Well, my experiment on a general interest board has borne some fruit. I don’t think anyone said anything that we all haven’t heard before, but the defensiveness of the reactions told a new story, for me.
My question was: “Why don’t you read poetry?”
The answers varied. The first is that old standby, “It doesn’t rhyme.”
That answer spurred some defensiveness in me in turn, from “some of it does!” or even “mine does!” to “wake up and smell the 21st century!”
Critics and a handful of fans adore the show “Arrested Development.” I like it, too, though I’ve only watched a few episodes. I understand why, at least to a certain extent, the show hasn’t caught on. It doesn’t follow American sitcom traditions, the dialogue is too fast, too many funny lines are simply tossed off without the expected build up and pay off of “American” humor. While it has quotable lines, the humor is too interconnected for easy translation to someone who hasn’t seen it. It’s easy to forget important details, easy to overlook important clues about what is happening and what will happen.
AD is, in short, an unrhymed poem.
Rhyme is pretty, it’s seen as traditional, and most of all it’s a mnemonic device that allows the audience to recall passages or whole poems, to quote at length based on aural clues that are built into the verse.
Flash back to the last time you sang along with a song on the radio. You can remember how the song is constructed partially because you can follow the logic of the rhymes. I can remember most songs after hearing them only once or twice, because I can reconstruct them in my head so long as I can recall a couple of lines’ end rhymes.
AD has more structure than its critics give it credit for, but because it’s not always the expected structure, what it has is overlooked. Compare to “My Name is Earl” which is also funny, also breaks with some sitcom traditions, but embraces the sitcom structure in an easily recognizable way and you see the difference between a critical darling and a critical darling that people actually watch.
So what do I think this really means for poetry? You know what? I don’t know. I do think that we expect too much of readers, or viewers, if we deny them any sort of understood structure, expecting each poem to build its own. But like sitcoms are not dramas are not news programs are not skit shows, all poems needn’t share a structure or identifiable structural elements.
This brings me back to genres. Genres allow an audience to form expectations about the work, providing footing and also providing a jumping off point for subverting those expectations. Such subversions won’t always be successful, as AD shows, and the categorization in itself will limit the audience to some extent. After all, some people won’t watch a sitcom. Some won’t watch the news. But what would happen if television or movies actively resisted categorization? “What kind of show is it?” “A television show.” “Yes, but what kind?” “The kind that’s on TV.”