yesterday was my birthday …
“Sour grapes,” the fox said, “I bet they were sour grapes.”
Now that I am officially unable to be a Yale Younger Poet I must be careful and not come off as the fox. It would be insanely easy to say “well, I didn't want to be that sort of poet anyway.” What sort? “Um, you know, a successful poet.” Of course I did. I had no idea how to do it, granted, but there have been numerous times in my life when I bought into the idea that success meant three things: 1) winning cool sounding awards, like the Yale Younger Poet prize, 2) being able to go into any Barnes and Noble in America and find my book in the poetry section, and 3) always taking the Garfunkel comma the Poet approach: use the word like it is a new last name. Note that nowhere is there any mention of how to judge function, how to critique the creative act that defines what a poet does. Ginsberg said, “POET is PRIEST” but we don't believe in religion, we believe in celebrities and that is what I assumed a poet was, a literary celebrity.
Except what does that mean? Regardless of how you feel about other art forms at least many in America have a set of rules the general public can follow to understand how things are judged. You would never get anyone in the fashion industry saying, “all fashion is beyond critique” as I've heard it said with poetry. No, darlings, you will get laughed out the door if you are trying to get to Bryant Park with that attitude. As Mz. Heidi Klum puts it on Project Runway, “One day you are in, and the next you are out.” Auf-Wiedersehen! At least we like to think the judges on that show are looking at the work in question, not the personality of the artist behind it. Over the years people have tried to take a similar poetry as reality TV show approach and it might work momentarily (Poetry Slams being a good example) but poetry, as an art form, doesn't require the sort of materialism other art requires, poets don't need a 30-minute shopping spree at Mood with a budget of $200 and two days to complete their poem in. It's an intellectual activity, which is what frustrates the critics. It's so nebulous. Instead, they try to judge a poet by other things, like performance when reading up on stage, which again fails since that's not poetry, that's acting. Then they start floundering about, defining poetry with lines like, “Poetry should be an extension of a life well or dangerously or doggedly lived.” Or, “poetry is made by people who want (or need) to make poetry.” As the younger generation would say, WTF? These aren't artistic manifestos, they're not even greeting card pap. They mean nothing. All art, everywhere, is made by people who want/need to make it. That is the biggest problem with any American Poetry criticism, no one has any idea what an American Poet is, let alone if s/he is any good. And no one will. How do you define success? Jim Behrle writes:
“It’s not enough to merely have [other poets] like you—like is not a strong enough emotion to propel you anywhere …. Fear is one of humanity’s great motivators. Fear equals Respect. And Success. Most poets are desperate for any kind of foothold in the genre, any sign at all that they are making progress upward toward their dreams of tweed, tenure, and cultural domination.”
I adore Behrle and I am glad to see he is getting steady work. I recall watching him a few years ago on VH1's “Can't Get a Date/ Vulgarian Make-Over” where it was revealed that he posted nude photos of himself on his blog, rated photos of girls he found attractive and, apparently, had terribly, terribly smelly feet. His shtick was being snarky about other poets, from his “What the hell is up with your author photo?” to little cartoons of animals claiming they got a chance to speak at Robert Creeley's funeral. But snark gets old really, really fast and even with all his winking and “this is how the system works” asides he never really says anything other than American Poetry is a cult of personality and here is what you can do to join in. But again, that's not poetry he's talking about, that's being what we call here in the Rust Belt a snob.
One assumption I hear all the time is that American poets aren't real poets or somehow their output is less than what we imagine poets living in other countries/ time periods/ dimensional worlds experience and do. “if these are our creators/ please, please give me something else,” Bukowski writes. And isn't it mind-bogglingly easy to say that? That's the coward's way out because that is the reaction we say to everyone who hasn't published a book and wants to write poetry or has published a book or simply had the misfortune of walking by a bookstore. Collins, Ashbery, the girl in your English Literature class: they are all criticized for being, or not being, a celebrity.
And its here where the entire thing falls apart for me. If you are simply going to judge the poet and not their poetry that's fine but be honest about what you are doing. The older I get the more I enjoy random strangers emailing me something they have written because that's joy. That's why I keep this blog going and why I love open mic poetry readings: anyone can do it. Poetry readings, the Internet, verse in all its forms and shapes and sounds, this is small town democracy in action. This is a world where we all get our 5 minutes up in front of a live audience and best of all we all cheer for each other because, as much as The Best American Poetry anthologies hate to admit it, we are a world of poets more less of equal caliber. You and me. I love that. The only difference between the anthologized poets and everyone else is that they have literary agents. You can get one too, if you really want. I don't know, I've never taken that route, I would be curious to hear if it helped them write better poetry.
Plus, it's really easy to write good poetry. People do it every day around the world with great success. I say this because, after all, no one has put forth what makes a poem good outside the general criteria all art is subjected to (see: duende). And if no one has a definition then you can't say Joseph Auslander's poetry is somehow less than Leonie Adams' because, what? one wrote in sonnets and another villanelles and somehow one form trumps another? (hell, they were both Poet Laureates of America but who remembers that?) And if you do run into anyone who says differently, that says American Poetry belongs in the hands of a select few, or that we have too many MFA Programs in America, too many poets writing (or any other bizarre anti-intellectual claim) they are either the editors of The American Poetry Review or trying to sell you something. Like the song says, “why don't you all f-f-fade away” and we all will. Believe me, we all will.