I would say that the anti-intellectualism of this poem makes me sick, but
the truth is that I am already sick of anti-intellectualism and that this is
nothing new.
> The miserly poet
> The poet who declaims his opinions
> in obscurely wrought puzzles
> leaves me cold.
"Obscurely wrought" is an odd phrase. Obscure puzzles, yes; wrought puzzles,
well, what other kind is there? But what does it mean to claim that the
"wrighting" of the poem is itself obscure? I think the intended sense is
probably "wrought into obscurity"; but that isn't the grammatical sense of
the phrase, which appears clumsy and ill-considered.
There is more to poetry, although not much more to this poem, than the
declaiming of opinions. And I doubt very much whether the deliberate
fashioning of enigmas is considered by those who go in for it to be simply a
"clever" or "poetic" way of opinionating. The reader who makes that
assumption is apt to be disappointed, even after making a strenuous effort
to decode the "signs" in the hope of finding out what it is that the poet is
"really saying". It is pretty crass to blame the poet for that
disappointment.
> Mental games of cleverness
> proclaim hollow virtuosity
> and touch nothing.
Much redundancy here, as there usually is when cliches are compounded.
"Cleverness" is already being used in the sense of "virtuosic mental games";
and "games", along with "virtuosic" rather implies "hollow" (one does not
often hear about "ample" or "satisfying" virtuousity).
There's a questionable slide, too, from the assertion that such
intellectualism "leaves *me* cold" to the assertion that it "touch[es]
nothing". It is arrogant to assume that one's emotions are exemplary, that
they are a reliable index of what "the reader", whoever she may be, must be
feeling. Sad to say, this arrogance is becoming more and more common among
students of literature, who have real difficulty in understanding the
"divisiveness" of much modern poetry, the way it sets one reading against
another.
> Meanings buried in too-clever references
> and elliptical allusions are still-born,
> leaving only signposts to nowhere.
This hostility towards "cleverness" again. Would stupid-enough references
appease the reader? There is some unfortunate mixing of metaphors here, too:
meanings are first buried, then still-born...
> If I struggle to decode the signs,
> will there be that flash of insight
> to reveal a new world?
> I puzzle and probe this tortured language,
> teasing out its meaning --
> but find only opinon,
> dressed in obscure intellectualism.
I am really troubled here by the readiness of the assumption that the "I" of
this poem is competant to deliver such verdicts - that it has really
"struggled" and that this "struggle" gives it sufficient warrant for its
opinions. Not least because I don't believe it; but also because I don't
believe that readings can be validated in this way.
> Neither hand nor heart was engaged
> in this clever mind game.
"The passion of it, the continual passion of it in this man who, fools said,
didn't 'feel'. I have never yet found a man of emotion against whom idiots
didn't raise this cry." - Ezra Pound (referring to Henry James).
> These shuttered phrases are ungenerous
> give little away.
> Tight and miserly,
> they withold meaning.
Again, this is blaming the poet for one's own disappointment in not having
certain of one's preconceptions rewarded ("by all means surprise me: but
only on the following terms...").
> This self-seeking game would matter little
> if the poet was not
> held up as a National Treasure.
'sright. It's all hype. The only true standard of poetic value is whether or
not *I* like something. Everybody else is making their feelings up.
- Dom
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|