World Class Poetry Blog

True Poetry: Criticizing The Critic
29 January 2008, the poet @ 7:02 pm

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.

2 Comments a “True Poetry: Criticizing The Critic”

1. Jim Murdoch — January 30, 2008 @ 8:53 am
   

   A few goods points in this blog. As for poetry and politics, some poets do deal with political issues head on. I don’t. In thirty-five years of writing I’ve used the word “politics” (actually it was “politicals”) once in passing. Beckett was also criticised in his day for not bringing politics into his writing and the gist of his answer, as is mine, is that we don’t write about what we want to, we write about what we have to. I can rant about social injustice with the best but there are clear parameters that define what I write about. And that’s fine. I shouldn’t be lambasted for that.

   It’s like the whole Billy Collins thing. He does what he does. If you get bored with what he does then read something else, it’s not as if there’s no one out there to choose from. Every writer/artist/whatever has his thing: Rothko did big chunks of fuzzy colour, Pollock did drippy paintings. What’s the point in criticising either of them because they’re not Rembrandt? There’s a place in this world for all of them. The world needs all of them.

   As for getting more people to read poetry… I’ve been reading and trying to read poetry for thirty-five years and there is so much pretentious, overblown, self-important, navel-gazing, plain badly-written tripe out there looking down its snotty-nose at readers because they don’t “get it” that when I do read a poem that I like and get I’m more taken aback than anything else. I wish people would be done with all these divisive definitions. It’s all just writing: ‘Ere ‘ave a shuftie at this, it’s summat I wrote, see if you like it. People read something and it makes sense to them or they impose sense upon it, they decide they like it or they don’t and then they get on with real life. Writing is only a part of life, even for writers; it has its place – it can be an important one – but it’s not the be all and end all of everything.

2. the poet — January 30, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
   

   Good thoughts, Jim. You’re right about choice. Everyone has preferences and I’m sure there is a poet out there to match every preference. Your views on all of it being valid are very akin to my own philosophy of poetics, which I call Millennialism. The view is that craft, passion, imagination, and raison d’etre are the most important characteristics for a poet to possess. These characteristics accompanied by the study of the techniques available and how other poets have employed them successfully should yield a poet worth his salt. All else is preference. Thanks for reading!

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