Making Poetry Popular Is No Vice

As one of the poets at what appeared to my eyes and ears to be a very successful event, I must object to Jan Breslauer’s snide put-down of the recent “The United States of Poetry/Nuyorican Poets Cafe Live!” show at the Veterans Wadsworth Theatre (“Cafe Poetry Without the Cafe at Veterans Wadsworth,” Calendar, Feb. 5).

What are Breslauer’s objections? Broadly, that poetry today is becoming too popular for her taste, and, particularly, that one of the poets onstage wasn’t as buttoned-down as T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock, who “measured out . . . life with coffee spoons.” She sniffs at the “oversized clothes” and “street lingo” of Everton Sylvester.

She sneers at the existence of poetry books, CDs “and other poetry-related products” and my “seemingly tireless” promotion of poetry--would she prefer that I ascend to the garret to inscribe some more porcelain for no one to read? My mimeo just broke!

She disdains the “MTV-esque editing tactics” employed in the PBS series “The United States of Poetry,” segments of which were screened at the Wadsworth. Again, she would have us return to talking heads and experts explaining poetry to you, the precise model that has kept poetry obscure and elite all these years.

I believe that we are on the brink of a revolution that will bring poetry into the center of our lives for the first time since Plato kicked the poets out of the Republic. That revolution owes its vitality to the newly acknowledged, varied traditions of literature found throughout the country--oral, written, performed, sung, chanted traditions that not only democratize the endangered art of poetry, but all the arts. I tip my hat of words to the new media delivering this new poetry--via television, CD, CD-ROM and the Internet. This is a new Poetry: relevant, accessible and busy kicking thoughtful, brain-cracking content onto the 500 dull duh channels. This accessibility, to Breslauer, is the problem. She wants her poets confined to the cafes and academy. It is my job to blow up the locks on those doors and to let in fresh air, fresh voices, life itself.

Meanwhile, the real story at Wadsworth remains untold. How almost a thousand Angelenos of different backgrounds and colors came together to hear their new heroes and to listen to others’ points of view. That’s poetry like in Russia, where thousands jam football stadiums to hear their poets wail, or in Senegal, where poet Leopold Senghor was the founding president, or in Elko, Nev., where the cowboy poets gather. But not anywhere else in the United States.

The real story is how Los Angeles, never before thought of as Stratford-on-Pacific, has become a center for new poetry. Here poets have found, on stage and television, a couple of modern and direct ways to get their art into the public eye and ear. Seven poets from L.A. on “The United States of Poetry”--Hail Los Angeles! Capital of the New Poetry!