Poetry Is Alive and Well in the TV Wasteland

How precise and kind and wise

That He woke us when our eyes

Fit the universe’s size.

Just the smattering we see

Seem to sensibly agree

In a homely crab or bear . . . .

--John Brugaletta

For those of us who find our poetry only in nature, human relationships, the shadows on our TV sets and, perhaps, in music and in occasional prose lifted to a level of imagination and beauty, it may come as a surprise that written and published poetry is massively alive and well in the nation.

John Brugaletta, who wrote the lines at the head of this column (excerpted from a larger work entitled “The Nightmare of Knowing”), estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of poets in the country, “more than at any other time in history.” In Orange County alone, he thinks there are probably 500 poets. During the five years that Brugaletta has been teaching his poetry-writing class at Cal State Fullerton, he has instructed at least 200 students, about 25 of whom have had their poems published in leading poetry journals.

And now, under Brugaletta’s editorship, Orange County, specifically Cal State Fullerton, bodes well toward becoming the western center of poetry publishing. A nationwide poetry magazine, Southcoast Poetry Journal, a twice-yearly publication, will make its debut here early this May. Although a handpicked editorial staff of Cal State Fullerton students is helping to select poems deemed worthy of publication, the journal’s content is not limited to students’ work. Poetry submissions are coming in from throughout the nation, including those from America’s leading poets.

The objective is to produce a magazine that will rival the country’s two leading poetry publications: Poetry Magazine, of Chicago, and the American Poetry Review, of Philadelphia. Cal State Fullerton’s 40-page Southcoast Poetry Journal, initially funded by the English Department, has a planned press run of about 500.

Announcement of the journal was made last week at a meeting of Los Compadres con Libros, a literary group that usually meets at the Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona del Mar.

“Not many people go out of their way to find good poetry, but there are hundreds of good poets out there,” as well as “thousands of small presses publishing poetry.” Unfortunately, “we treat poetry as disposable, as we treat everything in our society,” he told the group.

“The final decision of poetic immortality is the reading public. All they know is they like what the poet said, and pass it on to the next generation,” thus creating an uncontrollable process that ultimately decides what the world wants to keep, he said.

Out of the sheer mass of poetry being written today, Brugaletta estimates that there are “14 or 140” poets who might be considered great. Judging the quality of a poem is a question of standards that are inconsistent and highly subjective. He said he has never met a person, himself included, who could enjoy all styles of writing.

Largely, writing poetry is a labor of love, possibly a psychological necessity. Hardly anybody, he told me later, makes any money from poetry.

I confessed to him that a poem I wrote about Abe Lincoln in my college days was published, without compensation, in a national poetry magazine. Inspired by my small success, I must have written dozens of poems after that, attempting to ape the styles of Robert Frost and William Wordsworth. All of my subsequent poems were poor. So I gave up trying to write poetry.

He chuckled sympathetically, expressing his belief that “poetry chooses people, rather than people choosing poetry.” In his personal experience, when encouraged to write poetry by a high school teacher, he said he worked at imitating Frost, E. E. Cummings and T. S. Eliot. The results were not good. So he, also, gave up writing poetry. And then, lo!, one day while earning his doctorate in English at Columbia University, poetry chose him. He discovered his own poetic voice without forcing its emergence.

After I heard that, I went home, sat in my writing chair, pencil and paper at hand, and relaxed, waiting expectantly. It was raining outside. I won’t say nothing happened, but what did was hardly anything Brugaletta would publish in his forthcoming magazine, to which you can subscribe at $9 a year.

All right, if you insist, here’s my new poem: “It is raining / And the flowers are drinking.” Alas, after having given up poetry writing for 46 years, I am not yet among the chosen.