DECLINE IN MATURE LITERATURE

 

 

 

In the introduction to Birds Through A Ceiling Of Alabaster, George Wightman has observed certain traits in the maturity, and expiration, of a culture s literature. As he says:

It is a feature of mature literatures that the past is liable to be a ballchain on any forward impetus. Traditional forms become outworn and natural images deteriorate into cliches. The language is haunted by echoes and rendered bland by institutional standards and prolonged overwork. In such a situation the poet constantly seeks new vehicles in which to express himself and a fresh diction to make things new. A note of desperation enters into poetry. At this point modish stylistic postures are hailed as new aesthetic developments, extremist content replaces imaginative vision and novelty is pursued for its own sake.

 

Ultimately, says Wightman, the literature of a mature culture becomes arrested by the deadweight of tradition and stultified by attempts at new forms which lacked the necessary accompanying vision and body.

Such is often the case with the language poets, inheriting the tradition of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hart Crane that poetry must be difficult. And so now we have poetry even more difficult than theirs poetry that is language poetry that often reads as if the poet were on acid, by which words have been formed together in some new language that none of us comprehend. It s much like an abstract painting an excuse for failure of expression.

How much more difficult it actually is to have something meaningful to say, to communicate it well, and to do so simply and concisely, with an appropriate image that forms a picture for the reader, and an undercurrent that means yet something more.

 

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