Long
before the advent of the Age of the Internet, which has changed everything, it
was John Ciardi, I believe, who put forward the theory of the “vertical” and
“horizontal” audiences. The vertical audience for literature consists of the
mass of readers of any stripe who exist at any particular moment, whereas the
horizontal audience is those readers who exist from one particular moment
forward into the indefinite future. Although the vertical audience appears to
be massive in comparison with the horizontal audience of that same moment, in
fact the horizontal audience will be much larger — good news for the writer of
serious literature as distinguished from the writer of “popular” literature.
In
practice, this is what used to happen, according to Ciardi’s theory: on a
particular day two magazines are published; one is a popular mass-market
magazine, and the other is a “little” magazine. The popular magazine has a
vertical audience of a million people, but its horizontal audience diminishes
rapidly — it extends primarily only so far as the publication date of the
magazine’s next issue. Let’s say that length of time is one month, and during
those thirty days two million more people read the magazine, for a total
vertical-horizontal readership of three million readers. (Of course, this
doesn’t include readers of magazines in the offices of such people as doctors
and dentists where periodicals apparently have half-lives equivalent to
radioactive substances.)
The
“little” magazine has a vertical audience of only a thousand readers, but it
does not become obsolete as fast as the popular periodical. In fact, over the
years scholars, students, and researchers have recourse to the little magazine
in academic libraries and collections in particular. Eventually, the theory
goes, the little magazine’s horizontal audience outstrips the popular
periodical’s total readership.
One
can think of some limited-circulation magazines that would fit this pattern — I
would judge that since the eighteenth century The Spectator has been read by more people than any particular
issue, or even, perhaps, the whole run of Time magazine. But the theory is no doubt sounder if
one applies it, not to a whole issue of a magazine, or a whole run, but some of
the contents. No doubt more readers have read The Waste Land over the last century than have read any single
article in any issue of Newsweek.
Although
Ciardi’s theory, applied in such a way, can perhaps give some small comfort to
the poet in the long run, it will probably not give the journalist many
sleepless nights, for the reason that the latter is reaching the audience he or
she has chosen. The poet, on the other hand, probably is not reaching his or
her chosen audience — who consciously writes for the ages? Most poets would
like to reach a sizable vertical audience too, although Emily Dickinson may be
the exception; she apparently cared very little for any audience at all.
Others, however, like to think they are addressing one’s contemporaries, a
situation that poses a considerable dilemma to the serious writer. How serious
can one be if one reaches out for a mass readership? Walt Whitman, for
instance, addressed his poems to “the common man” but, though his horizontal
audience is enormous, it is not made up of laborers, and his vertical audience
was smaller than that for the work of many of his contemporaries — Whittier,
Longellow, the “Schoolroom Poets” whose works were found on the shelves on
anyone who had pretensions to culture in the 19th century. The poet, then, must
consider the audience he or she wishes to reach, and settle for that readership
which is as large as his or her seriousness of intent and talent will bear. The
smallest audience possible is one: oneself, the audience Dickinson wrote for;
the largest is everyone. Every audience in between these extremes, it goes
without saying, is limited to a greater or lesser degree. If the poet addresses
only himself or herself, he or she is a narcissist; if the poet addresses
everyone, he or she must seek the lowest common denominator, and art is
exhausted.
Visualize
a circle that represents all possible readers at a particular moment. Within
this circle imagine a triangle. At the apex of the triangle there is the poet.
One of the other points of our figure represents those readers who are of like
mind with the poet; the third point of the triangle stands for those readers
who are unlike-minded. The poet has several choices of audience: he (or she)
can address the people within both circle and triangle — everyone; the people
outside the triangle but within the circle — readers who do not read poetry;
the people within the triangle only — all the readers of poetry; himself only;
himself and like-minded people; or unlike-minded people.
To
address everyone is to write artlessly or journalistically, which will no doubt
exclude those people within the triangle who consider poetry to be an art; to
write for people outside the triangle only is probably hopeless. If he chooses
like-minded people, the poet will very likely choose to speak to them in
commonly held symbols and phrases — clichés, but not mass audience clichés;
rather, cult clichés, such as those used by Charles Olson and his “Black
Mountaineers.” Should the poet choose to address an unlike-minded audience, he
will have to speak in terms of the clichés that group has accepted, if he or she wishes to be
heard.
The
poet may, however, choose to speak to a central audience, those people
contained in the middle of the triangle — visualize a second circle within the
triangle, an audience interested in the art of poetry, but not necessarily of
the poet’s mind. In this case the poet must speak in symbols invented for the
purpose, the specific purpose, but these symbols must be recognizable, in
context, to the readership. In other words, the poet must be imaginative.
This
poet, then, will speak in his or her own voice, but to an audience that is
willing to abjure cliché in favor of art, an audience of the middle, not of the
extremes, and not including everyone. One way the poet can involve this middle
audience in the poem is through the use of the dramatic or narrative points of
view, by writing about his audience and about oneself; about their world as
well as the poet’s own — in other words, by invoking empathy, not merely sympathy
or antipathy.
Empathy
is the quality of seeing oneself in another’s art, though the world of that art
be strange. The middle audience is willing to give itself to the poet, but the
poet must be willing, in turn, to give himself or herself back to the audience
— neither one nor the other, but both. The audience that gives itself to a poet
is a cult; the poet who gives himself to the audience is a confesser, but if
there is mutual giving, then the art of poetry flourishes, and the poet can
choose to reach the largest possible number of readers consistent with quality
of writing and seriousness of intent.
I
don’t think this paradigm holds as well in the Age of the Internet as it used
to, because everything that is
published potentially can exist forever in cyberspace, or at least for as long
as there is technology and a form of the current civilization. It hardly
matters whether what is written is pure data, like statistics, or hard copy, or
digitized material including music and art. It is all available, and every day
millions of people enter terms into search engines to dig through materials
that used to take great labor and enormous amounts of time to uncover. There is
no longer a vertical audience; it’s all horizontal as far as electronics can
see.
The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama,
Nonfiction, Literary Criticism and Scholarship , www.UPNE.com, ISBN 0874519551, quality paperback,
$24.95, 224 pages. A Choice
“Outstanding academic title” for 2000. A companion volume to The Book of
Dialogue and The Book of Forms. ORDER FROM AMAZON.
COMMENTS
Oh, this is a jewel, Lew,
Many thanks. I loved, in particular, "This poet, then, will speak in his or her own voice, but to an audience that is willing to abjure cliché in favor of art, an audience of the middle, not of the extremes, and not including everyone."
Jennifer Reeser
Lew,
Thanks for sharing this. I especially appreciate your observations on empathy and mutual giving.
Geraldine Cannon Becker
Lew,
Very heartening for editors of little
magazines. It reminds me that the labour & effort of publishing them is not
as futile as one sometimes feels.
Paul Stevens
Paul,
The world of the little magazines has long been nurturing to literature. Let's hope it always will be, but so many of our best periodicals are dying these days and it's a brave new world out there on the Web.
Lew
Lew,
That
brave new world can seem scary "New Math of Poetry":
http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Math-of-Poetry/64249/
Mike Snider
Mike,
During the middle ages all warriors were expected to be able to stand up at the mead table and extemporaneously relate their exploits in what we now call "Anglo-Saxon prosody." Of course, there was also a caste of professional poets called "bards," but everyone was supposed to be able at the very least to understand and appreciate "poetry." There's nothing wrong with trying to teach everybody the elements of poetry writing and appreciation, and there's nothing wrong with absolutely everybody trying to write it (which they have always done: John Ciardi discovered that decades ago when he talked to fellow commuters on the train). I think the person who wrote that essay must be a snob.
Lew
Lew,
I
think you're right abut the snobbery - but I also think the writer is correct
that the likelihood of losing very good and even great poets in the crowd has
bever been higher for a living language. The flip side, of course, is that
there never were more opportunities for very good or great obscure poets to
find somone who'll read them.
Mike
I have no idea how many poets have been "lost" over the ages. I'm not sure it makes a lot of difference -- we have plenty to read, and people will always be out looking for the Emily Dickinsons and the Manoah Bodmans.
Lew
Comments