Tom: The answer for the most part is "no", with a couple of significant exceptions. I generally like to read a poem in a way that makes me think about myself and the world, and generally react negatively if I feel that the poet has unnecessarily thrust his or her persona upon me. Similarly, I hate going to a reading and having to listen to 5 minutes of preamble and an explanation of the "real" events and a gloss on the poem because it is too obscure. Read the damn poem and get out of the way!
Now, I feel differently when I actually know the poet because it is fascinating to hear the verbal tics in the poem that are part of the poet's speech or note the psychological fingerprints of a piece of art of someone you know. I also feel differently about certain great poets for whom I have made the effort to read the biographies and the criticism. Byron, Larkin, Dickinson and Swift fascinate me as people, for instance (even though my estimation of ED's work is lower than most of my peers), and I often do think about these poets as people as I read their stuff. I'm not so interested when the life is short and destructive (fill in many blanks there) or the art seems totally separated from the artist (Stevens). I mean, reading Stevens' biography is reading the life of a dull insurance lawyer who in his youth who would occasionally hang out with NYC literary bohemians. You can't connect the life with the art in a meaningful way, and so there seems to be no point. (OK, that will probably get me into trouble)

OK, You're in trouble, then!

The fact that you cannot connect the life with the art in "meaningful way" is, in itself, meaningful.

jejeje

(robt)

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(The former bear_music, in his own name)

The word "character" implies more than biographical detail, though. Think Martin Luther King and his comment about judging a man on "the content of his character."

So if a bio portrays an admired poet as a cad, a wuss, a wife-beater, fill-in-the-blank, does it affect your appreciation of the poetry? Yeah, yeah, it "shouldn't." But does it?

Generally not, Kate. Sometimes it seems the great poets fall into two categories--the jerks and the ones we don't know enough about to confirm that they were jerks (New Formalists (ahem) excepted, of course). Without some latitude on the morals of poets, I'd be stuck reading fiction. At some point when the product of the bad character spills into the content of the poetry--such as some of Pound's vile stuff--it does color my thinking, and I guess at that point it's OK. There must have been a few good doobies out there--Borges maybe? WC Williams (despite the awful poetry)? Even Petrarch--who took minor orders in the Catholic Church-- fathered illegitimate children with another woman as he was longing for Laura.

I once heard a professor say that to be a good writer you had to be a good person. I had to stifle a chortle, because I had read enough biographies of great writers to know that many of them were not exactly moral examples. I don't expect any better behavior from a great writer than from anyone else, and I don't feel I need any saints to worship. However, I do enjoy finding out about the lives of writers, because I think it often gives me insight into their works. Sometimes that insight does make me think less of the person and I suppose that has an effect on my reaction to the works, but good writing is good writing.

Everything I've ever read by or about John Keats confirms that he was a wonderful person and an exemplary character. Reading his letters, I'm always struck by the genuine, caring, thoughtful, attentive voice. Even his attitude toward poetry involved serving the public good. If there's any dirt on John Keats the man, I've not heard it.

I don't know that a great poet has to be a good person in his private life, but a great poet does have to have a finely developed sense of morality and decency and purpose in order to write his or her poems. I don't think there are any great poems that are non-ironic arguments in favor of "evil" or immorality. Even poems that don't express compassion nonetheless demand it of the reader to a certain extent. The reader has to "identify" and, to a certain extent, approve of what's being said (or at least not object to it).

If character were the only test, I'd have to burn Yeats and Frost, let alone lesser lights like myself, and confine my reading of the Moderns to Wilbur.

Some of my favourite writers were "bad" characters indeed. But what's good, what's bad, if not what they leave behind? If character was to be the sole yardstick of human achievement, we (Oog and Grok) would still be virtuously clinging to each other in the trees.

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Svein Olav

.. another life

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited April 03, 2002).]