Edited by author 09-26-2003 08:40 PM
He could help educate children in Cambodia, or his spouse with her pregnancy weight gain. Where do I come up with this stuff?

Janine, I think it's a case of mistaken identity; she said she went to high school with a Janine in Vancouver, who is now a writer.

Edited by author 09-26-2003 08:08 PM
But if you guys go offline, what the hell will a new parent do after his son has gone to bed?

(Hate to point this out, but an email address isn't 'offline,' tho it might feel so after posting in public for so long!)

Salad - glad you've been amused. I aim to please.
Z - my last name is Root, I work for an office furniture company and live in East Van. I'm orinally from London, ON, and went to school at UWO and Lakehead in Thunder Bay if that helps your girlfriend figure things out. We can take this offline if you want. janinerooot@hotmail.com
(yes, it's 'rooot'. Hotmail would not let me use my name. It's a restricted word, much to my dismay)

Edited by author 09-26-2003 07:53 PM
Yeah, I'd noticed that the spider's web was coming unravelled. Earlier on, it was all about the war in Iraq, and now it's about literacy, the environment and parenthood, so we must be nearing some sort of resolution, what? Regardless, we must be working for good. I've enjoyed it also.

Unfortunately, my weekend is no different from my week, which consists mainly of sitting in a cargo warehouse in the furthest reaches of Arctic Nowhere--which is why I can write such bloody windy posts :) Speakin of which, I know TFK was burning for a discussion on this thread, but we seem to have drifted rather far from the point of departure. Oh well, long live the epic digression!

You're from Vancouver, eh? This is probably not the forum for it, but I think you might know my girlfriend, or so she guesses.

Until we clash again...

Yes, you two, butt butt butt away! It's fun to follow.

   Well Z, we've managed to confuse the Google spider to the left at the very least. Last time it gave me links to Literacy Cambodia, Pregnancy and Weight Gain, a Green Guide and something about Asian Developing Nations.
   What we're fundamentally disagreeing on is that I think that the assesment of poem is subjective, but the assemssment of whether or not it IS a poem is more objective. At this point, I'm in danger of repeating myself more than I already have. I'm not sure if I'm failing to be clear about the distinction I want to make between genre and judgement, or if we're simply doomed to disagreement over the essential terms, but the discussion has certainly given me a clearer understanding of where you're coming from, and that's what I was seeking.
  I'll decline the offer to discuss an individual poem at the moment because I've got a full weekend of Film Festing and Word on the Streeting and will be mostly away from the computer for a few days. I'm in Vancouver, and our Film festival just started, so I've got 2 weeks of numb ass and bleary eyed voluntary exile from natural light. I'll be lurking around a bit, but won't be able to respond in timely fashion. But I'm sure the opportunity for us to butt heads will come up again. I look forward to it. Thanks!

Which brings us full circle to the caveat I stated in response to your original question: it’s ultimately subjective. You don’t have to check with me to determine whether something is a poem or not, you just have to check with yourself. I do not pretend to be the ultimate authority on any of these questions; anyone who does is kidding himself (or is it themself?) or is Harold Bloom. Obviously, it’s only my opinion; I never said otherwise. I’m not so foolish as to think the Truth is out there, or that I possess it, if only the 6 billion other morons on the globe could be as smart as I so they could too. I don’t favour any kind of New Critical pseudo-scientific objective correlative, which is sheer nonsense. Just because I don’t phrase something in the form of “I think that”; or “I feel that”; or “it seems to me that” doesn’t mean that I’m doing something other than stating my own subjective and doubtless flawed opinion on a given topic. And I am certainly not trying to ‘erase my subjectivity from the assessment.’

This does not, however, disqualify my argument that those who have read more are in a better position to make the distinction between poem and unpoem. (It’s not simply a matter of taste; there’s a lot that I like that I don’t deem important art, and there’s a lot of important art that I don’t particularly like.) This is how canons get built, by people with informed or refined taste; the more people the better because this increases the likelihood of variety. I know that canons are not perfect and change from time to time, but they’re still pretty much stable, because there is some justice to the choices that have been made and that continue to be made. I know discrimination is a dirty word nowadays, but it’s necessary if we’re going to have any kind of coherent reflection of culture. The post-modern dictum of the equality of all texts leads to a sort of Babel wherein a restaurant menu can be held up alongside “The Second Coming” or “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal” as an important ‘text’.

There is poetry, in the classical sense, in all forms of art. For the purposes of our discussion, however, I think it’s best to limit it to the language arts. See my post to the StarBok thread for my view on whether there’s poetry in a tree.

As for the ‘disdain’ implicit in my judgments, it is reserved for the would-be arbiters of taste who elevate unaccomplished writing onto the same pedestal as truly good writing or, worse yet, laud bad writing at the expense of good writing (e.g. publishers, award juries, etc.). I have no more disdain for a writer of dull verse or potboiler novels than I do for a plumber or a lawyer—but if someone tries to tell me that the weld-job Jim did on that drain-pipe, or the affidavit that Bill drew up, is poetry, I’m going to take issue with it. At no point did I say that I am a ‘poet’ according to my definition (my standard response to the question “Are you a poet?” is “I’ve been called worse”). I am in no position to make such a judgment; that’s for others to decide. All I do is study, experiment and continually attempt, as Rilke says, to fail better. It is my hope that I fail well enough to gain an audience, and it would be nice to have even one poem survive for perpetuity, but it’s not something I lose any sleep over. But if you are, as I’m guessing, a Torontonian, you’re more than welcome to pass judgment on my efforts next May when I do readings at the Art Bar and I.V. Lounge.

Finally, if I’ve been general and sweeping in my statements, it’s because we’ve been talking about the broader issues. If you want, please feel free to send me what you think is a poem and I’ll tell you if I think it is one or not and do my best to justify my judgment.

Z,
   My desire is not to be acritical; my desire is to try to establish a somewhat practical framework for engaging in a critical discussion, one that creates a discursive space where different readings can coexist. My point is not to reduce all critical discussion to questions of genre; my point is that genre distinctions are mostly about form and/or content. I feel that your definition of poem relies on taste almost exclusively.
   I have 2 basic problems with the way you use 'poet' and 'poetaster'. Primarily, it is impractical. The way you define what is a 'poem' seems absurdly specific - is is about your response and I have no way of knowing if a text is a poem or not without checking with you first. I understand that you think it is dogmatic and short-sighted to consider all lineated prose poetry. I think the western, English speaking world mostly agrees that lineated prose is poetry, and that this agreement constitutes a large part of the larger context we use to define genre. To engage in a useful critical discussion, I think that we have to have to start from a common language, and there has to be some consensus as to the general terms. The finer points will always be contentious, and that's where the critial fun lies, at least for me.
  You pulled out some old guys to support that the root of poetry lies in creation, but if you're going to take it back to just 'creation', then can a poem be something that is created our of different material than language? Is a photograph a poem? Is a tree? Additionally, 'creation' does not carry any of the baggage of 'good' or 'necessary' or 'hitting a high register' that you are imposing on the definition of 'poem.'
  My second issue is the disdain that is implied your terms. The agenda behind 'poetaster' is to elevate your position at the expense of others. It does not leave space for differing opinions on equal footing, and it attempts to erase your subjectivity from the assessment. When you talked about the Ondaatje novel, you were willig to couch it in terms of *your* experience and *your* opinion. When discussing poetry, I feel like you are discussing it as something which is out in the world, and its status is independent of your opinions, that you are just commenting on the obvious.
  Finally, I just wanted to be clear that I wasn't making a case for texts to stand *outside* of 'broader' contexts. My point was that our experiences of texts are always informed by multiple contexts, both broad and specific.

Edited by author 09-26-2003 12:03 PM
OK, Janine, but I find your position acritical--which is fine, nudding wrong with it, but I thought we were engaged in a critical discussion here. Yeah, you can can posit "novel", "poetry", "drama", etc. as simple genre distinctions, but if you're talking about these forms as art, I don't think you can leave it at that.

Aristotle and Sidney were both careful to point out that "poetry" is not the exclusive domain of lineated verse. The etymology of the word bears this out; poeisis=creation--not language presented in a certain format. In a way it's more dogmatic to say that something's a poem because it has line-breaks than one is not because it lacks urgency. A lot of novelists/prose writers I consider poets because their work hits a higher register than prose (Conrad, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Faulkner, Lowry, Ellison, Hurston, Sheila Watson, Kafka, Nabokov, Saramago, to name a few); likewise a lot of people who write in verse I do not consider poets because their work consistently fails to hit that register. Geoff Dyer has an interesting comment in his book on DH Lawrence; he says that a lot of his favourite "novelists" never wrote novels. I say potato, you say vodka...

Yes, I agree, it's important that a poem or novel or whatever be able to stand alone with its reader outside of any other context. If, however, it's going to be a poem or novel that outlives its author, it has to stand alone, AND within a broader set of contexts. I've read books that I thought were good at the time, but after reading more books and developing my tastes and instincts, or upon rereading, realized that those books weren't so good after all. "The English Patient", which I read at 21, is a perfect example of this. I can hardly believe now that I finished it, much less enjoyed it.

As for the question of violence, you only have to look at the sources of those two quotes to realize that they don't expect of literature an unremittingly serious assault on human folly. There's a great deal of humour in the writings of both Kafka and, especially, Swift. The world's a violent place and it's the artist's responsibility to combat that barbaric darkness--the fight is often best carried out with light.

 I do like the Kafka quote, on days when my tortured soul is writhing with angst, anyway. But I've gotta say I find both the Kafka and the Swift a little on the violent side to live my life dancing to those tunes. Excuse my bourgeois taste, but sometimes I don't want to read something that is the emotional equivalent of being drawn and quartered. I think there is a place for work that is more subtle in the challenges it places before readers, or, heck, I think there's a place for reading that purely for pleasure. I think there is merit and value in that, and I think that it can be artfully done. Yes, we need "those books which come upon us like ill fortune," but I don't need ill fortune all the time, thank you very much. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.
    As for why we read, I think there are lots of reason. We read for company. We read to feel less lonely. We read to escape where we are, to look for a home, to find echoes or reflections of ourselves in the world. We read to find things that are missing in our lives, to experience that which is foreign or dangerous or off-limits or impossible. We read to get further away from our egos than we can ever get when interacting with real live human beings. All these things we try to experience when we read can work to "break the sea frozen inside us." I don't think that the pain and discomfort of axes or hammering on our skulls are the only ways to alter ice, or change what's in our heads. The reactions we have to a poem, whether it does us violence, thaws us or leaves us cold is largely a matter of context.
    The more experienced we are as readers the harder it is to impress us with new tricks or ideas. Someone who is well read, drawing on their vast experience as a reader, may well find a particular poem derivative, unexceptional, unnecessary. But I may read the same poem and be utterly changed by it because it offers me something new. So, if it blows my head off, but not Z's, does it get to be a poem? Or do we have to ask TFK to break the tie?
    This is the problem I have with 'poem' as a value judgement, rather than a distinction of genre. If you say that a Layton poem is actually a non-poem, what does it become? I think it's stingy to take the word 'poem' and save it for special occasions. It should be as neutral as 'book' or 'novel'. When we snobby literary types want to make a (not so) subtle value judgement about prose, we'll call it 'literature', or distinguish it from 'popular fiction'. But when we use the word 'novel' on its own, there is no connotation of inferiority. The problem with 'verse' or 'non-poem' is the unavoidable connotation of inferiority, and that is a matter of taste, not genre.
    I don't mind explicit judgements, we can talk about good and bad poems 'til we're blue in the face. That's fun. But if we are arguing about theoretical poemness and the terms are poem/non-poem then we're engaging in a fight that's unfair from the start. It's an act of linguistic violence, of thievery, for one person to de-poem a text that isn't "necessary" in her eyes. Necessity is in the eye of the beholder. The visceral reaction a reader has to a poem depends on her contexts. If questions of genre have to rely on such specific contexts, then they become pointless.

Z,

The quote is from a letter from Kafka to Oscar Pollak, dated 27th January, 1904.

Gawd, Kafka's one of my favourites! A poet in prose clothing :) I've read almost all of his fictional works, and a few epistles, but haven't seen that quote before. What's it from?

Z, the Swift quotes strikes a good nerve for me. I agree.

I also like Franz Kafka's request:

"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us."

Hi Janine,

Ultimately, of course, it's a judgment call, and therefore highly subjective.

The measure, for me, has a lot (but by no means everything)to do with the Swift quote. I admire poets of a sceptical bent, who are outspoken in challenging accepted norms and mores, who cause the reader to see old questions and assumptions in a new light, who take risks, who put truth and beauty before comfort and security. A poet is someone who is innovative and experimental, but who also engages the traditions of the craft (I don't think anyone can be a fully-fledged poet without having read an enormous amount and variety of poetry). A poet is someone who fuses intellect and emotion with the acetylene of fresh, powerful language.

The question of what a poem is has much to do with what I said about "necessary art". I read a lot of stuff that leaves me with the thought: "What was the point of that? Why did they bother?" Poems that do not make a convincing case for their existence; poem-abortions that sound like faint echoes of things already said and said better; unleavened poems that simply fall flat. Emily Dickinson defined it best when she said (to paraphrase) that you know it's a poem if it feels "like the top of your head has been physically blown off".

Which is not to say that 'real poets' don't write non-poems. Among the poets I admire are many who have published a great deal of mediocre and downright bad verse (Irving Layton and Ted Hughes spring immediately to mind), but whose best work excuses their faults and excesses. A poetaster has no such gems to offset the dullness of their everyday gravel.

The tricky thing with judging contemporary poetry, I find, is what I would term "accomplished mediocrity", of which there is a great deal these days. This is poetry that you can't dismiss as bad, but never hits the high-water mark of good. It shows the odd spark of original life, but is mostly derivative. Like life in the suburbs, it simply fails consistently to be exceptional, while being thoroughly dedicated and responsible in a pedestrian kind of way: nice poetry that has a good car, a loving family, never kicks the dog, makes loan payments on schedule, shows up to work every day, goes to the gym, enjoys a beer or two in front of the tube, has hobbies, retires and dies of natural causes with a murmur. This is poetry whose authors adopt verse (or, more often, arhythmic lineated prose) as a medium for personal expression, but have never given enough consideration to why or how they do what they do.

While such judgments are undoubtedly subjective and prone to error, I don't think they are completely so. If one has read deeply and widely (in terms of time, traditions, and cultures) one has a reasonable foundation on which to build an aesthetic house--or Tower of Babel. It's a matter of well-honed instincts, not merely of taste. There are many poets of whom I'm not particularly fond, but who I am not prepared to consign to the poetaster bin because I can see that what they do is important and relevant (Adrienne Rich is one such for me, as is John Keats) both to poetry and to the world as a whole. But there's no calculus to it; if there were, it wouldn't be art, what? The important thing is to be broad-minded about the thing and to be aware of any reactionary, knee-jerk impulses of dismissal so that they can be suppressed.