Contemporary Poetry Criticism

[Here's an excerpt from an interesting review by Olivia Cronk about two books of poetry. It's interesting that her friend got ill from Aase's poetry; in a book on postomdern Swedish poetry that came out a few years ago, one critic made the same claim, but then went on to analyze what made her ill and it was a pretty interesting essay.]

I am disturbed by the tendency of poets and readers of poetry to create false boundaries around their own curations and tastes; this seems, to me, a kind of deluding process by which the thinker justifies (and therefore preempts the need for expanding) her or his own ideas. Three months ago, Bookslut ran a feature in which a poet argued (among other things) that grabbing John Berryman over Jorie Graham on the way out the door was somehow an ideological position that she had to defend. The conflict here seems moot, a half-awake gesture. While teaching in a Creative Writing institute this summer, I listened to a guest speaker contend that there are currently just two kinds of poetry: Narrative (good, interesting, comprehensible) and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (bad, confusing, jibberish-esque). In his estimation, the poetry world allows a lot of confusing stuff to be published, and he would, of course, prefer to read and write “things that communicate” with the reader. A peer, in a very small poetry group, denounced an Aase Berg poem I had selected for an exercise; she said that she “would never read that again because it made [her] sick to [her] stomach.” In short, rather than identify the metaphorical landscape of the piece, she felt physically ill from the mention of eating guinea pigs (note: read the link to see the strange misreading present in such a literal reaction). A friend of mine was told, years ago, while attempting a friendly writing exchange with two classmates, that a poem’s job is to offer clarity; otherwise, they demanded, what’s the point?

The point is this: contemporary poetry, as the massive and unwieldy thing it is, should be encouraged to re-shape our realities. Why bother consuming information that simply reinforces the things we already know and feel? I am not arguing for canon-negligence or firmly placed camps (if “Narrative” and “L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E” are the only options available to readers and writers, then there is a serious problem). I understand that straight language and plainsong and the telling of stories in poems can provide edifying experiences, but I am not sure why we can’t also think aggressively (intellectually, imaginatively) about what is “serious” poetry (a notion I think I am stealing from Susan Sontag) and what my aforementioned friend calls “prose broken into lines.”

[The whole division into sense and nonsense (which is supposedly language poetry) is incredibly detrimental and reductive, and right now there's a prominent "third way", in between sense and nonsense, nevertheless based on this simplistic binary.]

[PS, here's a link to the Aase Berg poem. Also found in the book With Deer (Black Ocean, 2009).]