From an Introduction to English Poetry: A Special AP2 Supplement

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2002 by Fenton, James

Some people have liked to emphasize the difference between English poetry as written in the United Kingdom and English poetry as written in America. So an anthologist begins: `This anthology of American poetry will be bale to extend its charm only to those who genuinely know the American language-by now a separate language, in accent, intonation, discourse, and lexicon, from English.' This is an absurd exaggeration, even as the anthologist in question seems to concede when she continues in her next sentence: `But the poems collected here can extend their command to anyone able to read English.'1

The admirably cooperative, positive, not to say optimistic attitude of the Ah-Got-Um Man appeals at once to the imagination, and reminds us of the European poets' and composers' delight in street vendors' cries. It suggests to me as well that poetry begins in those situations where the voice has to be raised: the hawker has to make himself heard above the market hubbub, the knife-grinder has to call out to the cook in the street, the storyteller has to address a whole village, the bard must command the admiration of the court.

The last 'hunh' the last stroke of the hammer, is eloquent the young bride has been unfaithful. And that is why the singer, the poet, is in trouble. That, we understand, is why he is working in a gang. He raises his voice to coordinate the work, and the song he sings can be expected to command the attention and sympathy of his fellows.

3. The Training of the Poet

One problem we face, as aspiring poets, comes from the lack of any agreed sense of how we should be working in order to train ourselves to write poetry. The old joke-`Can you play the violin?' 'I don't know-I've never tried'-depends on an understanding of a state of affairs that many a poet might find enviable: there is agreement as to what training and practice might be.

We know, of course, that we will never play the violin on the basis of inspiration alone, and we know that we are unlikely to work out the technique for ourselves, based on first principles. We know we need training and we know we need practice. Whichever direction our efforts lead us in, whether it is the concert hall or the gypsy band, we will know whether we come to be able to do what our peers or our mentors can do.

Supposing that we rise to the heights of our musical profession, we may reach a point when we cannot know for certain, because such things cannot be known by any artist, whether we are merely very good, or whether we have secured a truly distinguished place in the history of violin-playing. But, unless we are engaged in some gross and elaborate form of self-deception, we will roughly know what bracket we belong in.

In the writing of poetry we never know anything for sure. We will never know if we have 'trained' or 'practiced' enough. We will never be able to say that we have reached grade Eight, or that we have left the grades behind and are now embarked on an advanced training. We cannot hop on a train to Paris, or a flight to New York, and go and show our works to an acknowledged master, and ask to be taken on as a student.