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Infernos on the Pages of Literary Journals

That one barbaric yawp might just have been
All right, but then it ricocheted right down
The later centuries.  Literature’s new bin
Was made for poetry because the frown
From modernism and free verse soon smeared
Normality that people thought was sure.
The thought that rhyme and rhythm could be queered
Down (also other means for making pure
Creations in verse realms) and thrown away
Was unimagined till that Whitman guy
And others, Rimbaud, Dujardin, held sway
And forced deaf editors to say good-bye
__To epics, sonnets, even villanelles—
__And opted for the worst of driveled hells.

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Phillip Whidden is an American living in England who has been published in America, England, Scotland (and elsewhere) in book form, online, and in journals.  

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16 Responses

  1. Roy E. Peterson

    Phillip, I could not agree more. I consider rhyme, meter, and message to be three essentials for a classical or any other poem regardless of anything I consider mistaken for poetry even back to such people as Milton and earlier. Some of the poets you mention along the way benefitted from this sad literary mistake! You made some great points right on target in my way of thinking. Bravo!

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Roy E. Peterson, Thank you. Back when I was a “proper” academic teaching at an institution of higher learning in England, I had to deal with Milton (mostly PARADISE LOST). For my sins, I have had to read it more than once from front to back and have had to use a fine-toothed comb to write a big critical article about the whole shebang. I have definitely been inoculated against it. I know whereof I bleat. I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here.

      Reply
  2. Mary Gardner

    I love the eloquence of your sonnet. The enjambment and expressions are done well. “Deaf editors,” exactly.
    Rhyme and meter are indeed the normality; essential and innate to all. Were the free-verse writers playing a joke on us, but we took it seriously?

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Free verse was intended as a temporary course-correction from the overly ornate and diction-heavy style of Victorian and early Edwardian poetry. It was not supposed to be permanent. What happened was predictable — a world of newly-liberated people screaming about their feelings, and about the need for authenticity and honesty, and the undemocratic tyranny of meter, took over the show and have maintained their control ever since.

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        To be fair, it’s clear that everybody, including the free-versers, suffers greatly from this trend. It’s just a question of which schools of poetry have any awareness of this tragedy.

      • Phillip Whidden

        Joseph S. Salemi, I’m not going to lecture you about the history of the reaction against traditional poetry that sort of, kind of began with the prefaces (etc.) to the various editions of Lyrical Ballads. You know all that already. I reject some of Wordsworth’s sonnets as sonnets since they fly in the innocent face of the rules of sonnetry. If I listed them here, I bet a lot of intelligent (and otherwise) people would react negatively. I can’t be bothered by them. Just about the most favo(u)rite “go to” of humans is to disagree with each other. For what it’s worth (almost zilch, I suppose), I find the rigid rules of sonnetry liberating. They set me free from trying to stick to the first progam(me) that comes into my mind when I have a thought for a particular, new sonnet. I almost never end up writing what I had in mind when the sonnet idea first came into my brain. The strict rules liberate me from that slavery since they help me write something that was very unexpected–instead of the boring thing I was going to write. I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Phillip, I fully agree with you about the way in which adherence to a template of meter and rhyme can push a poet into new ideas and metaphors and brilliant diction choices that he otherwise would never have dreamt of. To me this lies at the core of fictive mimesis — the human capacity to imagine and fashion verbal realities that take on a life of their own on the page.

        The formalist rebellion against free-verse hegemony is a lot stronger today than it was thirty years ago, largely because it has started to escape the mortifying hands of academics and literary theorists who wanted to house-train the movement to be proper and decorous and respectful of public orthodoxies, and even to follow some of the strictures of modernism. Dana Gioia and H.L. Hix were examples of this tendency.

        One danger, however, is the impulse that some others have to make the formal template absolutely rigid, with no room for the substitutions (whether random or planned) that have always been a part of traditional English poetic composition. My own opinion is that this is a false-flag operation, deliberately orchestrated by our enemies to suck the life out of the formalist rebellion.

        I also believe that in poetry (as in politics) many individuals are better than their ideologies. Some of the early modernists were top-notch poets, and among their descendants there are some who have produced memorable and aesthetically valuable work. We need not always make a sundering division between their labors and ours.

      • Phillip Whidden

        Joseph S. Salemi, This website stumps me. I simply cannot figure out how to send you a reply to your most recent message. So, instead, I will paste that whole message in here and then reply to it below

        “Joseph S. Salemi
        May 22, 2024
        Phillip, I fully agree with you about the way in which adherence to a template of meter and rhyme can push a poet into new ideas and metaphors and brilliant diction choices that he otherwise would never have dreamt of. To me this lies at the core of fictive mimesis — the human capacity to imagine and fashion verbal realities that take on a life of their own on the page.

        “The formalist rebellion against free-verse hegemony is a lot stronger today than it was thirty years ago, largely because it has started to escape the mortifying hands of academics and literary theorists who wanted to house-train the movement to be proper and decorous and respectful of public orthodoxies, and even to follow some of the strictures of modernism. Dana Gioia and H.L. Hix were examples of this tendency.

        “One danger, however, is the impulse that some others have to make the formal template absolutely rigid, with no room for the substitutions (whether random or planned) that have always been a part of traditional English poetic composition. My own opinion is that this is a false-flag operation, deliberately orchestrated by our enemies to suck the life out of the formalist rebellion.

        “I also believe that in poetry (as in politics) many individuals are better than their ideologies. Some of the early modernists were top-notch poets, and among their descendants there are some who have produced memorable and aesthetically valuable work. We need not always make a sundering division between their labors and ours.”

        Joseph S. Salemi, I feel that I should bow to your superior grasp of the modernist-vs.-the-rest-of-the-world situation.

        My most recently published poem outside this website was published in a journal in California that is a print journal (as well as a website journal). The piece is what most people would call a free verse poem, though if they do call it that, then the word “free” in that phrase would be almost entirely misleading. The published poem is very strictly controlled by the poet, so much so that only a fool who is blind (as blind as the deafness is of the deaf editors blamed in the sonnet which has occasioned the current discussion) would not immediately see that it is not “free verse.” The only sense in which it might be called “free verse” is that it is clearly in almost every respect NOT a traditional poem. My point here is that I am not so narrow-minded in this debate as some might prefer to see me. Over the decades I have had “free verse” poems published in printed-on-paper serious journals and not just journals. These facts, to my mind, put me above the fray that some might think I am aggressively involved in. On more than one occasion my “fans” have (unfortunately–from my point of view) said that they prefer my “free verse” (non-traditional) poems to my traditional poetry (my sonnets for example). Well, in such a complicated world as ours there is nothing I can do about other people’s tastes. (I pause to point out that I am so traditionalist in my method of reading poetry that I find myself baffled by these same readers misreading either my non-traditional poems or my sonnets…or both. As my deaf adopted sister who has limited English cries out, “What to do?!”) Before anyone sneers at me for not being Modern , Post Modern (or WOTever) enough, allow me to say that I know how to do all that. When I was appointed to my most recent university-level teaching post, it was on the condition that I must teach literary theory. I agreed. I taught it. Been there, done that. Of course there must not be rigidity that crushes new breakthroughs in poetry. I give one example very pertinent to me. There was, after all, a time when there were no sonnets anywhere in any language. Then the sonnet came along. Early sonnetry in English at least was often fairly rough-and-ready stuff, very awkward in scansion. So it is good that in traditional poetry kinks can be ironed out. To me that is one way forward. Shakespeare learned how to write “the mighty line” from Christopher Marlowe. Until then (and probably for quite a while after Marlowe and Shakespeare showed the better way) the “traditional” way of writing poetry in the lines of drama wobbled. Improving traditional poetry is one way forward. I suppose I am sort of, kind of suggesting that we can allow the two streams of poetry to flow beside each other–and whether we are writing for the one stream or the other, or both, we can strive to purify the two streams pretty much separately (though I, yes, even I can almost imagine that they might help improve each other along the way).

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Dear Phillip —

        It’s easy. If you want to reply to a message that does not have a “REPLY” key underneath it, just scroll upwards from that message to the first “REPLY” key that you find, and which has the messages below it indented. Hit that “REPLY” key, type your answer, and then submit it. It will appear right underneath the message to which you want to give an answer.

        As for what you say about your publication experiences with journals and editors and fans, all of it can be explained by the fact that very few people today learn a damned bloody thing about formal poetry and its traditions in public school, and this has been true since about 1970. And so there has been half a century of the Dark Ages for people in regard to poetry, and they simply have no sense at all about formal verse, free verse, “controlled” verse, or anything at all of that nature. They simply think that poetry is an uncoordinated method of expressing one’s feelings, and they judge a poem solely on whether they are “moved” by it, or whether they “agree” with it. (By the way, this can be a problem sometimes even here at the SCP.) So you shouldn’t be angry or baffled by the reactions of various readers. They simply have no criteria for judging poetic work other than their gut responses.

        I don’t want to get into any more fights than the myriad I am already involved in, but there are some points of yours that I cannot agree with. I certainly don’t believe that “truth” is the most important thing in poetry. Not at all.

        Second, you strike terror into my soul when you say that “Improving traditional poetry is one way forward,” or that “it is good that in traditional poetry kinks can be ironed out.” To me that’s like saying a man can be transformed into a ‘birthing-person,’ or that puberty-blockers are good for pre-adolescents who have gender dysphoria. They are malignant lies.

        There is nothing wrong with traditional formal poetry. NOTHING AT ALL. The entire purpose of the SCP is to maintain the inherited traditions and to work within them, not outside of them. We neither need nor want any experimentation.

        I present these as “ipse dixits,” which means I don’t plan on arguing or debating them.

        All best wishes to you.

    • Phillip Whidden

      Mary Gardner, Your praise is good for me. Thank you. Earlier in history one of the people negatively criticiz(s)ing my poetry implied that I didn’t know how to use enjambment correctly. He didn’t explain the rules of “correct” enjambment, though. So I asked him to give a sure fire way to ensure that I do enjambment correctly. He did not reply, for some reason. Probably for as long as humans have been humans there have been bad jokes. I’ve heard and read a few in my lifetime. Let’s not, you and I, take bad jokes seriously. Let’s laugh them off. I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here.

      Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Thank you very much, Cynthia Erlandson. I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here.

      Reply
  4. James Sale

    Hi Philip – love it – especially the quoting of the inane Whitman at the beginning, and great closing couplet that sums its up. Well done. I don’t like promoting my own work on the back of others’s efforts/post, but sometimes there is no other recourse! My own HellWard Canto 11, Poetasters, deals exactly with this situation, and extensively portrays Whitman and another American nightmare poet (along with 2 dire Brits) and the damage they have wrought. Here is a flavour and like you the word, ‘yawp’ really strikes a bell:

    Why, here’s a famous poet wannabe,
    Who pilfered laurels on his frantic climb

    To be America’s biggest me, me, me!’
    I looked and saw Wilt Witless yawping hard
    With sounds barbaric and untranslatably

    Full, singing self with multitudes of words.’

    Well done on your account of these witless types!

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Thank you, James Sale. I’m glad we are on the same team. If I’m not mistaken, the word “yawp” in regard to Whitman is Emerson’s word “barbaric yawp,” so I can’t claim it as mine. But you knew already it was Emerson’s. Oh well. Perhaps the me Me ME poets need to read Emily Dickinson’s “I’m nobody. Who are you?” I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here.

      Reply
  5. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Phillip, you have captured the zeitgeist of an era, in which truth and beauty have been cast aside, with such luscious linguistic appeal in a sonnet that refuses to be ignored. This lets me know there is hope on the truth and beauty front. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Phillip Whidden

      Susan Jarvis Bryant, It’s always a pleasure to hear from you. Of course. I have been told that in creative writing courses (and elsewhere?) people pant to write sonnets. If the people are young people, guess what? They want to write sonnets. I am too limited in intelligence and imagination to be surprised by this. I hope the claim is true. One of my opponents attacking my article on Modernism and art here on this site was not only rude (no surprise there) but most of all wanted me to swallow the academics’ narrative that Modernism has to be divided into various stages (Post-Modernism, etc.) or else I am being “obtuse.” I reckon that anyone who doesn’t recognize that Modernism is Modernism, no matter how wrinkled it becomes, is himself or herself perhaps obtuse. I think of “A rose is a rose is a rose” by an early Modernist but think maybe she should have written “A desiccated, dried up rose is a desiccated, dried up rose, is a desiccated, dried up rose.” That is a truth. You will see soon on this site in a sonnet soon to be published here that I assert that the most often untaught rule of great writing is “stick to the truth.” As to beauty, well perhaps most of my sonnets are beautiful and a lot of them are beautiful. Forgive my extreme humility. However, the majority of such sonnets have not been published (except on my website–if you subscribe to the recent notion that poetry appearing on a website is published). I’m sorry you have had to wait a long time for my response. I almost never think to check here. I think the critic mentioned above would say that I should have said simply, “I almost never think.”

      Reply

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