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POETRYETC  May 2008

POETRYETC May 2008

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Subject:

Re: today's low / "Rain"

From:

Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc: poetry and poetics

Date:

Fri, 9 May 2008 08:50:41 -0600

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Well, Fred. while taking what you say here very seriously, & taking  
your point about 'containing', we'll have to agree to disagree about  
Howe; not in everything (if we all allowed ourselves to be judged by  
everything we write, we'd be in real trouble), but in what I find best  
in her work, where I feel the narratives do emerge out of the  
fragments as they are meant to).

Your decision to make 'a choice among three basic poetic stances' is  
admirable; not sure I ever think it thru that carefully, altho my  
formalist approach is a choice too, wherein some of the decisions I  
make I would hope touch upon them.

I guess we all harbour such hopes...

Doug
On 8-May-08, at 1:23 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote:

> 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).

Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]

http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/

Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html

Lives devoted to Beauty seldom end well.

	Sir Kenneth Clark

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