Over the past three years, I've received approximately 350 emails in response to The Boston Comment. Below you will find a small sampling of these emails from each of the seven articles.
Note: "Post-Post Dementia" also includes comments published on various "blogs."
- Joan Houlihan
Essay 6: The Sound of One Wing Flapping
Essay 5: If Only We Couldn't Understand Them
Essay 4: The Best I Can Do This Year
Essay 3: The Argument For Silence
Essay 1: On The Prosing of Poetry
Note:The mail for this essay is divided into three groups for easy reading: Positive, Negative, and Unintelligible.
Positive
Many thanks for your calm and rational critique of "Fence" and its constituents. I'm sure you'll take some heat for your comments (which I can only hope might be productive and posed in a well-intended rhetorical spirit--perhaps this is foolishly optimistic), and so I just wanted calmly to nod my assent.
It is wonderfully satisfying to read your unflinching assaults on language poetry and the post-post poets. Language poetry ultimately betrays and hangs itself with its own ideology, and as such is art without integrity. What is disturbing is our readiness as readers and critics to eat mud and call it fruit.
I really enjoyed "Post-Post Dementia": clever, intelligent writing. It reminds me of some of the great funny-savage reviews of Randall Jarrell.
What courage you have, to tell the truth as you see it (and as I see it.) Thank you.
i enjoy your articles and i agree with you completely. if
only it weren't too totalitarian to wish that all
these aesthetic diseases be strapped to polls and summarily executed,
i'd wish it. thankfully you are out there at
least trying to shame them into obeisance.
You're especially on target since it's ALWAYS been this way in poetry.
Paul Valery put it best:
"Everything changes, except the avantgarde."
(Or the "post-avant," or the School of Noisiness, etc. . . .)
A lot of people are deriding & dismissing Houlihan (as poet, as stylist, etc): not many are actually grappling with the substance of her sharp funny jabs.
Houlihan's contention is rather simple-- she maintains that this poem is an essentially random composition without any real meaning. Without speculating on the poet's motives and methods I'm not sure I disagree with her take on the result. Putting some words down and relying on an apparent richness in their connotations that allows the reader to infer connections is not writing a poem. It isn't actually random, but neither is it (in my opinion) particularly artistic or forceful.
I think what really bugs people is how efficiently Houlihan takes down sacred cows. Where BKS finds her "unreadable" I don't follow - is she too concise for your taste? Not prolix & patronizing enough? Her little essay on Langpo is classic demolition. Her critique of the bland & cliched accessible-poetics of a Billy Collins is right on. Her blast against the empty, aesthetically-null verbiage of such poems as represented in Fence was also a bull's-eye.
Fence Magazine solicited me to submit some poems to them, and I refused. . . . most of the poetry they publish seems to me to be elitist, intended deliberately for a coterie of initiates who wish to remain holier than thou in the Mallarmean sense: "Everything that wishes to remain holy must surround itself with mystery" is the commandment you "post-avants" in the School of Noisiness must never disobey. . . . And so you gird-guard your work with difficulties and densities and obscurities intended to keep the unholy, the masses, far away. . . Why? According to you, because the zeitgeist demands it. . . . The age demands it. (A couplet by Ernest Hemingway comes to mind: "And in the end the age was handed / The sort of shit that it demanded.")
In my opinion, or agenda, Houlihan isn't your real problem, anyway. . . . She's just a strawperson you've propped up to take easy potshots at.
It's funny, your poems don't suck as much as I thought they would based on the idiocy of your essay.
I won't waste time addressing most of your asinine and labored arguments. I just want to make a few comments regarding your gross stupidities and generalizations.
I haven't had a long time to go over all of these comments, Dale's piece, etc. -- can't believe he even bothered to write her, frankly, she's unreadable.
Houlihan doesn't know how to read post-avant work in any of its varieties & can't even see the differences when they're up front & fairly obvious.
Her response to Language poetry reminds me of myself at age 16 -- and man was I fucked up in the head.
I remember in her review of a past Best American Poetry anthology Houlihan quotes lines from a Hejinian in a round-up of lines so obviously bad Houlihan was left speechless. Should be her usual state, right?
After reading your "post-post dementia" article today I wondered out loud with my co-editor at Skanky Possum, Hoa Nguyen: "is she brain-damaged?" "She," let's be clear, since you need such clarity and "coherence," is you, Joan Houlihan.
The woman's arguments are logical fallacies -- sarcasm, ad hominem, scorn.
The ability to admire, take pleasure from work which one can't write about from a position of mastery is crucial--if one cultivates it, it becomes central to one's reading experience; if one dosen't, I suspect, one ends up hardening into a Houlihan......
I was like, "Joan Houlihan, you're a total retard."
i beg you to keep your antequated, NOSTALGIC, crappy ideas about literature to yourself.
I worry that Joan has fixed herself so severely in her stance of what is "correct" that she is no longer able to enter any poetry that strives to go beyond that set of limitations, and THAT is what makes her unable to see eye to eye with anyone not working within her idea of what poetry is, or should do.
Logically, someone might be a good critic and a bad poet. What struck me was that the [her] poetry was bad in a way that revealed a complete lack of critical self-awareness. If it were merely dull or limited, I wouldn't have reacted in the same way.
As my Momma used to say, "A gal just looks plain ugly when she trash talks." Or in another variation, "Why say 'bitch' when you can say 'witch' with a lot more class?"
Does Joan Houlihan just dump her unfair polemical wit-bites on folks and then go hide?
are you an idiot?
She doesn't, and will not, get it.
Houlihan's diatribe reveals a fundamental incoherence not just in her own thinking, but in a much larger set of social attitudes and assumptions about poetry.
The problem is that a critic like Houlihan (her article is
frankly, an inept case of an argument that can be more competently made) wants to snip off part of the range [of different approaches to poetry], dismiss it out of hand. That's not good-- not in music, painting, poetry, or astronomy. Parra is great. Pessoa is great. Palmer is great. Etc. There is matter, and anti-matter, and dark matter, and who knows what else.
No?
Joan Houlihan will go away. They always do. Eventually.
Where is the substance in Houlihan's essays, anyway? I haven't found it yet.
I mean, it's an honor to register on your "post-post dementia" radar. A day after George Bush sold us more security in the Middle East for 87 billion dollars I see nothing but dementia on the domestic landscape. Halliburton's "meaning" and "coherence" escalates a decline in human relations, meaningful or not—whatever your definition. What is meaningful in a post-human, post-American global economy fuelled by fear, terror and authoritarian claims on personal and domestic rights? From the academic halls to the littered bus stop behind our house, we live in a nation really beyond dementia. We're in retreat from reality because it's hideous to behold. And if poetry begins to look more and more like the complicated screens on CNN, it's because that's the world most people live in. That projected reality is more complex and dangerous than the static narrative voids you might embrace. Either way, mainstream verse, Halliburton, CNN—it's all a dead end anyway. Time to find new sources of hope!
Speaking of Bernstein, it's ironic to see Skanky Possum mentioned in your article.
I once passed a painter on the sidewalk who ranted while he filled the canvas. "Matisse, Kline, Grant Wood.... they have nothing on me! I am the greatest painter!" No one corrected, poor guy, but a few looked like they wanted to drop some change into his coffee can of brushes. But he was too scary.
Houlihan seems to be in a similar position.
I always enjoy when critics, like Joan, pull out the old garden hose to try and clean up the "new" poetries. They look so silly.
I often wonder how an adult in this country can still be so afraid of issues of economy, politics, the occult and anything else located in the particularities of our moment in history.
Joan H. assumes that the point is to create a random, meaningless utterance, but the poem is ABOUT meaning and the production of an axiomatic utterance. (Where the critic reads it simply as the unwillingness or failure to produce such an utterance).
Houlihan defines herself as a poet and her poetry is therefore fair game. I even think we're obligated to consider her poetry in this case, because it's something that we can demonstably show that a) we know where to "locate" her work in a way she doesn't know how to locate the work she criticizes; b) we can show that even by what we presume are her own standards it's just not that good.
If poetry is like a worm for cognitive
appraisal, the prose garbage Hooly-hand
writes is the best poem of all for acting
as a generative stimulus to bang-bang
all the toroids of poets set in motion
by the pen of idiots, let us say the banal
is a woman and the marvelous is a man
with no legs, who wins the butter churning
context, a spy or a volume of uneducated
drifters on the outskirts of an unborn science
of signals.
Educate yourself on the diverse forms surrounding us. Please consider these complex occasions of forces before marching forward again with your demented essays on poetry. If you want specifics on these forces, find out yourself.
I've got no problem with simplicity. But this meaning vs. meaningless, coherence vs. its opposite debate is just too useless to continue. A poem functions by virtue of its own evidence. The poem I think is indifferent to issues of simplicity or complexity. Its an enironment unto itself. A living thing. To address it other is reductive and wastes a lot of time. Hence, Houlihan can only sputter without ever reaching any true depth--she can't so it seems accept the evidence of the poem. So she stretches it into quibbles with "meaning."
the idea of “mainstream” seems to be a concern of yours and a maintenance of historical connection. I will leave out any comments on such breakthrough artist such as as: Emily Dickinson, Julian of Norwish, Christine de Pizan, Marchel Duchamp, Raphael, the impressionist, James Joyce, Allen Ginesberg, dizzy gillespie, Rableis, and Beckett, (the list could go on to include to many that have now become mainstream). again mainstream and tradition. Are you talking the proper place for woman? how about slaves? or maybe a repressive monarchy? what tradition are you talking about and what main stream. or maybe you are talking about the mainstream of prosecution of jews..now there is a long stading tradition. and HOW AOBUT THEM HOMOSEXUALS . . . ... I think you miss the entire point.. the mainstream “narrative” does not have a great history, and yet you want to maintain it.
Joan:
This is just to say that your essay on blurbing is--how can I say this without it sounding like a blurb?--hilariously true. It should be required reading in MFA programs.
Dear Joan:
I just discovered your essay on blurbs, and must applaud you for your wonderful sense of humor. You took the words right out of my mouth -- if it was capable of producing such words.
Ok, Joan. Read your article on WDS. Here's my question: will your book cover have blurbs?
Beautiful writing. You criticise with insight rather than with mere scorn.
I just read your piece on poetry blurbs and it strikes me as "gutbusting observations that shine more than a scintilla of light on the dark lunacy of contemporary poetry." Very funny piece, even if it is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Most contemporary poetry deserves to be shot--hung up on rifle ranges for target practice. A good recycling of all that wasted paper.
Thanks, Joan. I thought I was the only one who brought home poetry books with blurbs on the back which were puzzling but clearly meant to indicate that anyone who didn't find these poems dazzling and profound was incapable of recognizing real poetry--and then reading the poems within only to find them utterly unintelligible. I think they write these things consciously eradicating any shred of meaning.
About time somebody said so.
Brava!
Dear Joan Houlihan: As always, you are a treasure. This article on blurbs is delightful, and right on target.
Essay 5: If Only We Couldn't Understand Them
Dear Joan Houlihan:
Your essay in the Boston Comment is dead-on and wonderful. "Original language in service of difficult meaning" is a wonderful definition of great poetry. Beautiful about the Franz Wright poem as well. I look forward to reading more of your criticism.
I agree wholeheartedly with your essay. We have reached the age where poetry, as handled by such people as Billy Collins and Ellen Bass is simply a glorified shopping list. It does not deal with the grand moments of life: the "opera" of being...but instead gives us a daily dose of cream of wheat.. the flat prose is like flat tires, thumping along a familiar highway with no hope of ever reaching anything but the nearest rest stop. Forgive the metaphor. Thanks for the essay.
Dear Joan: this is just a small note to say that I have read your recent essay in that Boston Comment of yours, and it is brilliant. I love it.
Well, that is my small note. God bless your writing hand.
Kudos to Joan Houlihan for debunking the would-be icon, Ellen Bass. Not even the legitimacy of Collins (who was likely a "paid spokesman") could prop up the leeward leaning "Mules of Love." Ms. Bass amassed great fortune with her pop-psy book, but did so at the expense of many hypno-suggestive people who may or may not have experienced the real trauma of childhood sexual abuse. "If you think it happened, it did" is the missive of her book, and with no greater evidence than the murk of repressed memory, she invites her readers to begin a life of retaliation and victimhood. In the same genre that gave us "primal scream therapy," and "rebirthing" baptisms, Ms. Bass has attained a pseudo-celebrity status that rivals the Oprhaesque stature of those who tout "inner child" healing as so! me sort of new religion. Shame on her to use this platform as an attempt to launch herself as a "serious" poet. One can only hope that she ends in the same waste bin as Jewel, Ally Sheedy, Leonard Nimoy, Paul McCartney, (and even Russell Crowe), who thought notoriety license to wax poetic. May many more dead branches be lopped by your axe, Ms. Houlihan. Thanks for having The Courage To Squeal.
Ms. Houlihan:
How refreshing! An incisive critique of the ss (Sorry State) of
"contempampo"
which is neither simple-minded nor shallow: i.e. does not act as if
Language Poetry is new (or matters) or ideology (read:PC) is The
Answer. Your lucid piece recognizes how complex the art of poetry can
be, should be, its many depths beneath its shifting surfaces, like three
bodies skating at once a clean line across hard ice. Congratulations.
Most salutary.
I wish you well with your work.
And, where can I get the first 4 parts?
I just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your commentary on Contemporary Poetry and the debate between Clear and Obscure poems. I have always been on the side of Clarity because I had read many poems that I felt were made difficult for the sake of difficulty---kind of along the lines of 'no pain no gain' and all that. But you made a very convincing case that too often, very accessible poems really have nothing accessible at all. I too have enjoyed Billy Collins' work but felt that his success was because of his comedic, witty flair. I have attended his readings and they have been 'crowd pleasers.' You made some very salient points when you analyzed Ellen Bass' recent book. It was refreshing to see because I read too many reviews that are just pump pieces and I find it discouraging.
I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your
five-part essay about the state of published poetry
today. Actually I think that my subject line is
misleading. There are people out there writing good,
exciting, innovative poems but very few outlets are
deeming them worthy of publishing.
I agreed with almost everything you had to say in your
essays (and that rarely happens for me). Thank you for
pointing out that most poetry published today is not
only below par, but not worth wasting one's time on.
This is such as shame as the glutting of the
marketplace with such bad poems makes the general
reader think that all poets are bad and that there is
nothing of any quality being written (far from true).
Keep up the good work! And please keep up the close
analysis of what some publications consider good
poetry. I don't think many critics today have the
courage to take a poem deemed good by other
critics/publishers etc. and to closely analyze it
thereby showing the reader that no, this is not a good
piece of writing.
Looking forward to more great criticism from you.
I enjoyed your brave and constructive articles thoroughly. I laughed a lot too. I hope it doesn't cost you too many cocktail party invitations.
Dear Joan Houlihan--
Just wanted to let you know how much I admired your series of essays on
poetry. As it happens, I am just finishing up a piece along similar
lines on
the topic of bluff the art world; I only hope that my essay, when it
comes
out, proves as provocative and perceptive.
Thank you for your poetry #5 essay. It captures everything that bothers me about so much contemporary poetry.
I'm about to go on and read the first four.
Just to say how much I enjoyed your essay. The choice of the Wright
poem to
close was masterful---a fine example of what a poem ought to do. Thank
you.
Essay 4: The Best I Can Do This Year
Bravo, bravo and thank you thank, you for your fine article punching the lights out of the shredded prose pushers and that fiendish "Best..." series. And your rebuttal was a companssionate but clean coup de grace.
My name is Doug Anderson I am a poet and I edit a lit rag here in Seattle called "klang" (on the web at klang.bizland.com). I always approach the "Best.." series hoping to read something that will capture the pathos and ingenuity of American life. I look to poetry as a medium that conveys truth in beautiful, free, strange ways; I'm always hoping to be floored or seduced when I read it. But I always finish those anthologies with the disappointment and incredulity that you express so well.
Dear Joan Houlihan,
I could not agree with you more, or more sadly, in your lament over
"B... Poems of". Mightn't the problem begin with the magazines, which
are
the pawnshops where an editor has to find the 'goods' desperately sought
and which have been gathering points of mediocre work for many decades.
Still, I suppose the old idea may be true -- was it Pound's? -- that the
miry swamp is necessary to the growth of an occasional orchid. What's
needed is some intermediate searching and assessing, before the
candidates
hit the desk of a Hass. How's that to be contrived in a 'democracy of
letters'? Regional collections of "poems worth considering"? Where
would
the market be?
Anyway, thanks for saying what is so.
Thank you for articulating so well what so many of us think. Bravo!
You made my day, Joan Houlihan. I'm beaming your piece to every poet I
know, except the ones who have already beamed it to me!
Yuk-Yukalicious writing! Thanks for having the courage to say what you
did.
Dear Ms. Houlihan:
I just read your essay on the Best American Poetry series and couldn't agree more. (I'm sure you've been inundated with readers saying the same thing.) I have a past issue that I've been trying to force myself to wade through for months. Upon finishing your essay, I've decided to give it up.
I know there was at least one year that I liked the anthology, perhaps due to the guest editor, but since then I've never enjoyed it. I'm glad to hear the fault doesn't lie with me this time around!
Brilliant piece on the annual poetaster series.
Thank you.
re: Part IV
Good show Joan;
Please continue to rattle the bars.
Joan,
Now, I don't feel so bad about opening up a journal or collection and wincing.
Glad someone's saying it.
Ms. Houlihan,
Thank you for the insightful review of "The Best of American Poetry
2001".
I much appreciated your view that, absent some standard, we have no
'best'.
(I was sorry that you, or I, or for that matter, poor Mr. Haas, had to
be
exposed to the excerpts from the volume contained in your article. I can
only imagine the anguish suffered by anyone who had to read mounds of
poetry
worse than this.)
You did a nice job pointing out the fallcies of Mr. Lehmans'
assumptions.
In fact, perhaps the ONLY thing worse than the hijacking of poetry by a
self-appointed literati is the 'dumbing down' of poetry to include
everything. I don't know if this is dictated by post-structuralist
analysis
or simply the desire to 'grow the poetry biz', as you point out with
delightful cynicism.
I appreciate so much that you've exposed contemporary poetry's secret again. I think a whistle should be blown everyday until this arrogant breed addresses an audience other than itself.
bravo! where did you learn how to do this?
Thankyouthankyouthankyou
(Re the Best American Poetry)
I thought it was just me
Ms. Houlihan,
Thank you so much for your review of this year's Best American Poetry. I buy this series sporadically and this year, when I heard that Hass had edited it, I promptly ordered it. To my dismay!
My test of a "best" poem is: do I feel compelled to read it aloud to someone? There are very few of those in this volume.
I do have to add, though, that I never expect to find that even a third of the poems would go in my own "best" list--de gustibus and all that--and that previous volumes have been pretty satisfying (Simic, Ammons, Rich's) overall.
I think Hass was trying to flatter every camp, that politics of one kind or another was the ruling factor in his choices.
I appreciate your bravely speaking up in an arena where making nice-nice seems to be the rule.
Thanks for the review on Best American Poetry 2001. I laughed aloud
while my spirit sank. Then I read you aloud, feeling, I guess, that
your own essay had rhythm and style and merit that outweighed almost
everything called poetry I've read recently.
Thanks. I teach poetry, not creative writing but
intro to and Modern British Poetry at the University of Toledo. I came
across your essay on the Arts and Letters Daily web site that I use to
get
into the NY TIMES. Thanks for saying some wonderful commonsense things,
for
standing up for some commonsense values that don't seem very common any
more. I admire anyone who can say clearly what you said without sounding
like a curmudgeon.
Your essays are an oasis in the desert of contemporary poetry.
Joan,
Just read "The Best I Can Do This Year" at Sol. I hadn't laughed in a couple of weeks. Now I have, thanks to you. KUTGW*
[*Web initialism for Keep Up The Good Work]
Dear Ms. Houlihan:
David Lehman's greatest failure is in packaging
and labeling.
If he were to call them "Best American Joke
Poetry" anthologies and get them shelved in
the humor section, they would sell like hotcakes.
You're the best, most incisive poetry critic
in the country.
Keep up the good work!
Dear Joan, Your review was a breath of fresh air. Thank you for making this old poetry lover's otherwise dull morning. A few more like you and the emperors of the poetry establishment may wake up and admit that they have no clothes. Keep on keeping on.
Excellent review of Best Poetry and of the all too obvious sad state of
affairs it illustrates...
Dear Joan,
Thank you for being so intelligent! I love you! I wanted to tell you I've linked to your article "incoherent," which I loved, through my Bernstein page, at literaryhistory.com.
Essay 3: The Argument for Silence
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
What a refreshingly blunt and accurate article – just when I had begun to suspect that no one in a serious critical position was willing to don their reading glasses. The emperors/esses – and they are legion – have been lacking clothes for some time by my lights. …
No wonder poetry continues its slide into obscurity, unmourned by a broader public, except in the arenas of oral tradition where academic and publication credits are irrelevant, and the ‘net where the riot of free speech still allows uncensored (and censorship is what publications practice) brilliance and originality to flash to the surface of the ocean of garbage.
Squeeze my heart like fruit; make it bleed, sing, scream; rape its pretensions, trammel it in the mud or tether it to a solar wind. Just don’t let it desiccate safely in arid, climate-controlled verse of even-tempered, risk-averse poets and the editors complicit in their ruination.
Ms. Houlihan,
I haven't read such a beautiful series of academic ass-kicking in a long
long time. I know a lot of us who mourn the depreciation of genuine
poetic stock and the PBS-ification of all things creative, but never
have I seen or heard the arguments so well-planned, well-crafted, and
just laugh out loud funny. Kudos on the columns and thanks for giving
me a handful of belly laughs.
Another great article at Boston Comment. I almost laughed out loud at
your
comments vis a vis Oliver -- how right on.
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
Thanks for your highly invigorating article on contemporary American poets: You are so right it hurts.
Sincerely,
Great essay on the mass-production of poetry. Many poets these days seem to
be pumping out close to a book a year! (One thinks of W.S. Merwin and
others.) They are not doing poetry or themselves much justice in this way.
I am glad you have spoken out--and spoken well--on this issue.
thanks for actually having the ovaries to say something some of us have felt for a long time now.
As a minimally-published poet, i wondered if sour grapes weren't the cause for my indigestion after reading the latest book by the over-published poet. i'll lay off the Zantac now i know i'm not the only one who feels this way!
Hi, Joan--
Just read your latest Boston Comment arguing for silence...
tough-minded, clear
and very refreshing. Amazing how speaking the truth, even in prose,
carries with it the
ring of poetry.
Inspired. Your essay had all the compression and intensity not found in
Levine, Tate, and Oliver. But the list could be easily lengthened by
thumbing through random college catalogs. Here in Buffalo, for
example, we
have Creeley and Irving Feldman still writing away though their muses
have
been on Social Security for years.
Please let me know where I can find some of your other essays.
Dear Ms. Houlihan:
I've just read your third Web del Sol essay. Marvelous. Brilliant. You've done it again. Many thanks.
Amen; the same goes for musicians who crank out a CD every 14 months to
satiate corporate greed.
it has been spoken! Thank you for naming it.
Dear Joan Houlihan --
Just yesterday I came across your Essay III on the Arts & Letters Daily site and immediately sent it off to four thinking people -- all poetry lovers, two of them academicians -- under the subject title above (“About time somebody said this.”) In other words, with my wholehearted endorsement.
These are things that need to be said, and I have been saying them, but not in print, for some time. Thanks to you, I don't feel quite so isolate anymore…
Your piece about the rapid deterioration of poetry was excellent. A
welcome,
refreshing slap in the face. Hope it is heeded--although I doubt it as
long
as Maya Angelou roams the land.
I wrote something similar (ahem) in Poetry Canada Review years back,
calling
for a moratorium on the words
cat moon mountain love body bread blood desire photograph
which were cluttering up 90% of Canadian poems at the time. Of course,
everyone called me a bitch and kept on writing crap.
I have emailed your piece to some sympathetic fellow Canuck scribes.
Will be
on the lookout for more of your writing.
Joan H.:
Once again you're bravely on the money with your essay in Web Del Sol.
Hello Joan.
I write simply to say that I enjoyed your article on the Peter Principle
in
modern poetry. Couldn't agree more! What about writing one on the Peter
Principle in modern art? Now, there's a real need!
Thanks so much.
They do need sabbaticals from poetry! Thanks for another inspiring and
truth-naming piece,
Joan.
Ms. Houlihan,
Your series of essays ("How Contemporary American Poets Are Denaturing the Poem")
is right on the mark, and, in the relatively small world of poetry,
an exceptional and courageous venture. What you're doing reminds me of some of the
insights of Thomas Disch in his 1995 book The Castle of Indolence: On
Poetry, Poets, and Poetasters— as essay collection that I'm confident you're aware of.
I appreciate your intelligence and straightforwardness.
Joan--
Just came across your work via Arts & Letters Daily. Read the essay
included there, then went back and read the other two. Enjoyed them
all. How refreshing it is to read poetry criticism that is this clear,
crisp, and pungent.
kudos! all hail! bravo bravo bravo for the newest "boston comment."
oh, it hits the spot. joan, you have done us all a great service with
this one, and you will almost certainly get nasty emails from the
partisans about the terrible crime you have committed against american
poetry. but you have committed no crime-- you have done what needs
doing.
if robert bly were the robert bly of 40 years ago, he'd be publishing
you in "the sixties"! marvelous.
keep up the good work.
Joan,
Re: The most recent Boston Comment. Excellent, incisive commentary. I
was
appalled by a recent issue of The Kenyon Review, for many of the same
reasons you cite in your article. And from a personal standpoint, I
know
that judicious use of the sabbatical only produces better poetry in the
end.
Have been reading your Boston Comments series...
At last...someone who will say the emperor has no clothes.
Is web del sol the only place to find your work?
Kudos..The "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" reference made me laugh out loud.
You're funny & incisive. And not mean-spirited; you obviously love good
poetry, but you're worn out reading all the crap.
Do you have a book of essays? Poetry? Let me know so I can place an
order.
This is the best thing I have read on the state of contemporary
poetry. THANK YOU! I read thousands of submissions and it is so
depressing
to see dull and boring teachers in dull and boring programs producing
more
dull and boring writers. Thanks for pointing at the emperor and telling
the
truth.
Dear Joan: I just read part II of your essay on Language Poetry and am
delighted to finally find someone who can say something that is
meaningful
(already that's two strikes against you?!) No, really I loved your
reasoning, your explanations, your examples and your solid good sense.
It
was a pleasure to find someone as articulate as you are PLUS with a
sense of
humor to boot. Is your Part I still on the WEB because I'd like to read
it
as well.
Keep doing what you're doing.
I couldn't agree with you more. I guess it's a lot like the "emperor's new clothes". No one wants to speak up about this dreadful assault on literature for fear of seeming ingorant, or (worse yet) overly capitalistic and Western. Thanks for having the courage to speak freely. I hope your insightful, well-researched, coherent article will make a difference.
Thank you! That was a lovely skewering of this crap--sorry--I'm not as
elegantly dispassionate as you are. This stuff makes me furious--such
arrogance, such "we happy few" condescension! I want my poets
passionate, enthralled, rapturous, transcendant--and full of duende.
These withered cerebralists are appalling.
I tend to think it (language poetry) is one of the reasons poetry has been flushed down the toilet by the mainstream. I do not write for the mainstream but, I certainly would like to believe that at least some of my stuff is coherent enough for 'regular folk' to get the gist of. And actually I think that poetry should have a purpose, the purpose being to help people think, preferably independent thoughts. I'm going to try and start a movement I'm calling 'Commonism'. *That with the Post Modern Realism and the 'Project'. The purpose is to try to revitalize an interest in poetry in the mainstream. Good writing. I enjoyed the read.
Bravo! I agree completely with your assessment of these no-talent hacks. They, like other proponents of arcane literary theories that bugger common sense, need to be removed by their vegetative roots. Raus mit!
Ms. Houlihan,
Ten years ago, as a workshop student, I shared your opinions of the
Language Writers. Since then I've reconsidered that position. I've no
real interest in trying to argue you toward my new understanding of
their work, but I offer some of the texts that changed my views, just
for the hellofit:
Susan Howe
Charles Bernstein
Bob Perelman
Bruce Andrews
Joan Retallack
Nathaniel Mackey
I think you'll find that some stereotypes about Language
Writers--that they are humorless and talentless academic hacks, for
example--are quite unjust and are based in a limited reading of their
work. Bernstein, for example, can be quite funny. Howe, I would
argue, is very talented, as can be seen in the "Articulation of Sound
Forms in Time" section of Singularities. Everything by Mackey is
worth reading--I think he's brilliant, despite a tendency to come
over as an asshole in person.
Also keep in mind that the lines between the Langpo and Workpo camps
are blurry these days. Perelman spent a year or more teaching at the
Iowa Workshop at the invitation of Jorie Graham (whose own work is
very Langpoety, esp after The End of Beauty). And past and current
Workpoets of Iowa, like James Tate and Dean Young, are very close in
interests and poetic production to many of the Language Writers in
the list above.
No matter what you hear, there is always meaning in a Language
Poem--just as Stein's Tender Buttons are full of meaning. That's part
of the jokiness of some Langpoet oddities. The only thing you don't
really get is the prose-narrative-in-lines effect; even so, some of
the arch-Langpoets like Silliman will give you the odd bit of prose
when in the mood.
I hope those few points give you incentive to try these folks
again--a lot of it is crap, but then again, so is a lot of the other
stuff.
I liked your web del sol article and the poems linked to it. Keep the
banners
of coherence flying.
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
I enjoyed reading your essay (parts 1 and 2) on this subject--it's
something
that has needed to be addressed for a while. I think your examples in
part 1
are very persuasive; when I read Bly's 1999 Best American Poetry, I was
mystified and a bit frustrated, wondering the same thing: why so many
flat,
essentially boring pieces? Was Bly picking poets he respected for their
overall body of work, without worrying or looking closely at these
really
poor individual pieces? Thanks for taking him to task.
I think it's contemporary poets' misuse of Williams--and not Williams'
himself--that has turned his legitimate epigrams into something they are
not. "This is Just to Say" seems, to me, to suggest its raison-d'etre in
its
title: a short playful note between busy husband and wife. Its sexual
suggestiveness goes both ways, too: towards kidding (ie, you're so sweet
and
cold, my plum) and towards a serious version of this (ie I am slowly
realizing how sweetly cold you are). But I agree it's not representative
of
the full extent of what poetry can do. It's being used as a touchstone
for
flat writing. There is no better proof that such writers are poor
readers.
Yet it's hard to make any poem, even great ones, into a touchstone for
poetry. Touchstones have an artificially limiting effect. To me, this is
where the Victorian-era writers went wrong: their over-confidence in
what
poetry had to do to "be" poetry resulted in pieces full of literary
technique but ultimately banal verse. You can't label and reproduce the
poetry in poetry. Literary terms try to explain why a poem works, but we
know that with the best poems, the explanations proliferate beyond
usefulness. The least we can do, though, is point out poems that don't
rise
to the level of poetry at all--which you do very persuasively.
"The machinery of publication must have vigilant and knowledgeable
editors,
unafraid to publish excellent, unknown poets or to reject inferior poems
from established poets‹even their friends." I agree.
Language poetry is various experimental ways of writing whose
practitioners
try to convince the rest of the writers that experimentation is the only
place to be at. To me, experimental poetry is always a marginal thing:
certain personalities are drawn to it by an irresistible desire to do
something no one else is doing and which they themselves often don't
truly
understand (you've read their manifestos, you know how their praxis
doesn't
essentially match up--essentially fails--their theories).
Other personalities pick up these usually failed, misunderstood, and
as-yet-meaningless experiments and turn their impulses and random
discoveries into more polished, reader-friendly, meaningful work. Still
other personalities imitate these literary explorers. Soon you have a
status
quo, a recognizable style.
Experimentation has had such a history of being snubbed, ignored,
attacked,
and then vindicated years later that the experimenters are in effect
trying
to be snubbed, vindicated and celebrated all at the same time. Readers
are
letting their consciousness of this historical process get in the way of
their own direct response to a poem--it doesn't help that the publishing
and
scholarship are behind it. In effect, no one wants to be on the wrong
side
of history, laughing ignorantly at failed experimenters who may be the
eventual winners. This is where courage is necessary. You have courage.
Wow. And I thought I had brass balls. Just don't forget that asbestos
trenchcoat and you'll be fine.
Seriously, be well, keep writing,
Your two-part essay on contemporary American poetry astonished and horrified me. I had no idea that poetry, as well as prose, had succumbed to the enemies of structure. I encountered the term "pre-post-structuralist" recently in a book review, used by an Old Leftist evaluating the work of a New Leftist. What does it mean? Oops! How shallow of me to insist on "meaning." I am proudly a red diaper baby, but I don't understand the Marxian academic mind.
Thank goodness for non- "literary' fiction, since market-oriented writers must tell coherent tales.
Thank you very much for the illuminating articles.
Dear Joan,
Democratising poetry? Language poetry? isn't it the most
undemocratic, white middle-class art form of them all (along with
installation art etc) - It alienates the public, and can only be
appriciated (if this is possible and it is not just intellectial
postering) by a select few intellectuals - who do not live in the real
world, but the ivy covered hall of universities. Surely, the most
democratic, classless poem is one that can be understood and appriciated
by all.
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
Brava, Ms. Houlihan! You have been added to my short list for the Emperor Has No Clothes award. Those of us from the New Criticism generation (UC Berkeley, 1960) greatly appreciate your articles. There are some good arguments that the whole shoddy business stems from the intellectual corruption of French collaborators explaining in postwar times that "yes I wrote that (e.g., anti-semitic barbarity), but that's not what I really meant."
I expect to see your articles in the NYRB soon.
Joan:
Thank you.
I laughed out loud at your fine constructive destruction of the Language
Poetic pretense.
I read with joy your wonderful essay on Language Poetry. This past summer
I went to a writer's conferences (yes, I am one of those), and was
totally overwhelmed by the language poets. I read Brenda Hillman and Dean
Young to "suit up" for the occasion. Nothing could have been worse than
to be in a room with people who "get" one another's language poetry. At
the end of the second day I said aloud, "but what in the hell does it
mean?" Of course, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. It took me a
while to get onto Hillman's poem, "A Geology" and to read and reread
until I could see the two comparisons she was making, but what I kept
asking myself was, where is the enjoyment in reading?
I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your article on
Language Poetry in Web del Sol online and how refreshing it is to
hear someone speak frankly about the emperor's new clothes.
Your astute criticism shows clearly how little, truly, is going on in
such work, and how important it is for a poem to mean, as well as
be. Thanks, too, for the reminder of what a wonderful poem "Dolor"
is. The previous article on "the prosing of poetry" also hit home. I
look forward to future articles.
I also enjoyed your poems in the mini-chapbook, particularly
"Hydrangeas."
Joan: I really enjoyed the gadfly attitude you've taken in your essays
excoriating the two most popular trends in contemporary American
poetry: lineated prose, and language poetry. Perhaps you'll take on
the snobbish New Formalism sometime. I believe you were writing in the
spirit of moving things forward as much as pointing out that the emperor
is indeed naked. That feels good to one who recently went through grad
school and had to wipe the ass of critical theory (& there was a lot of
shit there).
I do, however, feel that you slighted both modes by not offering
alternatives to mitigate the overwhelming rejection of the styles.
There are poems in each of these genres that "work," that use the form
honestly. Off the top of my head Robert Bly, Thomas Lux, and Jane
Hirshfield come to mind as poets who write conversationally but whose
lines are justified. The language poets, because of their posturing,
are harder to defend, but a good part of your argument was based on the
disconnection between the words and the sense of the words. I can't
defend that as either a political or aesthetic sense, but it seems to me
that the poetry of C.D. Wright, for instance, would make a good case for
taking language to the limit of sensible connectedness. Hers is a poetry
that bears a surface resemblance to language poetry, yet it is grounded
in emotional logic, and a physical world. (If I knew Ann Lauterbach's
poetry better, I might use her as well.) Susan Howe and Michael Palmer,
who are linked stylistically to the language movement, have no political
axes to grind; theirs is a difficult, sometimes frustrating, but honest
means to an artistic end. My confusion in confronting their work has
led to my examining the spaces between words in a way that couldn't be
done otherwise. At least their work bears discussion, if not
acceptance.
My point is that the issue with language and sense is more complicated,
less dichotomous than either you or the language poets admit. I know
their Program is somewhat repellant, but your discussion would gather
more strength were it to consider the subtleties of poetry that "pushes
the envelope." There is work out there (Conjunctions highlights it)
that has moved poetic expression forward. I'd just love someone to
write about it sometime.
I realize I've spent this note talking about the issue of "language" and
have ignored the other argument, that of prose disguised as poetry. I
don't hold as strong opinions about that, however much I agree with the
points raised in your essay. But, as I say, there are always more than
two sides, and I spend a lot of time, in the classroom and among
friends, trying to show people that you do nothing justice by thinking
in either-or terms.
That said, I want to thank you for your articulate expression of
strongly held and openly voiced opinions. Such public forums for
argument are absolutely essential for keeping one's thoughts kinetic.
We are, after all, mostly water.
Brava. I enjoyed your essay on the L=A=Netc poets and agree that
there's a lot of career-promoting theory going on in their artifacts,
which are still productions and are also consumed (by readers with
stronger stomachs than mine). Perhaps it's a symptom of my own sleepy
view, but I can't imagine such poems providing any sustenance for the
writers' life. I've often wondered at the irony: "traditional" poems
usually owe their genesis to some appetite or necessity for the poem,
some very private weighing of words, but the L=Aetc poems seem born only
to be published and consumed. Their most natural environment may be the
world of commerce.
I appreciate the sound of your protest against the reification and
gollygee frequently aimed at this stuff.
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
I read both of your essays in WebDelSol, and I think the poetry community has found its prophet (and perhaps also its unafraid sage).
Thank you so much for taking the time to analyze and define this thing that everyone else feels too uncomfortable (or too indiscriminate) to notice. Thanks especially forno doubt braving the repercussions of your two very well defined criticisms of current poetry. I show the essays to every engaging writer/friend of mine whom I think is ready to read them.
Essay 1: On the Prosing of Poetry
Bravo, Joan!
Joan, I have just read your article, "On the Prosing
of Poetry," from The Boston Comment, on
Web del Sol. The introductory paragraph is the best justification
for the study of poetry I have ever
read. I am recommending it, as well as the entire
article, to the high school English teachers I
know.
As for the argument you posit, THANK YOU, THANK YOU,
THANK YOU.
Joan, I enjoyed your piece in Boston Comment very
much. We must speak out about the disrepair that
characterizes much of American poetry today. When even
skilled poets like Donald Hall lapse into the malaise
of unpoetic prose and call it poetry, the situation is
indeed alarming.
I want to thank you for "On The Prosing of Poetry." I just finished
reading
that and it just completely lays out a lot of points in an argument I've
been
having over poetry with some acquaintances. It really just spelled out a
frustration I've been having with poetry in a wonderful manner. Also, I
appreciate that it was more than just a rant. Anyone can complain, but
it
takes a person with something to say to suggest a remedy.
Joan,
I found this and almost died of shock. What a wonderful column. And here
I was thinking I just couldn't appreciate things the way an educated
person would. Let's hope prose disguised as poetry is just a
developmental stage.
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
Thank you! You provided hours of amusement as I read
your wry, acerbic, and insightful commentary on the
state of modern poetry.
Dear Joan:
Congratulations on a clear and penetrating article. We who also "fight
the
good fight" certainly applaud your tilting at these windmills.
Dear Ms. Houlihan:
At any rate, I enjoyed the article and I know there are many others who
have enjoyed it too. You may be happy to hear that the URL is
circulating.
Dear Joan,
Ms. Houlihan,
Thank you for writing this thoughtful and straightforward article. I hope it will have some influence, but I fear that too many have invested too much in the current trend of prose-poetry to give it its due consideration. Perhaps your piece will be a touchstone for future critics seeking to understand how banality triumphed in the late 20th c.
Still, you have in a quiet way taken a "hammer to the block of plaster" (to twist a phrase from Nabokov)that is the orthodoxy of poetics today.
Ms Houlihan:
May I have your permission to link to this article from my 'John Keats'
website? I think most of the visitors to my site would enjoy reading
it, perhaps as much as I did.
A superb essay. Your example at the end confirmed the "Marianne Moore
test" for me. A pity the others really didn't, something that makes one
wonder why they were among the "best."
Enjoyed your article tremendously, and will forward the URL to my poetry
reading group!
Dear Joan,
Recently I tried to read some Donald Hall and felt very confused.
Why
was this stuff labeled poetry? Even as prose, it bored me.
You have thoughtfully articulated the concerns of many readers who
encounter tedious prose chunks disguised as poetry. Well done!
Bravo! Here I thought I was the only Alice in Wonderland!
Good show! I agree 100%. (I am a poet of sorts, with 40 published poems in various journals, and a retired English professor.) Again and again I look at a contemporary "poem" and ask myself, "Why am I expected to read this? What will it do for me?" I don't give a damn about the author's grandmother--unless and if he makes her interesting to me through the force of his language--which he very seldom does. My own gripe might be added to the litany: there's almost no such thing anymore as a distinctive style. Take an issue of almost any contemporary journal and juggle the names and titles in a random fashion, and it usually would make no difference whatever. Any poem could have been written by anybody. They're all in the flat, grey, declarative chopped prose that seems to reign everywhere. Who needs this?
Thanks, Joan. Your article is good news for poetry, and it makes me
feel
more hopeful than I've felt in many a morning.
Dear Ms Houlihan:
Super article on Best American Poetry. Congrats.
Thank you for a gutsy, outspoken essay examining what poetry is today,
in our country. (Or, conversely, is not.) I agree that even the best,
or most published, American poets at times seem to produce works that do
not aspire to the heights of what poetry can be. I have heard that,
when asked, Henry Taylor said, "It's a poem if you say it is." While I
am all for experimentation with form, I think this can also be a copout
for the writer that does not want to work hard enough to write a real
poem, who simply stops at some point in the rough draft process, and
sends it off to the publisher.
And as for the publisher, is there a parallel here between the
publication of works by bestselling authors, for example Steven King,
and the publication of works by known poets? King has written some
worthy novels and short stories, but often it appears his new works are
printed solely on the basis of past sales. If a poet of Donald Hall's
calibre can publish lackluster work, is is also due to his established
popularity? In other words, is it the result of publishing houses
placing importance on the bottom dollar, rather than on quality?
I looked at the poems you have online, which is risky, after your
comments. To my pleasure, I found them to be wonderful, to be POEMS. I
especially love the line about the old woman, in Martiarch, "High and
flimsy as iris, nodding/in afternoon. . . ." To Celebrate the Empty
Tomb, and Stark, North of Gainsboro are also striking.
Thanks again for a brave, pertinent article.
Ms. Houlihan,
Dear Ms. Houlihan,
Dear Joan,
Dear Joan
I realize you must be getting a good quantity of mail regarding this
essay, so I will keep it short. Thank you. This argument never dies on
the various fora I frequent (including WDS's Writers Block) and I tire
of
making these arguments. Now I can just point to your article.
Wonderful editorial. You have my full agreement, though I think we're
wallowing in the minority.
Thanks for the read.
Just finished reading your web del sol attack on formless, voiceless,
anecdotal poetry, & I agree wholeheartedly with your critique of Bly &
his
choices. The Laux poem is exceptional in that context, and she has
written a
couple of pretty good collections of poems.
She, also, however, favors the autobiographical, anecdotal poem, as
detailed
in her collaboration with Kim Addonizio, whom you rightly castigate, on
the
Norton Poet's Companion. You might like to check out my review of it,
"Workshopism," in Notre Dame Review 8 (Summer 1999), 147-50.
Maybe if enough of us who value the traditional aspects of poetry keep
sniping at the hegemony of boring free verse, and if enough talented
poets
write what you and I would agree are real poems, the poetry in future
"bests"
& the literary magazines will improve.
You also might want to check out The Ledge, a poetry magazine I coedit,
for
which, as we say, "excellence is our only criterion" and into which we
put no
shredded prose, as Edmund Wilson called formless free verse.
Thanks for your essay, & keep up the good work.
Joan.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having eyes and ears. I really
thought I
was going quite mad, sitting here in Jersey, listening to trash being
touted
as poetry. Most contemporary books of poetry I pick up at Barnes &
Noble
evidence the same trend. I am a proponent of SLAM poetry (it is an
arena
where I have heard some of the finest) and of the craft of poetry.
Complete
with metaphors, similes, rhythm, and something that makes me remember
what I
came here to do....... not writing something in a notebook and then two
minutes later, getting up and reading it (because they felt it, they
really
did - if I hear one more woman compare her vagina to a flower - - ) as a
poem?
you have done a good thing and I am 100% behind you. In Jersey, we have
The
Paterson Literary Review which is filled with narrative prose. I think
there
were only three actual poems in the entire hefty publication...... These
groups are sealed against "real" poetry. Its very sad. The poetic
community
has turned into an incestuous self-congratulatory community of silent
dead
polite poetry readings. Clap-clap-clap. That was nice. I never want
to
hear that my poetry was "nice." I want the listener to be aware that
something profound has just happened. Silence would be better than
"nice."
The online publication that you are writing for is the best I have seen.
They seem to have enough testosterone to tell the emperor he has no
clothes.
Your article was both timely and fantastic. Hoorahs to you! Someone
who has
finally dared to say, "The Emperor is naked!!!"
Joan,
I read your "Boston Comment" on webdelsol. You're preaching to this
choirboy. I read '99 last fall and my comment was, "Slim pickings." I
felt
that Bly was perhaps the series' worst editor.
If you develop this further, I'd make a distinction that sets prose
fiction
aside: a short story or novel, written in prose, need not be in
"everyday
language." And good fiction is a "vehicle of expression" often quite
"worthy
of...significant subject matter."
I liked particularly your comment on poetry being "remembered...in a
physical
way, in the body's deep response to sound, rhythm, and imagery."
There's
nothing "almost" about it. When it's good, it's close to dance.
You must know Stevens's term, "fictive music." Of the many discriptions
of
poetry, that one most frequently charms my imagination.
Good essay. Necessary.
This piece was outstanding. I am a literate person (no M.F.A.,
though) who loves good poetry and tries to write it. I have long
sensed that the emperor is indeed unclothed when it comes to a lot
of
what gets printed in the most elite outlets and elsewhere. The
publication of Po-mo junk without feeling, engaging intellect, or
just
appealing language ensures that poetry remains on the margins of
thought and action in our greater culture and society while editors
and critics keep themselves on the throne.
Dear Joan, Sincerest thanks for articulating something that has been
niggling at me for some time. I write prose and my best work is embued
with elements of poetry and in those magical instances, my work is
brought to a higher standard. It is like the thread of gold in the huge
pile of ore. This relationship is not reciprocal; prose never
strengthens poetry. To believe otherwise, is a victory for those intent
on "dumbing down" all art forms.
Nicholas Allen Harp
hans beihl
David Starkey
Jeanetta L. Calhoun
Dan Moore
Michael Orth
Bill Knott
Henry Gould
Chris Lott
Henry Gould
Bill Knott
Rebecca Wolff, Editor
Fence
Dale Smith, Editor
Skanky Possum
Brian Stefans
Ron Silliman
a blogger
another blog
Who else?
Glenn Ingersoll
Nick LoLordo
Rebecca Wolff, Editor,
Fence
Charles Ebersole
Meng
Jonathan Mayhew
Shanna Compton
Chris Murray
Charles Ebersole
Jim Berhle
Kasey
Kent Johnson
Blogger
Jonathan Mayhew
Dale Smith
Skanky Possum
Dale Smith
D. Bouchard
Ian Wilson
Dale Smith
Jonathan Mayhew
Josh (Corey?)
bon teriyaki
Dale Smith
Dale Smith
kari edwards
Essay 6: The Sound of One Wing Flapping
Anthony Lombardy
Kevin Tsai
Lillian Kennedy
Sincerely,
a reader in Baltimore
Susan Balee
Alice Schertle
Richard Carter
Yours truly,
David Blair
Adrianne Marcus
Ilya Kaminsky
Ken Ashworth
Stan Sanvel Rubin
thanks again,
barbara matteau
Sincerely,
Aylin An
Kathleen Flenniken
Sincerely,
Mark Goldblatt
Tad Richards
Leonard Sanazaro
Keep up the good work
and best,
Doug Anderson
Michael Magie
Deborah Tobola
On-damn-ward!
Clarinda Harriss
Adrian C. Louis
Thanks for the essay,
Lisa Beyer
J. Patrick Lewis
Best
Doug Anderson
Seattle
jeremy
Thanks Again,
Brad Gregory
Sincerely,
Jack M. Dashiell
Larry Hathaway
John Askins
Best,
Athena Kildegaard
Marcia Brown
Ben Lindsay
Best,
Paul Jaminet
Don Cunningham
Jared Carter
Marty Egan
clifton Park, NY
Best regards,
Matt Nesvisky
Jan Pridmore
Namaste
Parris Garnier
Mike Mellor
Regards,
Jeffery L. Bahr
Vassilis Zambaras
Enjoyed,
Alicia Stallings
keep it up
jeanetta l. calhoun
Robert Sward
Kindest regards,
Katharine Daly
Jared Carter
Cordially,
Gregg Dippold
J. Scott Bond
Cordially,
Frank Fagan
Kathy Shaidle
Don Cunningham
Mandy Nelson
Christchurch,
New Zealand
Kelly Cherry
Bob Fauteux
Richard McLeese
Cooper S. Renner
Best wishes,
Seth Abramson
Randy Lusk
Respectfully,
Larry Gaffney
Best,
Ellen Dudley
Ruth Daigon
Robin, San Lorenzo, CA
Ann Medlock
Thanks,
Blair Allen
David Schwankle
The Birth-mark
Singularities
A Poetics
Marginalization of Poetry
Ten to One
I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up (or, Social Romanticism)
How to Do Things With Words
Discrepant Engagement
Strick
Whatsaid Serif
J. P. Craig
Frank Pool
Austin, Texas
Sincerely,
Derek Webster
RJ McCaffery
Carol Anne Sundahl
Thank you for that most excellent article!
I have always disliked language poetry, and it practitioners. I am
often astounded at their assumptions, and their inability to see the
obvious contradictions that they make when trying to justify their
'poetry.' The most glaringly obvious flaw in their reasoning is calling
poetry 'part of the capitalist system' etc., etc., - didn't poetry exist
well before there was any such notion of capitalism? I am a New
Zealander - and the Maori people have a strong poetic tradition, one
that is wholly oral - they are beautiful, cohrerant, lyrical narratives
of epic journeys and heros, not unlike those of the ancient greeks.
These existed long before European collonialisation. Similar examples
can be found in virtually every society on Earth; a common human trait
then, certainly not just a western concept or practice.
William Robertson,
Christschurch,
New Zealand
Today, purely by chance, I found and was surprised and delighted by your
two essays on "The Denaturing of the Poem". I read the second one (on
Language Poetry) first, lured in by a squib in "Arts and Letters Daily",
and was enchanted. Language Poetry, as described both in your words and
those of the poets themselves, is clearly intellectually bankrupt, and I
think your conclusion hit the nail on the head.
Sincerely,
Will Duquette
Best of luck,
John Argue
Bravo.
RB Shea
Marilyn Bates
All best,
Jennifer Horne
Ray Orkwis
R. T. Smith
Sincerely,
Cynthia Gaver
I wish I could have written that piece myself. Where have all the
poets
gone? I am regularly sickened as I try to read a well-known anthology
or
magazine, hoping that THIS TIME something grand and wonderful will
appear.
But it does not. I am tired of reading bad poetry or, as you put it,
non-poetry. I keep wondering if my work will ever find a home amidst
such
foolishness.
Let's keep up the good fight.
Sincere thanks,
Heath Davis Havlick
A voice of
reason is at last heard.
Gregory Jackson
Peter Kent
Thanks again. You've just secured yourself and Web Del Sol another
devoted
reader.
Dan Knestaut
Regards,
Carol V. Yocom
Thank you.
(Maybe you can turn this into a poem a la "Sea of
Faith.")
Most sincerely,
Steven Riddle
I agree with your views completely. If the "The Best (?) Poems of 1999"
is an indication of where prose writers--calling themselves poets-- are
going, the literary world is is for the biggest talentshake the world
will ever know…
Again, kudos to you.
Mae Barrena
Joe Adams
For what it's worth, I'm very grateful for your article. It's
particularly encouraging that anyone has taken on such people as Simic
and Hall, whom I believe have had it coming for at least twenty years.
(I spent time this weekend with someone who could produce ersatz Charles
Simic poems on the spot. It was fascinating, and, like the old SCTV, so
close and easy a parody that the humor was extremely uncomfortable.
Think bad translations of minor European surrealists, and start talking,
and you've pretty much got it.) Yet where I work most people I encounter
are writers, and of course most of their favorite poets are either
non-English language poets, or the English-language writers most subject
to your criticism. It is also extremely encouraging that anyone would
dare criticize the absolute ascendancy of Williams's influence. I'm very
interested in the causes of the phenomenon you describe, and I've found
what I think are many other causes, but Williams is really the one that
begs elaboration. Dickey really got it. It's too bad that book is
largely forgotten, and that he didn't usually hold himself to his own
standards.
Thanks,
Joshua Mehigan
Great essay, and I must agree with your assessment of American
poetry.
I too have read all the "Best American Poetry of. . " series and
thought
1999 was one of the worst!
Yours in harmony
Lynn Tait
I couldn't agree with you more. Your article summed up many of the
thoughts I've had over the past ten years concerning American poetry.
It's a
sad affair. I was glad to see that you named names, exposing what many
of
our so-called established American poets are really up to.Sincerely,
Tim Lane
Kevin Steel
Edmonton, Alberta
I read your article with great interest, and delight. I feel the same
way about 'the prosing of poetry' though I'm unable to describe my
feelings quite so well.
Take care,
Marilee Hanson
Peter Beal
Polly Robertus
Best,
Larry Gaffney
Thank you,
Marybeth Hillard
Charles B. Wheeler
Kelly Cherry
Right on! I have characterized this stuff--it's not really even writing,
no
more than what the (in)famous monkeys at the typewriters produce--as
Social
Workers' Notes, Weirdly Formatted.
Now, Jane Hirshfield! She's a poet.
Thanks for a good job.
Sincerely,
Richard Carter
Best regards,
Matt Nesvisky
Debbie Spanich
You've voiced my thoughts and far better than I could have! Keep up the
concern...
best wishes
Dwaine Rieves
I read your essay "On the Prosing of Poetry" and wondered if your
essay wasn't fueled by the fact that it was Robert Bly who was the
guest editor of The Best of American Poetry. Something about Bly
that pushes one over the top. I have to say I was disheartened myself
after reading this volume. Lately I have been turning to poetry in
forms. Recently my organization sponsored a workshop by Agha Shahid
Ali on how to write the ghazal, sapphic and canzone. I was glad to
see however you still had regard for free form poetry. I too am
struck with the work of Dorianne Laux. Karren Alenier
I agree with your essay completely. We have entered a new era of
flatter-than-ever language, despite the increased emphasis on form in
most
MFA curricula. There are many reasons for this, but one must surely be
the
sheer numbers of students coming out of the MFA workshop setting. I
hate to
say this, since I teach in a program myself half of each year. It would
be
interesting to read another essay (by you or someone else) on what
William
Stafford identified as the "MacPoem" many years ago, and on other
sources of
the "unpoetic poem."Enid Shomer
Just read your excellent & complete "emperor's clothes" critique in Web
Del Sol. Don't want to add much to your thought, just agree with bobbing
head & idiot grin because you dared. Bly seemed to think he'd "dared,"
too. Haven't read Moramarco's "rebuttal" yet (he should be in agreement,
I'd think, judging by his enthusiastic championing of Steve Kowit's
piece attacking "The Mystique of the Difficult Poem" in Moramarco's
editorship of the latest Poetry International), but you should be told
you've echoed many of my thoughts, frustrations. I've forwarded your
piece to many friends, too....Again, thanks!David Strumsky
G. P. Eireson
Julie Carter
George Held
best regards,
Marjorie Tiner
Sincerely,
Claiborne Schley Walsh
Bob Clawson
Thomas Eme
Truly,
Siri Sobottka