This is one of the most interesting articles I've read in quite a while... on Adam Kirsch, the US's enfant terrible of criticism:

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/magazine/050...ent_181504.html

Quite a long piece - but the last third is a review of Kirsch's own latest book of poems, which isn't quite so pertinent.

Isn't this comment of Roddy's an illustration of one of the problems of being a 'poet-critic'? AK's book of poems is less pertinent to his condition as a poet-critic than his book of critical essays. Why?

Over-confident and cocky young men (they tend to be men) who go round writing ferocious reviews may feel that outspokenness equals authority equals poetic strength, so their critical prose in some way opens a door through which their poetry follows. But the flipside of this is that no matter how good the poetry is, it comes wrapped in a kind of condom of prose. So that if the poet-critic publishes a book of poems the praise is still strangely muted -- along the lines of 'not bad, for a prose-writer'.

Not quite the same, but I seem to remember that Ted Hughes gave Keith Sagar's slim collection the following endorsement: "I often turn to Keith's poems in a quiet moment..."

Randall Jarrell is the maybe too obvious example, but still. Lowell said that Jarrell gave him the sense of being genuinely more interested in his (Lowell's) poetry than in his one.

Is this, however artistically magnanimous, simply incompatible with being a strong poet?

Why? Because I meant less pertinent to this thread, which is about the review of his book of 'essays' (ie reheated reviews).

Point taken though.

Absolutely. This is one reason I made a conscious decision to spend more time writing poetry and less time writing critical prose when I came 'back' into poetry a few years ago. I don't think being a critic necessarily affects the poetry one writes - by being more caught up in another poet's work than in one's own, perhaps, as in the example above - but I do believe it affects that poetry's reception. And not for the better.

Which is as good a time as any to ask what the difference is between being a poet who sometimes reviews and a poet-critic...

Jane, what did you write in the past that you consider to be 'critical prose' as opposed to reviewing or essay writing?

I'm reminded of the term 'escape velocity'. Under what circumstances might a 600 word review be urgent and autonomous enough to warrant escaping into the pages of a book?

Kirsch's pieces are a good bit up the evolutionary ladder from that though, I must say, from the worst kind of reheated fiddling little reviews we're talking about here.

Not that there is any guarantee that a 6000 word essay, published before or not, needs to be in print either.

The best single volume of essays by a contemporary poet-critic for me is Hofmann's Behind the Lines. The man's a savage genius, and there is no one else on his level, for me.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, Roddy. What's the difference, in your opinion, between 'critical prose' and essays on poetry? Perhaps you feel only someone who has published a collection of critical essays, or a new critical theory in book form, can be described as having written critical prose?

I'm not sure - that's why I was asking! It wasn't a loaded or accusatory question.

Personally, I don't consider myself a poet-critic though.

*sits for ten minutes trying to decide why*

Well, I write about circa 40 books each year, but my writings on them are generally responses and not critical weighings and disassemblies. I'm not trained in critical writing, not having studied literature and though I consider myself a perceptive and knowledgeable reader of poetry, I'm already, by a process of accrued default, approaching a poem as a reader, a teacher and an editor, as well as with potential jalousie de métier.

I'm not that skilled in framing my perceptions into a cogent written argument - and the best of those who do so are clearly those who do so for more than a profession, and though Kirsch is rather too fond of the neat supposition, he is clearly in it for more than an office at the end of a corridor and a modest photocopy budget. He also got his wellies on early - it's quite impressive to have a collection of essays at 30, even if most are reproduced from journals etc.

This will sound like shocking promotion, but Wilkinson's The Lyric Touch is masterly.

Chris, I bought that last summer and have enjoyed it a lot. Even where I disagree with him, or maybe especially where I do - he's full of life and wit.

I'm not really sure what "even if they are mostly recycled from journals" means - I mean, Updike, Amis, even Jarrell - their fat books of "criticism" contain mostly "recycled" material from journals, papers etc, and in what way (besides critical stature, on which score Kirsch is clearly ambitious) is that different?

Collection of essays written for that collection > mixed bag of bespoke pieces with some old pieces including reviews > selected reviews.

A review is a review, and should do what reviews should do. An essay is a different animal. Kirsch's book is tagged Essays on Contemporary Poetry, and it's mostly previously published reviews, and that interests me less, regardless of how astute and contextual they may be.


Meanwhile - any comments on the article?

It's certainly an interesting article. I'm struck by the comment that Kirsch criticises one poet for failing to create an 'objective correlative' for the inner experience conveyed in the poems. The objective correlative is Eliot on Hamlet: the notion that there isn't anything within the text to justify the self-loathing and angsty introspection of the soliloquies. Clearly, Eliot didn't consider an unpopular uncle murdering Hamlet's father and marrying his mother within 'a little month' something to be that upset about. I've always found this a rather arch take on the play, because, in my experience, innner states are rarely reducible to one particular external source. It's the same with Iago in Othello. No objective correlative for his malignity, but no less engaging, and linguistically stunning, for that.

It can be agreeable when there are firm hooks on which to hang one's reading of a poem, but many poems (like many inner experiences) are more subtle than that; and, many others engage directly with the ineluctable and diffuse nature of inner experience. Ashberry, for example. Is it the critic's job, in 2008, to 'hunt down' and pass judgement on the presence or otherwise of objective correlatives? However exhilarating the detective work might be? It seems a heavily value-laden way of reading to me.

Thus, Kirsch's criticism of Jorie Graham. David, I've always understood the objective correlative to be, not a justification for action (or feeling, which is a kind of action) but a structural device to give it external expression - like the weather. The weather itself can of course be the objective correlative, but I mean something more like the objective correlative being a barometer, indicating the emotional weather.

I don't think Kirsch thinks Jorie Graham's feelings or actions are inadequately justified: I get the impression he thinks they are simply too solipsistic to be for the benefit of the reader, and he's probably right.

I'd be surprised if Eliot thought Hamlet needed an objective correlative in order to justify his feelings. It's a technical issue, a structural one.

Roddy, I thought the article was interesting, but over-written - "the result are (sic) essays that can't help but radiate egghead gravitas." (Radiate egghead gravitas?!?) And get this: "Literary criticism for the general reader — the sort championed by poet-critics — took on a belletristic odor; no matter how formidable the close reading, it would now exist on the margins of a more sophisticated cogitating." (More sohisticated cogitating!) "Worse, by seeing off Arnoldian objectivity (“the object as in itself it really is”), theory discredited the probative force that powered the poet-critic’s prose." Theory discredited the probative force that powered the poet-critic's prose? I think Carmine's trying a leeeeedle bit too hard.

The piece is a little studenty-feeling, to be honest, in this way. I'd have liked more sense that the reviewer was actually taking on & engaging with some of Kirsch's opinions, rather than just floridly describing them. I swear that when I was reading it, a description of Kirsch's "perfect nose for" entered my brain as "pitch-perfect nose for", and I had to go back and check it. That wouldn't have happened if I wasn't already shrinking from excess. And there is a - er - em - slight air of sycophancy. Is there not?

I note that the word "reviews" is used explicitly to describe the things that make up Kirsch's book, & that is it used interchangeably with "essays" - and that Kirsch's output is also described as "arrestingly ambitious four- to five-thousand word pieces". So, not really certain of what the book is made.

I've noted in the past Kirsch's tendency simply to think he's right, regardless: what Carmine Starnino refers to here: "...pieces that carried out their flaw-detection duties without heed for margins of error. Only someone personally implicated in the ways poems can fail would credit his doubts to that extent." Kirsch, bless him, has put his foot in it a time or two, and while I'm not saying this is a BAD thing - I'm sure I have too - I think he does have to beware a certain appearance of narrowness.

Nice that he rates Seidel; I very much like "one of the very rare contemporary poets who can be transgressive, not in the fashionable way of the seminar, but in the disturbing and baffling way of the nightmare." If it weren't for the perceived narrowness, though, this wouldn't be the "surprise" that Starnino says it is (and anyway, I'm not surprised; he is).

I have The Wounded Surgeon; it's interesting, & of course Kirsch is right about the mode - the art, the real achievement - of the confessionalists' work having been largely thrown out in favour of the content. The content, which we currently favour, is what makes up so much "seminar transgression" - the schlock-memoirs, the Sharon Olds' kid's-penis poem, poor little sod - and Kirsch is right that in many cases these things can't demonstrate proper technical underpinnings. I think that's what he was getting at, leaving where we came in, with the Jorie Graham thing.

Anyway, a disclaimer, & of course I have a vested interest, but I tore strips off Kirsch last year for writing a tendentious and very ill-informed piece on the New York Sun on how blogs, written by ill-informed, self-indulgent etc etc, are destroying serious criticism etc. It was clear as day, reading it, that he was jumping on a bandwagon - several months after John Sutherland's piece in the Telegraph - and had never read a blog, had no feel for what blogs are out there, what their stated purposes are, who is writing them etc, or how they could be compared to newspaper reviews pages (those bastions of excellence). It was lazy, & just as self-indulgent as anything Kirsch accuses "bloggers" of doing. Why do these people always forget that writers write blogs? I was very sorry that he never replied, anyway.

It made me want to read the book of essays. Isn't it interesting that someone can write a criticism of a book of criticism? Is this verging on intense poetic navel-gazing? Well obviously it's a good thing that a man of strong opinion who publishes so much can be taken to task.

Generally it seems to me that contemporary American critics, just like contemporary American poets are much braver about making big pronouncements about life, art and the universe. Good for them. On this side of the pond these days we are so namby-pamby - don't want to commit ourselves or make those dangerous, big, hearty pronouncements. Is it that we're imbued with the famous British reticence? Is it because we are given to understatement and are in love with irony?

And another thing. I know what it's like to be at the mercy of theatre critics, who have no mercy because they're not practitioners themselves. This is both a good and bad thing. They can be direct and honest (and of course vicious) without fear of reprisal (no danger of their own play being savaged subsequently - because there won't be one) but on the other hand they are often consummately unhelpful to both audiences and theatre practitioners because they lack empathy or an understanding of process. Of course I generalise - some critics are much better than others. Some want to improve theatre and play a part in the evolution of the art form. I think that is the job of the critic, whether a practitioner or not.

Agreed, Katy. Although like Jacqueline, I'm drawn towards wanting to read the book myself, and that's very rarely the outcome of reading any review / essay. I think part of the attraction is what Jacqueline refers to as a greater willingness among US poets and critics to make the grand statements about poetry's value and purpose. In his 2004 TSE lecture Don Paterson referred to what he saw as a "terror" in Britain about making any claims for poetry's importance for fear of being laughed at / shot down in flames: although Don often says things that feel provocative for the sake of it, I'm glad he's saying them - there's no question for me that he's coming from a place of genuinely believing that poets have a serious and meaningful task to carry out, that it is not a marginal art (to cross-thread briefly). Without someone saying that, the critical field is overly dominated by the PNR crew and their ilk, who will quite happily tell you that you're not even eligible to think about poetry, never mind write it.

Jacqueline, I think criticising the criticism is just as important as criticising the poetry. It's all about being conscious of what we think, both individually and within the culture.

I loved David W's comment about the hyphen being read as a minus-sign!

Thanks for that. The soundbite in question comes from the following essay:

http://www.thedublinreview.com/archive/six/wheatley.html

I enjoy making dangerous, big, hearty pronouncements ...

David, thanks, am printing it off to read on the bus. Why did I talk about you in the third person??

Stick around a while. It's quiet here at the moment, but things have a tendency to flare up every now and then. Especially when those 'big arguments' come around ... :ph43r:

Meanwhile, don't let the peace and quiet here stop you. Let's hear some of your own pronouncements.

:dangles bait casually:

Katy, perhaps I did express the idea a little casually, but I don't think it was inaccurate. To quote from Hamlet and His Problems:

"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion....Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear.... Hamlet is up against the difficulty that his disgust is occasioned by his mother, but that his mother is not an adequate equivalent for it.”

You're quite right to point out that Eliot ses this as a structural weakness of the play, but it does appear, to me at least, to be about lack of equivalence between inner experience and the external conditions of Hamlet's 'lived' situation. My Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (which I must admit tends usually to function more as a doorstop than a work of reference in my house) adds the following:

"Eliot uses Hamlet as a test case, surprisingly labeling the play an 'artistic failure' precisely becuase in it the 'emotions' that Shakespeare evokes are 'in excess' of the facts of the story, the dramatic action. It is an absurd judgement, in which Eliot may not have believed, but which he uttered with such assurance that it is still cited and debated."

Your understanding of the concept is more sophisticated, but, perhaps, a little easy on Eliot. With regard to the solipsism or otherwise of Graham's work, I'll wait to comment until I'm more familiar with the poems in question.

Anyway, I'm still struck that a contemporary critic would use such a term as part of a critical voabulary. Solipsism seems a much better (if more astringent) critical word.