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19 June 2005: Yesterday, I was thinking about a request made by one of the slowest members of New-Poetry for a list of ten poems that could be used to convert an educated adult without much interest in poetry to an appreciation of it. A silly request because (1) what should go on the list would depend on the person one wanted to convert; (2) how could you expect a simple collection of poems to mean anything to someone who had managed to get through all the exposure to poetry that normal compulsory formal education inflicts on its vitims without developing any interest in poetry? What you would need, it seemed to me, would be a collection of writings on poetry, not poems.
But if you did not know anything about the person you hoped to convert, and had to choose ten poems, which ones would you choose? (Let's assume the subject has promised to read all the poems you show him in good faith.) You'd want as wide a selection as possible, I should think--excluding the excessively anthologized and taught poems that most people would have already been exposed to--in vain, in the case of your target.
On second thought, if you excluded chestnuts, what would be left except second-rate standard poems and probably inaccessible burstnorm poems? I guess I'd have to allow excessively anthologized and taught poems.
So, what would be on my list? Well, I'd put something by Bukowski on it. "Silence," by Gomringer, because if the subject caught on to it, it would convert him to poetry automatically. "Mathemaku No. 4a, Original Version," by me, for the same reason I'd include "Silence" (though I don't think it'd have near as good a chance of changing the subject's mind as "Silence"--but, I do need the exposure).
I'd have the old one about the soldier wishing he was home with his love in his arms again, and one of the poems from Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat." Kathy Ernst's "Fools." A visual poem by Karl Kempton, too, though I'm not sure offhand which one. There are a lot of other visual poets I'd want to use work from, but would have to protect against the subject's not being susceptible to that variety of poetry.
I would not choose a light poem on the grounds that people can like light poetry but not like serious poetry, and I would assume my task to be getting my subject to like the latter.
I'd go with Keats's "Ode to Psyche" as a repesentative of "old-fashioned" romantic formal lyricism that's about as accessible as a poem with Roman mythology in it can be. Thomas's "Poem in October" for its lushness, and because it's short. I'd finish with Roethke's "Cuttings," cheating somewhat by treating his "Cuttings" and "Cuttings (later)" as a single poem.
On the bench: Cummings's falling leaf poem and "in-Just" and Saroyan's "lighght." Housman's "Cherry Trees." One poem, each, from Yeats and Frost.
I don't claim the poems on my list to be superior to all other poems, though I think at least half are as good as any other poems ever composed. I also believe twenty or thirty other lists of poems could be made using entirely different poems than the ones on mine that would be as effective as my list. I doubt my list would convert more than one out of a hundred "dyspoexics," but I think it'd have as much chance as any other.
Note: yesterday's mathemaku has been replaced by a newer version. I'm not sure the latter is an improvement, though.
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