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
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