I thank the learned and talented souls who cared enough to joined the recent FB debate on my poem, I WANT TO KNOW IF THERE IS ONE WOMAN—even as they were genuinely puzzled and outraged by it. This poem, apparently needs to grow into its audience. Ideally, an audience already exists for a poem, but isn’t it better if a poem creates its audience? Yes—but I have no illusion that if this is happening, it is mostly through artificial and pedantic means. But I’ll take anything I can get.
Additional outrage has greeted my Pure and Impure essays, which have crystallized, mostly badly, Scarriet’s long-standing issue with the Pound/Williams/New Criticism Modernists/NAP, carried on in various guises since Scarriet’s founding in 2009 by Alan Cordle of Foetry.com fame.
In part three, I focused on the objection to my slighting the tiny Red Barrow poem of Willie Williams—an opinion which always generates a lot of hate mail. This is because Modernism dug its fangs in deep and look a very long drink (going on one hundred years—and Dracula, I guess, is still attached).
The outrage and misunderstanding seems to be taking three basic forms.:
The first is demonstrated by Kent Johnson, who shares some of my ideas, but who thinks there is something sacred and untouchable surrounding avants who got a little cult-classic book all for themselves and on their own, to celebrate their pre-published, amateur, college dorm, local bar, poetry (and ideas) in the middle of the 20th century, explicitly:—The New American Poetry, 1945 to 1960, edited by a suit for Greenwood Press who dug the nerdy Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson and Robert Duncan (mostly Ginsberg, because of his recent obscenity fame, thinking a “movement” of whatever Ginsberg was could earn some money).
Here’s what I said very recently to my friend:
Kent Johnson Kent, I have never said Olson’s laughably stupid theories were a “stealth” New Criticism polemic, but perhaps that’s what Olson thought he was doing, so good job, you’re being influenced by me and you’re now officially an ally… The 1960 NAP was not particularly academic; it was just bad, screed poetry, but its intention was academic and their notoriety grew within academia. That’s not a stretch to say, at all. So “hilariously numbskull” describes Olson and Duncan, not my ideas. I don’t think New Criticism has any intellectual merit either—it, too, was an ambitious striking move into the Academy—professors in love with literature were to be replaced by Creative Writing foot soldiers, poets for the “new,” i.e. their own work. It was vaulting ambition, (explicitly laid out by Ransom in his essay, Criticism, Inc.,) which is normal for a poet, sure, but I’m just calling it out and seeing it for what it is. You apparently can’t see it—because (can it be true?) your hurt pride needs to defend Olson’s inanity as heroic and meaningful. Good luck with that, noble, socialist, iconoclast!
The next objection is illustrated by a person I don’t know at all (one of the glories of online debate). This idea is that Modernism and Poe are one big happy family—Baudelaire always mentioned as the key piece, Eliot was influenced by late 19th century French avant-garde poets, etc. My reply to her sums up this objection pretty well, while giving it its due, since there is some merit in it.
Lorraine Yang Poe was being translated in Russia even before France. Poe was a genuinely popular writer; Baudelaire, who achieved fame due to an obscenity issue (like Ginsberg, Joyce) damned Poe with faint praise, by saying America didn’t understand Poe. Baudelaire belonged to the Cult of Literature and Poets as a sickness—Eliot, too. Thomas Mann, etc. It is an enormously influential trope, and Poe was tarred with that brush (wild-eyed drug addict “macabre” Poe!) which gave Poe dubious, credulous fans, but ultimately hurt Poe’s reputation in the long run, in terms of what fewer and fewer people know him to be: lynx-eyed, sober, brilliant, multi-faceted. Eliot, the smartest Modernist, secretly absorbed Poe, but ended up viciously attacking Poe (as became common to do) in “From Poe to Valery” after TSE won his Nobel, thinking it was safe to do so, apparently). Poe didn’t need these “sneering” cowards (Emerson began the tradition by spitefully calling Poe the “jingle man” in a private conversation years after Poe was dead) as much as they needed him, but yes you are correct to point out that there is an (ironic!) mutual relationship of sorts, yes.
Thirdly, the objection: Hey what are doing for women poets now? You don’t care about women poets, etc. (Let me repeat: my poem “I Want To Know…” is not anti-woman. I’m not blaming “women” for New Criticism. The poem is really just a cry of despair) and any objection based on the falsehood that my poem is anti-woman is not an intellectual objection, but a mere misunderstanding—which a poet should always take responsibility for—or never take responsibility for? That’s another debate.) Here’s my (I know, I know, “mansplaining”) response to the more mild objection of “what have you done for women poets, lately, Thomas?”
Anna Savage Actually, I do speak for women writers, who, thanks to Poe, had more respect in the 19th century than they do now, because an extremely influential men’s club clique, the Modernist Pound/Eliot/Williams clique allied with the Southern Agrarian New Critics, took over poetry, literature, and the Academy. They attacked Millay, made poetry crappy, and the sensibility of their world is now what we’re all swimming in (this clique viciously attacked writers like Poe, Shelley, Edna Millay, and ignored all the now forgotten female poets from the 19th century like Elizabeth Barrett). There’s so much work to be done on the Modernism error—that’s my focus. I do not ignore contemporary women poets who are good, however, though like anyone, I don’t have time to study the tens of thousands of poets writing today. . We need more Critics and Anthologists who honestly bring attention to what’s really going on….
The Scarriet Editors
July 10, 2022