[New-Poetry] Art of Finding, Linda Gregg's essay

[Suzanne Burns]

Bob,

She commends a  student for writing of "a mirror reflecting nothing."?  Good
grief, I remember the very workshop when she wrote that line in one of her
poems, or maybe it was in her list of six things she noticed.  And yes, I
had the same reaction:  it is very decorative and poetic.  Its a tad
satisfied with itself. Its bland.  It lacks grit.  Carolyn Forche called
this sort of thing "the cult of the 'silent' tick"-- the tendecny for poets
to skirt around difficulty by getting all breathy and empty.

Here is what I wanted to get at:

When you get past the vague, subjective language (and yes, I think Gregg
overuses about twenty or so words in her work to the point where they really
start to lose meaning-- it would be interesting to run one of her
manuscripts through Word to see how many times she uses the word "sacred",
for example) and examine the content, the guts as it were....

It's just not very interesting.

The essay doesn't really doesn't say much beyond what is easy for the reader
to agree with, and it keeps even that nice and vague.

In fact I would go further to say my impression is that this essay was
written to elicit agreement, approval, and the nodding of vaguely pleased
heads.

I would really love to see Gregg write an essay that really takes a stake in
a strong idea.  That eschews adjectives for a while.  An essay that
challenges the reader's expectations and assumptions, that takes a real
aesthetic stand.  An essay of aggressive vitality that throws its drink
against the wall and invites disagreement.

I think she is capable, but to tell you the truth, I think she is just too
damned nervous as a writer.

I highly recommend Mary Karr's essay "Against Decoration" if you really want
to get to into the meat of these ideas.

Being Cranky Today As Always,

Suzanne



On 12/19/06, Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
>
> Bob, I think you'll like it...it's partly advocating using our visual
> senses more fully,
>
>   with deep scrutiny and a wide-open aperture. Something that a vizpo poet
> > couldn't too strenously disagree with.
> >
>
> I haven't read the essay yet, so I won't comment more fully. I just wanted
> to respond to what Jim said.
>
> The only problem I have with this thesis is that it comes across as "fuzzy
> hippy talk" for lack of a better phrase-- its easy to agree with.  In fact
> agreement is ubiquitous.  I mean for heaven's sake what poet is going to
> disagree with this?  Its too general.  Of course we all advocate "using our
> visual senses more fully, with deep scrutiny and a wide-open aperture",
> and finding what is inside the poem!  Everyone is going to nod their head
> in reverent agreement and ignore the fact that it doesn't actually say
> much.
>
> How many poets honestly sit down to write and think "Yo! I think I will
> write something today that doesn't deliver the content of the poem and
> while we're at it, I'll deliver it dead!    Muwwaaahh!"  And please don't
> tell me that this is what language poets aim to do-- they don't. Their
> content might be the nuances and music of language, but that is still
> content.  It might *seem* to you that a poet you dislike is doing that, but
> realistically speaking that probably isn't true.
>
> The real issue is what *is* inside the poem-- and you really can only
> address that by looking at actual poems and taking them on their own terms.
> How the poem succeeds or fails at its goal is never going to be summed up as
> just one thing.  There just isn't any crafty technique that is going to help
> you.
>
> Back when I taught it was always a challenge to get my students to go
> beyond the subjective.  I really had to train them in the art of the "I"
> statement when critiquing a poem.  "This is very alive and beautiful.  There
> is really something inside this poem" doesn't actually say very much that is
> useful  because it begs the question "Yeah... and...this means what?"
> "Alive" and "beautiful"  means one thing to one person and something
> completely different to another.  And "Oh, there is nothing real inside
> this!" wafted out without anything more substantial to back it up sounds to
> me like an easy way to dismiss something just because you don't particulary
> like or "get" it.
>
> My two bits,
>
> Suzanne
>
> Haw, I think you may just written my blog entry for me, Suzanne.  I read
> the essay yesterday and found it to be just about nothing but gush.  I
> happen to disagree with a few things she says, but am willing to accept that
> her outlook on these is equal to mine (well, almost).  For instance, I think
> it's the objects we find inide our poems and how we treat them with craft
> that counts.  I also think craft is what gets our best objects into our
> poems.  I'm also a poem-as-art-object rather than a poem-as-instruction
> person.
>
> But where I think the essay next to worthless is its telling us to use our
> eyes but not really telling us how.  Gregg tells us about her childhood
> experience of Nature but doesn't seem to me to tell us explicitly how it
> helped make a poet of her.  Nowhere, from what I got from my first reading
> of her essay, does she say more than developing good poetic eyesight is as
> or more valuable than working on one's craft.  I suppose I can grant that
> she suggests ways to do this--by trying to see things from a slant different
> from the conventional.  I got this from her listing the three wrong ways her
> students tend to see objects.  But those three wrong ways all seem to me to
> reduce to connecting the wrong words to the objects they see rather than
> wrong seeing.
>
> Yikes, you got me going.  No brakes, so here's more.  She describes the
> student who "sees" objects as poetic things--for example, a sunset as
> "gorgeous" or "fiery-colored" (I'm going by mmeory so will be off, maybe by
> a lot, but getting the gist, I hope).  I say the problem here is verbal--due
> to lack of the craft to filter out cliche.  Later, she comends a student for
> writing of "a mirror reflecting nothing."  Why isn't that seeing the mirror
> poetically?  Then there's the student who Gregg says sees objects in too
> much detail.  Again, the student has a verbal problem--he can't find details
> to describe objects with anything but standard mundane details.  Then the
> third kind of student, who only sees sensationalistic objects.  This
> student, I would agree, has a problem with seeing--too limited a seeing.
> Some lesson, so far: don't limit your seeing.
>
> Earlier Gregg claims that seeing similes rather than objects was a flaw.
> I differ.  I see no point in using objects unless you can use them
> figuratively.  Or to set up a figure of speech, perferably a metaphor.  As I
> wrote that, I took it back.  Pure imagistic use of objects can be effective,
> too.  But metaphoric use is better.
>
> Of course, being a poet interested in many more techniques than Gregg
> seems aware, I didn't like, but understood, the implicit assumption that
> standard fifties American poetry is all that any poet would be interested in
> making.
>
> My amplification of what Gregg seems incompetently (as essayist; as
> teacher, she is probably reasonably good) to say: learn what words
> and attitudes are now too dead to connect effectively to the objects in your
> poems; do this by reading a lot of poetry, and by shoving your poetry at
> others and getting their reactions.  Oh, and learn to recognize the
> archetypal depth I think Gregg is talking about but doesn't say she it, and
> keep after your poems until it seems to be in them somewhere.
>
> Banal lessons, but better than her essay's.  Her Academy of American Poets
> position paper, I should say (why, I confess, is one reason I'm not being
> very nice to it--but yow, how I wish someone would be as unnice to my blog
> babbles of what I post here, including this, but about all I get is
> agreement/disagreement).
>
> I suspect I went out of agreement with you here and there, Suzanne, but I
> think we're in near-100% agreement about the essential ingushpidness of the
> Gregg essay.
>
> --Bob G.
>
>
>
>
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"Start with your identity, which is a combination of your assets and what
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