s anthology titled “ Open Poetry” and proves that once Poetry hits you in your heart, you could be the worst nefarious scoundrel with kings at your bidding and Empires at your command but you will be transformed and never again return to your former Self. ~~ Suibhne Gheilt 1 He has haunted me now for over a year that madman Suibhne Gheilt who in the middle of a battle looked up and saw something that made him leap up and fly over swords and trees - a poet gifted above all others - 11 How could a proud loud mouth who yelled KILL KILL KILL as he plowed done the enemy - heads rolling off of his sword - be so lifted up ( or fly up as those below saw it - wings beating) be so suddenly gifted with poetry and nest so high in Ireland’s tall trees? Is there a point where all paths cross? And why am I so drawn to him that all my questions seem shot in his direction? “And they ran into the woods and threw their lances and shot their arrows up through the branches” What parallels could I ever hope to find - my refusal to fight ( weaseling out on psychiatric grounds)? my leaving my country behind? my poetry? “and my wife wept on the path below. . . Oh memory is sweet but sweeter is the sorrel in the pool in the path below” I fly down every night to eat 111 Sweeney like the rest of us would have been better off if he had never anything to do with women. But the point of it lies hidden in a pool of milk in a pile of shit for you to see when a milkmaid smiles Sweeney like the rest of us flies down and when she pours the milk into the hole her heel made in the cowdung Sweeney like the rest of us kneels down and drinks and dies on the horn the cowherd hid in it. So before you have anything to do with women remember Sweeney the bird of Ireland lying on his back in the middle of that path in the moonlight. 1V And on my way home this morning ( my wife waiting) my shadow racing up the path ahead of me I saw something ( a black stone?) thrown at the back of its head ducked and spun around so fast I almost fell down - it was a bird flying up into a tree V No good could come out of this war out of what burns in the heart of our highly disciplined John Q. Killer as a whole village bursts into one flame - the villagers streaming like tears towards the forest cover his helicopter’s blades blow the leaves off and and the flame towards. . . as we sit in front of our bubbles watching our president ( whose bubbletalk no one can escape and he is a little bit mad -calling the reporters in for an interview while he’s sitting on the bubble having a bubble movement) and first lady climb into their big bubble bed an Lucy, born of their own bubbles, crawls in between - “ Mah daddy has so many troubles turning the world into a bubble and sick of crossfire - the cries of the women and children flying over his head - he stumbled down to the riverbank and found, the wreckage twisted around the tree behind, his skull. . . Noises, there are noises, noises that can of themselves drive a man mad -NOISES! But last night the Stockhausen penetrated from the four sides of the auditorium, stripping each layer of feeling and thought until all that was left was something the size of a nut - so tiny, so hard, so impenetrable it was alone in the middle of an infinite space. . . -Howard Dull ~~ ps: Howard Dull was such an obscure poet that he never published a book and ( to my knowledge) never published another poem. But OMG, this was so brilliant that in my opinion it should be read and studied at the college level. All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

[@andresmonreal8521]

I would love this poem if it weren’t filled with very thoughtful excrement.

[@andresmonreal8521]

I would love this poem if it weren’t filled with very thoughtful mundane images. 2:46

[@phonsefagan5649]

Complexity We often see As pretense to profundity Simplicity Implicitly As precourse to fecundity

[@BUKCOLLECTOR]

Enjoyed your poems. And your unique word choices enhanced the poems emotional impact and kept me engaged throughout. I’m a poet specializing in Japanese forms: haiku, tanka, haibun, kyoka, senryu. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a tanka and my haiku, a tribute poem to Bashō’s frog with commentary by the late AHA founder and poet Jane Reichhold who considered my Basho haiku among her top 10 haiku of all time. What an honor. Here’s the Bashō poem and commentary: Bashō’s frog four hundred years of ripples At first the idea of picking only 10 of my favorite haiku seemed a rather daunting task. How could I review all the haiku I have read in my life and decide that there were only 10 that were outstanding? Then realized I was already getting a steady stream of excellent haiku day by day through the AHA forum. The puns and write-offs based on Basho's most famous haiku are so numerous I would have said that nothing new could be said with this method, but here Al Fogel proved me wrong. Perhaps part of my delight in this haiku lies in the fact that I agree with him. Here he is saying one thing about realism-ripples are on a pond after a frog jumps in, but because it refers back to Basho and his famous haiku, he is also saying something about the haiku and authors who have followed him. We, and our work, are just ripples while Basho holds the honor of inventing the idea of the sound of a frog leaping is the sound of water As haiku spreads around the world, making ripples in more and larger ponds, its ripples are wider-including us all. But his last word reminds us all that we are ripples and our lives ephemeral. It will be the frogs that will remain. ~~ And my tanka: returning home from a Jackson Pollock exhibition I smear my face with paint and morph into art ~~ -All love in isolation from Miami Beach, Florida, Al

[@katakhresis2796]

Of no consequence, even to poetry.

[@GentlemanLife-Beyotch]

Modern poetry is distasteful, not difficult. There is a reason why contemporary poetry isn't "classic" or legendary.

[@Walter10065]

Funny how Lana Turner Get Up suffers in an English accent

[@user-dj8gt6ik7c]

I think you mean why does modern poetry suck

[@latino304]

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@37Dionysos]

In case you can't sleep.

[@dougvoice]

15.00

[@boaz1353]

interesting

[@fabiolahook8877]

Modern poetry is difficult because it is a symptom of a confused and degenerate culture.

[@latino304]

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

[@nononouh]

Expert meandering , self medicate w fact, unresolvable strangeness

[@rogerbourke5570]

Sophorific.

[@fabiolahook8877]

Sopomoric?

[@pitchforkcustom]

gatekeepers need to have their keys stolen.. modern poetry is not difficult, the issues aren’t difficult.. this lecture is nonsense… horribly disparaging snide remarks

[@rd3bruin]

first

[@aisamazkn9168]

Bad start

[@alfogel3298]

Charles Bukowski was the greatest poet and short story writer of all time. And anyone who leaves him out of the great modern poets or shirt story writers are either jealous or ignorant. For instance: “Peace” I thought the dove was the bird of peace but here they were shooting them out of the brush and climbing up the sides of mountains and banging them down; and everywhere the doves went there were the hunters blasting and beaming and blasting, and one man who didn’t in the slightest resemble a dove was shot in the shoulder; and there were many complaints that the doves were smaller and scarcer than last year, but the way they fell through the air when you stung the life out of them was the same; and I was there too but I couldn’t shoot anything with a paintbrush; and a couple of them came over to my canvas and stood and stood and stood until I finally said, for God’s sake go look at Picasso and Rembrandt, go look at Klee and Gauguin, listen to a symphony by Mahler, and if you get anything out of that come back and stare at my canvas! what the hell’s wrong with him? the one guy said. he’s nuts. they’re all nuts, the other guy said. anyhow, I got my 10 doves. me too, his buddy said, let’s go home: we can have them in the frying pan by 2:30. -Charles Bukowski

[@martinbiglieri]

The only valid reason to consider Bukowski as the greatest poet and short story writer of all time is to have only read Bukowski and absolutely no one else.

[@christopherreynolds4446]

Even Bukowski was not foolish enough to think himself as good, never mind better, than Eliot, Yeats, Stevens. Comparing him to such poets only diminishes his work as no one could seriously advocate such a stance

[@2DarkHorizon]

@@christopherreynolds4446 Alot of the old poets have the problem of not stringing all sentences to build up a scene. Most of the old poets usually have distinct lines. It feels written line by line in mind instead of the whole poem in mind. Thats why people like Bukowski the "peace" poem for example is a perfect example of what Im saying.

[@fabiolahook8877]

Bukowski? Vile alcoholic drivel IMO.

[@Davod2139]

Poetry on poetry taught by a professor of poetry disappearing up its own arse.

[@clarinet1]

Poor pronunciation of the German interpolations; could do better!

[@garymelnyk7910]

About what I expected: self congratulatory rambling nonsense.

[@AntQuick1102]

Hard to listen to, it's trash besides the household names

[@johns8596]

😴😴😴😴😴

[@Jason-ji4sy]

Awweh, somebody needs an Adderall to focus on complex ideas, how cute 😚

[@alfogel3298]

Where’s Bukowski? The greatest American poet and short story writer of all time. For starters via poetry collection. “ the days run away like wild horses over the hills” ( at least 10 immortal poems from this collection) ~ Short story collection: “ erection, ejaculation, exhibitions, and general tales of ordinary madness” Here are immortal stories from this collection: “ the blanket” “ the most beautiful women in town” “ life and death in the charity ward” “ Animal Crackers in my Soup” “ The birth life and death of an underground newspaper” -Al Fogel