How fetishizing ‘craft’ can get in the way of a good poem
 

Michael Bazzett, whose poetry I have often enjoyed, has a compelling read on the "dangers" of craft.

http://lithub.com/how-fetishizing-cr...f-a-good-poem/

Thank you, Andrew, that is a nice piece.

John

I'm not really grooving on what he's saying. Of course "the reader wants something alive inside that structure." Who is saying otherwise? He's arguing with something that no one ever said.

I'll search out his poetry but am not impressed with his thinking here. I like that he talks of the long process of finding a voice and method but don't know he ever makes the point, a point, clear. How is it about craft?

I think we all work and react differently. This is Bazzett's experience and Bazzett's reaction. There's nothing here I strongly disagree with, but the only thing I find extraordinary about it is that he seems to think it's a big deal.

I like his contrast between "honest labor," based on an acquired and acquirable body of knowledge, and poems that just happen, under the radar poems so to speak. I know I continue to add a little value to poems that took me a lot of work, and perhaps to subtract value from ones I tossed off in minutes. Surely the labor counts for something.
As Whistler put it in his libel suit, "I don't ask five thousand pounds (or whatever) for five minutes' work, but for the experience of a lifetime."

Cheers,
John

Update: 200 guineas, evidently: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...h-1440343.html

His main point seems to be less about craft itself being a bad thing and more about escaping the influence of other writers' techniques: realising that what is good about their poems can't be reproduced by simply copying the outward mechanics. A fair point, hardly earth-shattering. The whole thorny problem of what makes a poem 'alive' seems to contain a paradox designed to drive poets mad: the more you overthink and worry about it, the less likely that it's going to appear on the page.

Mark: "The whole thorny problem of what makes a poem 'alive' seems to contain a paradox designed to drive poets mad: the more you overthink and worry about it, the less likely that it's going to appear on the page."
It's alive, Frankenstein announces, as he sees all his labor pay off.

John

But his implicit premise is that craft is somehow deadening and one must therefore choose between craft and vitality. I think he ought to be saying that one should strive to have both, or even that craft is a tool used to generate vitality, not an impediment to vitality.

I think that's right. I don't think it's earth-shattering in any way, but I do think it's the sort of thing that is worth saying, and one that probably does speak to new writers.

It's not about writing a sonnet, it's about writing a poem, and if it happens to be a sonnet, great. It's easy to get caught in form or craft to the detriment of the poem. I've done it myself, and I think we all have seen it on the board.