The Poet In The Twenty-First Century

As a unified culture in the West becomes more and more attenuated, and even less desirable for many in a pluralistic society, the possibility of the poet speaking to us about matters outside his or her own personal domain becomes increasingly unlikely. This movement away from the social sphere toward the self has often been cited as an erosive development that started with the Romantics. According to this view, the poet has had an increasingly narrow focus since that time. At the outset of the twenty-first century, a relativistic moral and pragmatic philosophical stance is all but demanded of an informed person.

My view is that although we have narrowed our fields of interest, and become a society of specialists, our preoccupation with the self offers an unparalleled opportunity to address the personal concerns of the writer in a way that has been neglected since Blake. By this I mean we have the opportunity not only to examine the experience of the self, but to explain and face ourselves in ways that mirror the highly critical social climate and analytical tendencies of our time. We may no longer have the privilege of representing or identifying with the larger social realities around us, or sharing in a common mythology. This does not mean that we cannot seek to explain ourselves and our experience through a closely examined perspective.

In the last two hundred years, numerous schools of poetry have moved away from an explanation of the self. By forcing ourselves to examine the origins of our thought processes, we can better understand and explicate the very shape and direction of our thinking. The examination of the self is demanded in all spheres of social and institutional life where authority has become suspect and most actions are deemed to be motivated by personal interest and a political agenda. Although the scrutinizing of one’s thoughts and actions may be bogus for most professional purposes, it can become the modus operandi for the poet. In this one respect, he or she can act as a medium for the present culture in the manner of the post World War One poets as they gave voice to the spiritual malaise following the war.

Such considerations may be thought to emerge from or parallel the concerns of modern psychology. This is in part true in as much as psychotherapy and poetry attempt to uncover the roots of behaviour. The difference with poetry is that it does not impose behavioral adjustments though such modifications may yield lyrical insights. Poetry can fathom that behaviour for purposes of expressing the experience of examining the underlying assumptions we have about life. In a sense, the poet’s identity is a vehicle for lyrical illumination.

The contemporary writer has the opportunity like never before to examine himself or herself without the demands of social and political contingencies shifting the focus of his or her exploration. The possibility or need to explain oneself or another is an option that would not have crossed the mind of Tennyson, Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, or even Hughes. We can no longer take it for granted that our ideas will be respected as we experience them in the aesthetic realm. The origins of thought and impulse are now the most vital well-springs for uncharted experience and artistic development.

No one will argue that the self can be a limiting and limited subject if it is not representative. The Renaissance poets took advantage of their own predilection for self-examination in probing the characters and characteristics of stock figures in their world. In most respects such persons were vehicles, disguised as representatives of their society, for their internal musings on the self. We are no longer required to mask our fascination with the self through such stock figures and social ploys. The dagger of reflection is drawn close to the very heart of the individual wielding the pen or keyboard as the case may be. There is no necessity to displace such examination except for purposes of focusing the poet’s own concerns in the life or situation of another person or persons who more vividly embody the poet’s preoccupations in a particular instance.

That poetry today is about the self or reflects the experience of the self is beyond a doubt. The quality of the work, of course, is a whole different matter. The subject of the self can yield as much vapid, superficial, or overblown verse as anything else. In fact, it is easier to be swept up into a highly personal poem that does not evaluate or extol anything beyond the poet’s own immediate selfish concerns. It is critical that the writer use the self as a starting point from which to incorporate all the experiences, intuitions, and character observations that humanity provides into the service of his or her own temperament and intellect. The passage through the self to the truth of human experience is always an extremely difficult one to take. It requires an uncompromising honesty and the ability to see the hearts and dreams of others mirrored in oneself. As always, the dramatic intensity of the poem will depend on the skill of the poet in rendering his or her experience so that it evokes an equivalent response in the reader.