Memorable Poetry?

I've come a little late to Philip Hensher's piece in the Telegraph about the current state of poetry. It's worth reading, for its more nuanced than a summary of it might make out.

In response to the Costa being won again by a poet, (Jo Shapcott's "Of Mutability" following on from Christopher Reid's "A Scattering") he wonders why, when poetry receives praise and profile, it still garners little interest, few sales. He makes the point that whilst Sean O'Brien's "The Drowned Book" won many prizes, (and earned much from those awards), it sold "sod all." Moreover, he makes the point that when poetry is elevated in our discourse, it is for its backstory rather than the words itself. Shapcott's book was written following her cancer treatment, Reid's was an elegy. Its a valid point, but whenever people talk about what poetry is for, then weddings and funerals are often given as an answer. Although he's right that the Booker doesn't tend to be awarded based on a writer's sufferings; perhaps that's the wrong tree he's barking up. The "misery memoir" and its fictional equivalent (and I'd include Anne Enright's dyspeptic "The Gathering" in that list) have been a phenomenon in recent years - with books like "The Lovely Bones" outselling many others. "Poetry as a highly wrought expression of a complex emotion, or as an exquisite opportunity for verbal play and wit, seems to struggle for a readership," and I don't think anyone involced in contemporary poetry would think any different. I'm relaxed about this. We live in a world of films, games, television and the internet, and poetry has to compete with those as well as others. It seems that poetry is addressing issues relating to the environment with vigour; though may find it more difficult to respond to the deficit - after all, poetry has always been more comfortable describing nature than money.

Hensher seems to be struggling with the problem, and I'd say its at least partly because he doesn't seem to be aware (or certainly doesn't mention) many poets other than those, such as Duffy, Armitage and Paterson, who are as famous for their poetic presence as their poetry. You may well find all human life in poetry, but possibly not in any particular poet. Every week it seems that a different poet wins a prize, here or in America, and half the time, they are a name new to me, never mind to the general public. But I'd say the same is true for contemporary art, or theatre.

Although Hensher doesn't seem to be wanting to open a debate on that old chestnut of whether poetry should rhyme or not, the Telegraph readership takes up the cudgel for him. Strangest of all is Sophie Hannah's comment (I'm reliably informed it is the Carcanet poet writing) "Contemporary poetry does not sell because it doesn't offer enough pleasure/enjoyment to the reader. Rhyme and metre - the things that make poetry musical and memorable* are hardly ever used these days in the way that they were by Housman, Larkin, Tennyson, etc, and so much of contemporary poetry does not stick in the mind in the way that pieces of music we love do." *(MY EMPHASIS)

Should poetry stick in the mind? When I think of poetry I love, it is not the simple lyric poem, but the more complex ideas of "The Wasteland" or Ezra Pound's "Cantos". There is nothing wrong with memorising verse, but clearly that though a regular rhyme and metre makes that easier, it doesn't make it better. There are memorable poems by contemporary writers - Ian Duhig's "Fundamentals" or Edwin Morgan's "The Coals", or Luke Kennard's "The Murderer" would be in my list - and probably no less than in previous ages. The dreadful Victoriana that Pound wanted rid of, (which inevitably rhymed, and followed meter) is as unmemorable as a random shard of the least memorable L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet.

To my mind, a poet should be less convinced about their formalism, and more concerned with having something to say. "The Wasteland" remains the most convincing piece of English language art from the devastated world immediately following the First World War, even though it remains notoriously difficult art. Clearly, there was an audience for this great work, at the moment the "audience" for poetry may well be at those times when we need it most, when in love, when we suffer, when we lose someone we care about; the world we live in is unlikey to be so kind as to leave us with only these fundamentals for long. Poetry, will, I have no doubt, respond. And it probably won't be in pentameters.