The Cranky Old Man Speaketh (Againeth)

So last week I received in the mail four new books of poetry from the same publisher, as part of my subscription to their 2007 output.

One of them I found to be really brilliant, full of shimmery, crackling language and emotional life. Another, I found to be slightly less crackling, but still compellingly written and moving. Another, I found to be very well controlled but ultimately rather prosaic and even sometimes a bit tedious. Another, I found to be flat out boring and predictable, with uninteresting language and unsurprising "ideas."

If there's anything that links these poets, and their aesthetics, it is that they all seem to subscribe to the idea that poetry should stick close to the domestic and find its meaning in the emotion and experience of everyday personal life. This idea is so familiar that it's easy to take for granted. But is it an inevitable conclusion?

As far as I can tell, contemporary poets tend to fall into one of two aesthetic camps. They're either of the domestic/emotional/down-to-earth variety, or of the experimental-language/process-of-consciousness variety. Granted, some poets have dual citizenship in both these areas. But these are still the two main sensibilities.

I don't know where I'm going with this. It's not that both don't produce excellent poetry. Of the four books I mentioned, two are very strong, and even the third "prosaic" one is actually very well done. In fact, the first one I mentioned actually gave me a lot of pleasure.

But do we have to give up the old idea that poets are "comprehensive souls" who make connections between all areas and levels of reality and from those connections reveal larger visions? Why do we allow reality to be narrowed into such a limited humanistic container? Poetry can go anywhere; it can include anything; it must include everything.

I just want more. I'm not sure what I want or how to find it, but I want more.