Straw Man Kooser

Here is what I mean by being irritated (from Ted Kooser's irritatingly homey The Poetry Home Repair Model):

“If you've gotten the impression from teachers or from reading contemporary poetry that poets don't need to write with a sense of somebody out there who might read what they've written, this book is not for you. Poetry is communication, and every word I've written here subscribes to that belief. Poetry's purpose is to reach other people and to touch their hearts. If a poem doesn't make sense to anybody but its author, nobody but its author will care a whit about it.”

This is clearly a straw man---or a Trojan Horse---or a straw dog, for all that. Those elitist snobby, commie pink “teachers” and that babel of madness “contemporary poetry!” Why bother to attack like this. There really isn't anything to attack anyway. All poets have their readers, now don't they. The poets with the most readers are generally those that are the most like Hallmark cards in their “communication” of this or that belief strongly held for no reason, and without reason. And without research and without history and without context usually. So what is this attack really and always about? Just a ploy to get noticed?

There are lots of things wrong with this statement, including its sentimentality and dullness. “Communication” is one of those words that has been so contaminated with overuse and misuse and general encumberance that it is impossible for it to mean anything now. Talk about meaning. “Touching hearts” is in the same category. Maybe poetry is not about other people but about understanding ourselves or the world or just about play and exploration for all that. Maybe its like sex. But then, there are those who say that sex only has one purpose and it sure isn't fun.