The Drunken Boat

To visit Tryst

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By Mia

When it comes to elaborating the whims, aims, mission statement, or hoped-for success of Tryst, I begin to choke. Stating the obvious, “Tryst is aquarterly online poetry journal seeking quality work” is easy enough. But,let’s face it: An intro like that is about the laziest, most lame excuse fora poetry zine that says nothing and promotes extinction. This is when Irealize that it’s time to change hats from editor to writer and write fromthe perspective of a reader—but not just any reader. A well-read, widely-read, educated writer would probably be the most ideal person for the job asthe editor of most zines. But, as the editor of Tryst, I feel aresponsibility to consider all forms of artwork, “poetry” from theperspective of the everyday, public person. I want the work to click withthe street worker taking a break for lunch. In other words, I want the workpresented in Tryst to appeal to the general public who is hungry for “art”for the sake of art and not for its secrets, its transgressions, orfertilization for rhetorical essays. I imagine a mother who has just put herchild down for a nap has about five minutes to go online and grab a poem, ora photo before being snapped back to “reality”; the struggling writerlooking for inspiration; the lecturer on his way to a conference needingsome citations for his speech; the filmmaker digging for a script; thescholar researching material for his papers; the artist seeking the companyof his peers.

While I want Tryst to be entertaining, I don’t want people to view Tryst, orpoetry, as the “reader’s digest” of contemporary poetry/art. Making poetryaccessible to the public does not mean that poetry becomes the stuff ofmainstream, or a how-to-guide for flatliners. I believe there has to be abalance between poetry floating on mediocrity and slipping into nearoblivion. Perhaps, Muriel Rukeyser expressed some of these concerns best inher book, The Life of Poetry. The following excerpt is from “Chapter One:Fear of Poetry.#&148:

In speaking about poetry, I must say at the beginning that thesubject has no acknowledged place in American life today. Poetry is foreignto us, we do not let it enter our daily lives. We can see its expression,and we can see its effects upon us. We can see our own conflict and our ownresource if we look, now, at this art, which has been made of all the artsthe one least acceptable.

Since childhood, to many of us poetry has become a matter of distaste. Thespeaking of poetry is one thing: one of the qualifications listed of anannouncer on a great network, among “voice” and “correctpronunciation,” is the “ability to read and interpret poetry.”

But what is the nature of this distaste? If you ask your friends about it,you will find that there are a few answers, repeated by everyone. One isthat the friend has not the time for poetry. This is a curious choice, sincepoetry, of all the arts that live in time music, theater, film, writing isthe briefest, the most compact. Or your friends may speak of their boredomwith poetry. If you hear this, ask further. You will find that “boredom” isa masking answer, concealing different meanings.

One person will confess that he has been frightened off forever by the drydissection of lines in school, and that now he thinks with disappointment ofa poem as simply a set of constructions. He expects much more. One willconfess that, try as he will, he cannot understand poetry, and moreparticularly, modern writing. It is intellectual, confused, unmusical. Onewill say it is willfully obscure. One that it is inapplicable to thesituation in which he finds himself. And almost any man will say that it iseffeminate: it is true that poetry as an art is sexually suspect.

Then the task of ensuring the integrity of poetry, I feel, falls not only onthe shoulders of the wordsmith, but the editor, publisher and the academia,as well. This is to say that the responsibility should not fall on theshoulders of the public. Art is not based upon supply and demand. I don’tthink we need to feed the public poetry that is laced with amphetamines orbarbiturates. Even rap has more integrity than poetry that does not come byits merits honestly. In her book, Viper Run, from the essay, “AgainstDecoration,” Mary Karr lodges two complaints against contemporary poetry:

1) Absence of emotion. What should I as a reader feel. This grows from butis not equivalent to what the speaker/author feels. Questioning a poem’scentral emotion steers me beyond the poem’s ostensible subject and surfaceloveliness to its ultimate effect. Purely decorated poetry leaves me cold.

2) Lack of clarity. The forms of obscurity in decorative poetry are many andinsidious: references that serve no clear purpose, for instance, or ornatediction that seeks to elevate a mundane experience rather than clarify aremarkable one. Lack of clarity actually alienates a reader and prevents anyemotional engagement with the poem.

I couldn’t have said it better or more eloquently than Karr, though I don’tnecessarily agree that all poetry be stripped of decoration in order to beclear; it could use some “accessorizing.” I value honest writing above all.Honest writing is simply that which is written from the brain attached to aheart: Skill dictated by the presence of some inner emotional hunger. Again, I shall defer to the wisdom of Rukeyser:

This response is total, but it is reached through the emotions. Afine poem will seize your imagination intellectually that is, when you reachit, you will reach it intellectually too but the way is through emotion,through what we call feeling.

Finally, while Tryst‘s success remains to be seen I encourage contributorsto take chances, to avoid common pitfalls of imitating present-dayluminaries and to seek one’s truest vision, whatever that may be.

Some of my favorite poems (among many) are: “The Man with the Blue Guitar” by Stevens; “Among School Children” by Yeats; “Ozymandias” byShelley; “Atalanta of Calydon” by Swinburne; “The Rubaiyat” by OmarKhayyam; “Radiance” by Kabir; “Ash Wednesday” by Eliot; “Lady Lazarus”and “Edge” by Plath; “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator” bySexton; “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias” by Lorca; “Variations on theWord ‘Sleep’” by Atwood; “Midnight Salvage” by Adrienne Rich.