[New-Poetry] Camlle Paglia

[John Jeffrey]

Bob,

Here's a list of the poems that Paglia reviews in the book:  http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/paglia/toc.html

John J




________________________________
From: Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views" <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 6:29:24 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Camlle Paglia

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


      
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