Comments on: A Few Thoughts on Poetry and Criticism

By: John Gallaher

John Gallaher — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:15:48 +0000

I agree with one or the other or both of you, depending on what I’m doing at the time.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:52:34 +0000

I’m looking over a many-leafed clover that I overlooked before. “Doodle” — if that is your real name!
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:39:03 +0000

Well, now that you mention it, I’ve never seen Henry Gould & Kent Johnson in the same place at the same time. J’accuse!
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By: Doodle

Doodle — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:19:03 +0000

Well, there’s a lot more to poetry than tropes, borrowed or blue!
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By: Doodle

Doodle — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:25:33 +0000

Perhaps l’affaire d’Jeanne d’Arc demonstrates nicely how critics can fail to see the obvious!
Alors!
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By: graywyvern

graywyvern — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:07:50 +0000

I like to say that when the best poetry in our language was being written there were neither critics nor dictionaries, but actually that’s only half-true. From the very beginning, when people started writing down & editing their beloved epics, this was an act of “criticism”; as were the innumerable attempts at translation that preceded & accompanied our own Elizabethan era. In fact, the idea of a pure lyricism is itself the creation of a later, self-conscious age. Poets meet & talk shop just as soon as they begin exchanging poems. Their poetry reflects what they have heard & read. If there is a distinction to be made between the two activities (& i omit for the time being, allusions & actual borrowings), it must be rather between those words which are addressed to a wider audience, & the things that one addresses only other poets with.
m.
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By: JP Craig

JP Craig — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:33:55 +0000

What about the notion of poetry as itself secondary or derivative? Unless, you’re making up your own language, you’re derivative in that sense alone. But how about the tropes we borrow? Or the way we are indebted to the forms that came before us? I’m not talking about standing on the shoulders of giants, just the notion that poetry as an activity has characteristics that come from elsewhere. Innovation is over-rated, and foregoing it doesn’t deny creativity.
A third way poetry is derivative is that it often comes to the writer from some “outside” source. Or at least I read many poets describing it that way. The really good poem or line seems to come from somewhere or someone other than the self. Granted, this is “fictive,” but it’s descriptive, and it describes an imagined derivative relationship.
This seems to be a strand missing from the arguments going on here.
So maybe this “secondary” parasitic quality is something poetry shares with criticism and other forms of writing?
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:17:27 +0000

(also, if that’s true, I dunno where s/he gets off calling me “busy.”)
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:10:38 +0000

What! Is that true? I had no idea! (Which is ironic, considering that — I swear this is true — I sussed Jane’s real identity from the first review I read — it’s the voice — didn’t even realize it wasn’t general knowledge for years.)
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By: A

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:45:25 +0000

Michael,
Jeanne d’arc, duh!
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:06:49 +0000

Well, I think both those statements recognize a distinction between poetry & criticism. There are obviously lots of distinctions, but the question is whether any of them somehow denigrate criticism at poetry’s expense.
I really like what Lydia’s been saying in the other thread. I wish I knew who she is.
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By: john

john — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:25:00 +0000

Michael –
When you said, “Criticism is an imaginative activity in its own right, in no way secondary to the creative work it engages,” and, “My experience of 7 Types of Ambiguity is not different in kind or degree from my experience of Four Quartets,” in response to Joseph’s claim that “criticism is a derivative activity,” I took your statements to be part of an argument for an equivalence between poetry and criticism. I think my extrapolation was reasonable, even if in this instance erroneous.
It’s fine that you believe that “criticism arises simultaneously with poetic culture.” I don’t believe there’s any evidentiary way to prove it, but that’s fine. You may well be right.
Anyway, apology accepted. From now on, I’ll try to quote you directly if I have a comment to make on one of your comments — and I won’t even care if anybody denigrates my comments for being derivative of yours!!!
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By: Rich Villar

Rich Villar — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:38:02 +0000

Ahem. That was supposed to be accompanied by a YouTube video. Fargin’ HTML.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkz83VFEk1A
1:27: “And of course, with the birth of the first artist came the inevitable afterbirth: the critic.”
I (still) love history.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:34:02 +0000

Has someone brought up Eliot on “The Function of Criticism” yet? There he formulates a number of axioms with which I (obviously) cannot agree, but he does so with a style & panache that tend to undermine them.
And my apologies, John, for once more taking the huffy road — the road of huff, a road well traveled by critics to be sure, but one worth avoiding if one can help it.
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By: Rich Villar

Rich Villar — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:24:16 +0000

1:27:
“And of course, with the birth of the first artist came the inevitable afterbirth: the critic.”
I love history.
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By: michael robbins

michael robbins — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:15:49 +0000

My point only was that a culture of criticism arises simultaneously with poetic culture. I don’t know what it means to say that “poetic cultures have given precedence to poetry over criticism.” In some cases, I’m sure that’s true, if I understand the claim. In others, not so much. It has nothing to do with my argument, either way. “Equivalence” is yet another term you’ve introduced as if it were something on which my statements have depended. And I really am tired of having to address straw-man arguments that refute claims I have never made.
Anyway, in order to have done with this discussion, I’ll just recommend that anyone interested in the questions of criticism as other than some auxiliary tool have a look at Andrew Ford’s marvelous The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture & Poetic Theory in Classical Greece, which demonstrates among other things how much more ancient than we tend to assume criticism is, & how seriously it has been taken for millennia.
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By: john

john — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:26:04 +0000

Michael, you’re right, you haven’t defined anything. You’ve quoted a classical Greek scholar’s statement that aesthetic discussion in pre-literate cultures constituted an example of criticism.
Most people had been taking criticism to mean “written criticism.” You have introduced a new understanding of criticism into the discussion. You introduced oral criticism as evidence for your argument that criticism has always accompanied poetry. Apparently you meant that the discussion of aesthetic matters in pre-literate societies had to meet an unstated, undefined, un-indicated, unillustrated standard in order to pass as criticism. OK.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:21:39 +0000

I suppose there’s no use in pointing out that at no time have I “re-defined criticism to mean any discussion of aesthetic matters,” or that I don’t hold that to be a definition of criticism.
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By: john

john — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:47:32 +0000

The written historical record seems clear: The oldest surviving poetry precedes the oldest surviving criticism by (how many? don’t know) some centuries. Even if a culture of aesthetic discussion (or criticism) arose simultaneously with a culture of aesthetic production, the written record indicates that, historically, poetic cultures gave precedence to poetry, strictly judging by what our forebears valued enough to write down.
This doesn’t mean that any of us needs to value poetry above criticism, or that criticism didn’t arise simultaneously with the earliest poems. Just that, traditionally, poetic cultures have given precedence to poetry over criticism. A critical culture that sought to eliminate this hierarchy would have to buck millennia of tradition, which is fine on a personal level, but likely to run into resistance on the cultural. A critical culture that argued that criticism has always been the equal of poetry would have to transfigure thousands of years of the historical record, down to today. Anthropologists still record the poetry of non-literate people. I know of no instance in which an informant insisted that the anthropologist record the criticism and theory as equivalent to the poems, and I’d be surprised to learn of any.
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By: john

john — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:14:42 +0000

Michael,
My apologies for misconstruing your redefinition of the term under discussion. Regarding your observation of my conversational style, I would be happy to reciprocate, if you would be interested; please let me know.
I will recast my comment, taking your note into account.
This Harriet thread has by-and-large taken criticism to mean: Written response to aesthetic experience. If you’re going to re-define criticism to mean any discussion of aesthetic matters, that’s fine, as long as everybody agrees; but it does not seem wise to expect people to understand that you’ve redefined the terms before you tell people that you have.
Whether conscious discussion of aesthetic matters has always accompanied aesthetic creation is a matter of pure speculation. My hunch is that has not. My hunch is that, historically, aesthetic creation preceded the ability to articulately discuss one’s aesthetic sensibility. The testimony of the Classical Greek scholar you quoted is pertinent but insufficient evidence, and I am doubtful that sufficient evidence is available or ever will be.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:14:09 +0000

John, once again: no one has said or implied that “all that is meant by ‘criticism’ is ‘preference.’” If you’ll re-read the passage I quoted, you’ll see that what it actually says is that preference implies criticism. If something implies something else, those two things are by definition not identical.
I’ve noticed a few times in our discussions that you move from what some quotation actually says to some more simplistic version of it, & then refute the simplistic version while leaving the original assertion untouched. I’m not trying to be rude, but I do think that our conversations would be more productive if you’d watch this tendency.
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By: john

john — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:08:19 +0000

If all that is meant by “criticism” is “aesthetic preference,” then it might be true that no aesthetic experience is possible without aesthetic preference. When my son was an infant, months and months before talking, he preferred some songs to others, and he could make those preferences known before he could talk.
To follow this notion further, no aesthetic creation is possible without reflecting an aesthetic sensibility informed by critical reactions to previous aesthetic experiences. It may well be that aesthetic response to unknown, non-cultural phenomena preceded conscious aesthetic creation, in the pre-history of our species.
But this Harriet thread has by and large taken criticism to refer to a consciously articulated set of aesthetic judgments and responses, not simply the fact of aesthetic response and preference. This alternative definition of criticism confuses things, but that’s OK with me, as long as everybody’s talking about the same thing.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:30:34 +0000

By popular request, I’ll quote some more Basil Bunting:
“there is no excuse for literary criticism”
&
“There is no need of any theory for what gives pleasure through the ear, music or poetry.”
(I knew you’d like those quotations!)
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:34:31 +0000

“In pre-literate cultures the composition of songs is a process in which discussion & criticism, often passionate, plays an important part — & inevitably so, because aesthetic reaction implies preference & preference implies criticism.” (Kenneth Dover, writing about The Frogs)
It’s just not true that any poetic cultures have existed without criticism. On the contrary, one without the other is a historical impossibility. This is part of what I mean when I say criticism is not secondary: poetry has never & could not exist without it.
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By: john

john — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:30:22 +0000

It’s fine that Michael experiences poetry and criticism as identical, and it’s fine that other people experience them as different; but the theory is sequentially and historically secondary. Some poems engage with prior theory, but all theory engages with prior poems. Lots of poetic cultures have existed without criticism. No cultures of poetry criticism have existed without poetry. Regardless of anyone’s personal experience of criticism, it’s historically secondary. Because poetry can exist without criticism, but criticism cannot exist without poetry, it makes sense to view criticism as dependent. I’m not sure what “first order” and “second order” thinking means, but I would say that poetry’s relationship to “thinking” seems less straightforward than criticism’s.
I just noticed: My slippage between “criticism” and “theory” was unconscious. I don’t have a brief to distinguish criticism from theory; presumably all criticism assumes or argues a theoretical position.
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By: Robin Michaels

Robin Michaels — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:59:54 +0000

“Criticism is … in no way secondary to the creative work it engages.”
I simply do not understand how anyone can believe this.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:27:57 +0000

Joseph’s comment is untrue, although it expresses a commonplace attitude (Jarrell for instance says almost the same thing, although I’d trade every poem he ever wrote for one of his best essays). Criticism is an imaginative activity in its own right, in no way secondary to the creative work it engages. The Poetics, Sidney’s Defense of Poesie, Johnson’s essays, James’s Prefaces, Eliot’s essays: this stuff is permanent & first-order thinking. It’s weird to think that because a form of writing often takes other writing as its subject it is therefore parasitic or lesser. Rather, as Harold Bloom has written, “We read criticism as we read poetry (or ought to), so that we can acquire a further sense of what Milton’s Satan calls ‘quickening power.’” My experience of 7 Types of Ambiguity is not different in kind or degree from my experience of Four Quartets. I do mean that.
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By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:01:57 +0000

One more thing, Reginald. Your post inspired me to finish my own post on the subject of literary theory, which you can find here: http://perpetualbird.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-theory.html
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By: Joseph Hutchison

Joseph Hutchison — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:32:38 +0000

Criticism is a derivative activity—what I would call “second-order thinking.” By that I mean that critics attach themselves to a text or texts like remoras to sharks. This is not to denigrate remoras, only to suggest that sharks are the primary, vital source, the original energy. I suspect that remoras often take themselves too seriously, perhaps even fantasizing that the shark exists for them in some way, or that the rush of life-giving water through their remora gills is the product of their own efforts, when in fact it derives from the onwardness of the greater fish. Criticism is natural, but its importance shouldn’t be overestimated.
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By: john

john — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:46:34 +0000

Bob Kaufman never, to my knowledge, wrote any articles about poetry. I’d call him a terrific poet, though others may disagree.
On the main point, I agree: Almost all dedicated poets engage in criticism or theory or polemics, at least occasionally.
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