[New-Poetry] for the Bob-list

[Bob Grumman]

David Graham wrote:
>
>>> I could make a list of techniques I consider still new in 
>>> poetry--doing things with the color of letters, for instance, to 
>>> mention a simple one, but I'm not up to it.  So I'll end with a 
>>> request of you: post a poem that you think valuable that doesn't do 
>>> anything new.
>>>
>>> --Bob G.
>>>>
> ==================================
>
> So it seems to be as I suspected, that you don't acknowledge any value 
> that is not related to novelty.
Well, David, if you searched the New-Poetry archives (though I believe 
they are not very complete), you'd find that I acknowledge all kinds of 
values besides, let's call it "innovation."  I'm right now trying to do 
a super-full analysis of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18," "Shall I compare 
thee to a summer's day."  My aim is to determine what makes it a major 
poem.  I don't anticipate finsing anything innovational about it.


> Thus, when I ask you to cite an example of something "valuably old," 
> your response is to ask *me* to do so instead--presumably so you can 
> knock it down.  Which confirms my original suspicion, that your phrase 
> "valuably new" doesn't mean anything beyond "new."  And that novelty 
> is your only or chief criterion of excellence.
A poem only has two ways of being major, it seems to me: doing something 
old better than it's ever been done, or doing something new that seems 
(if only eventually) effective to poetry-lovers.  A good minor poem need 
not do either, but I'm temperamentally not able to sympathize with those 
who are satisfied to compose minor poetry.  I like lots of minor poems, 
even love some.  But it's hard for me to cheer for them when innovative 
poems I consider major are being ignored.  I concede that sometimes I am 
too negative about them.  But, hey, I got moon in Aries.  That makes me 
contentious.  I also have forty years of just enough money to scrape by 
and no recognition to speak of and hardly any hope of either, so I can 
get cranky.

>
> I'm willing to be corrected on this.  All you need to do is define 
> some poetic values that are not synonyms for novelty.  And concede 
> that it is possible for a poem to be great without being significantly 
> new.
>
Poetic values of the highest importance include what I call melodation 
for all their sound effects, metaphorical effectiveness, archetypal 
resonance, concision and clarity.  Shape on the page, color, 
pluraesthetic range (or amount of material included from other 
expressive modalities), coverage of existence (the wider and eeper the 
better).  A big problem with all this is that just about none of these 
things works unless fresh.  A metaphor may be brilliant but if it's been 
used by a hundred poets, it's not going to work.  So freshness, which is 
a way of being new, is a sine qua non of effective poetry.  Freshness 
can be achieved without innovation but innovation will always achieve it.

> I don't really *need* to cite any examples, believing as I do that 
> literature is news that stays news.  You just need to open any 
> standard anthology and examples will swarm.  But since I am an amiable 
> sort, I give you the following, which I think we could probably agree 
> is not "new" in any significant sense, and was not when it was 
> written, either:
>
> Delight in Disorder
>
> A sweet disorder in the dress
> Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
> A lawn about the shoulders thrown
> Into a fine distraction:
> An erring lace, which here and there
> Enthralls the crimson stomacher:
> A cuff neglectful, and thereby
> Ribbands to flow confusedly:
> A winning wave, deserving note
> In the tempestuous petticoat:
> A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
> I see a wild civility:
> Do more bewitch me than when art
> Is too precise in every part.
>
> --Robert Herrick 
As I've said before, David, my taste in traditional poetry isn't much 
different from yours.  I like the above very much.  A problem, so far as 
our debate is concerned, is whether or not the poem does anything new.  
I think a scholar of Herrick's times could detail many (minor) things he 
does that no other poet had.  As I said earlier in this post, he is most 
major here by doing what's been done, but doing it better than anyone 
else--or, to be a bit more accurate--better than just about anyone else.

Related to this is the fact that the poem IS new for a modern reader.  
Its language makes it new.  What's a "stomacher," for instance.  I would 
also say that my impression is that Herrick here comes up with an 
imagery-complex  that he may have been first to use, and uses it 
metaphorically--a woman's clothing personified--for maybe the first time 
in English poetry, or maybe the first time to this degree.  Certainly 
for the first time this well.

--Bob G.
 
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