Are There Iconic Contemporary American Poems? A BAPB Roundtable [by Dean Rader]

Earlier in the year, a student in my Contemporary American Poetry class asked me if there were any "great" contemporary American poems.  I told her there were many great ones, including, for example, everything on her syllabus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she said.

Why, she asked, did anthologies of contemporary American poetry have different selections of poems, when pretty much every anthology agreed on what 19th and early 20th century poems were "great?" I told her greatness was a tough thing to define, especially in the present.   When I pressed her, though, she admitted that what she meant was more like what contemporary American poems will, like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Snow Man" or "The Red Wheelbarrow," always be taught?  Are there recent poems everyone has acknowledged are iconic?

Her question intrigued me, in part, because it wasn't a query about the "best" poems but rather about poems that had been (or would likely be) entered into the bizzare and unpredictable canon-making machinery of the postmodern era.  Such things don't always have a great deal to do with how "good" or "memorable" a poem is but how emblematic of x or y it might be.  Enduring poetry, like so many things, is often largely about luck and timing.  Is "The Red Wheelbarrow" really Williams' best poem?  "In a Station at the Metro," Pound's? I'd take "The Man on The Dump" any day over "The Snow Man" or "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" or "The Emperor of Ice Cream," but "The Man on the Dump" is not connected to Harmonium or Imagism, or Modernism.  It's nothing but an absolutely fabulous poem (that's almost never taught nor anthologized).

So, I asked a few friends what poems written after 1970 they thought were the most iconic. Which ones will get written about, anthologized, quoted?  Which poems from this era will emblamatize American poetry?

There was, to understate, no concensus.

And so I turn it over to you.  Post your 5 (five) nominees below in the comments section, or email me your list ([email protected]).  We'll see what emerges.

At the end of my tenure as guest blogger, I'll post any meaningful results.  And, if I'm able to steal enough smart ideas from your lists, I'll cobble together one of my own.

Comments

[Laura Orem]

In no particular order:

Song of Napalm by Bruce Weigl
Having It Out with Melancholy by Jane Kenyon
Broadway by Mark Doty
in the thirty-eighth year of my life by Lucille Clifton
The Colonel by Carolyn Forche

[Stacey]

This is a great question. I'm going to think about it for awhile before posting my picks.

[Jonathan H.]

The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford (383 page poem)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery

Garbage by AR Ammons (I think it's all one poem)

The Nomad Flute by WS Merwin

Lost in Translation by James Merrill

[Steven Dube]

What years count as contemporary?

[Stacey]

Steven: poems written after 1970.

[Beth Spencer]

"A History of the American West" by Kevin Prufer; "Nox" by Anne Carson (if we're going for North American, not just the USA);
"Paschal Lamb" by Robert Hass; "A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert; "Bright Existence" by Brenda Hillman

[Amy Greacen]

Merrill's Lost In Translation for sure.
I'd speculate Schnackenberg's "Supernatural Love" will have staying power.
Amy Clampitt... "Beach Glass" maybe, or "Anatomy of Migraine"

hecht and justice will always be taught. i'm having a hard time imagining what i'd narrow it down to if i wrote the syllabus. :-)

[Laura Orem]

This is going to be difficult to narrow down. More difficult than in previous centuries because there are so many more different kinds of poetic voices now. It wasn't until the Modernists that a true avant garde poetic sensibility found an audience.(Exceptions, of course, in Whitman and Dickinson.) So what we will probably end up with, in our post-Post-Modern world, is a collection of different lists of "iconic" poems - poems that resonate deeply with different groups and kinds of people.

[DL]

A terrific question -- you can curate a whole symposium weekend around it. I'd find it hard to limit myself to five or even ten. I immediately start with Ashbery's "Self-Portrait," Ammons's "Sphere" or possibly "Glare," Merrill's "Book of Ephraim," O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter," Bishop's "Crusoe in America," and I haven't even gotten to Schuyler and Koch and to poems and poets more recent. I am very glad to learn of your enthusiasm for "The Man on the Dump," which I agree is not anthologized often enough. I included it in "The Oxford Book of American Poetry."

[Dean Rader]

I'd do that symposium, Laura . . .

[Tiffany Midge]

"A Story about the Body" Robert Hass
"What do Women Want" Kim Addonizio
"Remember" Joy Harjo
"You Bring Out the Mexican in Me" Sandra Cisneros
"How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" Sherman Alexie

[Laura Orem]

Dean - I'd be the first to sign up if you do!

[Amy Lawless]

Anything by Frederick Seidel!!!!! He's so Modern America.

[Amy Lawless]

Also I also love Paschal Lamb by Robert Hass and agree with one of the other commenters on that. It's one of my favorite poems ever.

[Julio Cesar Moreno]

Mr. Tambourine Man, Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, Dylan
Desolation Row, Dylan... all the best crafted Dylan lyrical poetry.

Carol Ann Duffy: Text
Posted on October 4, 2012 | 41 Comments
I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.