Comments on: A Few Thoughts on Poetry and Criticism, Part II

By: Jilly

Jilly — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:15:50 +0000

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:16:36 +0000

The idea goes back to Mallarme, so therefore it’s not exciting?
Uh, ok.

By: bill knott

bill knott — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:38:14 +0000

. . . the resources societies allot to poetry
are so meager that poets urchins grubbing roots in a waste lot
must of necessity wrest among themselves for a bite——
every morsel Coolidge gets is one me and my gang doesn’t——
in the class system of the arts, poets are the lowest, the slave class——
clashing and contending for the only pittance they grant us——
poetry, the least compensated and rewarded of all the major arts——
i hope you’ll agree it’s a major art, even if those in the other arts don’t recognize it as such
and don’t support it with their wealth, even though most of that wealth comes from products stolen and plagiarized from the efforts of poets——
(how many of his million billions has Bob Dylan donated to the Poetry Foundation)——
(hey Fence magazine, got any funds from the millionaire Pynchon lately—or ever? have any of those rich prosewriters or songwriters or screenwriters helped subsidize your publications)——
as Genet describes us in “The Maids”:
‘When slaves love each other, it’s not love they feel.’

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:18:19 +0000

Kasey Silem Mohammad said:
>…what I find most exciting about Coolidge’s writing: its near-total independence from declarative tyrannies. Some would call this “meaninglessness,” but I see it as extreme fascination with meaning, with the way meaning slips into and out of focus around words.
Sorry, but why is this “exciting,” exactly? The idea goes back to Mallarme…
Or Archilochus…
Kent

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:59:17 +0000

coupla quick things:
totes fair enough, kasey, & i likewise agree w/ yr posts most of the time, & enjoy them always.
i find it funny to be cast by joan & one of my favorite poets, the inimitable mr. knott, as the avant-gardener here, as i’m usually on t’other side o’ the fence, pointing out all the wonderful bushes & weeds & flowers growing in the yard watered by the “main” stream. but ignoring any part of the tradition is what i oppose, where’er it may grow. not liking it is one thing: although i too like it: dismissing it out of hand is quite another, & not worthy of a serious critic.
but that’s an odd thing abt aesthetic argument: you end up defending positions that, because you’re usually surrounded by people who fervently take them up, you often try to temper, while arguing w/ people whose views, when held with less strident certitude, you share. i noted this when ange was in the position of arguing that yes the ideological & its dogmatic affinities is too a legitimate part of poetic distinction-making.
which is to say i think many of the language folks are straight-up idiots, & a few official verse kulchur apparatniks are among our finest poets. & vice versa. still: third way? no way.

By: Doodle

Doodle — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 20:02:53 +0000

Ooh, glad to be a tastemaker!! And I’ll take a pacemaker over being heartless anytime.
Hm, wonder what Spicer thought of Bazooka comics: bet he liked ‘em.
That Bill’s and mickey’s uncapitalized verse rants resemble each other is freakin’ me out!

By: bill knott

bill knott — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:40:09 +0000

no, Mohammad, i (by a I)
ain’t being (of to)
sarcastic (on no);
i loathe the writtings of Coolidge and his kind:
and no babelful (we or by)
of your spaghettios critprose
can change the fact (a I of)
that (to on)
as the bestseller list on this site shows
(no we or)
most readers most of the time prefer
(me too oh)
poetry which is less ‘unconnected’ than his , , ,
but please don’t let that fact
discourage you avantistes
from performing your specialty acts, that same old huff and puff guff,
the incomprehensible in defense of the unreadable . . .

By: mickey o'connor

mickey o'connor — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:40:27 +0000

some of you guys
think everything is literary
criticism soon you’ll claim
bazooka joe bubblegum wrappers
are a form of literary
criticism
oh well
the tastemakers will go on
until they need pacemakers
they always do

By: mickey o'connor

mickey o'connor — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:40:27 +0000

By: K. Silem Mohammad

K. Silem Mohammad — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:36:35 +0000

Michael, yes, careless reading on my part about the conjunction thing, sorry. I still stand by my general position, however, regarding what I see as the arbitrariness of your general claim about why certain words are included and others aren’t.
I too “distrust the impulse to protect art from argumentative function”; I don’t think Coolidge’s art needs protecting from it, because I don’t feel it ever threatens it in the first place, at least not in the poem you discuss. I do see how a phrase like “declarative tyrannies” comes of as tendentious in a way I didn’t intend. Of course you’re right that there’s nothing wrong with declaration in and of itself, and no reason for poets or anyone else to view it as generically oppressive. Again, I just don’t think that Coolidge is making much use of the declarative function in this instance.
[Yipes, this point-by-point, back-and-forth argument stuff is addictive. It's worse (better?) than Scrabble!]
Sure, “The Red Wheel Barrow” is “inexhaustible,” but I still feel that there’s critical/editorial distortion involved in presenting it as an isolated poem rather than as part of a longer work, or at least as a work whose history includes being part of a longer work, even if Williams himself did contribute to this trend. All the same, when I said that such presentation made it “slighter” in some ways, I should have qualified that more carefully so it didn’t sound so much like a value judgment.
And finally, I most emphatically do not have a “let the poem be” aesthetic. I feel, as I’m sure you do, that poems are able to take whatever prodding and poking and slicing and dissecting a critic can muster. It’s good for ‘em. We just disagree in this case about the precise tools and methodology that should be used.
For what it’s worth, I do agree with about 87% of the things I’ve seen you say in this comment box, and half-agree with another 9%.