[New-Poetry] Poetry Foundation Letter

[Michael Snider]

On Jan 31, 2008, at 10:44 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote:

> Are you really saying that you don't see where there's a likeness  
> between, for example, rae armentrout and susan howe and in that  
> likeness a differentiation from say a sharon olds and donald hall  
> style poet? this is where I think ron silliman has been very  
> insightful in his critiques of the "school of quietude."


I'd say that your putting Donald Hall and Sharon Olds in the same  
bucket is an example of the pernicious flattening of perspective that  
Silliman encourages. I just wrote a blog post on Silliman as the Uncle  
Toby of American poetry, unable to see past his categories even when  
the evidence is staring him in the face:

  http://www.mikesnider.org/formalblog/2008/01/28.html#a765


Silliman's not the only one--polemics (including mine) flatten things.  
Long ago I noted that neither Marjorie Porloff, a better critic than  
Silliman, nor Charles Bernstein,  a better poet and. critic than  
Silliman, seem to be able to recognize iambic pentameter when they  
have an axe to grind. Link to Perloff is in this post:

http://www.mikesnider.org/formalblog/2004/06/17.html#a341

And  for those of you with access to Project Muse through schools or a  
kind friend, here's the link to Bernstein's remark:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modernism-modernity/v003/3.3bernstein.html

For a gaffe of mine own, just consider the title of that June 2004  
post. It was stupid, not at all clever, as I had supposed.