Comments on: Keep Blogging

By: Mary Meriam

Mary Meriam — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:17:40 +0000

Henry, thought you might like this:
“Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.” (Paul Celan)

By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:12:09 +0000

I never understand how Henry can be so goddamned funny & then turn around & get all “I’m Mr. Serious Poetry Cat.” I like Henry sometimes.
Blogs! Shouldn’t we just say no? Do we need to encourage ourselves to believe that we always have something worth saying? I read a few blogs (Don’s, SFJ’s, Digital Emunction, Jane’s when I can bear him) but even the best of them are distractions. Digital Emunction might be the best of the lot because it has many writers, so more than one ego is on display at a time, plus I don’t know what emunction means. I mean, I could look it up. I know that.

By: Jasper Bernes

Jasper Bernes — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:24:49 +0000

Peg,
You’re probably right about tone. I do need a stern aunt who’s willing to rap my knuckles when I step out of line. But Martin’s tired and rather familiar fretting about the lack of standards and suitable parenting on the internets deserved a little deflation. I’m well aware that many types of discourse–journalism and academic criticism, for instance, both of which I practice–are highly dependent upon convention (convention which has more to do with “style” than “grammar”). Nonetheless, it’s a bit silly to think that these types of discourse say something about “the sentence” in general, and even sillier to imply that these norms are somehow the most felicitous way to discourse about literature. Below the commanding heights of the magazines and the newspapers, the sentence is, indeed, a far weirder creature than either of you are willing to admit, and the blog owes as much to letter writing and diaries as it does to journalism. There are, it must be said, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Martin’s grammary.
Where, indeed, are these journalists worthy of emulating? When I admire journalists–like Naomi Klein, for instance– it is usually for what they are saying rather than how they say it. When I admire journalists for their style–as I admire the writing of Joan Didion and Susan Sontag–it’s precisely because they have broken with the fusty and often arbitrary or ideological conventions Martin finds sorely lacking here. Most poetry is bad because it is simply a dutiful exercise in filling out the conventional supports, and the same holds for prose. I suspect “training”–one of those class-conscious shibboleths like “tradition”–has very little to do with it.
I’m no internet utopian, and I’ve said why elsewhere. But I don’t agree with you or Martin in the slightest.

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:35:53 +0000

Actually the wings of Poesie are made not of wax but of a very durable-flexible alloy of lanthanum-silicon-titanium. The poet is a builder. Ask Capt. Sullenberger.

By: john

john — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:40:40 +0000

Forgotten about Icarus:
He really did fly!
Just don’t melt that wax, and you’ll soar!

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:20:24 +0000

Henry said:
>What seems gushy idealism or otherworldly purism to you, Kent, might actually be hardheaded psychological realism. As in, to quote Barack Obama quoting St. Paul, “I have put away childish things”.
Well!
And:
>But in order to “get” what I’m talking about, one would have to have a basic awareness of the substantial unity between those elusive, invisible, philosophical things we call Love, Beauty and Truth.
Well, you got me there, Henry. Unlike you, apparently, I don’t have “a basic awareness of the substantial unity between those elusive, invisible, philosophical things we call Love, Beauty and Truth.”
But I’ll keep chugging away.
(You know that I think you sometimes have terrific things to say about poetry, but here you have put on the big wax wings, I’m afraid.)
Kent

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:07:32 +0000

What seems gushy idealism or otherworldly purism to you, Kent, might actually be hardheaded psychological realism. As in, to quote Barack Obama quoting St. Paul, “I have put away childish things”.
But in order to “get” what I’m talking about, one would have to have a basic awareness of the substantial unity between those elusive, invisible, philosophical things we call Love, Beauty and Truth. The art work wins us over by its mysterious, psychic, indefinable partaking of these qualities.
In the end – & I mean REALLY in the end – you can’t fake it any more than you can fake love.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:50:13 +0000

But Henry,
When you say this:
“Vanity, envy, scheming, etc. – these are the poet’s problems, not poetry’s problems. & I suppose they’re exacerbated by the poet’s grudging awareness that such personal ticks, in the long run, are completely useless & irrelevant, often counter-productive. You can’t scheme your way into the ideal reader’s heart & mind. “Love is not love / that alters where it alteration finds / nor bends with the remover to remove.”
You are making an unambiguous claim for Purity! Poetry as “above,” transcendent of such worldly “problems.” I’m saying, yes, that these problems, if that’s what you want to call them, are part of poetry’s flesh and blood, part of its millennial, fractured song. And thank goodness. Otherwise, we’d hardly have any poetry–even the pure-sounding kind!
Kent

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:18:28 +0000

Kent,
I don’t think I was implying anything about Purity. My point was that no matter what the poet is or does, one way or another, it’s not up to them.
Vanity, envy, scheming, etc. – these are the poet’s problems, not poetry’s problems. & I suppose they’re exacerbated by the poet’s grudging awareness that such personal ticks, in the long run, are completely useless & irrelevant, often counter-productive. You can’t scheme your way into the ideal reader’s heart & mind. “Love is not love / that alters where it alteration finds / nor bends with the remover to remove.”

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:56:58 +0000

Henry,
Actually, Old Walt was a great schemer and devious self-promoter: He even wrote reviews for his own books and signed them under aliases. He surely would have had a blog, could he have had.
Great poets, thankfully, need not be Pure, as you seem to imply they should or must be. Vanity and envy deeply mark most of the greats. It’s part of the drive, as they say. Now, yes, it is ennobling when a certain saintliness of character (albeit often confused with conditions of life) accompanies remarkable aptitude. But to believe that selfless character is the foundation of good art flies in the face of poetic history, I’m afraid.
Kent