I had originally posted this topic to my blog, but It was suggested to me that it might be better to place it here for discussion.

I was reading Patrick Kurp’s excellent blog, Anecdotal Evidence, (http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com) and found this article on Herbert Morris, a poet unknown to me.

Kurp quotes Eric Ormsby (from a highly controversial 2004 essay on “the world of poetry”), who contrasts Morris’s work with the “career-building narcissism” and “sameness of tone” he detects in many U.S. poets. He finds the root of this in their “earnestness.” The rather discomforting quotation, found in the first page of the essay, is worth pondering:

Earnestness is a splendid virtue; while essential to social workers and scoutmasters, it is, however, of limited value to poets who usually prove to be better writers when they are shifty, unscrupulous, and shamelessly insincere--in matters, that is, unconnected with their craft. Earnestness, by contrast, deadens; it homogenizes the sentiments; it may flirt with irony but never dangerously so; it subordinates magic to agenda; it seeks to please rather than to charm; it hankers after acceptance and respectability, however much it may squawk the opposite--and was any great or good poem ever truly respectable?

So is earnestness so bad?

Yes.

It's not at all the same thing as seriousness of purpose.

Editing in, I should say I did read that post the other night and thought it was fun (fun being the sort of apposite anti-earnestness word). There is a sort of narcissism connected with this sort of earnestness, and it is a particularly American thing - or, rather, is particularly common in America - which I find hard to qualify. I think Kurp is, as usual, spot-on. And he's got me very interested in Herbert Morris, to say nothing of Morris' wonderful book collection, not least his affectionately-signed James Merrill firsts.

I read the whole of the Ormsby piece the other night - it is, frankly, a mere rant. And as with so many poetic rants, it largely comes down to 'the poets you like are rubbish and the ones I like are brilliant'. And as with most poetic rants, the perpetrator soon fails valiantly to practise what he preaches. So when it comes to proselytising on behalf of the poets he likes, he becomes, oops, rather earnest. Yet even the more pure of heart among us have a witch's teat marked Schadenfreude somewhere which can be pulled, and as a rant, it was amusing and rollicking in its way.

But as a piece on 'American poetry today' it fails entirely - no surprises from an American poet-academic who has long lived outside of the US. Is anyone under 50 mentioned in the piece, or anyone who wasn't as established much as they still are by 1985 or so?

As for the earnestness thing, well, it's all very well to raise a glass to mavericks, but would Ormsby actually offer a back bedroom to the childlike drunks and sociopaths and misanthropes who comprise the maverick crew he prefers?

Besides, I think those poets most prone to an earnest tone, an earnest sense of poetic endeavour are just as likely to be 'shifty, unscrupulous and insincere'. My experience confirms this. I recall reading out a few lines to a friend in a book shop in the US last year - what I call 'I Wish, I Wonder' poetry, something along the lines of, "The woodland accepts me. I wonder if the azaleas will bear the implausible caucus of my grief'. The more earnest the tone, the deeper the inner caucus of insincerity and unscrupulousness, I fear. Perhaps the most earnest purveyor of homespun wisdom among leading US poets has a ferocious reputation as a nasty piece of work. I'd rather let a rosy-nosed bruiser be my lodger!

Re. earnestness, I agree with Roddy.

And by the way, my azaleas are fine, thanks.

Ha! Excellent. Oh my god, "The woodland accepts me. I wonder if the azaleas will bear the implausible caucus of my grief'. I'll sleep happy now...

This extract makes my head spin. 'Was any great or good poem ever truly respectable?' Well, yes. Most of those cited as 'great' are completely respectable. This seems like a rather perverse definition of 'respectable' that apparently has nothing to do with how much respect a thing is afforded or whether or not it is deemed inappropriate by moral and cultural guardians. It smacks of the same thing as Sunday School leaders trying to tell you that Jesus is the pimp mack daddy.

And then the meaning of 'earnestness' here seems to swing between sincerity and eagerness. Hankering after acceptance and respectability isn't the same thing as the bloody-minded pursuit of an agenda, even though the two may overlap. It seems more in line with the unscrupulous scheming side of things.

Ultimately, what he seems to be proposing as the alternative to this 'earnestness' is a kind of empty-headed revelling in one's own abilities. Man's delight in being able to manipulate and create is certainly a driving force behind invention and achievement, but unshackled from any nobler purpose, it's just antics. Kurt Vonnegut said in one of his books something along the lines of he refused to teach anyone to write who didn't have a firm idea of what they wanted to write about. Ormsby seems to advocate instead that we try to be like Vonnegut's de-evolved man in Galapagos: farting and laughing, albeit to ever more sophisticated degrees.