http://voxpopulism.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/know-your-audience-when-your-audience-is-yourself/
I'd only begun to read Jacob Mooney's blog a week or so ago. He's a very perceptive reviewer, so it's been a delightful experience. And though many bloggers start out with numerous postings in their first few weeks only to write more sporadically before abandoning the project altogether, I hope he blogs in verbose variation for a long time. I'd like to respond to a few misconceptions, and from differences in perspective, from his latest above linked contribution.
"I happen to think that the offended party (Table Music’s Chris Banks) has more than ample reason to be offended by Palmu’s cursory reading, but that’s not quite the topic of this blog post."(Mooney)
I have no problem whatsoever with Chris Banks being offended by my review. I also have no problem with an alternative interpretation, one that disagrees with mine. Maybe I'd even learn something from it. But I do have a problem with the suggestion that the review was compromised by its limited word count. (And since you included this tidbit, then by definition, it is an important part of the post.) I could have written another 2, 000 words on Cold Panes, but because I'm doing this for free -- since (for example) there is one book published every one minute and forty seconds in the U.S., and since reviewing poetry books plays only one part of my fascinating gadabout multi-faceted life, which include many enjoyable endeavours not linked to the world of books at all -- I not only deferred, but positively demurred, to an extended exposition. Not all short reviews are supposed to deal in sophisticated detail. Another 2,000 words would have added more examples from the poems themselves, more nuanced observations. But the tone would have been the same. I outlined my salient impressions of the book.
"This is why following the flow of banal witticisms and counter-witticisms over the past few weeks has been so numbingly disappointing. Because it’s not really a conversation about any of the things it pretends to be about."(Mooney)
Amen! Though, from my side, I never pretended it was about intentionality vs execution, objectivity vs subjectivity. Banks started off with ad hominem, inserted the "intentionality" card as his lone dust-in-the-eyes substantive ploy, then continued with unintentionally ironic assumptions, misrepresentations, off-topic charges, contradictory assessments. Look, I'm not above sparring with someone who's upset with a negative review who then goes on a sweeping condemnatory paranoid spree. It's highly entertaining, and by my incredible mercury-spiking Stat-Counter hits, it obviously is so for others, as well.
Your heart is in the right place, Mr Mooney, when you talk of the importance of keeping to reviews of critical engagement, but my blog was virtually ignored when I wrote, for a year and a half, columns on any number of Canadian poetry collections, recent or in the past 20 years, avant-garde or formal, from celebrated poets or from those whose obscurity matched October evening slugs under a pile of swept leaves. I'm all for writing reviews and for discussing those reviews, or reading and discussing others' reviews and books. Anybody else want to join in? (And by discussing poetry, of course, I don't mean unending author profiles, chit-chat, and thematic concerns, popular on a few other Canadian blogs.)
"It’s about two groups of people with a personal dislike for one another, one that I know only bits and pieces about, but that I understand has been going on for some time."(Mooney)
I haven't met my two adversaries in this particular to-and-fro. I haven't read any of Lemon Hound's poetry. I've read Banks' two books, I've read his two polemics, and I've read Lemon Hound's .... er.... contributions (to use a charitable word) over the past two weeks. It's just words on virtual pages, Mr Mooney. When the lights go out at the end of the eve or in the early morn, the last thing on my mind is what barbs my two opponents have been busy conjuring up while I sleep, guard down and vulnerable.
"We are a slightly more evolved sub-set of the species, us poets, I honestly believe that."(Mooney)
Do you really believe that? Sorry, that's bullshit. I've lived enough decades in enough circumstances, professions, social groups, settings, relationships, and have had long and various social connections with many poets (though not with a large "poetic community", whatever that means). I've been a very lucky man in that I've met, befriended, been intimate on many levels with, fought with, reconciled with, and have had a world of treasured memories of so many different non-poets of all kinds in my life. Being a poet means you're good with words. Full stop. Spiritual sensitivity and moral virtue has never been amplified, and certainly not exclusively identified, with being a poet, in my long experience.
"What I’m tip-toeing along the edges of is a public argument, a group of people in a restaurant calling each other out on long-held animosities."(Mooney)
Again, I hadn't given Chris Banks more than a few passing thoughts after reviewing his book a year ago until the past few weeks, when he came out guns-a-blazin' on his new blog. Animosity is a harsh word for this amusement, at least I can only speak for myself. I hope he recovers from the negative review (it has been a year, after all) and goes on to delight himself and (hopefully) others with his future words.
Thank you for your concerned post, Mr Mooney. Sincerely. And I echo, underline, red star, highlight, and applaud your words to engage seriously with others' poetry. Maybe when this particular rhubarb subsides, more attention will be paid to the words on the papyrus or Microsoft screen, and not so much with the reviewer's supposed dark motivations for writing them. I'm not holding my breath, though.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Raphael Dervish's MOSQUITO COILS
The 2006 release by U.S. press Hoboken On My Mind of Raphael Dervish's Mosquito Coils fell through the proverbial reviewing cracks, it seems. I wasn't aware of this masterpiece (yes, that word is overused, but it still has force) until last month when a chance meeting with a Frank Sinatra karaoke crooner put the title on my lap. The book has nothing to do with the Mafia or waterfront politics, and that's just a small indicator of its off-beat charm and pioneering elan.
The overriding theme and mood of Dervish's third and most ambitious volume of poetry is one of sanguine somnolence, and the poem's opener (put down here in full) serves as an appropriate guide:
WE LEFT
We left
the train of a Sunday eve
pantcuffs wagging
in the starchy breeze
fools begging for autographs
by the rusted oil cans
brimming with exploded Oxydol
and rat whiskers
O! I lay down
on a corn husk
and snored an aria
counterpointed with the ocean's hush
in a makeshift jamboree
of the night.
This is a curious entry, and the first thing that struck my mind was the nature of the union of "we". "We" simply disappears. Or does it? Is this mysterious companion the reader? Or perhaps a figment of the narrator's erratic imagination? An indistinct homeless person wandering with the enigmatic lyricist? Whatever the answer (or possible answers) we know this much: people come and go, and you don't have to have viewed a statue to realize the breathtaking possibilities on the horizon.
The next several poems abruptly shift gears, and the reader is tossed into a maelstrom, a veritable broth of churning metaphysical goo. "Hard-Ass Wisdom On Two-Fifty A Pipe" outlines the cultural miscues and misunderstandings involved when a party of three occasional acquaintances get together to celebrate the posthumous release of a K-Tel Rat Pack double DVD, only to discover that pipe tobacco and rabid anti-smokers don't parlay their desire for compromise into a happy Frankie sing-a-long. Important moral and social questions emerge, here, and in the remainder of this powerfully felt and erudite book: does our desire for ingesting chemicals outweigh the importance of campy proximate clubbiness? Do we have the right to be selfish when it endangers others' joy? Is there such an idea as "too much of a good thing"? Dervish doesn't condescend by leading the reader by the nose into a pre-fab confessional, but lets the questions hang like air from residual belches after the guilty one has scarfed the double anchovies pizza with garlic, washed down by a bean sundae.
There are too many other highlights here to properly address without taking away the surprise of what will surely be Dervish's turning point in a long but sporadic career spanning the beginning of MTV through to nerdy Tony Soprano groupies sporting bolo ties.
Buy it. Read it. Live it.
The overriding theme and mood of Dervish's third and most ambitious volume of poetry is one of sanguine somnolence, and the poem's opener (put down here in full) serves as an appropriate guide:
WE LEFT
We left
the train of a Sunday eve
pantcuffs wagging
in the starchy breeze
fools begging for autographs
by the rusted oil cans
brimming with exploded Oxydol
and rat whiskers
O! I lay down
on a corn husk
and snored an aria
counterpointed with the ocean's hush
in a makeshift jamboree
of the night.
This is a curious entry, and the first thing that struck my mind was the nature of the union of "we". "We" simply disappears. Or does it? Is this mysterious companion the reader? Or perhaps a figment of the narrator's erratic imagination? An indistinct homeless person wandering with the enigmatic lyricist? Whatever the answer (or possible answers) we know this much: people come and go, and you don't have to have viewed a statue to realize the breathtaking possibilities on the horizon.
The next several poems abruptly shift gears, and the reader is tossed into a maelstrom, a veritable broth of churning metaphysical goo. "Hard-Ass Wisdom On Two-Fifty A Pipe" outlines the cultural miscues and misunderstandings involved when a party of three occasional acquaintances get together to celebrate the posthumous release of a K-Tel Rat Pack double DVD, only to discover that pipe tobacco and rabid anti-smokers don't parlay their desire for compromise into a happy Frankie sing-a-long. Important moral and social questions emerge, here, and in the remainder of this powerfully felt and erudite book: does our desire for ingesting chemicals outweigh the importance of campy proximate clubbiness? Do we have the right to be selfish when it endangers others' joy? Is there such an idea as "too much of a good thing"? Dervish doesn't condescend by leading the reader by the nose into a pre-fab confessional, but lets the questions hang like air from residual belches after the guilty one has scarfed the double anchovies pizza with garlic, washed down by a bean sundae.
There are too many other highlights here to properly address without taking away the surprise of what will surely be Dervish's turning point in a long but sporadic career spanning the beginning of MTV through to nerdy Tony Soprano groupies sporting bolo ties.
Buy it. Read it. Live it.
You Knew It Was Coming
It only took a week or so, but voila! the first charge of sexism has been thrust into the fray. (Are Zach Wells and I the only two reviewers who don't know that Chris Banks is a woman?) Of course, no names mentioned, again, of the power-ensconced men (wink, wink), but, hey, a broad brush makes a painting job a lot quicker. Who cares if half-a-can (whoops! sexist overtones on that one!) ends up on six members (strike that last word from the record!) of the family, plus the visiting Mormons, the woman librarian filing her pen-sword, and the matron with hands on hips?
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/2009/11/shameless-hussys-literary-advice_17.html
"Dear Shameless Hussy,
I have been watching the debate about reviewing in this country with some interest. After reading several posts on the matter I did my own research. What struck me even more than the obvious bias of the reviews..."
Comprehensive evidence, please? Bias in what form and content? By whom, specifically? Which publications are "at fault"? Original works of poetry under review in evidence for a more complete picture of what the male reviewers were working with?
"is the overwhelming number of them being penned by men,"
Comprehensive facts, please? In which publications? Are all of them then included? How many years of statistics? Ratio of men's acceptance-to-rejection in those submitting reviews compared to same in women? (which is more pertinent than total reviews). Percentage of women editors compared to men in totality of journals/publications who make the call for acceptance of submissions? Evidence of all work of all women and all men among both categories (accepted and rejected reviews). Percentage of men who submit compared to women who submit? "Objective" quality of work by men with journal-accepted reviews, arrived at by a numerous group of multinational poets and editors who have written extensively about all the reviewers under study?
"usually from the center and east of it,"
Hmmm .... one of the only two pegged reviewers in the Banks-initiated foofaraw is located west of Vancouver. Since the other has moved back east, that makes it a 50-50 affirmative-action geographically distributed wet-dream. But perhaps LH's persona has included and indicted the other ..... 50? 120? other males hogging the reviewing stage (by obviously nefarious, tribal means). I look forward to seeing those other male reviewers named, and the incriminatory textual evidence put on display. Of course, the only fair thing to do is to have ALL reviews by ALL men entered onto the ledger. Again, I await and expect this minor detail to be affixed, with appropriate and lengthy, well-thought-out commentary by LH included.
"and with distinctly similar tones."
As in B-flats? Which tone is this you speak of? Rage-fueled? Petty? Dismissive? Sleepy? Incorrigible? Marsupial-like? There are so many of these fascinating tones. Which is the distinctive one you mean? Ahh, the vapid vagaries of vagueness ....
As for the rest of the "substance" in this contribution, well, as LH herself likes to say: "I think it speaks for itself". I wonder, though: is there a dress code for women poetry reviewers that isn't being maintained by those same women waiting to break down the walls of ancient Rome? (Martha and the Vandalettes?) Yes, indeed, maybe we have the answer! The tribal authorities just demand dresses of their distaff reviewers! Well, we all knew that men were simple, and easy to please.
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/2009/11/shameless-hussys-literary-advice_17.html
"Dear Shameless Hussy,
I have been watching the debate about reviewing in this country with some interest. After reading several posts on the matter I did my own research. What struck me even more than the obvious bias of the reviews..."
Comprehensive evidence, please? Bias in what form and content? By whom, specifically? Which publications are "at fault"? Original works of poetry under review in evidence for a more complete picture of what the male reviewers were working with?
"is the overwhelming number of them being penned by men,"
Comprehensive facts, please? In which publications? Are all of them then included? How many years of statistics? Ratio of men's acceptance-to-rejection in those submitting reviews compared to same in women? (which is more pertinent than total reviews). Percentage of women editors compared to men in totality of journals/publications who make the call for acceptance of submissions? Evidence of all work of all women and all men among both categories (accepted and rejected reviews). Percentage of men who submit compared to women who submit? "Objective" quality of work by men with journal-accepted reviews, arrived at by a numerous group of multinational poets and editors who have written extensively about all the reviewers under study?
"usually from the center and east of it,"
Hmmm .... one of the only two pegged reviewers in the Banks-initiated foofaraw is located west of Vancouver. Since the other has moved back east, that makes it a 50-50 affirmative-action geographically distributed wet-dream. But perhaps LH's persona has included and indicted the other ..... 50? 120? other males hogging the reviewing stage (by obviously nefarious, tribal means). I look forward to seeing those other male reviewers named, and the incriminatory textual evidence put on display. Of course, the only fair thing to do is to have ALL reviews by ALL men entered onto the ledger. Again, I await and expect this minor detail to be affixed, with appropriate and lengthy, well-thought-out commentary by LH included.
"and with distinctly similar tones."
As in B-flats? Which tone is this you speak of? Rage-fueled? Petty? Dismissive? Sleepy? Incorrigible? Marsupial-like? There are so many of these fascinating tones. Which is the distinctive one you mean? Ahh, the vapid vagaries of vagueness ....
As for the rest of the "substance" in this contribution, well, as LH herself likes to say: "I think it speaks for itself". I wonder, though: is there a dress code for women poetry reviewers that isn't being maintained by those same women waiting to break down the walls of ancient Rome? (Martha and the Vandalettes?) Yes, indeed, maybe we have the answer! The tribal authorities just demand dresses of their distaff reviewers! Well, we all knew that men were simple, and easy to please.
Stories of Bute Inlet
I'm happy to pass along this note from Lannie Keller regarding the proposed Bute Inlet fast-track power project. This, though it's the largest hydropower project in Canada, is just one of many proposals for the area. It makes me wonder what some of the deeper reasons were/are for the 90% fund-cutting to BC's small-press publications, since I recall that BC Bookworld ran a thoroughly researched and damning article on the BC Liberals union with private power companies in a plan to export the benefits to the U.S. The issues and concerns are many and complex, but the call here is of a specific nature:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Bute: Collecting the Stories
Has Bute Inlet given you stories to tell? Do you know someone who would like to share memories about living or working in the inlet, or about an adventure up Bute? Can you provide ecological knowledge?
Home of Xwemalhkwu people – and of salmon, grizzlies and countless other creatures, Bute’s immense mountains, rivers and ocean contain memory-treasure: tales of journeys, quests, and challenge... and surely there are ghosts?
We are assembling the stories of Bute – the natural, the cultural, the ancient and modern. Our impetus is the Canadian Environmental Assessment which is seeking “local and traditional knowledge” about the area. We need to give them what we know about the spirit and the real power of Bute Inlet!
Tell what you know or tell what you want to be remembered – because Bute may change forever, but our stories can endure. And just maybe, our telling will help the CEA decide that Bute Inlet is not the place for Plutonic and GE to build the largest private power project in Canada. http://www.buteinlet.net/
Send your stories to Friends of Bute Inlet.
Email: buteinlet@gmail.com
Post Mail: Box 570, Heriot Bay BC, V0P 1W0.
If you have questions or for help with writing your story, please email or call us at 250-285-2846. If you have any photos of Bute Inlet we would love to include them in the documentation. Contact us for help with digital scans or copying.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is the understanding about an area or species that comes from the observations and life-experiences of people on-the-ground.
The insights that emerge from accumulated human knowledge paint a picture that can add to scientific information -- or contradict it. Our Bute Inlet stories and observations will improve the environmental assessment, and should influence resource management decisions.
Please encourage your friends and acquaintences who may be able to share information. Bute Inlet’s TEK will be published online at http://www.buteinlet.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Bute: Collecting the Stories
Has Bute Inlet given you stories to tell? Do you know someone who would like to share memories about living or working in the inlet, or about an adventure up Bute? Can you provide ecological knowledge?
Home of Xwemalhkwu people – and of salmon, grizzlies and countless other creatures, Bute’s immense mountains, rivers and ocean contain memory-treasure: tales of journeys, quests, and challenge... and surely there are ghosts?
We are assembling the stories of Bute – the natural, the cultural, the ancient and modern. Our impetus is the Canadian Environmental Assessment which is seeking “local and traditional knowledge” about the area. We need to give them what we know about the spirit and the real power of Bute Inlet!
Tell what you know or tell what you want to be remembered – because Bute may change forever, but our stories can endure. And just maybe, our telling will help the CEA decide that Bute Inlet is not the place for Plutonic and GE to build the largest private power project in Canada. http://www.buteinlet.net/
Send your stories to Friends of Bute Inlet.
Email: buteinlet@gmail.com
Post Mail: Box 570, Heriot Bay BC, V0P 1W0.
If you have questions or for help with writing your story, please email or call us at 250-285-2846. If you have any photos of Bute Inlet we would love to include them in the documentation. Contact us for help with digital scans or copying.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is the understanding about an area or species that comes from the observations and life-experiences of people on-the-ground.
The insights that emerge from accumulated human knowledge paint a picture that can add to scientific information -- or contradict it. Our Bute Inlet stories and observations will improve the environmental assessment, and should influence resource management decisions.
Please encourage your friends and acquaintences who may be able to share information. Bute Inlet’s TEK will be published online at http://www.buteinlet.net/
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Yann Martel -- Torch Bearer for Literature
[edit] I've just discovered Martel is more "humane" than I'd first surmised. The set-up was a book sent every other week. Math, below, altered.
Problems posting this on Nigel Beale's Nota Bene site. I'll put it up here first. This is after listening to a podcast interview of Martel by Beale:
-----------------------------------------------------
Wow! I'd long thought Martel's long-running stunt was all about a book set-up, as well as an excuse to flog his own political views, but this interview underlines and amplifies those suspicions. The arrogance was also multiplied. Good questions, Nigel!
The additional head-shakers from Martel were also illuminating. He cares about our political leader being literate or not, but doesn't care if the rest of the population watches TV 24/7? Really? I must have been deluded. I'd thought that a strong and engaged political and cultural society was possible here because of the ... efforts (or not) of the 33 million or so that make up our country, not just the whims of the figurehead of an institution that no one looks to for literary revelations.
His tone, especially, surprised me, only in that it exactly mirrored how I'd imagined it playing out through the stunt. Even though it was the same, I say it surprised me because I thought Martel would at least put up a veneer of humility or lightheartedness on the matter. No: strident, self-important in the name of (said with a spooky hush) literature, bizarrely exasperated and unbelieving (though I believe there's a large part of salesmanship there), Martel not only confirms but heightens my feelings that Harper did/is doing the right thing by ignoring this pest.
Imagine yourself (and Harper, for all his power, decision-making importance, etc., is first a human) receiving in the mail a novel every other week, and being asked to read it because it's good for you. The first thought is to laugh at the entire endeavour and dismiss it outright, and that's that. But then it's worth thinking about in greater detail. A novel takes (for me, at least-- I'm a fairly slow reader) between 8 hours and 20 hours to read (depending on length and complexity and readability). We're to entertain the notion that one should set aside, say, 6 hours every week to engage in an activity simply because a complete stranger tells us to-- because it's "good for us". The disconnect between Martel's idealism and his lack of understanding for another's rhythms and realities is wider than one of the great oceans.
And what, exactly, does Martel really think would come of it if Harper, teeth grinding, and reading out of a chastened duty-bound decision, somehow knocked off two or three of Martel's fave titles? Would Harper then have a revelation, and initiate decisions more in tune with those of Martel? Would he immediately cut his hockey watching from constant to that of perusing one or two playoff games only, all the while squeezing in the latest Ondaatje release on the toilet between conference calls? Is the Pope pro-abortion? What gall and naivety. Or, more likely, what a creepy way to engender a few sales of the suggestions-as-book, all while patting himself on the back for his "political engagement". (Oh, wait, that's something only important in our Prime Minister.)
The arrogance and condescension of his artistic stance, in isolation, is also nauseous. To be a supporter of art, and to be familiar with it, means that one must read novels? What, painters and sculptors who largely shun the printed word are to be belittled?
I hope someone starts a campaign to send Martel a book a week on the fine arts of diplomacy and individuation.
Problems posting this on Nigel Beale's Nota Bene site. I'll put it up here first. This is after listening to a podcast interview of Martel by Beale:
-----------------------------------------------------
Wow! I'd long thought Martel's long-running stunt was all about a book set-up, as well as an excuse to flog his own political views, but this interview underlines and amplifies those suspicions. The arrogance was also multiplied. Good questions, Nigel!
The additional head-shakers from Martel were also illuminating. He cares about our political leader being literate or not, but doesn't care if the rest of the population watches TV 24/7? Really? I must have been deluded. I'd thought that a strong and engaged political and cultural society was possible here because of the ... efforts (or not) of the 33 million or so that make up our country, not just the whims of the figurehead of an institution that no one looks to for literary revelations.
His tone, especially, surprised me, only in that it exactly mirrored how I'd imagined it playing out through the stunt. Even though it was the same, I say it surprised me because I thought Martel would at least put up a veneer of humility or lightheartedness on the matter. No: strident, self-important in the name of (said with a spooky hush) literature, bizarrely exasperated and unbelieving (though I believe there's a large part of salesmanship there), Martel not only confirms but heightens my feelings that Harper did/is doing the right thing by ignoring this pest.
Imagine yourself (and Harper, for all his power, decision-making importance, etc., is first a human) receiving in the mail a novel every other week, and being asked to read it because it's good for you. The first thought is to laugh at the entire endeavour and dismiss it outright, and that's that. But then it's worth thinking about in greater detail. A novel takes (for me, at least-- I'm a fairly slow reader) between 8 hours and 20 hours to read (depending on length and complexity and readability). We're to entertain the notion that one should set aside, say, 6 hours every week to engage in an activity simply because a complete stranger tells us to-- because it's "good for us". The disconnect between Martel's idealism and his lack of understanding for another's rhythms and realities is wider than one of the great oceans.
And what, exactly, does Martel really think would come of it if Harper, teeth grinding, and reading out of a chastened duty-bound decision, somehow knocked off two or three of Martel's fave titles? Would Harper then have a revelation, and initiate decisions more in tune with those of Martel? Would he immediately cut his hockey watching from constant to that of perusing one or two playoff games only, all the while squeezing in the latest Ondaatje release on the toilet between conference calls? Is the Pope pro-abortion? What gall and naivety. Or, more likely, what a creepy way to engender a few sales of the suggestions-as-book, all while patting himself on the back for his "political engagement". (Oh, wait, that's something only important in our Prime Minister.)
The arrogance and condescension of his artistic stance, in isolation, is also nauseous. To be a supporter of art, and to be familiar with it, means that one must read novels? What, painters and sculptors who largely shun the printed word are to be belittled?
I hope someone starts a campaign to send Martel a book a week on the fine arts of diplomacy and individuation.
Monday, November 16, 2009
On Blogging Responsibility and Direct Engagement
(A special evening of poetry from Trower, Haley, Neff last Saturday. The recorded sound quality is excellent, but, being technically illiterate, it's beyond me how to link it here. My gal'll get it uploaded when she has the time.)
It started off as an amusing diversion, but now it's become a hilarious act in an Ionesco play. And I probably wouldn't have added to the fun here, but since the disingenuous Lemon Houndhttp://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
has done her typical drive-by smear without having anything interesting or articulate to say on the topic she laments is getting so much play (though she constantly adds to it, and has nothing to say about friend Chris Banks' initiation of the current exchange with his 2nd or 3rd post of his new blog-- the one supposedly devoted to "positive" reviews of others' poetry), how can a born satirist and tribal regulator resist?
From the bookninja quote (funny how Lemon Hound fails to discuss the topic under consideration -- reviews of an essay about sequestered journalling in Iraq):
"But that doesn’t excuse Packer’s review, which seemed to me to be a review of Danner himself rather than the book Packer was supposed to evaluate." (bolding mine).
Well, so much for Chris Banks' lauded "objectivity". The author of this commentary on the MobyLives site has disagreements with Packer's stance. Fair enough. But that in no way compromises his motives, otherwise a Republican should never review a book by a Democrat, a Baptist by a Hindu, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan by a Montreal Canadiens supporter. (More on this two paragraphs down.)
Substance in a review is a funny notion, isn't it? When one, or one in one's own "tribe", is getting praised, there are no problems, no questions even, on the topic of objectivity. When one gets panned, even mildly rebuked in an otherwise positive review (see Donato Mancini's 140 + MA thesis on-line -- I don't have the exact page, nor am I looking it up), a humourless defense is erected at the expense of proportional succinctness and dispassionate appraisal.
I actually read the exchange between Danner and Packer. One could disagree with Packer (I don't have a strong opinion since I didn't read Danner's original journalism, and neither did any of those siding with Danner over Packer in the bookninja comments stream), but I thought Packer's opinions on Danner's fetishism of dead bodies, and connections between micro and macro war issues in Iraq, to be provocative and worthy of discussion. The beef with Packer, though, doesn't seem to be about the substantive issues at all. It descends, predictably, into the "cesspool" (Lemon Hound's word for the review culture in Canada, though what that's got to do with the price of Oil in Guatemala is beyond me) of Packer's motives for his disagreements with Danner. What, then, should be done about critical guidelines, in either the New York Times reviews, or the reviews by those covering obscure poetry books in Canada? Should a multicultural consortium of bureaucrats convene to determine, through intrusive biographical research, the histories of any and all correspondence between reviewer and author? And, if undertaken, what points systems should be assigned therefrom? Top of the pile if the two have never heard of each other? (I'll leave aside the rarity of this eventuality.) Demerits if the two have had tea, but have refrained (so far) from getting horizontal? Automatic ejection if the two have had an exchange wherein one gave a review slightly disparaging of an author who wrote 60% of his poems in traditional sonnet form, while the reviewer (in her artistic hat) wrote poems of Whitmanesque shagginess? Packer and Danner had had disagreements on the justification and procedure of the Iraq war. But their personal relations were cordial. Call the conspiracy rent-a-columnists!
"The comment stream here, well, I think it speaks for itself." (Lemon Hound)
Ah, the old damnation by innuendo tactic. "I think we all know what's up around here, pardner. The jig's up." To call this a logical fallacy would be to insult the notion of logic as at least a surface procedure. Yeah, I think the comment stream speaks volumes, too. Lucky it's still on display. Banks embarasses himself for the umpteenth time with another faulty assumption, demands (HA HA!) answers, though he's not a customer of the journals under his silly finger-pointing, and ignores the topic of the original post.
But wait. In the comment stream of LH's blog piece, we also have this nugget by Banks: "No one thinks any of these guys have any credibilty whatsoever. No one." Aw, it's touching to be given such power. I especially like the added "No one". The need to defend their coterie -- of whom, exactly? All poets? Some of the poets I've given positive reviews to, even some for whom I've given mixed reviews, have thanked me -- not that that matters greatly, but it kind of puts a kibosh on the hilarious bunker mentality/us-against-them silly dichotomies of .... an imagined tribe?
But Banks isn't finished. "What can they do to stop you? The answer is nothing and they know it. Hence the use of ad hominem attacks and defamation." Now this is a howler so rich it more than bemuses. It boggles. It keeps on giving, like a throwaway taunt from a kid who just thinks he's had his toy taken away. Hey, Banks, if "we're" so powerless( the continued passive-aggressive non-use of names, though that's hilariously transparent), why the emotional call for collective persistence in the face of unwarranted attacks? As a concerned plea in order to help lower Chris Banks' blood pressure, I assure him that I don't want to "stop" anybody-- whether or not I like their poetry-- from writing and publishing their own poetry, from applauding the poetry of their friends, and from their friends' applauding of their own poetry. As to the "ad hominem" charge, this is vintage Banks. The only ad hominems I've noted in this exchange is his petulant one-line snipe at my on-line verse, as well as the many other "softer", already-refuted character assassinations based on fantasy motivations. Go back and look at the record, Cold Panes. Anyone can see it. I harshly criticized your two books of poetry. Nowhere do I attack your person. I attack your collective assumptions. I was pissed off by your speaking for me on the subjects of love and loneliness. I attacked your boring conversational lines, your humourless tone, your spiritual self-abasement dressed up as a virtue in your poems. With many poets, the authorial "I' is ambiguous, someone else, and /or shifting. But I would be shocked to be informed that the first-person in your poems wasn't you. And I think it would be disingenuous to assert so. (But, then, like, I'm just trying to get to the author's intentions, man.) Therefore, to comment on attitudes in the poems (necessary in a subjective approach such as yours) is appropriate, In fact, it would be a cowardly puff, a bland blurb, to do otherwise. Would you object to another reviewer detailing the nature of that "I" if he or she praised the attitudes? After all, that's just as valid if lyric power can be linked to self-abasement (for example). It ennobles it. It washes it in sympathy where none, otherwise, would be possible. I've lauded many down-and-out spiritual seekers, or seekers who realize the gap between their own realization and ultimate enlightenment, but that's because they could singe a powerful metaphor in my memory, or could capture a potent image that spoke to their own sad questing. Without linking personal perspective to specific poetic qualities --many of which you and I actually agree on, to go by your own posts -- the qualities of the poems are debased by that missing link no matter what the specific attitude or personal virtue/shortcoming is.
More from the faulty understanding of Lemon Hound (she gathers more incorrect assumptions than Banks):
"Don't let these guys shift the discussion to the simplistic question of negative reviewing or not. That's a red herring. The issue is not at all about negative or positive reviewing, not at all. In fact I think I'm looking for reviews with a lot more bite than these guys can offer. I have a lot more to say about this, but not just yet. All I can say for now is that the binary of negative positive is a rhetorical trap. It's not the point at all."
Uhh ... excuuuuuuuse me (as Steve Martin would say). The "negative reviewing" canard is all on Banks' thumb-aided scale. He began this tete-a-tete with the high-falutin' call against "snark". But as Zach Wells, in typical sense-making perspective has pointed out in Brenda Schmidt's blog, about 5% of the entirety of his reviewing could be classified as snark. To me, that's astounding. That shows great restraint. Perhaps he's read a few too many clunkers, and has become bored with, and compassionate about, beating a last-place horse. But it's also being compassionate to the general reading public to give your honest opinion on what you consider to be a bad piece of writing, showing, of course, when needed, and under the constraints of time and page-space, the evidence to support the opinion. But the tender-green-shoot crowd believes that a review is for the poet first and foremost. Wrong. It's a conversation-starter to the general audience. When that audience decides (if they do) to pick up the book under review-- a book with a good, bad or indifferent judgement-- then, after reading the first several poems, they'll stop giving thirteen shits about what the reviewer thought. This is as it should be. Every person has his or her own subjective opinion. What a wonderful, diverse world! I argue with friends all the time, bless them. Arguements, disagreements, are only troubling when one side takes it all personally. And can you really call someone a friend (all this is beside the point, but I'm using the bogus negative-positive paradigm of LH) who doesn't have the guts to say to you what they really think? Tact is often welcome, but when an author (TO ME) makes egregious no-nos, so-called tact only serves to downplay the perceived faults, thereby giving an unfortunately wrongly-meant tacit pass or benefit of the doubt rather than honest condemnation.
"How convenient it has been to keep the discourse circling in that little rhetorical cesspool."(Lemon Hound)
Then quit being hypocritical by jumping in and stirring the pot. One person's cesspool is another person's clear lake.
It started off as an amusing diversion, but now it's become a hilarious act in an Ionesco play. And I probably wouldn't have added to the fun here, but since the disingenuous Lemon Houndhttp://lemonhound.blogspot.com/
has done her typical drive-by smear without having anything interesting or articulate to say on the topic she laments is getting so much play (though she constantly adds to it, and has nothing to say about friend Chris Banks' initiation of the current exchange with his 2nd or 3rd post of his new blog-- the one supposedly devoted to "positive" reviews of others' poetry), how can a born satirist and tribal regulator resist?
From the bookninja quote (funny how Lemon Hound fails to discuss the topic under consideration -- reviews of an essay about sequestered journalling in Iraq):
"But that doesn’t excuse Packer’s review, which seemed to me to be a review of Danner himself rather than the book Packer was supposed to evaluate." (bolding mine).
Well, so much for Chris Banks' lauded "objectivity". The author of this commentary on the MobyLives site has disagreements with Packer's stance. Fair enough. But that in no way compromises his motives, otherwise a Republican should never review a book by a Democrat, a Baptist by a Hindu, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan by a Montreal Canadiens supporter. (More on this two paragraphs down.)
Substance in a review is a funny notion, isn't it? When one, or one in one's own "tribe", is getting praised, there are no problems, no questions even, on the topic of objectivity. When one gets panned, even mildly rebuked in an otherwise positive review (see Donato Mancini's 140 + MA thesis on-line -- I don't have the exact page, nor am I looking it up), a humourless defense is erected at the expense of proportional succinctness and dispassionate appraisal.
I actually read the exchange between Danner and Packer. One could disagree with Packer (I don't have a strong opinion since I didn't read Danner's original journalism, and neither did any of those siding with Danner over Packer in the bookninja comments stream), but I thought Packer's opinions on Danner's fetishism of dead bodies, and connections between micro and macro war issues in Iraq, to be provocative and worthy of discussion. The beef with Packer, though, doesn't seem to be about the substantive issues at all. It descends, predictably, into the "cesspool" (Lemon Hound's word for the review culture in Canada, though what that's got to do with the price of Oil in Guatemala is beyond me) of Packer's motives for his disagreements with Danner. What, then, should be done about critical guidelines, in either the New York Times reviews, or the reviews by those covering obscure poetry books in Canada? Should a multicultural consortium of bureaucrats convene to determine, through intrusive biographical research, the histories of any and all correspondence between reviewer and author? And, if undertaken, what points systems should be assigned therefrom? Top of the pile if the two have never heard of each other? (I'll leave aside the rarity of this eventuality.) Demerits if the two have had tea, but have refrained (so far) from getting horizontal? Automatic ejection if the two have had an exchange wherein one gave a review slightly disparaging of an author who wrote 60% of his poems in traditional sonnet form, while the reviewer (in her artistic hat) wrote poems of Whitmanesque shagginess? Packer and Danner had had disagreements on the justification and procedure of the Iraq war. But their personal relations were cordial. Call the conspiracy rent-a-columnists!
"The comment stream here, well, I think it speaks for itself." (Lemon Hound)
Ah, the old damnation by innuendo tactic. "I think we all know what's up around here, pardner. The jig's up." To call this a logical fallacy would be to insult the notion of logic as at least a surface procedure. Yeah, I think the comment stream speaks volumes, too. Lucky it's still on display. Banks embarasses himself for the umpteenth time with another faulty assumption, demands (HA HA!) answers, though he's not a customer of the journals under his silly finger-pointing, and ignores the topic of the original post.
But wait. In the comment stream of LH's blog piece, we also have this nugget by Banks: "No one thinks any of these guys have any credibilty whatsoever. No one." Aw, it's touching to be given such power. I especially like the added "No one". The need to defend their coterie -- of whom, exactly? All poets? Some of the poets I've given positive reviews to, even some for whom I've given mixed reviews, have thanked me -- not that that matters greatly, but it kind of puts a kibosh on the hilarious bunker mentality/us-against-them silly dichotomies of .... an imagined tribe?
But Banks isn't finished. "What can they do to stop you? The answer is nothing and they know it. Hence the use of ad hominem attacks and defamation." Now this is a howler so rich it more than bemuses. It boggles. It keeps on giving, like a throwaway taunt from a kid who just thinks he's had his toy taken away. Hey, Banks, if "we're" so powerless( the continued passive-aggressive non-use of names, though that's hilariously transparent), why the emotional call for collective persistence in the face of unwarranted attacks? As a concerned plea in order to help lower Chris Banks' blood pressure, I assure him that I don't want to "stop" anybody-- whether or not I like their poetry-- from writing and publishing their own poetry, from applauding the poetry of their friends, and from their friends' applauding of their own poetry. As to the "ad hominem" charge, this is vintage Banks. The only ad hominems I've noted in this exchange is his petulant one-line snipe at my on-line verse, as well as the many other "softer", already-refuted character assassinations based on fantasy motivations. Go back and look at the record, Cold Panes. Anyone can see it. I harshly criticized your two books of poetry. Nowhere do I attack your person. I attack your collective assumptions. I was pissed off by your speaking for me on the subjects of love and loneliness. I attacked your boring conversational lines, your humourless tone, your spiritual self-abasement dressed up as a virtue in your poems. With many poets, the authorial "I' is ambiguous, someone else, and /or shifting. But I would be shocked to be informed that the first-person in your poems wasn't you. And I think it would be disingenuous to assert so. (But, then, like, I'm just trying to get to the author's intentions, man.) Therefore, to comment on attitudes in the poems (necessary in a subjective approach such as yours) is appropriate, In fact, it would be a cowardly puff, a bland blurb, to do otherwise. Would you object to another reviewer detailing the nature of that "I" if he or she praised the attitudes? After all, that's just as valid if lyric power can be linked to self-abasement (for example). It ennobles it. It washes it in sympathy where none, otherwise, would be possible. I've lauded many down-and-out spiritual seekers, or seekers who realize the gap between their own realization and ultimate enlightenment, but that's because they could singe a powerful metaphor in my memory, or could capture a potent image that spoke to their own sad questing. Without linking personal perspective to specific poetic qualities --many of which you and I actually agree on, to go by your own posts -- the qualities of the poems are debased by that missing link no matter what the specific attitude or personal virtue/shortcoming is.
More from the faulty understanding of Lemon Hound (she gathers more incorrect assumptions than Banks):
"Don't let these guys shift the discussion to the simplistic question of negative reviewing or not. That's a red herring. The issue is not at all about negative or positive reviewing, not at all. In fact I think I'm looking for reviews with a lot more bite than these guys can offer. I have a lot more to say about this, but not just yet. All I can say for now is that the binary of negative positive is a rhetorical trap. It's not the point at all."
Uhh ... excuuuuuuuse me (as Steve Martin would say). The "negative reviewing" canard is all on Banks' thumb-aided scale. He began this tete-a-tete with the high-falutin' call against "snark". But as Zach Wells, in typical sense-making perspective has pointed out in Brenda Schmidt's blog, about 5% of the entirety of his reviewing could be classified as snark. To me, that's astounding. That shows great restraint. Perhaps he's read a few too many clunkers, and has become bored with, and compassionate about, beating a last-place horse. But it's also being compassionate to the general reading public to give your honest opinion on what you consider to be a bad piece of writing, showing, of course, when needed, and under the constraints of time and page-space, the evidence to support the opinion. But the tender-green-shoot crowd believes that a review is for the poet first and foremost. Wrong. It's a conversation-starter to the general audience. When that audience decides (if they do) to pick up the book under review-- a book with a good, bad or indifferent judgement-- then, after reading the first several poems, they'll stop giving thirteen shits about what the reviewer thought. This is as it should be. Every person has his or her own subjective opinion. What a wonderful, diverse world! I argue with friends all the time, bless them. Arguements, disagreements, are only troubling when one side takes it all personally. And can you really call someone a friend (all this is beside the point, but I'm using the bogus negative-positive paradigm of LH) who doesn't have the guts to say to you what they really think? Tact is often welcome, but when an author (TO ME) makes egregious no-nos, so-called tact only serves to downplay the perceived faults, thereby giving an unfortunately wrongly-meant tacit pass or benefit of the doubt rather than honest condemnation.
"How convenient it has been to keep the discourse circling in that little rhetorical cesspool."(Lemon Hound)
Then quit being hypocritical by jumping in and stirring the pot. One person's cesspool is another person's clear lake.
Monday, November 9, 2009
On "Aesthetic Tribalism"
http://chrisbanksy.blogspot.com/
The tactic used in this finger-wagging snipe dressed up as a corrective, a plea for the possibility of serious poetry criticism, is ...... hmmm ..... tribally applauded and beneficient, a frequent ploy, one used by those on the receiving end of uncomplimentary reviews who see dark forces at play, the reviewer being mainly a frontperson for the primitive, reactionary group who must put down anything which even vaguely threatens their own power base of influence. I set down the last clause with much humour, for surely the reader can smile, even laugh, at the inflated, antagonistic presumption entailed in one who sees an isolated review through such a conspiratorial lens.
I stare at the following quote, made by Banks, in disbelief:
"a provocative essay about Dean Young and his emulators which has started me thinking about the various poetry camps we see here in Canada. In a section of his essay called “Followers”, Hoagland writes, “We are living in a time of poetic explosion; the university creative writing systems have not just trained a lot of young poets in literary craft, they have fermented these young artists in a broth of language theory, critical vocabulary and aesthetic tribalism, which the age apparently demands.” "
Let's see. I've been linked in his first polemic as a snarkist, as one who can't or won't engage with the writer's intentions (bogus arguement, which I've answered in a blog post late last year). So -- though he employs the passive-aggressive tactic of high school off-stage whispers just loud enough for everyone else to hear, including the subject of the snark within a "snark", without naming them, myself and others -- I'll answer with some facts (not petulant assumptions) which should interest anyone else who may read his words.
Banks applauds Hoaglund's essay. In his quote of Hoaglund (above), "followers" are chastised for a kind of groupthink, a tribal coterie, which arises out of the university creative writing system. A quick glance to the right sidebar informs the reader that Banks has emerged with a degree from a university creative writing program. He now teaches creative writing. Is this a super sly form of self-abasing satire? If so, well done. If not, this contradiction tops even his previous embarassing assumption of yours truly as a young gun out to create an unearned following by stepping on the necks of his elders.
Anyone who has read my blog can easily see that the aggregate opinion is one of dismissiveness towards coteries and groupthink. That's one (among many) reason(s) I take the postmodernists to task. With rare exceptions, what they're doing is third-rate Black Mountainisms and French theory. Their theory (often written directly as "poetry") accepts no "conversation" with those poets working in the lyrical vein. So the conversation is pre-emptively closed by deconstructionists, postmodernists, post-postmodernists, avante-gardists, post-avantists, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E ophiles, flarfists, and other assorted doctrinaire "new"-schoolers who, by their very foundation, are reacting against the word's (understood, obviously, here, in quotes) patriarchal aggression, linear falseness, traditional entrenchment, value-bound overview. No, when someone (or many someones) attacks my entire foundation for what not only constitutes great poetry (oh, evaluative meanie!), and for whom I see boring, in-club poetics substituting for poetry, I don't see any way of having a fruitful intermingling or "understanding" (misapplied word). But then the no-less-aggressive post-lyric "tribe" only recognize "signifiers" when coming from those they attack.
And the spiritual "progressives" complain because those not enamoured with spiritual ideas of what poetry should and should not be have their own ideological "tribes". I love spiritually saturated poetry. But only if it's poetry first, any message, if any at all, incorporated into it, not used as an excuse to mount a pulpit, unaffiliated or Presbyterian or Buddhist. But much in the direction of this conversation is unseemly, it seems. The best spiritual poetry I've read -- timeless lines about timelessness by way of timeless truths (you can immediately see the problems needed to surmount the abstractions inherent in much so-called "spiritual" poetry)-- is so because the music is there. Spiritual maturity or authority (a good word, not the oppressive accusatory outrage the "egalitarian" pomos denounce) is conferred on an author often by long, slow, doubting, thoughtful, changeable degrees. But "spiritual" poets often want to advertize their elevated status, their putative understanding, or, failing that, their wonderful sensitivity for the importance of enlightenment. I find it nauseating. And ironic, obviously. Spiritual pride is the most subtle and deceptive of sins. And by no means the most rare. By the way, my tendency is towards Advaita Vedanta, but there're no needed organizations for that, and certainly no proselytizing, which is a small part of its beauty.
But perhaps Banks was the exception, bravely (or cynically?) soldiering on in the face of closed-minded tribal association, dissociating himself from the power-groups forming themselves in his very midst during communal workshops and theory riddles. And for the record, I don't think creative writing programs are all evil (though I wouldn't know, I've never entered one). I just don't see that they're necessary. Fun, perhaps. And, maybe the best that can be said for them: I'm sure they can, at their best, save time for a budding poet by instructing her or him on what hasn't worked. My most prevalent thought on that particular subject, though, is that we already have more than enough poets on board. What sympathetic reader of contemporary poetry can read even a single poem of even a tiny corner of them? Just to be clear: I think that everyone on earth should, if they feel it strongly enough, create and try to get published as much poetry as they want. I should also have the opinion that that's often unfortunate only in that the acceptance of middling or bad verse tends to obscure, by time constraints and the leveling pell-mell effect, good poetry. But then there I go being evaluative and unaccepting, again.
The arguement that "Reviewers should be asking of every poetry collection they read what is the intent of the poet" (Banks) is unworkable and inane. I've dealt with this at some length in my post last year on "Negative Reviews of Poetry", but I'll expound since it crops up a lot lately amongst poets who feel hurt by an unkindly assessment of their own poetry. The creation of poetry is obviously highly personal, highly idiosyncratic, highly subjective. Why should the reader not be granted the same attitudes? If a poem, TO ME, lies on the page like wobbly graphite, smudged ink, or typographic epilepsy, my immediate reaction may very well be "ugh!" (TO ME). If the feeling persists through several more poems, I may start to formulate an opinion that this is bad (TO ME). If I read the entire book and find no redeeming virtues in it, I may even be so callous as to (gasp!) not even read it again, thereby losing all chance for a second-chance about-face, or at least softening. More often, though, there ARE redeeming strengths in even otherwise bad books, and I often point them out. Proportion is everything. I often point out what are (TO ME) severe faults amongst the books I rave about. Again, proportion. Another term for that is honest engagement.
Reviewing is highly subjective. It is not a soft procedure in order to find, at whatever compromising stretch, a go-between for author and reader. Such a "sensitive" approach is patronizing to both. The author can detail the most lovely sentiments, the most highly evolved spiritual truths, the most progressive social solutions, yet if those aren't set down in compelling image, metaphor, voice, syntax, narrative, sound, organic structure, passion, mood, rhythm, tone (you know, those outdated poetic "vice"-devices, according to the "revolutionaries"), the words may better be employed in a prose essay, religious tract, political speech.
"[T]he book reviewing status quo .... is about the homogenization of literary culture, and robs poetry of its natural tendencies toward innovation and change."(Banks)
That's the kind of abstract mush that sounds fine and noble, but what does it mean? I love poetry in many forms, moods, subjects, styles, voices, modes, lengths. I also become bored, even irritated, with poetry in the same forms, moods, subjects, voices, modes, lengths, styles. And whenever I encounter one of many complaints in the guise of calling out for "innovation and change", my eyes glaze over with a fine mist. Those frequently championed words need to be explained. There's nothing new. Though, thankfully, there are an infinitely fascinating array of new ways to say nothing new.
Want a better, more "engaged", review? Ask a friend, or a family member, or a poetic "superior" who can do you a favour. Isn't that, though, part of what Banks denounces in his (or Hoaglund's) silly "tribal" metaphor? I write my reviews because I love poetry. Over 90 % of them are unpaid. The ones I have been paid for have netted me somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1.89 an hour (give or take a quarter, or so). And if I wanted to kiss ass and "get ahead" in an intricately staged secret hand-shaking power-broking nod-nod-wink-wink-off, I'd say that shit was sherbet, and fashion my efforts and desires around the community and not the poem (Ursus makes that last important point in Brenda Schmidt's blog, though it shouldn't have to be said). If you want a guaranteed forgiving review of 10,000 + words, focusing on bland descriptors of psychically-intuited authorial intention, dealing with beside-the-point author profiling, thematic concerns, compositional theory and process, adjectival generalizations without textual back-up, and pro hominem non sequiturs in place of analysis of the poem(s), cough up the payola to one of those internet-review-dictators (in the secretarial sense) by giving a pre-set outline to him or her. That'll certainly get some kind of discussion going, perhaps even an understanding of sorts.
The tactic used in this finger-wagging snipe dressed up as a corrective, a plea for the possibility of serious poetry criticism, is ...... hmmm ..... tribally applauded and beneficient, a frequent ploy, one used by those on the receiving end of uncomplimentary reviews who see dark forces at play, the reviewer being mainly a frontperson for the primitive, reactionary group who must put down anything which even vaguely threatens their own power base of influence. I set down the last clause with much humour, for surely the reader can smile, even laugh, at the inflated, antagonistic presumption entailed in one who sees an isolated review through such a conspiratorial lens.
I stare at the following quote, made by Banks, in disbelief:
"a provocative essay about Dean Young and his emulators which has started me thinking about the various poetry camps we see here in Canada. In a section of his essay called “Followers”, Hoagland writes, “We are living in a time of poetic explosion; the university creative writing systems have not just trained a lot of young poets in literary craft, they have fermented these young artists in a broth of language theory, critical vocabulary and aesthetic tribalism, which the age apparently demands.” "
Let's see. I've been linked in his first polemic as a snarkist, as one who can't or won't engage with the writer's intentions (bogus arguement, which I've answered in a blog post late last year). So -- though he employs the passive-aggressive tactic of high school off-stage whispers just loud enough for everyone else to hear, including the subject of the snark within a "snark", without naming them, myself and others -- I'll answer with some facts (not petulant assumptions) which should interest anyone else who may read his words.
Banks applauds Hoaglund's essay. In his quote of Hoaglund (above), "followers" are chastised for a kind of groupthink, a tribal coterie, which arises out of the university creative writing system. A quick glance to the right sidebar informs the reader that Banks has emerged with a degree from a university creative writing program. He now teaches creative writing. Is this a super sly form of self-abasing satire? If so, well done. If not, this contradiction tops even his previous embarassing assumption of yours truly as a young gun out to create an unearned following by stepping on the necks of his elders.
Anyone who has read my blog can easily see that the aggregate opinion is one of dismissiveness towards coteries and groupthink. That's one (among many) reason(s) I take the postmodernists to task. With rare exceptions, what they're doing is third-rate Black Mountainisms and French theory. Their theory (often written directly as "poetry") accepts no "conversation" with those poets working in the lyrical vein. So the conversation is pre-emptively closed by deconstructionists, postmodernists, post-postmodernists, avante-gardists, post-avantists, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E ophiles, flarfists, and other assorted doctrinaire "new"-schoolers who, by their very foundation, are reacting against the word's (understood, obviously, here, in quotes) patriarchal aggression, linear falseness, traditional entrenchment, value-bound overview. No, when someone (or many someones) attacks my entire foundation for what not only constitutes great poetry (oh, evaluative meanie!), and for whom I see boring, in-club poetics substituting for poetry, I don't see any way of having a fruitful intermingling or "understanding" (misapplied word). But then the no-less-aggressive post-lyric "tribe" only recognize "signifiers" when coming from those they attack.
And the spiritual "progressives" complain because those not enamoured with spiritual ideas of what poetry should and should not be have their own ideological "tribes". I love spiritually saturated poetry. But only if it's poetry first, any message, if any at all, incorporated into it, not used as an excuse to mount a pulpit, unaffiliated or Presbyterian or Buddhist. But much in the direction of this conversation is unseemly, it seems. The best spiritual poetry I've read -- timeless lines about timelessness by way of timeless truths (you can immediately see the problems needed to surmount the abstractions inherent in much so-called "spiritual" poetry)-- is so because the music is there. Spiritual maturity or authority (a good word, not the oppressive accusatory outrage the "egalitarian" pomos denounce) is conferred on an author often by long, slow, doubting, thoughtful, changeable degrees. But "spiritual" poets often want to advertize their elevated status, their putative understanding, or, failing that, their wonderful sensitivity for the importance of enlightenment. I find it nauseating. And ironic, obviously. Spiritual pride is the most subtle and deceptive of sins. And by no means the most rare. By the way, my tendency is towards Advaita Vedanta, but there're no needed organizations for that, and certainly no proselytizing, which is a small part of its beauty.
But perhaps Banks was the exception, bravely (or cynically?) soldiering on in the face of closed-minded tribal association, dissociating himself from the power-groups forming themselves in his very midst during communal workshops and theory riddles. And for the record, I don't think creative writing programs are all evil (though I wouldn't know, I've never entered one). I just don't see that they're necessary. Fun, perhaps. And, maybe the best that can be said for them: I'm sure they can, at their best, save time for a budding poet by instructing her or him on what hasn't worked. My most prevalent thought on that particular subject, though, is that we already have more than enough poets on board. What sympathetic reader of contemporary poetry can read even a single poem of even a tiny corner of them? Just to be clear: I think that everyone on earth should, if they feel it strongly enough, create and try to get published as much poetry as they want. I should also have the opinion that that's often unfortunate only in that the acceptance of middling or bad verse tends to obscure, by time constraints and the leveling pell-mell effect, good poetry. But then there I go being evaluative and unaccepting, again.
The arguement that "Reviewers should be asking of every poetry collection they read what is the intent of the poet" (Banks) is unworkable and inane. I've dealt with this at some length in my post last year on "Negative Reviews of Poetry", but I'll expound since it crops up a lot lately amongst poets who feel hurt by an unkindly assessment of their own poetry. The creation of poetry is obviously highly personal, highly idiosyncratic, highly subjective. Why should the reader not be granted the same attitudes? If a poem, TO ME, lies on the page like wobbly graphite, smudged ink, or typographic epilepsy, my immediate reaction may very well be "ugh!" (TO ME). If the feeling persists through several more poems, I may start to formulate an opinion that this is bad (TO ME). If I read the entire book and find no redeeming virtues in it, I may even be so callous as to (gasp!) not even read it again, thereby losing all chance for a second-chance about-face, or at least softening. More often, though, there ARE redeeming strengths in even otherwise bad books, and I often point them out. Proportion is everything. I often point out what are (TO ME) severe faults amongst the books I rave about. Again, proportion. Another term for that is honest engagement.
Reviewing is highly subjective. It is not a soft procedure in order to find, at whatever compromising stretch, a go-between for author and reader. Such a "sensitive" approach is patronizing to both. The author can detail the most lovely sentiments, the most highly evolved spiritual truths, the most progressive social solutions, yet if those aren't set down in compelling image, metaphor, voice, syntax, narrative, sound, organic structure, passion, mood, rhythm, tone (you know, those outdated poetic "vice"-devices, according to the "revolutionaries"), the words may better be employed in a prose essay, religious tract, political speech.
"[T]he book reviewing status quo .... is about the homogenization of literary culture, and robs poetry of its natural tendencies toward innovation and change."(Banks)
That's the kind of abstract mush that sounds fine and noble, but what does it mean? I love poetry in many forms, moods, subjects, styles, voices, modes, lengths. I also become bored, even irritated, with poetry in the same forms, moods, subjects, voices, modes, lengths, styles. And whenever I encounter one of many complaints in the guise of calling out for "innovation and change", my eyes glaze over with a fine mist. Those frequently championed words need to be explained. There's nothing new. Though, thankfully, there are an infinitely fascinating array of new ways to say nothing new.
Want a better, more "engaged", review? Ask a friend, or a family member, or a poetic "superior" who can do you a favour. Isn't that, though, part of what Banks denounces in his (or Hoaglund's) silly "tribal" metaphor? I write my reviews because I love poetry. Over 90 % of them are unpaid. The ones I have been paid for have netted me somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1.89 an hour (give or take a quarter, or so). And if I wanted to kiss ass and "get ahead" in an intricately staged secret hand-shaking power-broking nod-nod-wink-wink-off, I'd say that shit was sherbet, and fashion my efforts and desires around the community and not the poem (Ursus makes that last important point in Brenda Schmidt's blog, though it shouldn't have to be said). If you want a guaranteed forgiving review of 10,000 + words, focusing on bland descriptors of psychically-intuited authorial intention, dealing with beside-the-point author profiling, thematic concerns, compositional theory and process, adjectival generalizations without textual back-up, and pro hominem non sequiturs in place of analysis of the poem(s), cough up the payola to one of those internet-review-dictators (in the secretarial sense) by giving a pre-set outline to him or her. That'll certainly get some kind of discussion going, perhaps even an understanding of sorts.
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