Time for a good quibble to end the weekend.

Alison Croggon wrote:

>A report on the millions that Poetry magazine was gifted three years ago...
>A little, predictably, depressing.  Seems the way to go is defiantly
>middlebrow. The president of the Poetry Foundation is John Barr, "a
>published poet and former Wall St executive" - (there's a lot of these CEOs,
>by the way, writing execrable fantasy novels - it seems like a weird
>American phenomenon) -
>  
>
If it is, it's the first I've heard of it.  But I can't blame them.  I 
warrant that most American corporate executives (really drones in better 
suits) dream of what Amiri Baraka's character Clay said in "Dutchman" in 
1964: "Murder.  Just murder would make us all sane!"  It's that Auden 
character saying "I do not like my work" while holding Bernie Goetz's 
pistol.  I can compose such fantasies in my head but they always have 
the same ending: I am Clyde Griffiths walking to the electric chair.  It 
is called An American Tragedy...Not, or I Lost My Barbaric Yawp A Long 
Time Ago.

>''We believe that the golden age for any art happens when that art is
>written for and derives its energy from the general audience of its time,"
>said Barr in a recent telephone interview. ''And if and when an art form
>becomes a more closeted and insular affair, it's going to lose some of that
>energy." 
>
>Hmm. And this the magazine which made its name on Eliot, Stevens, Williams
>  
>
None of whom, AFAIK, held an academic rank.  Gioia is right about that 
much.  Dr. Williams made house calls.  In 1978 I worked with one of his 
pediatric patients and she was shocked to learn the old dude wrote 
poetry.  She was not the one who had to eat the tongue depressor in "The 
Use of Force," by the way.  Stevens was lucky in that he probably never 
had to cold-call a prospect: the single most hideous experience in 
business unless you're a speed freak who will say anything to anyone.

>et al? As I recall, they didn't exactly reach the "general audience" of
>their time. But really the way to go is to contact those "poetry users"
>(sounds like junkies really). Marketing, of course. Me, I just think they
>should sling some of those dollars my way, or at least to poets...part of
>the original idea of the bequest, it seems, but hijacked on the way by 21C
>spin. Sigh.
>  
>
I tried, right?  I threw my best pitch at the Emily Dickinson prize.  So 
Landis Everson got it.  I think this is admirable: not all of us begin 
as 22-year-old out-of-the-gate studs and this horse is way further into 
the pasture than I am.  He almost surely needs the money more than I 
do.  Ten thousand dollars looked real good.  So did a book.  So did 
being promoted via readings, having my name dropped in publications, 
etc.  I could have the greatest of all honors accorded me: Dan Schneider 
could call me a poetaster and rewrite me on the Cosmoetica site.

> The choice of Logan as its first honoree is entirely in keeping with 
> the newly pugnacious tone of Poetry magazine's review section. ''Part 
> of what I've tried to do is to make Poetry into a place where people 
> can expect honest reviews," said Wiman, a plain-spoken fellow from 
> East Texas who has taught at Stanford and Northwestern. ''If the 
> readers are going to disagree with something, they're going to 
> disagree vehemently, but at least they'll have a genuine reaction."
>
I was one of Poetry's subscribers when they had 11,000 and I'm part of 
the carryover to 29,000.  Thus I've seen a bit of the change, and yes, 
any comment I make is based on one memorable review: August Kleinzahler 
rottweilering Garrison Keillor's "Good Poems."  Keillor is a very funny 
man who tells great Lutheran jokes.  If this is proof that anyone with a 
Name can issue a poetry anthology, when does Johnny Depp show up?  In 
the meantime, I also have to question the premise.  Kleinzahler was 
pitted against someone who thought Keillor was doing poetry a service.  
Why was this arranged?  To start a fight to answer the question Can 
Poetry Matter?  Yes...if you care about August Kleinzahler's opinion of 
Garrison Keillor or about any of the participants.  I like the premise 
of the "honest reaction" but care less for the implications that Poetry 
is getting into arranged brawls.  I know, I'm sure it's an old 
tradition, but I just happen not to like it.

> Richard Nash, the publisher of the fiercely independent Brooklyn-based 
> Soft Skull Press, is about to scale back his extensive poetry list, 
> most of which he's lost money on. Nash believes that the future of 
> poetry lies with small-scale ''poet-entrepreneurs" working at a 
> grass-roots level and through the Internet to rebuild an audience from 
> the ground up.
>
I rather agree with it from very impure motives.  The "unconnected" poet 
is going to get nowhere with contests, with the once-small but now 
powerful presses like Copper Canyon and BOA, and with obvious coteries 
of which he or she is not a part.  I'm not sure what Nash means by a 
poet-entrepreneur, but I suspect more of us will have to become 
renegades, poetic gangstas, to get a hearing.  I don't know what that 
means either, not practically.  I don't disagree with the Internet 
perspective but it too has become less an Medieval fair than a set of 
selective little boutiques where you have to divine the reigning 
prejudices to get in.  A good friend who is quite published in print and 
online can't crack either publication calling itself Drunken Boat.  I 
can't crack one of her safe-houses, 2River.  One online publication 
called Edifice Wrecked looked at one of my works in progress called "Un 
Bacio" and wanted it for a section on unfinished works called "On 
Draft."  Publication would begin a process via interviews aimed at 
finishing it.  They then changed their corporate mind due, the editor 
said, to a "scheduling conflict.".  I was invited to submit it as a 
regular contribution.  It died and was never heard from again.  Oh 
well?  Oh.  Not "Well" at all.

Ken

----------------------------------------
Kenneth Wolman	www.kenwolman.com		kenwolman.blogspot.com

39. Not observing the imperfections of others, preserving silence and a continual communion with God will eradicate great imperfections from the
soul and make it the possessor of great virtues.
			--St. John of the Cross, Maxims on Love (The Minor Works)