The Dreaded Bell Jar Curve

Bark blogger Brett Ortler

     In "Too Many Writers: The Best Problem in Contemporary Poetry", Blogger Brett Ortler writes:  "If there are too many writers, yes, you’ll have a lot of schlock (most of writing produced will be middling or bad).  Nevertheless, if you have a glut of writers, you’ll also, by definition, have an excess of good writing."

     Given that he produces a science blog, Brett has committed a surprising error.  It becomes evident the moment he trots out the dreaded Bell Jar Curve. 

     Can you spot the mistake?

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     No, Brett, a glut of writers will not necessarily or even generally produce "an excess of good writing."  Indeed, it hasn't.  The reason is simple:  "good writing" does not refer to "the best of a bad lot."  We have models passed down through millennia to define this.  Rather, the inept majority might form a voting bloc to preclude any initiative or funding that might allow more talented artists to reach and please an audience.  As for the less gifted horde, even if 100 chimpanzees with 100 typewriters do produce Shakespeare after 100 years it won't register as more than an imperceptible dot--an inconsequential fluke rather than an outlier, let alone meaningful data--on your chart.

     The Bell Jar Curve is made for random/natural phenomena that trend toward a middle ground:  crop yields, rain patterns, golf scores.  Standard deviations are useless for art not because humans are unpredictable but because, for better or worse, they are easily influenced.  It would be like measuring crop yields during a hurricane or golf scores in three feet of snow.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #11

      For poets of yore, a pyramid would be a more representative shape.  There were plenty of William McGonagalls at the bottom, none worth distinguishing from the others.  Only Shakespeare would be at the top.

     The disappearance of fundamentals, coupled with the death of poetry in the early 1900s, squeezed the pyramid.  The center was lost as average poets were replaced by ConPoets who think doggerel or lineated prose will please an audience, even as they avoid listening to it themselves.  Now the pattern is a thick vertical line with two progressively tinier dots after it.  The first signifies those few hundred out of 2 million who know trochees from iambs;  after that, we see the handful who can create something interesting with that knowledge.  We can't chart this because by the time the smallest speck of skilled authors becomes visible the column of aspiring muggles may have stretched itself twice around the moon and be heading home.

     Times change.

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"There are more poets (soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionally less poetry."

- Lord Byron

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Can you imagine not knowing...?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #72

par·a·digm  [par-uh-dahym, -dim] noun

1. Grammar
a. a set of forms all of which contain a particular element, especially the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.
b. a display in fixed arrangement of such a set, as boy, boy's, boys, boys'.

2. an example serving as a model; pattern. Synonyms: mold, standard; ideal, paragon, touchstone.

3.a. a framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community.
b. such a cognitive framework shared by members of any discipline or group: the company’s business paradigm.

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    In "'Kill List': A Bad Poem as Provocation" on the Bark blog, Brett Ortler wrote:

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #74

In October, Josef Kaplan released a poem called "Kill List" via the publishing platform CARS ARE REAL. The poem's premise is pretty simple. A (relatively) well-known poet is named, and then either described as "rich" or "comfortable".

A brief example:

Lanny Jordan Jackson is comfortable.
Jewel is a rich poet.
Josef Kaplan is comfortable.
Justin Katko is a rich poet.

This continues for 58 pages.

The first question: Is it a poem?

     Is this a question?

Answer: Sure.

     Say what?!?

While much conceptual...

     As you know, "ideational" and "conceptual" are fashionable buzzwords among Content Regents.

...poetry wouldn’t be considered poetry by previous generations of poets...

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #69

     ...or any generation of readers, including the current one (if it exists).

...(could you see Goethe reading a translated version of Josef Kaplan’s "Kill List" and considering it a poem?), this doesn’t mean that "Kill List" isn’t poetry.

     Actually, it sort of does.  The only audience poetry has ever had has always rejected dull prose with linebreaks posing as poetry.  This constant has been more reliable than the speed of light.

A wide swathe of poetry (free verse, prose poems) wouldn’t have been considered poetry, but so what?

     My sentiments exactly.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25

Paradigms shift. 

    "Paradigms!?"  Mind-numbingly dull 58 page directories have paradigms?

Notions of what is and is not art change, and I’ve got no problem with that.

     Nor do I, unless these changes occur only in the minds of failed artists.

Next question: Is it any good?

     Oh, this should be fun.

It’s terrible.

     Yes, but terrible what?  I would say humor but the closest thing to a punch line is the copyright notice.  (Are they really worried about being plagiarized?)

     Seriously, I challenge anyone to read this drivel without asking:  "Can you imagine not knowing the difference between this and poetry?"

While "Kill List" is getting some attention, I’d argue that it’s only because of its provocative title and the fact that it is essentially a long exercise in name-dropping.

     Let me get this straight.  An artless, enervating "long exercise in name-dropping" is accepted as poetry (of all things!) but deemed "terrible" because it's "a long exercise in name-dropping"?  That makes less sense than saying rhyming verse is poetry but that "The Tay Bridge Disaster" is terrible because it's rhyming verse.

In that respect, the poem seems to be as much a marketing ploy as it [is] a poem.

      Yes, much as Chernobyl was a marketing ploy for nuclear energy.

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