"And I'm not so sure, Bob, that nobody is allowing the bad things Eliot said to affect the way they read his poetry."
Well, I may be splitting hairs, but what I meant is that nobody is claiming that Eliot's poems are any better or worse based on his personal life. However, it is still possible and reasonable for someone to enjoy Eliot's poems less based on bad associations with the man.
If a member of your family gets murdered in a fine restaurant, it doesn't actually affect the decor or the quality of the food or service after the body is removed and the blood cleaned up, but you still might not like eating there any longer. Does this make you a dilettante when it comes to fine dining because you are unable or unwilling to separate your personal associations of murder, on the one hand, from the impeccable service, wine list, and food preparation on the other hand?
No, it simply creates the unfortunate situation that your enjoyment of the restaurant has been ruined for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the restaurant.
Why shouldn't such a thing ever happen with poems?
Let's say someone broke into your home and brutally killed your family in front of your eyes, but then published a ravishingly beautiful poem in the New Yorker that was widely praised. Are you a dilettante if you find yourself unable to enjoy that poem?
Change that. What if the poet who published the ravishingly beautiful poem is not the fellow who slaughtered your family in front of your eyes, but a blogger who claimed that it never happened, but, if it did, your family had done worse things and you have no reason to complain? Are you a dilettante if you find yourself unable to enjoy that poem?
And if either of these fellows then is published frequently in an online zine, are you some sort of wacko if you decide you do not want to submit to that magazine because you do not wish to appear in the same magazine with either the murderer of your family or the poet who said your family had it coming?
I mean, it's all very pretty and noble and idealistic to keep insisting that Art is sacred and stands alone and trumps all other concerns, but did I mention that the poet who wrote the beautiful poem also beat you up so badly you were in a coma and when you woke up you were paralyzed and disfigured and breathing through a tube? Must you enjoy the poem as much as the rest of us or be dismissed as a dilettante who totally doesn't get art and poetry?
Sure, my examples are hyperbolic, but if you buy my premise (and perhaps you don't) then we're just quibbling over where to draw the line.
So yes, I think we all agree that nothing actually changes about the poem itself when we learn that the poet is someone who makes our skin crawl, but that doesn't mean we are required, under pain of arrogant aesthetic dismissal by New Critic snoots, not to allow our personal feelings about the poet influence our enjoyment of the poem.
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