Poetry Elite or Everyday?

In the Harrington essay, I'm interested in the idea that the privatization of poetry is, in some respects, elitist. I'm also interested in thinking about poetry as something marketable. I normally think of the creation of poetry as a very personal thing. I know that in my own poetry, I'm not writing for anyone else and think of an audience only insofar as a poem's coherence is concerned (I'm thinking here more of grammatical coherence as opposed to interpretative coherence). I also tend to think of poetry as being inherently self-absorbed, so I find it interesting that Harrington seems to be suggesting that poetry can become too private, too wrapped up in itself (or the poet). I realize that Harrington is referring to a specific moment in American poetry and is by no means suggesting that all personally focused poetry (and I think it can be argued that all poetry is, at least in some way, personal) is elitist. Still, the issue Harrington raises makes me wonder how much poetry is and/or should be concerned with its audience. On the one hand, poetry seems to lose its relevance if a reader can't relate to it, can't find something meaningful within it. At the same time, if poetry is totally absorbed with its audience, it becomes a product to be marketed, reduced, perhaps, to greeting card rhymes. And then there's the question of who makes up poetry's audience; as Harrington points out, poetry's readership seems to exist primarily within the academic realm. In this sense, poetry today could be viewed as elitist. This makes me wonder in regard to my own poetry, what is the point if we are essentially writing poems only for other poets and scholars? Shouldn't the "common man" be able to find something of value within poetry? This is something I've often thought about and I still really don't have a good answer to these questions. Yet, despite this, I still feel driven to write. I think, largely, poetry is created out of a need to communicate. For me, there is satisfaction in laying my thoughts out on paper--the communication lies in transferring what is in my mind into words. If from this initial communication other people are able to get something out of my poetry, all the better.

Eliot and Rich seem to be saying similar things about poetry in regard to the effect of preexisting poetry (and literature in general) on the poet. That is, they both seem to agree that everything that has already been written influences and essentially becomes part of the poet's poetry. For Rich, as a woman, this means that she must work against these traditions because they are inherently oppressive. I think we can see Rich struggling with this throughout her poetry--struggling to establish herself as a female writer within a tradition that has considered the female primarily as an object (i.e. as a muse or as a caregiver). Rich's poems seem to become progressively less formal and more experimental over time and I think this suggests that for her, to write within formalistic traditions (i.e. rhyme or meter) is to be subject to oppression. Breaking free as a female writer seems to coincide with breaking free stylistically.

In regard to how Rich's poems serve or don't serve a public, it seems that she is certainly aware of a public, but perhaps, primarily a female public. I think that she is trying to create a new tradition; to make a space for women within poetry and in doing this is conscious of the fact that women will look to her poems for this new tradition. I think Rich's poems, too, reflect and are concerned not just with women within literature, but also within society. I see Rich becoming most conscious of this in The Will to Change and specifically in "Planetarium," and thus I find it interesting that she talks about "Planetarium" in her essay and mentions that it is tied to the earlier poem "Orion." There's plenty more that can be said about this, but I'll stop since I've already exceeded my "300-500 words."