Of Prime Ministers and Poets

Recently, I came across a remark online that said, in essence, I’m ok with rhyming poetry.  I just don’t like rhymes that are predictable.

Is Rhyme Dead?

This comment was not in reference to my own so-called poetry.  And yet, since my poetry mostly rhymes, I suppose I took it to heart.  Sometimes, even the most oblique observation can feel like scathing criticism.

I had a logical quibble with the statement though.  Rhyme is, by its nature, predictable.  There are only so many words that rhyme with other words.  The set is finite.  If this is so, statistically, a result can be predicted with reasonable accuracy.  And given the context clues of the flow and meaning of the poem, there may, in many instances, be only one result which makes sense.  So, the predictability of a particular rhyme in any given stanza is not so much undesirable and distasteful, as inevitable.

I also hasten to add, if my rhymes are so predictable, why didn’t you write them?

My second quibble has to do with academics interfering with enjoyment. 

In my view, there are a fair number of people who have studied poetry to such a point that they feel obliged, to exclude less fashionable, less elite forms, from their definition of poetry.  Limericks perhaps, do not make the cut.  And if you are so bold as to attempt rhymed poetry, you must be “all in.”  Your poem must be perfect in its adherence to the form. No half-rhymes need apply.  As if a rhymed poem, by consorting with musicality, no longer has value as a delivery device for meaning.

My view is that art takes the form it takes.  One does not tell an oil painter that acrylics are the only serious medium.  One does not tell the potter to do sculpture instead.  I wonder if people in Shakespeare’s time criticized him in this way. Not another sonnet, Will!  Can you stop it already, with those beastly plays?

I know in my heart, that rhyme is not dead.  Lots of people create fantastic rhyming poems and are praised for them, rightfully.  One of my favorites to follow on Threads is Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston.) 

The entire music industry is based on the relatively rare ability of fine poet/musicians to create rhyme. Surely, our lives and their pockets would be emptier, without their contributions.

Yet somehow, in our cynical, we’ve-seen-it-all age, we cannot bear to allow something we enjoyed in childhood to brighten up our overly serious adult lives.  We must condemn it as child’s play, as unserious, as more than a little annoying. Funny poems, ok.  Maybe they can rhyme.  But do not expect, to be considered on par with an Ivy League MFA, who splatters his or her drama on the page like Jackson Pollock, giving migraines to even the best typesetter.

On Further Review

I may sound a little bit bitter in this blogpost, but I have recently had to swallow a few difficult-to-swallow negative opinions (whether voiced or unvoiced) about my work.  It is interesting to learn what others think, I suppose. Although I’ve lived quite happily for most of my life without knowing.  What others think of me is none of my business, as Mark Twain is purported to have said. 

I know, that putting yourself out there means being vulnerable.  You must expect to encounter push back.  Still, a good compliment, however sincere, would go a long way with me, right about now.

This blogpost is about handling reviews, whether meant for you or just for the general category of humans, to which you pretend to belong (i.e. writer, author, poet etc.)

How do we endure them?  Why do we subject ourselves to them?  Why do we take them to heart, even when they are not directly aimed at us?  Why do we allow them to foul our mood and stymie our progress?  Why do we let other people get in the way of us fulfilling our dreams?

Prime Ministers

There is no prime minister in my country, yet my thoughts have been filled with various prime ministers and their attitudes, in the past few days.  I began watching The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard on Amazon Prime, recently.  It is a series about a fictional populist candidate for prime minister in England, who runs against PM Tony Blair and wins.  She is the manager of a grocery store, and a very fine one, at that.  But she has no other qualifications for the top job.  Nonetheless, she decides to “stand” for Prime Minister and gets elected, along with a majority which allows her to actually pass legislation. 

In one scene, early on in the series, she sees for the first time, a billboard-sized attack ad against her.  Her husband sheepishly shows it to her, a little embarrassed that anyone should treat her that way.  He wants to shield her from the pain, to protect her, to comfort her hurt feelings. 

Reminds me a little of some one else, who offered to protect women this week.

When she sees the billboard, her response is, “This is great!  Now I know, they’re taking me seriously.”

Like water off a duck’s back.  You can’t help but smile at how little it bothers her, to be opposed.

Another prime minister who recently got my attention was Justin Trudeau, of Canada.  He was on Stephen Colbert the other night, and the late-night host reminded the PM that people on the right in Canada are trying their best to oust him. 

Instead of defending his own, more left-leaning views, Trudeau said something like, I understand where they’re coming from.  They’re in pain, having to pay more for food and rent.  We have a housing crisis.  People are hurting.  That’s why we have …” and he listed off the various programs that addressed those needs.  Programs created by the left, which, despite their dubious origin, seem to benefit everyone.

That pivot—the move, where, instead of looking at someone squirming in their seat, we are redirected to look at the real problem—that is genius.  Embarrassment turned on its head—we should be embarrassed, not because of my political predicament, but because of the obvious distress of those we serve—and this is how we’re going to fix it.

That is another way of dealing with thinly-veiled criticism.

Finally, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared recently on MSNBC Morning Joe.  Years ago, he made himself very unpopular in his own country by being such a staunch ally of ours, after 9/11 and throughout the conflicts that followed. 

He was touting his new book On Leadership, and they rolled a clip of him, quite a bit younger, talking about The Good Friday Agreement and the talks that lead to a cease fire in the conflict in Northern Ireland, a conflict that had bridged most of my lifetime, up to that point.  Before the current conflict in Israel/Gaza/Lebanon can get to the point of such talks, he said, there has to be a cessation of violence, and an agreement, on the outcome desired by both parties.  How anyone gets to that point, I suppose, may be in the book.

His comment about criticism I found somewhat more actionable.  He said something like:  Being a prime minister means subjecting yourself to a huge amount of criticism.  You go from being persuader in chief, during the campaign, to CEO of the country, which requires a completely different set of skills.

But as his wife pointed out, the criticism you endure is voluntary.  You can step down at any time, and no longer subject yourself to it.  In the end, being prime minister is a privilege, and the criticism is what it is.

Of the three attitudes toward criticism– laughing all the way to the bank, the pivot-and-deflection, and acceptance, as a price to be paid for being in a prominent position–I think I like the last one best.  You can’t take it all to heart, because you have a job to do.  You owe it to yourself and to your country. That is, if you happen to be prime minister.

You owe it to your future readers, if you happen to write.

Writers/Authors/Poets

Writing, too, is a privilege.  We forget this fact, in this democratic age, when most everyone knows how to use a keyboard, and a website can be spun up in an hour.  But we are not owed an audience just because we put something on a page or on a screen. 

We must pay the price of admission to our readers’ eyes and ears.  That price includes criticism, whether it comes in the form of reviews of our books, as general comments about what our poetry should and should not be, or as gentle nudging, from people who know more about publishing than we do, who think we should polish our work, to give it a more alluring and wide-reaching glow.

As they say, it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  You can spend a lifetime writing and yet never achieve any level that matters, in the eyes of some people.  It is hard not to get discouraged against such overwhelming odds.  Perhaps we should take our cue from the Prime Ministers of the world. Tony Blair said in the interview that he was an optimist.  He admitted that he wasn’t sure whether it was a logical thing to be, in his position.  He said there was a distinct possibility that it was just something in him that was insuppressible.

We writers, who try to compete in the knock down drag out field of publishing, whether indie or hybrid or trad, could all use some of his insuppressible optimism. 

To summarize: Answer your critics by proving them wrong. Defy those who want you to stop in your tracks. Keep going. Got bad reviews on the first book? Write another.

Combine the element of defiance, the element of the pivot, and the element of acceptance.  That’s all behind me now, your actions will seem to say. Just wait and see what I do next!

Finishing Touches

I listened to an interview with Dean Koontz, author extraordinaire, whose books number over one hundred.  It was on a podcast called The BestSeller Experiment.  I don’t recall what he said about criticism, if anything, but he did have an interesting comment about research and writing books.

He said he had a friend who stopped writing his book, in order to do some research.  Later, years later, he asked the writer, so, whatever happened to your book?  The book was stalled at exactly same point, as when they had last spoken. 

There is such a thing as doing too much research, Dean Koontz said.  You want to do enough to place your reader in the time and place.  If you do more than that, you may never finish.

I think that if there is one thing, that successful writers and successful prime ministers have in common, it is this: they actually finish things.  No matter what anyone says. 

So, pardon me, while I go and finish what I was doing.

For a poem about paying the price, read The Price. For an less-than-complimentary ode to a poet, read To the Poet. For a glimpse inside a poetry reading, read Poetry Reading.