Long Sunday

Stephen Burt in n+1, Number 4

Excerpted from the symposium on "American Writing Today:"

Whom should more poets follow, or at least contemplate? Again, in poetry: George Herbert, Christopher Smart, pre-1937 W.H. Auden, Basil Bunting, Donald Davie, James K. Baxter, post-1964 Robert Lowell. Among living writers, maybe Thylias Mass, Juan Felipe Herrera, Laura Kasischke, Liz Waldner. In poetry criticism: William Empson, Donald Davie.

What current modes clog the pipeline and tire me out? (1) Quasi-automatic writing and a kind of comic quasi-surrealism, especially when the author wants to be winning, funny, "entertaining," and shocking at the same time. (2) Slack free-verse autobiography; chatty anecdote without interesting form. (3) Endless zeroxes of '50s formalist poems, copies of Anthony Hecht and Howard Nemerov. (4) "Spirituality," which, pursued as a primary goal, tends to make poems sound like bad translations.

Most poets today are writing either for a coterie of readers they know personally, who want to participate in the social circulation of new work (rather than in the rereading of old work), or else (in part) for an academic market in which the more you publish (as long as it's in semiprestigious venues), the more your chances for tenure and promotion.

Both paradigns encourage overproduction. Younger poets, in particular, seem to rush things, to make public ten pounds of cookie dough when, had they waited, they might have had five pounds of tasty cookies. I don't know what any of us can do about that, and for certain poets whose work is supposed to sound "raw" (such as Kasischke and Waldner) that may not even amount to a disadvantage.

Anything you can do 100 times in 100 poems without learning a new trick isn't worth doing more than twice. Sense is harder than nonesense; order is harder than disorder. But, as Stevens said, "A great disorder is an order"; as Dickenson said, "Much madness is divinest sense / To a discerning eye."

Something by Caleb Crain, somewhat less memorable, followed.

Huh

Huh.  (Derrida is rolling in his grave.)   

Update:  it seems the real story about The New Republic is elsewhere.

Progressive avant-garde?

Something I stumbled across in a bookstore, yesterday, in Asheville.  The absence of any comment–apart, perhaps, from the ambiguous sigh expressing merely, "Ah, but the science of it all"–should not  of course mislead you into assuming only the worst, most simplistic or didactic approval of any of the most obvious potential glosses, naturally.  In other words, all pervasive ironies aside, I just thought it was interesting.  (Certainly a cultural context worthy of attention, in any case, for historians of artistic, creative and political groupings, generally.)

How shame and envy maketh "the enemy" to go 'round; knights, be ye forever wroth, then with name cast vote, whilst women watch and nearly swoon

        When Sir Palomides saw that Sir Tristram was disguised, he thought to shame him:  he rode to a knight who was sorely wounded and who sat under a tree a good way from the field.
       "Sir knight," said Sir Palomides, "I pray you to lend me your armor and your shield, for mine is overly well known in this field; that hath done me great damage.  Ye shall have my armor and my shield which are as good as yours."
       "I will well," said the knight, "that ye have my armor and my shield.  If they may do you any avail, I am well pleased."
        So Sir Palomides armed hastily in that knight's armor and his shield, which shone like any crystal or silver, and he came riding into the field.  Neither Sir Tristram nor any of Sir Tristram's or King Author's party recognized Sir Palomides.  Just as he came into the field Sir Tristram smote down three knights, right in the sight of Sir Palomides.  Then he rode against Sir Tristram and each met the other with great spears, so hard that the spears burst up to their hands; then they dashed together with swords eagerly.  Sir Tristram marvelled what knight it was who did battle so mightily with him.  Then he was wroth, for he felt that knight to be passing strong, and he deemed he could not have ado with the remnant of the knights because of the strength of Sir Palomides.

Separated at birth?

 To continue with a theme....More ill-thought out and badly timed lookalikes

Paxless in Americana

It's a match made in heaven.  One wonders if they know each other?  A commenter on the latter, one "Big Billy" asks a good question:

What if a pair of opposing hypocrits (where one says one thing and doesw [sic] the other, and the other says the other and does the one thing) team up? As a human, I find it impossible to constantly avoid hypocrasy [sic], so why not pair up and embrace out hypocritical natures, and then we can really progress, right? My partner will do my work for me while I do his work for him. We will both get our jobs done while approaching more exagerated extremes.
But then again, we're probably better off if you just call me an idiot too.

In this our quest, for the ultimate blog brevity I then leave it to you, dear eater, to draw your own excursions.  For it is a black and white world, with the Author sitting f'evern top (ever'n especially whilst claiming the bottom!) and we was only ever kiddin', once Hugh challenged e to a duel. 

A duel, e says!  At dawn, no less.  E dunno, somehow "be offended, but say so" just don't 'ave the same ring to it.    An' sometimes it be da fools who call idiots, "idiots" best.

And if charity be not charitable

"Sometimes resentment would cross our faces, sometimes wildness would fill our eyes, but we were tame apes, and we dreamt not of the savannah, but of the books we would write in imitation of others."