The Value of Criticism in Contemporary Poetry

[after] The Poetry Space_ — Poetry Criticism

The Value of Criticism in Contemporary Poetry

[after] The Poetry Space_ — Poetry Criticism (recording) — 12/7/23

This was an exceptional brainstorming-centered episode of The Poetry Space__ hosted by Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (Rattle)

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Katie made a thoughtful remark about poems not needing to be perfect. This made me reflect on my own position when it comes to poems I publish in ONE ART. ONE ART poems that I publish don’t always feel 100% finished. I’m comfortable with a  poem being “good enough for now”. Sometimes timeliness and a sense of urgency about getting the poem out into the world matters. In certain instances, the challenge a poet getting their poem to a more finalized place (I suspect) has to do with not yet being distanced enough from the event that took place in their personal life to look back on it with Wordsworthian reflection in tranquility, as the saying goes. My overall point, is that I’m happy to publish the “good enough” poem because, as has been mentioned time and again, lit mags are “curating” – and the poem can be further revised (as they often are anyhow) if/when they appear in a future poetry collection.

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I’m a long-time fan of cultural critic Chuck Klosterman who wrote I Wear the Black Hat. It’s a wonderful text I cannot recommend enough.

Reflecting on writing reviews that are interesting, thoughtful, entertaining, and may actually get someone to buy the book (!)—I’m perfectly happy to “wear the black hat” and write [William] Logan-esque reviews. Taking on this role, one must accept the potential for difficulty publishing your personal writing as you may make a few enemies along the way. A good critic must come to terms with being, frankly, fine with that.

I truly believe reviews are a necessary function for the literary community ecosystem. They are badly lacking in the poetry realm.

I’m a fan of micro-reviews – say 250-350 words – it varies. I think these are digestible and can be written with a mind for utility without being “hatchet jobs”. There’s no need for meanness in reviews. As I’ve expressed elsewhere, in as many words, poetry reviews are not a place for punching down. William Logan writes reviews of work by [mostly] the most well-known, name-checkable poets.

It's perfectly fine to write “mixed” reviews that are neither rave, nor wholly positive, but also not simply panning a book that already was unlikely to sell more than 250 copies.

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As an aside on reviews, my concept of Lawless Explications (the original title for this Substack, in fact), is a personalized quasi-gonzo journalism style of review.

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In The Poetry Space__ episode, there are several good ideas suggested by Dick Westheimer.

This got me thinking about how interesting it would be to have an Intelligence Squared-style discussion where there are “experts” (poetry critics) on each side who argue their perspective in a debate format.

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The death of Harold Bloom signaled the end of the Western Canon as we know it.

Post-Bloom, what is the appropriate modern lens for criticism?

As I reflected on contemporary poetry criticism, I kept coming back to one word that feels necessary— intersectionality.

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What do I mean by intersectional?

We cannot simply view a work through a single lens. This goes for the individual poem and a collection.

I argue that you can’t just look at formal or technical elements; can’t simply focus on an appeal to a emotional response; can’t strictly view a work through feminist lens (and certainly not a radical feminist lens).

Further, sonorous language and literary devices can’t be everything as this can be simple sound and fury signifying nothing. On the flipside, a lack of narrative, no aboutness, are just are problematic. Poets who go all in on experimentation are failing an essential aspect of communication. While Richard Hugo argues that when language seeks solely to communicate, then it is dying—Hugo does not say that it’s not essential that language is used to communicate at all. Poems that fail to communicate, well, fail. Why was the poem written and shared with an audience if not to convey something of significance? Something that matters.

I’m not saying a poet has to meet the reader halfway even. They can meet the reader part of the way. And not all poems are for all audiences. Some poems are designed to be niche and for select audiences. This is not new.

Like William Logan, I appreciate clarity in poems. I’m unimpressed by the youthful “mystery” and purposeful obfuscation that is often tempting to write by 20-somethings.

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There is a concern about colonialism in a global world, and criticism should embrace that. Chill Subs, the lit mag service that is positioning itself as a much more useful and modernized version of Duotrope, has called attention to the fact that there’s a disproportional number of lit mags in the U.S. and that the literary community focus is generally on the U.S. and U.S.-based magazines and presses.

Readers and critics alike should not overlook the exceptional work tha tis being written abroad.

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The intersection of technology and poetry is tricky territory that’s been talked about plenty on The Poetry Space__. Critics should not ignore the potential for high-caliber work in places where they do not expect to find merit. NFTs are one example.

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Certain forms are more easily open for criticism than others. Slam poetry, for example, is often excellent as oratory, and then falls flat on the page. This is not unlike the way good song lyrics typically do not translate well directly as poetic lines. Like every good rule, there are exceptions.

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One area that I have a personal struggle with is what I’ve noticed is a negative view, among certain groups in the literary community, of what they see as “mental illness poetry” or “therapy poetry” or “trauma poetry” or pick your term. I personally write, oftentimes, in a neoconfessional style that comes from the first-person “I” perspective, where the “I” (speaker of the poem) is indeed closely modeled off of my own reality. I think there is great value in this sort of work and plenty of work that deals with grief/loss/trauma/recovery appears in ONE ART.

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Unlike Logan, I’m not a big fan of poems that spend a lot of time working to insert themselves into the canon. I think he’s more impressed by this show of knowledge, show of broader understanding of the history of literature than is necessary or appropriate.

Related to this, I’m often turned off by work that focuses too much on a special interest (area of research) that requires specialized, obscure, or otherwise niche knowledge. Same, too, work that requires looking up half the words and references to get a foothold. These are not poems that invite you in and I personally see this as problematic. Certainly problematic for your average reader. Scholars are a different story.

In general, I believe poetry should be “democratic” in that a person who is not a poet’s poet, who is not a regular reader of poetry, should be able to make their way through (most) poems and glean at least a bit of understanding and not either (a) come away completely dumbfounded or (b) come again feeling dumb because they believe they “can’t understand poetry”. This tends to make a person feel like their back in high school English class where poetry was treated as Billy Collins describes in his modern classic “Introduction to Poetry”. This is not what we want in the poetry community. We want to bring more people into the fold, not cause them to run into the woods for fear of greater exposure to the art form.