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poetsalive-blog · 7 years

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On Rebecca Watts’ Essay “The Cult of the Noble Amateur”

(Author’s note: This is a rebuttal to Watts’ essay which can be found here: http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10090 ) After hearing that Rebecca Watts has received abuse for the above article “The Cult of the Noble Amateur,” I decided that constructive discourse was needed. As a poet and critic, I find it very upsetting that any person would receive abuse let alone a person seeking to have a difficult conversation on the direction of publishing, prizes and popularity.

I will begin by saying I disagree with Watts’ arguments that the world pretends poetry is not an art form and that social media has helped dumb it down. However, I do understand her frustrations with turning out technical, complex poems that ask for critical engagement when quick-to-digest pieces seem to garner a lot more attention in the current poetry market. Let me assure everyone though, that there is space for both subgenres of poetry and both are art.

The problem with poetry, a number of family members tell me, is that they don’t understand poetry. Their memories of poetry are being forced to memorise passages of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and other poets whose work bore no connection to the realities of their everyday. I come from a working class background and I do see the disconnect between high literature and the interests of that demographic. They feel spoken down to and thus, poetry found itself relegated to classrooms as the average person turned away from text that they felt didn’t get them. People like to see themselves in all forms of media and art. It is why increasing the number of minorities and LGBTQ in entertainment is getting a lot of advocacy: these demographics want to see themselves in the forms of entertainment they enjoy. Why shouldn’t they?

Therefore, when we scour the literary landscape for journals to submit work to, we find a lot of specialist titles; journals for LGBTQ only, women only, language poetry only, poc only thrive alongside bigger publications that display more diversity in order to speak to more demographics. We are fine with this so why not the rise of “spoken word on paper” (or perhaps we could coin this type of poetry “pop poetry)? I’d like to think that poetry has made inroads towards peace with language and prose poetry. Is pop poetry not the next in line to be added to the roster of styles we celebrate? The Ted Hughes Prize is certainly leaning that way. I agree that honesty in poetry is nothing new. It is also true that this is not the first time honesty in poetry has been challenged.

The Confessionals of the mid-1900s received much criticism for being too prone to, as Robert Phillips phrases it, “ public breast-beating” and narcissism.[1] When Confessionalism came to the forefront of the poetry market, critic Charles Molesworth wrote that the movement was “a degraded version of Romanticism” and that the Confessional poet was a “failed sage.”[2] Robert Bly accused Robert Lowell of “offering his readers nervous excitement rather than poetic excitement.”[3] In the end, the handful of genuine Confessional poets produced poetry that has remained in “the spotlight” even now. Just as we had our Plath and Sexton as young writers, certainly young poets are entitled to the “disarming honesty” of McNish and Tempest’s work (which applies to today’s young concerns) and to see that it is doing and achieving something in the market besides racking up YouTube views.

In terms of the style of poetry that demands more of its readers, there is still plenty of room and praise. However, does the rise of “spoken word on paper” / pop poetry mean you will need to do a little more research as to which prizes you submit work to? Of course, but you should be doing that anyway. You should know who the judges are and what interests they have in the moment so that if the Ted Hughes Award is going the way of a style you don’t write, you will know not to submit (and save yourself the fee). There is no shortage of journals, prizes and publishers for poems that utilize higher diction and complexity and enough people submit to these journals that the competition is fierce as ever.

Kaur, Tempest and McNish are thus the types of poets for people who would have left poetry behind in secondary school. There is nothing wrong with that. Their style allows the audience to stay engaged in a performance and their use of social media utilizes a platform that the public is addicted to. They are reaching out to the public rather than expecting the public to come to them. In terms of high literature at readings, I’ll use the example of John Ashbery – whose poems are difficult and take work. Trying to absorb John Ashbery in real time can be quite a task let alone fully “get it.” The books of Kaur and McNish require less strain and as such, watching their work and also having it at hand are akin to reading along song lyrics printed in cd jackets (or cassette tapes if anyone else can remember these) while the music plays. I fail to see how “easy to grasp” equates with bad when it seems to me that the experience is just different. One of the most poignant examples of spoken word poetry being at the right place at the right time was Tony Walsh’s delivery of “This is the Place” at the Manchester Bombing vigil. On paper, the poem lacks what you call “intellectual engagement” and “craft,” but when delivered, Walsh gave the community it what it desperately needed. The performance was powerful, to say the least and I understand the public’s desire, then, to have a written copy of that performance piece which spoke into the grief and fear everyone was experiencing.

I assume that the demographics that are interested in Kaur and McNish are no different, and because publishers exist to make money (and endure) as much as promote good poetry, there is a profit to be made in that. McNish came to Picador with a ready-made following which translates into guaranteed sales. I can’t, in good faith, knock Picador for taking advantage of McNish’s marketing savvy. We also cannot assume that an interest in pop poetry and its penchant for clichéd language will negate a person’s potential to venture into other forms that use more technical and creative elements. I certainly began, as a teenager, writing poetry that utilized such overemotional language as “I don’t grieve \ I shatter,” and have changed so that I now enjoy looking for poetry that challenges me, asks that I spend time with it and get to the root of how it works. My favorite poet is easily Frank Bidart. But could I have commenced my interest in poetry by reading and engaging with his work – which is unequivocally challenging as it is emotionally visceral? Not a chance; I was not emotionally or intellectually capable. (And I am not arguing that those who prefer accessible poet are not capable. I am stating that I was not capable.) We need to understand poetry can’t speak to one demographic, one level of education or understanding, one prosodic style. There is plenty of room for both McNish and Ashbery and by having an array of “levels” (for lack of a better word), you offer up more variety to the public to draw them into a world that they shut themselves out of because they felt shut out. I would also warn against drawing comparisons between the cult of personality wielded by Trump/Farage and that of the pop poets. I found this to be a very hyperbolic and misguided section of the essay. Trump, in particular, leads a movement bent on spreading misinformation, division, exclusion, prejudice and, at times, violence. To even compare the pernicious nature of Trump’s cult following to that of poets that draw crowds is guilty of “dumbing down” the conversation and depriving it of nuance – the very thing Watts accuses the poetry market of doing.

As I previous indicated, I do understand the frustration of producing work that challenges a reader only to see it rejected. The business of poetry for most of us, I assume, is a life of “not quite right for us but good luck elsewhere.” Seeing a poet get praised for including poems she wrote at age 8 in her book would rankle even the most welcoming of us. Nonetheless, it is art and it has worth and a purpose. It is up to the individual poet to look at submission guidelines, back issues, and the interests of the editors / judges to make more prudent choices as to where to send work.

That said, I do think that the article Watts’ wrote is very much needed even though it is a difficult and uncomfortable conversation, especially if prizes like the Ted Hughes prize are going the way of “pop poetry” and away from complex poetry that utilizes the page.

[1] Robert Phillips, Robert Phillips, The Confessional Poets, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973), pp. 1-2

[2] Charles Molesworth, ‘“With Your Own Face On”: The Origins and Consequences of Confessional Poetry,’ in Twentieth Century Literature, 22: 2 (May 1976), 163-178, p 164.

[3] Phillips, p. 16

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poetsalive-blog · 8 years

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Lowell and the Work Poetry Must Do

From time to time, I encounter students who claim that their writing is fine, perfect even. “Writing is all subjective” they say, especially in relevance to writing poetry. These tend to be the “sit down and do it” type of students where I can lead them to the trough, like a horse, but I can’t force them to drink. It is usually at this point that I tell them that though they are interested in their subject, that does not mean a reader will be. That assumption is narcissistic. (A hard truth for some.) I will admit to using writers and critics of writing who bring up this point-of-view as segues into a discussion on Confessionalism, a form of poetry not even named until it was over and ripe for reviling. It is a sub-genre of poetry that I have found to be misunderstood. One of its architects, Robert Lowell, was accused of narcissism in concerns to his subject matter, even while being praised as a master for his command of prosodic speech and line. His poems that laid out the ugly bones of his life were vilified as a breast beating, Frank O’Hara referred to him as a “peeping Tom” and Adrienne Rich ceased being Lowell’s friend for including the private communications of Lowell’s then-wife Elizabeth Hardwick in The Dolphin. Richard Bowen, in his essay “Confession and Equilibrium,” does admit that Confessional poetry was a “form of life,” which readily worked for Lowell. But Bowen also writes that “the value is limited; it may release Lowell, but as poetry it functions mainly as personal therapy, and cannot but remain in itself a dead end, often impressive with psychological insight and a certain rhetorical power, but lacking in wider responsibility[…].” Not everything works in poetry and if the aim is catharsis for the author, then the reader is often left unable access and engage with the poem in a meaningful way.

So when we run workshops, are we essentially directing people in self-help therapy for those students who cling to writing about their lives? For my own part, I would argue that if such catharsis occurs, it is through the student’s own efforts - a by-product - and not a goal of Confessional poets let alone a workshop. For my part, I am more concerned with what a poem is doing; a very helpful way of work shopping I picked up from one run by Joshua Clover. For the poem to get to what the poet is doing, and be clear about it, one has to revise. Frank Bidart wrote of Lowell, “He did not write. He rewrote.” Lowell spent decades revising his poems, sometimes years after he had published them. This is further evidence that not “everything goes” in poetry. There are a lot of options to play with, so much that there can be an “everything,” but it has to go in the right places to produce maximum effect. Writers who aim for catharsis also tend to use first person. But as a critic, it is a slippery slope to assume the “I” means the author; and even if “I” is meant to represent the author, the critic should remember that the “I” is just that: a representation. I refer to it as an archetype of the author where we are getting only a portion of who the author really is. All we usually have available to us is the author’s perceptions, a constructed world contained within text and, if we can find it, biographies. However, even knowing an author can rarely, if ever, display their total self and that the critic should avoid thinking of the author as that takes could take the poem too far out of its space. The poem can sit back on its laurels when the author assumes you will know their history and can connect the dots. Still, the function of first person narrative or lyric does not negate that niggling. Ted Kooser writes that “When ‘I’ says something happened, I believe it happened, and if something awful has happened to ‘I,’ I feel for the poet.’ I’ve gotten very used to reminding myself that even when the author intends the “I” to be themselves, it still is not “I.” It is an archetype that the author has created themselves. Nobody ever gives enough of the game away so that the reader understands all of the nuances of the author. We get a partial construct in the space created by the author.

I’ve mentioned that Lowell used letters from his ex-wife, Elizabeth Hardwick, in his poems and that left readers no doubt that he was using lived experiences as artistic fodder. Given the constraints of reading I have stated, let’s try to think of the letters as literary devices rather than mirrors into Lowell’s being. When Lowell uses these letters, what is it that they do? Do they add to the quality of a poem. It is often beneficial to look at how much of a work is quotation versus how much is original material.

When it comes to Lowell, it is hard to know. It seems as though “Hospital II” is an osmotic process from Hardwick to Lowell where the reader scarcely knows where one ends and the other begins. At the end of part one, is it Hardwick or Lowell who is “foolishly alone.” One might think it Hardwick; after all, Lowell was then married to Caroline Blackwood; but The Dolphin is read as a conversation of emotional truth, then Lowell too is in “this long alone” and “floating the lonely river to senility” as in part five of “Leaving America for England.” Is it Hardwick that Lowell wishes to blend his guilt and archetype with or that her writerly words blended well with his own to produce a book that is saturated in self-deprecation. The better question, then, is what does the poem do in terms of itself and in relation to any other poems published in the same book. J.D. McClatchy points out that Lowell’s strength is in his line, and this is certainly true. Lowell was a master at balancing hypotaxis and parataxis. Subject-wise, Lowell called it a “story of changing marriages.” Except that when Lowell disconnects his poems from temporality, one is not always sure which marriage he is in. Looking at “Hospital II” again, I surmised that Lowell is referencing his relationship to Hardwick based on the speaker’s reference to the “new creature.” If one is familiar at all with Lowell’s biography, then one knows that the “new creature” is Blackwood and therefore the “I” is Hardwick. But after the quotation mark signals the ending of the speech / letter, the “I” set in the present tense is less defined. Is the “I” referencing Lowell reading the letter or Hardwick after writing it? I like living with the ambiguity. This also is an indication that one cannot assume “I” means an accurate portrayal of the author. The degree of letter used in part 2 is much less and again, one must know the biography if Lowell and make assertions. “… at least he cared” is a common phrase uttered by the heartbroken, in this case, we might assume Hardwick. But there is an increased back and forth between the “I” of the letter and the “I” of the speaker. And perhaps at this point, the point is that Lowell’s identity, or at least the version of himself portrayed in his poems, was inescapably caught in his relationships. The archetype “I” of The Dolphin had women and mental illness, which in and of itself, can lead to an overwhelmed mind. And from start to finish, The Dolphin reads as an overwhelmed mind coming to the reader in puzzle pieces. This is why accessing the author via full book versus anthology can produce a distinct contexture not available when a poem is read as a stand-alone entity. In returning to the topic of Confessional poetry, most readers will not be as aware of the writer’s biography as we were of the Confessional poets. Their lives, though dramatic, were the stuff of interest. However, that they told the absolute truth is a misconception. Why did they make-up histories or re-order events, or leave out major details all together? As I said before, therapy and catharsis is a lucky by-product if it happens at all. Life events of the poet are literary devices to make the poem do work. James Merill said Confessionalism “is a literary convention like any other, the problem being to make it sound as if it were true. One can, of course, tell the truth, but I shouldn't think that would be necessary to give the illusion of a True Confession.” This is why I fight the impulse to assume first person means the author and why I urge students to do the same. Assuming “I” is real is very limiting. To be bound in the real life, the absolute truth, is to sanction the poem in ways the reader may not be aware of and cannot be aware of. The significance of a detail may not be relevant to the greater truth perceived by the reader. During my thesis, my advisor picked up on the theme of “mothering” in my poetry. At the time, I wasn’t a mother and wasn’t ready to be one; but I increase the motherly theme in those poems because that was the work the poem wanted to do. It is also easy to come to the conclusion that anything goes when reading the poetics of some poets. When poet Amiri Baraka writes “MY POETRY is whatever I think I am” and “I must be completely free to do just what I want, in the poem”, he does not necessarily mean that when you write a poem about a personal trauma, every event that contributed to that trauma must be found in the lines in exactly the way they occurred. I argue that he means you should not force a poem about rape into a sonnet form if the authentic voice you have so painstakingly developed is compelling you to write it as a ghazal or free verse. If you are writing about a time when you were mugged and your purse stolen, ask yourself what the larger aim of the poem is and if knowing all of the items in the purse are relevant to that aim. Ask yourself if a fictionalized detail might work better in your efforts to play with language, to make something more nuanced and resonating than recounting the details as if by rote. This is the short answer to people who claim that “art is subjective” and “art is whatever you make it.” If you make a piece not do anything, then it won’t do anything for most people who read it; just you and anyone who automatically likes everything you create. If you want your art to be out in the world, it must be written to engage with that world so that the world can engage with it. Then you must rewrite.

#confessionalism #robert lowell #poetry

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