Poetry and Pop Culture

Many people (myself included) draw enormous inspiration from the poems that they read.  Inevitably, that can lead to a bit of stylistic imitation.  This is a perfectly legitimate way to begin, but what happens when those great works of literature make no mention of current events, no allowance for hybrid cars and cell phones?  Obviously, we can still write enormously successful poems about nature, or about human nature in a traditional or innocuous setting, but what are the risks and benefits of acknowledging the technologies, trends, and contemporary quirks of the people and culture around us?

To begin, let’s look at one of my favorite poems by Li Po (701--762 A.D.), translated by Sam Hamill.

               I take my wine jug out among the flowers

               to drink alone, without friends.

               I raise my cup to entice the moon.

               That, and my shadow, makes us three.

               But the moon doesn't drink,

               and my shadow silently follows.

               I will travel with moon and shadow,

               happy to the end of spring.

               When I sing, the moon dances.

               When I dance, my shadow dances, too.

               We share life's joys when sober.

               Drunk, each goes a separate way.

               Constant friends, although we wander,

               we'll meet again in the Milky Way.

I think one of the strengths of this poem (besides its beautiful pacing and imagery) is its ability to be savored and visualized by an audience well over a thousand years after it was written!  On the other hand, there are also plenty of powerful poems that invoke the trends, quirks, and unique cultural baggage of our contemporary audience, even though some of those elements might not be recognizable to an audience fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years from now. 

Let’s work through the following contemporary poems and see if we can get a feel for the poets’ strategies.  Also, let’s see if we can identify those familiar human elements that are driving the poem, beyond the mention of cell phones, Teletubbies, and barbed wire tattoos.

 

Say My Name

by George Bilgere

Beyoncé's singing,
And what's strange about that
Is, first of all, I somehow know who Beyoncé is,

And second, the voice I'm hearing
Is coming from the earbuds of an iPod
Plugged into a kid sitting about thirty feet from me

On the fourth floor of the library
On a humid summer night,
The buzz of cicadas outside

Sounding weirdly like the buzz
Coming from his head — and third,
I know exactly what he's reading, because

I assigned it to him. It's the immortal
Paradise Lost, by John Milton,
And it's very long and very hard

And it's a terrible thing to be reading
Late in the summer, time running short,
Life running out, the moon

Throbbing just above the trees
And somewhere out there a woman
Is leaning against the fender of a car,

Waiting for you to shift her
Transmission into submission, and God knows
I don't blame this kid for blowing out his ears

At an early age, as Adam and Eve
Stand there stunned in the garden,
Stupidly covering their crotches, as if

That would do any good, as if it would stop
Beyoncé, dark serpent, from reminding
This nice Catholic boy in his brand new

Tommy Hilfiger muscle shirt,
With his fresh, 'round-the-biceps badass
Barbed wire tattoo, that in this
Fallen world he's never,
Never, evah gonna get his
Smooth white hands on what they burn for.

Speaking American

by Bob Hicok

When he learned I'm a poet he asked if I knew
this other poet. We don't all know each other,
I told him as he informed me she likes cheese
similes. Love is like cheese, time is like cheese,
cheese is surprisingly like cheese. Then I said
I know this poet and he went, see. "He went, see"
means he said see, see, but you know that
if you're American and alive. I explained
that "I know this poet" means "I know her work,"
when he was like, work? "When he was like"
is like "he went," which is past tense of "he goes,"
in case you're from another country and confused
by our lack of roundabouts. But poetry isn't work,
he said, unless you're talking about reading it.
But I'm not talking about reading it, I went,
in a moment that was the future past of everything
I'd do from then on. Such as snag the last
of the hyacinth cookies and step onto the veranda
to be awed by stars. Where I went, it's hard work,
to be awed by stars: they're just little lights
about which we learn a song as children.
And he was like, but I do wonder what they are,
as both of us lifted our heads like birds
waiting for our mother to throw up in our mouths.
When I shared the image, he was like, gross,
but then he went, you're right, that's what we do,
we expect the sky to feed us. This lead
to a long discussion about yearning
in which the word yearning never appeared,
in which he went and I went and he was like
and I was like and the stars
kept doing what the song says they do,
because "burn your hydrogen burn your hydrogen
little star" doesn't fit the diatonic harmony
that pivots on an opposition between tonic and dominant
in a tune derived from "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman."
Then a woman came out wearing a red dress
the size of a whisper, lit a smoke
and the smoke's smoke acted all floaty
and sexy and better than us, and she was like,
want one, and we were like, yes.

(Note: Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman is the French melody used for “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”)

Ink
by Bob Hicok

I feel obligated to get a tattoo.
It's how the skin of the species
is evolving. If I continue
living without plumage,
it will be impossible to mate
or hold a conversation
with a banker. My favorite
is strawberry ice cream. Not
average size scoops, Baskin
and Robbins size scoops
but three and tiny
I discovered one night
tattooed to a thigh.
It was the possibility
of kissing a private dessert
I so admired. I've decided
to get tattoos of my eyes
on the inside of my eyelids
so I can stare at the oceans
of my dreams. I'll have
muscles tattooed to my chest,
money to my palms, the smell
of honeysuckle to my breath. I want
BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE
tattooed to my brain, mouths
to the bottom of my feet, you
to me. There is not
enough art in this life.
Tattoo my front door
to my tombstone and place
a key on my tongue
like a mint. It's not for me
to decide whether my return
will be called
breaking out or breaking in.

What the Living Do

by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat's on too high in here, and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss -- we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

Uninhibited, Baby
by Tom Hunley

I want to be uninhibited like my baby boy
who does not fuss about manners
but drools on the bedsheets, shouts out
in church, and does not say, Hallelujah,
but grins and groans and grabs at my shirt,

and who, no matter how many times we burp him,
always has more projectile puke to take to the bank,
to the new neighbor's living room, or to the food court at the mall,

who will not take his own moral inventory or even the first step,
will not toe a party line or visualize world peace,
but cries and craps and tries to crawl,

and will not talk politely on the telephone to long-distance relatives,
and will not be ignored
even when he's asleep on my lap,
stretching like a tightrope or the ignition cord on a power lawnmower,

 a diapered despot
who doesn't bother to comb over the bald spot on his crown
and is spellbound every minute of every Teletubbies episode,

and every day I study his countenance and try to learn
how to be uninhibited like him, as uninhibited
as the dawn's first sunbeam when it skips
all preliminaries and formal introductions,
careering downward to caress my face.

I Went to the Movies Hoping Just Once the Monster Got the Girl

Ronald Koertge

He was as hungry for love as I.  He lay in his cave

or castle longing for the doctor’s lovely nurse,

the archaeologist’s terrific assistant while I hid

in my bedroom, acne lighting up the gloom like

a stoplight, wondering if anybody anywhere would

ever marry me.

I was hardly able to stay in my seat as the possibilities

were whittled away; her laughter at his clumsy gifts,

her terror at his dumbness and rage, his final realization

synapses lazy as fly balls connecting at last as he

stands in the rain peering through her bedroom window

she in chiffon and dainty slingbacks he looking at

his butcher shop hands knowing he could never unsnap

a bra

and in comes Jock Mahoney or Steve Cochran and takes

everything off in a wink and she kisses him over

and over, wants to kiss him has been waiting to kiss

him while the monster feels his own lips big as eels

or can’t find them at all or finds four. 

I almost shouted into the dark that life with Jock

or Steve was almost something to be feared.  Couldn’t

she see herself in a year or two dying at a barbecue,

another profile nobody with his tongue in her ear?

Wouldn’t she regret that she had not chosen to stay

with someone whose adoration was as gigantic as

his feet?

I went to the movies hoping that just once somebody

would see beneath the scales and stitches to the huge

borrowed heart and choose it, but each time Blob

was dissolved, Ogre subdued, Ratman trapped, Giant

Leech dislodged forever and each time Sweater Girl

ran sobbing into those predictable rolled up sleeves

I started to cry too, afraid for myself, lonely as

a leftover thumb.

What’s the matter with him?” the cheerleaders asked

the high scorers as they filed out.

“Nothing.  He’s weird, that’s all.” 

Fast Gas

by Dorianne Laux

for Richard

Before the days of self service,
when you never had to pump your own gas,
I was the one who did it for you, the girl
who stepped out at the sound of a bell
with a blue rag in my hand, my hair pulled back
in a straight, unlovely ponytail.
This was before automatic shut-offs
and vapor seals, and once, while filling a tank,
I hit a bubble of trapped air and the gas
backed up, came arcing out of the hole
in a bright gold wave and soaked me - face, breasts,
belly and legs. And I had to hurry
back to the booth, the small employee bathroom
with the broken lock, to change my uniform,
peel the gas-soaked cloth from my skin
and wash myself in the sink.
Light-headed, scrubbed raw, I felt
pure and amazed - the way the amber gas
glazed my flesh, the searing,
subterranean pain of it, how my skin
shimmered and ached, glowed
like rainbowed oil on the pavement.
I was twenty. In a few weeks I would fall,
for the first time, in love, that man waiting
patiently in my future like a red leaf
on the sidewalk, the kind of beauty
that asks to be noticed. How was I to know
it would begin this way: every cell of my body
burning with a dangerous beauty, the air around me
a nimbus of light that would carry me
through the days, how when he found me,
weeks later, he would find me like that,
an ordinary woman who could rise
in flame, all he would have to do
is come close and touch me.

Exercise:

To get a better feel for the risks and potential benefits of incorporating uniquely contemporary elements into a poem—in effect, “dating” the poem—let’s try a quick exercise.  Write a poem (or even just a scene or short, prosaic description) that is utterly devoid of “pop culture” references.  In other words, give no clue as to the era in which the piece is set.

Next, revising the same description or writing something completely new, go ahead and make reference to the Top 40 music blasting from the passing car, the student wandering into traffic while tethered to his iPod, the new toy your child or nephew wants for his birthday, a political dispute on the television—whatever you want.  See if you can make the meaning and/or appearance of what you’re describing clear to a potentially unfamiliar audience without utilizing too much exposition.

From this point, it’s a “simple” matter of comparing the two and deciding which one you like best.