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  #21  
Unread 03-05-2002, 07:46 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is online now
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It's worth noting that even a scathing review can't help but pause to offer up some extravagant praise. Salemi calls Rhina a "particularly adept sonneteer," while pointing out that over half the book is given over to sonnets (thus implying that over half the book is quite worthwhile), and he singles out the three sonnets of "Three Versions" as being "powerful, hallucinatory poems, harrowing in their closeness to the threat of personal annihilation."

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  #22  
Unread 03-05-2002, 08:57 AM
Len Krisak Len Krisak is offline
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Since I was the one who stuck the stick
in this vipers' (rattlers' ?) nest, it ill
becomes me to change the subject ever-so-slightly,
but that's a terrific limerick, Alicia!
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  #23  
Unread 03-05-2002, 12:45 PM
Paul Lake Paul Lake is offline
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Whatever else you take Salemi for, please don't consider him a Guardian of New Formalism. Most of the New Formalists I know are kind and generous people. There's a whiff of sour grapes in most of what Salemi writes since he feels like an outsider both to the literary mainstream and that band of poetic outsiders called New Formalists. That's why he spends most of his bile on formal poets whose books get published, setting himself up as the true arbiter of what's good and bad formalism in the process.

Salemi's bias is not based on gender either, as a quick perusal of his review of my last book (on the same website) will quickly show. His rancor is spread liberally in all directions. His review of my book, (Walking Backward) was as eccentric as his review of Rhina's. His thesis, about my collection of dramatic monologues and narratives, was that I, the author, was invariably in the poem as the auditor of the monologue, and that the speaker of the monologue was not my creation but a real person whose gritty authenticity I envied and appropriated to provide my poems with the life and energy I lacked. For the first and only time in my life, I wrote a letter of response to the review. You can find Salemi's review and my response in the website's archives--and Salemi's response to my letter which I have had the extreme pleasure of never reading.

Rhina, your poems will survive this Lilliputian assault.

Paul
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  #24  
Unread 03-05-2002, 01:05 PM
nyctom nyctom is offline
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Well Rhina--what I found most interesting is that he took you to task for writing about the small and immensely pleasurable moments of life. You know, life as us little people live it on a day-to-day basis. It reminded me of western history before Fernand Braudel etc.--what was important was inevitably white, male, quantifiably memorizable, and usually involved a war. Everything else was just too "trivial" for the historian's attention--meaning about 97% of human experience.

One of my best friends is a psychologist and we were talking about psychology and therapy in movies. Usually there is an arc to a dramatic revelation--followed quickly by the Instantaneous Cure. We both agreed that most insights that are deep and have the greatest impact are most often generated by the simplest of triggers. It is one of the things I like best about the poems of yours I have read--how something simple like grading a student's poem, to take just one example, leads to a deep and lasting insight (such as how hard it is to balance kindness and compassion with uhm, let's call them critical standards).

The book is on my wish list. I look forward to reading it.

Best regards--
Tom
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  #25  
Unread 03-05-2002, 02:14 PM
Anthony Lombardy Anthony Lombardy is offline
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I have just come upon this thread, and as a longtime admirer of Rhina's poetry, I was mystified at how Salemi's review could possibly be so negative. Having now read the review, I see the problem, but I do think it's obvious, as Roger suggested, that Salemi admires Espaillat immensely. His complaints are philosophical or sociological, to put it kindly; they are really complaints against the Espaillat temperament, which most of us so admire and envy.

Alicia, Salemi seems to think there is a war going on between contemporary mainstream poetry and the right-thinking formalists, and that as members of the latter group we are all obliged, in bringing the fight to our enemies, to carry a manly share of the rhetorical burden! Those who shirk these manly responsibilities are obviously women or wimps!
Salemi strikes me as a very talented man whose own poetry has drifted into skillful light verse, a satiric vein in which rhetorical motives overpower all others. I have no doubt that encountering poetry like Rhina's must provoke in him anxieties about the direction of his own work, as well as disappointment that his own thematic and philosophical obsessions are not reflected in the work of the worthiest members of the formalist sodalitas.

To attack someone you obviously admire is a sign of distress. Maybe the best answer to a controversialist is silence or a minimal acknowledgment and then a generous forgetfulness.

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  #26  
Unread 03-05-2002, 02:53 PM
Michael Cantor Michael Cantor is offline
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Does anybody keep statistics on poetry reviews? Is there a category for Most Pejorative Uses of the Phrase “Middle Class” in a Single Essay By a Critic Over the Age of Nineteen? I counted eight in seven pages, including two in a single paragraph. Difficult enough when you’re writing about social issues, but in a review of a book of polished and highly intelligent poetry? Never let it be said that Joseph S. Salemi does not have his own agenda.

The Criticism of Hey-Hey-Look-At-Me has been so successful in pushing Rhina’s book that I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t all a clever marketing ploy, hatched by some canny Newburyport grandmother. If not, it’s still one more wonderful example of how an attack on a work of art on ideological grounds will help promote the piece being attacked. Salemi has already accused Rhina of avoiding religion - now if he could only be persuaded to brand the book as obscene (incorrect, of course, but then so is much of the review), it might make the best seller lists.

When I began to see the responses to Len’s note I did have one regret - so many poet-hours dedicated to first reading, and then commenting on Salemi - think what good work might have been created if all that time and talent was focused elsewhere. Then I realized that we have created the very best kind of work - a tribute to an honest and talented poet from her friends and admirers. I’m honored to join it. Thank you, Joseph S., for giving us the opportunity.


[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited March 05, 2002).]
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  #27  
Unread 03-05-2002, 04:46 PM
Jennifer Reeser's Avatar
Jennifer Reeser Jennifer Reeser is offline
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Stallings Passes

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;


The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
A.E.'s on the speaker--
All's right with the world!


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  #28  
Unread 03-05-2002, 05:39 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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What Tony said.

Alfred Nicol just looked in on this and asked, "What does Salemi want, the proletariat ravings of Bukowski?" Which brought to mind Professor Mezey's GREAT CLERIHEW on that subject:

"Charles Bukowski
couldn't find his house key,
but he was such a souse
he was lucky to find his house."
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  #29  
Unread 03-06-2002, 12:54 PM
Rhina P. Espaillat Rhina P. Espaillat is offline
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Well, it doesn't get much better: a delicious limerick by Alicia, original poetry by Jennifer Reese, a Mezey clerihew quoted by Tim, the offer of further sales--thanks, Carol!--all this support from Erastophereans and other poet friends (no, Michael, I didn't plot this, but I should have, and now know what to do to promote my next book, if there is one!)as well as reasoned critical statements by Roger Slater and Paul Lake and Tony Lombardy...a treasure trove!

I do, most of all, want to agree with Paul that this review is not at all representative of New Formalists, from whom I have had nothing but kind and encouraging treatment. And I also agree with Tony that the best response, after all, to this very noisy tempest in a very small teacup, may be "generous forgetfulness."

I'm so used to thinking of myself as unknown that it's been an absolute gift to receive the warmth offered to me by all of you, especially since so many of you are here on my bookshelves and in my thoughts!
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  #30  
Unread 03-06-2002, 09:19 PM
Paddy Raghunathan Paddy Raghunathan is offline
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Rhina's sonnet that appeared in the latest issue of The Formalist was anything but nicey-nice. But how is poetry inferior (be it formal or free) because it is nicey-nice?

My two cents worth.

Paddy
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