In his 1942 lecture, “The Music of Poetry,” Eliot is, as usual, saying excellent things, but also things which are nothing but fudge. Eliot was something like his ancestor, Emerson, in this, who had a tendency to throw a great deal against the wall, hoping some of it would stick. One often reads, in Emerson, and Eliot, profundity in proximity to pure trash, an elegance lacking facts and details to back up its arguments.

“No one has better cause to know than I, that a great deal of bad prose has been written under the name of free verse; though whether its authors wrote bad prose or bad verse, or bad verse in one style or in another, seems to me a matter of indifference. But only a bad poet could welcome free verse as a liberation from form. It was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form or the renewal of the old; it was insistence upon the inner unity which is unique to every poem, against the outer unity which is typical. The poem comes from the form, in the sense that a form grows out of the attempt of somebody to say something; just as a system of prosody is only a formulation of the identities in the rhythms of a succession of poets influenced by each other.”

The confusion here, in which Eliot is at pains to clarify that bad verse or bad prose is, most importantly, bad, and all that matters is that the writing in question (whether prose or verse) is bad, arises from the vague manifesto-ism which he and his colleagues created in the first place. Here is the older, successful man of Letters apologizing for the idiocy of his ‘old gang ways.’ Such an apology is necessary because the Modernists were NOT specific in their obsevations; where’s the specificity in Emerson, in Pound, in Eliot? Where is their ‘Rationale of Verse?’

If you’re going to make a fuss–which Eliot is still doing here–about ‘the revolt against dead form,’ you have to be specific. Eliot is being irresponsible, and surely he knows it, for he is tacitly opening the gates to ‘bad prose,’ vindicated under a banner of vagueness: ‘revolt against dead form!’ Is Shelley ‘dead form?’ Is he, or not? Fashion may indeed say it is so, and with rhetoric so vague, any sort of unfortunate things can happen.

Pedagogy is serious business. Manifesto-ism is not a game. One affects countless generations of young minds. One shouldn’t be sloppy.

Eliot posits a good ‘inner unity’ against a bad ‘outer unity,’ but this is irresponsible, opium-eating nonsense, the goofy romantic side of Emerson in operation, for if the word ‘unity’ is properly used, we cannot presuppose a ‘inner’ unity AND a ‘outer’ unity–it doesn’t compute. It creates a straw man: ‘outer unity’ which is ‘typical’ to be knocked over by a ‘unique’ and ‘inner unity’ which is not defined.

For Eliot to say that ‘form’ grows out of ‘the attempt of somebody to say something’ is brilliant, if somewhat vague. If prose is ’somebody saying something,’ then poetry is ‘the attempt of somebody to say something’ and perhaps here is the discriminating definition at last. Even the purest Imagism is still ‘the attempt of somebody to say something.’ But what of Eliot’s famous ‘dissociation of sensibility?’ The younger Eliot was once certain how crucial ‘the attempt of somebody to say something’ depended on the correspondence of feeling and object, but here Eliot’s ‘form’ arises out of an ‘attempt to say,’ a problematic formula, since ‘attempt’ opens the door to, well, Ashbery-ism, an exquisite and pleasant ‘attempt’ or seeming ‘attempt,’ to say something.

But this is finally too vague, and even crude, as Eliot’s rejection of Milton and the Romantics was, based on what must be seen as the absurd ‘dissociation of sensibility’ theory.

Here is a far more reasonable description (written before Eliot was born) of the difference between the Metaphysicals and the Romantics:

“Almost every devout reader of the old English bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, undefinable delight. Upon being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and of the grotesque in rhythm. And this quaintness and grotesqueness are, as we have elsewhere endeavored to show, very powerful, and if well managed, very admissible adjuncts to Ideality. But in the present instance they arise independently of the author’s will, and are matters altogether apart from his intention. The American Monthly has forcibly painted the general character of the old English Muse. She was a maid, frank, guileless, and perfectly sincere, and although very learned at times, still very learned without art.

No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end — with the two latter the means. The poet of the Creation wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he considered moral truth — he of the Ancient Mariner to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by mental analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception — the other, by a path which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a certainty and intensity of triumph which is not the less brilliant and glorious because concentrated among the very few who have the power to perceive it.

It will now be seen that even the “metaphysical verse” of Cowley is no more than evidence of the straight-forward simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he was in all this but a type of his – school — for we may as well designate in this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the volume before us, and throughout all of whom runs a very perceptible general character. They used but little art in composition. Their writings sprang immediately from the soul — and partook intensely of the nature of that soul. It is not difficult to perceive the tendency of this glorious – abandon. To elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind — but again — so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all good things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and utter imbecility, as to render it not a matter of doubt, but of certainty, that the average results of mind in such a – school, will be found inferior to those results in one (ceteris paribus) more artificial. Such, we think, is the view of the older English Poetry, in which a very calm examination will bear us out. The quaintness in manner of which we were just speaking, is an adventitious advantage. It formed no portion of the poet’s intention. Words and their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us today with a vivid delight, and which delight in some instances, may be traced to this one source of grotesqueness and to none other, must have worn in the days of their construction an air of a very common-place nature. This is no argument, it will be said, against the poems – now. Certainly not — we mean it for the poets – then. The notion of – power, of excessive – power, in the English antique writers should be put in its proper light. This is all we desire to see done.”

The author of the above passage is by none other than that working critic, Edgar Poe.

“No general error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end — with the two latter the means.”

Here we see the great “error” of Eliot expressed tersely, concisely, wittily and prfoundly.

I certainly had heard of ‘As One Put Drunk Into The Packet Boat;’ it’s in my first edition, Vintage Book of Contemporary Poetry, edited by J.D. McClatchy, which I’ve had for years.

Ashbery graduated from Harvard in 1949. That’s 60 years. ‘Packet Boat’ is, according to you, one of his best things. That’s quite sad, really.

The line, or title, in question, has no existence, really, under our examination so far, except as a signifier of Ashbery’s erudition. This was my first point, and this remains the point. It’s a pity you can’t see that.

Thomas

A marvel, indeed, that you read the ashes and chewed on the berries of this poem with Harold Bloom, one of Ashbery’s most prominent champions, yet you didn’t know Ashbery purloined his letter(s) from Marvell. The Finch did not see the Berry for the Bloom?

It just goes to show how profitable poetry-stealing is; not only is it difficult to detect, but if ‘found out,’ the thief merely comes across as clever and erudite.

This example, interestingly enough, suppports my quarrel with the New Critics, for Ashbery’s ‘act’ occurs ‘outside’ the ’sacred (new critical) text’ of the poem, and thus is an event banned from our critical lexicon by the myopic New Critic. The New Critic is trained only to ’see’ the finished, whole result–where form and content are one– but we ’see’ how this is a false ideal, in fact.

In order to be detective/critics, we need to think outside the box (see Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’) and this means also thinking outside ‘the poem’ and not allowing ourselves to be tripped up by male ego new critical erudition. We may even have to be a philosopher a la Plato and embarrass the poet, if it comes to that.

Thomas

So “Hum…..” Hum….” what? It’s got to be a proper name because it’s capitalized. Surely you don’t mean Humphrey Bogart or Humbert Humbert? Do you mean Humpty Dumpty because the pieces can never be put back together again?

Yes, eureka! Humboldt, Alexander von Humboldt!

I enjoy reading your stuff, the wisdom of senty years that bodies forth from an uncompetitive liver of life, your unique perspective of being an American in SE Asia paints some very perspicacious and pertinent pictures with a core philisophical poetic of acceptance, tolerance and desire to understand the other point of view, one of the most human presences here.

We only have text to go on, so at some level, though we all know we are essentially the same – human beings; we exist only in the mind of one another as a fiction really, a textual representtion of ourselves, simulacral renderings of the real thing, binary data bits, letters, a masquerade in the imagination, which He who needs not naming, the Mossbawn magus, says, that it is:

“…precisely this masquerade of fictions and ironies and fantastic scenarios that can draw us out and bring us close to ourselves. The paradox of the arts is that they are all made up and yet they allow us to get at truths about who and what we are or might be”

~

i wrote a pong in response to Annie’s ping on the Taggard thread where we are both pretending to prove our version of the Taggard poem. Hers that it is dactylic and mine that it is free verse with no regular metric.

I started on the high horse, but by the time i finished it, had got closer to something that had brought me closer to myself, and my feelings toward the mental fiction of Annie Finch which i hold and is down to her textual representation of herself, which began with an air of competitive superiority on my part, dissolved as i hoked in deeper to waht i was really after trying to get out and i came to understand that – it doesn’t really matter who is right or wrong, as what’s important is not being the best, the cleverest, the biggest pain in the ass, but Humanity.

I will try to post it again tommorow.

cheers

“Naturally, sounding as intelligent as we do, and armed with the trick of sneering and calling anyone who disagrees with us as minor voices, coupled with a pliant fan-base of people with self-esteen isssues who are keen to shed any their lower-class self and escape into a realm of sophisticated chat where they think hanging round playing a game of what one writes being considered incredibly important by a room full of bores all pretending such is so — hence the confusion, and people taking what the top 1% with a straight face, for a larf as serious and not just fun.”

Self-esteem issues indeed, and pleasure issues too, i.e. people who take themselves so seriously they are unable to grasp the fun side of ideas anymore, and grow so rigid insight is no longer possible, the intellect so immune to shock and awe.

I think the surest sign of a genuine “Elder” of the sort I had in mind a little way up on this thread was a.) a sense of fun and b.) a sense of the ridiculous.

I’ve also heard a lot of pleasant surprise and assent in response to Richard Hugo’s insistence that it was a terrible waste to assume that “the further from sentimentality we got, the truer the art.” Takes a good gulp to get the mind around a revolutionary idea like that, indeed a rethink of everything we’ve been taught.

And the Coleridge too that we all quote so frequently without bothering to figure out what it actually says:

“A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct ratification from each component part.”

And Michael, John Ashbery is a whole lot more like that than his poe-faced apologists (love that expression and have been waiting to use it!)!

Christopher

Wow. I had no idea about this and I don’t even think Harold Bloom mentioned it when we read it in his class.

I have always liked Ashbery’s 17th-century-ness.