THE SILENCED GENERATIONS

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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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fascist

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Pierre Joris, on his blog today, states:

"Pound, the man, was clearly fascist — but his major work, The Cantos, are not."

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A different, perhaps opposing view, from Laurie Smith's essay from 2002, "Subduing the reader," in Magma magazine:

(http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=14974)

:—Here's the penultimate paragraph:

One can dismiss [Geoffrey Hill's] Speech! Speech! as the last gasp of Pound's influence, but in every generation there are poets who try to tell us that the present is worthless compared to the past, though they rarely have the talent of Pound or Hill. A current example is the American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg who is much admired by the New Republican Right and, surprisingly, by Bloodaxe Books. We need always to be alert to writers who claim that good poetry must be difficult, accessible only to the educated few, and see this claim for what it is - fascist.

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Certainly 'The Cantos' would seem to be a prime example of what's "difficult, accessible only to the educated few."

Smith is protesting against those "writers who claim that good poetry must" needs be over the head of most readers, must be difficult—

make your own list of those writers.

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I remember hearing famous poet S complaining about famous poet A, saying in effect,

If someone as deeply-grounded in the esthetic theories of Modernism as me, if someone as intelligent and well-read as I,

can't understand much of A's verse, who the bloody hell can—

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I've never been able to appreciate 'The Cantos' (not even the ones that appear, flooded with footnotes, in the Norton Mod),

it's over my head. Too "difficult" for me. That doesn't mean I think it's 'fascist.' Laurie Smith's assertion is intriguing and worth considering,

but as I said in earlier posts on this blog, I'm of two minds about the question—

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In any case, I can read, and do read, with great enjoyment, Pound prior to 'The Cantos,'

those lyric satiric poems which perhaps find their culmination in the masterpiece, 'Mauberley'—

And I would rather read my early Pound,
true texts that need no sage-expanding, / truth-expanding
/pages that need no sage commanding,
which needs no footnote page expanding/ extending
that needs no footnote's countermanding
sharp/high/whole notes that need no foot-expanding
that needs no footnote's underhanding/
where footnotes need not rise demanding
where footnotes need not add demanding
where footnotes dare not flock demanding
where footnotes need not come demanding
where footnotes intrude not their demanding
where footnotes come not eye-demanding
which footnotes don't damn with demanding/
than wade those wallow Cantos round
till I drown in understanding.

And I would rather read the early Pound,
where footnotes demur/still/fade/ebb their shrill demanding,
where footnotes hide their damned demanding,
which footnotes need not face demanding
where footnotes offer no demanding
where footnotes rise not eye-demanding
than wade those page-swamped Cantos round
till I drown in understanding.

/those sargasso / critic-swamped /

And I would rather read the early Pound,
texts that need no exegesis,
than wade those footnote Cantos round
till I drown in underthesis.

/tart texts that need no exegesis
/taut texts that need no exegesis
smart texts / high texts
start texts / tough texts that need
neat texts that / complete/ replete
plete texts that need no exegesis
whole texts / full texts / rife texts
clear texts / sheer texts

his texts there/then need no exegesis,
with texts that need no exegesis,



till I drown in footnote thesis / pieces/ chaos/ mire/
terebis / teresis / catachresis./ mimesis/
till I drown down underthesis/

And I would rather read the early Pound,
'high deeds' that need no exegesis,
than wade those footnote Cantos round
till I drowned in underthesis.
.....

high deeds that need no quote-expanding,
than wade those footnote Cantos round
till I drown in understanding.

/no quote-remanding

high deeds that need no down-me-handing

'high deeds' that need no critic-handing

'high deeds' that need no critic-tending, / critic-panding,

sanding, shanding, ganding, banding, handling, branding

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And I would rather read the early Pound,
'high deeds' that need no critic's branding,
than wade those footnote Cantos round
till I drowned in understanding.

///

stranding / pand(er)ing
...
branding? arm-branding (armbanding
label-branding school ism-branding/ scholar's branding
/scholar-scanding


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