-Erich Vogel
REVIEWS
Angelou, Maya: A Brave And Startling Truth
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence: A Far Rockaway of The Heart
Ginsberg, Allen: Illustrated Poems
Giovanni, Nikki: Love Poems
Gluck, Louise: Meadowlands
Kumin, Maxine: Connecting The Dots
Merwin, W.S.: The Vixen and Lamenting The Makers
Moyers, Bill: The Language of Life
Rivard, David: Wise Poison
Snodgrass, W.D.: The Fuhrer Bunker
INTERVIEWS
COMMENTARY
On Self Publishing, Web Publishing, And Hypocrisy On Our Part
No other poet gets the privilege of publishing poetry books as short as Maya Angelou's. Ever since the inaugural poem came out, she gets little hard-backed, single-side printed, thick papered editions that cost twelve bucks a pop! This includes A Brave And Startling Truth, her commemorative poem for the United Nation's Anniversary.
These speeches Angelou writes for ceremonies are not really poems, at least not poems of note. They are like the sculptures and paintings in airports; they exist to fill an empty space and cause no trouble. Angelou appears to be specializing in such pieces, and why not? the money is good. Books like Phenomenal Woman read about the same even though they were not written for any particular event. Maya Angelou's reputation is a creation of critics who are either contented by her sentiments however poorly expressed, or critics who do not want to take the heat for being the first one to dump on her.
I have no career to kill; let me be the first, skip her.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 2, Jan-Feb 97
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Far Rockaway of The Heart reviewed by Erich Vogel
The title of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's new book is a reference to his most famous work A Coney Island of The Mind, which established him as the clearest and most accessible of the Beatniks. In many ways he has cruised on the basis of that initial success as Ginsberg did with Howl, never attracting any great quantity of critical attention with his subsequent work; he is perhaps hoping that A Far Rockaway of The Heart will do the trick. I would concede that Ferlingetti's work is an improvement over the likes on Ginsberg and Kerouack (not Burroughs), but that is not saying much. Of all the literary movements and schools of the 20th Century, the Beatniks are consistently the most pointless, childish and dated.
The best poems in the book suffer from being too personal and sentimental, but at least reflect some genuine feeling in the writer. Somehow one can tell that Ferlinghetti is sincere in his warm hearted nostalgia, even though he is incapable of providing his recollections with the kind of detailed context that might let the reader feel along with him.
(from "#3")
Driving a cardboard automobile without a license
at the turn of the century
my father ran into my mother...
...And I in the back seat of their eternity
reaching out to embrace them
(from #2)
The bulk of the poems are even less effective. The book-jacket proclaims them to be "parodying" the likes of Eliot and Pound and other important "pre-Beat" writers; evidently the aging and dead kids are all right. The problem with calling these poems parodies is that they lack humor, or even any measurable commentary; they are more like mediocre imitations. Take his attempt at Lorca:
He also at times invokes the writer's name in the midst of his mimicry, just in case we do not 'get it'.
(from "#11")
Ferlinghetti also uses some of the poems to paradoxically claim equity for some of his beat contemporaries with the very greats he apparently considers overrated.
...to London's Call of The Wild to Kerouac's Cassidy...
...and Ken Keasey in his bus
(from "#97)
Poetry Harsh, Issue 4, Jun-July 97
Consider the beauty and complexity of:
Occasionaly Ginsberg will pour a little giberish into a poem, hoping the reader will come up with a meaning for him.
The illustrations are banal woodcuts such as any B average art student might execute. They reflect the modicum of imagery in the poems with little invention.
Give this and the rest of Ginsberg's many books a miss. If you are already a fan, commit suicide, or just quit reading altogether and take up macrame.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 1, Nov-Dec 96
Nikki Giovanni's Love Poems
Reviewed by Monica Sudo
Nikki Giovanni is not a poet that I have ever considered moving or profound, but her latest book, Love Poems, is embarrassingly bad; reading it is like watching someone make a complete ass of themselves at an open-mic.
I suppose most poets come out with a volume dedicated to love poems eventually; Anne Sexton's book so titled is probably her best. However, many poets are not at their best in this genre, more concerned with saying something about their feelings to their sweetie than writing a good poem.
(from "What It Is")
(from "That Day")
The crude and awkward rhyming of several pieces is a new technique for Giovanni. Perhaps it reflects an interest in rap, or an attempt to jump on that bandwagon. Love Poems is dedicated to the newly murdered rapper Tupac Shakur. Her memorial poem for him is not a love poem and sticks out like a canker sore.
2Pac is not with us
if those who lived by the sword died by the sword there would be
no white men on earth
(from "All Eyez On U")
When she stops rhyming the poems are less painful, but the amateurish simplemindedness of her love poetry is just as apparent.
(from "A Poem Of Friendship")
i really need to hug you
when i want to hug you
as you like to hug me
does this sound like a silly poem
(from "My House")
you'll be there in the dark
like a lighthouse in the fog
seeing me through troubled waters
(from "You Are There")
(from "Her Flying Trapeze")
Poetry Harsh, Issue 3, Apr-May 97
Louise Gluck's poetry has always been strong on unity of theme, image and style. In Meadowlands she tries for a greater level of unity yet by using poems to tell a narritive story in fragments; the idea is a good one, but in this case it fails. She redraws characters from The Odyssey with latter day motives and sentiments. This basic technique of recasting mythological material is at least as old as Euripides, is overused today, and Gluck finds no valuable uses for it here as she did in The Triumph of Achillies.
She also juxtaposes her Oddyseus and Penelope with a modern couple who are Gluck herself and her newly ex-husband in no uncertain terms; in "Quiet Evening" she refers to her son Noah by name. Pairing classical characters who think like yuppies with actual yuppies is redundant and creates little effect. Penelope and Oddyseus are described in current terms from the first poem; she is "passionate like Maria Callas" and he "suntanned from his time away- wanting his grilled chicken". On a petty note, I might add that chickens were not introduced to Greece until well after the Peloponesian war as an import from Persia.
Both modern and classical characters here are dissapointingly shallow. Cerce is a caricature of 'the other woman', as if drawn from an angry wife's point of view.
WIFE: "I have deep friendships. I have friendships with other recluses."
However, the saddest loss evident in Meadowlands is Louise Gluck's sublime turn of phrase. In the past her poetry has seemed to fashion gorgeous evocative imagery out of a seemingly inadequite number of descriptive terms, with a talent that was impossible to pin down to mere technique.
If you have never read Louise Gluck, then go right to the nearest decent bookstore and pick up The Wild Iris, Ararat, or her collected first four volumes; Proofs And Theories, her essays on poetry, are also well worth getting. Skip Meadowlands altogether, and try to wait the two to three years for her next book patiently.
"I wished for what I always wish for. I wished for another poem."
When she published Meadowlands, Louise Gluck was lost in wishful thinking.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 1, Nov-Dec 96
Maxine Kumin's Connecting
The Dots
reviewed by Erich Vogel
Maxine Kumin's great failing is that she lacks insight. She can describe her familiar New England farm scenery adequitely, and the poems where she sticks exactly what she knows and is comfortable with are tolerable.
(from "Cross Country Skiing)
When she tries to break into more interesting subject matter she loses whatever genuinness her better poems have. When she gets into matterial which ought to be disturbing, especially when personal, all sensory detail dissapears.
(from "Letters")
(from "Song For Seven Parts of The Body" in House, Bridge, Fountain Gate)
Poems written about wars and like events as seen on television are almost never powerful, even when tackled by an otherwise excellent poet like Sharon Olds; for my money only Robert Bly ever succeeds with such material, by moving it onto a grander philosophical plane. Kumin's poems in this genre, such as "After The Cleansing of Bosnia" are among her worst.
Anne Sexton had the good sense to keep her 'tourist' poems on familiar turf; "Somewhere In Africa" is about her dead mentor John Holmes. Kumin speaks of her departed friend Sexton in a poem along similar lines "October, Yellowstone Park"; neither her memories of the park or Sexton have much impact.
"dead seventeen years today, who for seventeen
years before that was a better sister
than any I, who had none, could have conjured."
Alas, the excellent Anne Sexton's most frequently anthologized poem is one of her worst, "Sylvia's Death", which is a deliberate and painfully honest document of jealousy, but not well written. Maxine Kumin's work in the same vein "New Year's Eve, 1959" has even less to offer its readers: textbook reflections on the period "Coke was still a carbonated drink", the persons "madcap Anne" and herself "I alone am saved to tell you how they could jive".
Kumin's poems do not usualy contain speculative analisis, and this is merciful thing considering her few poems constructed out of abstract thought. Her ideas, like her images, are tired to the point of being cliche, or at least stock.
(from "After The Poetry Reading")
When she sticks to her forte, Maxine Kumin's poetry has some merit. She has a genuine passion for the details of her farm life, even if she has no imaginative thoughts about that life to share with her readers. The other poems in Connecting The Dots have nothing to recommend them. I advise you to avoid this and the rest of Kumin's books..
PPoetry Harsh, Issue 1, Nov-Dec 96
W.S. Merwin's THE VIXEN
and LAMENT FOR THE MAKERS
Reviewed by Erich Vogel
It is not easy to define what is lacking in W.S. Merwin's work. His poetry rarely fails out of awkwardness or poorly chosen language. It is this smoothness together with a complete lack of disturbing material that makes him the favorite son of the new New Yorker. His work is uniformly dull, without any passion or even energy. Not every poet is meant to have the violent subject matter of Sharron Olds, but there is no drama without conflict on some level. Even a disagreement between a man and a lilac over the niceness of the weather can be enough to give a poem the necessary tension to keep you reading. The absence of even the most mild everyday stress between characters is what renders Merwin's poems boring and false, makes them a cliche of what poetry "is". Merwin's work in this decade has even less to recommend it than his earlier books. He has become set in his style, even formulaic. The Vixen is another volume of his well written, but largely uninteresting poetry.
On rare occasions he will have a nugget of real eloquence, as opposed to just facility, in one of his descriptions.
More often, his descriptions will be so straightforwardly bland that it sounds as if he were giving you directions.
"Summer and winter there is the field below the house
there is the broad valley far below them with all the curves
of the river a strand of sky threaded through it"
(from "Fox Sleep")
Perhaps the easy fluidity of Merwin's language is a trap he lays for himself; keeping him from seeing when a poem has no substance. Some passages feel as though the poet got caught up in the flow of his words while writing and never went back with a more critical eye towards meaning.
On a more petty note, he uses sloes entirely too often in this collection. I suppose a devil's advocate might accuse Garcia Lorca of referring to oleanders too often. But Lorca is using a charged cultural and personal symbol, whereas Merwin is just referring to a vegetable. I am not partial to his placement of line breaks either; they do not provide either clarity or meaningful juxtaposition.
Now turning to W.S. Merwin's new anthology Lament For The Makers, I will compare him unfavorably to Robert Bly once more. When Bly edits an anthology it is almost invariably worth getting. Even if you are familiar with all the poems, which is unlikely when Bly picks them, you find new value. Through his commentary and arrangement Bly will trace thematic threads from one poet and era to the next, as he did expertly in News Of The Universe. He also has excellent taste.
Merwin finds three unifying factors to link the poets he jams together in this volume: they are supposedly influences on his work, they are all mentioned in his title poem, and they are all dead. The first two are egotistical and the third is true of all of us, eventually. The poems he selects are unrelated in theme and style and are for the most part not the best examples of the poets' works.
Merwin's only commentary is very curt biographical sentences at the end of each poem, and a long title poem. His one poem here is a stylistic departure for him, and not a positive one. It lacks the word flow which is typically his best feature and reads awkwardly.
Sylvia Plath took her own
direction into the unknown
from her last stars and poetry
in the house a few blocks from me"
Stevens "The River Of Rivers In Connecticut" is the only example of Merwin selecting a good, if not great, poem to represent a poet.
Traditionally overrated poets like Ezra Pound, James Wright, the Roberts Lowell and Graves are no better represented here than they should be.
In regards to both these books, and W.S. Merwin's work in general, save your money.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 2, Jan-Feb 97
Bill Moyer's The Language
of Life
reviewed by Monica Sudo
There is nothing I like less than the cliched, stereotypical image of poets as lofty people who understand the mysteries of life and whose minds dwell constantly on higher things. If you give most poets half a chance they will try to portray this unlikely character for you. Bill Moyers handed several of them this opportunity on a platter when he made The Language Of Life series for PBS.
I had high hopes for the show initially. Moyers has damn good credentials as a journalist after all, and if he had approached poetry with an iota of the skepticism he has for politics then he might have produced a good program. I guess Moyers is incapable of distrusting something that has not personally bitten him in the ass yet. Instead he approaches a slew of known poets with the reverence that might be expected towards the Dali Lama.
And most of the poets eat this kind of treatment up; after all, the desire for such deference was a big part of what they wanted to get out of being a poet all along. I am sure that they have lain awake at night since they were twenty, dreaming up the pithy little quotables they spew at Moyers.
"The heart already knows"
(Lucille Clifton)
"Poetry is a conversation with the world"
(Naomi Shihab Nye)
Robert Bly at least has a few interesting things to say about not throwing out classical western culture as we become interested in multiculturalism. Jane Kenyon speaks of her life in an honest and down to earth way. Galway Kinnel and Sharron Olds have poems in the book, but no interviews; they are not represented in the television show. They might well have had more interesting and honest statements to make.
I have known a number of poets. They are not lofty minded folks; if anything they are more petty and materialistic than average, not even particularly mature. They do not need to be in order write good poetry. I am not suggesting that they should be saints and sages; I am suggesting that they stop using those personas both when they talk and write. Poets are by-and-large greedy for glory and acceptance. They watch the mailbox with baited breath. They get mad when the national book award goes to somebody else. They divorce their first wives in favor of their prettiest graduate students. They are normal Geraldo type folks, often with a little more brains and always with a lot more ego and ambition. More people might be able to relate to poetry if more poets owned up to the truth about their natures.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 2, Jan-Feb 97
David Rivard's Wise Poison
reviewed by Monica Sudo
David Rivard seems like he's trying to find a middle ground between two tiresome schools of poetry: the shallow, Generation Xy, phoney street life poetry written by the likes of David West and the uninspired, non-threatening, 'lofty', yuppified poetry of W.S. Merwin and his ilk. In so doing he may have found the ideal "formula" for being published in the current poetry climate, but the formula shows through the poetry like a paint-by-the-numbers Mona Lisa.
One will head toward the meat packing district, over the river.
One will make it only as far as the mountain meadow, the lupine.
One will climb the fence around a rocket launching pad.
One will sleep on grates, eloquent as an air brake.
(from "Emergency Exit")
He uses a lot of pop-culture references which stick out with an awkwardness which reflects the intention behind them.
(from "Hush & Taunt)
(from "What Kind of Things Are There")
I love the drops of rain
that stammer down the fire escape
(from "Jihad")
(from "Change My Evil Ways")
I strongly suggest that you give both this and his first book a miss; they are as disingenuous and meaningless as his constant use of "&".
Poetry Harsh, Issue 4, Jun-July 97
W.D. Snodgrass' The Fuhrer
Bunker
reviewed by Erich Vogel
W.D. Snodgrass is a poet whose reputation stems entirely from one out-of-character poem, "Heart's Needle". It was the title poem of his first book and propelled him directly from obscurity to what passes in the poetry world for fame. While "Heart's Needle" is quite a good poem, it is not remembered for itself so much as for its profound impact on Anne Sexton, and through her on the confessional school of poetry. He abandoned confessional poetry in subsequent books, along with all subject matter over which he had any command. His output since 1960 has been less than prolific, and since the early 1970's it has been mostly work-in- progress segments of this book.
The Fuhrer Bunker, The Complete Cycle is a long book of poetry at 202 pages; after all, it was about 25 years in the making. What saddens me about the book is that its central idea had real promise. The history of Germany and the Nazi High-Command are related by various participants, in snippets resembling diary entries, letters, etcetera. I like to see chronological cycles of poems which can be followed in linear novel fashion and I also enjoy epistolary forms in poetry. All that was needed to make the concept work, was some original ideas about the nature of these individuals, who remain history's most important villains.
Unfortunately, Snodgrass has no new thoughts about either the mental lives of the Nazi leaders, the experience of their defeat, or the societal phenomenon of Nazism. Snodgrass's Hitler is the Hitler of most popular films and documentaries, likewise his Himmler, Speer, et al. His generalized poems about the German people as whole depict them relating events broadly, like a Greek Chorus. His vision of these figures may be correct, if simplistic, but Snodgrass tells us nothing new and his conceptions do not call out for poetic expression.
Upstairs 1,000 American planes are bombing us this minute. Our
Luftwaffe, of course, is no where to be seen.
(from "Martin Borman Personal Secretary To The Fuhrer")
( from "Reichsmarschall Herman Goering")
The simplistic approach to personality only accentuates the mundanity of Sndograss's language. His descriptions, even his imagery, is very common and matter-of fact. I think this is an attempt to enhance the epistolary feel of the collection, and I would be more inclined to forgive it as such if he was able to sneak in a line of real eloquence here and there, much as people do unwittingly in their conversation. But even as plain dialogue, Snodgrass's language does not work; it reads like the script from a bad docu-drama on A&E.
"Whore. Just hot for some Vienna stud.
Clear out any time you please. I'm going."
To yield one's life up to a greater purpose,
To our vaster, purer will.
"Besides I just can't do those...acts
You want me to...I get no pleasure...."
(from "Adolf Hitler")
The forms in this collection vary widely, at times into the experimental. Himmler's poems always take the same eccentric cube shape, initially supposed to portray his casting himself a horoscope, but also suggesting a telegram coming into the bunker from outside. The asterisks here are used to represent a large centered dot.
A*SIMPLE*HANDSHAKE*THAT*WOULD*
BE*BEST*WE*MILITARY*MEN*SHARE* COMMON*SYMPATHIES*&*SO*WE*CAN* DISPENSE*WITH*SOME*FORMALITIES*
Speer is always depicted one stairs as he enters or leaves the bunker, and so the lines are given a triangular arrangement.
(from "Albert Speer Armaments Minister")
Snodgrass begins, ends with, and frequently returns to a character he calls "Old Lady Barkeep", who Snodgrass describes as "a figure from renaissance song and verse...for satirical verses about their leaders." What these poems contribute to the collection is obscure; like the rest of the poems, they simply relate events banally.
(from the opening "Chorus: Old Lady Barkeep")
I thrive on just such rain
While humans prowl on this globe of yours
I'll never lack for customers
By the way, how you doin?
(from the concluding "Chorus: Old Lady Barkeep")
Poetry Harsh, Issue 3, Apr-May 97
Galway Kinnell
interviewed by Erich Vogel
I ambushed Galway Kinnell recently and got this brief but interesting Q-&-A out of him.
Q: Is there anything you see coming up in a lot of poetry lately that you don't like?
Galway Kinnell: I suppose there are things in some poems here and there that I don't like, in poems written now or two hundred years ago. I'd feel more confident talking about the ones written two hundred years ago than the ones written today. There's always some poet out there thinking "huh? is he complaining about me here with this or is it someone else, and who are you Galway Kinnel to judge what is great and what isn't?". What's more I'd have to be possessed of a kind of a cruel streak to say it in a public forum. And if you are going to do it, then you have to say what poems it is you're talking about. We don't know what is going to be considered great a hundred years from now. So I have to say that I'm not going to answer your question.
Q: How much revision do you do on your own poems?
GK: Before the reading I'll be sitting out in the cafe scribbling and thinking people are going to be listening to me in twenty minutes; I rise to new insights about what is wrong with my poem. It is necessary to be in an alert state to do revision- and there's no more alert state than being about to read in public. But I'm not sure I answered your question. I revise a lot. If you can see my personal copy of Imperfect Thirst here, it's all beat up and dog-eared; there is a lot of scribbling in the margins.
Q: Do you think poetry criticism serves a useful purpose? and if so, what is it?
GK: I think it can introduce someone to a poem. Sometimes if a person doesn't know much poetry, if someone doesn't know Wallace Stevens and they pick up a book of Wallace Stevens for the first time-
Q: It can give them access to an understanding they wouldn't otherwise have?
GK: It provides an opening, yes.
Q: That said, do you think negative criticism serves any useful function?
GK: Sometimes, if there is a poet who is famous and a lot of people call him great, but really he is not a good poet.
Q: Or maybe if a great poet is not up to form lately?
GK: No, I don't think negative criticism is called for in that case. But if the emperor has no clothes?
Galway's latest book is Imperfect Thirst, and he remains safe from us...for now!
Poetry Harsh, Issue 2, Jan-Feb 97
L.R. Pettus
Interviewed by Erich Vogel
Q: What kind of poem do you really detest?
L.R. PETTUS: Badly written, badly thought out, I don't know.
Q: What makes a poem qualify as badly written?
LRP: Oh, amateurishness of the kind you might have at an open mic. I think what appalls me that some of the younger poets do is that they don't read! and so they don't have any idea of what people have already done. Or they try to work within classical forms they don't really understand. I'd like to see less art and more craft. Art is when you scribble something down on a napkin on the bar, and craft is when you go over and over something till it becomes worth showing to other people.
Q: So self criticism plays a big role in your creative process? You do a lot of redrafting?
LRP: Oh yes.
Q: Is outside criticism, feedback from other people something you rely on much? or are you mostly your own critic? LRP: Hmm...I don't call myself a performance poet, because they have a lot more bells and whistles than I do. But I think telling people stories, reading poems and stories well is important. Being a story-poet I think having people enjoy the poem is important.
Q: What do think of the 'spoken-word' scene in the San Francisco Bay Area and some of the people who identify themselves as spoken word performers rather than poets?
LRP: Some of them are quite good. I've come to the conclusion that it takes everyone involved, even the really bad ones, to make art happen. You can't have just the cream off the top.
Q: Errr, that doesn't fit in very well with the philosophy of our magazine.
LRP: Hm.
Q: Tell me the story of your "I'm a Robert Bly Groupie" t-shirt again.
LRP: The t-shirt I retired?
Q: Yeah, just tell me again how it came to be and how it came to be retired.
LRP: Robert Bly as a poet is pretty damn good. Wonderful with an audience too and he had a wonderful catalytic effect on me. He would come to San Jose to give a reading and I would typically hear him and go sit up and write poetry all night. I would look at my own work and find it had taken a new direction each year or so right after his visit. So I had this t-shirt custom made that said "I'm a Robert Bly Groupie" and wore it to his readings. He took notice of it eventually and would look for it and say "Where is the woman who always wears that t-shirt? There she is!".
But when he came out with Iron John...Iron Hans was not a wild man; he could not have been. I went off on a quest to find what kind of a man Iron Hans could have been. The story of Iron Hans does not fit the interpretation Bly puts on it. There are other stories from non-european traditions that would fit his message, but he is too much of a snob to use those. He did not do his homework and he does not care whether what he is telling his audience is true or not. I think he has a real contempt for his audience. These people have not done the reading, the original research; they are trusting that he has, that he knows what he is saying and that he is telling them the truth. I have a much smaller audience than Bly, but the people who do listen to me tend to trust what I say, so I do my homework and try to tell the story right before I do anything else.
Q: Do you think Anne Sexton got the Grimm's tales right in her Transformations poems?
LRP: I've never read them. If Bly had just written his own Iron Hans poem with that interpretation that wouldn't have bothered me.
Q: But he wrote a supposedly scholarly prose book pertaining to tell the original allegorical meaning behind the fairy tale. If any fairy tale can even be said to have such a thing. Do you think Joseph Campbell is accurate in his interpretation of myths and fairy tales? Bly claimed him as the inspiration behind Iron John.
LRP: If you listen to Campbell and you listen to Bly they are not saying the same thing at all. So I stopped wearing the shirt and wrote him a letter telling Bly why. I also think there is a growing mentality in this country, that we are becoming a nation of crybabies and that Iron John is encouraging that. Now he's got a new prose book telling us all to stop sniveling!
L.R. Pettus won the 1993 Phelan Prize for her book Seven Harp Songs. Her latest book of poems is The Golden Ball, A Partial History. Any of her books are well worth checking out if you can find them.
Poetry Harsh, Issue 4, Jun-July 97
Commentary: Manifesto-Masthead
by Erich Vogel
I know a lot of poets and poetry fans who think that Poetry Harsh is a bad idea. They would rather I devote a magazine to reviews of poetry I like. Aside from the fact that I could not find enough good new poetry to supply material for a bi-monthly, I firmly believe that what poetry as a whole most needs is to purge itself of a glut of bad and mediocre work.
I do not mourn the passing of old fashioned notions of what is or is not a poem, but with them disappeared all firm criteria for evaluating poetry's worth. Standards of merit have become as abstract as the most abstract poetry, and this too is a good overall development. Unfortunately, this lack of firm rules has fostered a climate where readers have no confidence in their own ability to judge what is good or bad. How often have you heard someone qualify their opinion with "I don't really know anything about poetry."? Would they say the same thing about novels or films? probably not. The sad truth is that most poets encourage this attitude since it makes them invulnerable to the painful experience of being criticized. This not only keeps poets from the rough lessons which would improve their work, but it drives readers away by intimidating them. Is it any wonder that poetry sales are so poor? or that the thousands of poetry magazines which exist today are lucky to have circulations of five hundred to a thousand? The critics who ought to be helping us toward a sense of what makes a modern poem good are writing articles more abstruse than any poem. They too are afraid of being the emperor with no clothes; that there is a secret trick to understanding poetry which they have missed.
Poetry Harsh is here to put its two cents in about some examples of poetry best forgotten. We want to encourage you to have high standards and to be hard judges when confronted by inferior work: on a bookshelf, at a reading, or even on the screen of your own word processor. You cannot write poetry, or read poetry, until you learn to identify what fails and excise it.
In other words, be harsh.
Commentary: On Self Publishing, Web Publishing, And
Hypocrisy On Our Part
by Erich Vogel
Our first letter leads us into the subject of my latest editorial.
In investigating the web for poetry content and discourse I stumbled on Monica Sudo's comments about poetry scams, etc. It was disheartening to find someone displaying such bald examples of slavishness and hypocrisy. First, the notion that one should just submit their creative work and hope for acceptance from the publication machinery demonstrates a cynical attachment to establishment acceptance hierarchies. Secondly, I would like to know just how many editors she had to suck up to in order to "publish" her ideas on the web. I suggest that she stop and think next time before she attempts to think.
Demian
In spite of all my complaints about how a system of professional publication works in practice, I still prefer it to a world stuffed with the work of the self-published and the vanity pressed. While professionally published poetry is about 90% awful, privately published poetry is more like 99.8% awful (figures courtesy of the statistical firm of Ratfocher, Hinesmoocher & Schtonk).
Bad poets do get past the gauntlet of professional publication with an alarming frequency; excellent poets also get squashed. But even a patchy and corrupt filter for the great bales of poetry generated every year is better than no filter at all. This is a why I avoid reading web-published poetry as much as possible; its quality is comparable to most of what gets read aloud in open-readings, without any of the charm that format provides. Even the work of most of the poets we trash is better than the bulk of the self-published work in print and on the web. While I don't think that editors always show the best taste in my work, either by what they reject or accept, I do find that the very effort of submission leads me down a more self-critical path that improves my efforts. Personally, I am grateful that none of my earliest efforts at poetry exist in any printed form.
Self-Publishing is itself a scam, one that works from the bottom up.
I should add that attempts are being made to create respectable literary magazines on the web, and I applaud the effort (if not always the poetry therein). The Hawk, for example, is to my knowledge the first electronic publication to pay poets for their contributions. I think that is an effective way for them to separate their publication from web-magazines which exist to publish a small circle of friends, or publish all submissions indiscriminately. It is a shame more print magazines do not pay their poets; good poetry is work after all, like any other form of writing.
To address Demian's second question, I am the only editor here, and I am immensely grateful for Monica's contributions. If you show her your ass she is unlikely to kiss it. I wish I could clone her. How do I justify the apparent hippocricy of publishing my own articles? Personally, I have never considered criticism to be an art form; that sort of attitude leads to reviews that read like bad poetry themselves. Criticism exists in service to the art form, a kind of consumer report. As such, Poetry Harsh is an unpaid showcase of informed opinion for a specialized audience; which is just what web-pages have always been most useful for. I get little or no creative satisfaction from this kind of writing, and I'll be happy enough to do less if I ever have enough outside contributions to retire behind the editor's desk. (Ye gods! I haven't written a new poem since I began this miserable enterprise).
Commentary: On Poetry In Buses And Trains
by Monica Sudo
At this risk of being a jerk, I am going to discuss something which is not so much a scam as just a bad idea: poetry in commuter vehicles. I cannot call it a scam, because it does not do any real harm; the problem is it does not do any good either.
Putting up posters with short poems in trains and buses is an idea that got started in London. In 1992 the New York subways started doing the same thing with their Poetry In Motion program. Poetry In Motion now also puts its posters up in trains and buses in other parts of the country. The poems are selected mainly by the Poetry Society of America, which does not welcome unsolicited submissions. Their stated purpose is "to make bus and subway riding more pleasurable experiences". I think the experience of subway trains could be more effectively improved with more security and cleanup personnel, but anyway that is not the real idea or purpose behind this program.
The notion which underlies "poetry for the subways", as well as spoken word at concerts and a lot of other poetry programs, is that they will somehow generate a vast new audience for poetry among people who would never otherwise read it. The theory is that there are great hordes among the silent majority who would become rabid poetry fans if only given the chance; they will look up from their benighted commuter lives at a poster to see some verse about morning coffee and say "my God! what has been missing from my life!" then immediately run out to buy books, take classes, and attend readings.
Poetry is not a popular medium in modern times, for the very appropriate reason that is by nature a rarefied and acquired taste. It creates emotions subtly in its readers, through ideas and thought-provoking styles. It does not have the clear and easy appeal of a film, or the novel's ability to enmesh you into the lives of its characters over a long period. Sure the Iliad was considered pretty hot stuff in its day, but then the competition was not real stiff. Lollapaloza-type poets think they can make poetry interesting by filling it with routine sex and drug humor, but end up creating work which is neither exciting nor profound.
My question is, what is so terrible about poetry having a small attentive and discriminating audience of intellectual people? Intellectuals also need catering to in this life. They do not always like Star Wars and The Client; let them eat poetry. Let me rephrase that, let us eat poetry. I make no bones about it, I am an intellectual snob and proud! I like Antonioni movies, wine tasting, boys with PHDs, and poetry! So what if a poetry career won't support most poets in the lifestyle to which they would like to become accustomed? They should marry rich!
Poetry doesn't need a vast national PR campaign. The good poetry exists, and those who truly require it have the brains to locate it.
Commentary: On Celebrities Who Publish Poetry Books
by Monica Sudo
Why does a lot of public success in any field qualify someone to write and publish a book of poems? What entitles movie stars to larger and more widely distributed editions than a poet who has won a pulitzer prize? An astronaut may have seen some things that are well worth writing a poem about, but since when does a lifetime of rigorous military and technical training prepare you to express yourself in metaphor? It never fails to infuriate me that in about half the bookstores I visit, these are the only books by living writers on the poetry shelf! (but of course I am forgetting Where The Sidewalk Ends).
The most glaring examples I can think of are a pair of Jimmys, both literally and figuratively. Jimmy Stewart's poetry qualifications are his 200 odd years as American movie icon and supposed nice guy. For this service, readers are supposed to put up with his "Funny Little Puppy" and "Kitten My Pal" poems that Dana Carvey mocked so well on SNL. Jimmy Carter gets to be a poet because of his contributions as elder statesman, befuddled negotiator, and liberal saint (I assume his actual Presidency had little to do with it). Couldn't he have just written his memoirs or a manifesto? something he might be trained to write and which his public might actually enjoy? Couldn't he have just put the poems in a shoebox and hidden them in the back of his peanut-Tara presidential library?
There are plenty of others, the aforementioned astronaut, Jack Palance's Love Poems, Linda Goodman's Love Poems and her 'verse- novel' Gooberz; I think Gooberz may be the Necronomicon of bad poetry.
Do these damn books even sell that well? I find it difficult to believe that they do; surely even the most die-hard admirers of these public figures can only be embarrassed by their poetry. What do the publishers have to get out of it? modest sales, a new name for their stable, perhaps a hope of getting a better-selling manuscript later. When the benefits consist of a mere 30 pieces of silver (or perhaps 'magic beans' would be a better image) is it too much to expect of publishers that they show a little integrity about what they will and will not publish?
Yeah, it is too much to ask, silly question.
I went to Erich's house and looked up the shall-remain-nameless competition in his copy of the Poet's Market; sure enough, it was still extant. It cost $15 to enter and the winner gets a 200 copy edition of his or her chapbook printed plus 20 personal copies free! The chapbooks are described as "printed on high quality paper".
There are hundreds of poetry contests in this country. A small number of these are legitimate endeavors, with sufficent endowments to pay for their prizes, judges, administration, etcetera. Only a few of these legitimate conests, like the Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship, are open to unknown poets; the rest, like the National Book Award, require a poet to have a book already published, and often require the publisher to make the nomination.
Unfortunately, most contests are profit making ventures, which prop up unprofitable magazines, presses, and the quasi-established poets who act as judges. They require entry fees that can run from $2 for a single poem, to $30 for the privilege of having a book length manuscript considered. They offer modest pots of prize money, mostly under $1000 with honerable mentions that can get as little as $5 and/or some form of book, chapbook, anthology, or magazine publication. Only slightly more legitimate, some contests will require you to subscribe to the sponsoring magazine in place of an entry fee. The real lure for the contestants is not the cash, or even the printing, but the "respectability" of the prize, the hope that mention of the prize will give them a foot in the door with editors and publishers.
The sheer quantity of awards prevents any but the most firmly established from having any significance to publishing professionals. To paraphrase Beau Geste, poetry prizes are like hemorrhoids, every asshole gets one if the just bend over often enough. The only thing sadder than an aspiring poet who empties their piggy bank on entrance fees, is one who wins a prize only to find that no one gives a damn about it. They will mention it expectantly at their next open reading, to be met with the ususal smattering of indifferent applause.
How do you tell if a prize comes with any glory? Poets And Writers announces the winners of cash prizes over $500, but most of those winners will never be heard from again. If you see the prize in question touted on the dust jacket of an established poet's book, it is almost certainly worthwhile and just as certainly not open to unknowns. The name of a famous dead poet attached to the prize means little or nothing. A well known poet acting as judge for the contest is being paid, needs the money, and does not care if the contest is a scam.
I say a good rule of thumb is not to enter any contest with a fee. For me it is an issue of principle; these competitions feed on the naive ambitions of young poets as if they were krill, and are no better than vanity presses in this regard. If a poetry enterprise can find no better way than this to maintain itself, then it should simply be allowed to perish; there is no shortage of magazines, small presses, and "poetry centers". If an established poet, with an enviable career, cannot support himself with poetry in a more acceptable fashion, then they need to start flipping burgers; a little burger flipping might even improve their work. There is no shortcut around the glut of poets, talented and untalented, clawing for a bit of the limited quantity of acclaim in the field. All you can do is read, write, and submit.
Commentary: On The "New" New Yorker
by Erich Vogel
For better or worse (and lately it is worse), The New Yorker occupies an important and unique position in the poetry world. More than thirty years ago, Sylvia Plath observed that poets measured their success in the thinness of return envelopes and fatness of checks from this magazine; it remains true. Poets are generally considered to have real careers only after they have published there.
While the overall quality of the magazine has suffered since Tina Brown took over as editor, its poetry (now edited by Alice Quinn) has taken the worst hit. Most obviously, the magazine has gone from printing four or five poems an issue to only one or two; I suppose they need room for fashion segments and photo essays. More significant, their poetry desk has lost its guts. The New Yorker introduced us to the likes of Dorothy Parker and Anne Sexton. It has always had its share of soothing and well established poets, and I do not object to this. But it now includes no work more intimidating than that of W.S. Merwin, and if you had not been published in the New Yorker before Quinn took power you are unlikely to be in it now.
I think Tina Brown would as soon remove all the poetry from "her" magazine. She knows the recipe for Vanity Fair, and sees no practical need for the New Yorker to taste differently. I shall offer a clear reason; the core audience of the New Yorker liked it the way it was. The Vanity Fair readership cannot be courted but at the cost of longtime subscribers. I know families with every issue since the first in their attic, who are now on the edge of canceling their subscriptions. I propose that we all cancel our subscriptions. The world has plenty of Vanity Fairs, and only one New Yorker.