Even today many poets are trying to find themselves or their voice as they write their poetry, says renowned poet and author Nikki Giovanni in her interview with BlogtalkradioTM host Joy Keys. Poets of the newer generation are definitely discovering new ways of expressing the way they see life and all of its tragic anomalies, they are exercising their personnel strife, and giving their inner-self a voice. Today there is an incredible need to be heard, a need to feel like we are the center, that our words are the truth and all that matters, but as we all know not all that speak need be heard. Imagine the analogy of two people, victims of a hit and run, both will indicate pain. However, depending upon each victim’s pain receptors and threshold one will be sure to exclaim that he/she are in far more pain than the other, but the others pain is truly no less, yet this is our way of making the world understand us. It is only when we forget ourselves, unlearn ourselves of being the center of focus and pay attention to the cosmos that surround us that makes us who we are, only then is when poetry will matter, and the experience (life) will connect and be understood as the sweet sounds of a well conducted orchestra.

What are we to do with the disposable poems? Yes, I said disposable due to a lack luster attitude that exists in the development of poems. There is a rapidly growing community of illiterate poets today that is filled with self-indulgence, egotism, and the worst of all patronage for the sake of fan accumulation and a myriad of reasons, but that is another matter and blog post. Today, with all of the venues like blogs and twitter apps have made it possible for one to expose their raw feelings before they have had a chance to process them, or even a chance to seek resolve prior to writing them into a poem or dirge if you will. Author and poet Dana Gioia wrote in his essay “Can Poetry Matter” that American poetry now belongs to a subculture. No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life. The divorce of poetry from the educated reader has had another, more pernicious result. Seeing so much mediocre verse not only published but praised, slogging through so many dull anthologies and small magazines has created a riff between poets and would be readers—to paraphrase. In his essay he speaks a great deal on how we as poets can develop to improve our place in the literary verse, but of course it has to be read for you to understand how to improve.

But I guess that leads me to the point of what I meant by “illiteracy” in the poetry. What I hear/read from many poets, are personal and sometimes fictional (fantasy) works that lack investigation into the purpose of the write. For example: if a poet sits down to write a poem regarding 9-11 and only uses news media (television reports) as the source and basis of the material without reading—let’s say the “9/11 Commission Report”; how deep and valuable will this poem be for an intellectual reader? This is just a small example of the importance of reading to develop the skills and increased substance for ones works and verse, but this is only relative to the purpose of ones’ poetry. Where have all of the critics gone, poetry without its critics can really deminish what we call art. What are we afraid of when it come to hearing and providing feedback to the author...

Now let’s hear your thoughts… agree or disagree, all opinions are as important as the poetry we all write.

This post was incited by the words of Amiri Baraka in his poem “Against Bourgeois Art”, Buffalo 1978. In this piece I am reminded that history repeats itself, let's be the change!

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