{"id":230962,"date":"2017-04-04T10:58:36","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T14:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=230962"},"modified":"2019-04-09T09:29:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T13:29:39","slug":"poetry-in-the-age-of-the-tweet-230962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/poetry-in-the-age-of-the-tweet-230962\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry in the age of the tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

April is National Poetry Month, created in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets to celebrate\u00a0an ancient literary genre that captures readers’ minds and hearts as powerfully today as ever.<\/p>\n

Rochester\u00a0has, for generations, taught students the pleasures and possibilities of poetic expression, counted famed poets among its faculty, and hosted an\u00a0array of\u00a0writers who have made exceptional contributions to the art of verse.<\/p>\n

Can\u00a0poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? Seven years ago, Rochester Review<\/em> asked that question of the University’s poetry faculty and students, and found that the answer was an emphatic “yes.” The pace of digital life has only quickened since 2010, but the slower process of\u00a0reading and crafting\u00a0poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.<\/p>\n

\n

This story originally appeared in Rochester Review, March\u2013April, 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"James
Poetic progress: \u201cTo write one poem, you have to read a thousand of them,\u201d says poet James Longenbach, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English. (University photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A cell phone trills. A\u00a0BlackBerry vibrates, bristling for immediate attention. \u201cTweets\u201d accrete, each bearing fleeting news of someone\u2019s latest passing thought on Twitter. Now, now, now, now, now.<\/p>\n

In an era of such frenzied exchange of language, it might seem that there would be little place for the poem. But poetry never has been more alive at Rochester than it is today, in writing workshops and poetry readings, informal gatherings and solitary sessions where a\u00a0writer confronts a\u00a0blank sheet\u2014or screen. Far from being blotted out by contemporary mores of communication, poetry provides a\u00a0kind of corrective.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoetry, like all great writing, whether poetry or prose, forces you to be very slow,\u201d says James Longenbach<\/a><\/strong>, the Joseph H. Gilmore Professor of English and an acclaimed poet and literary critic. \u201cYou have to read very slowly. You have to write very slowly. That\u2019s what I\u00a0say to people who say they don\u2019t understand poetry.<\/p>\n

\"book
\u201cPoetry, like all great writing, whether poetry or prose, forces you to be very slow.\u201d
\n\u2014 James Longenbach<\/div>\n

If you try to speed through language the way we do in most of our lives, poetry will be not just irrelevant, but incredibly frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speed, succinctness, transparent and uncomplicated meaning\u2014these are the currency of now ubiquitous electronic communications. But poetry, which also concerns itself with condensation of thought, is an art of shades of meaning, ambiguities of purpose, and the pleasures of language itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve become the culture of the sound bite\u2014and poetry is precisely the opposite of that,\u201d says Thomas DiPiero, a\u00a0professor of French and of visual and cultural studies, as well as the senior associate dean of the humanities. \u201cIt\u2019s a\u00a0way of thinking\u2014a very specific way of thinking. It\u2019s been called \u2018concentrated thought.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

And, judging by the English majors as well as students from disciplines throughout the College who fill English literature classrooms each semester, it has a\u00a0powerful appeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a\u00a0strong sense, a\u00a0thrilling sense, of writing among the undergraduates, and not just of poetry but of fiction as well; you can\u2019t have one genre without the other,\u201d says Longenbach, the author of critical works such as The Resistance to Poetry<\/em> and The Art of the Poetic Line,<\/em> as well as volumes of poetry including Draft of a\u00a0Letter<\/em> and Fleet River.<\/em><\/p>\n

Offered through the English Department, the poetry workshops that Longenbach and colleague Jennifer Grotz,<\/a><\/strong> an assistant professor of English, teach are part of the department\u2019s creative writing program. Directed by Joanna Scott, a novelist and the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English, the program is grounded in an understanding that writing is a creative discipline that draws on the study of a wide range of literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn workshops, half our time is spent reading the greatest poems we can read,\u201d says Longenbach, whose poetry has also appeared in publications such as The New Yorker,<\/em> The New Republic,<\/em> Slate,<\/em> and The Paris Review<\/em>. \u201cTo write one poem, you have to have read a\u00a0thousand of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grotz, whose poetry volume titled Cusp<\/em> won the Bread Loaf Writers\u2019 Conference Bakeless Prize in 2003, says that she teaches students to \u201cread as a\u00a0writer would.\u201d Joining the University faculty last fall, Grotz also translates French and Polish poetry and will teach in Rochester\u2019s new literary translation program.<\/p>\n

Grotz found her own way to poetry slowly, teaching herself by reading other poets before taking up the academic study of poetry. A\u00a0Texan who grew up \u201cin a\u00a0house with no books,\u201d she was \u201clike a\u00a0musician who could pick out a\u00a0tune,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer
Well-versed: In her students, English professor Jennifer Grotz seeks to develop a facility with writers\u2019 tools. \u201cMy philosophy of teaching at least introductory-level poetry is to break it down into what writers call \u2018craft lenses.\u2019 To have the students think of themselves as writers, with skills they want to develop\u2014image, music, and so on.\u201d (University photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In her students, Grotz seeks to develop a\u00a0facility with writers\u2019 tools. \u201cMy philosophy of teaching at least introductory-level poetry is to break it down into what writers call \u2018craft lenses.\u2019 To have the students think of themselves as writers, with skills they want to develop\u2014image, music, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Giulia Perucchio \u201913, who took Grotz\u2019s workshop last fall, that approach was invaluable. \u201cWe connect huge, fluid things with very specific images,\u201d she says. A\u00a0graduate of Rochester\u2019s School of the Arts, she came to the University already focused on creative writing. \u201cThat\u2019s the best thing I\u00a0learned from her: how to be very specific, very direct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poetry\u2019s roots at Rochester run to the University\u2019s beginning. Ashael Kendrick, a\u00a0scholar of Greek and one of the professors who came to Rochester when the University was first formed in 1850, translated and anthologized poetry. In 1968, Anthony Hecht \u201987 (Honorary), the former John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry, received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry while at Rochester, where he was a\u00a0member of the English department for 18 years.<\/p>\n

In many ways, the name most closely associated with verse at Rochester is that of the late Hyam Plutzik, who preceded Hecht as the John H. Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry and taught at the University from the mid-1940s until his death in 1962. A\u00a0widely published poet concerned with themes such as the relationship between science and poetry, Plutzik taught writing workshops and gave weekly poetry readings on campus.<\/p>\n

Today he\u2019s memorialized in the Plutzik Library for Contemporary Writing at Rush Rhees Library, where professor emeritus and poet Jarold Ramsey is also honored with the Jarold Ramsey Study. The library houses the William and Hannelore Heyen Collection, an extensive poetry archive assembled by poet Heyen. Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation also holds collections\u2014including early editions, manuscripts, and correspondence\u2014by John Dryden, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), John Gardner, Carl Sandburg, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and other notable poets.<\/p>\n

Tyler Goldman \u201910, an English major with a\u00a0creative writing emphasis from Balacynwyd, Pa., took part in the literary translation program\u2019s inaugural course, translating Roman lyric poetry into English. He says among the values of literary translation is its ability to heighten a\u00a0writer\u2019s awareness of language. \u201cIt allows you to think critically about the way language operates,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

That awareness is key to any writer\u2019s development, Longenbach says. \u201cI teach poetry almost exclusively as craft,\u201d he says, \u201chow we focus and sharpen the way we harness language. I\u00a0tell students we\u2019re almost never going to talk about the subject of a\u00a0poem. What\u2019s unique is the way the language takes you through the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t a\u00a0lot of different subjects for pop songs, he observes, but we listen to our favorites again and again. Why? It\u2019s not that we can\u2019t recall them\u2014quite the opposite. It\u2019s our attraction to how they express an experience. Poetry, which he calls a \u201csonic art,\u201d is the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou read a\u00a0poem many times, not because you can\u2019t remember the words, but because you want to inhabit the way it moves through language.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning poet Galway Kinnell \u201949 (MA) agrees. A\u00a0poem is \u201cnot just an exposition of an idea or an event, but a\u00a0reliving of it,\u201d he says. That evocative force lies in the images and music its words create.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn poetry workshops, I\u00a0find, students learn to attend to the precision of their language more powerfully than in any other class I\u00a0teach,\u201d says Longenbach, who became interested in poetry in college, after having spent \u201ca great deal of my youth involved in music, as a\u00a0pianist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such exactness is not what everyone anticipates, however. Grotz and Longenbach find ways to help their students appreciate that poetry\u2014like all art forms\u2014requires a\u00a0blending of feeling and craft.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re working with young people who feel passionately about something, and you\u2019re helping them learn how to connect that passion to a\u00a0passion for the beauty and accuracy of language,\u201d says Longenbach.<\/p>\n

Strong emotion can be an impetus for a\u00a0poem, but it\u2019s not enough. \u201cPeople who write not-very-good poems have compelling emotions, too,\u201d he says, \u201cbut they haven\u2019t figured out how to get it on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Grotz\u2019s workshop, Rainer Maria Rilke\u2019s Letters to a\u00a0Young Poet,<\/em> a\u00a0slim volume of correspondence from Rilke to an aspiring poet, helps frame discussion of the emotive dimension of poetry. She delivers the book to students in a\u00a0sealed envelope, just as a\u00a0letter would arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo my mind, Rilke really helps to address the other reason young poets turn to poetry: expressing themselves, thinking about what it means to be human,\u201d says Grotz. \u201cI contain our \u2018soul talk\u2019 to Rilke. Otherwise we focus on technique. It helps us talk more clinically about the craft\u2014but it\u2019s very hard to talk about one without the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnique is what allows empathy to come through as empathy and not just as \u2018I have these emotions,\u2019 \u201d says Emily Claman \u201906. After graduating with a\u00a0degree in philosophy, she earned an MFA with a\u00a0concentration in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and credits her work with Longenbach and poet and former Rochester faculty member Sally Keith for her pursuit of a\u00a0poetic career.<\/p>\n

When he was an undergraduate, poet Ilya Kaminsky recalls, Longenbach spoke with him \u201con a\u00a0line-by-line basis\u201d about poets Frost, Lowell, Walcott, and\u00a0Ashbery.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust think of it: James Longenbach, famous poet and literary scholar, has spent hours and hours of his time reading poems of a\u00a0first-semester freshman who did not even know English well at that time,\u201d says the Odessa, Ukraine, native who is now a\u00a0professor of poetry at San Diego State University. \u201cSuch generosity of spirit is what makes education possible and what truly propels talent to\u00a0grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Workshops are not the only courses in which Rochester students encounter poetry, of course. And poetry doesn\u2019t stand alone, says Longenbach\u2014\u201cThere\u2019s a\u00a0climate of writing here: fiction, poetry, and increasingly, playwriting\u201d\u2014nor is it separate from the work of the larger English department.<\/p>\n

When Kenneth Gross, a\u00a0professor of English who has published extensively on Renaissance and modern verse, teaches his course on lyric poetry, he guides students in \u201cslowing down, and dwelling on images and ambiguities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such ambiguities are an irreducible part of poetry\u2019s complexity, and its power\u2014a dimension, in fact, of the very precision Grotz and Longenbach instill. \u201cPoetry works, and sticks around, because it\u2019s not clear. There\u2019s something that can\u2019t be put into words, even though it is words,\u201d Gross says.<\/p>\n

\"Kenneth
Finding poetry everywhere: Professor of English Kenneth Gross shows students that poetic language inhabits places they might not expect. \u201cPoetry works, and sticks around, because it\u2019s not clear. There\u2019s something that can\u2019t be put into words, even though it is words.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Poetry \u201cmakes you consider multiplicities\u2014often contradictory multiplicities\u2014of meaning,\u201d says DiPiero. \u201cReading poetry is like reading the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while students in his courses\u2014not just English majors, but an \u201cimpressive range,\u201d says Gross\u2014might be uncertain in approaching poetry, he reminds them that \u201cthey have a\u00a0lot of experience with rhythmically shaped language: nursery rhymes, prayers, music lyrics, epitaphs, even jingles.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his lyric poetry course, Gross\u2014author of books such as Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconoclasm and Magic<\/em> and Shylock is Shakespeare<\/em>\u2014focuses on Shakespeare\u2019s sonnets and the poems of John Keats, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Bishop. They\u2019re short works that \u201cgive them a\u00a0sense of a\u00a0single poetic intelligence,\u201d he says. \u201cFor these poets, the major poems are the intense, short lyrics. They\u2019re very meaty objects of analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he shows students, too, that poetic language inhabits places they might not expect. In one course, he spent a\u00a0week examining with students the texts of national anthems such as the Star Spangled Banner<\/em> and La Marseillaise.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt made them take up things they didn\u2019t think of as poems\u2014or even as things to be read\u2014and see them as rather charged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not to be overlooked, either, is the sheer enjoyment that engaging with a\u00a0poem as a\u00a0writer or a\u00a0reader can provide. \u201cHowever dark or difficult a\u00a0poem, in some way it has to foreground pleasure,\u201d says Gross.<\/p>\n

That pleasure is what feeds literary readings like the Plutzik Reading Series, which brings readings by contemporary novelists and poets to the Rochester community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Plutzik Series pulls an audience beyond the classroom\u2014and also feeds back into the classroom,\u201d Gross says, as faculty members\u2014particularly Longenbach, Scott, and now Grotz\u2014incorporate work by visiting writers into their\u00a0courses.<\/p>\n

Like the Neilly Series, a\u00a0writers\u2019 lecture series supported by an endowment from Andrew H. \u201947 and Janet Dayton Neilly, the Plutzik Series is \u201ca huge part of the literary community here. It transcends poetry,\u201d says Goldman.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften, when I\u00a0taught poetry classes, even workshops,\u201d before coming to Rochester, \u201cthere was a\u00a0part of my job that was being a\u00a0salesman\u201d for poetry, Grotz says. \u201cHere I\u00a0don\u2019t feel the need to sell poetry at all. The students come interested and hungry.\u201d How to keep them fed, she adds, \u201cis a\u00a0wonderful problem to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Samantha Miller \u201911, a\u00a0double major in English and philosophy from Henrietta, N.Y., who is in Grotz\u2019s workshop this semester, poetry counterbalances the more impatient and utilitarian interaction with language she has in other facets of her life. \u201cWe\u2019re so used to text messaging, e-mails\u2014instant gratification and immediate answers. And poetry takes a\u00a0lot more time,\u201d she says. \u201cIn a\u00a0sense, poetry doesn\u2019t fit with our times, but I\u00a0think that makes it even more important and valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller hopes one day to teach poetry at the college level and says her literary study at Rochester has shaped not only her professional ambitions but also the very way she sees the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you can gain by studying poetry is a\u00a0new set of eyes,\u201d says Miller. \u201cYou have a\u00a0new appreciation for even the most minute things around you.\u201d<\/p>\n

It engenders, says Kinnell, \u201ca tenderness towards existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Grotz suggests, there\u2019s even something elemental to\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody knows poetry isn\u2019t what you do to make money,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not read the way popular fiction is, by any means. It may seem like an old-fashioned thing to do. But it\u2019s the perfectly packaged thing for a\u00a0human being. It\u2019s totally human-shaped, human-made.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s breath.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? As April’s National Poetry Month begins, University’s poetry faculty and students have found that the answer is an emphatic “yes.” The pace of digital life has only quickened over the last ten years since Twitter was founded, but the slower process of reading and crafting poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":231762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[20542,29502,32092,1646,2666,2276,1636,16072],"class_list":["post-230962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-department-of-english","tag-featured-post-side","tag-james-longenbach","tag-jennifer-grotz","tag-kenneth-gross","tag-literature","tag-poetry","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPoetry in the age of the tweet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/poetry-in-the-age-of-the-tweet-230962\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poetry in the age of the tweet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? As April's National Poetry Month begins, University's poetry faculty and students have found that the answer is an emphatic "yes." 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