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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #71 |
Why, you go out and acquire them, of course!
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| Armin Shimerman plays "Quark" |
If poetry is about poems you seek out specific recommendations from consumers: critics, bird dogs and readers. This approach gives us eclectic sources like The Hypertexts. Editors might be surprised to hear how many interesting poems people have encountered in workshops, open mics or elsewhere. How can it hurt to ask your readership for tips? To paraphrase Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #111: "Treat subscribers like family. Exploit them."
I enjoyed Michael's article. However, it seems that Mr. Robbins and I have very different definitions of competence. For example, regarding "Apple Slices" he writes:
"Now, this is crushingly banal (and, at the end, questionably grammatical). It's not just that this scene of adolescent wholesomeness is textbook workshop pablum, but that it has been platitudinized. It's trite and conservative.
"But it's eminently competent."
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #11 |
Then there is this:
"The merely competent should study Mlinko's work with envy."
I appreciate the bold statement. In my time I may have made a few, myself. The problem is that this sample illustrates what Michael is bemoaning, not what he is championing:
You never hear of Ixion, tied to a revolving wheel,
but it's an axiom that, sooner or later, a hurricane'll hit here.
Before we pursue that, though, we must make the same detour Mr. Robbins did in considering Mark Edmundson's "Poetry Slam" article in Harper's Magazine:
Mark Edmundson: "Contemporary American poetry speaks its own confined language, not ours. It is, by and large, pure. It does not generally traffic in the icons of pop culture; it doesn't immerse itself in ad-speak, rock lyrics, or politicians' posturing: it gravitates to the obscure, the recondite, the precious, the ancient, trying to get outside the mash of culture that surrounds it."
Michael Robbins: "This is just not true..."
"Not true?" The Ange Mlinko excerpt was not obscure? Not recondite? Exactly how many anglophones do we think will know who Ixion was? Greek mythology isn't ancient and "outside the mash of culture" here in North America? What could be more precious than speaking of Ixion using quaint contractions, the last of which breaks voice and rhythm?
In an era when few MFAs grads know whether "Prufrock" is verse or free verse competence is a far greater and rarer accomplishment than some seem to think.
Footnotes:
¹ - "New Yorker" poems = throwaway poems by celebrated poets.
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Can you point me to the part of my article where I claim that Mlinko's lines refute Edmundson's claim? I used Ange's lines to demonstrate a different point. I explicitly say that my own poems refute his claim, but I thought it unnecessary to list any of the dozens of poets I can think of off the top of my head to do so. His claim is absurd. Jennifer L. Knox, August Kleinzahler, Anthony Madrid, Patricia Lockwood, Rae Armantrout, Nick Demske, Rachel Zucker, Nick Laird, Paul Muldoon, Frederick Seidel—shall I go on?
ReplyDeleteAs for your notion that line breaks should be "thoughtful," I roll my eyes. This is the kind of nonsense MFA programs promulgate. Clever line breaks are a ridiculous affectation. Here's a good post on the subject:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2013/04/feckless-line-breaks/
Welcome to Commercial Poetry, Michael!
ReplyDelete> Can you point me to the part of my article where I claim that Mlinko's lines refute Edmundson's claim?
More like the other way around. He might use them to challenge yours. To wit:
> I used Ange's lines to demonstrate a different point.
Understood. You used Ange's lines as examples of work that is better than the merely competent. You then took a sharp turn ("detour") to disagree with Mr. Edmundson's claim that contemporary poetry "gravitates to the obscure, the recondite, the precious, the ancient, trying to get outside the mash of culture that surrounds it." I was merely pointing out the irony that you disagree with Mr. Edmundson after citing an example containing every single aspect of his criticism.
> I explicitly say that my own poems refute his claim, but I thought it unnecessary to list any of the dozens of poets I can think of off the top of my head to do so. His claim is absurd. Jennifer L. Knox, August Kleinzahler, Anthony Madrid, Patricia Lockwood, Rae Armantrout, Nick Demske, Rachel Zucker, Nick Laird, Paul Muldoon, Frederick Seidel--shall I go on?
While Mr. Edmundson's premise is indisputable, I agree that aesthetic sampling was an absurd approach. What does showing that there are half a dozen PoBiz types producing works of questionable ("inconsistent" is the word I'd use for many of them) quality prove? Absolutely nothing. Hell, you and I could probably name hundreds! Nevertheless, as long as people believe that poetry is about poets, not poetry or audiences, this is the kind of arguments we'll encounter.
More fundamentally, what difference does it make what kind of poetry is being produced if almost no one reads, hears, performs or quotes it?
Tree. Falling. Forest.
Cart. Horse.
> As for your notion that line breaks should be "thoughtful," I roll my eyes. This is the kind of nonsense MFA programs promulgate. Clever line breaks are a ridiculous affectation.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that thoughtless, feckless or random linebreaks are preferred over thoughtful, well crafted ones. The problem, in my mind, is not that MFA programs teach this particular skill; it is that, from all appearances, they teach few others.
Thanks for visiting, Michael. Don't be a stranger!
Actually, my point is, obviously, that the "feckless" line breaks are the ones you call "thoughtful." Producing them is not a "skill," except in the sense that a cheap card trick is a skill.
ReplyDeleteAnd I simply disagree that Ange's lines "contain every single aspect of &c." They are neither precious nor located outside the mash of culture. Nor would even Edmundson suggest that poetry should *never* be recondite or obscure.
That Edmundson's premise is far from indisputable is evinced by the mere fact that it has been disputed. And disputed forcefully. By several writers who know what they're talking about, while he clearly does not.
@Michael:
ReplyDeleteWe'll just have to agree to disagree on whether or not thoughtful linebreaks are superior to random ones and whether or not juxtaposing "Ixion" with "hurricane'll" is precious.
"That Edmundson's premise is far from indisputable is evinced by the mere fact that it has been disputed."
No, it hasn't. Only his approach and examples have. Why he chose aesthetics--the least quantifiable, least demonstrable and most controversial criteria--as the basis of his argument about "the decline of American verse" is beyond me. To call his argument poorly designed and constructed would be an understatement.
Good hearing from you again, Michael.
While I wrote accentual verse for 25 years, I switched back to blank verse for writing my epic.
ReplyDeleteI wince at a lot of line breaks that are attempting to be clever but they just appear sloppy to me, like when poets break between an adjective and noun, or beak up grammatical phrases, or leave words like "the" hanging at the end.
To me it is not the line break, but the elegant phrasing of the line itself that expresses a concept or thought in the progress of conceptual development through the sequence of lines.