Mark Weiss wrote:
> The problem, of course, is that neither Graham nor Ramke nor their
> sponsors told the participants, all of whom paid for the privilege, what
> the rules were. Or rather, they lied about the rules.<
Oh, but I'm not talking about the mere rules of the _contest_, Mark! I'm
talking about the rules regarding what's poetry and what's not. That's
where I'm asserting there are no rules. Anything is poetry that anyone
claims is poetry -- isn't that the modern and contemporary view on which
these contests are predicated?
Well, if there are no rules about what's poetry and what's not, how can
any _contest rules_ have any significance or importance in that context?
Where there are no rules how can there be any cheating? If "a poem" is
anything anyone says is a poem is a poem, then the only way to tell
what's worth printing is what someone decides to print. Quality is
defined as what gets printed, so then, on what grounds can you say that
what gets printed is not quality? It is the definitional tautology on which
free verse is predicated. Therefore, no matter what Ramke and Graham
did, or did not do, with the manuscripts, the one they judged the best
and printed is, therefore, by virtue of being judged and printed, the best.
No complaints are possible from those whose manuscripts were not
selected, because they sent in their "anything anyone claims to be a
poem is a poem" poems and paid their money and took their chances.
That they had no chance at all since they weren't sleeping with the
judge or hadn't paid the judge for classes or the like is irrelevant in the
larger context of what makes a poem a poem in our time in the context
of what constitutes poetry today.
The revelation is that if you want to win big awards and prizes, make
sure you do what it takes. Don't mistake the context. Be someone on
whom nothing is lost.
Marcus
>
> I had the distinct misfortune, by the way, as a graduate student of reading hundreds of pages of perfectly made heroic couplets and blank verse by poets famous or infamous in their day and now largely forgotten. Try Davenant's epic or anything of Prior for reasonably accessible examples. If there had been contests back then they would have been participants. And perhaps winners--both were poets laureate.
>
> Mark
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marcus Bales <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Aug 2, 2005 10:21 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Cummings
>
> On 1 Aug 2005 at 9:15, Alison Croggon wrote:
> > ... Aside from the sheer poisonousness of some of it, behind it is this idea of
> > "objectivity", as if poetry can be judged like a 100 metre race with a
> > clearly unambiguous "winner".<
>
> Poetry is like a 100 metre race in one way: both are artificially
> conceived, a narrowing down of a set of rules out of a broader human
> experience. We say the record-holder of the 100 metre race is "the
> world's fastest human", for example, as though the only running ever
> done was done at the 100 metre distance. Also, still similarly, poets and
> their advocates make a similar claim about poetry, though, don't they --
> that poetry is the best use of language or the highest art, that the title
> "poet" and the description "poetry" are honorific.
>
> It seems to me that it is the combination of the claim that "poet" and
> "poetry" are both an honorific with the claim that there is no way to tell
> the difference between "poet" and "non-poet" or "poetry" and "prose"
> that lead directly to the sporting competitiveness you deplore. So long
> as anyone can play and there are no rules, what do you expect? As for
> whether any given behavior is cheating when there are no rules, well,
> come on! If there are no rules, there is no cheating.
>
> We should be grateful to the Bin Ramkes and Jorie Grahams of the
> world for demonstrating so vividly and completely the principle that
> without rules there is no cheating. What seems to me to be over-
> reacting is the outrage with which their behavior is disparaged. It's the
> sour grapes of sore losers who didn't think of doing just as Ramke and
> Graham did. It's no more reasonable to protest that Cummings benefited
> from his class and educational situation than it is to object to Ramke's
> and Graham's behavior. He played within the rules of the time, and
> anyone who was born to a wealthy family and played all their life with
> the sons and daughters of famous university luminaries, and who went
> to a famous university with them, would do the same today. Wasn't there
> a guy named Merrill recently? No doubt Ramke and Graham believe that
> if mere social position and money can be used to produce prominence,
> how different is it, after all, to use work position and friendships to
> produce prominence?
>
> Marcus
>
>
>
>
> This is not to say that there are not
> > problems with the whole American idea that in order to get published at all
> > one has to win a poetry competition - there clearly are huge problems. Here
> > small poetry presses are, at least in part, government funded, and so can
> > operate more like publishers.
> >
> > In my experience, cliques are more often perceived than real. But also, the
> > most essential energies in the arts have always stemmed from loose
> > associations of those with like minds, "elective affinities", as Goethe
> > called them. Only in the worst circumstances are they actually cliques.
> > Advocacy, mutual support, mutual passion - these things are not in
> > themselves at all unethical, are in fact how new things happen and change in
> > any culture.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > A
> >
> > Alison Croggon
> >
> > Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> > Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> > Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
> >
>
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