Comments on: Whatever happened to travel poetry?

By: taminchina

taminchina — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:07:41 +0000

I like this question. And why, why is Pablo Neruda still so neglected. His Macchu Picchu poems are incredible… as, in fairness, is everything he wrote. Interesting to question a sense of place, perhaps, today, we are less attached to our planet than ever before. We only need to look at the state of the world to see that our connection to the land, to other people has never been so precarious.

I still can’t fathom why more people don’t read poetry… I read more poetry than anything else, and I find it more capable of getting to the heart and soul of the modern condition than any other form of writing… Ah, perhaps that’s why!

Alice Oswald’s A Sleepwalk on the Severn has a great sense of place, but I wouldn’t define it, or her, as being particularly concerned with travel.

Andrew Motion recently wrote a poem about a visit to a memorial… it certainly offers thoughts about the nature of being a tourist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/nov/02/korean-hiroshima-memorial-andrew-motion

By: kristine Byrne

kristine Byrne — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:14:08 +0000

Dear David Miller…I was delighted to come across your link…I am struggling at this moment to try and put ‘good’ words to some footage I have of Croatia…and just googled…. Ginsberg’s Travel Poems …which led me to you. I have one or two ‘travel’ poems ??? up on my Poemsapennyeach youtube site. I wonder would you think they qualify as such ? All best wishes from a very wet and cold Ireland. kristine

By: Jared Krauss

Jared Krauss — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:20:22 +0000

I wonder if the cause for this is because, like you said, poetry is more often used in music. So, instead of having magnificent poets in the form of poetry, plain and simple, we have poets in the form of magnificent musicians. When I think about people that could be called that, without perusing my ITunes or the internet, I come up with Bob Dylan, Paolo Nutini, The Pogues, possibly Flogging Molly, and in some of their work Led Zeppelin. Now, I’m not saying that all of these artists and bands work is poetry focusing on a place or the travel, but a good portion of it is.

Now to go to ITunes and find specific examples for each.
Bob Dylan: Under the Red Sky, Simple Twist of Fate, Hurricane, Lily, Rosermary, and the Jack of Hearts.
Paolo Nutini: These Streets, Alloway Grove, Autumn
The Pogues: Lullaby of London, Fairytale of New York, A Rainy Night in Soho, Dirty Old Town – A lot of the Pogues music is about places they have been, love or hate.
Flogging Molly: Tobacco Island, The Wanderlust, Within a Mile of Home.
Led Zeppelin: Kashmir (about travel), Over the Hills and Far Away, Going to California, Down by the Seaside.

Just my 2c.

By: Legal Nomads

Legal Nomads — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:30:28 +0000

I still think haikus are a great poetry-fix for the Twitter, no-attention-span set. They capture a moment in time with aching precision, and force the writer to be extremely selective about the words chosen. A perfect example is Craig Arnold (who sadly passed away this year in Japan):

The day is breaking –
one side of the mountain pink
one in cold shadow

-Jodi

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:01:25 +0000

I discovered the boar.dom a few years ago. Any time I’m feeling trapped in my home town I read about one of the locations under ‘Days’ and I’m transported to another part of the world with a whole new bunch of experiences (negative and positive) and a different perspective. It’s not a collection of poems. It’s poetic travel writing that captures the character of a place and it’s people with pure terrifying honesty. http://boar.com/days/

By: david miller

david miller — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:30:43 +0000

sweet simone, really appreciate the kind words and fired up to check out Carolyn Forche. she’s another one, like henri michaux, whose name i’ve heard but work i’ve never had a chance to check out.

robert hass was another good call–one I overlooked mentioning.

By: Simone

Simone — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:37:56 +0000

Sorry for that — I kept trying to post this comment, but it just wasn’t working. For some reason, it liked “testing.” Let’s try this again…
I love that you’re always bringing in the different genres, David. Writing is becoming increasingly divided these days.

Robert Hass, one of my all time favorite poets, is not what I would call a travel poet, but he does an incredible job evoking the landscape of the Bay Area, California, which has always been his home. Identity and place are bound together in almost all of his work.

In The Country Between Us, Carolyn Forche wrote about the time she spent working with Amnesty International in El Salvador at the beginning of the 80s, helping to find what had happened to the people who were disappearing during the reign of terror. She calls her poetry “the poetry of witness,” but it is deeply personal. I have never, ever tired of this book. Her lyric talent is out of this world.

If you want to peek into Australia, Les Murray is an interesting, political Australian poet who really evokes life in the bush.
There are many, many more…

I do think poetry is increasingly losing its ties to place, maybe in part because the form, while losing some of its formality, has become more cerebral. So much poetry these days is about language, and playing with language. I feel like its lost some of its connection to the body.

By: Simone

Simone — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:36:29 +0000

testing…

By: joshua johnson

joshua johnson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:11:52 +0000

I first began creatively expressing myself through poetry. Granted, it probably wasn’t good poetry, but it seemed like the only form available to me. It’s funny, I just resolved myself to start writing poems again and step up at an open mic poetry slam, something I haven’t done for 8 years.

Poems are elegant and can be so cutting and true. Then why is it poems seem to get the snub as far as “real” writing goes? Don’t know.
Thanks for bring this point up David. I have never read any Neruda, but I think I will mosey on down to the library this afternoon.

By: david miller

david miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:31:35 +0000

thanks for the comment and the rec, aaron. i’ve head of henri michaux but never read his stuff–that title sounds sweet. will definitely check out.

anyone else? what are people reading out there travel / place-wise that extends past ‘typical’ prose?

By: david miller

david miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:29:56 +0000

good points eva. i agree the audience for poetry is probably getting smaller and yeah, ‘big names’ are hard to imagine, although billy collins signed some relatively massive book deal a while back.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:18:21 +0000

I find Gary Snyder is awesome at evoking a sense of place in his poetry. Also, people may want to check out Henri Michaux. He was a painter/poet/travel writer. I just read his book “Ecuador” and it switches back and forth between prose and poetry to tell of his trip to that country. Sometimes you can hardly tell which is which, which I really liked.

By: Eva

Eva — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:54:17 +0000

I went to a reading for a Canadian self-described “travel poet” a couple years back. Sadly I’ve forgotten his name, but I liked his stuff. I think it’s all still out there, maybe just not drawing the “big names” (Whitman, Ginsberg, etc) that it used to. Then again, does poetry have those “big name” types it once did anymore, whether travel-centric or not?

By: david miller

david miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:01:37 +0000

nice julie. you know i actually saw mary oliver in the nederland community center (there were like 15 people there) and it almost felt embarrassing. i don’t know what it was–the small group or the fact that we were all inside on a sweet day or mary’s ‘presence’ but whatever it was i came away feeling like i dunno. i guess she ‘carried herself’ like ‘this famous writer’ whereas you’re always hoping people will just be cool and approachable or whatever. (like once in seatle we walked up the stairs into the elementary school with julia alvarez and she had this cool ‘just stoked to be here’ presence.)

i guess this is all beside the point though, and maybe m.o. was just having a bad day but yeah, will have to revisit her work.

the main point is travel and place in poetry, and you’re right, m.o. is a good addition. i should mention coleman barks as well.

i’m just wondering where it’s going and looking to see whatever names people throw in, especially writers from other countries.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:37:11 +0000

I’d add the American poet Mary Oliver to your list. For me, all of her poetry is deeply rooted in place, namely the Cape Cod area. Though it’s not an area that speaks to me, her poetry does because she channels this absolute reverent attention for the place where she lives and details it in such a way that the reader comes away with something much more universal than Blackwater Pond in Massachusetts.