[New-Poetry] poetics is childish

Sun Sep 21 12:23:05 EDT 2008

I'm with you on this one, Old Mole.  I could start in on why I think
"summer" is o.k. there.
If someone like Goldbarth wrote that poem, we'd wonder where the other 39 or
139 stanzas were.

I'm not enamored of narrative, which is why I like the Wenderoth poem.  Like
Roger Day, I wonder why anyone would not write fiction (short) or prose
poems if the narrative aspect is something that they're good at.

I think that it would be pure fantasy for Wiman or any other editor to think
or act as if they were in a "seat of power" to crown anyone anything or
direct taste.  Just another subjective bar stool if you ask me, though we
have to recognize that a certain style of eyewear is suddenly popular due to
S. Palin.

- Jim

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 8:02 AM, TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org> wrote:

> Go back and read the first issues of Harriet Monroe's Poetry Magazine --
> http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8081/exist/mjp/show_issue.xq?id=1201876985640625-- and see how much of it you like, how much of it would have been a "threat
> to poetry" by the terms of that days Quackenbushes or Grummans -- how much
> of it is tedious and dated by that day's standards -- how much of it, for
> that matter, is even vaguely modernist.
>
> Meanwhile, I'll go on writing my narrative poems. I like stories, and I
> like to tell them.
>
> And meanwhile, on Ron Silliman's blog, he praises the work of Joe
> Wenderoth, who seems to me to deserve his praise, and also criticizes it,
> for reasons that seem valid to me. He quotes one poem:
>
> *What Does Death Insure*
>
> death insures
> that one will never hear
> again
> the sound of a small plane
> sketched out in the sand
> of a windless summer afternoon
>
> He praises it for being "crafted with an exact eye & a strong sense of when
> to stop," with which I agree, and he cavils on the word "summer" as an
> example of when Wenderoth sometimes /doesn't/ know where to stop, with which
> I'd also agree.
>
> But what I don't understand is why Silliman associates "summer" in the poem
> with "the clichés of the School of Quietude." In this case, because it's in
> a School of Noisitude poem, why isn't it a cliché of the School of
> Noisitude? And why does Silliman assume that "summer" would have been any
> more appropriate in a School of Quietude poem? A cliché is a cliché, we
> unfortunately all use them from time to time, and we all try not to.
>
> But what I don't understand is why is this a School of Noisitude poem
> anyway? What distinguishes it from the School of Quietude? It has narrative
> elements -- are they OK here because it's School of Noisitude?
>
> My first inspiration as a poet was Leadbelly, and he's remained a powerful
> inspiration over the years, and what drew me to him was his sense of how
> much narrative is driven by what's left out. My later teachers and role
> models were Donald Justice and Donald Finkel, probably both as associated as
> anyone with the SOQ, and both of whom had -- and encouraged -- an exact eye
> and a strong sense of where to stop. So what's the difference? Why is the
> striving for an exact eye and a strong sense of where to stop a threat to
> poetry when practiced by me and my ilk, and a blow against the establishment
> when practiced by a practitioner of the SON?
>
>
> karen wrote:
>
>>
>> >On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Jason Quackenbush <jfq at myuw.net<mailto:
>> jfq at myuw.net>> wrote:
>> >it's interesting, but i still think Christian Wiman is a bigger threat to
>> poetry than poetry about theory.
>>
>> Why?
>> I'm curious about your statement about Wiman here.  Not because I'm a
>> Wiman loyalist, but because it is a provocative thing to just throw out
>> there.  The underpinnings of it seem to imply everyone on this list has some
>> sort of inside information on Wiman that would make this true. Which I
>> personally don't.  Even though I'm a UMASS MFA'r and work with Jim Tate and
>> get to hang with the Cool Kids of PostModern Poetry.  Yet, I still find
>> opinions about everything poetry seem to change yearly within the halls of
>> academia.
>>
>> However, from what I've seen of Wiman as of late, he's been trying to
>> bring Poetry Magazine back from the brink of the tedious and dated Narrative
>> Poems they cleaved to for so long.  Granted, they still publish
>> narratives...and hey, I stand guilty of still liking many narrative
>> poems....perhaps, omg!,  even writing a few myself.  Though I find breaking
>> free of the form liberating too.
>> I guess what I am trying to say is I think they are reaching out more.  I
>> have enjoyed Atsuro Riley's work immensley, for instance.  As well as Kay
>> Ryan (and yes, I've seen your opinions of her voiced here...so my mention of
>> her may not help at all).
>> And though I'm on a grad student budget and can't afford the yearly
>> subscriptions, I will say, I'll take Poetry over Octopus any day.  Octopus
>> leaves me feeling cold and disconnected on a regular basis.  Although, they
>> DO have really smart reviews.
>>
>> Still, I'm seeing an effort on Poetry's part to change it up.  Yes, I
>> know....albeit slowly but surely. I don't like all the poems in there.  But
>> what review does meet that high water mark anyway?   None in recent history
>> I can think of....
>>
>> But hey, I probably don't really know what I'm talking about in the end.
>>  My ears just perked up on your blanket statement about Wiman...which I'm
>> sure everyone on this list gets except for me.  Or maybe not?
>>
>> Karen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>    On Sep 19, 2008, at 4:00 PM, jforjames at aol.com
>>    <mailto:jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>        http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/09/books/raising-poetry
>>
>>        NONFICTION: Raising Poetry
>>        by Sharon Mesmer
>>
>>        Craig Dworkin, ed., The Consequence of Innovation: 21st
>>        Century Poetics (Roof Books, 2008)
>>
>>        The problem with poetry these days isn't the literary
>>        magazines run by pharmaceutical industry businessmen, or the
>>        grants granted by pharmaceutical industry heiresses, or even
>>        the grant-granting bodies composed of
>>        pharmo-conservo-politicos (and heiresses). And it's not all
>>        the writing about writing, either, or even the writing about
>>        the writing about the writing (which, okay, can get annoying).
>>        It's the poetry about the writing about the writing about the
>>        writing.
>>
>>        Poetry has become an overscheduled toddler run ragged by
>>        ambitious, bickering parents, its very existence a compromised
>>        simulacrum of their disharmonious projections and expectations
>>
>>        _______________________________________________
>>        New-Poetry mailing list
>>        New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu <mailto:New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>>        http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>>
>>
>>    Jason Quackenbush
>>    jfq at myuw.net <mailto:jfq at myuw.net>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>    _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> The moral is this: in American verse,
> The better you are, the pay is worse.
>  --Corey Ford
>
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