The most significant change in poetry in the last 200 years has been in both form and subject matter, but formal concerns are really insignificant compared to content, simply because poetry has become prose and yet is still classified as poetry, and this practical truth trumps all others—no matter how much the formalist poet may protest. You want rhyme? Go to popular music.
But this is not an argument against formalism in poetry; we merely seek to look at the whole issue of old and new poetry as cunningly as possible.
The relationship between life and letters is more complex than the ‘include everything’ modernist would have it, while the pure formalist would reduce the relationship to one of pretty smoke.
But now let us really put our philosophy to work: Subject-wise, the most significant change in poetry is that poetry is no longer concerned with love.
Why were poetry and love nearly the same thing for hundreds of years?
Formal excellences are many, each fit a case, and they work when they work. So much for the rhetoric on that.
Love is the third of the Great Triad which includes Letters and Life—for several reasons.
1. Love is a popular topic. Life and Letters cannot enhance each other if Letters is the domain of a few, or merely a rote academic pursuit.
2. Love is of universal interest precisely because it incorporates every aspect of human existence: behavior, desire, morals, judgment,pride, children, spirituality, generosity, beauty, loyalty, attachment, manners, rhetoric, passion, urgency, delicacy, and the civilized. It is from a practical standpoint, not a romantic one, that love is significant. To reject love the subject matter as ‘romantic sentimentality’ is to reject it for reasons even less substantial.
3. Since so much of old poetry is a love story, to revive the topic again will reconnect old poetry and living poets.
We told the formalists to go to popular music if they wanted rhyme; we could go to popular music for love, too.
But love is like the sea no amount of tears or poems will fill. Popular music will inevitably be about love, and what about poetry?
For the reasons we have just given, Love ought to be Poetry’s template once again.
If poetry’s loud little brother, popular music, makes love its theme, this should not affect what the poets write about. Sure, if a plaintive singer can sing more profoundly on love than a poet can, the poet should be rightly uneasy and embarrassed to be outdone by the songbird. But the poets should persist: the topic of love is vast and without end, with nuances abounding, and as we said, it is the only proper subject for lyric poetry. Exceptions will arise, but even when poets write of walls, what are they really writing of but love? Let us err in the direction of swoon.
Love is a subject which includes a great deal which seems to have nothing to do with love. Love is a great way to talk about other things. At least, in poetry.
If poets think Love is not political enough, well what do we think is at the bottom of the most pressing issues of our day? Islam and the West disagree most profoundly on sexual freedom. Love is the most important topic, wherever we look.
Why Love was chased from poetry by the Modernists is surely an interesting topic in itself.
But it is time Poetry saved itself with the one thing that can save it.
