Confirmation Bias in Poetry
4 questions to ask your poet-self to see if you are fooling yourself.
Confirmation Bias in Poetry
Keep looking for a minute or so at the photo of the eyes. Take a moment to sense how you feel about the look in those eyes and how you feel. Even blur your eyes for a second to see past details and gather your own intuition. [i] Before you read the endnote, let me say it always surprised me how many people knew this person and thought he was a really nice guy — I was amazed at what other people couldn’t see that I saw which was so obvious about this person.
To continue: there is no one right way to write poetry or even to read poetry. Many different kinds of poetry are valid and can be appreciated.
But there is one unacceptable component in poetry and that is anything phony. Or insincere, or disingenuous, or concocted foolery. Pretentiousness is another. Anything fake: fake tones, fake ideas, fake presumptions.
A genuine effort to write poetry is commendable. However, when the talentless strive too much, they by necessity wear masks and costumes and speak in elevated pulpit tones and throw incensed smoke around with obscure and oblique inferences. Please stop the “say it slant,” a contorted old-fashioned if not now archaic and even corny silliness in poetry. Get to the point, launch the rocket, let the sail fill with wind, clearly express your feelings, or go home.
Mumbling in the distance doesn’t work anymore.
Another very irksome issue in much of modern poetry is when the poem purports to be about one subject but is really about another subject, a kind of subterfuge which is insulting to the reader. This is popular with agenda poets who are people with deep personal problems and try to be friends with you so they can make their problems — your problems. (You know the sort, I’m certain.)
If a poem is to be written, it is the responsibility of the poet to not waste the reader’s time. Many poets today write their poems in complete ignorance of poetic history and essentially accomplish monkey-see, monkey-do. They see others write scribble-scrabble down in little itty bitty lines and nonsensical line breaks — so they do it as well. Or, ‘if it feels right’ just put in a random line break.
Poets and artists need to know how art has evolved to develop their own work as relevant. Poets and artists may very well start out young and fresh and blindly start their art, but soon the work begins and correlations soon become corrections toward an artist’s genuine voice or vision.
One very common aspect in contemporary poetry is that a poem doesn’t need to say anything, that a poem can be abstract as cement scuffed by shoes: ok; now what? If a poet doesn’t have anything to say, why are poets using words to put nothing in a poem? I think it is because the poet doesn’t have anything to say. Not sure, though. (Very dry joke.)
One thing is certain; when the poet or the poem go dark, when the poem goes into negative territory, death, gloom, family problems, shame, winter, hell, politics, doom, — without a redeeming follow through — the poet is a hobby poet. Why? Because a hobby poet’s knees crumble into dust on the path of true creativity. What this means: if a poet can’t create something beautiful, they surely can ‘create’ something ugly.
It is much easier to sink a boat than build a boat.
Now, today, there are millions and millions of poets — and how many are actually thinking about the art of poetry itself? Not many. I am not talking about common terminology used in poetry, such as meter and rhyme, or free verse or tone or voice — write anyway you want. But poets don’t seem to be aware of how they write like other poets.
In the music world, musicians bring lawsuits against other musicians if even a few seconds of a song are deemed to copy another musicians song.
In poetry today, originality seems to be discouraged. It may be due to social equity forces — everyone is equal, no one is special. Yes, everyone is equal, but this is dragged over to ‘all art is equal.’ Are all architects equal? All singers? Come on, speak up, say the truth!
I can go to any poetry magazine site and scan the poems and find the exact use of phrase, vocabulary, and sentence structure across the pages. Poetry is often written for other poets, for poetry clubs, and not for real people, who often squirm intolerably at the mention of reading poetry — and with good reason — because so much poetry today is garbage, drivel, self-indulgent therapy, righteous bellowing, me-me-me-of-great-interest, and any other hither-to as yet unimagined innocuous scribble.
The poetry world is dark and obsessive, and extreme egotists flaunt their own pride and narcissism — as a means for self-identity. As soon as the ego gets exhausted, the subject becomes world justice, or save the world, or save the elephants, join the cause, be part of the group, pay the dues, be a comrade, wave a flag. (Of course there are worthy causes — I like elephants — but no one wants to be lectured in a poem.)
Confirmation bias is a powerful force in many areas of life.
Poets think they are good poets.
Poets seldom say that they are not a good poet.
Ever hear anyone say that they are not a good driver? How many times have you heard someone say that they are a good driver — as they exceed the speed limit?
Poets are often so myopic that they really have no idea if what they write is good or not, and why is this? Confirmation bias. Many studies exist.
People fool themselves.
People like to stand on the edges of cliffs — and not only that — people not only run up to the edge of volcanoes — they jump into volcanoes.
Answer these questions.
1. Exactly what is it about your own poetry, do you think, makes other people want to read your poetry? Answer the question — if you can’t answer the question you have no idea of what you are doing.
2. Exactly how does your poetry fit into the history of poetry? If you have not already answered that question — before reading this essay — you are a hobby poet. Answer the question anyway.
3. Exactly how is your poetry part or not part of any present day poetry trend? Exactly how can a reader, say, Oh, This is a Poem by You, and Not by Someone Else? Exactly how is your poetry furthering the art of poetry? Be specific. Write it down, fill in the blanks, use the whole page.
4. Again, is your poetry a container for an agenda? Any agenda. If so, the agenda comes first and the art of poetry is subjugated to serve the agenda. No agenda needs a poem. Why? Because the poetry will be a buggish crawly piece of journalism subservient to obsequious opinions. Answer yes or no if you have an agenda — even a personal agenda.
What it is that compels so many to write formulated groups of words so vehemently, so intently, or so sloppily, I have no idea.
I guess it will all shake out and there is no need to worry.
Are you caught in confirmation bias?
Are you fooling yourself with poetry or anything else in your life?
Hear yourself in order to hear others.
_____
(soon, how to get out of Poet Confirmation Bias)
[i] An actual evil, lying, dishonest man. Oh, yeah! And he doesn’t like me pointing my camera at him. So many people really liked this man as he was once in an authoritative position. I looked at him and saw a rotten thief and liar and I could not not understand how others simply could not see what I saw. Most people reacted in a pre-emptive collective assumption and thoughtlessly confirmed their reaction.