Criticism: Restoring Literature

A problem threatens our literary world. For this paper it seems unimportant to know when it emerged, but merely the fact it exists and most savagely rips into the soul of our literary world. Many people believe in this threat, and a few even rant in annoyance on its presence; yet none, or at least very few, actually act out against the beast: so it rages on. In this hour the reasons rise for why those who worry about the literary future should amputate the claws of this creature before it rips another tear in our already fraying form of art.

For years the attitudes towards literature have stealthily morphed form one point of view to another, drastically different yet similar enough for people to accidently make the switch.  As an example we may use the case of horror: In its dawn, writers such as Poe would frighten readers for the purpose of unveiling things dreadful in a subject. However, readers—who became the next generation of writers—focused more on his scaring than his reason for scaring. Next they imitated the style of fright, finding it a unique feature, yet forgetting what esteemed the device in the first place. So they morphed it into a genre, similar to the happenings of romance, fantasy, westerns, science fiction, and so on, sinking libraries from treasuries of expression to shelves cluttered with genre fiction: fiction which strives for a certain genre-based persona: a story for the genre rather than a genre for the story.

So what does the future hold? Every movement since the start of Literature has pushed a new manner of expressing ideas; but in the contemporary movement of genre fiction, each innovation only pushes a new manner of writing genres. Sadly this only digs the art deeper into the ground, year by year, “innovation” by “innovation,” to where meaningful literature only appears every so often. Literature still moves as authors experiment with new ideas, but since the goals have changed, so has our tendency to move in a beneficial direction.

Although why does any of this matter? Can readers not read for the mere delight? Literature influences the time people spend. So would we not better ourselves from spending that time enjoying the books as we delight to do, yet at the same time benefit from them? Would not a person rather eat a delicious food which strengthens his health rather than an equally delicious food which turns him sick? After all, literature did emerge as a way of breaking down complex ideas and emotions in a fashion more approachable and engrossing than speaking of them directly; but what value holds the approachability an engrossment without the ideas? Without its valuable attributes, literature encourages only to seek pleasure over knowledge, and such a thing hinders deep thinking—it teaches us we work for pleasure, not for betterment. Societies which value all knowledge and no pleasure produce rigorous people, drained of joy; but societies which value all pleasure and no knowledge produce idle people, wasting moments which they could instead use for good. Yet if society pairs knowledge with pleasure as they may with literature, it produces a heightened culture, its people both merry and philosophical.

A problem threatens our literary world. Instead of continuing our restrictions and muddling of literary value, the time arises for goals to change, and change begins with the people—for works of literature mostly reflect the minds which wrote them. Ages ago in Greece and Rome, the children studied literature joyously, eager to learn of its deep nature, and such eagerness over great literature resulted in even more great literature. How has that morphed into an often grumbled-over required course? Perhaps instead of investing so much time assigning students to studying stacks of great works, the teachers should instead first help the students learn of literature as a whole: assist them in understanding its grand purpose, using the works as examples of the concepts rather than the concepts as examples of the works. Such an education impressions a deeper meaning into the students, producing deeper readers and more expressive writers—only for them to impression the next generation, and so on, each generation once again progressing in the right direction so we may finally regain our ground and restore the literary form.

Book Review: The Big Smoke

If you just take
a prose and break
it up into pieces I
don't think that you
can really call that poetry.

I am getting sick of the abuse of free verse I have observed explosively trending in contemporary poetry. Frankly, I have read many wonderful uses of free verse, and these uses were great partly because they were actually poetry. Poetry has more to it than looking like poetry. If you take a normal sentence and break it up to appear a free-verse poem, that is in no way worthy of the name "poetry," but rather "poorly formatted prose."

The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka is yet another addition to the Jack Johnson collection, which by now could be placed in the mythology section of a bookstore. It is a collection of Johnson-inspired poems that hardly vary in style, tone, or themes. Almost every poem states something about black rights, perseverance, or Johnson's hardships with women, and yet Matejka somehow, in 100 full pages of poems, managed to never deepen the dimensions of these themes.

Now, to the deeper and more controversial issues, for those are truly the reasons I excite about literary criticism. What is the purpose of a poem? It has become commonly agreed that poems share an experience. However, I hardly believe it stops there, and this is where I often ram heads with other theorists. An experience is not worth sharing in a poem unless it unveils an idea worthwhile. Unless a poem adds something important to my life or has the potential to add something important to the life of another, I find it pointless and a waste of good time.

A few poems in this collection handed some interesting ideas for me to sort out, primarily Cannibalism and Battle Royal - the book's first two poems. I spent two hours breaking down the possible implications of these poems and their intricate symbols and challenging ideas. Quickly I swept the book back up, thrilled to rip another bite of its meat. But I found myself highly disappointed starting at poem three and ending at the last. All of the symbols and layers had been dumped out, and Matejka resorted to rapid-firing events, all of them failing with a capital F as stand-alone poems. None carry any meaning other than their face-value, and nary actually gave the world insightful ideas when removed from the collection.

"Belle & I returned after a fine supper
of roasted quail in the Crystal Dining
Room. Hattie was waiting in the mauve
hallway right outside our rooms.
She was angry & rigid like one
of those Buckingham guards when
it's raining. I don't know why she came
to San Francisco, but she wore the black
lace dress I bought for her in London."

¿.....profound stuff.....?

And let's not forget the protagonist of our story, Jack Johnson. Every poem is dedicated to him, and we learn many facts about his life. Matejka clearly did his research on Johnson's life, but he completely forgot to write him as an interesting character. Instead, he leaves the protagonist flat. Apparently when you devote an entire book to one single person, fleshing out his depth is hardly necessary.

The Big Smoke is doubtlessly a bunch of broken up prose made to appear like free verse, as well as random events; yet it is hardly poetry.

1 out of 5 stars