World Class Poetry Blog

Here’s an interesting project, and a revolutionary way to market poetry. What do you think?

Here’s a bird poetry contest.

Speaking of birds, meet Amy Clampitt.

Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s swan song.

Gary Snyder wins $100,000 poetry prize.

More on birds:

How about loons?

This week I’ve published a review of Variations on a Natural Theme: A Loon Year by Hugh Hennedy. Here’s a poem from the selection (you can read another one in the review):

On the Surface Loon
In no apparent hurry
To dive out of it
He rides and bobs in sun

Standing now he bathes
Wings spread wide for balance
His white breast in air

Remember George Carlin’s comedy act, “The Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV?” It was very funny. Well, Bob Harris has penned the “The Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing,” only it’s not so funny. It’s tragic. And true. By the way, “penned” didn’t make the list, but it did get an honorable mention.

And now for something completely different (thanks to Monty Python):

This isn’t a political blog, but I found this on The Huffington Post and had to say something. Robert S. McElvaine suggests four ways for the Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to reach a modus vevendi (a disagreement to agree; I mean, an agreement to disagree, or whatever) while keeping the gun pointed at warmonger John McCain. Here are the four points:

Each campaign continues to raise huge amounts of money; they should make an agreement to turn over either a set amount or an agreed percentage (perhaps 20%) of what they raise to a joint Democratic campaign group with people from both campaigns that will produce commercials and other efforts to educate the public about Mr. McCain while the struggle for the Democratic nomination continues.

You know, this is actually a novel idea. It would be such a fresh approach to modern politics that every news network in the world would provide the Democratic Party with endless commentary and free publicity. The focus would be taken off the fight for the most powerful minority in the world to actually beating up on the guy they want to lose in November. Why didn’t they think of that?

Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama should agree that at the end of each commercial against the other that their campaigns produce for the rest of the nominating contest, after they have attacked the other Democrat, they will expand the closing tagline to say: “I’m [Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama] and I approve this message — and I also approve of [Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton] much more than John McCain.”

OK, now that’s a stupid idea. You only get so much time to present your message. Why would the candidates volunteer to give up some of that time to say “I like my opponent better than my other opponent?” We went from novel to ridiculous in a single bound. Well done, Stuporman.

The Democratic candidates should agree that during the remaining battles in their continuing civil war they will spend at least as much time in speeches contrasting themselves with Mr. McCain as they do contrasting themselves with each other. (Indeed, the Democratic candidate who focuses his or her fire almost exclusively on the “Bush-McCain” policies would very likely win more Democratic and independent support than the one who spends her or his time attacking the other Democrat.)

I don’t know about “as much time”, but the candidates should spend some time discussing the reasons voters should reject McCain. Of course, I can’t see Hillary doing that. She’s too focused on winning. I believe Barack Obama would be the more likely candidate to take periodic potshots at McCain and to create the image that he should be the one to represent the Democrats because he’s willing to fight McCain on ideology. And, really, that’s what this is all about. Ideology. There is a much sharper difference in ideology between Obama and McCain than there is between Clinton and McCain and that’s where the Illinois senator can capitalize. He is right on the three most important issues of today: War in Iraq, Ethics, and Energy. Those are also the three areas that McCain is wrong in (although he is most right on the ethics issue).

A final point in a Clinton-Obama modus vivendi would be much more difficult to achieve and may not be necessary if the first three points are agreed to: Each candidate could agree that when the nominee is chosen, he or she will pick the other as her or his running-mate and that the latter will accept.

Actually, I think such a move would kill the Obama campaign. There is way too much negative baggage with Clinton. The list is too long to mention. I’d end up still firing off my points on election day. While Obama is not the perfect candidate - for the Democrats or for the country - there is a lot less negative baggage that comes with him than with Clinton, or with McCain for that matter. In this case, experience is not what matters. What matters the most in this election year is ideology and vision. Neither McCain nor Clinton are showing much of either.

Agree with it or not, only Obama has a stark and distinctive voice in either category. His ideology is progressive and consistent. His vision is domestic, not foreign. Maybe you are not on board with that at all and you feel much more comfortable with a traditional Republican message (as I do), but you certainly won’t get that with McCain. And since McCain has bucked up to follow the Party line, which is decidedly anti-Republican having betrayed the principles that made the GOP strong in the first place, that makes Barack Obama’s non-interventionist ideology much more appealing to us conservative-leaning and libertarian independents. We may not like what we’ll get with him, but at least we’ll know what to expect.

Dilemma: How do you get that into a poem?

I recently read a review of a literary journal that I like and found myself wondering what it was exactly that the reviewer was trying to say. Luckily for the reviewer, I hadn’t seen the particular issue of the journal that he reviewed, so I could neither agree nor disagree. But if I had to make a decision to purchase a copy of the journal based on the review, I’d be at a total loss.

The journal in question is Rattle. I like Rattle. I liked it when it first appeared in the 1980s. Though I haven’t been a faithful reader through the years, whenever I have picked up an issue of Rattle I have not been disappointed. Yet I recognize that no poetry journal is perfect and all of them to some degree can be improved. I think Rattle’s editor, Timothy Green, understands that as well.

A review of Rattle #28, poems by and about nurses, appeared recently at Luna Park. I was baffled by the review because some of the metaphors, in fact the language as a whole, falls to the floor and leaves me grasping for meaning. It got me to thinking about what the purpose of a review actually is.

A Review Of Luna Park’s Review
Gregg Weiss’s review of Rattle starts off like this:

There is much to be said for sticking to your strengths, for the exploration of a narrow milieu. In the twentieth century, artists as varied as Martin Ramirez, Charles Bukowski, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and A.J. Liebling exploited the concept of a niche aesthetic, either thematic or stylistic, to great effect. And while we all (or at least I) wish that we were Pablo Picasso, as native to “Guernica” as “Hands with Flowers,” we are instead generally closer to Jim Carrey: excellent at a specific brand of physical comedy, but mediocre in the dramatic roles to which he has more recently “graduated.”

Weiss sets me up fairly well in the first two sentences. Right away, I know he is critical of Rattle’s literary aesthetic. That’s fine. That’s what reviews are for. To point out the good and the bad and to make sense of them. But “good” and “bad” are relative terms. Something is either good or bad based on a person’s point of view, a particular aesthetic rendering. And Weiss certainly has that.

Weiss lets me know immediately that he does not appreciate the niche aesthetic. While I appreciate his prejudice, I’m not sure that it is necessary for a review of a specific issue of a literary journal. What he thinks about Rattle’s aesthetic philosophy as a whole has no bearing on whether or not issue #28 succeeds or fails. If the reviewer starts off with a prejudice of the aeshetic that he is reviewing then he shouldn’t be reviewing it. How can he be objective about that which he obviously has no appreciation for?

Where Weiss begins to lose me is in the third sentence. This is where he introduces his own prejudice (an irksome habit that too many reviewers are too happy to do much too often). I’m not sure what the parenthetical first person is supposed to indicate; I really don’t care about the reviewer’s aspirations. I’m more interested in knowing what he thinks about the subject of his review. Furthermore, I do not appreciate the assumption that all of his readers have the same fantasy that he has. How does he know that we all want to be Picasso? The fact is, we don’t. In fact, when he contrasts Picasso with Jim Carrey, the only thing I can think of is “That’s an odd place for an allusion to bathroom humor.” And it nags on me that Weiss believes “we all” are like Jim Carrey - first rate at our own niche aesthetic and second rate at everything else - while he continues to criticize Rattle for being what “we all” are. Suffice it to say, I’m not with Weiss at all from that point forward.

Creedence Clearwater Revival Vs. Pablo Picasso
The first sentence of his next paragraph is a jarring obstacle as a follow up to Weiss’s thesis:

Nearly all weighty-topic free-verse, Rattle 28 has opted for CCR over Picasso.

So what? I like Creedence. I’m not a big fan of Picasso. So right away, I’ve discovered that this reviewer has a prejudice that I don’t share. He likes Picasso and not Creedence. I’m just the opposite. He is sour on Rattle; I’m not. Therefore, my conclusion is, based on his negative review, that I should perhaps buy the journal because I’d probably like it. I’m sure that wasn’t the reviewer’s intention and it begs lunacy to think that it should have been. That’s not how reviews are supposed to work.

It’s All Downhill From There, Pablo
From there, the review just gets worse. Sentence by awful sentence:

Only one of the 98 poems features either a rhyming or metric pattern.

A statement that Tim Green says is completely false.

In addition, the poems of Rattle 28 rarely attempt humor, and are explicitly concerned with Heavy Shit: assassinations, cancerous mothers, religious minority, child molestation, unity, the death of a parent.

Again, what’s wrong with that? Shakespeare wrote both comedies and tragedies, but rarely did he write both at once. His plays were either comedies or tragedies. Where in the poetic handbook does it say that poetry should be humorous? Where does it say that it can’t deal with “Heavy Shit”? I’m not given a clue. This is just a statement that Weiss brushes right over to get to the next one.

The scope is ambitious. My preferred selections, however, flash a self-centered wit amidst an often ponderous crowd.

Again, the author here injects his own prejudice. Instead of just giving me an overview of what to expect from Rattle 28, he instead tells me that he prefers self-centered wit to emotional depth. How ponderously shallow of him.

What Should Reviewers Do With Prejudice?
While I don’t expect reviewers to hide their prejudices, I do expect them to be forthcoming about them and to not allow their prejudices to cast negative aspersions upon the works that they review. There is a stark difference between stating that one prefers a certain aesthetic and judging whether that aesthetic succeeds on the basis of generally accepted aesthetic principles. If a reviewer warns me, for instance, that there is not as much wit as heavy shit then I can judge for myself whether that is good or bad; but if the reviewer tells me that it is bad that there is more heavy shit than wit then all I get is a window view into that reviewer’s soul, but the reviewer’s soul is not my concern.

I do find it helpful, however, that Weiss gives me samples of the poetry involved. Then I can judge for myself, based on the passages, that the rest of what he says is right on or just too much of nothing. In this case, I’d say the latter.

How Weiss Helped Me To See The Light
One passage of Weiss’s review that really shines is when he talks me through the difference between the poems written by nurses and those written by non-nurses:

The 21 poems by nurses are interesting in how they relate to the rest of Rattle 28. As you would expect, the general subject matter does not lighten once we walk through the front doors of the hospital. There is, however, in many of the nurses’ poems, a gallows humor that, although not always successful, examines and comments on death, sickness, pain, etc. where the non-nurse poets of Rattle 28 often simply insist on the existence and awfulness of such facts. And as T.S. Davis notes in his essay on the relationship between nursing and poetry, the potential for thematic and emotional monotony in “nursing poetry” is overcome, at least in Rattle 28, by a visceral intensity of image and language that distinguishes similarly-themed poems from each other.

This section of the review tells me what is good and what is bad without the reviewer having to tell me. I can judge from the reviewer’s comments about the poetry as to whether the nurses’ poems or the non-nurses’ poems sound more appealing to me. And that’s what a good review should do: It should bring out the good and the bad in such a way that I see the poetry for what it is and not be overly concerned with the reviewer and his thoughts about it. Metaphors such as this one:

Rattle 28 reminds me of the dining-out scene in my hometown of Los Angeles: appealing restaurants like occasional plums in an overpriced and mediocre pudding.

And this:

For while the supposed small-moment magic of a Billy Collins may be endearing, expounding on the significance of a cloud passing a hammock depends on an expectational straw-man to an equal extent (although opposite effect) as Steven Spielberg does in Schindler’s List: the universe is more complex than a single cloud passing a hammock, and individual action is more personal than genocide. Like the emotional effect of Schindler’s List, the vast majority of small-moment poems may seem momentarily counterintuitive, but are ultimately self-evident.

do nothing to help me understand the nature of Rattle 28 and its good/bad qualities nor does it help me get a grasp of the reviewer’s thoughts on the work and whether I should trust him. These passages are overwritten and it appears that the reviewer is simply trying to be cute when he should be helping me make a decision as to whether I should spend the time and money on the product he is reviewing.

Is Weight-Free Verse Bad, Or Is That Prejudice?
Again, the final paragraph morphs into a void of misunderstanding as Weiss grasps for the right words to say, “Rattle needs improvement through diversity.” Instead of brevity and economy of words, he waxes into poetic mumbo-jumbo and unnecessary wordiness:

While competent small-moment poetry is easier to produce than competent weighty-issue poetry, Rattle 28 is emphatic in its embrace of the latter in a free-verse form. And while unrealized ambition is preferable to pandering, competence is always better than incompetence. How, then, to improve Rattle’s batting average? If Rattle was mine, I would either widen its aesthetic— specifically, to include more formal and thematically varied content— or reduce its length. In its current form, Rattle has a recognizable aesthetic— serious free-verse— but not enough successful poems. As I do not expect for Rattle to start restricting the length of future issues on the basis of this review, the success of these issues will be determined by the quality and number of weighty-topic, free-verse submissions— which Rattle obviously cannot control— or, conversely, by Rattle’s willingness, or lack thereof, to expand its aesthetic niche in regards to the “importance” of subject matter, comfort with humor, and diversity of form within its selections.

I am never led to understand why “weighty free verse” is bad. I only know that the reviewer doesn’t like it. That doesn’t help me as a reader understand why I should or should not make the purchase, which is what the reviewer should be doing. Every paragraph, every sentence, every word should be devoted to that one task, helping the reader decide. If I see too much reviewer and not enough review then I don’t trust him. In the same way, if when reading a poem I see too much poet and not enough of what the poet wants me to see in the poem then the poet didn’t do what he should have done. The same is true of fiction, creative nonfiction, humor, or any other type of writing. The reviewer must not make an appearance.

A review is not written for the author of the work that is being reviewed. Weiss’s comment “I do not expect for Rattle to start restricting the length of future issues on the basis of this review …” is simply uncalled for. Whether an author, editor, poet, or other producer of artwork makes any changes on the basis of a review should never be of concern to the reviewer. Whether or not the consumer can make an informed buying decision on the basis of a review should be the reviewer’s chief and only concern.

Why Getting Past Prejudice Is
A Reviewer’s Greatest Brush Stroke
Gregg Weiss falls short, not because he doesn’t have intelligent things to say, but because he doesn’t help me decide whether to purchase Rattle 28 or pass. Instead, he tells me why I shouldn’t buy it on the basis on his own prejudices and I end up wanting to buy the journal on the basis of his prejudices because I don’t share those prejudices. I have my own. A good reviewer gets past the prejudices and sheds light on nuances within a work in such a way that prejudices don’t matter. And when that happens, whether one likes “Olga” or “Susie Q” is a moot point, because reviews shouldn’t revolve around redheads vs. blonds arguments.

I’m a bit disappointed. No one has entered my ekphrastic poem contest. Really, there’s not a lot of commitment. Just write a poem and publish it on your blog. Then link it back to me. Details here.

A former operations manager of Oxford American magazine is in jail - for embezzling.

Thanks to Poet Hound, I now know I can make $200 for one poem.

Read this interview with Hiram Larew, a poet who comes very well recommended in my part of the world.

Former Hanover, Pa. Poet Laureate Dana Larkin Sauers is the latest poet to be reviewed at World Class Poetry, for her book Between the Space of Grace and Gray.

I suppose at 88 years of age you don’t have much to worry about. That’s the impression I get from reading the memoir-like blog of Mary A. Kaufman. Meander With Me, as it is called, is a nice blend of poetry, philosophy, and creative nonfiction.

Mary’s blog is currently categorized with six categories for her writing:

• Essays
• Opinion
• Poetry
• Stories
• Thoughts
• Uncategorized

She moves about freely and at ease between these categories and a variety of topics from day to day and will often include a bit of commentary before and after her original poetry. A self-avowed atheist, she has lately been on the subject of God, Christians, and faith. While her diatribes may come across as listless rants to the less keen, to me they appear more as a scurry for justification by one who has experienced life from several angles, including the wife of a Mennonite devotee.

While Mary’s arguments against the existence of God are a bit sophomoric (she really says nothing I’ve never heard before), her insights into philosophy, mythology, history, and culture are much more engaging. Unafraid to drop an allusion that might go over the head of an average reader, she provides some erudite insights into life and isn’t afraid to speak her mind as is evident in her poems that address racism and bigotry and other hard subjects. Her poetry, however, is an interesting mix of fine craft and sloppy editing.

I admire Kaufman’s willingness to write about subjects that most people wouldn’t tackle - death, racism, apologia to reason, politics - and her range is remarkable. I get the feeling that she is well read and thinks deeply on these topics before writing about them. But the writing itself is a little raw and needs some honing.

It is evident that, in her poetry, she likes to rhyme. But her rhymes are not sing-song rhymes in the vain of trite iambic pentameter. Rather, she has a tendency to slip into blank verse and she reminds me a little bit of Percy Bysshe Shelley - heady and rhapsodic. The problem is that the blank verse isn’t tight enough. It does at time stumble upon itself and I like the fact that the rhyme is unpredictable most of the time. Her rhymes are more like T.S. Eliot’s Modernist rhymes where there is no set pattern, no predictable abcabc or abab. They look more like a meandering rhyme where a couplet might follow an abab scheme followed by an abcacbba; in other words, the rhyme scheme is not formulaic. But she does have a tendency to use the same style and tone in almost all of her poems.

A little more variation would be nice. Not in subject matter, but in meter and elements of craft. Kaufman also needs to watch cliches. For the most part, her images are original and she does a good job of saying things in a new way, but there are times when the verse is too long and rambling and that’s when she has a tendency to underwrite. Otherwise, I find her verse a bit refreshing and not at all pretentious. Nor is it simple in the sense of being simplistic, though she does keep the poetry simple in terms of uncomplicated and that’s welcome, particularly on a blog that isn’t trying to reach for the atmosphere.

Meander With Me is a fabulous blog with a great theme. Mary Kaufman does indeed meander and her blog is aptly titled, though her meandering is intentional and done with purpose so I don’t count it as a negative. Kaufman has self published a book of poems titled Butterflies and Bumblebees. With some editing, she has the potential to create verse and creative nonfiction that could find its audience.

I recently reviewed a chapbook of poems titled Harpoon, written by lawyer Michael Cavendish. You can read the full review at World Class Poetry.

Right now I’d like to offer a critique of one of the poems in the chapbook, “The Poppies.” According to the Foreword, written by an anonymous endorser, “The Poppies” was written “as a form of lyrics accompanying the silent music of a show of paintings by the artist Tayloe White. This, I believe, places the poem in the category known as Ekphrastic.

First, I’d like to say it intrigued me that the art of Tayloe White inspired the poem, which is effectively organized into numerous sections. Just how many sections, I don’t know, for the entire poem is not printed. Only sections 2, 3, 5, 7, and 8, enumerated by Roman numerals, appear in the chapbook.

Harpoon is a rather short chapbook. It consists of seven poems. Four of them I like, “The Poppies” is one of them, and three of them I don’t. Even the ones I like have some imperfections. “The Poppies,” as I state in my review, is a fitting opening poem for Harpoon simply because of its craft.

I’m not going to reprint the whole poem, but I will take a few lines from each section and reprint one entire section, below:

The Poppies

II

From worm’d rooty tilldirt
Spilled with bloodcurdle
On greenlegs and razorfish’d leaves

…

III

…

Bulbous boned breakwind bred of
scorched butter and stale strawberry wine
magni-munificent, resplendent in breeches of

Lime and saltpeter veinings,
hemmed with sashes of rock fungi black
impetuous rude liver spot, this

…

V

Dahlia-O-Pidgin holds a summer kitchen
twain the snail track and grasshopper jetties

where spindle-foot suckers and short-legged-armored truckers
collapse down deep to feed pails of plenty

and bounteous and full-fare selections,
her raw preparations du jour

slurping dribbles of clear shelled crustaceans,
antennae whirled in boar-boor–ish rapture

Dahlia delights in their tankering fests
each scrap and shaving an earning

for her wintry strongbox-cum-underdirt chest
(afull and afilled and locked from the rest)
which rumbles with sparrowcock’s spring yearning.

VII

akimbo from the acorn fall
cicada beaks busy at labor
trim jademint wainscott and emerald upholster
and seaglass porte …

VIII

…

nameless fellows there toil unreclined
kerchiefs in waterstain, cheeks rough with seed
puffing hues of onecandy salt-crabapple mellow
look polychrome sunshower downpours to find.

Cavendish’s obvious strengths are his sensitivity to language and vision. “The Poppies” does a good job of setting its own music, but it does an equally good job of breaking its own rules. At times, the poem shines and in other places the shine turns pale as contrivances enter in and Cavendish has a tendency to over reliance on alliteration, though his near-rhyme is splendid.

The opening lines of the poem are a beautiful start. I like how he takes ordinary words and makes them extraordinary by combining unexpected nouns and buttressing some of his nouns together with their adjectives. His employment of assonance and consonance are great when not overdone, but the overdone parts are thick and muddy. He certainly has imagination and I give him credit for that. When he doesn’t overwrite, he is honest, creative, and playful. Those are refreshing qualities and the playfulness doesn’t get in the way of the poetry as is the case with former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins, which is even better.

I like the Dahlia-O-Pidgin segment best, which is why I chose to reprint the entire section. Right off the bat he gives me action and beauty. A simple scene that I can visualize. The first line of the second stanza startles me with its length, but the internal rhyme brings me back to earth and the following line rings so musically that I want to kiss him. The lines that follow maintain the music, tone, and pace, but the long dash in the middle of “boorish,” done intentionally to draw attention to the back-to-back boar-boor, is so amateurish I’d like to turn my kiss into a kick. It murders the rapture, which is the perfect follow-up word. But Cavendish recovers from that mishap to take Dahlia to a sweet finish.

All in all, Cavendish writes well, but he is undeveloped. “The Poppies” is inventive and playful, and fits Tayloe White’s artwork well. Maybe too well.

Forgive me if this seems academic, but I was intrigued by this review of a book of poetry essays.

As far as I know, Bob Blaisdell is no poet. He is, his bio says, an editor of a couple of books on poetry. If poetry is on the fringe of the arts then poetry critics must be on the fringe of the fringe. That puts guys like Bob Blaisdell, a reviewer of the critics, so far on the fringe he can be a fringe magnet. So where does that put the critics of those who review books of essays about poetry? Where ever it is, that’s where I aspire to be.

Poetry’s Larger Cause
I’m always on guard whenever certain types of people start talking about certain topics. For instance:

• When military leaders and policy analysts talk about the peace process
• When politicians and journalists talk about “the truth”
• When businessmen talk about morality or ethics
• When SUV owners talk about saving the environment
• And, yes, when literary critics talk about poetry’s “larger cause”

I didn’t know there was a larger cause, but Adam Kirsch seems to think so.

In the midst of admiring the Polish writer Adam Zagajewski in his essay collection, Kirsch reflects, “Here (in the United States) poetry is such a minor, sidelined pursuit that its practitioners seldom even consider the possibility that their art has a duty to a larger cause. … The moral crisis of Eastern Europe under Communism gave poetry an urgency and stature it can never have in the United States, where it is largely a hobby confined to writing workshops.”

This paragraph strikes me as overly ridiculous. I’m not sure what the point is. Poets stuck behind the iron curtain, if they had a “moral crisis,” it was simply that they were slaves to a state that allowed them the freedom to express themselves as long as they didn’t express themselves in a negative way toward the state. I don’t see how anyone can compare that to literary artists living in a country that encourages them to be as derelict as possible. There is, literally, no parallel.

As Americans, we have our own moral crises:

• Should we burn books we don’t like?
• Should “community standards” dictate what is acceptable in literature?
• Should public funding be used for works of desecration and religious sentimentalism alike?
• Should poets charge for their work?

Flippancy aside, I’m reasonably sure that poetry’s “larger cause” is simply to write good poetry. Anything beyond that is in the realm of personal conscience.

I certainly don’t think that I, as a poet, have a “duty” to anything other than writing what is in my spirit to write. We don’t tell plumbers of their duty to a higher cause. We don’t say to cocktail waitresses, “You must serve the larger priorities of existence.” Such talk is just plain silly. Doctors don’t have higher causes. Their one and only duty is to heal the sick and do no evil. Such it is with poets: Our one and only duty, whether it be Baudelaire or a 19th century Jesuit priest, is to write poetry that deserves to be read.

Blaisdell’s Anti-Poetic Response To Kirsch
Rather than take a position himself, Bob Blaisdell decides to validate Kirsch’s silly notions by not invalidating them:

Kirsch’s frustrations with particular American poets stems from his disappointment that they don’t seem to want to commit themselves to “a larger cause.” Kirsch expects poets to have the moral seriousness and political vision of Sophocles or Solzhenitsyn. Instead, he finds that most of them play in their own little worlds or use poetry as therapy - that they’re more or less talented slackers.

Well, I can understand Kirsch’s frustrations. There should be a seriousness attached to poetry, though I’m not sure it should be a “moral seriousness.” I’m not sure what that means. Is he saying that poets should live morally pure lives? Or that poets should encourage others to live morally pure lives? Is he calling us back to a Victorian real politic? God, I hope not.

Poets aren’t politicians, nor are we preachers. And we can thank the Almighty Deity for that. But Kirsch is right - if he did indeed say this (I haven’t read the book that Blaisdell reviewed) - when he says that most poets “play in their own little worlds or use poetry as therapy.” He’s wrong, however, when he asserts that we’re “talented slackers.” Slackers, yes. But most poets aren’t that talented.

I’m being brutally honest. Just ask any poetry journal editor how many poems she receives every year and how many of those she rejects. Then ask her how many she rejects without a second glance. To quote one journal editor I spoke to, “Most of what we get is just pure shit.” The same could be said of the bulk of poetry journals. Even much of what is published doesn’t pass the talent test.

I’m So Discourteous (But At Least I Write Poetry)
Later on in his review, Blaisdell praises Kirsch for his clarity while pointing out that it will annoy readers. Yes, that’s what readers want - to be annoyed. I’ve always liked that about clear writers if, for any reason, because I “understand” them. I just love how Blaisdell makes clear Kirsch’s view on the difference between courteous and discourteous poets:

“For the discourteous poet … novelty and complexity are the fundamental values, both because they provide aesthetic pleasure and because they differentiate the poet from his predecessors.

Judging by that sentence, I’d have to conclude that I am a discourteous poet for I think novelty at least is a fine value. Complexity I can give or take, but no poem can exist meritoriously on complexity alone, nor on simplicity alone. There must be something more than what can be perceived at face value. But the way that this is put leads me to believe that the combination of novelty and complexity is, in Kirsch’s eyes, a bad combination. So what would he make of Homer? Milton? The Bible?

“Discourteous” seems to be a reference to a poet’s mode of delivery more than voice or technique. I can’t help but notice that works that have stood the test of time and are still read today are themselves works that are novel and complex. So what can be so wrong about those qualities, I wonder?

Furthermore, aesthetic pleasure and differentiation from one’s predecessors are presented as negative values. Since when have they been negative values? Would Kirsch prefer that all poets be little Shakespeares, mass producing sonnets and odes of unrequited love? Never mind originality. That’s not important. Strive for a wooden caricature of the overdone. That’s a great path to better poetry.

Then the next statement just flows right from the obvious anti-novelty bias as if there is a natural logic to them:

The reader does not need to be invited or seduced into the poem; his presence is either assumed or ignored. …

Well, I certainly do believe that the reader should be invited and seduced into the poem. But the reader should also want to be seduced. A reader who fights against the seduction doesn’t really want to be a reader.

I am so sick of the pabulum that we’ve been fed about writing for a sixth grade audience. As writers have pandered to a lower reader comprehension level, the reading levels of readers has declined. It’s time for readers to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and learn to read complexity. They may learn to like novelty, originality, unique voices among the slackers. Today’s readers seem to like their poetry the way they like their living quarters, with cookie-cutter floor plans and brown faces.

The finished poem will not disclose the event or emotion that brought it into being, finding it more valuable to demonstrate the incommunicability of experience. Reference and allusion tend to be idiosyncratic and alienating, and form is conceived intellectually and theoretically rather than discursively or musically.”

I love how brilliant insight is mixed in with the ridiculous and mundane in Kirsch as translated by Blaisdell. I agree that finished poems should disclose some kind of emotion or experience that readers can take value from. Otherwise, what’s the point of the poem? Certainly we don’t want alienation of the reader from the writer, but how is intellectualism a negative where form is concerned? Obviously, Kirsch has never tried to write a sonnet or a villanelle. If he has, he has forgotten that writing poetry is an intellectual exercise.

I can see the broader point that certain schools of poetry have degenerated into a random set of noises, a kind of atavistic rambling of sound. But that’s not every school of poetry. The generalizations are so obvious, but it’s hard to tell whether it is Kirsch that is the problem or the interpretation of his essays that present the difficulty here. But there is some difficulty in the way that I perceive the presentation of his point of view.

It seems that Blaisdell is saying we should trust Kirsch because he’s read a lot of poetry, not because he understands it. He doesn’t converse with us, we are told. He lectures us, but without the academic background that would qualify him to do so. He uses no literary theory and (applause) “quotes nothing faddish” - you mean, he is novel? Yes, but he is a good old chap.

Finally, Blaisdell does give us his honest opinion of Kirsch:

Yet I can’t imagine anyone quoting for inspiration or liking Kirsch’s impatient rules of thumb about writing poetry.

No, I can’t either.

You’re Just A Poet, What Do You Know?
Kirsch, who has written and published one book of poems, likes some poets, but he doesn’t like us all. That much is clear. Of course, I don’t like us all, either.

Who does he loathe? Apparently, Sharon Olds and Billy Collins. And what does Blaisdell say about that?

I won’t make a peep for Olds, but his disparagement of Collins seems to say a lot more about Kirsch’s own rigidity than about Collins: “Relentless joking can be a way of discouraging curiosity, ambition, and endeavor, without which there is no greatness in art.”

Now Blaisdell shows his true colors. He won’t defend Olds, who was my first contemporary influence and who inadvertently gave me great encouragement as a young poet learning the craft, but he slobbers all over former poet laureate Billy Collins. Quite frankly, I agree with Kirsch on Collins. He is so over rated he’s like a bad spaghetti sauce.

Collins has effectively turned contemporary poetry into a Mother Goose for adults. His constant tongue in cheek is good for one or two poems, great for an ice breaker, but does every single poem have to be a clown on a unicycle? Evidently, Blaisdell thinks so. Oh, and you may as well bring out the elephants and midget trapeze artists too.

Blaisdell finally ends his review of Kirsch the essayist with the obligatory ass kiss:

Finally, however, I appreciate Kirsch’s righteous campaign to expand the audience for serious lit. How helpful it is, after all, to have so dedicated and knowledgeable and passionate a guide as Kirsch! He has earned his two cents, and even when I disagree with or find myself weary of his postulates (”poetry is capable of the most subtle perception and the most civilized thought, if only a poet takes himself and his art seriously enough to achieve them”), he gives us plenty of reasons to go read contemporary poetry for ourselves.

Oh, my! Why doesn’t he just pop the question?

I am so not enamored of this silly campaign to get more people to read poetry. It’s such a “righteous campaign,” how can anyone be against it? Well, for starters, because poetry isn’t one of the food groups. It’s literature. You either like it or you don’t. And if you don’t then it doesn’t matter whether you read it or not. If poetry isn’t your gig, pick up Collins. On the other hand, if you like the novel and complex then perhaps T.S. Eliot is more to your liking.

I for one couldn’t care less about dedication and passion in people who write essays. Knowledge is an asset, of course, but based on Blaisdell’s review, I can’t see where Kirsch has the kind of knowledge that would make me trust him. He hasn’t earned his two cents, nor has Blaisdell, but I will say one thing about the latter’s final analysis: I too am weary of Kirsch’s postulates and, yes, there are plenty of reasons to read contemporary poetry. The fact that it is sometimes novel and often complex are just two of them. Sharon Olds is another. And even bad reviews, and bad reviewers, can be stomached if one reads with an open mind.

After reading this, if you’re still interested in The Modern Element: Essays In Contemporary Poetry by Adam Kirsh, click here to be taken to Amazon.com.

While reading my favorite blogs and news stories the last couple of days, I’ve noticed there are quite a few noticeable notables. I’d just like to mention a few:

First, the names of the Best New Poets of 2007 have finally been published. Publishers are beginning to take nominations for 2008.

The Virginia Quarterly Review clues us in on the submission review process. Yesterday on VQR: Gore, Bush, and tete-a-tetes.

The 50 Books/50 Covers competition.

Sally Vickers praises Paul Muldoon’s The End of the Poem.

Ron Silliman on Jean Valentine. As usual, Silliman is exacting in his analysis. If I could choose a critic of my poetry, I’d want it to be Silliman.

Howard Junker on Absinthe.

Nancy Breen shares how (and how not to) submit greeting card verse.

John Hewitt updates us on the status of his novel.

The New York Times lists the 100 notable books of 2007, including Time and Materials by former poet laureate Robert Hass. Any idea how many more are books of poetry?

Jim Harrison talks about Charles Bukowski.

An interview with the woman who wonders What Is This Thing Called Love?

There are still poets against the war. Really?

W.S. Merwin, 80 and still going strong.

The Kenyon Review announces two winners of Pushcart Prizes. “Bicameral” by Linda Gregerson and “War Lullaby” by Meghan O’Rourke, which is simply fabulous. O’Rourke writes for Slate.

Yesterday, KR blew me away with a brilliant critical analysis on the state of the book review in American culture. Noting that many daily newspapers that once published book reviews now do not, or have cut the space allotted for such reviews, the market response has been to make us all reviewers. Amazon allows anyone and everyone to post reviews of books, but are those reviews reliable? You can vote on the reviews to let the reviewer, Amazon, and everyone else know whether certain reviews helped you or not. Personally, I miss the days when experts who can speak the language of form gave us an intelligible defense of their biases. They may not have been perfect - can you say “haughty culture?” - but at least they were informative and stimulating, unlike those Amazon reviews, which can often be scathing and lacking in depth or meaning. Yes, the way we give (and receive) reviews have changed, but that doesn’t mean we should surrender.

Speaking of reviews, if you have a book or a chapbook that you’d like reviewed for the eyes of thousands, let me know. Like Joan Didion, if I like it I’ll review it. If I don’t then I won’t mention it. How much more fair can I be?

Finally, Deborah Ager at 32 Poems shared links to the art work of Ron Mueck. These sculptures are absolutely stunning.

And now, your thoughts?

I got an e-mail two days ago asking me if I’d review a book. Of course, I’m always interested in reviewing good poetry books. So I sent my usual response to such requests. Here’s my policy:

Send me your book. If I like it, I’ll review it on this blog and at World Class Poetry on the reviews page. If I don’t like it I’ll toss it and not mention it.

If you think that is harsh consider this: If I bought every poetry book I reviewed, I’d be bankrupt. I can’t do that. So I figure if someone wants his book reviewed then he’ll send a review copy. That’s a standard practice in book publishing. Even if your book is self published, and I’ll review self published books while other book reviewers will not, if you want your poetry book to reach an audience then you have to give a few away to reviewers so that they can spread your message for you. It’s a minimal cost.

At any rate, got a poetry book you want reviewed? Let me know. I’ll take a look at it.

This is why I read the 32poems blog. Deborah Ager isn’t your typical poetry blogger. You won’t find any pretentious snot about postmodern superiority or lullabies to feminist goddesses chanting the sapphic pleasures of song and eternal nature worship. No W.D. Snodgrass meets the New Formalism with palisades to democratic vistas. And, God forbid, no sappy M.F.A. theses or poetry workshop rejects foisted upon us all through vain self-glorification. Deborah’s the real deal.

OK, so it’s a recipe, not a poem. Is there a difference? Writing a poem has much to do with cooking a meal. They are both creative pursuits and the one might be more tasty at mealtime, but no more beneficial. While one feeds the body, the other feeds the soul.

Ager’s blog is attractive, with its sunflower yellow borders and burnt orange dressings, you get the sense that she’s talking to you, not at you, and you know that she loves poetry. It’s not just a passing fad or a failed calling. Her top menu says it all. The obligatory About Us, a pretty decent blogroll even though most of the blogs are Blogspot blogs, a nice list of writing residencies (a feature I absolutely love), a list of poetry magazines, the 2007 book list (yay!, and something called NaPoWriMo.

Ager’s been writing her poetry blog since September 2004, which means she knows what she’s doing. It also means that she has one of the longest running poetry blogs on the Internet. It makes me jealous. Her list of categories is long enough to hang a man in town square (not that she should), but the items in the list are as attractive as her yellow. And one more final sweet thing to say: I love ginger, and sweet potato soup sounds good too. The only thing I don’t like - she doesn’t post every day.