Nonfiction Text: Annotation Exercise Instructions for TeachersThe following article (“Apples and Orangutans: Competing Values in Contemporary Poetry”) on aesthetics in contemporary poetry provides a great overview of the variety of values in poetry that are championed today. I’ve provided three versions of the article to help differentiate instruction and ensure that all reading levels in your classroom have an entry point to the discussion of values in poetry.

The Upper Level (A) version represents the article as it originally appeared. The vocabulary is a challenge even for your most advanced readers. It is important for your more advanced readers to identify and look-up words they do not already know. Advanced readers will benefit from two exercises as they read. First, they should monitor and repair meaning around unfamiliar vocabulary. They should underline, and define in the margin vocabulary they do not know. For each word they should try to annotate a synonym or a short phrase of definition and then ask them to reread the sentence substituting the word in the margin. After they’ve determining meaning, they should reread the sentence with its original language to reinforce their understanding of the word. Secondly, they should look to identify opposites as they read. Webb frequently and purposefully identifies two opposing values to make a point that there is conflicting and diverse opinions of aesthetics in contemporary poetry. As students list a quality in one column they should try to list the opposing quality in the second column.

The Mid Level (B) version simplifies the vocabulary, but maintains some of the complex sentence structures of the original. Mid Level readers should focus on connecting what Webb is saying to an area of prior knowledge that they have more experience with. Ask students to take a movie that they like and find which values on the list describe that movie. Is the move funny? Serious? Full of irony? Does the movie try to tell a story or is it more important for the movie to just show a day in the life of the characters? Also, ask the students to make a list of values that they think could not be used to judge movies and to track that as they read.

The Lower Level (C) version of the text really highlights the listing of qualities and avoids the longer prose sections of the article. As your struggling students read this text, it is important for them to group the different qualities. Ask them to write an L, next to each of the values that has to do with language. Ask them to write an R, next to each of the values that deals with the role of the reader in reading a poem. Finally, ask them to write a W, next to each value that seems to be about the world that the poet should or should not write about. It is less important that the students end up with the same L, R, or W’s next to different values. It is more important that that they are reading and then trying to consider the

values in terms of categories. Your struggling readers will comprehend more if they consider how each new value that they read about connects to a broader idea.

Level ABased on Apples and Orangutans: Competing Values in Contemporary PoetryCharles Harper WebbThe Writer’s Chronicle, Vol. 37, Issue 2

The Elizabethan poet’s situation was, I’m sure, more complicated than it seems, looked back on from the 21st century. I can imagine feuds: enjambed versus end-stopped lines, traditional versus contemporary diction, suitable and unsuitable subjects for poetry. Still, poets had many areas of agreement: the need for rhyme and/or meter, accepted rules of syntax, diction, coherence. Boundaries might be stretched, but were rarely breached by serious practitioners of the art. Comparing poems might not always have been apples to apples or even crab apples to pippins, but it was not apples to landfills, or dirt bikes or orangutans, as it often is today.

Poetry has become such a wide-open field, such an anything-goes battle zone; it’s hard to find areas of universal tolerance, much less agreement. Neo-beat, meat, academic, street, slam, formalist, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, experimental, stand up, stoogist, imagist, deep imagist, avant-garde, prose, post-structuralist, modern, High Modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern are just a few of the adjectives applied to poets as diverse as Mark Strand, Charles Bukowski, John Ashbery, Ron Silliman, Michael McClure, Rita Dove, James Tate, J.D. McClatchy, Lyn Hejinian, Elaine Equi, Charles Bernstein, Patricia Smith, Billy Collins, Gary Snyder, Gerald Locklin, Ray Gonzalez, Wanda Coleman, Mark Weber, David St. John, Sparrow, Aram Saroyan, Russell Edson and Brenda Hillman.

Since poetry in the U.S. rarely posts big sales, and is infrequently reviewed, once books are published, the marketplace and critics do little winnowing. With no natural selection operating, any type of poem, no matter how ill-suited for life, can survive, and even prosper if it finds a few supporters—especially loud ones emanating from universities.

The situation gives poets enormous freedom, but also creates enormous frustration and befuddlement. It offers poetry readers and prospective readers dizzying choices, but can give them fits. Poetry is already viewed by the general public as a field likely to make those foolish enough to enter feel more foolish still. Though contemporary poetry offers something for virtually everyone, the sheer amount of published work makes it hard for the reader--especially the neophyte—to find books to his/her own taste.

As for critical assessment of poetry—how does one competently

assess something when there is no agreement what that thing should be?If assessment is by committee, decisions normally flow toward a

middle ground, excluding the unusual (hence, the truly innovative), and the great. Assessment by one person is necessarily subjective. Unlike the 100-meter dash, where the fastest time wins, contemporary poetry can offer few, if any, objective criteria for winning. A writer of first-rate formal verse may be the very thing a lover of experimental verse finds most unworthy, and vice versa.

Yet critics often write as if their responses must be shared by all right-thinking people. One reason so much friction exists between poets and groups of poets, is that each tends to think of the others as deluded, foolish, benighted, shortsighted, stupid, dull, insensitive, and not much sort of morally depraved.

I’ve done my share of fulminating against aesthetic values which I believe foster bad writing, alienate readers, and doom poetry to cultural insignificance. I’m convinced that my positions are right. I’m also convinced that differences in aesthetics—i.e., taste—arise, in the main, not from reasoned judgment, but from temperament. Some differences are biological: inborn attitudes and tendencies almost impossible to change. Most of the rest are psychological—learned at an early age, and highly resistant to change. Relatively few, I believe, are products of conscious choice. People react, and then rationalize their reactions.

I often hear that poets should support each other because, “we’re all, first and foremost, poets.” I applaud any idea that encourages people to be kind to each other. Still, it should be noted that poets in the United States today may have no more in common than Montana fly-fishermen have with Antarctic gill-netters. People come to poetry wanting, needing, demanding very different and frequently incompatible things. What is praised in one quarter is sure to be vilified in another, and its opposite praised.

Below are a number of these “things” which readers may hope to find, along with a brief explanation of each. Even within these divisions, there are disagreements, and many possible subdivisions. I offer the following, not to limit the diversity, not to solve the problem (if it is a problem), not to bring one group or another to its senses, but merely to highlight some of the competing values that exist among poets and/or lovers of poetry in the United States today. 1) Natural language. Poetry should be written in straightforward language, clearly and concisely saying what it means. It should be written in the language people actually use, unencumbered by obscure allusions or references. Nothing should be written in a poem which a person could not conceivable say in a conversation.1A) A plain style. Poetry should eschew all preciousness. It should strip

away poeticisms and verbal flourishes. It should be simple and direct, with no pyrotechnics and no pretension. Understatement is a virtue. Figurative language, if present, must be in moderation. 1B) Free Form. Rhyme and meter are unnatural, and/or oppressive, and/or inhibiting, and/or elitist, and/or not reflective of modern American life. The best contemporary poetry is free verse, or possibly prose poetry, which breaks down the artificial division between poetry and prose. Some proponents of free verse give great weight to effective use of line breaks; others to the poem’s appearance on the page. 2) Special Language. Poetry is not everyday speech, but language set apart. This set-apartness may be expressed through poetic devices such as rhyme, meter, and erudite allusions, or by using language in nonstandard ways. Poetry should allow readers to savor elevated diction, or perhaps disjunctive sentences and indeterminate syntax. Our natural language should be crafted so as to make it feel special. 2A) Musical language. The sound of poetry is related to, but more important than, whatever “sense” the poem contains. Proponents may say, “I don’t know what it means, but it sounds great.” Readers may approach the ecstatic through sound. 2B) Flash and flair. Poetry is language-intoxication. A poem is the perfect place to display verbal panache and excess in the manner of Shakespeare. Overstatement can be a virtue. 2C) Fixed form. Poetry at its best makes use of rhyme and/or meter. Anything less is “Playing tennis without a net.”3) Difficulty. Since poetry is language working at its highest potential, it is necessarily (and delightfully) challenging. A good poem requires many readings, and considerable (often professional) interpretation. Easy poetry is inferior poetry. 4)Clarity. Virtually all great writing of the past has been clear, and contemporary writing should be too. Obscurity means bad writing. Ambiguity may be good, but only if multiple meanings do not cancel out or deconstruct each other.4A) Accessibility. Poetry should be read easily. It should be, in the words of Billy Collins, “hospitable.” It should be available to a large audience and, at least on the surface level, require little or no interpretation.4B) A determinable meaning. A good poem accurately conveys the author’s meaning to the reader. It is successful act of interpersonal communication.5) Indeterminacy. All claims to insight into the human mind are suspect, as in the concept of “truth.” By refusing to be freighted with or trapped inside a given “meaning,” poetry best illuminates the so-called “human condition,” which is also indeterminate. Meaning is impossible, or at least, undecidable, since for any statement, there are a multiplicity of possible,

often contradictory, meanings. Ambiguity is unavoidable, multiple meanings serving to contradict, cancel out, and deconstruct each other.6) Opacity. Clarity traps the reader in stale, enervated, writer-directed ideas and perception. Opaque elements in a poem force the reader to participate actively in the creation of meaning.7) Mystery. Poetry should not put all its cards on the table. Clarity is a virtue of prose, if it is a virtue at all. Poetry is beyond logic. Its realm is the ineffable, which is not reachable via “normal” linguistic paths. Ambiguity may be savored for its own sake. 8) A fresh look on life. Poetry refreshes the world, making the audience see with “new eyes.” The means by which this effect (called by literary theorists defamiliarization) is achieved range from devices of traditional prosody, to techniques of the avant-garde. For a poem to succeed, it must transform the everyday, taken-for-granted world into something new, interesting, and strange. 9) Epiphany. Poems should be about large, life-changing events or revelations.10) Memorable moments. Poems should be like snapshots: small but potent slices of real and/or imaginative life. They concretize and commemorate experiences which would otherwise be lost. 11) Puzzles to solve and codes to break. One of the joys of poetry is the chance to test one’s wits against the text. What are the symbols, and how are they used? What are the patters of imagery, and why do they exist? What meanings lurk under the surface of the poem?11A) Verbal play. Poetry is language working at its highest potential; therefore, the more meaning that can be layered into it via puns, homonyms, acrostics, and other games and tricks, the better.12) Seriousness. Although it is sometimes argued that humor or even silliness may be used to serous artistic purpose, readers must save their highest (and perhaps their sole) regard for works of high and sober seriousness. 13) Wit and humor. These qualities may be expressed in forms ranging from academic quips to X-rated fantasies to slapstick, each style having its critics, and its fans. Though few poets or critics would exclude wit and humor from poetry, the values attached to them range from very positive to very negative; their value, from high to negligible.14) Sincerity. Aphorism abound concerning to the relation (frequently inverse) of sincerity to good poetry. Yet the quality is highly prized in many quarters. Its perceived lack may disqualify a poem form consideration as serious art. 15) Irony. This quality, which can include self-mockery, is fundamental to post-modernism, which takes as a given that humankind has lost its position at the center of the universe, and been relegated to an

insignificant planet orbiting a minor star. David Lehman calls irony “…the attitude of mind best suited to the presentation of internal conflict… [and] intense ambivalence. Irony also suggests a certain kind of literary structure in which oppositions coexist and paradoxes can prevail.” Postmodern irony is frequently of the scornful kind. 16) A chance to feel intelligent. Because good poetry conveys much information in relatively few words, even the most transparent verse requires more brainpower, and necessitates more mental leaps, than an equal amount of prose. The self-esteem derived from proving oneself up to the task is one of the least frequently acknowledged benefits of reading poetry. 17) A chance to co-create the poem. Poems should allow the reader’s mind to go wherever it is moved to go, without any struggling toward a “correct” interpretation. A good poem expects intense reader engagement in the creative process, and functions mainly as an aide to the reader’s imagination. There should be no “privileging” of author over reader. Author-imposed meanings are oppressive. 18) A chance to willingly suspend disbelief. Good poetry induces a waking dream. Like a surfer who yields most of his power of movement to a wave, readers place themselves in the poet’s hands, hoping to be taken somewhere appealing. All hypnosis, after all, is self hypnosis. 19) Vivid imagery. Poetry works through Eliot’s “objective correlative”—emotion evoked in the brain through imagery.20) Figurative language. The essence of poetry is metaphor. Through this imaginative linking of unlike things, poetry can approach the ineffable. 21) Emotional power. The heart of poetry is emotion and poetry should have “heart.” It should pack an emotional wallop. Emphasis on ideas may be seen as “heady,” inimical to poetry.22) Intellectual power. Poetry should be unabashedly intellectual, full of ideas—philosophical, political, scientific (or whatever a given reader enjoys). Strong emotions may be seen as irrelevant, softheaded, or worst of all, sentimental. Poetry as T.S. Eliot claimed, is an escape from emotion.23) No ideas but in things. Poetry is not the place to examine intellectual issues. If they are explored, they should be embodied in concrete, nonintellectual imagery.24) Associative leaps. Poets display their virtuosity by nimble, fluid, wild and frequently nonlinear associations. The pleasure in reading is akin to watching a trapeze artist make one dazzling jump after another.25) Moral, mental, spiritual, psychological uplift. Poetry should be a source of inspiration and encouragement. It embodies the virtues of the culture and helps to pass them on. 26) Art for art’s sake. Art answers to no power above itself. It is not an

agent of social utility, nor should it be. It constitutes its own and only justification.27) Past literary glories revisited. Contemporary poetry should do what great poems of the past did. It should be in harmony with, and a part of, a Great Tradition.28) Avant-garde approach. Poetry should be in the forefront of human thought, feeling, and perception. Above all else, poems should, in Pound’s words, “Make it new.”29) Imagination. Virtually all readers admire and search for this quality, though they may disagree violently as to what the quality is, and how it is expressed.30) Entertainment and fun. Some readers crave these qualities in poetry; others find them unworthy of the art, more appropriate for lowbrow entertainment such as movies or TV.30A) Performability. Poetry is an oral art, and the best poems work best when presented orally. Some fans of poetry don’t want to read it, but to hear it at readings.30B) Excitement and energy. Like rock music, poetry should set the mind running and the body pulsing.31) Relaxed contemplation. Poetry should be a kind of meditation, lowering the pulse and calming the mind.32) Boredom. Poetry that amuses or entertains can’t move readers’ minds out of the cultural ruts they are in. A poetry of brilliant images and epiphanies is artificial and unnatural. Numbing repetition, or befuddling nonsequiters may force the reader to enter into creative partnership with the writer, and not simply fall back into passivity. 33) Careful crafting. Poetry should be painstakingly crafted, even I the result is to seem not crafted at all.34) Spontaneity. Poetry should be the uninhibited effusion of a moment. “First word, best word.”35) Cohesion and unity. Poems should provide flowing, fully evoked descriptions or narratives, presented with a logical progression of images and ideas. All elements should work together to create a unified experience. Ambiguity may be a good thing, but only if multiple meanings do not cancel out or deconstruct each other. 36) Fragmentation. Poems should reflect the discontinuity of human life. Logic is not to be trusted, and may be an instrument of patriarchal oppression. Real-life experience is not unified; neither should poetry be. 37) Closure. A poem’s ending should be strong and decisive, with powerful resonance. 37A) Elusive closure. A poem’s ending should be less a door slamming than a whisper. It should suggest possibilities, not a state a conclusion.38) Absence of Closure. Closure is unnatural, and limits the poem. A

poem’s conclusion should maximize the poem’s openness to interpretation.39) Psychological insight. The ability to explore the human psyche is the great strength of literature, and therefore, of poetry. Poetry should help readers to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves and others. It should uncover genuine emotion, even when the emotion is disguised as another, more socially-sanctioned one.39A) True confessions. Poetry should honestly depict emotions and events that are normally kept hidden. Poetry is the place to expose one’s shames, and excise one’s demons. Readers may therefore be helped to normalize their own difficult emotions and experiences, and come to terms with their own secrets. Poems provide a kind of psychotherapy. 39B) Impropriety. Since standards or propriety are meant to keep unpleasant, upsetting, and potentially dangerous truths out of mind, and since good poetry tells the truth—however provisional, shaky, and subjective it may be—poetry will necessarily violate these standards. It may deal with (and even celebrate) the inglorious, ignoble, violent, illegal, and mean. It may, and perhaps should, transgress. 40) Propriety. Poetry should celebrate by example the virtues of restraint, reticence, decorum. It embodies and reinforces important cultural ideas and norms. 41) A strong individual voice. Poetry is all about the human personality, as expressed and embodied in the individual manner of speaking/writing—i.e., the voice. The poet’s “I”ness should not only be explored, but if interesting enough, indulged. This voice may or may not be closely related (or identical) to the speaking voice of the poet. The successful poet’s voice is distinct from all others. The use of the first person “I” is encouraged. Mark Halliday described the intention of a good poem as follows, “If I could speak to you, or if a deep part of my being could speak directly, truly, powerfully, to the center of you… then it would sound like this.”41A) Freshness of expression. This quality, like imagination, is admired by most (but not all) poets, though they may disagree violently as to what the quality is, and how it should be expressed. This freshness not only gives pleasure; it renews and revitalizes the language. 42) Detachment. Poetry should aim for the objective ego-less voice of science. At the very least, it should avoid self-obsession, and eschew the first person “I.” The author, after all, is dead—merely the physical entity through which language expresses the limited number of things which its own structure enables it to speak. “Personality” is inimical to successful poetry. 43) Wisdom and timeless values. Poetry should be a repository of important human truths, able to guide and help readers in their lives.

Great poetry expresses things “oft thought but ne’er so well expressed.” 44) A relativism. All values are time and culture dependent. There is no absolute “truth.” The so-called truths of our culture are oppressive lies. 44A) Nihilism. Intense relativism often leads to despair. Nihilists may look to poetry for support of their system of (non)belief, as well as reinforcement for, or relief from, despair. 45) A sense of shared experience. Poetry should give readers a feeling of commonality with other people, past and present. It should increase our sense of empathy, and help us to feel less alone.46) Recognition of essential aloneness. Poetry should demonstrate and embody the futility of expecting company on one’s life journey. How can we know another person, when it is impossible to even pinpoint an “I”?47)A good story. The best poetry is narrative. Poetry without a narrative element is gelded poetry.48) Lyrical beauty. The highest form of contemporary poetry is the lyric, which does not need, and may be debased by, a narrative component. 49) A particular world view. Many readers, though they may deny it, reject work that embodies a particular world-view different from their own. To be excellent in their eyes, the poem must seem to share the readers’ own outlook.49A) Women’s/racial/ethnic issues. The most interesting poetry deals with the [fill in oppressed group]’s concerns, and should help to empower them. Proponents often state their views proudly and openly. 49B) White men’s issues. The most interesting poetry deal with white men’s concerns, and should help them to keep the power that they have, and regain power they have lost. Proponents tend to conceal their views, sometimes even from themselves. 50) Re-creation of life experience. Using imagery, sound, dramatic pacing, and other techniques of prosody, a good poem re-creates in the reader’s mind, the author’s real or imagined experience. Reading poems is a way for the reader to gain vicarious life-experience.51) Creation of a new, linguistic experience. Language is not life, and can’t re-create it. A poem is an experience of language, which must be distorted, fragmented, or otherwise teased out of normal usage to create something new and hitherto unknown.52)Realism. Narrative and description should be based on, and centered around, the world in which human beings live. 53)Surrealism. The dream realm of the unconscious is the proper subject of poetry. Fantastical happenings are more interesting and meaningful than the quotidian, and just as real, being a part of mental life. Poetry should express and celebrate unfettered imagination.54) A map of awareness. Poetry is linguistic charting of consciousness at work and play. John Ashbery employs a fluid, gliding style that seems to

erase its meaning as the sentence unfolds. Lyn Hejinian uses discontinuous sentences and fragments, with much leaping about, to mirror her thought process. Denise Duhamel uses multiple digressions. In a sense, all poetry is about writing poetry.55) Compression. Poetry is powerful thought squeezed into a small space. It is language under pressure, as in the poems of Dickenson.56) Rhapsodic flow. Poetry is an up swelling of life energy—powerful, fecund, and abundant, as in the poems of Whitman. Slavish sticking to a point or theme is intrinsically unpoetic.57) Impeded forward progress. Poetry should employ stumbling blocks—opaque language, repetitions, interruptions, even simple boredom—to keep the reader from passively succumbing to the writer’s control. 58) Beauty. Poetry should be concerned with the beautiful, the fine, and the refined. Subtle, graceful, and deft, it should appeal to our higher nature. 58A) Beauty in ugliness. Poetry should bring out the beauty in what is normally not considered note considered beauty. 59) Ugliness. People should deal with life as it really is, stripped of pretense, presented in all its grit, grime, and brutality. Poems should be raw, explosive, and unpolished. The cult of beauty is outdated and effete.60) Absence of beauty and/or ugliness. Both beauty and ugliness are value judgments without objective reality. They are equally oppressive illusions, both of which must be rejected.61) Disguised technique. Through skillful use of craft, poetry should create in the reader a “waking dream.” The poet works very hard to make it seem as if he or she didn’t work at all. 62) Laid-bare technique. Poetry should call attention to its tricks and secrets. it should not try to create a “waking dream,” but should be honest about its status as a verbal artifact.

The list could go one, but I hope the point is made. If you’re a poet trying to publish your work, it’s best to know what values are “out there,” and which publishers—judging by what they publish—share yours. There’s no point in sending a perfect apple to someone who only wants to see orangutans.

If you’re baffled reader, it helps to understand that, not only is most contemporary poetry bad (as most poetry in all ages has been bad), good poetry written from an aesthetic different from your own, may also seem bad to you. Critics’ aesthetic positions can be deduced from their writing, and factored into your assessment of their assessments.

If you are a beginning writer of poetry it’s useful, through wide reading and deep self-scrutiny, to refine your taste and clarify your personal aesthetic. What do you want your poetry, and others’, to do? (This

decision can be conscious or unconscious, explicit or implicit.) At all stages in a writing life, and most especially the early ones, it’s best to keep an open mind. An individual’s taste naturally changes over time. Lock it in, and your work may cease to grow.

If you’re a veteran reader and/or writer of poetry, it’s valuable to understand how the world of American poetry has changed in even the last twenty years. Awards and competitions—always undependable indices of excellence—have become more so. Reviews and criticism are more unpredictable and frustrating than ever. To acknowledge the full range of editorial preferences may not ease the frustration, but it can lessen confusion and self-doubt when you’re sure you’ve written well, yet get a negative response. It may help you reaffirm what you’re trying to do.

American poetry… is an expanding universe, poets streaking away from one another, becoming more and more diverse. Yet at some point in the future, this expansion will certainly stop. Some writer or theorist may at this moment be creating work that will change everything, poets may coalesce into a state of near-unanimity, ready to heat up and explode again.

Level BApples and Orangutans: Competing Values in Contemporary PoetryCharles Harper WebbThe Writer’s Chronicle, Vol. 37, Issue 2

In 1500s in England when Queen Elizabeth ruled, it was pretty clear what the expectations of poetry were. When people looked at a poem and decided it was good or bad, they had one set of qualities they were looking for. Today, it is more difficult to compare poems. Comparing poems might not always have been apples to apples or even crab apples to pippins, but it was not apples to landfills, or dirt bikes or orangutans, as it often is today.

Poetry has become such a wide open field, such an anything-goes battle zone, it’s hard to find areas of universal tolerance, much less agreement. There are many different kinds of poetry from new formalist which still uses rhyme to slam poetry competitions. There are also a diverse set of poets operating in America. One poet’s poems look so different from another’s that it can be difficult to even compare them under the genre poetry. In fact some poets don’t even use short lines, but write in prose paragraphs and still call it a poem!

Since poetry in the U.S. rarely posts big sales, and is infrequently reviewed, once books are published, the marketplace and critics do little narrowing down to what they consider good. With no natural selection operating, any type of poem, no matter how ill-suited for life, can survive, and even prosper if it finds a few supporters—especially loud ones coming from universities.

The situation gives poets enormous freedom, but also creates enormous frustration and confusion. It offers poetry readers and prospective readers dizzying choices, but can give them fits. Poetry is already viewed by the general public as a field likely to make those foolish enough to enter feel more foolish still. Though contemporary poetry offers something for virtually everyone, the sheer amount of published work makes it hard for the reader--especially the newbie—to find books to his/her own taste.

As for critical assessment of poetry—how do you know when something is good? How can you assess that this poem is better than that one?

Assessment by one person is necessarily subjective, a matter of opinion. Unlike the 100-meter dash, where the fastest time wins, contemporary poetry can offer few, if any, objective criteria for winning. A writer of first-rate formal verse may be the very thing a lover of experimental verse finds most unworthy, and vice versa.

Yet critics often write as if their responses must be shared by all right-thinking people. One reason so much friction exists between poets and groups of poets, is that each tends to think of the others as deluded, foolish, benighted, shortsighted, or stupid.

I’ve done my share of arguing against aesthetic values which I believe foster bad writing, alienate readers, and doom poetry to cultural insignificance. I’m convinced that my positions are right. I’m also convinced that differences in aesthetics—i.e., taste—arise, in the main, not from reasoned judgment, but from temperament, or personality. Some differences are biological: inborn attitudes and tendencies almost impossible to change. Most of the rest are psychological—learned at an early age, and highly resistant to change. Relatively few, I believe, are products of conscious choice. People react, then they rationalize, or come up with reasons, for their reactions.

I often hear that poets should support each other because, “we’re all, first and foremost, poets.” I applaud any idea that encourages people to be kind to each other. Still, it should be noted that poets in the United States today come to poetry wanting, needing, demanding very different and frequently incompatible things. What is praised in one group is sure to be looked down on in another, and its opposite praised.

Below are a number of these “things” which readers may hope to find in a poem, along with a brief explanation of each. Even within these divisions, there are disagreements, and many possible subdivisions. I offer the following to highlight some of the competing values that exist among poets and/or lovers of poetry in the United States today. 1) Natural language. Poetry should be written in straightforward language, clearly and concisely saying what it means. Nothing should be written in a poem which a person could not conceivable say in a conversation.1A) A plain style. Poetry should be simple and direct. Understatement is a virtue. Figurative language, if present, must be in moderation. 1B) Free Form. Rhyme and meter are unnatural, keep people tied up and are not natural to American life. The best contemporary poetry is free verse (not rhymed), or possibly prose poetry, which breaks down the artificial division between poetry and prose. 2) Special Language. Poetry is not everyday speech, but language set apart. This set-apartness may be expressed through poetic devices such as rhyme, meter, and references to other works of literature (allusions) or by using language in nonstandard ways. Our natural language should be crafted so as to make it feel special. 2A) Musical language. The sound of poetry is related to, but more important than, whatever “sense” the poem contains. Proponents may say, “I don’t know what it means, but it sounds great.” 2B) Flash and flair. Poetry is about being drunk on language. It is the

perfect place to show off language skills. 2C) Fixed form. Poetry at its best makes use of rhyme and/or meter. Anything less is “Playing tennis without a net.”3) Difficulty. Since poetry is language working at its highest potential, it is necessarily (and delightfully) challenging. A good poem requires many readings, and considerable (often professional) interpretation. Easy poetry is inferior poetry. 4) Clarity. Virtually all great writing of the past has been clear, and contemporary writing should be too. A poem which is difficult to figure out means that it is bad writing. 4A) Accessibility. Poetry should be read easily. It should be, in the words of Billy Collins, “hospitable” or it should welcome you into its home. It should be available to a large audience and, at least on the surface level, require little or no interpretation.4B) A determinable meaning. A good poem accurately conveys the author’s meaning to the reader. It is successful act of interpersonal communication. A meaning is clearly gotten by the reader.5) Indeterminacy. By not caring about being understood a poem is closer to what it is like to be a person. People are different from one moment to the next and so a poem should not have only one clear meaning. 6) Opacity. Parts of the poem that are hard to figure out are what makes poems great. 7) Mystery. Poetry is beyond logic. Even after a lot of discussion, there should still be parts of the poem that cannot be worked out.8) A fresh look on life. Poetry refreshes the world, making the audience see with “new eyes.” If a poem succeeds at this, the poem has changed the world into something new, interesting, and strange. 9) Epiphany. Poems should be about large, life-changing events or revelations.10) Memorable moments. Poems should be like snapshots: small but strong slices of real and/or imaginative life. They make solid and celebrate experiences which would otherwise be lost. 11) Puzzles to solve and codes to break. One of the joys of poetry is the chance to test one’s wits against the text. What are the symbols, and how are they used? What are the patters of imagery, and why do they exist? What meanings lurk under the surface of the poem? A poem which allows you to ask these questions is the best poem.11A) Verbal play. Poetry is language working at its highest potential; therefore, the more meaning that can be layered into it via puns, double meanings and other games and tricks, the better.12) Seriousness. Although it is sometimes argued that humor or even silliness may be used to serous artistic purpose, readers must save poetry for serious times and read it without looking for entertainment.

13) Wit and humor. Poetry is a chance to be entertained through humor and should try to charm the reader by being clever and funny.14) Sincerity. A poem should try to be honest and heart-felt. Any poem that keeps emotions at a distance is considered bad poetry.15) Irony. Poems should keep emotions at a distance or the poem will become cliché. Poetry can contain emotion, but it should be dealt with by adding in layers of awareness about the emotion. The poet may make fun of the emotion at the same time it is being expressed.16) A chance to feel intelligent. Because good poetry conveys much information in relatively few words, even the clearest verse requires more brainpower, and necessitates more mental leaps, than an equal amount of prose. 17) A chance to co-create the poem. Poems should allow the reader’s mind to go wherever it is moved to go, without any struggling toward a “correct” interpretation. A good poem expects intense reader engagement in the creative process, and functions mainly as an aide to the reader’s imagination. 18) A chance to willingly suspend disbelief. A poem should take the reader someplace. It is not the reader’s job to actively figure out where the poem is taking them as much as it is the reader’s job to sit back and enjoy the ride.19) Vivid imagery. Poetry works through Eliot’s “objective correlative”—emotion evoked in the brain through imagery.20) Figurative language. The essence of poetry is metaphor. Only through using language to mean more than its obvious usual meanings can poetry work. 21) Emotional power. The heart of poetry is emotion and poetry should have “heart.”. Emphasis on ideas may be seen as too brainy.22) Intellectual power. Poetry should be full of ideas—philosophical, political, scientific (or whatever a given reader enjoys). Strong emotions may be seen as not important, soft-headed, or worst of all, sentimental. Poetry, as T.S. Eliot claimed, is an escape from emotion.23) No ideas but in things. Poetry is not the place to examine intellectual issues. If they are explored, they should be embodied in concrete, nonintellectual imagery.24) Associative leaps. Poets display their skill by quick and wild jumps from one idea or image to the next. The pleasure in reading is akin to watching a trapeze artist make one dazzling jump after another.25) Moral, mental, spiritual, psychological uplift. Poetry should be a source of inspiration and encouragement. It contains the virtues of the culture and helps to pass them on. 26) Art for art’s sake. Art answers to no power above itself. It should not be used to put forward an idea or to change the world. It exists for itself.

27) Past literary glories revisited. Contemporary poetry should do what great poems of the past did. It should try to follow in the forms and subjects of poetry that has been written before.28) Avant-garde approach. Poetry should be in the front of human thought, feeling, and perception. 29) Imagination. Virtually all readers admire and search for this quality, though they may disagree violently as to what the quality is, and how it is expressed.30) Entertainment and fun. Some readers crave these qualities in poetry; others find them unworthy of the art.30A) Performability. Poetry is an oral art, and the best poems work best when presented orally or out loud. Some fans of poetry don’t want to read it, but to hear it at readings.30B) Excitement and energy. Like rock music, poetry should set the mind running and the body pulsing.31) Relaxed contemplation. Poetry should be a kind of meditation, lowering the pulse and calming the mind.32) Boredom. Poetry that amuses or entertains can’t move readers’ minds out of the cultural ruts they are in. A poetry that is boring and full of repetition may force the reader through boredom to be imaginative. 33) Careful crafting. Every step of the poem should be given a lot of thought and revised many times over.34) Spontaneity. Poetry should be written in the moment and not revised. “First word, best word.”35) Cohesion and unity. Poems should be logical and each step of the poem should clearly follow the steps before it. 36) Fragmentation. A poem should be broken up and not logical. The human life is not logical and so poetry should take turns and returns that do not follow the normal step-by-step process of logic.37) Closure. A poem’s ending should be strong and final, with powerful ending impression. 37A) Elusive closure. A poem’s ending should be less a door slamming than a whisper. It should suggest possibilities, not a state a conclusion.38) Absence of Closure. Closure is unnatural, and limits the poem. A poem’s conclusion should maximize the poem’s openness to interpretation.39) Psychological insight. Poetry should help readers to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves and others.39A) True confessions. Poetry should honestly depict emotions and events that are normally kept hidden. Poetry is the place to expose one’s shames, and release one’s demons. This will help readers feel more normal with their own shames and demons. 39B) Impropriety. Since standards or good manners are meant to keep

unpleasant, upsetting, and potentially dangerous truths out of mind, and since good poetry tells the truth, poetry should not care about politeness. Poetry should break from being polite or having good manners to get at the truth. 40) Propriety. Poetry should celebrate by example respectability and good manners. Poetry should hold up the best of society.41) A strong individual voice. Poetry is all about the human personality, as expressed and shown in the individual manner of speaking/writing—i.e., the voice. The poet’s “I”ness should not only be explored, but if interesting enough, encouraged. This voice may or may not be closely related (or identical) to the speaking voice of the poet. The successful poet’s voice is distinct from all others. The use of the first person “I” is encouraged.41A) Freshness of expression. This quality, like imagination, is admired by most (but not all) poets, though they may disagree violently as to what the quality is, and how it should be expressed. Freshness is expressing yourself in a way not heard before in poetry and it feels new to the reader.42) Detachment. Poetry should try not to express the self. Instead it should be like the voice of science or math that is less concerned with personality. 43) Wisdom and timeless values. Poetry should be a bank of important human truths, able to guide and help readers in their lives. Great poetry expresses things that are important to society, but are not usually expressed.44) A relativism. There is no truth or no value in a society that is more important than any other. One person’s truth is not the same as another’s and poetry should not try to tell us which truth is correct. 44A) Nihilism. Nihilists believe that there are no truths and this leads them to feeling lost. Poetry should express this feeling of being lost and should not try to lead us out of the darkness with ideas of truth or even many different people’s versions of the truth.45) A sense of shared experience. Poetry should give readers a feeling of what we have in common with other people, past and present. It should increase our sense of empathy, and help us to feel less alone.46) Recognition of essential aloneness. Poetry should recognize how each person in an individual completely different from another.47)A good story. The best poetry tells a story.48) Lyrical beauty. The best poetry does not try to tell a story but presents an impression of one moment unconnected to the moments before or after. 49) A particular world view. A poem must share the same opinions about the world as the reader’s opinions.49A) Women’s/racial/ethnic issues. The most interesting poetry deals with the concerns of a group of people who have been held back by society, and it should help to empower them.

49B) White men’s issues. The most interesting poetry deal with white men’s concerns, and should help them to keep the power that they have, and regain power they have lost. Fans of this view tend to keep this view hidden because it is not popular. 50) Re-creation of life experience. Using imagery, sound, dramatic pacing, and other techniques of prosody, a good poem re-creates in the reader’s mind, the author’s real or imagined experience. Reading poems is a way for the reader to gain life-experience by living the poet’s life through the poem.51) Creation of a new, linguistic (language) experience. Language is not life, and can’t re-create it. A poem is an experience of language, which must be changed from our normal usage to create something new. 52)Realism. Narrative and description should be based on, and centered around, the world in which human beings live. The poem should represent reality.53)Surrealism. The poem should not try to express reality, but should feel more like the kind of reality in dreams where reality is changed or not completely logical.54) A map of awareness. Poetry should show the reader what it is like to take in reality as a human. This is not the normal stories that we make up, but instead is full of incomplete observations. The poem is a picture of what it is like as human being to take in the world is limited bits and pieces.55) Compression. Poetry is powerful thought squeezed into a small space. It is language under pressure. Every word should carry a lot of weight in the poem. Fewer words is better.56) Rhapsodic flow. Poetry is an up swelling of life energy—powerful, full of life! To read a poem is to let long lines lead you along the page so that you run out of breath reading them aloud. 57) Impeded forward progress. A poem should not move forward from beginning to end, but should go back on itself at different moments. Poetry should also put obstacles in our way as we read to slow us down from pushing forward to the end.58) Beauty. A poem should try to be beautiful with pretty images and sounds.58A) Beauty in ugliness. Poetry should show us beauty inside things that we normally think of as ugly. 59) Ugliness. People should deal with life as it really is, stripped of pretense, presented in all its grit, grime, and brutality. Poems should be raw, explosive, and unpolished. Beauty should not be the goal of poetry.60) Absence of beauty and/or ugliness. Beauty and Ugliness are in the eye of the beholder. No one can say what is beautiful or what is ugly and poetry shouldn’t try to say that either.61) Disguised technique. The poet works very hard to make it seem as if

he or she didn’t work at all. The hard work that a poet put into the poem should not be seen and it should be difficult to discuss how a poet created an effect. Reading a poem should be like watching a magician. We should ask ourselves, “How did they do that?” in wonder.62) Laid-bare technique. A poet should show off how talented they are through making it clear what literary elements and techniques they are using. Enjoying poetry is about enjoying how much skill the poet has.

If you are a poet it is important to understand what values you think are important so that you do not compare your poem to others who hold different values. Also it is important for poets to send their poems to editors of journals who have similar values.

If you’re a confused reader of poetry, it helps to understand that, some poems are bad and that some poems just hold different values than the ones that you like. If you do not like classical music, you probably are not the person to judge which concerto performance is the best one. The bottom line is that you should know what you like in poetry and what you do not like in poetry; we call this your aesthetic criteria.

At all stages in a writing life, and most especially the early ones, it’s best to keep an open mind. An individual’s taste naturally changes over time. Lock it in, and your work may cease to grow. So for now your goal should be to be able to discuss all of the values you like in poetry and to be open to the ones that you do not like.

American poetry… is an expanding universe, poets streaking away from one another, becoming more and more diverse. Yet at some point in the future, this expansion will certainly stop. Some writer or theorist may at this moment be creating work that will change everything, poets may come together and agree on what is good and bad in poetry. But, until then it is important to know when you are comparing apples and orangutans.

Level CBased on Apples and Orangutans: Competing Values in Contemporary PoetryCharles Harper WebbThe Writer’s Chronicle, Vol. 37, Issue 2

What do people mean when they say a poem is a good or bad poem? Could a poem be good to one person and bad to another? The source of a lot of this confusion lies in aesthetic criteria. Aesthetic criteria is the list of things that you are looking for when you decide if something is a good or a bad poem. If you like poems that tell a story, you may think all poems that just express emotion without a story are bad poems. This is the same as if someone who only like hip hop said a country song is a bad song. It may or may not be a good country song. We wouldn’t know if we just listened to the hip hop listener. Similarly, we might not know if an emotion-based poem is a good or a bad one if we only listened to the story poem reader.

Then, it is important for us to know our aesthetic criteria or what we consider to be good. Below are a number of these “things” which readers may hope to find in a poem, along with a brief explanation of each. Even this is not a complete list, but it is a start to let us begin to have a conversation.1) Natural language. Poetry should sound like how we speak everyday.1A) A plain style. Poetry should be direct and clear about its meaning. 1B) Free Form. Poetry should not rhyme. 2) Special Language. Poetry should have special language that is different than how we speak everyday. 2A) Musical language. Poetry should sound like music. 2B) Flash and flair. Poets should show off their vocabulary and language skills. 2C) Fixed form. Poetry should rhyme.3) Difficulty. Poetry should be hard to understand at first. We should have to work at it. 4) Clarity. Any poem that is not clear immediately is a bad poem. 4A) Accessibility. A poem should welcome you to read it. You should want to read it and feel invited to read it. 4B) A determinable meaning. A poem should have a clear meaning that everybody gets. 5) Indeterminacy. A poem should have more than one meaning and people should disagree about its meanings. 6) Opacity. Parts of the poem that are hard to figure out are what makes poems great. 7) Mystery. Poetry is beyond logic. Even after a lot of discussion, there

should still be parts of the poem that cannot be worked out.8) A fresh look on life. Poetry refreshes the world, making the audience see with “new eyes.” 9) Epiphany. Poems should be about large, life-changing events.10) Memorable moments. Poems should be about moments in our lives that we want to remember. 11) Puzzles to solve and codes to break. Poems should be puzzles that the reader has to solve to figure out the meaning.11A) Verbal play. A poet should be playful with their language. 12) Seriousness. Poetry is about serious topics only. 13) Wit and humor. Poetry is a chance to be entertained through humor and should try to charm the reader by being clever and funny.14) Sincerity. A poem should try to be honest and heart-felt. Any poem that keeps emotions at a distance is considered bad poetry.15) Irony. Poems should keep emotions at a distance. Poetry can contain emotion, but it should be dealt with by adding in layers of awareness about the emotion. The poet may make fun of the emotion at the same time it is being expressed.16) A chance to feel intelligent. Poetry is our chance to feel smart. A poem should not treat the reader like he/she is dumb.17) A chance to co-create the poem. Poems should leave room for the reader to fill in certain blank spaces. 18) A chance to willingly suspend disbelief. A reader of a poem should feel like they are being directed by the poem. They are not supposed to have to fill in spaces. 19) Vivid imagery. Poetry should be full of images. 20) Figurative language. The words in poems should mean more than their normal meaning in conversation. 21) Emotional power. The heart of poetry is emotion and poetry should have “heart.”. Emphasis on ideas may be seen as too brainy.22) Intellectual power. Poetry should be full of ideas—philosophical, political, scientific (or whatever a given reader enjoys).23) No ideas but in things. Poetry is not about exploring ideas, but about the real, solid world.24) Associative leaps. Poets display their skill by quick and wild jumps from one idea or image to the next. The pleasure in reading is akin to watching a trapeze artist make one dazzling jump after another.25) Moral, mental, spiritual, psychological uplift. Poetry should be a source of inspiration and encouragement. It contains the virtues of the culture and helps to pass them on. 26) Art for art’s sake. Art answers to no power above itself. It should not be used to put forward an idea or to change the world. It exists for itself.27) Past literary glories revisited. Contemporary poetry should do what

great poems of the past did. It should try to follow in the forms and subjects of poetry that has been written before.28) Avant-garde approach. Poetry should be in the front of human thought, feeling, and perception. 29) Imagination. Poetry should be an act of imagination and be full of the mind’s playful imagining not of how things are, but how they could be.30) Entertainment and fun. Some readers crave these qualities in poetry; others find them unworthy of the art.30A) Performability. Poetry is best presented out loud. Some fans of poetry don’t want to read it, but to hear it at readings.30B) Excitement and energy. Like rock music, poetry should set the mind running and the body pulsing.31) Relaxed contemplation. Poetry should be a kind of meditation, lowering the pulse and calming the mind.32) Boredom. Poetry that amuses or entertains can’t move readers’ minds out of the box they are in. 33) Careful crafting. Every step of the poem should be given a lot of thought and revised many times over.34) Spontaneity. Poetry should be written in the moment and not revised. “First word, best word.”35) Cohesion and unity. Poems should be logical and each step of the poem should clearly follow the steps before it. 36) Fragmentation. A poem should be broken up and not logical. The human life is not logical and so poetry should take turns and returns that do not follow the normal step-by-step process of logic.37) Closure. A poem’s ending should be strong and final, with powerful ending impression. 37A) Elusive closure. A poem’s ending should be less a door slamming than a whisper. It should suggest possibilities, not a state a conclusion.38) Absence of Closure. Closure is unnatural, and limits the poem. A poem’s conclusion should maximize the poem’s openness to interpretation.39) Psychological insight. Poetry should help readers to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves and others.39A) True confessions. Poetry should honestly depict emotions and events that are normally kept hidden. Poetry is the place to expose one’s shames, and release one’s demons. This will help readers feel more normal with their own shames and demons. 39B) Impropriety. Since standards or good manners are meant to keep unpleasant, upsetting, and potentially dangerous truths out of mind, and since good poetry tells the truth, poetry should not care about politeness. Poetry should break from being polite or having good manners to get at the truth.

40) Propriety. Poetry should celebrate by example respectability and good manners. Poetry should hold up the best of society.41) A strong individual voice. Poetry is all about the human personality, as expressed and shown in the individual manner of speaking/writing—i.e., the voice. The poet’s “I”ness should not only be explored, but if interesting enough, encouraged. 41A) Freshness of expression. Freshness is expressing yourself in a way not heard before in poetry and it feels new to the reader.42) Detachment. Poetry should try not to express the self. Instead it should be like the voice of science or math that is less concerned with personality. 43) Wisdom and timeless values. Poetry should be a bank of important human truths, able to guide and help readers in their lives. Great poetry expresses things that are important to society, but are not usually expressed.44) A relativism. There is no truth or no value in a society that is more important than any other. One person’s truth is not the same as another’s and poetry should not try to tell us which truth is correct. 44A) Nihilism. Nihilists believe that there are no truths and this leads them to feeling lost. Poetry should express this feeling of being lost and should not try to lead us out of the darkness with ideas of truth or even many different people’s versions of the truth.45) A sense of shared experience. Poetry should give readers a feeling of what we have in common with other people, past and present. 46) Recognition of essential aloneness. Poetry should recognize how each person in an individual completely different from another.47)A good story. The best poetry tells a story.48) Lyrical beauty. The best poetry does not try to tell a story but presents an impression of one moment unconnected to the moments before or after. 49) A particular world view. A poem must share the same opinions about the world as the reader’s opinions.49A) Women’s/racial/ethnic issues. The most interesting poetry deals with the concerns of a group of people who have been held back by society, and it should help to empower them. 49B) White men’s issues. The most interesting poetry deal with white men’s concerns, and should help them to keep the power that they have, and regain power they have lost. Fans of this view tend to keep this view hidden because it is not popular. 50) Re-creation of life experience. Using imagery, sound, dramatic pacing, and other techniques of prosody, a good poem re-creates in the reader’s mind, the author’s real or imagined experience. Reading poems is a way for the reader to gain life-experience by living the poet’s life through the poem.

51) Creation of a new, linguistic (language) experience. Language is not life, and can’t re-create it. A poem is an experience of language, which must be changed from our normal usage to create something new. 52)Realism. Poems should be about reality.53)Surrealism. Poems should make sense the way dreams make sense. Poems should not be based in reality.54) A map of awareness. Poetry should show the reader what it is like to take in reality as a human. This is not the normal stories that we make up, but instead is full of incomplete observations. The poem is a picture of what it is like as human being to take in the world is limited bits and pieces.55) Compression. Poetry is powerful thought squeezed into a small space. It is language under pressure. Every word should carry a lot of weight in the poem. Fewer words is better.56) Rhapsodic flow. Poetry is an up swelling of life energy—powerful, full of life! To read a poem is to let long lines lead you along the page so that you run out of breath reading them aloud. 57) Impeded forward progress. A poem should not move forward from beginning to end, but should go back on itself at different moments. Poetry should also put obstacles in our way as we read to slow us down from pushing forward to the end.58) Beauty. A poem should try to be beautiful with pretty images and sounds.58A) Beauty in ugliness. Poetry should show us beauty inside things that we normally think of as ugly. 59) Ugliness. Beauty should not be the goal of poetry. Poems should be full of dirt and grit.60) Absence of beauty and/or ugliness. Beauty and Ugliness are in the eye of the beholder. No one can say what is beautiful or what is ugly and poetry shouldn’t try to say that either.61) Disguised technique. The poet works very hard to make it seem as if he or she didn’t work at all. The hard work that a poet put into the poem should not be seen and it should be difficult to discuss how a poet created an effect. Reading a poem should be like watching a magician. We should ask ourselves, “How did they do that?” in wonder.62) Laid-bare technique. A poet should show off how talented they are through making it clear what literary elements and techniques they are using. Enjoying poetry is about enjoying how much skill the poet has.

If you’re a confused reader of poetry, it helps to understand that, some poems are bad and that some poems just hold different values than the ones that you like. If you do not like classical music, you probably are not the person to judge which concerto performance is the best one. The bottom line is that you should know what you like in poetry and what you

do not like in poetry; we call this your aesthetic criteria.American poetry… is an expanding universe, poets streaking

away from one another, becoming more and more diverse. Yet at some point in the future, this expansion will certainly stop. Some writer or theorist may at this moment be creating work that will change everything, poets may come together and agree on what is good and bad in poetry. But, until then it is important to know when you are comparing apples and orangutans.