I Prefer Poems That Aren't Shaved Down There

I hadn't planned to start off with thoughts on Shakespeare, but what the hell.

One of the reasons I read poetry is to steal from other poets. But how does one steal from Shakespeare? I do think he (whoever he was, Stratford or Oxford) was a bona fide genius, but part of his allure also results from his placement in history. He wrote at a time of unusual opportunity, when the modern English language, our English, was just being born.

Here's a partial list of words he coined: compromise, dwindle, madcap, tranquil, lonely, submerge, undress, cold-blooded, champion, torture, swagger, and bloodstained. A longer list can be found here. And then there's the way he used the words . . .

The English language is always changing, always alive. However, our language is still basically the same language that Shakespeare and his contemporaries originated. Poets can still mess with language a great deal, but is it even possible for anyone today to write as freshly as Shakespeare? Even if someone of equal genius appeared today, I think he or she would might not be able to achieve equal results. I fear the language is just not molten and protean enough anymore. Has it cooled and hardened? It seems to let less in, at least without a fight. An author who uses neologisms these days often seems merely eccentric or, at best, "experimental."

And yet that's still just so tempting. There's a lot of pressure on poets now to use what Eliot called "the language of the tribe." God forbid anyone uses language that isn't familiar and contemporary. But that limitation dulls the English language, it seems to me. Even "experimental" poets often use very limited diction. How can poets write poetry as lexically lively as Shakespeare's without seeming merely eccentric? How can poets preserve the richness of the language without seeming quaintly anachronistic?

The last major poet who tried to keep the English language thick with non-ordinary vocabulary was Hart Crane. His approach to Modernism was to drop Elizabethan and Romantic language directly atop the phenomena of the modern world, such as the Brooklyn Bridge, willing them to co-exist. If only he had (fully) succeeded. Think of the possibilities that would be available if his version of modernism had taken. Instead, we got W.C. Williams and his goddamned wheel barrow. (Nothing depends on that f***ing wheel barrow! Nothing, I say!)

In an earlier post, I announced my preference for curvy language. To that, let me add my allegiance to furry language. Let me further say that current diction is often the equivalent of a woman who's shaved down there, and that, in literature as in life, I prefer the forest to the plain.