Before actually discussing the title, I have a story to share. I'm currently taking an advanced creative writing class where the entire semester we are reading and writing poetry. Towards the beginning, when discussing Ars Poetica or the art of poetry (which subsequently inspired my poetry and this website) we as a class in conjunction with the professor determined that poetry can be basically anything. Some of my notes include phrases such as: poetry is art, poetry is wearing another soul's shoes and treading down your own path,it is a translation of a literal event into a figurative experience, it is what it is because of what it's not, and so much more.
Fast forward and we're over halfway through the semester. We are required to find and study a book of poetry by a single contemporary poet. However, as I and other students seek to find poets whose poetry we enjoy and/or can relate to, we're running into walls we previously were not aware of put there by our professor. A friend of mine was discussing our frustrations and I realized that our professor is unintentionally pitting his apparently modernist mentality against our contemporary (and millennial) class and thus the poetry we are seeking out.
The reason I describe him as having an "apparently modernist mentality" is because one of the defining aspects of post-modernism, which evolved as opposition to previous characteristics of literature and the arts, is the break from what considered the high brow or academic quality of arts and literature. Here he has asked us to seek out contemporary poets and their works, and now he is retroactively denying what are some prime examples of contemporary poets. People like Yung Pueblo, Rupi Kaur, Najwa Zebian, and more who are published within the past 365 days whether through publishing groups or self are not considered as "college level" texts.
Don't take me wrong--I definitely appreciate and respect my professor, but I feel like this experience has highlighted a phenomenon I didn't consciously realize was occurring. My generation, the students currently earning undergraduate degrees to be more specific, have come up against generations worth of restrictions and oppositions and are taught we live in a free world, where we just need gumption and motivation to do anything we set our minds to...but in the same breath are given limitations for a variety of reasons. The older and more experienced professionals are comfortable and successful, which--good for them--can mean that change and new thoughts might upset the world that they have, in a sense, conquered or understood. On both a physical and on a metaphorical level, the world and it's inhabitant are always changing. We adapt to our environments and either seek to change them or leave them.
Much of what poetry and literature and all the arts have become today began with rules and limitations to which people either conformed or rebelled. So my question now is: is there more rebelling to come?
Comments