reading poetry – Ken Craft

telescope

According to the prophets, when someone asks you to review their book, you make like Donald and duck (the exception being a good friend). But what about a request that you critique a poem? Tougher, as it’s such a small basket of kindness, the sort you might decline only if it’s a stranger.

But…but! If you’re up to helping a friend by reading and reviewing a poem, consider the hazards. Critiquing is not an easy basket to prepare, Red Riding Hood. There’s a wolf’s teeth worth of dangers once you jump in!

First off, critique requests usually come without specific questions. When on such vague grounds, the honest reviewer, left to his own devices, must decide where to begin. I like to start with the overall, then go to the nitty gritty.

The overall amounts to some parts emotional, some parts technical, but all considered as a whole. As a unique piece of literature, how does this poem hit me? What does it accomplish? What, pray tell, is its purpose? And once I convey that to the writer, I look closer and try to figure out the parts or techniques that were responsible for this general feeling (Part II of the critique).

Maybe I’m wrong, but I always feel like Part I–the overall effect– is the most important aspect of a poem. Still, the closer look (trees, as opposed to forest), which attempts to dig out the why’s, provides the true fodder for revision.

The key to answering these “why’s” involves the Good and the Bad technique. Usually, God help you, SOMEthing is working in this piece. Point this “Good” out by hunting down specific words, figurative language, or structural touches. that strengthened the poem’s purpose and/or struck you as powerful and unique.

Then it’s on to the “consider this” part (a.k.a. the “Bad,” which we don’t utter, as it is a 3-letter word with aspirations). As a receiver of critiques, I value “Bad” parts of a critique the most, for these are the constructive criticisms that represent one (hopefully sharp) reader’s reaction to my work’s weaknesses. The responder’s job, in this case, is to state what’s not quite working for him and why. The writer’s job is to consider it.

Considering isn’t as easy as it sounds. Yes, you can accept a suggestion, reject it, or put it on hold, but often criticism takes to task one of the writer’s babies. What, pray tell, is a “baby”? A baby is a particular line, word, or flourish that the poet-writer loves.

How crestfallen is the poet when the baby, of all things, comes under the scrutiny of a critical reader? Very. And you can bet THAT change will be put on “hold” as a “maybe, maybe not” change for future revision.

It’s like the dentist hitting a nerve while drilling teeth sans Novocaine. (Ouch!) The poet, clearly convinced that this was the best part of the poem (and often its genesis) must now realign his universe. It will take time. He may stubbornly hold (and lose the hand later on) or, in time, give the baby up with the greatest reluctance. That’s the nature of giving and receiving critiques.

Does expertise in poetry affect the quality of criticism? It can help or hurt, in my experience. Some university-trained (do the letters M, F, and A mean anything to you?) or self-appointed experts who are widely published can go overboard and get all tangled up in their own advice. As Whitman would have it, they come off as “Learn’d Astronomers” who look at heavens clouded by pride. Leave these good “professors” to their telescopes. You want people who just enjoy stars.

And it goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway because I talk too much) that second and third opinions are a great help. But yes, this is assuming that good poetry critics are easy as New Orleans and as plentiful as mosquitoes during a rainy spring.

Let’s agree on this much: Criticism is a fine balance of subjective and objective, brain and gut. Not everyone is good at it, but if they are and if they’re willing, they are invaluable poetry friends and you owe them in kind, if they write as well.

Good critiques take time and effort, after all. Going through the motions doesn’t fly.

orr

I am closing in on the final page of New York Times poetry columnist (now THERE’S a job) David Orr’s You, Too, Could Write a Poem. Naively, I thought it was a book about writing poetry from a man who reads poems for a living. Not quite. It’s a collection of Orr columns that have already appeared in the Times, the first of which is called “You, Too, Could Write a Poem.”

But even that is a curveball of sorts. If you think that the first essay, at least, is about the democratic nature of poetry writing, you’d be wrong. It is Orr’s take on the notorious “Best of” series, wherein bookstore shelves are annually littered with titles like The Best American Poetry (and, beyond that, you can scratch poetry and pencil in words like “Essays,” “Sports Writing,” and “Short Stories”).

The trouble with any “best of” book is that it is only as good as its editor. The other, even bigger, problem is that choosing the best of anything in any given year is positively Sisyphean. We might as well call it The Approaching-Best Poems According to Our Guest Editor of the Year, Who Has Many Connections and Prejudices That Will Surely Show Themselves on These Pages. But that would be unwieldy. And tough to fit on a cover.

Orr gets into this a bit himself, when he writes, “What this series stands for isn’t excellence, aesthetic or otherwise, but the idea of poetry as a community activity. ‘People are writing poems!’ each volume cries. ‘You, too, could write a poem!’ It’s an appealingly democratic pose, and it has always been the genuinely ‘best’ thing about the Best American series. The only problem is that poetry isn’t really an open system; it’s a combination of odd institutions, personal networks, hoary traditions, talent, and blind luck. It’s both an art and a guild, in other words. And if basic participation is possible for anyone with a heartbeat and a laptop, the requirements for the deluxe plan — the true ‘Best American’ plan, if you will — are obscure to all but a handful. The negotiation between what we now call the ‘best’ and what we’ll later call the ‘great’ never ends; each year the Best American Poetry offers a new compromise, and each year the truce is broken, the sides are marshaled, and the oldest argument begins again.”

Being a neophyte to the world of published poetry, I cannot help but wonder at words like “odd institutions, personal networks, hoary traditions, talent, and blind luck.” From that suspect line-up, I feel most ready to point at personal networks, for isn’t that true in ALL institutions — political, commercial, academic, and beyond?

And in the name of clarification and elaboration, what are these odd networks and hoary traditions Orr speaks of? The talent and blind luck make not only sense, but dollars. You need talent to write “good” poetry, I’m sure, but it is not necessarily the coin of the realm in the country of the published. Sometimes blind luck is the only currency that gets an outsider through the customs gate. And which gate? With which poem as ID?

So, yes. I’m well into Orr’s book and, even though it was misleading, the title essay did entertain and intrigue me, only I wish Orr would share more of what he knows about this byzantine world, this mysterious oligarchy of poets rich in connections, talent, and traditions (both time-honored and for-breaking, which is equally time-honored).