The Bartender Issue

It’s always tempting to talk about Contemporary American Poetry in terms of polarities: Accessible versus Difficult, Spoken Word versus Page, Free Verse versus Formal, Narrative versus Lyric, Confessional versus Respectable. It might be more accurate to describe the whole as a very healthy spectrum, along which poets are free to move in any of a number of directions, depending on the needs of whatever poem we happen to be writing at the moment.

But if there exists one single defining issue that draws a hard line between one school of American poets and everybody else, I think it might be what I refer to as The Bartender Issue

Understand first that I do come from the Spoken Word side of the house, that my first audience of choice is a live audience, and that I measure the success of any new poem by the response of that audience. It’s always gratifying when the applause goes on for an unusually long time, when the comments are favorable, when people go out of their way to volunteer a compliment. Most of the people in most of my audiences are poets themselves, and we all crave the acceptance of our peers. But for me, there exists an even higher standard of success: the people working the room; the waitress; the bartender.

We poets are all in the same boat, working with common tools, trying to achieve the extraordinary. When one of us gets it right, it is to be expected that others of us will appreciate the accomplishment, and be encouraged by it.

But in our live readings, even the best of us are reaching only other poets and the handful of non-poets who are willing to come out at night to listen to poetry, and in the context of American culture as a whole, that subset constitutes only a tiny fraction of the potential audience.

This is what makes the bartender and the waitress important. They’re not in the room for the poetry; they’re there because it’s their job, they’re being paid to be there. As such, they are the only delegates in the room from the Rest of America, the huge majority for whom Poetry is not even a blip on the radar. The bartender and the waitress represent the audience we have to reach if Poetry is ever again going to Matter in this country.

Moreover, the simple fact that they are working creates a handicap in trying to connect with them. For even the most dedicated connoisseur of the open-mikes, it’s impossible to give every poem the kind of attention it deserves and may require. In an open mike, the first obstacle that every reader faces is the shifting of gears the audience has to effect between one poem and the next. This is true even for those of us who haven’t come hoping to find a date, who are sitting in the audience just for the poetry, perhaps even making notes to keep our attention from wandering. Consider how much more difficult that shifting of gears is for someone taking whispered drink orders or making change from a twenty (well, maybe not a twenty, not in a roomful of poets; but a ten wouldn’t be out of the question).

For me then, it is doubly sweet when the bartender or the waitress or the barista pays me a compliment; the photographer. If a particular poem wins acceptance from my peers, I’ll believe it’s a good poem. But if the bartender likes it too, I’ll believe it’s an even better poem.

In this respect, I’ve become aware that I’m hitting a hot button issue in Contemporary American Poetry. I have been repeatedly surprised to learn how many American poets—and critics—would argue that if the bartender likes it, it’s a lesser poem.

For these poets, “Accessibility” is a bad word; poetry is supposed to be Difficult.

In 2007 I was invited to perform and speak at the Edmonton Poetry Festival. I talked about what an exciting time this is to be an American poet. I observed, unoriginally, that in the second half of the twentieth century, American Poetry had been gravitating away from any general audience toward a point at which poets would be writing only for each other. In the question period I was asked, “What’s wrong with poets writing for each other?” My first thought was, “Oh no, he’s got me;” but the words that came out of my mouth, almost reflexively, were, “Absolutely nothing. But it shouldn’t be the only thing.”

A few years ago, Garrison Keillor put out an anthology called “Good Poems,” aimed—very successfully—at a general audience, and comprised of poems that one could enjoy without having an MFA. (Nothing against MFAs; a number of my friends have gone that route, and some pronounce it “life-changing.”) Poetry Magazine, uncharacteristically, ran not one but two reviews of “Good Poems,” back to back in the same issue. One review was by Dana Gioia, and generally favorable. The other was by August Kleinzhaler, and it bordered on contemptuous; poetry is supposed to be Difficult.

In an exchange of letters with Donald Hall a few years ago, I argued that he would never find a poem in Poetry Magazine or The New Yorker that would win a poetry slam. He responded (in a column in American Poetry Review) that he couldn’t agree with me more; he wrote, “What the hell do I care, considering a poem’s virtue, about the votes of a bunch of cheerful, self-chosen enthusiasts in a bar?”

It is not my intention here to throw down any gauntlets. Kleinzhaler and Hall are both poets for whom I have great admiration. Indeed, their own poetry is accessible enough that I find it rather surprising that their critical stance is so slightly to this side of Harold Bloom. Though I hesitate to put words in anyone’s mouth, I think it’s clear where they would stand on The Bartender Issue: if the bartender likes it, it would be, in their eyes, a lesser poem. It’s hard to find an issue of Poetry Magazine in which the majority of critics and many of the letter-writers wouldn’t fall into that category.

I am not for a minute arguing that poetry has to be accessible, or that, God forbid, the Bartender should be the ultimate judge. I think it is entirely healthy that every polarity be respected and evaluated on its own terms. Every critic is free to say, “This is not to my taste.”  But if anyone argues, “This is good poetry because it is Accessible,” or “This is bad poetry because it is Formal,” they should be considered to have shot themselves in the foot. And if anyone argues, “This is bad because the bartender stopped what she was doing to listen to it,” that critic is a mole working against the long-term interest of American poetry.

In the world today we see a tremendous amount of energy being invested in Fundamentalism, in the attitude that we alone, we embattled minority, are preserving and protecting the Truth against all comers. It is disheartening to think that in an enclave of society as appropriately esoteric as American Poetry, we might find ourselves contending with this same kind of energy.

It feels like a turf war. The Spoken Word people, with an expanding audience, are saying to the Masters of Poetry (the ones who run the Masters programs), “We don’t have to go through you; we can go straight to our audience.” And the Masters, albeit with one very interested eye on that audience, are answering, “Go right ahead; but if you don’t come through us, it’s mere Spoken Word; you can’t call it Poetry, much less Good Poetry.”

That makes me the guy stepping out from the Spoken Word side, impelled by a vision of how very much we have to offer each other, waving the white flag of truce.

And being shot at from both sides.