A recent Publisher's Weekly article regarding poetry reviews is making the rounds. In it, Craig Teicher asks of poetry reviews in general (and negative ones in particular), “What is the point?” Is it sales? Is it humanity, or posterity? He writes:
“I’ve been reviewing poetry for a number of years and I’m constantly asking myself these questions. As PW’s poetry reviews editor for the past four years, I’ve mostly seen my job as an ambassadorial one: I want to help bookstore buyers and interested readers figure out which poetry books to stock or buy. But I’m also a freelance reviewer for many publications, from general interest magazines like Time Out New York, where I can’t count on a poetry savvy audience, to journals like Boston Review, where I expect a highly literate reader who knows a bit about poetry. When I write for the former, I tend to explain what’s going on in a book of poems, in hopes that a reader skeptical of poetry might be swayed to buy it. I tend not to write about books I don’t think well of for general interest magazines. But when I write for the poetry-literate reader, I know I can dig a bit deeper and feel free to make the kinds of criticisms that poets will take seriously.”
In explaining his own role (how often does a question of this sort, a systemic question, fall to those whose opinions are bound up by their own experience?), Teicher I think too-gingerly slips across the real rub of the poetry dilemma: “a highly literate reader” today only “knows a bit about poetry.” The majority of the reading public are not just sadly ignorant of poetry, but their ignorance makes them downright afraid of it. To these readers, poetry is as opaque and intimidating as the French language. It stems from a flaw in our pedagogy, the way we too-often teach in school that the point of literature is its summary — what cannot be summarized can be neither understood nor enjoyed. A critic must un-school them, in that sense.
In my welcome letter to The Critical Flame, I wrote that the focus of that journal would be stimulative; would be inflammatory; that it would be primarily educational: “the heart of our continued education is a public discourse that is free from small-minded influence, sanitation for the sake of weak wills, and cowardly censorship. With that in mind, we at The Critical Flame seek to clear a space in this wilderness that is the internet for articulate discussion and learned debate. We will make our convictions vulnerable to scrutiny, put aside our petty egotism, and engage with literature honestly, openly.”
That type of engagement can come in many forms — reviews of single volumes, articles on poets and careers, critical essays on forms and styles, etc. — but it must, must, must be sustained in order to be effective, in order to lead readers out of the cave of summarization and allegory. I feel strongly that a 300-word review educates no one; it bears the same relation to literature that a bumper sticker does to politics. It is a sales pitch, at best. A book report. This is not to say that length is itself a virtue: a 3000-word must justify the attention it requires of a reader, else it becomes nothing but an exercise in the critic's own aggrandizement. Still, I would much prefer seeing a critic try and fail at true engagement with the work.
I believe the point of reviews in general is to continue some form of education; not didactic as it was in school, but dialogical as it was in the Forum. A review or essay or critique ought to be the beginning of a shared and ongoing conversation regarding literature, poetry, and all that comes with it. This is the reason I feel that, despite their sometimes glaring flaws and failures, William Logan and Ron Silliman are two of the most effective poetry critics working today: when they write, people generally respond (often angrily); when they make claims, people discuss; when they make judgments, people debate.
That right there is the point: it's sharp, and incites a reaction.
11 comments:
You say: "The majority of the reading public are not just sadly ignorant of poetry, but their ignorance makes them downright afraid of it. To these readers, poetry is as opaque and intimidating as the French language. It stems from a flaw in our pedagogy, the way we too-often teach in school that the point of literature is its summary — what cannot be summarized can be neither understood nor enjoyed."
I agree, and--for whatever it might be worth--I'm here to tell you that I (that makes at least one literature teacher) do all that I have one central goal when I introduce undergraduates to poetry: discover how it says something rather than worrying about the Cliff's Notes goal of figuring out what it says (i.e., coming up with a summary). When students learn the "how," they easily make the step to learning "what."
Hey R.T.
I certainly did not mean to mass-condemn teachers — I had my fare share of excellent teachers of poetry, and I know there are plenty more. They do a much harder thing day-in and day-out than any of us bystanders, that's for sure.
In a former life I wrote math textbooks, and as we talk teaching I wonder if another issue isn't a lack of lesson plans for poetry. It would be an interesting thing to see what's out there and what is needed, particularly on a primary and secondary-school level.
I cannot speak with any authority about what might be out there in terms of lesson plans (i.e., I teach at the university level rather than high school and lower grades), but I have anecdotal experience with so-called "instructor's guides" provided by publishers as supplements to their textbooks. Even though I do not use them, some are good, with sufficient emphasis on diction as well as other structural and formal issues in poetry (my passion). My challenge at the university is to get students to go beyond their earlier educational experiences with poetry; some middle-school and high-school teachers (perhaps not always adequately prepared for their jobs) have not been particularly helpful to impressionable students. However, the bottom line, as your posting suggested, is that not many people have any ability to read or interest in reading poetry, which in many ways is an art form more appreciated by readers in previous centuries.
"That right there is the point: it's sharp, and incites a reaction."
"O blessed literary spite!"
- O. Mandelstam
The point of your post seems to be to re-state your belief that controversial blogs are better than non-controversial ones, because controversy itself must be the point, instead of pedagogy.
Blogs may be a new hybrid form of critical comment or inquiry--neither as formal nor as systematic as essays, and neither as ephemeral nor as topical as letters to the editor.
Their interactive rapidity is certainly a new thing. Imagine a political or feature columnist--15 or 30 years ago--engaging his readership within minutes of publication! It's one thing that's literally killing newspapers and magazines.
Commentary seems to be regarded as a subsidiary set, to the main blog. I tend to disdain bloggers who refuse to engage (reply to) their commentators, as if they were above the fray.
Curtis,
I wasn't really talking about blogs at all, except to mention Ron as a critic -- by discussion I meant any sort, whether at a bar, in a classroom, after readings; or, I guess, at blogs and websites too.
I'm very sorry to see you ignore everything I wrote here except in regards to the aspect of reviewing you seem to have wanted to discuss, that quality you call controversiality. I suppose a person finds what they want to find.
Anyhow. A critic can incite discussion without "controversy" per se, no? Can make points strongly, express and explain judgments while citing evidence? Or maybe I see the term controversy in a too-negative light, as a sort of crass political or topical goading, and not as you intend.
I've been thinking about this issue over the years (and have written a long series on my own blog about it, The Ideology of Critique). Where I agree with you is that the reviewer's job is to educate. But I note that many reviewers think their job is to pass judgment, rather than educate.
Can we really blame educational pedagogy for this, without equally calling to task those poets who, lodged in academia, have come to view poetry as an arcane, specialist discipline? I don't think so. In other words, I think where you place the blame is wrong. I think many poets are quite responsible for poetry "losing its audience," in that they wanted to create a literary elite, and have done so. Eliot and Pound explicitly said as much, as did some of their better-known peers; the present state of poetry's elitist status is the end result of that thread of poetry criticism which goes back at least a century now. Poetry hasn't been a populist art since the Moderns made it elitist; and the way poetry is taught now in schools is a direct result of that: the assumption that a poem must be explained, or summarized.
So I think your sense of the blame of this is misplaced. Nonetheless I agree with you the reviewer's/critic's job is to re-educate the general reader back towards a more popular understanding and appeal.
And let's be honest: Most poetry, unless it consciously tries to be, isn't really all that arcane or difficult.
Art,
I definitely agree that poetry is not nearly as difficult as it is made out to be: the intimidation is largely a result of unfamiliarity.
The role of poets is definitely another story; their role in the "academy" is debatable. However I'm not willing to say that a poet ought to write in this or that style, with this amount of difficult, etc. Rules of that sort inevitably make fools of the legislator — some genius comes along and proves they're all silly.
I think one can say that the importance of poets in the academy, or TO the academy, is debatable. But the place of "professional" poets, as teachers of poetry, English, MFA programs, etc., is very much a part of both the culture of reviewing, and what's wrong with that culture. I don't think one can say that the academy is irrelevant to contemporary poetry, because it is the venue that is the dominant place where "professional" poets can make a living: pretty much the ONLY place where poets can make a living doing poetry.
So I don't think that the influence on poetry criticism from the academic approach to teaching poetry, or writing about it, can be underestimated, because it has become so central to the business of the poetry world. A lot of poetry reviewing is little more than mutual backscratching: you give my book a kudos, I'll give your book a kudos. In other words, cronyism. Not to mention dishonest.
I never meant to imply that poets ought to write in this style or that, with this level of complexity or accessibility or comprehensibly or that. I never meant to imply a value judgment between "academic" poetry vs. "populist" poetry. (Although let's face it, Billy Collins and Robert Frost have sold more books of poetry than Charles Bernstein or Christian Bök ever will.) I never meant to imply that difficult poetry is better or worse than poetry that is simpler and more comprehensible. In fact, I've never dictated any such thing, and never will.
What I HAVE said is that, if poets write hermetically and obscurely, they forfeit their right to complain about the lack of an audience for their work. If a poet deliberately writes so that no one but another poet can read it and comprehend it (sans footnotes), then no valid complaint can be made that non-poets don't want to read those poems.
in other words, I believe that poets need to take responsibility for their own actions, and for creating the climate that they find themselves in. If you write more difficult poems, that's fine; but in doing so, you forfeit your write to bitch that ladies in the grocery store checkout line don't want to read them!
The blame for a lot of the things that poets complain about, in terms of the general public not caring about their poetry, rests solely on their own shoulders.
I never said, nor do I believe, that poets need to write any other way than how they choose to. I never have dictated to any poet, nor will I ever, how they ought to write. I never told an obscurantist poet to write more populist, nor will i ever do so. In fact, I prefer diversity in poetry, I appreciate many styles and levels of complexity, and I really enjoy moving between those levels and styles, both as a reader and as a reviewer.
I think it's fair to point out that poets have to reap what they've sown, but I would never tell them WHAT to sow. This is a human truth, not just a literary one: all actions have consequences, and the thoughtful person considers them, before and after taking action.
So we cannot go blaming other, outside forces for what we HAVE sown: don't go blaming other, outside forces for what has done oneself to create one's own problems.
Therefore, I don't think blaming public education for the general public's lack of interest in poetry has any real merit. Modern(ist) poetry made its own bed, and now has to lie in it. Blaming doesn't fix the problem: being better educators, AS POETS, might have a chance. The burden of educating the general public towards appreciating poetry again lies as much if not more on the shoulders of poets, and no one else.
Or to use words one might hear from that great poet of the Western, John Sturges, "Quit bitching about it, and man up." LOL
You won't be recommending White Buildings by Hart Crane then, I suppose.
In Breslin's William Carlos Williams seminar in the late 60's at Berkeley, we argued about WCW's "unserious" "topical" "target-practice" essays. How could so serious and committed and revolutionary a writer not have more to say about taste, and aesthetics and structural theory than the handful of snapshots which comprise his "critical" oeuvre?
But there are different occasions for discussing letters, and reviews have their place. Some writers shun critical writing, others (like Barrett Watten) seem to prefer critical writing to writing poetry, even to the degree of considering criticism a form of de facto poetry writing.
In the post-Modern age, proliferating layers of increasingly dense parasitic critical theory can weight down a model--to such a degree that the original subject becomes less important than what can be made out of it.
As a budding poet in high school, I was almost always more interested in the HOW--the "mood" and method of what affected me--than the ultimate WHAT that I was intended to "get." I would guess that that's more universal among the inspired young than is generally acknowledged by teachers. Also, the ability to describe critically what one is feeling and responding to in a poem may not be a useful measure of appreciation. But humanists believe that results (and meaning) matter more than method, that if you don't understand the implication of what you're enjoying, you're only halfway there. Kids may become alienated from literature simply because they believe their inability to describe it well is proof of the failure of their comprehension. In listening to classical music, most people wouldn't have a clue about how to go about constructing a symphony, but they can have profound experiences of it. Listening, just listening or reading, doesn't require a regurgitation as proof of one's response. Maybe talking about poetry is worse than just reading it.
For the record, I think we sell poetry short at the earliest opportunity, by subjecting children to sing-song-y nursery rhymes and "clicking" prosodic examples, so that by the time they're in junior high, they're already prejudiced towards the most trite senses of poetry. This is where the real pedagogical rape takes place, long before high school teachers can break these tired old misconceptions and interest students in deeper apprehensions of structure and meaning.
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