“Poetic diction” has been a contentious issue since at least the time of Wordsworth. What words are appropriate for a poem? What is the right tone? At what pitch should the music of poetry be set?

Beyond these individual queries lies the issue of whether there is a correct poetic diction. Are there merely individual styles, some of which work and some which do not? Has Eliot hit on something by tying the “music of poetry” to “common speech”?  Thomas Gray claimed that the language of poetry is not the language of common speech. Yet he wrote with relatively straight forward diction. Eliot often employed obscure or learned words: Sanskrit was hardly a part of the common speech of English in his day, or in any other. He occasionally inserted jazz rhythms into a poem, always in a self conscious way so as to call attention to them.

There is no one such thing as “common speech” nor one set of words that constitute poetic diction. There are many vernaculars of English dictated by region, social class, education, age, and other factors. The music of poetry must work internally within the poem. That is the only rule of poetic diction.

It is as if Pound had anticipated “The Matrix” when he wrote this definition: the image stops time, moves beyond it, and the poet need not fear mortality—for that instant, at least. It is the moment when Neo says “no” to the bullet of inevitability, plucks it in its flight, and looks at it, with disdain edging on boredom.

At the beginning of the twentieth century most poetry had dissolved into warm mush. It was too freighted with non poetical obligations: to be moral, to be musical, to affirm middle class life. Pound put a halt to the whole mush project with a simple statement, and rebooted the system.

But, of course, he cannot have them. They are dead. This is the first frustration of an ambitious writer: not to have reciprocation from the writers he admires most.

Everyone who writes has an imaginary audience in mind, and probably multiple audiences. The act of writing, in and of itself, is never enough. The satisfaction of publication is something, and possible enough for some. But the sense of an active, responsive audience is the ultimate thrill. And of all the possible audiences, the one that can only be reached in the imagination “the dead writers”—is the most desired of all.

As Chuck Berry puts it, “Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikowsky the news.” I’m here!

Is language the content or the tool? Or both? Modern poets, from the mid twentieth century on , have been proclaiming something that has always been true, but not often acknowledged: poetry is language. Poetry is language before it is ideas or emotions or opinion. Instead of ignoring this fact, or treating it as unimportant, poets now often revel in the “matter or materiality of language,” with mixed success. The materiality factor works best when integrated with other things, with idea or emotion or opinion. When it is presented as the sole content of a poem there is often a gimmicky feel to the work. How many concrete poems can one read without a break? How many sound poems? The materiality people are often on the edge of experiment, in the avant-garde. They push back the frontiers, but are too often casualties of experiments gone wrong, the Madam Curies of their art.

Good poetry raises as many questions as it answers. A poem is not a how-to book or a simple minded self-help book, though reading poetry has given me a lot of helpful tips on life, the most important tip being that I need to read more poetry.

I like the divided response Koch hopes for: “distressed and illuminated.” You cannot see that which is distressing when the lights are off. Neither can you be illuminated except from a state of confusion.

Didactic poetry, poetry that presents only answers, is a bore. It is curious to be alive. And it is a sign of a lively mind to be curious.

They want explication of what they did not understand; they do not need an explanation of what seems clear to them. The interesting thing is that which is clear to one reader is confusing to another. The lucky readers meet each other, in classes, in person, or in books and articles, and the lifelong discussion begins. Some of us teach, some of us end up arguing with poets in obscure blogs. Poetry gives stimulation via puzzles. The worst thing that could happen to poetry is for people to agree that there is a theory which explains it all.

The lyric has taken a lot of abuse in the schools of creative writing, and elsewhere. Among other things, It has been associated with sexism, racism, and environmental irresponsibility. To be lyrical is to be egotistical, to express the “I” that looks upon others and the world at large and evaluates it. It looks at itself in the mirror and falls in love, like Narcissus did in the myth. In other words, lyric is guilty of the wrongs that lie behind it, in the culpable society that enables it and the flawed people who write it,  as if our contemporaries who scorn it are less flawed and our society is less culpable.

As Warland says, lyrical form is the lineage of poems. The poet is a seer and a singer. Hope, disappointment, love, anger, and a myriad of other emotions work through the form. Great poetry is lyrical. Awful poetry is lyrical. The problem lies not in the form, but in the one who works in it.

Ferlinghetti is reflecting the post modernist (but not necessarily Post Modern) obsession with passion and inner vision as motivators of poetry. It seems to me an aesthetic that has yielded mixed success. It gave us “Howl”, but it also drove the brains out of poetry.

What is wrong with a poem that does not always burn? Contemplative poetry has its place. So does playful verse. Writers who explore language and uncover its twists and turns and ironies do not need to shoot burning arrows into the thatched roof of gentility.

Is “fame” to be the sole reason for writing with “your wit on fire”? This sounds more careerist than, I hope, Ferlinghetti intended to be.

Confession: I find Blake to be mostly unreadable.

In poetry the writer must be true to him or her self. Most people live in varied states of duplicity. They wear one mask at work and another at home, or they are one way with waiters and another with clients. We have all seen it, been it.

But what about personae? There can be but one Sordello. The poet wearing a mask is still the poet behind the mask. The lie of the persona helps speak a truth.

One could speculate that the task of being just one person is impossible in the modern era. Marketers and political propagandists have an array of tools at their disposal by which to thwart us from becoming who we are meant to be. Poets are leaders in the resistance. It is a lonely and difficult job.

The moment when I read my name followed by my year of birth with a dash after it is one I will never forget. The first thing that came into my mind was that someday there will be a year after the dash. If I am luckier than I deserve, the book will be in print after my death. All authors, distinguished or not, must face this moment.

Perhaps writing is not a “practice of death” but a grab at immortality through tangible achievement. Shakespeare boasted that the young man’s beauty would last as long as the sonnet in which it is captured was read. An ironic blessing is that bad writing tends to lapse out of print and is forgotten. It is a pity that the author is forgotten; it might be a blessing that the author’s fame as a prize jackass has passed into oblivion.