A friend recently lent me The Errancy, and my first impressions of it
corresponded quite closely to Fred's criticisms (very wordy, obsessed with
delving into nuances where I can see no good reason to follow her). I was
disappointed, since I was expecting something pretty good from all I've
heard of her. But they *are* only first impressions, and perhaps my
expectations themselves may have skewed my judgement. Did I start reading
her in the right place? Am I missing the point?

Best wishes

Matthew Francis
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd
CF37 1DL
UK

[mailto:[log in to unmask]
01443 482856


-----Original Message-----
From: Tod Edgerton [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 February 2000 00:11
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Narrative etc.


In response to fred's 3 "criticisms" of Graham:

1) She doesn't stir up the dust and then complain she can't see. She stirs
it up to effect that blindness and express--if you'll allow me to sloppily
and loosely and lazily make recourse to that term, for the moment--the
experience of encountering the limit. It's the performativity of her work
that strikesd me as so incredible, and to which I aspire to, even as
sometimes I think she talks too much _about_ her subject, but perhaps only
enough to help frame the "performance," the gesture, the act. The dust is in

our eyes and Graham as much as anyone writiing today helps us see how we
cannot "see to see."

2)Again, her "endless lines" are the _materialization_ of "content." Form is

a means of thinking. Style is the structure of thinking, feeling, being.
Good poets know this, and do not use line breaks, etc. as meaningless
vestments to "pass" as poetry. Her endless lines her yearning flesh are the
endless arcs the subject sets out on towards (to words) the _________--. The

structure of her lines is the structure of desire, at least as she supposes
it; feel free to disagree with her, but do philosophical differences make
for bad poetry, or philosophical differences? How does one can one?
symbolize the unsymbolizable one hopes to encounter. Does she effect that
encounter with the Other--here in the poem it puts on its face of
language--in her poetry, or just "talk about" it? I don't know. But
sometimes I swear I almost swoon. . . . I'm sorry you don't have the same
experience. But I cannot fathom how you think she's narcissistic. What do
you mean by this word? Do you mean to say she uses poetry as a vehicle for
shoring up her ego, a careerist out for praise and if poetry's what gets her

that then a poet she is? I think her poetry stages--stages--the self's
vacillation between trying to transcend its boundaries without permanently
dissolving them, the tensions between the symbolico-imaginary construct of
the ego and the ego-destructive "masochistic" jouissance of the subjective
function, the "real" encounter or eruption. The self risks its permanent
dissolution in the face of the Other in relation to which it is sparked. I
feel I'm not being very clear here, and am feeling a bit inarticulate at the

moment. Maybe I'll be in a better position to phrase it more clearly later.

3) Not to be bitchy, but the very idea you state in your first sentence
instantly strikes me as utterly ridiculous, whether we are talking about a
poet who is "truly great" or not.

Tod

>From: Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Narrative etc.
>Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 15:14:27 -0500
>
>Tried to send this earlier today; it seems not to have gone through.
>
>To Tod: Again, "Fred" is fine. - It's difficult to answer a question of
>the form "How can you think X = Y" when one has been discussing exactly
>that proposition - or discussing Y in such a way that its application to
>X should (or so one feels) be clear.  To criticize Graham fairly I would
>have to quote her work. Since I don't have the time I'll retire the
>field, fully admitting that I have not proved a case. Three points,
>however. 1) JG's stylistic mechanisms include setting down blanks or
>dashes in place of words, and sequences of variations on a phrase that
>remain, and are stated to be, insufficient.  I don't feel that these
>mechanisms serve "silence," or demonstrate a meaning that language
>cannot grasp. To me they are, as it were, noisy; they "raise a dust,
>then complain they cannot see."  2) To assume that one's subtlest
>velleities are worth endless lines - that to summarize or approximate
>would be self-betrayal - strikes me as narcissistic.  I think some poets
>are popular because they act out (at least on paper) a self-absorption -
>or a self-destructiveness or infantilism - that the reader shares, but
>which the reader must, in daily life, suppress.  It seems odd to pair
>Graham with Bukowski, but I think one may fairly do so - and not to
>Bukowski's disadvantage: his implicit deal with the reader (your
>forgiveness, my exhibitionism) is more honest.  3) A great sensibility
>can ignore history, or assume that everything crucial in history
>happens, or is reflected, in the poet's soul.  Simply to make this
>assumption, however, does not make one great.  To equate a massacre,
>war, or cold war with a disastrous love affair, or with a mood resulting
>from it - and to make the mood, rather than the massacre, the subject of
>the poem - strike me as narcissistic. It is a narcissism sanctioned by,
>and evident throughout, contemporary culture; and I think the role of
>poetry should not be to replicate but to attack it.
>
>Re your second paragraph: it's quite possible that I've allowed the word
>"narrative" to mean too much, and hence too little, in recent postings.
>So I will say that by "narrative" I mean three things: plot (however
>simple), characters (however few), and beginning, middle, and end.  T.
>Bahti's claim that, looked at a certain way, every good poem is a
>narrative was useful to me personally, since around the time I read it I
>was planning to try my hand (for the first time) at the lyric.  Yet this
>claim is a metaphor, and all metaphors are questionable.
>
>To D. Barbour: My example of a long narrative poem that "doesn't push
>enough at its chosen conventions" - if by "push at" you mean detach
>oneself from, criticize, transcend - is Walcott's Omeros.  I greatly
>like many of W's shorter poems, such as his elegy to The Mighty Sparrow,
>but I found Omeros unreadable.  Its plot conventions are those of the
>high-modernist novel, wherein time may be disordered, character
>splintered, discursive levels in conflict, and the ordering myth a
>received, rather than an invented, structure.  Its stylistic conventions
>are those of (Walcott's) lyric poetry, where lush metaphor is an
>unquestioned good.  I often recommend this book as an example of what
>not to do in modern epic.

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