[Christine P'legion]

Originally Posted by N. Matheson

When I began writing, I did so under the impression I would make something that would stand the test of time, to warrant memory and legacy.

Is this your main impetus for writing? Why poetry? How long have you been writing?

I genuinely do not believe any poet in the 20th or 21st century will be remembered in a few centuries.

I highly doubt that supposition, but if it's true; so what? You'll be dead then, as will the rest of us -- let future generations think of us or not, it's one and the same when you're not there to see it. And really, no 20th century poet? Frost, Eliot, Heaney, Thomas, Auden, Plath, Pound, Ginsberg, Bishop, cummings, Rilke, Brooks, Owen, Oliver -- not a single one of them will survive?

If I undertook any endeavor, I would do so knowing there is a chance, however slim, I could cement myself as the best.

If you will only attempt that at which you think you can be the all-time best, then enjoy doing a spectacular squat-diddly-nothing with your life. Needing to "be the best" is a shit motivator. It will kill your creativity, pleasure, bravery, and resilience.

I write because I enjoy it, because language is the most wonderful tool and playground I know, because I want to use the gifts I have, because there is pleasure in mastering a craft, because there are things I want to remember, because it makes me feel close to my grandmother, because it brings me joy when people enjoy or are moved by something I've created, because it occasionally puts a little money in my pocket -- for so many reasons. I don't want to be the best poet out there. I want to be the best poet I can be. Do you hear the difference?

I think any poetic venture in the modern age is doomed to futility and oblivion. Everything I could write will be deemed inferior.

And I think that this whole rant smacks of trying something, finding it was harder than you expected, and deciding that it's easier to take refuge in grandiosity and throw the whole thing over as a dead end than to pick yourself up and do the hard work of trying and trying again.

[Michael Tyldesley]

I don't think it helps to see poetry as a hierarchy with Shakespeare or whoever on top. I'm not naïve though and I have observed that the structure of the poetry community is more hierarchical than many other types of art or literature.

Perhaps you could set an alternative target? Why not aim to be the best worst poet? The one who finally sinks below William McGonagall on the bottom rung.

Orwell wrote about good bad poetry in his Rudyard Kipling essay:

At his worst, and also his most vital, in poems like ‘Gunga Din’ or ‘Danny Deever’, Kipling is almost a shameful pleasure, like the taste for cheap sweets that some people secretly carry into middle life. But even with his best passages one has the same sense of being seduced by something spurious, and yet unquestionably seduced. Unless one is merely a snob and a liar it is impossible to say that no one who cares for poetry could get any pleasure out of such lines as:

For the wind is in the palm trees, and the temple bells they say,
‘Come you back, you British soldier, come you back to Mandalay!’

and yet those lines are not poetry in the same sense as ‘Felix Randal’ or ‘When icicles hang by the wall’ are poetry. One can, perhaps, place Kipling more satisfactorily […] if one describes him simply as a good bad poet.

Betjemen and Tennyson wrote good bad poetry too apparently.

[Roger Slater]

Before you tire yourself out wondering if people not yet been born will like your poetry, maybe you should try it out on some living people? You know, sort of like a focus group?

[Shaun J. Russell]

I'm assuming the OP is just taking the piss out of all of us with this thread. They have to be, right? It's just too rich to think otherwise.

Shakespeare's great. I had a dissertation chapter on him, I've presented at conferences on him, I have a publication on him, and I teach him regularly to my university students -- as recently as two weeks ago, in fact, and indeed, I did teach Sonnet 18. Funny thing about that sonnet in particular: if the subject of the poem was a real person (a dubious proposition, but still...), then we have absolutely no idea who he (or she) was, which gives the lie to the idea that Shakespeare would immortalize him/her with his words. He immortalizes his own impression of the object of affection, but no details are given. There's a parallel there to the OP's own ostensible worries about posterity...

But here's the thing. Milton's great too. And Dickinson. And Keats. And all the others mentioned by Christine, Susan, and others in this thread. I was teaching Marvell's "A Horatian Ode" today, and asked my students to give a definition of an ode. When they did, I mentioned that odes were often to people, but I rattled off a few other odes to animals and objects. One of my students literally squealed when I mentioned "Ode on a Grecian Urn," as it turned out that she absolutely loves the poem. Beauty is truth indeed! My point is that it really doesn't matter if Shakespeare is the "best," because that's an utterly foolish metric. Some days I turn to Shakespeare, some days I turn to Auden, others I turn to Herbert, Betjeman, Robinson, or any number of others...because we have a big ol' canon full of brilliant men and women of words, and an even bigger assortment of non-canonical work that is brilliant in the eyes of many, many individuals too. If there were a billion poets out there, with most of them loved by two or three, that's still something incredible for the two or three readers (and likely for the poet).

In other words, who cares if Shakespeare is considered the pinnacle? It literally doesn't matter. Let academics write articles about it and debate the finer points of who is responsible for the order of the 1609 Quarto, or whether the "young man" and "dark lady" were real people. Just write and share your own damn poetry and let posterity take care of itself.

[Carl Copeland]

Interesting question about the motivations and ambitions of poets. I certainly admire those who write simply because the spirit (or demon) moves them, but I suspect many creative souls are partly motivated by the desire for immortality. Horace, Derzhavin and Pushkin wrote their “monument” poems, and Shakespeare said his verses would live “as long as men can breathe or eyes can see.” If that’s what puts a fire in your belly, let it work for you. Or, if you think Shakespeare has cornered the market, do something else, but if you don’t want to stand on the shoulders of giants, look for a very young field to make your mark in.

[N. Matheson]

I know Horace's. I translated it.

[Roger Slater]

Also, it's possible to be immortal yet still relatively unknown. When you write a poem or create any work of art, you are creating an object or a thing that exists and represents you without the continuing assistance of your heart, brain, flesh and blood. When you write and publish, you are taking some portion of your soul that is currently bound to your mortal self and placing it into a new container that will outlast its flesh container. So the very act of creating a poem that succeeds in encapsulating something of your humanity creates a form of immortality.

Of course, that's not the same thing as being immortally famous. It's possible that these little immortal chunks of your personhood will not interest many people in the future. The poems survive, in the sense that they are available to anyone who is interested, but that doesn't mean people will want to read them.

But here's the thing. Posterity may not recognize you as the new Shakespeare, and your name may not become a household word, but every now and then someone may happen across one of your poems and read it and like it and identify with it. Your poems will be available to show who you were long after you yourself are not available to do so, since pushing up daisies is a full-time occupation.

So be glad. You do achieve immortality through your poems after all. Unfortunately, though, no one may care.

But if you're in it for the praise and feel bad to think people won't be praising you after you're dead, why not settle for the consolation prize of being praised while you're alive, if you can manage it? Praise is best when you still have the ability to blush and say thank you.

[Julie Steiner]

A few years ago I had a long phone conversation with someone who said he would donate lots of money to the nonprofit choir on whose board I serve—IF we would sing nothing but Bach cantatas.

Bach wrote so many of them that we could go years before we needed to repeat them, and each is absolutely perfect. According to him, there was no need for any composers after Bach to write any songs at all.

"Not even Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff...?" I asked.

"No! They have several outstanding pieces, but their overall output can't compete with Bach's. Bach alone is enough."

I said, "Well, the San Diego Master Chorale has always presented music by a variety of composers, including living composers setting texts by living poets, and I don't see that changing. You might be interested in the Bach Collegium of San Diego. But even they don't sing only Bach."

"Yes, I know! Outrageous, isn't it? I've scolded them about it several times, but they keep on programming these lesser lights. It's false advertising to call themselves the Bach Collegium. I won't give them a dime."

If he's determined not to enjoy Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Rachmaninoff's Vigil and Vespers too much out of loyalty to Bach, he's free to feel that way, but the rest of us are going to go on delighting in them.

Ditto for the works of A.E. Stallings, Wendy Cope, Richard Wilbur, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and even us slobs on Eratosphere. People are going to go right on enjoying the best works of these, even though they weren't written by Shakespeare. Why does there have to be only one composer or poet worth remembering?

[N. Matheson]

You tell me. I don't know why people have been reading Hamlet a dozen times but those same people couldn't identify John Milton to save their lives.

[John Riley]

Dickinson, Yeats, Keats? Donne and Herbert did pretty well for themselves. Whitman. Look outside of English. Pessoa, Baudelaire, Reverdy, lots of good stuff is coming from Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America. The question is bigger than poetry though. How long will written art be considered vital? Look what television and movies have done to drama.

There are many writers of the last five hundred years who will be remembered as long as any writers are remembered. I’d suggest worrying about your own writing if you are truly moved to write, as others have said.