O!, Orr, and Poetry

If you didn’t happen to read David Orr’s essay, “O! Poetry,” let me recommend it to you (New York Times Book Review, Sunday, March 27). The focus is the April issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, which features a web headline “Spring Fashion Modeled by Rising Young Poets.” After stumbling over exaggerated shock (Orr’s first line begins “The signs of the coming apocalypse are many, but none are starker than this Web headline…”), he offers a provocative article. If you’re like me, you’ll find many parts disagreeable, but disagreeable in the best possible way – Orr takes a stand and, to process what he has to say, you’ll need to give him some time and think about what he’s saying.

He gently indicts the fashionable co-opting of poetry by names like Terrell Owens and Ashton Kutcher, yet admits that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to broaden poetry’s audience. He makes populist appeals (“First, only a snob or an idiot complains when the magic wand of Oprah is flourished in his direction”), and gives the pleasant, offensive suggestion that Important Literary Folk (his caps, not mine) merely uphold gender biases and sneer at fashion “because it’s girly.” He also argues that Oprah offers a limited but valuable nod to poetry in a culture that is not particularly interested in it. He even takes Margaret Atwood to task. She had remarked “the question ‘What is the role of poetry?’ is like asking, ‘What is the role of eating?’” Orr’s pragmatic sarcasm leapt out of its metaphorical seat for this one, which is good, because Orr’s irreverence helped him prove the weakness in Atwood’s metaphor. “People who don’t eat," Orr writes, "seem generally to be dead.”

The gulf between fans of poetry and folks who just aren't interested won’t be filled by what Orr calls “Magical Poetry Talk,” or “comments that make poetry sound like God’s own electric Kool-Aid acid test.” Orr pines for coverage about the experience of a poem – a single poem, and what it does for a fresh reader. We are, after all, a pragmatic culture – we often want what we want now, and, when learning, we like to begin with how a thing works. Whomever Orr may offend with his grounded views, he makes a wonderful point: should we love poetry as if it were something impossible, remote, or unattainable, then that’s what it will remain.

What do you think, readers? Be sure to add your feedback in the comments section! Perhaps we can do some exploration of poetry right here? If you’re new to the discussion, be sure to check out Poetry For Beginners, written expressly to help the new reader appreciate poetry for the first time!