----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: today's low / "Rain"
>I tend to agree with what you say about your own work Fred, but not always
>about what you find in others'. Can we not manage (can they not manage,
>say Susan Howe's visions of history in text) also to at least hold up to
>question the given ideology(ies)? I think some do, & I also think that
>some of us (larger group than just here) even in more 'pure' writing get
>something said that counts...
>
> As do you...
>
> Doug
Doug, as I read the phrase "visions of history in text" I thought, not of
Howe, but of Pound: "An epic is a poem containing history." It's a
definition I've always liked, and - in the twenty minutes I can devote each
semester to poetry that isn't lyric - I always mention it to my Intro
students. But it's also a silly statement and potentially misleading.
History is huge, complex, and desperately painful. The only thing bigger
and crueler is nature, of which history is a part. No poem can "contain"
it. The Cantos don't. Nor are they an epic, in any sense; nothing is
gained by calling them an epic, instead of inventing some new term for
"enormously expansive lyric." What is epic about them, and what makes them
readable and important, is their ambition, the sense they project of
seriousness: the fate of society, not just that of an individual
sensibility, is at stake.
For me the writing of any poem must be preceded by a choice among three
basic poetic stances, three implicit definitions of what poetry does. This
choice is distinct from choices as to length, style, persona, even theme; it
subtends these, and may connect to what Dominic called "diagonalizing." 1)
One tries to confront history, stand up to it - knowing that it will always,
as Hegel said, "leave a remainder"; that it will probably digest one's
effort. 2) One opts out and writes about one's private life, loves, nature,
"timeless" things. I probably give the impression that I categorically
reject such poetry. I don't - IF it's honest about what it's doing; if the
poet doesn't try to fool h/hself or us. I guess I'm talking about the
Horatian mode, the middle style, of which Jack Gilbert is a fine
contemporary example. He also serves; he sees, and shows us, how small he
and his loves and travels loom in comparison with the whole. 3) One
constructs a myth. A myth may be "confrontational" (Whitman, Hart Crane,
Shelley), escapist (Renaissance Arcadias), or some combination (Yeats, HD,
Gunnar Ekelof). "Visionary" poetry comes in here - but I never apply this
term to work by anyone who isn't genuinely, helplessly visionary; and the
only name that comes to mind is Blake. --- I suppose religious poetry is a
fourth alternative, but I have no interest in it.
Why I'm setting out these choices - at far too great length - is to clarify
(to myself also) why I found Susan Howe intolerable. Her "texts" do contain
glimpses - I would not say visions - of bits and pieces of history: Pierce,
Melville, "my" Emily Dickinson, etc. They are impressionistically gathered
and juxtaposed with autobiographical material and footnote-like cultural
allusions. They are not made to tell a story or allowed to tell their own.
The whole is indifferently labeled narrative, lyric, or even "epic." And as
I said, apart from the different style - and the more intellectually upscale
target audience - that whole strikes me as the same kind of self-absorbed
purse-rummaging I complain of in Wright. Or, even worse, in Jorie Graham.
You know I'm not a formalist. Stylistic incoherence isn't the source of the
problem here, but an effect. The problem is incoherence about what poetry
does, what its goals and enemies are, what oneself is doing as a poet. That
incoherence invites inflation in criticism, and, ultimately, mere
power-grabs - like the Perloff remark discussed a few weeks ago (Poetry is
what MY experts decide).
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