[Mike Slippkauskas]

Dear Sphere,

I want to take nothing away from Ms. Bishop, an excellent poet. But did you all read the David Orr review of "Edgar Allen Poe and the Juke-Box" in the April 2 New York Times Book Review? The greatest American artist in any medium of the second half of the 20th century? The first paragraph reads like a parody of Harold Bloom. Has Elizabeth Bishop really invented us, and all those who have never heard of her? It will become a party game to hazard the few American artists perhaps greater. Ralph Ellison, Louis Kahn, John Coltrane, Elvis Aaron Presley, Stan Brakhage, Martha Graham, Marlon Brando, Steven Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Elliot Carter, Bob Dylan, Jackson Pollock. The above were plucked at random (and perhaps misspelled) and for rhetorical purposes I omitted poets. So --

Is she inarguably greater than Wilbur, Hecht, or the nearly forgotten Edgar Bowers? I treasure his similarly choice Collected above almost anyone's.

I am grateful to Bishop, for her good taste (George Herbert) and for many of her poems. But she can be frankly bad, as can all poets, especially the best poets. But I feel this is sometimes not dared said. She was so exacting, her output so slim. I look forward to hearing from any of you.

Sincerely,
Michael Slipp

P.S. What I'm really saying, I think, is that such outrageous hubris, on the part of a reviewer in the media capital, can only damage Elizabeth Bishop's reputation. She certainly would have quailed to hear it, from what I know of her.

P.P.S. If an adept could link the review to this thread I'd appreciate it. I failed

[nyctom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/bo...=1&oref=slogin

[nyctom]

While I don't agree that "such outrageous hubris, on the part of a reviewer in the media capital, can only damage Elizabeth Bishop's reputation"--we're talking about a single book review after all, not something writ in stone and handed down to us mere mortals from the gods of Poetry--I don't think that such a hyper-hyperbolic review does anyone justice, not the reviewer, not the NYT, and certainly not Bishop. I mean, geez, one could make a strong case that Madonna has wielded more influence on American culture in the 20th century and beyond than Bishop. And that probably says more about the relative position poetry now has within that culture than Bishop's poetry and its particular influence.

I'm a huge fan of Bishop's poetry (and her interviews and her letters, which are vastly entertaining and often instructive), so yes, she is arguably better than Wilbur, Hecht and Bowers--for me. But then again, I've never quite understood this impulse to rate the "importance" of particular poets as if this were some bizarre kind of Billboard chart (And coming in this week at number 7, with a bullet, is Elizabeth Bishop)...

I am, though, very glad Bishop's previously non-published work is being officially printed. That's the most important thing. The review will be forgotten soon enough.

[David Mason]

There's a very convincing (and damning) review of the new book in the latest issue of The New Republic by Helen Vendler. I gather it's available on line.
Dave

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Well, I didn't even know about the book, so I found the article really interesting. I took its overatatements as such, but it's just what you do, isn't it?

Dave, thanks for the tip, I'll look for the other review. I'm sure I'll also try and get hold of the book.

I do think Bishop is a poet whose reputation will continue to be evaluated and re-evaluated for decades. This article has strengthened that view.

KEB

[epigone]

I agree with Mike that it is absurd to claim that Bishop has “created our world,” and I would go well beyond nyctom and say that Madonna wins hands-down in a head-to-head. But isn’t it worse that Orr never even makes his case? And the only thing more idiotic than Orr’s invitation to a “canned debate” on obscurity in poetry is his attempt to resolve that debate through exploiting a fanciful opposition between “difficulty” and “subtlety.”

I should be more generous to a fellow lawyer, but I find David Orr’s columns an abomination. Actually, that is me being hyperbolic, because in order to get one’s dander up about reviews in the NY Times Book Review, one would have to have expectation from that publication, and there is no (longer any) justification for any such expectations.

Still, I think Orr’s reviews would be better placed in the Sunday “Styles” section than in the Book Review, as they are almost never about poetry. When he finally gets around to discussing Bishop’s poetry, he has some interesting things to say, but based on the excerpt he provides of “Vague Poem,” the only poem that he quotes at length, I’m not sure I trust his taste. I have no idea why the opening line of “Keaton”: “I will be good; I will be good” is “one of Bishop’s finest, saddest openings.” It doesn’t strike me as either fine or sad, but perhaps I shall have to get the book and decide for myself.

People interested in finding reading Vendler’s views can find them here:
http://www.tnr.com/user/nregi.mhtml?...=vendler040306

I haven’t taken the trouble of subscribing to TNR’s online edition, even though it’s free, so I have only read the opening paragraph. I had heard about Vendler’s attack on the new Bishop book, and I do get a perverse thrill out of Vendler and Alice Quinn going at it. I’ve never understood how either of them got to be such forces on the American poetry scene. Vendler writes a good deal of criticism, and I like some of it, but she's hobbled by a tin ear. What exactly does Quinn do other than force her poor taste on innocent devotees of The New Yorker? Orr says she’s done a fine job in editing the new Bishop volume, so that’s at least something.

Anyway, from what I’ve read and heard of Vendler’s side of the argument, I would side with Quinn here. Why on earth shouldn’t readers be entitled to access to Bishop’s unpublished poems, so long as we all know that they are her orphans? Why is publishing these any worse than publishing her letters? It strikes me as either unscholarly or elitist for Vendler to attack the very idea of such a collection. Unscholarly, because it is inconceivable to me that these poems would not shed some light on Bishop’s published work. Elitist, because I have no doubt that Vendler would read these unpublished poems with great interest if she came upon them in an archive, and it appears that she thinks that Bishop’s readership is too unwashed to give Bishop’s unpublished poems the weight they deserve in an overall assessment of her work.

epigone

[Gregory Dowling]

Very well put, Epigone. And I thoroughly agree on Helen Vendler. She has written well on certain poets but there is something limited and limiting in her approach to poetry. There's a good essay by Bruce Bawer on her in which he says:

"The lamentable consequence of such an approach is to make Whitman sound less like Whitman than like Helen Vendler. It is one thing for a critic to write about poems in the language of a critic; it is another for a critic to write about poets as if they thought like critics. Whatever genuine insights Vendler may have into a poem's form and meaning are rendered considerably less valuable by her thorough inability to understand the way a real poetic mind actually goes about creating form and meaning."

In any case, whatever its editorial faults, the new Bishop book is clearly something one must have.

Gregory

[Janet Kenny]

How one longs for a critic with an appetite. I don't ask for a palate

Janet

[Margaret Moore]

Well, I've yet to see the book, and I can't think it woud damage Bishop's poetic reputation (think of the minor works of William Carlos Williams and Larkin). However, I have some sympathy with Vendler's proposal for the title. I recently read 'One Art' with reference to its (?)seventeen drafts at a local open mic session - as a riposte to a friend's reading at an earlier event of a piece by Bukowski which included a gibe at revision.

Margaret.

[Marcia Karp]

Dear Janet,
You are witty, but cagey in not naming who you are disappointed with. Do you mean that Helen Vendler has neither appetite nor palate? It would be quite extraordinary if you do.

Best,
Marcia