*
for an egregious example of what I'm talking about in the previous post,
see page 13 of the Sunday Opinion section in today's NYTimes,
the Metropolitan Opera currently spending 16 million on a new production of Wagner's Ring,
while last year the Los Angeles Opera wasted 31 million on a similar fling—
Where are the poets protesting this misallocation of arts funding?
Where are the poets picketing these presentations,
lying down inside the opera houses refusing to move and forcing the police to drag them up the aisles with nightsticks and tasers,
where are the poets refusing to accept this injustice—
poetry is the least funded art, every poet knows: but
when are the poets going to rise up and battle against this inequity?
47 million: 470 poets could have been given a hundred thousand dollars apiece
to support their work,—
470 poets should have been granted this money,
but poets will never get the share of arts funding they rightfully deserve unless
they stand up and fight for it!
*
a fable:
The State (society, the institutional powers that be, etc) has budgeted 20 beans for the Arts—
of course 20 beans are too little, the State should allocate more beans, everybody knows, everybody bleats and tirades
that 20 beans are not enough funding for the Arts, etc., etc.,
the State should give them more, the State should blah blah blah—
the Artists endlessly complain they're being shortchanged in the State's dispersal of resources—
and they're right, of course: but so what?
The Artists can bang their heads against the State's palace doors all they like,
but 20 beans is it.
And eventually inevitably those 20 beans are distributed to the Arts:
Music gets 8 beans,
Film gets 4,
Painting/Visual gets 3,
Theater gets 3,
Prose gets 2,
Poetry gets—wait, aren't there any left? Did you count them right?
**
Sunday, September 26, 2010
a familiar fable
*
If you were the member of a tribe that was constantly attacked by other tribes,
if for centuries those clans had continually robbed your crops and stole the fruit of your labors,
wouldn't you consider those groups your enemies?
And what if your tribe and those same hostile tribes were under the rule of a larger entity,
a body politic, a realm, that favored those rival tribes, that in the distribution of its wealth and benefits
had always unfairly granted those enemy tribes more resources than it gave to you—
If you were a member of this outcast caste, this slave class,
might you not resent and even rise up in rebellion against the system that despised and exploited you—
You probably would,
unless of course you were a Poet,
in which case you'd be kneeling down and kissing the ass of those enemy tribes
of Music, Painting, Film, etc.,
and prostrating yourself at the feet of your most rapacious enemy, the Prosewriter tribe,
and your whole tribe, every Poet would be groveling alongside you—
Nor would you and your fellow helots mass your forces in united protest against the State that supported and awarded its endowments
to those foe tribes of Musicmakers, Painters, Filmistes, Prosewriters, et al,
those adversary tribes who have eternally plundered and plagiarized your achievements, the produce of your hands,
who have commandeered, hijacked the goods your serfdom has created—
those rival tribes, whose punishment for the evil piracy of your work
has been what?
Not punishment, but prize: to garner the major share of any and whatever Arts funding
the greater society meagerly dispenses in its budgetary decisions.
*
But of course if you were a member of this tribe, it wouldn't be heredity; fate would not have cursed your birth into this family of Untouchables:
no, you would have joined it yourself, free will, you chose to enter this pariah pack
and suffer its abject, its humiliating impoverishments,
to sacrifice your life in masochistic menial fealty
and obsequious servitude, in endless subjection
to those superior vicious tribes who fang the food from your mouth, who loot your livelihood and ransack your soul,—
and oh yes, you'll crawl and humbly bless the god that rewards those enemies.
*
If you were the member of a tribe that was constantly attacked by other tribes,
if for centuries those clans had continually robbed your crops and stole the fruit of your labors,
wouldn't you consider those groups your enemies?
And what if your tribe and those same hostile tribes were under the rule of a larger entity,
a body politic, a realm, that favored those rival tribes, that in the distribution of its wealth and benefits
had always unfairly granted those enemy tribes more resources than it gave to you—
If you were a member of this outcast caste, this slave class,
might you not resent and even rise up in rebellion against the system that despised and exploited you—
You probably would,
unless of course you were a Poet,
in which case you'd be kneeling down and kissing the ass of those enemy tribes
of Music, Painting, Film, etc.,
and prostrating yourself at the feet of your most rapacious enemy, the Prosewriter tribe,
and your whole tribe, every Poet would be groveling alongside you—
Nor would you and your fellow helots mass your forces in united protest against the State that supported and awarded its endowments
to those foe tribes of Musicmakers, Painters, Filmistes, Prosewriters, et al,
those adversary tribes who have eternally plundered and plagiarized your achievements, the produce of your hands,
who have commandeered, hijacked the goods your serfdom has created—
those rival tribes, whose punishment for the evil piracy of your work
has been what?
Not punishment, but prize: to garner the major share of any and whatever Arts funding
the greater society meagerly dispenses in its budgetary decisions.
*
But of course if you were a member of this tribe, it wouldn't be heredity; fate would not have cursed your birth into this family of Untouchables:
no, you would have joined it yourself, free will, you chose to enter this pariah pack
and suffer its abject, its humiliating impoverishments,
to sacrifice your life in masochistic menial fealty
and obsequious servitude, in endless subjection
to those superior vicious tribes who fang the food from your mouth, who loot your livelihood and ransack your soul,—
and oh yes, you'll crawl and humbly bless the god that rewards those enemies.
*
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
po-poirot
*
“Anyway (poetry) is not the most important thing in life, is it? Frankly, I'd much rather lie in a hot bath sucking boiled sweets and reading Agatha Christie, which is just exactly what I intend to do as soon as I get home.” —Dylan Thomas
**
“Anyway (poetry) is not the most important thing in life, is it? Frankly, I'd much rather lie in a hot bath sucking boiled sweets and reading Agatha Christie, which is just exactly what I intend to do as soon as I get home.” —Dylan Thomas
**
Sunday, September 5, 2010
repost from a couple years ago——
*
One of Wallace Stevens's many masterpieces, "The Man on the Dump," may reveal something of what it is that great poets do, or can do.
They forage, scavenge on every debris/each drop of detritus and forge it charge it reborn—
Part of that garbage, that scum of scrap they use is us—
we lesser poets.
Great poets can take other poets' failures and transform them into successes.
A great poet like James Tate can take the failed verse of dub poets and transform them into his masterful poems.
This is hyperbole perhaps, but there might be some truth to it.
This capability may be one of the many that separate great poets like Tate from flub poets like me.
Because, I think, and this is the thought that woke me up in distraction this morning,
the sad meager truth is that I can use nothing from other poets' failures. I do not have that capability—
No: I can only take other poets' successes and turn them into my failures.
The successful poet is the Man on the Dump,
the failed poet is the one lounging around in the King's Treasury.
Like all lesser poets I am doomed to waste my life taking the successful works of great poets and transforming them into my failed poems.
In fact I the lesser poet may have no source material, no resource but them, their verse.
I have nothing else to work with but their accomplishments.
Whereas they, the great poets, have for their wield not only the heap achievement of their fellow greats, but
(and this is the crucial difference between them and us)
they can also utilize the wasteproduct trash efforts of all us failed poets.
(Could it be a formulaic fate's-cross exchange: we failed poets have nothing to work with but the triumph-tomes of successful poets, while they, the great ones, have nothing to work with but our ruined rhymes—? No, too neat.)
Everything's piled on their scarred and stained workbench.
But on our escritoires only the heavy volumes of the Majors are lined up
and held up precariously
by the trembling bookends of our arms, our forearms—
which leaves our hands, our hands flapping around quite useless.
*
One of Wallace Stevens's many masterpieces, "The Man on the Dump," may reveal something of what it is that great poets do, or can do.
They forage, scavenge on every debris/each drop of detritus and forge it charge it reborn—
Part of that garbage, that scum of scrap they use is us—
we lesser poets.
Great poets can take other poets' failures and transform them into successes.
A great poet like James Tate can take the failed verse of dub poets and transform them into his masterful poems.
This is hyperbole perhaps, but there might be some truth to it.
This capability may be one of the many that separate great poets like Tate from flub poets like me.
Because, I think, and this is the thought that woke me up in distraction this morning,
the sad meager truth is that I can use nothing from other poets' failures. I do not have that capability—
No: I can only take other poets' successes and turn them into my failures.
The successful poet is the Man on the Dump,
the failed poet is the one lounging around in the King's Treasury.
Like all lesser poets I am doomed to waste my life taking the successful works of great poets and transforming them into my failed poems.
In fact I the lesser poet may have no source material, no resource but them, their verse.
I have nothing else to work with but their accomplishments.
Whereas they, the great poets, have for their wield not only the heap achievement of their fellow greats, but
(and this is the crucial difference between them and us)
they can also utilize the wasteproduct trash efforts of all us failed poets.
(Could it be a formulaic fate's-cross exchange: we failed poets have nothing to work with but the triumph-tomes of successful poets, while they, the great ones, have nothing to work with but our ruined rhymes—? No, too neat.)
Everything's piled on their scarred and stained workbench.
But on our escritoires only the heavy volumes of the Majors are lined up
and held up precariously
by the trembling bookends of our arms, our forearms—
which leaves our hands, our hands flapping around quite useless.
*
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
the trick
*
“The trick naturally is what [Robert] Duncan learned years ago and tried to teach us — not to search for the perfect poem but to let your way of writing of the moment go along its own paths, explore and retreat but never be fully realized (confined) within the boundaries of one poem. . . . There is really no single poem.” —Jack Spicer
*
I don't totally disagree with what Spicer says:
—his "trick" obviously works for some poets—Frank O'Hara for example—
but not for others,
whose trick is indeed "to search for the perfect poem"—
Bishop and Mallarme, to name a couple—
Many perhaps most poets oscillate (Octavio Paz's term) between these either-or choices,
compare the "perfected" poems of Robert Lowell versus his Notebook sonnets . . .
But ultimately the poets from both these positions
—or "temptations" as Paz summarized them:
"The history of modern poetry is that of the oscillation between revolutionary temptation and religious temptation." (Children of the Mire, p. 37.)—
ultimately, don't both temptations—the religious (Bishop et al) and the revolutionary (O'Hara et al)—
no matter what "trick" they employ—
end up, finally, pared down to their most perfect poems, confined to a Selected,
even the greatest Revtemps,
among whom I would place O'Hara—
even they will get reduced to their best; most of their verse will be winnowed away—
we living can never know which O'Hara poems will continue to thrive,
just as Tennyson's contemporaries could not have foreseen what his Selecteds would include/exclude—
future academic specialists will study specific poets in their entirety, of course—
and androids/cyborgs will upload every poem ever published, in 0.3 seconds—
but most readers, human readers anyway, will stick to that Selected—
I haven't read all of the Collected O'Hara, but some of the poems I've read donkeydozens of times with renewed appreciation—
"Mary Desti's Ass" made it into the 213 (page-through printed) pages of Donald Allen's Selected O'Hara,
but will it survive in the smaller Selecteds to come—
it's not a "perfect poem" perhaps, and will probably never appear in general anthols like the Norton etc.,
but it leaves me stunned stammering with admiration after every reading—
*
Peculiar loves like mine for "Mary Desti's Ass" are of course marginal, and bear less import than the consensus that accumulates and creates the canon of
those singled-out poems which enter the various Selecteds that follow in the wake of a great poet like O'Hara—
Anyway, considering it over I think I disagree further with Spicer's quote above: I think he misses the point.
Because perfect poems do get written by significant poets, whether they're Revtemp or Reltemp, it doesn't matter.
Spicer's formula—"let your way of writing of the moment go along its own paths"—is probably a good description of O'Hara's practice,
and his injunction—"not to search for the perfect poem"—inveighs against what Bishop and say Philip Larkin sought to do in their work—
Pick up the Larkin or the Bishop Collected in one hand and the O'Hara Collected in the other,
and feel the weight of their ways.
But my disagreement with Spicer's (or is it Duncan's) dictum, is simply this:
if O'Hara truly tried "not to search for the perfect poem," he failed.
Because he did write some perfect poems, and so did Bishop and Larkin.
(And Duncan, he failed too, if his aspiration/intent really was to eschew "the perfect poem"—two of his (at least) seem pretty perfect to me: Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar, and Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow—)
The trick is to write perfect poems using the trick that works best for you,
even the trick that tricks you into thinking your goal is "not to search for the perfect poem"
is a good trick if it helps you to write some perfect poems,
as presumably it did for O'Hara.
Revtemp, Reltemp, whatever the hell.
***
Saturday, July 31, 2010
THE SILENCED GENERATIONS
*
Below are excerpts from a few of the negative notices that greeted my first two or three books. These are just a sample of the bad reviews those volumes received.
To say that I was discouraged and disheartened by these vicious hostile words is to put it mildly. In fact, I was so hurt and crushed that I stopped writing entirely.
How many other fledgling artists have suffered similar injury—generation after generation of new writers at the dawn of their careers, brutally assailed, cut down in their premiere years, felled in their first steps, balked before they'd barely begun, undermined and destroyed by the malicious oppugnacy of critics—
How tragic that young poets should be treated so cruelly!
:
"[Bill Knott's] poems are so naive that the question of their poetic quality hardly arises. . . . Mr. Knott practices a dead language." —Denis Donoghue, New York Review of Books, May 7, 1970
"[Bill Knott's poems are] typically mindless. . . . He produces only the prototaxis of idiocy. . . . Rumor has it that Knott's habit of giving his birth and terminal dates together originated when he realized he could no longer face the horror of a poetry reading he was scheduled to give."
—Charles Molesworth, Poetry Magazine, May 1972
"[Bill Knott is] malignant."—Christopher Ricks, The Massachusetts Review, Spring 1970
"[Bill Knott's work] consists almost entirely of pointless poems, that say disgusting things. . . . [His poetry is] tasteless . . . and brainless."
—Michael Heffernan, Midwest Quarterly, Summer 1973
"[Bill Knott is] incompetent."
—Alicia Ostriker, Partisan Review (date? 1972?)
"Bill Knott's poems are . . . rhetorical fluff . . . and fake." —Ron Loewinsohn, TriQuarterly, Spring 1970
"Bill Knott should be beaten with a flail."
—Tomaz Salamun, Snow, 1973
***
Below are excerpts from a few of the negative notices that greeted my first two or three books. These are just a sample of the bad reviews those volumes received.
To say that I was discouraged and disheartened by these vicious hostile words is to put it mildly. In fact, I was so hurt and crushed that I stopped writing entirely.
How many other fledgling artists have suffered similar injury—generation after generation of new writers at the dawn of their careers, brutally assailed, cut down in their premiere years, felled in their first steps, balked before they'd barely begun, undermined and destroyed by the malicious oppugnacy of critics—
How tragic that young poets should be treated so cruelly!
:
"[Bill Knott's] poems are so naive that the question of their poetic quality hardly arises. . . . Mr. Knott practices a dead language." —Denis Donoghue, New York Review of Books, May 7, 1970
"[Bill Knott's poems are] typically mindless. . . . He produces only the prototaxis of idiocy. . . . Rumor has it that Knott's habit of giving his birth and terminal dates together originated when he realized he could no longer face the horror of a poetry reading he was scheduled to give."
—Charles Molesworth, Poetry Magazine, May 1972
"[Bill Knott is] malignant."—Christopher Ricks, The Massachusetts Review, Spring 1970
"[Bill Knott's work] consists almost entirely of pointless poems, that say disgusting things. . . . [His poetry is] tasteless . . . and brainless."
—Michael Heffernan, Midwest Quarterly, Summer 1973
"[Bill Knott is] incompetent."
—Alicia Ostriker, Partisan Review (date? 1972?)
"Bill Knott's poems are . . . rhetorical fluff . . . and fake." —Ron Loewinsohn, TriQuarterly, Spring 1970
"Bill Knott should be beaten with a flail."
—Tomaz Salamun, Snow, 1973
***
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