Jeez, Fred, at least I can't accuse you of being a "dead white male", since
you're not dead. That "white male" thing we'll just have to Deal With.
Some of my best friends are white and male, but then I've always been an
exotic.
I'm gonna give you the opportunity to try this whole What Is Poetry thing
again, now that you'll have had some sleep and can give it a better go.
I'll bet Chicago's having, characteristically, a helluva beautiful
summer---the only time I miss it, and the only time it's visitable and
habitable.
Best,
Judy
2008/7/12 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "sharon brogan" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 6:24 PM
> Subject: Re: another snap -- July 11, 02008
>
>
> Frederick,
>>
>> I value your opinions very highly, so I am asking for more. Is this your
>> sense of much, or most of my work? Is this poem particularly bad, or has
>> it
>> just tipped you into speaking?
>>
>> Somehow I think that knowing this will help me decide how to approach your
>> critique, how to think about it.
>>
>> You have touched on something that I've been concerned, but uncertain
>> about
>> before.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sharon, this question is hard to answer because the only earlier poem of
> yours in my inbox is your 4th of July poem. (Don't take that personally; I
> had something like 5000 messages and I recently cut them down to 2000.) All
> I can give is a vague impression, and those are unfair; one should be able
> to cite lines and passages. With that proviso I have to say yes; my
> impression of your work is that it makes the reader look at you (the "I")
> rather than providing an image-world he or she can inhabit. Let me stress
> that this is an extremely widespread shortcoming. Many poets spend their
> entire careers talking ABOUT their grandparents, parents, childhoods,
> marriages, divorces, children, politics, gardens, etc. They do so with more
> or less wit or soulfulness, more or less fresh metaphors and stylistic
> economy. They criticize each other, and perhaps improve, in style alone,
> never aware that there is any deeper issue. And there are many readers who
> enjoy, or even recognize, no other form of poetry. Such readers want to
> feel, Oh I've been there; the same thing happened to me; I really feel I
> know her, etc. But as far as I'm concerned, these predictable agonies and
> ecstasies and this sentimental pseudo-relationship aren't poetry; they're
> Oprah. At the level, not of style, but of inspiration, what makes poetry
> poetry is 1) One tries to go beyond one's comfort-zone (which includes one's
> comfortable lifelong griefs). To probe the unconscious until one is truly
> scared of what one emerges. Baudelaire: "Au fond de l'abime de trouver le
> nouveau." That "new" is what counts, for oneself and the non-Oprahish
> reader. 2) One renounces the most pervasive ideology of our society and of
> ordinary language: the assumption that there is a Private Life - of
> "personal feelings" and immediate relationships - distinct from the big
> "abstract" world of politics, history, science, etc. In reality, reality is
> ONE thing. It contains one's least admissible dreams, other galaxies, the
> future, hydrangeas, etc. etc. As Forster said of prose, the point is to
> connect - but more relentlessly, rapidly, and bravely than prose can. The
> paradox of Mainstream poetry, which is all I'm accusing you of writing, is
> that on the one hand it's narcissistic, even solipsistic - it assumes that
> one's tsurris (Yiddish: pains, troubles) and petty epiphanies are
> interesting. But on the other it's utterly timid; it confines itself to the
> narrowest ghetto of insight and subject-matter. I recently encountered two
> reviews that praised two different poets for being "humble." I don't think
> good poetry or poets are ever humble. I'm not.
>
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