OK. What to say? First did you see my subsequent couple of posts on this Michael? I said I needed to think more about it.  

It has become pretty clear talking to others that the problem with much of the response to the review has been caused by the crossing over of different issues that arise from/in it. It is a long review and says quite a lot. I know I homed in on where I saw her discussing an issue which has been a concern of mine for years concerning the mechanics of inverted snobbery and how they function in the poetry scene. I ignored somewhat the reasons for her saying what she said even though I could tell they would not be my own and were coming from a different place. Of course I noted the Paterson thing and nearly said something about it but thought it would confuse the issue - Paterson always confuses the issue - in some ways I think he is an arse and the change of mind that Watt's talks about in the review I find typical of him - I can never decide if he really doesn't know what he is talking about (though he thinks he does) or if he is just a literary wide-boy whose motivations get tangled.

I agree with everything you say in your first paragraph, but in your second paragraph, leaving aside the Paterson thing, I am very much in two minds about the 'category mistake' question. Yes and no. It's not black and white. It is not black and white because of the way it relates to the inverted snobbery of some mainstream commentators and their disingenuous lauding of what I suspect they don't actually rate at all. I don't trust them. I don't for one moment imagine that this 'getting down with the kids (well worn cliche I know) is anything to do with a sudden enthusiasm for the 'variousness' of the art. I suppose we could say that it is down to a far too conscious post-modern levelling exercise, one in the abstract in other words, where the parameters of judgement are not the same as those espoused by Watts, but I'm not even sure if I believe that. And if those 'parameters of judgement' are in fact the disavowal of the standards of Watts then she has every right to counter them, whatever we think about it. But I don't think they are that, I think they are a convenience, a suspension of the rules for the moment, for some other purpose, while in other cases the rules and standards can be applied with vigour but only a dollop of honesty, as the 'category mistake' is wilfully employed when talking about the avant stuff they don't like. Of course your saying "Applying traditional values and judgments of high-art verse to the avowedly unliterary and popular poetry with which she's dealing in this essay is such a pointless exercise" is right in the general sense of comparative criticism, the acknowledgment that these are different categories, but in the context of this poetry's reception doesn't it make sense? Haven't the categories already been melded. They want their cake and they want to eat it.

I agree with your final paragraph and share its general take on things but I am not sure how it relates. As I have tried to say in a previous post I have absolutely nothing against McNish or Kaur etc, and the fact that their work does nothing for me personally has nothing to do with the fact that that if others find it of value then that is to the good. Nevertheless if Watts sees it as being related to a bigger problem then she is right to talk about it. For myself I honestly don't know, or at least I don't know what to say with regard to positives and negatives. I have myself made a connection between a certain type of poetry which I think grew out of the use of social media, that is like a hyper-personalism, a confessional and therapeutic poetry come of age so to speak (I mentioned it in my academia essay) but I noticed this in work that I liked a lot and was positive about (Melissa Lee-Houghton is a good example) and I would be very surprised if this issue was not related to it. This is why the whole thing is confusing and explains the mixed feelings of many who have responded.

Has there been another article which in recent years has had such a response? I don't think so.

Cheers

Tim 

On 24 Jan 2018, at 14:28, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Too late for me to join in now, but I must say I was extremely surprised that so many people seemed enthusiastic about the drift of the PN Review essay.  That essay, with its clarion-call for standards in poetry, was itself based on the values of Don Paterson's 2004 essay "The Dark Art of Poetry", which was a strident attempt to differentiate a small inner ring of establishment craftspersons (such as himself) from the many-headed Other in the various forms of slam poetry and theory driven poetry by Marxist dons and hippie ramblings and aleatory poetry and in fact any kind of poetry at all that deviated from an extremely narrow conception of skilful verse-making using picked language. An essay that, I'm sure I remember, was rightly attacked on this very list. (Remember him dismissing Prynne fans as reading the phonebook, or dismissing most alternative poets as "fundamentally talentless poet-commentators"?) 
> 
> Watts chides Paterson for so far deviating from this erstwhile hard line as to debase himself by making vaguely complimentary references to the popular poetry that Picador are now promoting. And maybe his change of heart was purely commercial. But whether it was or not, I applaud it. I have a profound dislike for standards in poetry because they're always inadequate to encompass the variety of the world and, more often than not,  they're applied in totally inappropriate contexts. And Watts certainly shows us how to do that. Applying traditional values and judgments of high-art verse to the avowedly unliterary and popular poetry with which she's dealing in this essay is such a pointless exercise, it just reveals the critic's thick-lensed lack of perspective; it's like someone maundering on about rap music having no tune, or complaining that Ginsberg's poems don't scan. That kind of category mistake should be met with tolerance and good humour but it doesn't merit a response and it certainly doesn't merit praise. 
> 
> I should have thought we would know here that poetry is a various art.  It has always existed on a vast substrate of popular, personal, family, lovelorn and adolescent poetry. 99% of the time we ignore the substrate, but it can be sampled in tumultuous quantities on a thousand international websites. I don't pretend I'll settling down to read McNish and Kaur any time soon, their poetry has a new audience and by definition isn't going to appeal to long-engaged poetry fans like me. I'm not going to pretend I like their poetry more than I do because they happen to be young and female (a slimy male practice that historically has killed off many a woman poet's career, as Germaine Greer has pointed out). But the success of their books is much more a matter of celebration than dismay. And if it leads to some self-questioning of traditional critical behaviours (for example, those stultifying reproofs about emotion and sentiment in poetry, those indefensible attempts to dictate the poet's material and behaviour) then that'll be a pretty good thing. A lot of this was debated in the US a few years back, around the time of Gurlesque poetry,  -- and it turned into a pretty serious and valid critique of both trad US mainstream and Language Poetry. Of course McNish and Kaur don't interest me in the same way as Arielle Greenberg or Cathy Park Hong but their books and their expressed indifference to traditional literary standards do raise some comparable questions. I feel it's a welcome incursion.