Reviews That Should Have Been Written:
Poetry, The Press, and Public Space
Charles Bernstein wrote in A Poetics that “[t]he reason it is difficult to talk about the meaning of a poem -- in a way that doesn't seem frustratingly superficial or partial -- is that by designating a text a poem, one suggests that its meanings are to be located in some 'complex' beyond an accumulation of devices and subject matter” (p. 9). It was this issue of complexity on which Amiri Baraka fervently challenged Bernstein and the entire academy during a free symposium sponsored by the Friends of the University of Pennsylvania Library on Saturday, May 6. “Reviews That Should Have Been Written: Poetry, The Press, and Public Space” included a panel discussion by four distinguished poets -- Bernstein, Baraka, Eileen Myles, and Jennifer Moxley -- and two critics, Alan Golding and Steve Evans, followed by readings by the four poets.
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“arts criticism is a form of class struggle” |
Quoting Bernstein's published words, Baraka addressed his fellow panelist: “'Recapturing complexity' -- What is that? What do you mean by 'complexity'?” Direct but gracious, Baraka contended that arts criticism is a form of class struggle, that complexity as some kind of intrinsic value has been used historically to suppress certain kinds of work, to “distort” or “subjugate discourse.” He decried the commonly held notion that the fewer the number of people who understand something, the more profound it is: “It's a cheap trick.” Following critics Golding and Evans, who both read from prepared remarks, and poet Myles, who spoke in an inquisitive stream of consciousness, Baraka opened his remarks with a tongue-in-cheek observation: “What I've noticed is that poets like to talk, and academics like to academize.”
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“passing through the eye of the needle” |
I was eager to hear Eileen Myles speak, having first heard her sensitive but straight, down-to-earth dialogue style at last year's People's Poetry Gathering in NYC. She described her five-year experience as a reviewer for The Village Voice, how she learned to successfully pitch a review to an editor by linking it with something the editor knew, how the reviewer has to be careful not to “cave in to this incredibly sexy feeling of what you can do for yourself and other people.” Myles likened the poet's conflict of “getting the word out” without being a “media whore” to “passing through the eye of the needle.” She recounted a conversation with John Ashbery, during which she asked him how one gets reviewed in the New York Times. He replied, “If you find out, let me know.” The very fact that John Ashbery can't count on being reviewed in the NYT, Myles said, “rescues him and the poetry neighborhood.” Later in the discussion, concurring judgments were made by Baraka, who described the poetry reviewed in the NYT as “dull, stupid, backward poetry,” and by Moxley, who said the NYT's reviews “are boring and such bullshit.”
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“the gatekeepers to the kingdom of verse” |
Following Myles was Bernstein, who described the last thirty years of poetry reviewing and publishing as “nostalgia” that creates an us-versus-them critical splitting, counterproductive to the forwarding of poetry. He went on to say that the kinds of reviewing we see from national publications and institutions are “acts of commission more than omission,” that reviews operate to legitimate the cultural authority of advertisers, for example, trade presses as “the gatekeepers to the kingdom of verse” or the final arbiters of taste, “rather than engage in poetry as active artform.” Consequently, contemporary reviewing “covers up” what's going on in poetry; for example, “slams are treated as a cultural phenomenon like skateboarding” with no discussion of individual slam poets. Bernstein identified among the nationally circulated publications “a concerted effort of negative evaluation that doesn't critically engage poetic issues.” Still, “the public space is crucial for poetry,” for the social engagement of poetry, Bernstein concluded. We would asphyxiate without what Andrew Ross calls “the oxygen of publicity.”
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“readership that validates one as a 'real poet'” |
The final panelist was Jennifer Moxley, introduced by moderator and UPenn prof Bob Perelman as a poet of the younger generation. Moxley began by saying that, as a poet, she approaches “casually” her role as a reader of reviews, a “very tedious genre.” Because she already knows what she wants to consume culturally, she reads reviews only after reading texts. Well-articulated reviews can extend her experience of a book or persuade her to alter her original dislike of a book. In the vein of “bad reviews are better than no reviews,” Moxley said she doesn't “have the pleasure of being attacked” because her work isn't noticed by the mainstream. In fact, she self-published her first and only book of poetry, and sent brown-paper-wrapped copies to family members, friends, and former teachers, one copy of which landed in the hands of a reviewer at a nationally known publication. Moxley described her discomfort with the fact that her book ended up in a place she had not intended. She cautioned against the power these institutions have over the ego and the notion of a “real public” readership that validates one as a “real poet” in a way that our private relationships do not.
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the only truly viable response: “Resist inclusion by creating your own book” |
Is reviewing evaluative or descriptive? Critique or talk? Backscratching? Judgment among friends? Fondling acknowledgments? A form of community building? Does reviewing improve writing? These were some of the questions asked by critic Golding to open the panel discussion. Golding described most reviews as being formulaic and lacking surprise, sustained analysis, and historical and theoretical contexts. He noted how reviewers often contrive connections among unrelated works. Critic Evans identified as another pitfall of criticism the reviewer's assumption that the book in front of the reviewer is an exception and that the reviewer's act of reading it is an exception. A “bored reader” and “unhappy writer” of reviews, Evans added one more question to the mix: Where does literary change take place? Baraka proposed perhaps the only truly viable response: Resist inclusion by creating your own book. “Poets have been convinced that they're not stronger than this economic world. . . . Poetry is strong enough to crack [its] back.”
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf said that “[a]ll this pitting. . . of quality against quality. . . is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters” (pp. 184-185).
Onward, to lots of links for further reading about the poets, Bernstein, Baraka, Myles & Moxley. . . .
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Marj Hahne is our Museletter correspondent reporting from Philadelphia, South Jersey & Delaware. She is a teacher/poet/writer who is passionate about helping children uncover and cultivate all their creative voices. This is her first feature column for About.com Poetry.
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