Neo-Formalists and Confused Lyricists

http://chrisbanksy.blogspot.com/2009/12/poetry-and-intention.html


"if we are to expect other nations to take an interest in the poetry produced in Canada, the aesthetic stances of our nation’s critics need to be pushed aside and a more objective approach that takes into consideration a poet’s intentions needs to be adopted."(Banks)

That's right. Those dolts outside our own borders need to have their hands held before they can appreciate good or great poetry. Condescension hidden behind "sensitive guidance".

Banks, of course, is too busy drifting mist into the readers' eyes to relate the critical history of CanPo, and how it gets written and disseminated in the first place. Until he quits being a hypocritical cheerleader for the "lyric" (hidebound, tribal tic-scratcher!) and criticizes (which is to say, examines with proportion, noting successes and failures) the many volumes in front of him, his vague pronouncements and generality-laden denouncements hold as much weight as a flea's fart. Of course, before anti-Monsignor Wells, myself, and others (Banks typically won't name names beyond this point) came along less than a decade ago, Canada's status as an international poetry backwater was well established. Are we to blame for that, too? Or perhaps the gulf can be explained by the promoted poetry itself, and by the ecstatic blurbs of condescending explanation substituting for serious analysis. Just, you know, my own take on it. It's true, after all, because this is what I intend to say! Oh, non sequitur of joy! Tautology of smugness!




"To my mind, we have far too many critics dismissing books under review based not on the poetry’s substance but on the poet’s style."(Banks)

Then you haven't been paying attention, which is par for the course. I've repeatedly stated otherwise, but you're too busy decorating your hobby horse to actually listen with discernment instead of tribal stance and ideological blinkers.

Substance is very important in a book of poetry. But substance without aesthetic joy, and just as importantly and to the point, without aesthetic wedding, is journalism, or worse, message-mongering. Simplistic, arrogant, unmusical ..... in other words, non-poetry.

Got a "message"? Bury it. Read Shelley's "Ozymandias". Stevens' "Anecdote Of The Jar". Vallejo's "The Spider". Layton's "Boys Bathing". Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop For Death". More critics got those poems wrong -- on substance -- back in the day, but so what? Eventually, if the music is joyful, and the meaning is teasing, people get it, or get a part of it (which is often good enough). Even those maroons living across the Atlantic who can't figure out what all the fuss is about if chancing upon Roy Miki's "make it new". (But Miki's not a lyric poet, so perhaps Banks agrees with me, here? I don't recall a postmodernist rave yet at his blog.)

Style and substance can't be separated. Banks teaches poetry?



"Zachariah Wells, a critic who puts the Neo in New Formalism, and several of his more ardent supporters"(Banks)

If one label fails to stick, try another one. Has Banks considered that poets can write in, and critics applaud, traditional forms without being "neo-formalists"? And that a single book of poetry can contain the strictest of metrical patterns, the most widely shunning of the same, and various fascinating meetings between both poles, and still be praised by myself?

To be absurdly obvious (though, apparently, needfully so), one can prefer poetry in metre, and/or in rhyme, strong rhythms, and musical and metaphorical ordering, and still be sympathetic if the work is good to poets who write in free verse (however you see that problematic term). Gee, kinda like Wells and myself and other unnamed boogey(wo?)men. But don't let facts -- on record -- stand in the way of a good conspiracy.




"followed hard on that initial post of mine with a willful misreading of the word “intention” suggesting I wanted critics to somehow divine a poet’s thoughts which they see as being divorced from the actual poetry."(Banks)

No. Again, you misunderstand. You take a sentence I (or Wells) have said , sever it out of context with the larger argument, and construct your rebuttal based on a faulty premise.

I said, and will patiently say again, that it doesn't matter what the poet's intention was if:

1) it's not transmitted, either clearly or (the same thing) aesthetically of a piece with the idea;

2) the intention/meaning is, itself, shallow or wrong or redundant;

3) it's so closed to further possibilities that the poet can see no future refinements or breakthroughs when he/she or a critic encounters it.



“When we appreciate style as the subtle medium of sense, we can see how the way works are written also discloses the meanings these works of art intend. Meaning in poetry is imbedded in the saying."(Kinzie)

I've said as much. What's the problem?


"Such meaning in poetry does not just happen: It is the product of a trained writer’s strength, all of which in one way or another is formed and fueled by intention. In art, it is only by intending a saying, with all of its effects of meaning, that a work in words can become a coherent piece of literature. Similarly, it is only by imagining how artistic intention grows through the work that a reader can get inside it” (34)."(Kinzie)

Again, no quarrels. I'm scratching my head (no fleas). This is only contentious, vis-a-vis my own critical ideas, if one enshrines "intention", wrenches it out of its suggestive elbowing with all sorts of poetic tropes, syntax, sound patterning.

Between an author's intention and the author's realization is often a sad divide. That the peacock poet accepts the former as the initial spur and last stop in worthy poetic creation is bizarre.

As to the rest of Banks' "argument", again, its church-related broad-brush finger wagging misses the boat by an ocean or two.

By the way, I believe the CNQ review challenge is still a go. Silence on the matter is puzzling. After all, what an opportunity for a corrective to the tribal elite!

Sara Teasdale's "The Kiss"

THE KISS

I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.

For though I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.

Cesar Vallejo's "XXVII" from TRILCE

from Trilce
XXVII
(translated: Clayton Eshleman)

That spurt frightens me,
good memory; powerful master, implacable
cruel sweetness. It frightens me.
This house pleases me perfectly, a perfect
spot for this not knowing where to be.

Let's not go in. It frightens me, this permission
to return by the minute, across exploded bridges.
I push no further, sweet master,
courageous memory, sad
songskeleton.

How the content, that of this enchanted house,
gives me quicksilver deaths, and plugs
with lead my outlets
to dry actuality.

The spurt that doesn't know what we're up to,
frightens me, terrifies me.
Courageous memory, I push no further.
Blond and sad skeleton, whistle, whistle.

What They Say, And What They Mean

"The comments feature on this blog has been turned off for the moment. Partly this is because of the holidays and a need to *not* be checking in so often, but also because LH is not convinced that comments streams are doing much to foster discussion." (LH)

--I comment to more blogs than I can count, but when others comment on streams, either here or elsewhere, and I disagree with them, it pisses me off.



"Nor in fact, that they are the place for such discussions. The appropriate response to a poem is usually another poem." (LH)

--Traditional poets, or those who just read poems, should just shut up and appreciate the brave, hard work the visionaries provide.



"What is the appropriate response to a blog post? To be honest, the knee jerk reactions (and everyone has them) aren't helpful."(LH)

-- 'Knee jerk reactions' are my own code for substantive rebuttals which make my own one-line drive-bys look picayune.



"Mostly these streams (not only here but other places) seem to be draining energy not creating it."(LH)

--I gain a lot of energy by pontificating my biases and self-defensive manoeuvers. But when others naturally challenge the wisdom in such pronouncements, my energy seems to, indeed, drain.



"And how much time do people have to be crafting long attacks and defenses in comments streams?"(LH)

--Substance and nuance are bogus. As are well-considered angles which put an argument in historical perspective. Long live the withering drive-by!



"There have been some fine discussions (here and elsewhere) and for those I am thankful."(LH)

--I like people who not only agree with me, but whose responses are minor variations of 'excellent post, LH!'.



"Otherwise, I look forward to posts, and poems, and more time to think about them. More time to reflect before hitting save, send, publish."(LH)

--Especially when my false you tube analogies come back to bite me.



"Happy Holidays and welcome incoming bloggers."(LH)

--Especially those who challenge the Eastern based, male, comspiratorial tribal aggressive negative reviewers who control all the poetic discussion in this country.

Anne Sexton's "Somewhere in Africa"

SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA


Must you leave, John Holmes, with the prayers and psalms
you never said, said over you? Death with no rage
to weigh you down? Praised by the mild God, his arm
over the pulpit, leaving you timid, with no real age,

whitewashed by belief, as dull as the windy preacher!
Dead of a dark thing, John Holmes, you’ve been lost
in the college chapel, mourned as father and teacher,
mourned with piety and grace under the University Cross.

Your last book unsung, your last hard words unknown,
abandoned by science, cancer blossomed in your throat,
rotted like bougainvillea into your gray backbone,
ruptured your pores until you wore it like a coat.

The thick petals, the exotic reds, the purples and whites
covered up your nakedness and bore you up with all
their blind power. I think of your last June nights
in Boston, your body swollen but light, your eyes small

as you let the nurses carry you into a strange land.
. . . If this is death and God is necessary let him be hidden
from the missionary, the well-wisher and the glad hand.
Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden.

Let there be this God who is a woman who will place you
upon her shallow boat, who is a woman naked to the waist,
moist with palm oil and sweat, a woman of some virtue
and wild breasts, her limbs excellent, unbruised and chaste.

Let her take you. She will put twelve strong men at the oars
for you are stronger than mahogany and your bones fill
the boat high as with fruit and bark from the interior.
She will have you now, you whom the funeral cannot kill.

John Holmes, cut from a single tree, lie heavy in her hold
and go down that river with the ivory, the copra and the gold.

Georg Trakl's "Sunny Afternoon"

SUNNY AFTERNOON
(translated: Jim Doss & Werner Schmitt)


A branch rocks me in the deep blue.
In the frolicking, autumnal leaf-tangle
Moths flicker, intoxicated and crazy.
Ax blows resound in the meadow.

My mouth bites into red berries
And light and shadows sway in the foliage.
For hours golden dust falls
Crackling in the brown ground.

The thrush laughs from the bushes
And frolicking and loudly the autumnal leaf-tangle
Strikes together above me --
Fruits detach bright and heavy.

Robert Duncan's BENDING THE BOW

I always leave the comment stream open going back to the first posts of this blog. Robert Duncan clearly has a lot of fans and admirers since I continue to get hits of my review-post I made in January of his book of off-the-mark arrow-thocks. Another Duncan supporter has joined the fray, and I'm interested in his further response, or in any other response from anyone -- pro or con -- on BTB.

Problems again with Blogger. Or more than likely my own tech obtuseness. In any case, to get the Duncan post, hit January's post on 'Blog Archive' at right sidebar-- it's Jan 27.