The Men That Don't Fit In

 

 I was thinking about poetry and wondering why it's basically vanished from the world.  Nobody writes it, nobody reads it, nobody cares about it.  Oh, sure, stuff called poetry is still published and maybe the poet's family says they read it and it was just swell, but the truth is there is no audience for poetry anymore.  And even someone like me who actually does read poetry reads essentially nothing published after 1960.

I think one reason why poetry is dead -- and there are many reasons -- is that there is no longer poetry addressed to the reality of life, distilled observation and common sense. Certainly there is no robust, masculine poetry anymore -- the kind that speaks directly to you without literary allusions, metaphors, obscure references, the kind of poetry you  have to take a class to understand. There used to be lots of that sort published in mass-circulation magazines, then collected in books that became popular best sellers.  There was also a lot of humorous poetry, poetry for children, religious poetry.  All gone now.  

It seems to me there is a demand still for such poetry but in its absence people quote, recite, song lyrics.  That's the closest thing there is to popular poetry anymore, and sometimes the lyrics are pretty good.  But too often they are painfully poorly written, the writer unskilled with the written word, unable to express well what he wants to say.  Not all, of course.  Some song lyrics are very good and stay with you, creating images in your mind that linger.

Anyway, here's a poem that I think illustrates what I'm talking about.  A plain poem telling us something about the world and a type of person in it that we can recognize. Maybe it's us and a warning.  It has a certain masculine flavor to it that seems gone from the world.  It was written by Robert W. Service in 1911.

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

    A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

    And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

    And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

    And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

    They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

    And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

    What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

    Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

    With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

    Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

    Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

    In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

    He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

    And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

    He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

    He's a man who won't fit in.

And here's a song, Gentle on My Mind, that I think has lyrics to rival the old verses of the popular poets of days gone by.  It was written by the great John Hartford in 1968 and is here sung by Glen Cambell.