Dale Carnegie School of Poetry

The Dale Carnegie School of Poetry encapsulates what I dislike in poetry, or more generally, in people. The Dale Carnegie School of Public Speaking stated, say what you’ll say, say it and say you’ve said it. Presumably because repetition and simplicity equals comprehension.
The Dale Carnegie school of poetry is when a tone is set at the start of the poem, the poem expands or expounds on it and it ends with a one or two line reinforcement of the same as a moment of awww. It vexes me because it dawdles and goes no where unexpected. It bothers me because it is against my world view that life is complex and messy and of quick turnabouts. A poem if a model of the world is a revolution at the particle level. There’s a spin, a twist, an unexpected, perhaps even unaccounted for, trajectory. Not everything fits. It is not a linear narrative.
Perhaps this explains why I like haiku. It gets right down to the business of pivot and juxtaposing. It turns on itself. When I unconsciously get that one nostril curled up when I say the word narrative or lyric, I mean this sub-set of those where everything is boiled down to a sieved single flavour.
If the narrative goes along as lineated story-telling but then expands here and there to profound, it saves it in my mind. If what is added as a gesture comes justifiably from what was said before, and is not a tacked on obvious attempt to be profound, but a genuine-feeling eureka, and all that came before is changed in light of the new information, I can roll with that. There is revolution. The concrete become re-signified, this meets my criterion for satisfaction.
If the poet questions her or his own narrative, I can go with them, comfortable that they are sentient and critical-minded. If they dither on basking in their own emotional roller coaster, I want another ride. Emotional-junkie poetry that calls complaintsky indulgence, an expressive therapy is therapy that reinforces rather than transforms, then it just feels counterproductive to read or write. Something new must arise. It need not be salient or sense. It just can’t be the predictable. I’m overstocked in the predictable. I’m hard to impress for new. I frustrate myself with this.
When I first saw Niagara Falls, I was underwhelmed. When I saw mountains with my own eyes in person for the first time, I was disappointed. The same sort of thing happens with built-up award winning poetry. That’s it? I don’t get how others are so impressed. Are they being nice and encouraging or are genuinely blown away?
Am I too cynical? Expect too much? Am I being a brick-layer laying one dang brick after the last, or am I the bricklayer who has the vision to see that with hundreds of others over the decades, we are together making a great cultural treasure that will house people? One brick and one bricklayer is nothing but we are all part of something greater. Or am I just the person defacing the wall with a paint doodle?
If a whole collection seems spiffy, lines are enjambed freshly, words are considered, but beneath that, consuming more, there’s an underlying constancy I get uneasy. Is it just expounding in the same linear motion while dressed in dazzling ruffles, ribbons, grommets and colors array? I get the sensation of being shown the menu and the first is a pink aspic salmon. The next is a green aspic turtle. Then a series of tiny petit fours, except in aspic. And the picnic starts to get a bit grim.
Does a collection amount to a tone of self-pity, even if prettied up by arm’s length cynicism? Is all the humour dark as if there’s a dignity in never being truly sad nor lightly amused? All kinds of alarm bells go off in my head but I can’t hear them because I’m used to screening out the din of fire alarm tests.
But if I poem is an expression of a person, then a criticism of their expression is a criticism of the foundations of how they see the world, and not just a matter of the work? To remark on the point of view of the poem is to remark on the person. We must talk of the artistry and craft not the ideas. Not question where the wall was put, or that there be a need for a wall, just accept that a wall is a good thing and remark on how well the wall is doing.
Why must I always have revolution? Why do I find the dull so tiresome instead of finding comfort in the constructed stability? Why must I construct instability? Both are as riddled with false vision. If I mix it up and say something straight as an orator for copper-lobster mould sales, would I threaten myself so?
Do I think on some level that if I don’t make a miniature model of the world that somehow the world that it represents changes? Do I think that the world needs the prayers that imitate the shape I want the world to have in order to keep the shape it doesn’t have? What do I have vested in the idea that poems must be complex. Do I conflate that with intellectual rigour and a plain poem comes from a dumb mind? Was I called stupid that much of the time for the first 10 years that I will carry that fear of being taken for a fool as a resistance indefinitely? Or do I over-examine?