Beware communities that swarm. Those millions who attend to music as contemporary ritual only, for instance, but have little, or no, musical taste. Or a community of that kind of poet who struggles for renown and achieves it to some degree—for social reasons only.
It is the most important advice I can give—do not join these communities or attempt to teach them. The sting of the cold wind is nothing compared to the wrath of a mob.
I have never been injured by a mob—because I follow my own advice.
My experience with single-minded communities usually results in something very much like the brief anecdote I am about to tell.
I was lazing on my living room couch on a Wednesday evening after dinner, scraps to the dogs, the dishes done, studying the internet for signs of poetry—one of my favorite activities, since it is more interactive and up-to-the-minute than a book—and having just mended ways with my avant provocateur acquaintance, Kent Johnson, my chances, I figured, were good, of finding some poetic zest. But here is what caught my eye:
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Like many poets, I make it a point to keep up with what’s being published in the journals online and in print and have never really questioned the viability of a poem’s publication, even if I don’t like it or I might think it’s a “bad” poem. Editors are subjective judges, I know that. What one editor loves another may not, etc., etc.
Okay– enough intro. I read a poem today in the current issue of New York Review of Books that was so– what can I say?– superficial, an inch deep, just bad. Other than this poet’s name/reputation, there doesn’t seem to be a point whatsoever in choosing the poem to print in a journal as well-respected as NYRB. Am I crazy?? Biased?? What’s going on here??
Here’s the poem by Frederick Seidel. As with many of Mr. Seidel’s poems, it slants with–if not white privilege, certainly an economic privilege. Tell me what YOU think?
WHITNEY ELLSWORTH
Whitney Ellsworth drives up in his early
1950’s Citroen, the French blak classic
You see in old French movies,
Super exotic in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
And says, “What to go for a ride?” A blond boy.
The year is 1955 or 1954.
There is no Arthur Whitney Ellsworth no more.
He was the nicest human being my life has produced,
With a father, it appeared, as the source.
Kindly Duncan Ellsworth had a beautiful house
In Connecticut and another in Vermont and another on
Fisher’s Island.
I have many memories of each place.
Do you want to take a ride? And I get in
And as we drive off, I wake from my dream.
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The above is a FB post by Michael Klein, an individual I do not know. The post earned 120 comments, including one declaring friendship with Whitney Ellsworth himself and informing us that Ellsworth was the first publisher of the “well-respected” NYRB, adding some interesting, neutral context.
But as for reaction to the poem, it received near-universal disdain: “Ew,” “Shit,” “Yikes,” a vomit emoji, “There is nothing to it,” “Is it a poem?” and “Shite.”
With a few exceptions, not one person had anything positive to say, or anything to say, really, about the poem itself.
One person, Michael Slipp (and he was alert enough to reproduce the poem accurately) probably embarrassed some on the thread with a guarded half-defense of the poem, pointing out Seidel was published quite often in respectable journals and magazines and that the poem in question was a bit like James Schuyler’s work and that he, Michael Slipp, enjoyed its “flatness,” though according to Slipp, Schuyler was better.
The other exception was this comment from Joe Babcock:
“This could easily be finessed into a better poem. I get a pre-Stonewall gay vibe from it.”
This comment first attracted Michael Slipp to the thread, who revealed he had been Seidel’s waiter for years. Slipp defended Seidel as a friendly man.
Babcock’s observation elicited the only attempt to respond, up until then, to the actual poem:
“Michael Slipp, I try to be an ameliorative reader, interpreting/reinterpreting the language so as to make the whole as interesting as possible for myself. The suggestion of “pre-Stonewall gay” makes the poem work for me: the repetition of the invitation to go for a ride, boy kinda being stalked? A bit shivery, which can be taken to make the wake-from-a-dream shivery… & if life-is-but-a-dream (row your boat which is not in the text) one may wake from/to sexuality & death. My motive here is to strain some in respect for the person who recommended Seidel me, plus I now feel more pleasure in having read the poem than I did before.”
The engaging post above was from Martha MacNeil Zweig.
“Most Relevant was selected so some replies may have been filtered out” warns FB next to the comments. In telling this story, I hope I didn’t miss anything substantial.
An early, typical, response, was this one by the published poet Sean Singer:
“Seidel was always a crank, but now he’s obviously out of touch with reality. His poems are junk, so they really don’t need to be read. No one should be surprised that poems in favor of late capitalism exist because poetry is part of America. No idea why he seems to have a direct line to the New York Review, though, which otherwise publishes very fine book reviews. Seidel has been deliberately, consciously trying to offend readers since 1962.”
No one has responded to what I wrote (except for one “like” from someone who does not appear to be a part of any poetry community.) I’m not being hounded by any mob!
Here’s my response to Michael Klein’s post:
“I think what the poem is getting at is the inseparable gap between hip, liquid France and staid New England. The dad with three homes in New England is “kindly;” this is the self-satisfied wealth of flinty Maine or Rockport, impenetrable, unyielding; while the younger generation, looking for adventure, ironically plays out not in the New World, America, but in the Old World, which nevertheless symbolizes what is new, but in an illusory way, perhaps (“French movies”) but the adventure never gets off the ground, as the narrator abruptly ends it, signifying how vast is the separation between these two, ironically carved out worlds in the poet’s mind. And there in the middle of the poem the one poet who most strangely and solidly evokes France as America and the Modern as somehow quaint and old is Poe, Seidel gently mocking him with bad grammar to give us “no more,” a sonorous line of “no” which contains the proud, austere name of the elegaic subject. What happened in that car ride as it took off for the future? Why did it need to be hidden?”
Say what you will about the internet, big tech, and Zuckerberg, I think poetry and FB go very well together. I think FB does poetry best. Who needs the Metaverse?