[nyctom]

J. D. McClatchy, From "Twenty Questions" in Twenty Questions:

One has heard a good deal lately about the New Formalism. What's up?

It's one side of a wooden nickel. On one side, a real buffalo called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, a frivolous exercise in nonsense. On the other, a big chief with a feather in his hair: the new formalists, who claim to be restoring traditional values to poetry. Where mindlessness was, there shall rigor be; where technical sloppiness was applauded, it shall be driven out with a crisp quatrain or brisk narrative. Their aims seem noble, and are narrow. Worse, their practice is rarely above the second-rate. It's not that they write in verse; it's that they write bad verse--exactly the sort of plodding, inaccurate lines that versifiers have been blamed for down the centuries. If only Pope were alive, here's a new Dunciad to be written! The parade of pasty, pinstripe formalists and preprogrammed L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E cyborgs, all slaves of a single idea, the feministas, hip-hop end men, hollow-voiced cliff dwellers from the Southwest, every Boston poet in a straight line so that they may pat each other on the back, East Village tyros...Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS is restored.

[Roger Slater]

There's only one solution: write like McClatchy.

He seems remarkably uninformed and illogical for such a fancy literary critic. He acknowledges that there has always been bad poetry, even in the days when all poetry was in meter, yet he seems to think the presence of bad metered poetry in today's day and age makes a mockery of the formalist endeavor.

I think he is also way off the mark in claiming that the aims of those who write formal poetry are to drive out mindlessness and sloppiness, or that there is necessarily such a high-minded superciliousness behind the writing of formal poetry. I write it with complete respect for those who write free verse, not with scorn or intending to reproach my free-verse brethern. I write it because it seems to suit my talents, such as they are, and because I enjoy this kind of verse. I really don't need to be told by a second-rate free-verse poet that I have a political or social agenda simply because I like to rhyme.

It's sad, though, that an influential person like JDM doesn't encourage all poets to find the voice and mode that works for themselves, whether it be free or formal verse, instead of making snarky comments that bless only the boring middle-ground he is hoping to claim as his own.

[Robt_Ward]

Roger,

With all due respect, I think you're missing the point here. Bearing in mind that McClatchy is the man who edited James Merrill, it's fairly ludicrous to paint him as someone who's against metrical poetry per se, or who thinks all poets writing in form are "supercilious" or whatever.

I think McClatchy's point is that the "New Formalism" is becoming like language poetry, hip-hop, la feministas, whatever, in that for the group the politics of the form is too often a larger isssue than the quality of the poem. He isn't dismissing the traditions of poetry, he is dismissing their use for a political purpose. to foster an atmosphere of "us vs. them".

The excerpt beginning this thread was very specific in its criticism of the "New Formalism", and is not directed against metrical poetry as an art form. He's talking about people he thinks have "perverted" the art, or twisted it to their own political ends.

IMO opinion McClatchy's piece, in toto is a trenchant and thought-provoking piece of criticism. And, for what it's worth, I can't stand the man's poetry.

(robt.)

[Roger Slater]

The problem is, there is no term for people who write in meter these days but who are not "New Formalists" in the sense of having an ax to grind or being disapproving of non-formalists or trying to "restore" poetry as it was written in days gone by. When people condemn "New Formalists," I think they are (wittingly or unwittingly) aligning themselves with those who think that rhyme and meter are a dead letter, necessarily retrogressive or reactionary.

Anyway, to speak of "they" who write formal poetry and to say that "their practice is rarely above second-rate," seems both unfair and unuseful. His "rarely" allows for exceptions, like Merrill, but who are the "they" he is condemning en masse, and what of the implication that it cannot be said of people who write the way McClatchy likes (neither LANGUAGE nor New Formal) that "their practice is rarely above second-rate"?

It should be obvious, even to McClatchy, that most poetry written in any form, from formal to free to LANGUAGE to you name it, is second-rate. So are most novels. So are most songs. So are most paintings. So are most sculptures. So are most actors. What does McClatchy mean to be saying, therefore, when he singles out New Formalism by claiming that most of the poems produced in its name are second-rate? I'm serious. What is his point? That formalists should write better? That formalism is empty and arid and should be avoided henceforth? That formalism is no different from any other kind of poetry or art form? That true art is hard to make in any style?

I suspect that this single paragraph doesn't express all of McClatchy's attitudes on the subject, but to me it shows that he had at least a moment of less-than-stellar thinking and insight.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Originally posted by Roger Slater:
It should be obvious, even to McClatchy, that most poetry written in any form, from formal to free to LANGUAGE to you name it, is second-rate.

Or third-rate. Or fourth.

Although I'm now thinking that I don't want to become too involved in this thread...I'd hazard a guess: McClatchy might be referring to the way in which some formalists seem to believe that their poetry is automatically good/better simply because it has meter and rhyme. The analogous, for any school, would be in the way some members of each school believe their poems are automatically good/better merely because they're following certain tenets of their school. Here, again, the subject of (e-)valuation rears its head, if it has one.

Incidentally, I've always wondered why "New Formalism" needed to be called "new." What's new about it, specifically? Or is it merely a temporal designation?

C.

[Paul Lake]

To refute McClatchy, I'd say just go and read the new selected poems by Charles Martin or Sam Gwynn or recent books by Rhina Espaillat or A. E. Stallings and then decide if the work is really mediocre. I just finished Martin's *Starting from Sleep* and I admired so much of it that I'm considering reviewing it, even though I want to stop writing reviews.

[nyctom]

I don't think McClatchy is against metrical or formal structures per se. Why then the rhetorical wish for another Pope to come along? That doesn't sound at all to me like someone who ipso facto devalues metrical poetry. On the contrary, I think the key phrase in that passage is "all slaves of a single idea"--and not only that narrow vision, but the fact that that narrow vision is politicized. I would be curious to know exactly what he means by "the sort of plodding, inaccurate lines that versifiers have been blamed for down the centuries" (inaccurate? interesting choice of word, that), but I thought the passage was interesting because it was so specific and pointed in its criticism.

In the same essay he writes:

In a time when one is asked to admire a string-tied bundle of old newspapers at the Whitney Biennial, why shouldn't one take every heartcry-in-jagged-lines as a poem? It is no wonder sentimental, neo-con critics of poetry yearn for a golden age, when the old father by the hearth read to his children from a well-thumbed copy of Wordsworth. The holiness of the heart's affections has never seemed so distant, so desired.

Nonsense. There are more poets and readers today than ever, but the proportion of good poets and good readers is probably the same as it was a hundred or two hundred years ago. During the so-called golden age, Longfellow's "Hiawatha" was bought and read as a national epic, while Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" (published the same year, 1855) was ignored.

I would like to think if Beat poetry, for instance, was still fashionable in the way l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poetry (and its flip side, new formalism) currently are, McClatchy would be writing against ITS single-idea approach. It's the narrowness that is the key, I think.

And for the record, I think McClatchy's poetry is boring as well. I couldn't get through more than a few lines at a time before my mind drifted off.

Curtis: yes. And I suppose it is "new formalism" for the same reason pop art was originally refered to as "neodada"--the name will fit until something better comes along.

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Tom,

If I had to point a finger--and, hell, I might as well--I'd say that the one factor above all that irritate me in reading some formalist verse is how the lines don't really seem to turn the poem. I.e., they often seem like place-holders, used to fill out the form, with no other major purpose. They give information which will be important for the conclusion (it is a step toward the end) but the meaning of the poem doesn't shift much between them, in a way that I'd call...uh, "expansive," or "multi-dimensional." Even when the ending line or couplet might provide a sharp turn, an unexpected conclusion, or a tight summary, the lines leading to the end are often merely expository in nature, almost prosaic in their development.

I've been re-reading Millay's sonnets recently, and I've marked where her turns actually seem to add to an overall experience which is multifaceted, yes, and also complete as a whole communication by the end: just when I'm thinking I know where she's going, she often shifts the route after the breaks, and I feel as if my own consciousness has been expanded. The lead-in (previous line) seems right, the shift seems right, and the slightly new direction (next line) seems right; and, finally, the composite of these three is much larger than what is directly communicated.

The formalist poems I like tend to avoid the "one-track" approach, but I'd be lying if I said that I've never thoroughly enjoyed some poems that "plodded" toward the end. Sometimes, the main idea of a poem, in combination with interesting rhythms and sounds and language, makes the development process between lines less important.

These considerations might only be a reflection of my own personal preference, of course.

Curtis.




[This message has been edited by Curtis Gale Weeks (edited June 22, 2003).]

[David Mason]

I remember first hearing the term New Formalism in the 1980s and writing to Dana Gioia, saying it sounded nutty to me. Ever since then I have consistently, in print and in conversation, expressed my reservations about it. Nonetheless, edit one anthology.... So it goes. I'm for strong technique, real vision--all the things poets have always been for, I guess, and I still find it dismaying when New Formalist poets are discussed as if they were a monolithic movement. Having made a few generalizations myself over the years, I'm getting think generalizations are odious. The proof of the validity of any poem is usually the poem itself. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, ...

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited June 22, 2003).]

[Terese Coe]

The same JD McClatchy had high praise indeed for Anthony Hecht at the West Chester conference. Wouldn't it be cool to post a copy of that?