April 8: I've been somewhat active at the Harriet Blog. Quite politely, I must say, especially for me. (I'm trying to let the adult in me make friends--and there is an adult in me, folks--while muffling the child in me, who too often seems out only to voice grievances.) Two days ago I inserted the following into the ongoing thread about Matthew Zapruder's article:
I've now sort of caught up with the comments in this thread. They done wore me out too much to say much back right now. Will say this to Joan (Houlihan): seems to me your claim that we all recognize nonsense when we see it indicates what I find wrong with your outlook. I do not know nonsense when I see it. I know what makes sense to me, and what does not make sense to me, but it is difficult for me to determine whether or not what doesn't make sense to me is nonsense or not. That's where critical help comes in. If some language poem, for example, makes no sense to me, I want someone for whom it does make sense to tell me why it does. And I do believe a poem should make sense . . . of SOME KIND--not necessarily verbal sense. (Some poems can make non-representational sense to me.)
I also believe in returning often to poems that make no sense to me and reflecting on them, trying to figure them out on my own. On the other hand, my time is limited.
You, however, seem to believe that since you can immediately recognize nonsense, you needn't bother as a critic with any poem you can't at once make sense of. A responsible critic would not have that attitude.
One other comment, this to Matthew Z. He mentioned that K-12 teachers should give more help preparing students for "difficult" poetry. I disagree. Teachers should continue teaching conventional poetry and not unconventional poetry (except to the few very verbally advanced)--for the same reason they should teach arithmetic and algebra but not calculus (except to the few very mathematically advanced)
I don't think unconventional poetry will ever be very popular, but I agree with Matthew that good criticism of it would win it more appreciation. And the problem is not lack of good critics but lack of publishers outside the micropress willing to publish their work.
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The child in Gary B. Fitzgerald immediately fired out two responses to this:
“And I do believe a poem should make sense . . . of SOME KIND--not necessarily verbal sense.” - Bob Grumman
[VERBAL – adjective - 1. of or pertaining to words; 2. consisting of or in the form of words; 3.consisting of or expressed in words; 4. pertaining to or concerned with words only (as opposed to ideas, facts, or realities); 5. using words;]
I believe you have touched upon the crux of the matter, Mr. Grumman. What, pray tell, is the point of selecting WORDS to make sense that is NON-VERBAL? After all, there are many non-verbal arts from which one could choose to ‘make sense’: music, painting, sculpture, dance. In fact, if non-verbal communication is the objective then one could simply grunt like a Chimpanzee or bay at the moon. Why waste our time with meaningless words? If you want to make a point about the meaninglessness of words, just publish a book with blank pages. If you can’t actually write poetry, why bother with words?
* * * * *
"Look!", the boy cried. "Look at the Emperor!"
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My adult and my child shared what I said back:
Gary, your questions are precisely the ones I would want a critic to attempt to answer. I'm afraid I can't comment on what you said about the boy and the emperor. That went over my head.
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Fitzgerald obviously was not interested in discussion, only in obliterating opposition to his opposition to unconventional poetry. He completely ignored my main point, which was that a work should never be dismissed as "nonsense," or the equivalent until responsibly analyzed by someone sympathetic to it. But I admit I might have expressed myself a little more clearly. I should have spoken of "conventional verbal sense," for instance. I was thinking of the sort of gestalt-sense that poets like Ashbery make to those who appreciate their work. It's as verbal as narrative sense, or the sense that a unified idea makes, but it's not conventional verbal sense. Of course, anything a poem does is done by words, or connects to words--as purely graphic elements in visual poems do (or, at least in those visual poems that are also poems, if your believe with Geof Huth and so many others in visio-textual art, that a visual poem isn't necessarily poetry).
I now see that I should have spoken of "conventional denotative verbal sense." That would exclude the purely visual sense a visual poem can make, and the purely auditory sense even a conventional poem can make. I should add that a poem can certainly make conventional denotative verbal sense and sense in other ways.
The next day I posted the following set of thoughts:
In his post in favor of certain of my comments, Don Share had this to say about my hope that criticism of a visual poem from Poetry be elicited, "about visual poetry, well, you can see how having people discuss it turned out right here on Harriet: not very well, in my opinion."
I assume he is referring to the thread about mIEKAL aND's work. I agree that the discussion of that work was pretty poor. One good reason for that is that the aND "textscape," as I call it, is, alas, not a very complex or interesting piece. aND, a friend of mine, has done many much better pieces, some of them genuinely visual poetry, as this one is not. What could anyone be expected to say about it except that it is a pleasant arrangement of pseudo-letters that suggests something undeciphered from a lost civilization?
Another good reason for the poor discussion is that very few people interested in works like aND's would be likely visitors to Harriet. Most participants in the discussion, therefore, were outsiders to visual poetry. Many were the opposite of sympathetic to it.
So, my suggestion would be to choose a better example of visual poetry from the Poetry gallery. The Lipman work, for instance. And don't start a thread on it, post the poem with an e.mail address to send critiques of it to, and circulate invitations to critique through the Internet. Once the critiques are all in, then post the best of them (I myself would post the worst, too, as examples of the way not to do critiques, but that's just me). It is then that comments could be allowed.
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One thing I have to praise Don Share for: his willingness to circulate amongst the lower orders in the poetry world, something few if any other Establishment figures with clout equal to his (as editor of Poetry) have. He took what I wrote seriously:
Hm, well critiques ain't criticism - or am I wrong? I don't have the means to take up Bob's suggestion on this website, but I s'pose I could do it on my blog, or you on yours (Bob, or anyone). What I wouldn't want to do is decide which are the "best" critiques. But let me ask this: why exactly would a poem you don't think much of elicit responses worse than one that might, arguably, be better? Should only "good" poems (visual or otherwise) be critiqued? Are only good poems discussed well??
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I answered him in detail:
Not sure why critiques aren't criticism, Don, but "critical essay on a poem" would be fine with me, too.
Deciding the best essays? Difficult, but really what I would think necessary is reducing the number posted for comment. There'd have to be some way of doing that. Seems to me that if you had a lot, the commentary would be even more confusing that such commentary usually is. And setting it up more difficult, etc.
As for whether a good poem is better to critique than one not so good, I was thinking along with Matthew (I think) in wanting criticism that opened up difficult poems to people who might appreciate them given helpful nudges. Ergo, the helping critic would need a poem he thinks good, that he likes.
(Later thought: that if a critic unfavorably discusses a poem the critic does not think highly of, those who are fans of the kind of poem it is can claim unfairness, that a bad poem has been used to discredit the poetry school it is from. Not that the aND work is anywhere near bad; it's just something I don't particularly go for.)
As for the aND poem, I felt it drew little discussion not because it was, in my view, a lesser artwork, but because there wasn't very much to it (in my view). I do think a critic can say more about a work of more complexity.
I think any poem can be discussed well. A good critic can be illuminatingly hostile toward a poem he discusses. But the very best criticism will be of the best poems, because the best poems will draw more enthusiastic investigation. Or maybe the best criticism is of poems the critic can sense may be good but is also stymied by. I guess I don't have any kind of final answer to the question.
As for setting something up, I'm an idea man only. I.e., I'm lazy. And over-extended. But it seems to me it shouldn't be too hard to get a space somewhere to post a poem at, and store critical discussions of it by whatever name. Maybe have some kind of panel to winnow them down to the most interesting, or to get a range of views, or whatever. Then post the chosen ones for comment--and at least publicize them at Harriet.
Or maybe this: post a poem at Harriet, and call for bloggers to devote one entry in their blog to a discussion of it such that it demonstrates how they think a critic should respond to a poem. Harriet could, I should think, keep a list of the URLS of blog entries discussing the poem. Maybe someone with a big blog and time could collect all the discussions into one place.
Just thinking out loud, Don. Thanks for the interest.
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Don reacted favorably to the above, saying this morning it was well put, then asking if anyone else were interested in a critical discussion of a visual poem. I hope a few at Spidertangle will be. Or will get in touch with people who would be. This may be a chance to take a small BigWorld step upward from the large Bigworld step upward that getting the gallery into Poetry was. The best thing we can do is expose people to our work, but--it seems to me--the next best thing is to get discussions of our work going. Needless to say, I will discuss any poem Don posts.
If interested in a critical discussion of a visual poem, please say so at the Harriet Blog.
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