Over a family dinner during Christmas vacation, we had one of those long, semi-heated discussions that touch on politics, the economy, media, civic ideals. It went way past the main course and the kids all asked to be excused.
The nut was this — with new media at the forefront, with online versions of newspapers becoming the norm, who will the journalists be? Who will pay them? Who will get the stories, and will they be trained, careful, objective, committed and true?
My undergraduate degree is in journalism, and I tend to err a little on the side of the idealist, so I say that a free and dedicated press is an intrinsic part of our nation’s fabric, and such a vital expression of our values that we will not abandon it — even if we don’t want to pay for a daily paper the way we used to.
I won’t pretend to have a crystal ball vision of the future, though. No doubt journalism is evolving. Local and global stories are being captured and shared in new ways. Journalists struggle, on one hand, to give their audience the stories they say they want to read and, on the other, to give voice to the stories that truly need to be told. Plus, they have to be responsive to the increasingly corporate framework they work within. It’s enough to make a person dizzy.
Enter the poets. The new voices. The unfettered observers of the human condition. Or at least that’s what this very insightful journalist (who also happens to be my aunt) suggests.
I think of poets like Carolyn Forche, who has written as a witness just as keenly as any reporter on the front.
And poets like Billy Collins, who offers up humor and breathing room in the midst of wars and banking crises and whatnot.
And poets like Robert Hass, who puts words to the praise and reverance and compassion in a person’s heart.
These poets observe big and little bits of life, report upon them, and connect us across what seem to be gaping oceans of differences until they become familiar — universal, in fact — in the form of a poem. Not unlike a good journalist, you think?
(Click here for the story my aunt, Jane Dwyre Garton, wrote on poets, journalists and Ted Kooser’s fabulous American Life in Poetry Project.)
Thanks, Liz. That was a great article, and now I’m signed up for the American Life in Poetry email too.
I wonder if the intersection of poetry and journalism was also encouraged by MG and YA novels in verse, “reporting” on historical events, biographies, art, and modern day stories.
Oh, I LOVE that way of thinking, Sara. Absolutely…
Billy Collins
I’m a fan of Billy Collins!
🙂 Lindsey S
What a cool article! Thanks for the food for thought!
We will or will not abandon the commitment to the free press? (I’m guessing you meant will not?)
I’ve been reading an article about Good Bad Poems in the December/January Poets & Writers mags about a guy in Iowa who writes poetry on demand for the op/ed column of the newspaper. It’s pretty cool, I think – as he points out, you can say a lot more in a lot less space when you’re working with poetry.
Yikes. Thanks for catching that. Will not, for sure…
Trying to say more in less space is a noble goal, I think, even for a novelist.
Poets & Poetry
Elaine M.
Thanks for this post and the link to that wonderful article. I agree with you about Billy Collins. Some intellectuals feel his poetry is too accessible–but I like his work. I think Sherman Alexie has the ability to write about dark/serious topics with a sense of humor, too.
I also wish more newspapers/magazines published light verse today as they did in bygone years. I think back on the humorous verse of writers like Ogden Nash and Morris Bishop.
I’m a huge admirer of Wislawa Szymborska’s work. Some of her poems that read to me of life as it is, of history, of the human condition, of evil and that pack more power than prose: The End and the Beginning; Torture; Starvation at Camp Jaslo; Photograph from September 11; The Terrorist, He’s Watching; Hitler’s First Photograph; Children of Our Age.
I love poetry, of course! If I had to do without poetry or journalism (like your music or books torture!), I’d give up journalism.
But…poetry is all about one person’s view, the personal approach…and it should be. So I want the good journalism to balance it out. I can’t know my approach, my opinions, without unbiased journalism to get the facts right.
And yes on the stress journalists are under. My husband’s a full-time editor/reporter, and his job has changed an awful lot in the past 7 or 8 years. I’m glad I don’t work at the paper anymore!