O Where are the Happy Poems?
If you thumb through a literary magazine -- even the best of them -- you're likely to wind up sighing. The writing is excellent, of course, and that's exciting, but the topics! The poems tend to go from death to war to illness to divorce to miscarriage to sexual abuse to... well, I imagine you have the idea. Not that I'm innocent. I've got a book of poetry about WWII, and a chapbook that's partly about a brain tumor. The last five poems I published were about (or had as a triggering subject) the death of a friend, the suicide of a friend, the kidnapping of Thomas the Apostle, depression following major illness, and alienation in marriage. Well, Saint Thomas aside, that's about as much fun as Norwegian films.
And here's my complaint. I write happy marriage poems. I have a half a book of happy marriage poems. I've submitted about fifty for publication, to a dozen different journals. And the magazines have accepted exactly one. (I have trouble placing my happy religious poems, too, but I think that's a different story.) Why? Of course I'm not objective, but I don't think it's a matter of quality. I think it's a bias against happy poems.
Why this idea that the dim light is more fine than the bright? Do people think that happiness is trivial? That happiness is uncomplicated? It's neither. A happy marriage is profound and complex and difficult--and I am deeply pleased to have one. A happy relationship with God is not "intellectual suicide," but a matter of will, trust, and openness-- the thing in my life that scares me the most, and yet makes me the happiest. Happiness itself is a fragile, mysterious thing. Contentment is not small, nor peace easy, nor joy trivial.
4 Comments
Right on! However—I think it’s only poems that have this disadvantage. I think a novel that’s ultimately happy is more likely to be a great success. So you have that to look forward to. (Unless, of course, you are planning a deeply depressing novel.)
you are so right. I read an analysis once - don’t
remember where - that we only consider pessimism to
be profound while optimism is considered trivial.
frustrating but true.
Best of luck with your poems
Ariane
So, Pat, I’m in the mood for a novel featuring a happy marriage. Can you suggest one?
I know what you mean, Apart from Billy Collins who gets positive poems published? What about a poem about the palpable struggle to stay optimistic, the rebelling against and slapping down of negativity in terribly cleverly phased happy ways? Would that slip past the requisite minumum of angst?