Comments on: Panel 2: Aesthetic Lineage and Originality

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:24:22 +0000

Not trying to give offense, Simon. Nor attack you personally, nor call you racist or anything else. I apologize if my comment seems ad hominem or antagonistic.
I do have to take issue with your statement, however, that you never “suggested that the g factor or any other intelligence measure be ‘applied’ to poetry…”
Here is your first post :
“Well, “intelligence” as Steve points out is loaded — politcally as well — I think Spearsman’s g factor hit the public consciousness with the publication of The Bell Curve. And it’s funny, there are few black poets that I think would qualify as as “displaying their intelligence” in the sense of analytic workings à la Donne. Carl Phillips, A. Van Jordon spring to mind, but not too many others.
This may have to do with the greater proximity poetry has to the affairs of African-American culture; one does not have to reach as far back in the canon and thus there is less need for interpretive work and all the syntactical and semantic complication it induces. You see it also in Irish poetry, which I think supports the thesis.”
- Tell me if I’m wrong, but I find it pretty clear that in this comment you are associating – ie., suggesting an application of — intelligence measurement to African-American poetry in general. And then you are offering a supposed rationale – the proximity of Af-Am poets to the affairs of their culture – for the supposed evidence of the poetry’s lack of “display” (of intelligence). This kind of thing bothers me, whether you AGREE with such supposed “applications” or not.
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:15:21 +0000

I do not believe the g factor is anything other than the product of a particular culture. I do not believe intelligence can be measured in a quantitative fashion, and I believe attempts to do so will be distorted snapshots of a culture’s neurosis. I never stated, suggested, or insinuated that the g factor or any other intelligence measure be “applied” to poetry or poets, or, indeed, to anyone.
While I am trying to make a point about different rhetorics in different traditions, you seem deeply invested in ignoring what I am actually saying and calling me racist even after repeated clarification. I will not respond further to you in this thread.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:46:15 +0000

Simon, we’re obviously arguing at cross-purposes. We’ve applied differing notions of “intelligence” to Kinnell’s initial comment (on the intelligence of Shakespeare, Dickinson & Mandelstam) – which, I would remind you, made no reference to “analysis” or “problem-solving” or “display”.
As far as I’m concerned, the idea that scientists can go about “measuring” the intelligence quotient, in biological terms, of complex intellectual activities (such as poetry), is a very stupid idea. The ant will never comprehend the elephant.
You want to criticize Kinnell for using a loaded term, because for you “intelligence” simply refers to some criteria drawn from biology – the g factor, the Bell Curve, etc. The application of such supposed measures to ethnic or racial groups does indeed have loaded and controversial implications. But your attempt to turn that particular controversy into an issue regarding African-American or Irish poetry is an imposition of your OWN notion of “intelligence”, not Kinnell’s. And I find it patronizing and manipulative to import that particular brouhaha by way of a comment on the nature of African-American poetry in general.
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:12:37 +0000

My comments are not patronizing in the slightest, neither to African American poets nor to Irish ones.
You may wish to use the word “intelligence”, like Humpty-Dumpty, to mean whatever you like (for you it appears to mean “good poetry”), but I proposed a quite specific definition — a certain “on display” working out of intellectual problems.
The dominant tradition in African American poetry today does not do this, although I mention two authors who do. Similarly, if you go back and look at what Yeats and his acolytes and influences were doing with Irish literature, you do not find the kind of focus on elaborate hypotaxis that you associate with, say, the Donne moment.
Yes, that means I’m saying Yeats is not a poet “of the intellect.” He is not at home in analysis. Your view of the intellect in poetry seems to be a highly stereotyped notion that might as well have been ripped from the New Criterion. Most “academic” poets — meaning poets employed “as poets” by the University system — are not writing writing with the intellect at all. They might name drop something from the syllabus, but they are most sentimental (in the technical sense.)
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By: Henry

Henry — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:20:44 +0000

Sorry : typo in penultimate paragraph of previous. Should read : “not always positive – but recognition nevertheless”
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:15:02 +0000

Simon : your comments about Af-Am poets are patronizing. & as I tried to suggest, “intelligence” in poetry is not about “display” or braininess. It’s more an intuitive rightness, stemming from intense engagement on many levels simultaneously – ethos, pathos, logos. . .
Ange : I would suggest that the angst you express about the existential situation is in part a consequence of the very academicization of the poetry culture which your panel report describes. America is full of poet-pedagogues, offering pretentious nostrums to young students, creating a subculture which combines poetry, self-help, “life-lessons” & vocational advice, presenting itself as the official “world of poetry”, much like the state-sponsored Writer’s Unions of the former Soviet Union, & similar authoritarian societies.
Edmund Wilson, in an essay on Yeats of 70 yrs ago, wrote about the old-fashioned (& now scarce) “dignity” of the poet – which he thought Yeats tried to maintain : partly by means of an elegant craft of heightened speech, but more importantly, by means of a personal, moral engagement with the people and politics of his time. Yeats understood that it was not scholars, fellow poets, or professors who provided the social sanction for poetry : it was the ordinary reader, people at large. The relation between a poet and a people is one of mutuality, mutual recognition (not always position – but recognition nevertheless). It is not a pedagogical relation but a public one.
My attitude should not be taken as promoting anti-intellectualism, “social poetry”, or demagogic rhetoric. In my view it’s the ideological-verbal tokens and abstractions emanating from the groves of academe which do most to debase the rhetoric of poetry itself, which trap writers in angst-filled generalizations like “fucked-up world” : generalizations and abstractions which are a measure of one’s disengagement from the particulars of social and historical reality. The academy both over-emphasizes the political effectiveness of literature and trivializes it in the process.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:08:16 +0000

Well on the one hand, Eliot said that the best method is to be very intelligent, and on the other there’s WCW’s ethos that smart’s not good enough (“if it ain’t a poem, it ain’t a pleasure”). Take your pick! (Seriously, I don’t think these two comments are really at odds with each other.)
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By: Simon DeDeo

Simon DeDeo — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:14:15 +0000

Well, “intelligence” as Steve points out is loaded — politcally as well — I think Spearsman’s g factor hit the public consciousness with the publication of The Bell Curve. And it’s funny, there are few black poets that I think would qualify as as “displaying their intelligence” in the sense of analytic workings à la Donne. Carl Phillips, A. Van Jordon spring to mind, but not too many others.
This may have to do with the greater proximity poetry has to the affairs of African-American culture; one does not have to reach as far back in the canon and thus there is less need for interpretive work and all the syntactical and semantic complication it induces. You see it also in Irish poetry, which I think supports the thesis.
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By: Ange

Ange — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:02:41 +0000

I’m playing Devil’s Advocate, Henry, partly because the negativity is in the air and partly because I’m trying to imagine what “difference” might have looked like on the poetry panel. But I’d like to believe that the poet intuits an order of beauty and justice. I’d like to. It’s hard, though, not to agree with Steve — “to enchant and disenchant” … and that’s my optimistic side.
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By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:19:45 +0000

To enchant and to disenchant, I think. As Yeats at his best usually knew.
I’m surprised that Kinnell believes, or appears to believe, in a unitary measure of intelligence, otherwise known as Spearman’s g. But we can all agree that Shakespeare, Dickinson, and Mandelstam were very smart.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:29:40 +0000

I think I agree with Galway Kinnell’s intelligence pantheon. Except I’d put Chaucer in there too. Ben Jonson was no slouch either, nor John Donne.
The greater part of a poetic intelligence remains beneath the surface, it’s implicit in the poetry itself. The lit-world can talk & talk about it. . . but the poetic intelligence soaks up what’s going on around it and transmutes it into something effective on a different plane, exponentially more powerful.
I’m for enchantment, that is, fluency. . .
Who says it’s a fucked-up world? The poet intuits an order of beauty and justice. . . seeks a verbal equivalent to the way a hidden loving universe might possibly be.
When baited at a lecture by Stalin’s apparatchiks to answer the question : what is poetry? Mandelstam shouted out : “the poet’s sense of being right.”
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