First go here -- where you'll find a "spirited" debate on the current state of poetry -- for the backstory.
I think that you have to look at Myspace poets as a movement at this point. There are a lot of them, though due to the nature of the poet -- the tendency of self-examination, looking at the world and expressing your place in it -- the role of the individual vs a group ethic is easier for them to see. Add that to the fact that many poets are artistic anarchists and you might as well try to juggle balls of mercury as get outsider/underground poets together in a cohesive unit.
Continued...
Members of Outsider Writers, including poets, have come and gone, which is as it should be. I like to think that some sort of growth occurred before their departure, even if it was just that they were finally assured of their individual value over a -- for them -- ill-fitting group mentality.
But to complain of Myspace poets, as I've heard more and more people do lately, is to miss the point. The criticisms truly echo all that was thrown at the Beat poets back in the day: Corso, McClure, et al were almost universally reviled by the literary tastemakers of the establishment. It was an uptight time in America and this was the required reaction to the most ecstatic poetry movement since Whitman blasted the old forms apart and shined the light of naked truth.
Still, it sort of amuses me to find that we still have throwback critics who take issue with the fact that we call ourselves "outsiders": As if we haven't earned the right. Is it really so hard for them to see that those of us who admire and sometimes pattern ourselves after the likes of Bukowski, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac etc. might have a pretty good idea about what philosophy of literary creation we adhere to?
So what's the big deal if a writer wants to refer to him/herself as a poet? Isn't poetry more in the soul than it is on the page? Anybody who claims that someone isn't a poet should ask themselves if they have been inside of that person, to see what makes them tick and to know what it is that gets them up to face the world in the morning. And if you are saying that someone "isn't a poet" because you don't care for what they've written (i.e., it isn't to your personal taste) you might as well just be putting pricetags on cans at the grocery, because you are neither an artist nor a thinker, but a labeler.
I say "Power To Myspace Poets" and wish that there were a group label for them, like the ones for Myspace Music and Myspace Comedy.
Oops, I guess now I'm the labeler.
J.D. Finch
Last update : 08-03-2008 00:06
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