[New-Poetry] Camlle Paglia

[Judy Prince]

My personal jury's still out on the Paglia question----because her book
hasn't yet arrived in my mailbox, doggone it!  But two things occur to me
after reading David's and Bob's latest posts.
IF, in her book, Paglia, through her many critiques, shows us what she
thinks is exceptional poetry and convincingly demonstrates why she thinks
it's exceptional, then we must conclude that she does not find the more
contemporary poetry, for the most part, exceptional poetry.  We must accept
that.  The scary part is only that, having agreed with her about her
lovingly-dissected favourites, we are left holding poetry that we judge to
be of equal merit---poetry, in some cases, which sounds like what we
ourselves write.  No wonder Paglia's frustrating us!

I would put a Lucile Clifton poem and others by largely-unknown
contemporary-to-us poets forward as worthy inclusions for Paglia, but after
thoroly reconsidering Paglia's critical parameters, I must admit that my
choices wouldn't make the cut either, dammit.  I still value them and think
they're beyond stunning and quiet-explosive....but they wouldnae make the
cut.

That leaves us those very few contemporary poems that Paglia feels ARE
worthy to include, but that we scratch our heads with confusion, disgust,
incredulity at Paglia's deeming as worthy as her [and our] ole faves.
 Wonder what she thinks they have so abundantly?  Will perhaps find out when
I read her book.  Wonder what you-all think about it who HAVE READ HER BOOK.


Judy

2008/11/19 Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>

>  Kind of annoying to find just about nothing to argue with in a David
> Graham post, a *long* David Graham post.  I *did* find *one* minor point
> to attack him on, though: he says, "It's possible to take Paglia at her
> word, and believe that she read intensively of work published in the past
> few decades and found almost nothing worth analyzing . . ."  I say it's
> not.  If she had, she would have *had* to have at least mentioned why she
> had dismissed not just the many superior poets she did but the many *kinds
> *of poetry she did.
>
> A second argument I have that she didn't do much of a survey of poetry to
> find poems for her book is not so convincing: it is that in choosing just
> about nothing but standards, and railing against modern taste in some area
> of art, she reveals herself as a probable rigidnik, and no rigidnik, by (my)
> definition, would be broadminded enough to have carried out a genuine survey
> of the field.
>
> Nice that she picked something by Roethke, one of my favoritest favorites.
> David, did she pick anything by Cummings?  If so, was it one of his visual
> poems.  I hope not!  It would make it harder for me to write her off.
>
> --Bob
>
>
>
> David Graham wrote:
>
> I don't despise Camille Paglia either, though I disagree with her often
> enough, and find her style sometimes offputting.  *Break, Blow, Burn*, the
> bestselling book of poetry criticism in question, is a worthy book.
>  Considering it, I'm struck by several things.   First, when was the last
> time a book of serious poetry criticism was a best seller?  I can think of a
> few recent ones that seemed fairly popular, though I don't know how their
> sales might compare to Paglia's:  books by Edward Hirsch, Molly Peacock,
> Robert Hass (collection of his *Washington Post* columns), and not many
> others.  So that's one thing worth pondering, and celebrating.
>  Second, a glance at Paglia's table of contents would, in fact, support
> Bob Grumman's objections.  For the most part, despite Paglia's strident
> puffery and posturing in support of her project, she's picked little but
> safely canonized classics to analyze, beginning with Shakespeare's sonnet
> #73, and progressing through such cutting edge figures as Donne, Herbert,
> Marvell, Blake, Wordsworth Shelley, Coleridge, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats,
> Stevens, Williams, Roethke, Lowell, Plath, et al.
>
>  The only oddities come in the very recent picks, who include four
> relative unknowns (Chuck Wachtel, Norman H. Russell, Rochelle Kraut, and
> Ralph Pomeroy) plus Wanda Coleman and Joni Mitchell.  Otherwise it's pretty
> much Nortonized classics all the way.
>
>  I don't think it's *bad* to have yet another book dissecting
> Shakespeare's sonnets and Williams's overexposed "Red Wheelbarrow," but it's
> hardly earth-shaking stuff.
>
>  For my money, Paglia's taste is ever more uncertain as she moves into the
> contemporary world, too.  That's no doubt true of most of us, of course.
>  She's pretty damn good on Shakespeare, Whitman, and so forth, but I don't
> find her as convincing on Wanda Coleman, for instance.
>
>  And Joni Mitchell, whose "Woodstock" lyrics close out the book, seems an
> odd choice.  Not that Mitchell isn't a great songwriter, but why this song?
>  Why not a thousand others?  Why no song written in the past 40 years, for
> that matter, if you're going to make a gesture at being hip and write a book
> of poetry criticism specifically aimed at general audiences?   Poor Paglia
> reminds me in this regard of the minister of the church I attended as a kid
> in the 1960s, who tried to reach out and be "relevant" to younger people in
> his congregation by quoting Simon & Garfunkle lyrics in his sermons.  Kids
> who were, of course, listening to Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and The Doors at
> the time.
>
>  As far as I can tell, all but 6 of the 43 poets in the book are dead; and
> even most of the recent poems are at least 30 years old.  It's possible to
> take Paglia at her word, and believe that she read intensively of work
> published in the past few decades and found almost nothing worth analyzing;
> it's also possible to doubt how hard she looked at anything that wasn't
> already published when she was in grad school.
>
>  Among other things, I would have appreciated a fuller discussion of why
> she didn't just focus on Shakespeare et al.;  or, failing that, if she was
> determined to make some token gestures toward the contemporary world, what
> factors went into her choices.  Has she read Yusef Komunyakaa and found him
> wanting?  If so, why?  No masterpieces by Richard Wilbur, Philip Levine,
> Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop?  Is Wanda Coleman really better than Hayden
> Carruth, Charles Simic, Lucille Clifton, Albert Goldbarth, Robert Duncan,
> James Wright, Robert Hass, Philip Larkin, Adrienne Rich. . . ?
>
>  Still, such a book does no harm, and gives snipers like us a good target.
>  And I for one am pleased to see a prominent critic going back to good old
> new-critical close reading.  Despite Paglia's posturing, that probably *is*
> a somewhat radical move these days.  This might be a good book to assign in
> college classes, in fact:  it has the moves.
>
>
>
>  ========================================
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
>
>  Home Page:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz
>
>  Poetry Library:
> http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
> ==========================================
>
>
>
>
>  On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:14 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>  Because a book of poetry turns up on the bestseller list, is no reason to
> despise it.
>
> I was going to let your post go in peace, Russ, but the above statement
> gave me pause.  At first, I thought, of course, no reason a poetry
> best-seller ought to be lousy.  Second thought: has there been a poetry
> best seller in the last fifty years in this country that wasn't either
> loaded with the masterpieces of yesterday or absolute crap?  But I don't
> despise this one, I despise its publishers.  As I've said, repeating my
> boilerplate forever.  We have enough "good poems."  Let us have an
> anthology of kinds of poems never before in an anthology printed in editions
> of more than a thousand--edited by someone who knows something about
> poetry..
>
>  --Bob
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20081119/43481ac5/attachment.html