Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Big Snore (by David Orr)

Much of the back-and-forthing concerning David Orr's inane and insipidly inbred piece concerning "The Great(ness) Game" in The New York Times certainly provided an orgy of interested parties with cause for poetic pause; however, if I may bend your e-eye ee-ay-oh a mo', two points need stressing that, in the streams and reams of words engendered by that POS, somehow got lost.

Firstly, no offense, but when did America claim poetry as its sovereign domain in the greatness game? So what if no great American poets wait in the writerly wings? It won't hurt the art, not by a country snarl. Orr's protectionist flaccid head-in-the-sand attitude really didn't adequately answer its owns questions; and, more to the point, it didn't even ask the correct ones.

Secondly. WTF gives? Since when does greatness belong to the poets and not the creations of same? Who cares who wrote Leaves of Grass, The Iliad, Duino Elegies, Ariel, The Divine Comedy, The Martyrology, The Sleeping Lord, The Complete Emily Dickinson, Four Quartets, The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen, The Alexandria Quartet, et so forthia? Not moi. It's the poem, not the poet, that matters, that makes a difference, that sticks to the ribs of the heart and soul forever. Orr goes off half-cocked and proves the cult of personality's alive, well, and thriving in his own small dickhead.

'Nuff said.

5 comments:

  1. Tell us what you really think, Judith. :-)

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  2. She's BAAAA-aaack. . . .

    :)

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  3. Hehehehe . . . Man, Art, I missed you so much, you have no snidea :). And, I know I left you in the lurch over contemporary poetry's shabbiness; but, I did want to say I really appreciated your response and confirmation of my own feelings concerning the vapidity of much of what passes for poetry featuring in The New Yorker those past few issues.

    Even on a bad day, IMO (although I can't imagine you having one; or, more to the point, uploading anything less than utterly lovely and polished pieces, your work sings full-frontal praise in comparison; ain't jes' fulsome comps; is simply the way I hear, see, feel, and know it in my bones).

    I am thinking of some of your experiments within formal constraints, some of those that seem, to me, stunningly formed and breathtakingly perfekk. Ground-breaking.

    Just my deux, of course; and, it's too bad we're not well-connected because The New Yorker would rise in my estimation of its editors' ability to choose poetry of worth, value, and lasting beauty above and beyond the call of the cutey-kersnooty.

    Now, don't go thinking I'm bullshitting, that would be a grave glerror; just ask my many many "friends" who hate my fucking guts because I call 'em like I love 'em (or not).

    I'm Charlie Manson's vicious twister sister (according to someone with the initials ZW or GM or CS or DB or . . .). Won't name nor shame 'em; as McLu said, Your enemies are your best promoters; it's better than being banned in Boston.

    But? Pfft! They's giving CM a good bad name, IMHO :). The egregiosity of it all, again IMO?

    None of these poetasters understands I put poetry before its makers; thus, they can only justify their existence by calling me crazy or nutzo or so. Too bad; they could learn a thing or two if they actually opened their minds to something new.

    Howzat, Frank My Dear Friend? Is what I really think . . . I think :) . . . I also think you're a fine poet and thinker, FWIW; and, I can hardly wait till the whole world knows it (or, IOW, nag nag nag and the cheque is in my horse's mouth, LOL).

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  4. Yeah, it's true everywhere, online or in academia or in the print journals. If you get tangled up in the person before the work, the perspective gets skewed. We need to focus on the work. The artist is there in the work, to be sure, but it's not hard with practice to tell if the artist is trying to dominate the work with his or her own ego, or if the artist is following where the work wants to go, and is comparatively egoless. I'm not of the camp that believes that knowing things about the artist is absolutely unnecessary (which was sort of the New Criticism's viewpoint), but I am indeed of the camp that the work is what matters (unlike many of the postmodern theoretical/political camps). I'm not of the belief that biography is determinant of the work, nor do I believe the BS that "all art is autobiographical." The artist IS in the work, and can't be denied to be part of the work—if only in the sense of individual voice, one like no other—but critics who keep confusing the work with the artist, and conflating everything into biography has obviously never heard of persona, fiction, imagination, or projection. I mean, duh. Every artist tells lies, and it's the lies that tell the deeper truths that go beyond mere facts. Art is not evidence in a legal case; accuracy in biography matters, but the argument of accuracy in memoir often gets sidetracked into worrying about the details rather than the overall arc of truth. So the artist is part of the work, but the work is bigger than the artist. There's a point at which the work leaves the artist's hands, and takes on its own life, and that's the point at which it needs to be considered on its own merits, first and foremost.

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  5. Right. Animals do not make art, Art; and, of course, I deploy the word "make" in the sense that a poet is the maker, the creator, of the work, a fact which cannot be denied. Still, that all-important still; if a work succeeds, it does so on its own merits, soars on its own terms, has nada to do with how it came to balance there, no history, no future, no biography, nothing but what it sublimely is and how it superbly does what it does in terms of its effect upon readers.

    When I am inside the work, Four Quartets, say, I am not thinking, Whoa, Eliot, what a great guy, eh? No, I am AWOL in that landscape, utterly absorbed and assimilated, I guess, complete express transport away from my "I" and his "who," too.

    It's a journey and a point of stillness simultaneously, not unlike the effect seeing a play supremely acted; I'm gone, there is no ego here nor there.

    Of course, one can say, Alas it is delusion all . . . But, not this one, not in those transplendent moments when the world falls away and all that exists is the movement of the work itself, the way in which the words ignite a conflagration of complete conscription, an all-encompassing, all-consuming moment-by-moment movement where time and space cease to exist.

    Orr cited Whitman and Dickinson; but, he studiously and a little disingenuously, IMO, avoided mentioning Edna St. Vincent Millay (whose reputation at that time far surpassed most everyone in the U.S.).

    Vincent. A true celebrity, one who thrilled millions and who commanded top dollar for everything she inked. Massive audiences, endless adulation, terrific power; and, what happened? The work didn't hold its own; and, although she was inordinately "famous," her fame was in her name and person, not in her output.

    The same ol' shame ol' cult of personality rearing its uglies. A fiery redhead, five-foot nuthin', thrilling voice, unforgettable face BUT an almost psychopathic need to be worshipped, one of the first twentieth-century narcissartists, IMO.

    All but forgotten, now; but, Edmund Wilson, IIRC, wanted to marry her and she presided over the Guggenheim Awards, deciding who got funding and who didn't.

    Who didn't, most particularly and outrageously? Cummings. I kid you not. I think Orr might have addressed some of that bullshit; he had such an opportunity to examine so much of what happens in artistic endeavours; and, IMO, he blew it, preferring to focus on a pair of poets whose works may or may not survive outside a century (again, IMO). If the work's still relevant 2500 years from now; well, then, we'll talk :).

    See, I think you're right, Art; you cannot remove an artist from the creative act; but, the result must never depend upon its creator for its greatness. Its greatness resides within its own exacting and demanding parameters (or else).

    When I review a work, I don't think about its creator, the biography of the maker; I look at what's on the page and whether it propels me off that page. I write for readers, not writers, IOW, I guess; and, the bottom line does enter the question in that respect; but, art is not a commercial enterprise; rather, it is a creative compulsion, at least as far as I'm concerned.

    There are professional poets; there are career poets; and, there are snake-oil sales-peeps who may fool some of their readers some of the time; but, the fact remains:

    Poetry's greatness can only be defined on her own terms. Truth, beauty, delight, transport, the heart of the matter of the heart.

    Art cannot exist in a vacuum, of course; it requires its makers; but, that does not mean it demands we know a damned thing about 'em.

    The older I grow, the more convinced of this I become. When I hear that I panned this book because I had it in for its writer or had some ulterior motive, I simply shrug and think I don't know these people; and, given the way they think, I don't want to know them.

    It's entirely obscene, IMO, to think that an individual entrusted with the privilege and responsibility of telling their truth concerning a given work of poetry would or could even conceive of betraying Poetry for personal reasons.

    So much of what I read doesn't work for me, period; I'm just one person who's working for her, for Poetry, nobody else, nothing else, ever; and, I pray I never stoop to their level since I wish only to rise to communicate and share the good words whenever I find them, something that happens so rarely that, when it does happen, the only thing better is great sex which causes me to literally weep with jouissance.

    These peeps who take aim at others for telling their truth in the name of Poetry first? These peepsqueaks who promote their own agendae and egos at the expense of the work of others (under the guise of this or that label)?

    Ah, I genuinely believe they missed their calling because whatever else, poets they ain't, period. There's no quota on greatness. The work speaks for itself. It doesn't need a performer nor a showperson to do anything but deliver it to those who are literally dying for what they may find there (yet rarely do).

    That's my story and it's cost me not less than everything, praise Him. (Or, IOW, I'd do it again and again and again . . ..)

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