An Explanation, Part 2

I have a myriad number of excuses on hand for why I've let Poetry Midwest linger unattended. A lightning strike near my house caused a power surge, killing my computer's logic board and frying the circuit boards on both my primary hard drive and my back up drive. I overextended myself at work by taking on an extra class and other committee responsibilities, so that little of my spare time is left for the journal. I have four kids, a wife, a mortgage, a life. You know the drill. But, in the end, these are still excuses.

I think my neglect of Poetry Midwest indicates a shift in my interests in poetry. After over twenty years of reading and writing and following the poetry world, I find myself drifting away. I follow fewer poetry blogs now than I did a few years ago, I'm involving myself in fewer poetry debates and discussions, I'm reading less contemporary poetry, even though I was coordinating reviews for The Great American Pinup before Google deleted it from the ether. I haven't written a poetry review in awhile because I find myself not liking what I've been reading, and rather than write a scathing review, I find it better to hold my tongue--not for fear of backlash (I've dealt with those before) but because words fail me as I'm reading.

More often than not, I cannot finish a book of contemporary verse because the poems aren't connecting with me on a physical level. I want a poem to take my breath away, to give me pause, to provoke a physical reaction akin to goosebumps, a panic attack, or a reeling sense of awareness of the sublime. A few do this--Annie Finch's re-issued Calendars, which I was sent for review before TGAP went belly-up, stunned me into silence, which is a lot better than choosing to be silent. But for the most part, what I have been reading recently seems less like finished poems than rough drafts. Yes, I am speaking in rough generalities, and yes, this is a slipshod way of discussing my malaise, but so be it.

Most of what I'm reading nowadays is egocentric navel gazing built on the "cult of me," pure confession without the tone of the confessional. (And yes, before my critics turn to Google to pillory me I will admit that I am guilty of writing stuff like this, too, and perhaps that is part of my problem). I'm reading more work that is "shock and awe" or "aw shucks" than it is a careful consideration of what language, rightly applied, can do. And by rightly applied, I mean language applied as an artistic endeavor attempting to achieve a communicative end. It's Coleridge's idea of poetry being "the best words in the best order" that I'm attached to, and I wish more writers were, too.

I am, for all intents and purposes, becoming disaffected with the poetry scene in its current state. Maybe I am reading the wrong things. Maybe I am too caught up with and emotionally attached to the poets who emerged from the 1950s to the 1980s; poets whose politics are embedded in their work but are not the focus of their work. In this age of distraction, I find myself turning to those poets whose intensity of focus propelled their words beyond the self. And while I revel in their words, I envy their hard-won talents, too.

And still I write, despite my disaffection. But I haven't submitted a poem for publication in over two years--a lifetime in the poetry world--because nothing I've written feels ready. I decided to withdraw two completed manuscripts from circulation, as what is fashionable in poetry now is not what was fashionable when the poems that comprise the books were written. Essentially, I grew tired of rejection and seeing my bank account drain $20 at a time. After slogging away for so long without a book to show, I begin to wonder if what I am doing is worth doing anymore. The reward of poetry is internal, emotional. Perhaps I've grown cold, and need a trial separation to see if the flame can be rekindled.

Am I suffering from ennui? Perhaps. Suffice to say that I'm evaluating my commitment to poetry, and thus, in turn, to Poetry Midwest. I've been reading a lot of short stories and science fiction and fabulist works, gorging myself on brief creative non-fiction, reading a lot of RPG blogs and chasing after memories of chasing make-believe dragons in the dungeons of my youth. Is this my mid-life crisis? Or am I just finding it time to move on to other forms? I had a colleague at another college where I taught tell me that it took him about ten years to shake off his MFA. Is this what's happening—am I finally embracing those resentments and that aesthetic that has long simmered beneath the surface?