I want to be a “major” poet!

By Patricia Smith

How about you?
Yes, yes, I’m reading Auden again. So sue me. Now I’m tossing and turning in my sleep because W.H., in his infinite wisdom, once set down the standards (as he saw them) for recognition as a “major” poet. Since, I certainly aspire to be “major” (the alternative would be—uh, what?), I thought I’d see how I measure up, just how far I have to go before students of the genre are poring over my musings for “clues” or whispering my name in hushed, shivery reverence. Maybe then I can ease up on the shameless marketing of me, myself, and I, crossing the country hawking my books with the unleashed fervor of a Jehovah’s Witness.
So let’s see how major you are. Let’s see how major I am. (By the way, if your name is actually Major Jackson, you can stop reading right here.)
According to Auden, here’s what it takes:

1. A large body of work.
I gotta lotta poems. Four books, two stuffed notebooks, a few computer folders fulla. The question, I suppose, is what constitutes large. And are we talking just the stellar stuff, or everything, including my dark little ditty “Man Cooks Lover in Tomato Sauce”? For instance, Marvin Bell, who is certainly major in my book, has 19 tomes under his belt. I’m pretty sure all the poems in all the books are keepers. He’s also the subject of what I think is my favorite blurb of all time: “Marvin Bell’s writing has been part of the conversation for 40 years…”
Wow. Every time I read that, I feel really left out. What conversation? Who’s talkin’ to whom? Where’s this conversation taking place? Applebee’s? In an airport lounge? Someplace you can’t get into without a password and appropriate business attire? Online at majorpoetsonly.com? (I can’t help picturing a back room somewhere, with some cigar-chomping poetry don granting audience to bewildered hopefuls. At some point, a ring would have to be kissed.) And do you actually have to take part in the conversation, or it is OK to simply be talked about?
Hey, if being talked about is major criteria, I am so in.
OK, back to volume. Auden said “large body.” That I got. When I print out all my poems (just so I can sit in the midst of the pile and feel accomplished), the printer drones on forever. The thick pile ‘o stanzas have popped the rings on some pretty hefty binders. No sack or messenger bag in my possession will hold them all. Therefore, dammit, I qualify.
2. A wide range of subject matter and treatment.
Just pagin’ through my stuff: Bungee jumping, postmortem facial reconstruction, dog ghosts, a loquacious rock ‘n’ roller, sex between 80-year-olds, rainfall in Bophuthatswana, menstrual blood, Chicana dreams, Lysol, Phyllis Wheatley, filthy sex, the aforementioned freaky cook, the Green Hornet, wooly canines, first kisses, skinheads, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, carnies, killer hurricanes, George Bush, the downside of fame, my suicide attempt, spit ‘n’ hiss poem directed toward ex-husband, syrupy love poem to current husband, Mike Tyson, list poems, villanelles, a pantoum, sonnets, ghazals, persona poems, two sestinas, a couple of nonce forms, rants, haikus and tankas.
What I love most about being a writer is that the canvas is blank so often, and that every single word every written or spoken in any language is available to you. If your writing is more than a recreational exercise—if it is actually the way you process your life—you will find yourself writing about practically everything just to maintain some level of sanity. Go ahead. Open today’s newspaper and just try not to write a poem. Hell, I could write a whole book of poems about Alberto Gonzales not knowing anything.
By the way, a man actually did cook his lover in tomato sauce. Really.
3. An unmistakable originality of vision and style.
One of my primary goals as a poet is to develop an unmistakable signature. You too? I’d like folks to read something I’ve written and know it’s me, whether or not my name is attached. Admittedly, that’s a lofty aim and it’s hard to me to know whether I’m gettin’ there or if I’m fooling myself. How do you gauge the effectiveness of your own vision?
I guess this means searching for unexpected entry points into your poems, and then conquering that novelty, writing past it. The problem with doing a lot of readings (and I do a LOT of readings—right now I’m a plane jetting back from Dayton, Ohio, ha ha, bet you’re seething with jealousy) is that your style tends to be rooted there. I hear “Folks tell me I sound like you” much more often than “Folks say I write like you.”
4. A mastery of technique.
Ahem. Moving on.
Can we just skip this one? No?
Well, actually, I’m working on it. This semester, in my MFA program at Stonecoast, I’m wallowing in the mechanics of prosody–basically so I can stop simply be affected by the narrative arc of poems and see what actually gives them bones and muscle. As a result of this studying, my tool box is suddenly bulging with choices I didn’t have before—if a poem shouts, “I wanna be a sonnet!,” I can now respectfully oblige. I know what hendecasyllabics are, but every time I try to write in them, I sprain my head.
Of course, becoming familiar with technique is not the same as mastering it. So obviously, #4 needs a little work.
5. A constant, progressive process of maturation–so that should an author’s individual works be placed side by side at any stage of his or her career, it would always be clear which work came first and which came after.
Oh, definitely, no problem here. Just opening my first book (penned in a giddy fever more than 15 years ago) is a painful experience. From the very first page, I’m bombarded by inexplicable line breaks, vaguely veiled clichés, weak end words and brilliant ideas that start off half-baked and stay that way. (Just last month, in a class full of impressionable middle-schoolers, I read a poem from my first book as an example of how not to do something. The irony is just reaching me.)
Thinking about it, though, couldn’t someone meet every one of these criteria and still be a friggin’ lousy poet?
—–It’s possible to have lots of poems (no one says they have to be publishable) and be “part of the conversation”—if that conversation takes place behind your back and consists mainly of groans and snickering.
—–If one of your poems is an ode to the fluff between your toes and another is a persona piece in the voice of Queen Elizabeth, you’re definitely workin’ a wide range of subject matter. If the first piece is actually created with the fluff and the second is a limerick featuring the word “duck,” your vision and style are unquestioned.
—–Technique. Anyone can study prosody, learn how to structure a poem. Understanding the bones isn’t the same as understanding the body.
—–Evident creative maturation is an easy one. Write two poems—label one Part 1 and the other Part 2. Place them beside one other. Voila! It will be incredibly evident which one came first.
So what really makes a poet major? (Once again, Major Jackson, I am not talking to you.) It’s got to be something more. Who are the living, breathing (sorry, W.H.) major poets, and what makes them that way?

2007-04-25

Posted in Group Blog, Poems on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 by Patricia Smith.