Poetry
 

Why is everything in the October issue terrible? Is this the mark of the new editor? Am I just in a bad mood?

I don't know about your mood but it looks pretty terrible to me. I hate people droning on about difficult poetry for a start. What happened to easy poetry like Keats and stuff?

I was going to comment but anyone can click that link and find comment enough.

Hm, should I feel even worse then, to be rejected this issue? :o

The Reverdy translation by Lydia Davis is pretty cool.

Yes, to the Reverdy.

Nemo

Not at all, Janice. Salon de Refuses and all that. There should be an accent of some sort there.

I must confess to loving this letter:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet.../letter/246536

I don't love it because it's right, but because it's wrong in such a way as to illustrate something that's terribly wrong with American poetry--its adherence to fairly irrelevant (and certainly outdated) struggles. As for the issue as a whole, I thought the poems by dead people were good.

Poems by dead people are always best. Except in our cases, Quincy. And some Spherians here and there.

What language! I'll bet the bloke's a little person.

The letter is a lot of fun. I enjoy anything attacking the insufferable Michael Robbins.

I liked his piece, though--at least the first half of it, the part slagging off the postmodernist anthology. The second half I didn't follow, but suspect it contains an admission that what he writes and likes is actually "non-poetry." Well, duh.

I'm sure he is insufferable, Orwn, but who he for us over in Yew-rope? I could google the swine I suppose, but it's what you think that I really want to know. Then I can curse him properly.

So we found ourselves at a large collective dinner friday evening, devoted to another theme. By an act of fate, we happened to be sitting next to the evening's speaker. She asked me about Poetry, the journal. "Blah blah blah, more interesting stuff going on elsewhere, etc." She asks me about the former editor. I answered, "I've heard he's been ill, hope things work out for him, etc." Turns out they're working on a new venture together. Always be careful what you say, people have a way of showing up, and questions are never unmotivated.

Then she asks "what's the most interesting thing going on in poetry right now?" Oh, boy. We talked until she had to stand up and address the gathered throng. It was fascinating watching her switch gears, although I'm guessing she speaks on the topic frequently. But I do wonder if I said the right things, if such things exist.

So picture this: an interested, intelligent non-practitioner asks you "what's going on in poetry right now?" You've got two minutes before the conversation at the table turns. What would you say?

Yours, in curiousity,

Bill

I'd say curiousity is spelled wrong. Then I would say I won't alert the word nerds if you change it quicker than I can say "Alien vs. Predator". (Which is published by Penguin which I will never be, so Duh!

I know it won't happen, but I wish we could all quit talking, writing, and even thinking about "poetry" in such a general way. Poetry is as guilty of this as anyone. They're not responsible for the future of the genre, they're just a magazine! I love most of the poetry of Yeats, but I can't stand the poetry of Ginsberg. Am I for poetry or against it? Both, very strongly and all the time.

As for Robbins, his poetry that I've seen does nothing for me, but I have to give him his due. I've enjoyed several pieces of his prose, and he often stands out in Poetry.

I haven't seen this issue, but could it possibly be any worse than those preceding it? I shudder to think.

I don't think I can speak to what is the most interesting thing going on in poetry, but only to what I find most interesting, which is mainly the return of many things that have been out of fashion for a long time, things like wit and humor, in poets such as Wendy Cope, Gail White, Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, David Kirby, A. E. Stallings, Julie Kane, R. S. Gwynn. Or direct engagement with human emotions in contemporary daily life, as in Rhina Espaillat, Deborah Warren, Catherine Tufariello, Sharon Olds, Linda Pastan, Allison Joseph, and many of the aforementioned poets. Or lyrical beauty in rhyme and meter, which I find particularly in Stallings, but also in several other formalists writing now. There are great writers in every era, but certain of my tastes have been starved for a long time, so it has been wonderful to discover some contemporaries that satisfy them.

Susan

I was going to say that obviously you should have replied that the greatest thing going on in poetry right now was the formalist movement, and the greatest magazines were Measure, Raintown, Able Muse, Light, etc. -- but Susan said it better, and thank you, Susan.

Susan and Gail sum up well. I'd add: Josh Mehigan, John Whitworth and Maryann Corbett. And don't forget the place where many of those above named folks hang out: The Eratosphere.

Thanks for that support, Lance. I've been hanging back from this thread, having conflicted thoughts.

Walter asks, up top, whether the quality of the latest issue has something to do with the tastes of the new editor. It seems too soon to rule, but: I did go to hear Don Share read, and I did buy his book, and I feel safe saying that musicality is not what he's mainly after, left to his own tastes. We'll see what happens.

In answer to Bill's question, I feel the way Jim B. does: how can anybody think of poetry as all one thing? I also find myself wondering what "now" means. To Poetry, "now" apparently comes a month at a time. Flarf one month, landays (which were amazing, I grant) another month, whatever gets attention--because the new, different, and exciting generate buzz, which sells magazines.

But the new, the different, and the exciting seem not to be what I enjoy most in poetry, so I get weary of keeping up with trends. I hate to sound like an old fogey, but there's so much old poetry I still need to learn about! Conversing with the people who show up at the Sphere has done more for me than trying to keep up with Poetry.

Indeed, Maryann. Having only two eyes and but one head, there is bound to be poetic territory left unexplored. But if we each go where our heart sends us, all of it will be covered.

I am not quite sure what Bill was saying. Was this the Editor whose judgement is being questioned? If she was the designated speaker and he was sitting beside her, how did he not know? And if he didn't know, then that must signify a pleasing modesty on the part of the lady.

May I tell a story, too?

Once upon a time, O best beloveds, in Blackwood Miners' Institute, there was a poetry reading by three poetical "young Turks" who had arrived at establishment acceptance. I went, to hear them read and to help with the organisation. Afterwards, while we were clearing up, the poets, the publishers and the distinguished host formed a group each sitting on a chair. There was the same number of chairs as of arses. Suddenly, the distinguished host cried - "wait a minute - there's another poet here!" walked over to get another chair and invited me to join them.

He was then Editor of a prestigious journal and had once told me that he found it impossible to relate to my kind of poetry. I cannot warm to his, but as the circle reformed, with a scraping of chairs that I recall clearly, I felt his conviction that poetry is bigger than the sum of its factions.

I wrote to thank him and he replied "It was no big deal; I would have done it whoever had been left outside. I just hate Magic Circles". And on that, he and I are in agreement.

That was kind of him, Annie. He probably knew you would have done the same for him were he outside the circle.

I agree with Terese; that's a great story, Annie.

A further thought or two: Besides learning from people who come to the Sphere (which we sometimes do in places other than the Sphere), we can learn about new things to enjoy in poetry from Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Rattle site. I'm sure there are many other such sites and e-mail services; people might want to name them here. It's true that we also find much we don't like at those sources, but it seems to be a necessary learning process.

Just now I'm also paying attention to some of the finalists in poetry for the National Book Award.

My favorite poem-a-day is from the Poetry Foundation. Here's a link to sign up http://www.poetryfoundation.org/newsletter/ and here's a recent sample:



10 / 15 / 2013

Poem of the Day: Surprised by Joy
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

Source: Poems (1815)


WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

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I liked the Flarf issue for what it was. There was a spark of life within its pages. I even liked "Aliens vs Predators" (I flipped through his book and every single poem is like that one, so I put it back on the shelf and realized he can only do one sort of thing.)

Words, words, words, as the dead prince said (sorry to ruin the ending), and that's how I feel about October's issue.

There's an aridity to Robbins's work that disappoints me, as well as a kind of ambition that I instinctively distrust, but he has been one of their more interesting critics of late. As for "what's going on in poetry," it really is the case of the blind men trying to describe the elephant--American poetry is really too big to make totalizing statements. I, like many others here, probably have a better sense of what's going on in the form scene than elsewhere, as it's the place where my phone calls started getting returned first, as it were, but I'm not sure if I'd want to definitively declare that "we" (however defined) are "what's happening." One of the best ways to go to crap as an editor is to assume that one really knows what's "out there," that there aren't new discoveries to be made. While there are plenty of reasons one should dislike J*e S****i, this declaration should put paid to any remaining legitimacy he has:

I for one will continue to cherish, as a reader and as an editor, the pieces by authors previously unknown to me that don't do what I expect them to do, as well as those who are perennial favorites.

I consider it a badge of honor that I am not on Trinacria's invitation list.

What Quincy said times ten.
I find quite embarrassing the perennial Sphere thread which claims with no sense of irony at all that what is going on in our own backyard is the only ballgame out there.

Nemo

I put my finger on Robbins’ desire for power above all. Ambition of any kind, poets or lawyers, etc., carries with it a tacit desire for power and prestige. No blame there. But Robbins is different. He is content to fart big in your closet with you tied up and left inside to suffer. If he can make a poem out of it, bravo for him. You think I lie: he served diarrhea to friends in one poem. His lines are so drenched in cynicism he makes Mark Twain in his last years seem like Jonathan Livingston. I’m sure Robbins would be proud of that fact. There is a cool streak of cruel chic that runs through his poetry, prose, and interaction (such as the disastrous encounter we had with him on Eratosphere a while back).

Robbins is the kind of poet a sociopath might take to. If Billy Collins sometimes wears his heart on the sleeve, Robbins will cut yours out, if he could, and have you watch it beat to his lines, which will only be in sync with your organ when it begins to go irregular, with spasms and twitches of inevitable death throes. If anyone now reading found this description disturbing, then you know how I feel when I read Robbins.

Quincy is right. I think it was Momus who said that in the future, everyone will be famous to 15 people.

Don,

I find that when names are ascribed, for persons or movements or what-have-you, it's always about power, or more accurately about control.

And so one comes along and spends much effort trying to define a thing, we'll call it Thing; and then the next comes along who doesn't like Thing being called Thing and bats back a new name or several—for Thing, for the purveyors of Thing, and for the enemies of Thing; and on and on. Maybe this is the ballgame Nemo referenced.

The point of the matter is that it doesn't matter much: control is not possible in the absolute sense, although influence is possible, to varying degrees. Many of the Dead Poets have been able to achieve great influence without spending so much time playing that ballgame—although of course even many of those were also occasional raving critics. (Raving positively; raving madly; or just raving.)

Curtis,

Ballgames are fine. Robbins is going for the balls. Not the same thing!

I think it would be unfair, or perhaps unfortunate, to judge Robbins by his poetry. Prose seems to be his strength. I don't always agree with them, but the commentaries of his that I've read are interesting and sometimes rather graceful in their venemous way, like a spitting cobra.

I wonder if he's being a bit too clever in his review, though, creating an artificial distance between himself and the postmoderns by trashing them.

Best,

Ed

Ed, exactly. The second half of the piece was clearly his attempt to theorize some positive way forward for the avant-garde, the part of it we can only assume includes him. It didn't make any sense to me, but I also wasn't trying nearly as hard as he was. I still enjoyed reading it, which is doubtless more than I could say for the anthology under review.

Quincy's response about 'what's going on in Poetry' seems to me hard to better. Except there is one trend that holds most everywhere: more people write it than read it.

C

BTW, should I say that I reread Alien vs. Predator (the poem, not the book) & it made me laugh. No way it was worth the words we spilled on it those years ago.

Robbins is an establishment figure. He’s published in the New Yorker and Poetry Magazine. Good for him. But if there’s going to be revolution anytime soon it won’t be it those pages – getting back to the original theme of this thread: how Poetry Magazine has lost its edge.

Robbins is politically motivated at least as much as he is aesthetically. That is his right and he is by no means the first. For my blood, he runs too hot in the nihilism direction and I’m just a sappy humanist. He does have taste: the Palmer poem he quotes is exquisite.

John says, What language! I'll bet the bloke's a little person.

Priceless.

There's so much old poetry I need to learn about. Me too, Chris. And so much young poetry I don't. Not you, of course, Athene. Meaning Spherians.

I like Robbins' reconsideration of Dylan Thomas more than his gutting of the postmoderns, by the way; I thought his acerbic wit was put to better use pointing out the shortcomings of a poet whose work he's rather reluctantly fallen back in love with.

With the postmoderns, on the other hand, he basically demonstrated several clever ways to poke a dead horse with a stiletto. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't help me as a reader; I'm never going to spend much time reading poems I don't like, and I can figure out which ones those are on my own. Bashing other poets with savage glee seems to generate more interest, and it can be entertaining in its way, but I doubt it has much nutritional value.

Best,

Ed

Indeed, I'm told that the flesh of dead poets is crawling with dibrachs, tribrachs, dactyls, anapaests, cretics, and all kinds of inedible creepy-crawlies.

The importance of Robbins's takedown of "postmodern" poetry isn't so much that he skewers mediocre poetry but that he points out that these categories and the polemics associated with them have become less about the advancement of poetry (however construed) and more about product placement. The same, really, could be said about every school of American poetry. I'm all in favor of movements and polemics and all the rest--I just want them to have some vitality.

This is an important point. Readers are selfish—they read what they like and avoid what they don't like. And negative criticism isn't going to change minds as much as the poems themselves. There might be a case of being affected by criticism when the poet or poetry in question is unknown, but as they say, even negative criticism can be a positive if it sparks curiosity.

I think Auden wrote in one of his essays that negative criticism is pointless, or that he realized at some point that it would be pointless for him to write negative criticism.* Also, he said that the best criticism, even the negative, is written by those who have some respect or appreciation for the poetry being criticized. He gave the example of Nietzsche's attacks on Wagner: negative; but Nietzsche had at one point loved Wagner's work and still appreciated it on some level.

*Negative criticism that is a full-on attack. Wanted to clarify this point.