Editorial
The Issue of Poetic Popularity

Poetry, like all art, ranges in seriousness from the simple and inconsequential — in poetry’s case this is readily found in the typical Limerick — to the painful and majestic. It has been the opinion of some that the decay of poetry as an art-form in the Western world is due to its difficulty as a medium. While this is a wholly reasonable assumption to make in a world of competing artistic media, what is entirely without justification is to then to demonize the popular, as if both the host of other media (television at its head) and “popularist verse” have catalysed the decline of the poetic intellectual. Not only is this logically unreasonable, it is also based on a greater flaw: that in years past, every man spent his leisure with Milton. While poetry now competes with more artistic media, it is wrong to argue that the population has become culturally boorish and unsophisticated. Rising literacy rates and the fall in the cost of books have made all forms of literature more accessible. It was in the twentieth century that we saw T. S. Eliot fill football stadia with the audiences of his lectures. Eliot, bastion of royalist, conservative politics and academic, serious poetry, was wildly popular and greatly respected by the great mass of America, just as W. B. Yeats and James Joyce were celebrated in their lifetimes. Popularity does not come about by writing that which it is assumed people want to hear. Popularity is born of the poet responding to the time he or she exists in; finding something relevant to say. Walt Whitman captured the joyous optimism of his America as Eliot captured the dour drudgery of post-war Europe. If anything, the desire to be widely appreciated should spur on innovation, not diminish it.

There is no perfect individualism to be found in poetry. Whether one takes the extreme Structuralist viewpoint or otherwise, it is an undeniable fact that a poet does not write from within a vacuum.

“These are really the thoughts of men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me”¹

If innovation is constrained by the canon of literature, so too is writing enriched by the great wealth of the very same thing. It seems then that the popular poet does two key things: he or she displays a deep connection with the contemporary mood and developments, and secondly has a profound relationship with previous and concurrent writers, and with thinkers of all kinds.

In part due to the perception of writers like Eliot and Pound being obscure, there is a false notion of brilliance attached to obscurity by some. If a poet is obscure, it could mean one of several things. He or she does not want to reveal meaning, is lacking the necessary skill to fully illustrate the point, or simply has nothing to say. Eliot’s reverence to classical literature is not a case of him being intentionally “difficult”, but rather “different”. Likewise, the contemporary writer Geoffrey Hill is acclaimed for being “uncompromising”. He does not make himself needlessly simple, but he is respected for “saying such interesting things²”. There are certainly writers who enjoy demonstrating their own education (one immediately thinks of the Metaphysical poets) but all good poets have something interesting to say, and this renders their methods subordinate.

If this is a defence of popularism then it is also a defence of this magazine. The contents of these pages are dictated by the will of the readers; it is unlikely that every reader of the final magazine will have read every poem short-listed for publication, and so responsibility rests with those who vote. Whether it is a pleasant thought or otherwise, the value of any artistic thing is judged by its popular acceptance. Individualist art cannot, by popular consent, be art. This magazine, then, is an experiment in democratic poetry. The rationale is simple enough: the poetry which makes the greatest emotional connection with the greatest number of readers is most deserving of being published. We do not seek to reward popularism, but to reward the verse which strikes an emotional bond between poet and reader. This has been the vital quality of the greatest writers.

1. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
2. A. N. Wilson, Spectator

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