Comments on: Yonder All Before Us Lie Deserts of Vast Eternity

By: Lydia Olidea

Lydia Olidea — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:02:29 +0000

Rather than these metaphysical vagaries about what, exactly, a “poet” and “critic” be, can we spend a minute on some more immediate matters?
My first inquiry is this: is there any empirical evidence that there are more poet/critics now than at some earlier time? It seems likely that the very opposite is the case. After all, the dynamic of specialization has had its say across all the employment sectors. Within academia, to take the obvious example and as Doug well knows, there is considerable material pressure not to be a poet-critic: scholars generally don’t get “creative” work counted toward tenure and vice versa. Since there is a limited period of time to meet tenure standards, you can see the pressure to specialize.
Lacking any empirical truth, this claim has the character of a classic canard, on the order of “the real Paris hasn’t existed for twenty years” — a sentiment that was old before the Commune was new.
That is, I suspect that the claim that there’s a proliferation of poet/critics is a thing people say so as to feel a certain thing about their current moment. I have some guesses as to what this might be, but I’d rather ask the question than answer it.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:55:05 +0000

The most noticeable achievement of critics vis a vis poetry seems to have been to distance it from the poetic impulse. I think it’s a lot healthier if poets write poems and critics critique and a fairly sturdy wall is maintained between the two. Criticism by its very nature is exclusive, and I think the best poetry is in some sense inclusive. Two very different cognitive activities, appealing to two different types of (or aspects of) people.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:46:57 +0000

You’re welcome, D.A. Was thinking this morning that my own dichotomies, described above, still need work also…
- that is, in poetry, it’s not simply a distinction between feeling or sense on the one hand, and intellect on the other. There’s something deeper, involving the distinction (if there has to be one) between mind and heart, knowledge and love. Goes way back to Plato & Homer, & I’m sure before that, through the medieval theories of contemplation, etc….
A balancing act, I guess. Hence the trouble with sentimentalism on the one hand, & deracinated intellectual apathy & vanity games, on the other.

By: D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:36:44 +0000

Henry,
Thanks for the valuable comments. I don’t mean to imply that some sort of Maginot Line needs to exist between poetry and criticism. I’m not asking anyone to dig a trench. I’m merely stating a mood that I’m in, and as such it is likely to shift. I’m not wedded to anyone’s ideas, least of all my own. I just figured that as long as we were going to engage in the two human follies known as “poetry” on the one hand and “criticism” on the other, I’d pretend that one was somehow better than the other. Am thinking of writing a series of essays entitled “Can Just Any Matter Matter?” Unless that, too, has been done.
Best,
D. A.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 23:27:13 +0000

One more addition… I guess what I’m saying is that if poets accept a division between feeling and intellect, and leave intellect to the professors, critics, etc., they are in danger of giving away the store…
this was the theme of Eliot’s idea of a progressive “dissociation” of reason & sense – which poetry’s “wit” aims to reunite…
Of course our pleasure in poetry is rooted in sense experience… painting & music grow directly out of the physical pleasures of sound & sight… but poetry, when it translates sense experience into language, has already added a new dimension of reflection… the intuitive feeling of rightness we have when we enjoy good poetry is an intellectual-emotional experience, all in one…
“a Tear is an Intellectual Thing
and a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King”

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:09:35 +0000

p.s. sorry, I meant to say PLAY amateur critic (last sentence)…

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:08:33 +0000

Seems like a sane & sensible attitude, expressed here… but it’s a Big Topic, raises a lot of questions….
I wonder if our received notions of instinct – feeling – intellect are really true… the Aristotelian Critic Elder Olson (of the Chicago School) has a curious way (in an essay called “Outline of Poetic Theory”) of describing emotions stirred by poetry as having their source in “opinions”. Given the ethos or ground prepared by the poem, we obtain certain opinions about the characters or situation presented, and the plot or outcome – what happens to this situation – evokes our emotions…
He was focusing mostly on dramatic poetry, but I think he would apply the same approach to some (not all) other kinds…
what we call an “instinctual response” of pleasure or interest might actually be a kind of instantaneous intellectual activity, coordinated very quickly on many levels, as we read or hear the poem… & maybe our pleasure has to do with the way the poem coordinates these responses – like a mental model of “fitness” or coherence or substance or accuracy… & our emotions are stirred by this sudden organization of experience and sense…
Maybe it’s like listening to music – you can only say so much about it, words are inadequate to paraphrase the inherent (”intellectual”) order of the music itself, thus we are impatient with a lot of criticism, because it uses rather blunt intellectual instruments sometimes.
But criticism has its own standards & values – maybe there are too many poets who lay amateur critic, and vice versa…

By: elle

elle — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:24:51 +0000

Knowing how one feels about anything is a good thing. No defense required.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:25:59 +0000

Being a village explainer myself, I thought folks might like to know the whole story behind the story of the Stein quotation.
In ch. 7 of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, G.S. famously said of E.P., “He was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, if not, not.” When asked about this remark later, she told Thornton Wilder, “Ezra Pound still lives in a village and his world is a kind of village and people keep explaining things when they live in a village…. I have come not to mind if certain people live in villages and some of my friends still appear to live in villages and a village can be cozy as well as intuitive but must one really keep perpetually explaining and educating?”
(from Frederick Prokosch, Voices: a Memoir, “The Evil Corner”)

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:36:22 +0000

Yes