The Poetry Blurb

"A stunning collision between language and reality, memory and desire!...Emily Dickinson's collection surely permits her to take her place beside Poe and Longfellow as one of America's best poets…at last, the emergence of a new – and distinctly women's –voice in American letters!"
Jorie Graham

"One of our generation's best. One function of the poet is not merely to teach, but to enlarge our notion of the world – in this, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman succeeds admirably!"
Yusuf Komunyakaa

"This debut selection, A Boy's Will, establishes Frost as one of the finest poets to come out of New England since Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman!"
Robert Pinsky

"Prufrock and Other Observations seems destined to shake up the very way we see our world, and the reader is unapt ever be the same again. This is what we task our poets with – and Mr. Eliot is more than up to the task."
Mark Strand

One recognizes in these parodies the all but ubiquitous poetry blurb of current literary fashion. Nothing of the kind was penned in the day of these authors – although they alone, among American poets, could imaginably be deemed worthy of such superlatives. Not even in positive reviews - because a literary critic of those far-off times, had he written in such a gushing style, would have been considered an ass fit only to write about Broadway musicals or local Booster events.

Everyone would have thought so – the reader, other critics and the poets themselves. Even the notoriously insecure and self-centered Frost would have felt shamed and cheapened by such sycophancy. Eliot would never have written this way about Dante. Hell...Walt Whitman wouldn't have written this way about himself!

There is a kind of paradox here. The English (who do this well) will describe battered cod-cakes and greasy fries as "Too bloody good!", while the victory at Waterloo or the heroism of the RAF are "A bit of all right…don't you think?"

Everyone is allowed to have the World's Greatest Mom, and every man had better be married to the World's Most Beautiful (and Fair-Minded) Woman. We expect kids to "love" ice cream and think pizza is "great".

Trained writers are assumed to be alert to such nuance…so, are we to take it from the hyperbolic and fawning crap exchanged like saliva between contemporary MFA's that they consider their colleagues to be mediocrities on their best days?

DEAR SIR--I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "LEAVES OF GRASS." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean.

I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.
I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks, and visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R.W. EMERSON

Concord, Massachusetts, 21 July, 1855


[Of course, Mr. Emerson had no idea that Whitman would turn around and publish this letter, both in the newspapers and as a preface to the second edition of his book.]

[This message has been edited by Peter Chipman (edited December 20, 2004).]

Characteristic of poetry blurbs is that they are compliments from the "critic" to the (connected) poet. Compliments in conversation or correspondance may or may not be OK, but in published critique they are a cloying fraud perpetrated on the readership.

Maybe too, Emerson-as-Windbag was ahead of his time.

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited December 17, 2004).]

Here's a page of more acid reviews:
(The links didn't work for me--just scroll down the page to read the articles.)

http://www.mrbauld.com/harshp.html

Regards, Maz

I think I'm in love.