Comments on: naive advice for paisley rekdal

By: Robin Ekiss

Robin Ekiss — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:42:07 +0000

We haven’t yet seen a shout-out for the Goldilocks Principle, though: reading — and/or writing — JUST enough. Should reading poetry instead be roughly equivalent to dieting: sufficient exercise and everything in moderation? And if so, do we need to organize a chapter of OverReader’s Anonymous?
Where does the proliferation of “book sharing” sites like Shelfari and Good Reads fit into this equation? Do they make anyone else feel like reading is a competitive, contact sport?
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:37:09 +0000

It’s interesting, if I may generalize a tad unfairly, that we have threads going on that seem to advocate, respectively, reading less and writing more!
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By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:37:13 +0000

Alicia, I write enough reviews these days (and have a free enough hand in choosing the books for some of those reviews) that there’s no sharp line between books read for review and books read for pleasure. (Most of the books I review give me some pleasure!)
I too am more interested– much more interested, right now– in poems than in books of poems, though some books are book-length projects that don’t let you separate them out neatly into individual poems. (By contract: Silliman, among others, has said he’s more interested in poetry than in poems: if what you want are ideas that move a project called “poetry” forward, or that expand it, maybe you need whole books, not one-page poems, in order to see the ideas. Jack Spicer though so, and while he’s not my favorite poet by any means, he’s not someone we shd dismiss.)
Poets should read the poetry of the past, yes! And most American poets under, say, 50 probably do feel the pressure to publish too fast, because they need first or second books in order to qualify for academic jobs: it’s a Red Queen’s Race, and the readers lose. OTOH poets long ago published too fast for the same reason novelists now publish too fast: the books sell, and the publishers want the money. Which state of affairs would you prefer? What is to be done?
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:22:24 +0000

A little out of context, but here’s Samuel Johnson, answering Soame Jenyns:
“Many of the books which now crowd the world may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure? The only end of such writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, of better to endure it; and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us that we are puppets, of which some creature not much wiser than ourselves manages the wires?”
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By: Alicia (AE)

Alicia (AE) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:57:09 +0000

Thanks, Steve, for pointing out that terrific piece by Paisley. I’m curious–when you are reading all these books, is that for pleasure, or for review, or some combination? Because it seems that reading books for review is rather a different exercise, especially for a piece that includes several books. Certainly it seems that most omnibus reviewers do just flip through the books at hand and sample–and who can blame them. (And of course poets are grateful to be reviewed at all.) Certainly, I tend to read books of poetry that way –just grazing through them, not in any order, and returning to poems that nourish me in some way or just irritate my curiousity. I am more interested in poems than books of poems.
This is sort of a side issue, but if the question is keeping up with contemporary poetry, which Paisley suggests is among her concerns, I do think it isn’t terribly “good” for a poet to have a diet too heavy in contemporaries. And I do think there probably are too many books being published–in one sense I am of the more-the-merrier school, but it seems that at least a hefty minority of these books are being submitted (and maybe even written) because people need a book publication to get a job offer, and I don’t think that is a healthy state of affairs.
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By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:27:38 +0000

I didn’t mean to send Millay fans back to this very site you are reading right now, but rather to get Millay fans to see what happens if you click here. You’ll be glad you did.
I like her sonnets too– the most famous ones aren’t necessarily the best.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:39:04 +0000

Well, here it is Friday, and I’m eagerly awaiting word of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Steve!
The first test in Harvard’s poetry audio digitization project was the restoration of a recording of a poetry reading by Millay. We had to play it over and over again in the preservation studio, and the engineers were not, in the end, among those who fell into a swoon on hearing her voice.
I’ve always sworn by her sonnets, most of them, anyway, but find few takers.
Until we hear more from Steve, folks might like to go here, and the bravest among you here.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:29:50 +0000

I’m on my fifth bottle of wine for the day (taking PR’s advice), and find myself agreeing with you on all counts : there ARE indeed far too few books of poetry published every week, and one should consume them in equal parts (first odd-numbered pages, then even) with coffee, beer or pretzels, preferably at a Twins game (go, Twins! they OWN the pennant this year!). As you point out, poems should be savored slowly, but not too slowly, so that the verbs coincide in tense and number in your mind as well as on the page in front of you, and the lips read along with the lines generally in a vertical zig-zag steady-state sort of motion, being careful to pour the imagery directly from the bottle into the glass without effort or extreme spillage; and beefing up the sensitivity and interpretive quotient (ie. do we not note an allusion fo Keats there, in Maxwell Temperature’s verse chronicle, DELICATE PULLET (p. 43, line 16) : “the glow of the bulbous red orb of the grape”?) through a careful process of simultaneous imbibulation (book + booze) stimulating the noetic (poetic) nerve in the cranial septum, located on my lefthand bookshelf (7th floor)? Thanks so much for confirming my own reading and drinking habits,
Steve! Words to the wise for an perspiring reader of poesie or glug.
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