Top Ten 20th Century Poets in English
Daniel Sterling
Wallace Stevens
Robert Hass
Carolyn Forche
TS Eliot
Eavan Boland
Louise Gluck
Robert Frost
Adrienne Rich
Wm. Carlos Wms.
Richard Hugo
(is that 10 ?) Anyone want to debate?
Michael Wojcik
>Wallace Stevens
Ezra Pound? One of the great Am Lit Mod debates. See eg. Perloff's
fine essay "Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?".
Stevens was an important thinker and a very clever poet, but I ultimately
find him a trifle annoying. The group of sun worshippers in "Sunday
Morning" (is that the right title?), for example -- oh, really.
>Robert Hass
>Carolyn Forche
>TS Eliot
Good thing Eliot wrote more poetry than drama. If he were remembered
for his drama, he'd be second or third string in the canon (like
Christopher Smart or Anne Finch, but less readable).
>Eavan Boland
>Louise Gluck
>Robert Frost
Tangent: is Frost a modernist? (I'd group him with Fitzgerald and
Wharton as a cusp figure, marking the transition in Am Lit from the
premodern to the modern, I guess.)
>Adrienne Rich
I dunno about this one. Rich is an important and readable essayist,
and a competent poet, with a long and varied career (and a large and
varied poetic corpus). I'm not sure that I'd call her one of the
"ten best", though I'm not sure what my criteria for "ten best" would
be. My tastes run more toward the lyricism of the American
Confessionals: Lowell and Snodgrass (the ur-Confessionals), Sexton,
Plath (though I don't think her work is quite as sophisticated as
Sexton's). And let me put in a plug for my friend and teacher
Joseph DeRoche.
In terms of the history of twentieth century poetry, too, there
might be some challenges (on the grounds of innovation or influence),
though the length and variety of Rich's career supports her here.
But Moore, Bishop, H.D., and Mina Loy were arguably more important
in determining the directions of English-language poetry.
>Wm. Carlos Wms.
>Richard Hugo
More suggestions:
Amiri Baraka
Basil Bunting
Hugh MacDiarmid
Edward Kemau Braithwaite
W. H. Auden
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
Michael Wojcik
mwo...@lynx.dac.neu.edu mwwo...@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu
Software Engineer, Micro Focus Ltd.
Graduate Assistant, Department of English, Miami University
Allan Burns
>
>(In no special order)
[. . .]
>Anyone want to debate?
Do you expect anyone to take seriously a list that
doesn't include Yeats?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Joseph M Green
>>(In no special order)
>No need to debate this. You leave Yeats off your list and include
>Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche and Louise Gluck and therefore
>have sunk so deep beneath the watery floor that you cannot
>possibly be raised. Hass, Boland, and Hugo also couldn't possibly
>be included.
Make that -- have gone and done sunk.
Joseph M Green
>(In no special order)
No need to debate this. You leave Yeats off your list and include
Joseph M Green
>>(In no special order)
Just back from Parnassus. As expected Yeats soars above it. The correct
order is something like this (can't be precise becasue Eliot and Pound
were wrestling in the Captain's tower while mermaids laffed and fishermen
threw flowers....
Yeats -- no question of his pre-eminence
and in no order...
Pound, Stevens, Lawrence, Williams, Eliot, Frost, Auden
Lots of other fellows a bit below these -- hard to tell -- i did
not think that breath had undone so many.
No trip to Parnassus really necessary, of course. One sees that the
fellows one can not study -- specifically not study -- and still
get a Ph.D. here at the prairie school are the best.
Criteria? "The intellectual sweetness of those lines/ That cut
through time or cross it withershins."
Now a similar ranking for lit in Eng --
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth
all high above the Aonian mount -- add Yeats to these three.
Chaucer, of course -- I was briefly dazzled by the sun.
and then Keats (for the Odes -- great final effort -- great
little shortstop). Ben Jonson -- no question. Herbert and Donne (I prefer
Herbert) Pope. (has wings others in this little paragraph don't).
Shelley. For Prometheus Unbound....
Abigail Ann Young
I would make a slightly different list, again in no particular order:
TS Eliot
Robert Graves
Siegfried Sasson
Robert Frost
Marianne Moore
Edna St Vincent Millet
ee cummings
W H Auden
William Butler Yeats
Dylan Thomas
And then there are the others, like Allen Tate, Hart Crane, Amy
Lowell, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Steven Spender....
How can I stop with ten?
A.
--
Dr Abigail Ann Young, Records of Early English Drama| young@epas.|
Victoria College, University of Toronto | utoronto.ca|
Francis Muir
Yeats -- no question of his pre-eminence and in no order...
Pound, Stevens, Lawrence, Williams, Eliot, Frost, Auden
Criteria? "The intellectual sweetness of those lines/ That cut
through time or cross it withershins."
Widdershins? One of John Buchan's favorite words.
Now a similar ranking for lit in Eng -- Shakespeare, Milton,
Wordsworth -- all high above the Aonian mount -- add Yeats
to these three. Chaucer, of course -- I was briefly dazzled
by the sun. and then Keats (for the Odes -- great final
effort -- great little shortstop). Ben Jonson -- no question.
Herbert and Donne (I prefer Herbert) Pope. (has wings others
in this little paragraph don't). Shelley. For Prometheus Unbound....
I'll trade you Pope for those two adjectival S's, Swift & Smart. Back
in the 20th Century I would always find room for Housman. But a list of
the 20 finest poems would make more sense. And also, why is it that
these lists are so dam' serious? Is there no place for Making Cocoa
for Kingsley Amis? Or archy & mehitabel?
Francis Muir
Cadmus' gift was impalpable. He had brought Greece "gifts of the mind":
vowels and consonants yoked together in tiny signs, "etched model of a
silence that speaks"--the alphabet.
Almost the last words of
Roberto Calasso's NOZZE
DI CADMO E ARMONIA with
quotations from Nonnus'
DIONYSIACA
David E. Latane
>(In no special order)
Yes, the notion that the pathetic Carolyn Forche is a better poet
than all the poets writing in English in all of England, Wales, Scotland,
Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, etc. is . . .
debatable?
D. Latane'
Mark Taranto
Back in the 20th Century I would always find room for Housman.
I find myself in agreement with Francis more and more, these days. I
wonder if I am changing, or if it is he.
I don't usually think of Housman when I think of 20th century poets.
His best known work was published in 1896, but the rest of his poetry
was, indeed, published in the 20th century.
Mark
Joseph M Green
>Allan Burns <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>> tr...@panix.com (Daniel Sterling) says:
>>> (In no special order)
>> [. . .]
>>> Anyone want to debate?
>> Do you expect anyone to take seriously a list that
>> doesn't include Yeats?
>Nor Auden!
>Was Pound on the list?
>I'd think about substituting Sexton for Rich, and might add Spender,
>and perhaps Richard Wilbur or Lowell.
>Mark
An incredible list -- even more incredible a fellow suggests that
Baraka might be included. Pound, Yeats, Stevens, Eliot, Hardy,
Frost, Auden, Williams and the last two decided among a myriad --
not including Spender or Wilbur or Rich or Sexton. This is
obvious.
Joseph M Green
>In article <318846$8...@lynx.dac.neu.edu>, mwo...@lynx.dac.neu.edu
>(Michael Wojcik) wrote:
>> In terms of the history of twentieth century poetry, too, there
>> might be some challenges (on the grounds of innovation or influence),
>> though the length and variety of Rich's career supports her here.
>> But Moore, Bishop, H.D., and Mina Loy were arguably more important
>> in determining the directions of English-language poetry.
>Why do you say this of Mina Loy? How was she influential? I recently read
>some of her poems in an anthology (Pratt's Imagism anthology?) and was
>intrigued. Unfortunately, I've been unable to track down any more of her
>work. Melvyl, the on-line catalog system for the University of California,
>list only 11 books by Mina Loy in all UC libraries. My campus has her
>collected poems, but it's in Special Collections and can't be checked out.
>I am also unable to find her poems in any of the major (ie Norton) anthologies.
h, Mina Loy was that woman King Kong was in love with -- actually another
"discovery" -- a case of a poor overlooked person -- touted by
fellows who need an article -- more slouching towards the
brute and beastly shires stuff.
>I think Adrienne Rich is far more influential, although I'm not that
>impressed with her poetry. Her activism has gotten her more readers
>than her poetry would have if she'd been a quiet creative writing
>instructor in the Midwest.
>Tom
Mark Taranto
> tr...@panix.com (Daniel Sterling) says:
>> (In no special order)
> [. . .]
>> Anyone want to debate?
> Do you expect anyone to take seriously a list that
> doesn't include Yeats?
Nor Auden!
John McCarthy
Apart from that I rather like the present Oxford Professor of Poetry,
James Fenton.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Tom Listmann
> In terms of the history of twentieth century poetry, too, there
> might be some challenges (on the grounds of innovation or influence),
> though the length and variety of Rich's career supports her here.
> But Moore, Bishop, H.D., and Mina Loy were arguably more important
> in determining the directions of English-language poetry.
Why do you say this of Mina Loy? How was she influential? I recently read
some of her poems in an anthology (Pratt's Imagism anthology?) and was
intrigued. Unfortunately, I've been unable to track down any more of her
work. Melvyl, the on-line catalog system for the University of California,
list only 11 books by Mina Loy in all UC libraries. My campus has her
collected poems, but it's in Special Collections and can't be checked out.
I am also unable to find her poems in any of the major (ie Norton) anthologies.
I think Adrienne Rich is far more influential, although I'm not that
Allan Burns
says:
>
>In <318isc$7...@panix2.panix.com> mtar...@panix.com (Mark Taranto) writes:
>
>>Nor Auden!
>
>>Was Pound on the list?
>
>>I'd think about substituting Sexton for Rich, and might add Spender,
>>and perhaps Richard Wilbur or Lowell.
>
>Baraka might be included. Pound, Yeats, Stevens, Eliot, Hardy,
>Frost, Auden, Williams and the last two decided among a myriad --
>not including Spender or Wilbur or Rich or Sexton. This is
>obvious.
There are two major schools of thought on these matters. Both
admit Yeats, but go in different directions from there. Critics
such as Hugh Kenner & Guy Davenport (& our very own Vance
Maverick) draw a Modernist line from Yeats that runs through
Pound & Eliot (& along the way Williams & Moore & maybe HD)
to Bunting, Zukofsky & Olson. Is the next stop here LANGUAGE?
The other school, whose most eminent representative would be
Harold Bloom, & which might be characterized as neo-Romantic,
prefers Stevens & Hart Crane & Roethke & goes on through such
as Ammons, Merrill & Ashbery.
Neither school is particularly fond of Auden. More might
drop him from such a list than Mark would expect. I think
I see why (though I don't necessarily agree). As a craftsman
probably his only peers in the language are Pope & Tennyson;
but when it comes to individual poems, he doesn't seem to
hold his own against such as Yeats, Eliot, Stevens. I can
hear protests already. But I merely find it interesting that
critics as different as Bloom & Kenner both do not like Auden.
That suggests to me a certain vulnerability that may tell
against him in the long run. Both schools, btw, seem well-
disposed toward Hardy & Frost. (But both dismiss Dylan
Thomas.)
Among contemporary British poets, Kenner's top pick is
Tomlinson, whereas Bloom's is Hill.
I think Joe's list of eight sensibly synthesizes the two
sides, although the picks may not be quite so obvious as
he suggests. Personally--and there is of course an irreduciably
subjective element to all of this--I would drop Williams.
Of the three spots that remain I would reserve one for Hill.
In another I would be tempted to place a poet much
underrated & little discussed these days: E. A. Robinson,
whom I have been reading off & on through this year with
growing admiration. The last spot is too difficult for
me to determine, though right now I'm inclining toward
Roethke.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Francis Muir
Francis Muir writes:
Back in the 20th Century I would always find room for Housman.
I don't usually think of Housman when I think of 20th century poets.
His best known work was published in 1896, but the rest of his poetry
was, indeed, published in the 20th century.
For the record, SHROPSHIRE LAD (1896), LAST POEMS (1922). Quite a gap. I had
in mind some of these latter.
Metro Gnome (again, soon..)
Joseph M Green
>I would make a slightly different list, again in no particular order:
>TS Eliot
>Robert Graves
>Siegfried Sasson
>Robert Frost
>Marianne Moore
>Edna St Vincent Millet
>ee cummings
>W H Auden
>William Butler Yeats
>Dylan Thomas
>And then there are the others, like Allen Tate, Hart Crane, Amy
>Lowell, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Steven Spender....
...
I hope that it is unclear that the poets named are meant to be
the top ten poets writing in English in the 20th century.
Moore, Millet, Thomas, Cummings, Graves and Siegfried S. may
place somewhere in the top 100 but ... Sweet Christ,
even Auden may not make it. And, again, where is Yeats?
It is impossible to take a list seriously that does not include
Yeats -- like making a list of the top ten 16th century poets and
not including Shakespeare.
Amy Lowell! Are we trying to be inclusive -- is that it?
Allan Burns
says:
>
>Francis Muir writes:
>
> Back in the 20th Century I would always find room for Housman.
>
>His best known work was published in 1896, but the rest of his poetry
>was, indeed, published in the 20th century.
Most of Hardy's poetry was published in the 20th C as well.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Joseph M Green
>also Rudyard Kipling.
>Apart from that I rather like the present Oxford Professor of Poetry,
>James Fenton.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
Hell, why not? If we are to include Amy Lowell (and Faye Raye and
anyone to keep out the bad guys) why not include the author of the
immortal Gunga Din?
Here -- let me start a list of the top ten artists of all time
using what seem to be the criteria used so far for selecting
the top ten poets:
1. Norman Rockwell
2. Maya Angelou (for her lovely hats).
3. Perry Como (need to include an Italian American).
4. Madonna (designs her own bras).
5. Quentin Crisp
6. American Indian (to be named).
7. Sorry and sad assed Sapphist (to be announced).
8. Georgia O'Keefe
9. Anyone named Violet
10. Vita Sackeville West's Poodle "Tara"
Katherine Catmull
Now a similar ranking for lit in Eng --
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth
all high above the Aonian mount -- add Yeats to these three.
Chaucer, of course -- I was briefly dazzled by the sun.
and then Keats
Hey. Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, Keats beats Wordsworth, not
to mention Yeats for god's sake, we've all known this since _childhood_.
Re-arrange the rungs on this ladder a bit (while they're all asleep would be
best) and you'll have this right.
Kate
-------------
"Be the voice of night and Florida in my ear. Ask me how I feel about
Wallace Stevens."
Mark Feltham
W.B. Yeats
And in no particular order,
W.H. Auden
Adrienne Rich
Sylvia Plath
William Carlos Williams
Robert Lowell
John Berryman
Dudley Randall
--
-Mark
Anne Levinson Penway
>
I mentioned this discussion to my poet/husband and he wishes to respond:
Though you have selected some names whose stature in 20th century poetry
is beyond dispute, and you seem to have had the courage also to select
some names of questionable repute, nevertheless your selection and Dr.
Abigail Young's selection has inspired me to name my ten controversial
choices for the twentieth century -- choices I feel are representative
of the diversity and the verities encompassed by the art. My selections,
in ascending order, are:
Charles Bukowski
Paul Carroll
Louis Zukofsky
W.B Yeats
W.H. Auden
T.S. Eliot/Ezra Pound
Wallace Stevens
H.D.
John Ashbery
Robert Duncan
Why did I choose Robert Duncan as the greatest poet writing in English in
the twentieth century? Because not only is he the greatest, he has composed
the greatest short poem in the English language since Marlowe. And he also
composed three or four of the greatest long poems in the English language.
And finally, the reason I have chosen Robert Duncan as the greatest poet
of the twentieth century writing in English is, that he is better than
John Ashbery - Barely! And if you want to, go find out for yourself.
"I shan't have lied."
Mike Penway
(Did I mention my husband is something of a troublemaker? He's Irish. He
asked me to say that. I will relay your responses to him, but
please don't flame the messenger! Anne Penway)
Tom Listmann
<AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> wrote:
> Neither school is particularly fond of Auden. More might
> drop him from such a list than Mark would expect. I think
> I see why (though I don't necessarily agree). As a craftsman
> probably his only peers in the language are Pope & Tennyson;
> but when it comes to individual poems, he doesn't seem to
> hold his own against such as Yeats, Eliot, Stevens. I can
> hear protests already. But I merely find it interesting that
> critics as different as Bloom & Kenner both do not like Auden.
> That suggests to me a certain vulnerability that may tell
> against him in the long run. Both schools, btw, seem well-
> disposed toward Hardy & Frost. (But both dismiss Dylan
> Thomas.)
I've noticed over the years that poets like Auden and critics don't.
I think the reason for this is that poets admire the craftsmanship
and are less concerned with the philosophy or message behind the
poems (or the belief system behind the poetry); whereas the critics
need something to analyze to death (and for tenure). You can write
reams on Yeats' symbolism or Celtic Twilight; Eliot's allusions,
borrowings, Christian redemption, whatever; Pound's Chinese; but most
of what I've read on Auden concerns his prosody, not his grand scheme
for humanity. It's also possible that Kenner and Bloom react
against Auden because he was the leading poet of their youth (assuming
that their respective youths occured during the 40s-50s!). In the
same way that I reacted against the Beats in the late 60s and 70s:
they had become the tradition that everyone was imitating (badly!).
If the dominant criterium for this list is influence, then you have
to include Auden and WCW, I think.
Tom
Alasdair Grant
>Yeats -- no question of his pre-eminence
American favouritism there surely. Replace Stevens & Williams by
your choice of Hardy, Owen, Plath, Hill, Heaney and Walcott.
Might bring the list more up to date too. And to rate Lawrence
anywhere near the top 10 is quite absurd.
Joseph M Green
It would be an odd sort of overcoming the American prejudice to replace
S or W with Plath -- she was an American, after all -- tho married
to a Brit (who is, if we are to judge from his new book "Shakespeare
and the Goddess of Complete Being) now quite mad.
Hardy made my list but I am quite willing to consider him a 19th
century poet. Owen doesn't make the list for the same reason Yeats
mentions in his preface -- stuck in the blacking of the mirror.
The same reason Plath is excluded.
Also a rather odd American prejudice to prefer Lawrence --
do you suppose American prejudice means preferring a British
poet. Excluding Lawrence is a British prejudice it seems to me --
too many scions of one of the greatest literatures in the
world now reduced to dressing up their cats as the Lady of Shallot
for Lawrence to have a chance. If I have a prejudice at all it is
an Irish prejudice -- preferring swift indifferent men to Cambridge
souls -- as they seem to be now, of course.
Mark Taranto
I thought I should point out that when I mentioned that Lowell should
be considered, I meant Robert, not Amy.
Mark
Alasdair Grant
>>American favouritism there surely. Replace Stevens & Williams by
>>your choice of Hardy, Owen, Plath, Hill, Heaney and Walcott.
>>Might bring the list more up to date too. And to rate Lawrence
>>anywhere near the top 10 is quite absurd.
>It would be an odd sort of overcoming the American prejudice to replace
>S or W with Plath -- she was an American, after all
I knew that... but a Cambridge woman too, and not in the traditional
American poetry canon so excruciatingly exemplified by the lists of
some of your compatriots.
>-- tho married to a Brit (who is, if we are to judge from his new book
>"Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being) now quite mad.
Makes a change from John Betjeman. I rather think Her Majesty likes
being immortalised by her court poet as a "spermy fattening gland".
>Owen doesn't make the list for the same reason Yeats
>mentions in his preface -- stuck in the blacking of the mirror.
>The same reason Plath is excluded.
Tell us more. Dying in the trenches is obviously a bad career move
for a poet. Much better to live alone in a bee-loud glade.
>Also a rather odd American prejudice to prefer Lawrence --
>do you suppose American prejudice means preferring a British poet.
You have a single-threaded mind don't you? I assumed selecting
Lawrence was independent of the American bias. But now you mention it,
it does look like the choice of a tourist. If you need an unpleasant
character from the sticks, Dylan Thomas was a better poet.
>If I have a prejudice at all it is an Irish prejudice
but Heaney just isn't good enough?
Joseph M Green
>Mark
Yes, the Amy Lowell suggestion came from a neighbor to the north.
It should also be pointed out that claiming pre-eminence for
this or that Amy Lowell sort is not brave (as one soul insists)
but the simplistic produce of a common day -- today. A
Forrest Gumpy kind of thing.
Joseph M Green
>In article <gree0072.775598167@gold> gree...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Joseph M Green) writes:
>>>American favouritism there surely. Replace Stevens & Williams by
>>>your choice of Hardy, Owen, Plath, Hill, Heaney and Walcott.
>>>Might bring the list more up to date too. And to rate Lawrence
>>>anywhere near the top 10 is quite absurd.
>>It would be an odd sort of overcoming the American prejudice to replace
>>S or W with Plath -- she was an American, after all
>I knew that... but a Cambridge woman too, and not in the traditional
>American poetry canon so excruciatingly exemplified by the lists of
>some of your compatriots.
Not true anymore -- in a way she is the canon. Too bad, of course.
I exclude her because she is stuck in the mirror -- as I wrote.
>>-- tho married to a Brit (who is, if we are to judge from his new book
>>"Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being) now quite mad.
>Makes a change from John Betjeman. I rather think Her Majesty likes
>being immortalised by her court poet as a "spermy fattening gland".
As would I.
>>Owen doesn't make the list for the same reason Yeats
>>mentions in his preface -- stuck in the blacking of the mirror.
>>The same reason Plath is excluded.
>Tell us more. Dying in the trenches is obviously a bad career move
>for a poet. Much better to live alone in a bee-loud glade.
Yeats out of the bee loud glade tout suite as we say. A bad
career move in the sense that Owen never had a chance to come
out from the mirror. I think his poetry wonderful but he did die
before ... what?
>>Also a rather odd American prejudice to prefer Lawrence --
>>do you suppose American prejudice means preferring a British poet.
>You have a single-threaded mind don't you? I assumed selecting
>Lawrence was independent of the American bias. But now you mention it,
>it does look like the choice of a tourist. If you need an unpleasant
>character from the sticks, Dylan Thomas was a better poet.
No, I am thinking of his last poems. He gets in for them just as
Keats gets in for his last year. Nothing much to Thomas -- as he
sensed.
>>If I have a prejudice at all it is an Irish prejudice
>but Heaney just isn't good enough?
I have one slot and you are right. Heaney gets it over Roethke.
Allan Burns
fac...@cats.ucsc.edu (Tom Listmann) says:
>
>In article <94210.09...@psuvm.psu.edu>, Allan Burns
><AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>> I can hear protests already.
>
Too sweeping a generalization, but quite possibly a tendency.
>I think the reason for this is that poets admire the craftsmanship
>and are less concerned with the philosophy or message behind the
>poems (or the belief system behind the poetry);
Do either Kenner or Bloom judge poems in this manner?
>whereas the critics
>need something to analyze to death (and for tenure).
Not the good ones. Aristotle? Coleridge?
>You can write
>reams on Yeats' symbolism or Celtic Twilight; Eliot's allusions,
>borrowings, Christian redemption, whatever; Pound's Chinese; but most
>of what I've read on Auden concerns his prosody, not his grand scheme
>for humanity.
I wonder what serious critic judges poetry on the basis of
"grand scheme[s] for humanity."
>It's also possible that Kenner and Bloom react
>against Auden because he was the leading poet of their youth (assuming
>that their respective youths occured during the 40s-50s!).
Yes. Bloom has said his formative experience as a reader of
poetry was stumbling upon Hart Crane at the age of 12 or 13.
That would have been in the early 40s. But their reasons for
disliking Auden are far more complex than you are suggesting.
>If the dominant criterium for this list is influence, then you have
>to include Auden and WCW, I think.
Why should influence be the most important criterion? If
it were, we'd still be judging Cowley, Denham & Waller as
giants.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Millie Niss
people make a list of 10 poets who wrote before the 1960's and are
almost part of the (dare I mention it without reopening that dreadful
thread!) canon. Other people make a list which includes their
favorite "canonical" 20th C poet, but mostly more recent, more
topical, and more "diverse" (in the PC sense) poets. It seems to me
that these two sorts of lists don't answer the same question. I think
all the people who left out Yeats and Eliot etc. would admit that
those poets were influential and deep, but they might not enjoy
reading their work. (Of course, I don't understand how you can not
enjoy Yeats...) I wonder if people who make the second kind of list
read poetry for the same reasons as I do-- it seems as if (some) of
the newer poets are read in the way one might read non-fiction, for
the issues it raises rather than for images and language. I prefer
poetry that sounds interesting read aloud and uses language which is
far removed from newsmagazine-like prose. Even when a poet such as
Eliot or Stevens raises political issues it is not political in the
way that some feminists (say Marge Piercy, May Sarton, Adrienne Rich,
etc.) use poetry as a way of expresing political ideas.
My list:
Yeats
Eliot
Stevens
Williams (with reservations)
Marianne Moore
Auden
Frost (again, with reservations)
I can't think of three more who are any where near in the same
category. Some more recent stuff I like includes Derek Mahon, Derek
Walcott, James Fenton, Seamus Heaney, Anthony Hecht... But I don't
think any of these authors come close to the ones listed above.
Although I was awfully impressed by Mahon's Selected Poems. They are
almost all perfect but I don't think they introduce any new techniques
or subject matter. Anyone for a discussion of any of these poets?
Millie
Millie Niss
I hope. I've often felt (and been guilty myself) that educated people
gossip about the lives of writers and artists for exactly the same
reason as people read the National Enquirer, only we don't even feel
guilty reading about someone's sordid affairs so long as the book has
lots of footnotes and no pictures...
>And also, why is it that
>these lists are so dam' serious? Is there no place for Making Cocoa
>for Kingsley Amis? Or archy & mehitabel?
>
> Francis Muir
For non-serious poems how about:
Lewis Caroll's "I think I saw poem" (the one with
I thought I saw a banker's clerk descending from a bus
I looked again and saw it was a hippopotamus
If you should stay for tea, I said, there won't be much for us
--
Wendy Cope's condensed version of the Wasteland
--
Ezra Pound's parody of the old english cuckoo poem "Winter is ikummen
in/luden sing goddamn/slippeth bus and sloppeth us etc."
--
Looking at the above, it seems I even my choice of lowbrow poems are
excessively highbrow. I guess I need to loosen up... Any
suggestions?
Millie (guilty of taking this thread too seriously)
Francis Muir
Francis Muir writes:
And also, why is it that these lists are so dam' serious?
Is there no place for Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis? Or
archy & mehitabel?
For non-serious poems how about:
Lewis Caroll's "I think I saw poem" (the one with
I thought I saw a banker's clerk descending from a bus
I looked again and saw it was a hippopotamus
If you should stay for tea, I said,
there won't be much for us
That's better...much better. Let me guess..Bruno & Sylvie? An appalling
tale with this one great poem that meanders through several pages (more?).
Francis Muir
Postscript. Or is it Sylvie & Bruno?
Joseph M Green
of the ocean. Most people read poetry because they enjoy bad
prose. This is why the poems of Raymond Carver seem to provide
near universal satisfaction.
Kate berates me for placing Keats below Yeats and Wordsworth.
I'm sorry that I can't do better. Kate is one of the few persons
invited to my funeral -- one wants a tall person there -- but
I can't give keats a boost. I nervously excluded Dryden from
my list just to please Kate and now everything is ruined anyway.
Keats thought Wordsworth one of the three wonders of the age...
I'll be in the Protestant cemetery in Rome in September and will
consult his shade again.
My general feeling always has been that if we were meant to know
I have always thought that if we were meant to know a thing Hugh
Kenner would have told us. Have always been a
a bit nervous about Auden -- a good poem in a way on Yeats death
but the "he was silly like us" all wrong. Yeats didn't make the
mistake of thinking that what is News is what is in the newspaper.
Auden means, I think, that Yeats was silly -- the "like us"
included to hide that.
The bee loud glade. Yeats was appalled that this poem was a favorite.
Early stuff --till 1906 -- has been dismissed but this is a mistake.
Much much more there than some allow. A strange version of pastoral
-- with the awareness that pastoral means an overcoming. Houseman
wrote nothing but pastoral elegy -- no awareness of what is denied.
Owens. Yeats pissed off poets like Auden by not including him.
Yeats thought the poems were simply examples of passive suffering --
which, of course, they are. What else could be done? A cold
eye needed when what is wanted is tragic joy. Lapis Lazuli
about this. Owen not belittled here -- this is what the
circumstances were. Yeats' grounds for excluding the war poets
in "The Oxford Book of Modern Verse" on the ground that "When
man has withdrawn into the quicksilver at the back of the mirror
no great event becomes luminous to the mind."
From a letter:
"The English critics feel differently. To them a theme that "bulks
largely in the news" gives dignity to human nature, even raises
it to international importance. We on the other hand are certain
that nothing can give dignity to human nature but the character
and energy of its expression. We do not even ask that it shall
have dignity solong as it can burn away all that is not itself."
(This on his distase for O'Caseys "The Silver Tassie." and from
Hone's biography.
My list is a list of poets who can provide tragic joy -- even
if in only one instance. Keats" last poems do this --
especially "To Autumn" Yeat's last poems do this.
Hmmmm.
"Whence did all that fury come?
From empty tomb or virgin womb?
St. Joseph thought the world would melt
But liked the way his finger smelt."
Thomas Reid Scudder
>Looking at the above, it seems I even my choice of lowbrow poems are
>excessively highbrow. I guess I need to loosen up... Any
>suggestions?
Hmm... Ogden Nash:
Columbus was an Italian
And some people said he was a rapscallion
But he wasn't offended
Because some people thought he was splendid...
and on and on and on
or: A cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other milk.
or Dorothy Parker:
"News Flash" -- Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses.
or that master of modern light verse, Theodore Geisel.
(btw, could you post the condensed version of the Waste Land? sounds
hilarious.)
--
Tom Scudder -- tom...@ruf.rice.edu -- kibo nathan Turkey fnord
It's Time! -- Dress-Up/Neutopia in '96! Obscure quote of the day:
I think we are in rats' alley
Where dead men left their bones.
Tom Listmann
<AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> wrote:
> In article <facman-2907...@perform-mac19.ucsc.edu>,
> fac...@cats.ucsc.edu (Tom Listmann) says:
> >
> >I've noticed over the years that poets like Auden and critics don't.
>
> Too sweeping a generalization, but quite possibly a tendency.
It's a generalization about a tendency. Isn't everything said in this
newsgroup a generalization? It's tendency I noticed from discussions with
poets such as Karl Shapiro, Richard Eberhart and Sandra Gilbert many years
ago, and also just a general impression I get.
> >I think the reason for this is that poets admire the craftsmanship
> >and are less concerned with the philosophy or message behind the
> >poems (or the belief system behind the poetry);
>
> Do either Kenner or Bloom judge poems in this manner?
Yes, I think so; most critics these days concentrate on grand
schemes in the poetry to justify the criticism. Another generalization
of a definite tendency...
> >whereas the critics
> >need something to analyze to death (and for tenure).
>
> Not the good ones. Aristotle? Coleridge?
Both Aristotle and Coleridge were poets. Is it your point that the
best critics are poets? I'll buy that--it comes back around to my Auden
statement! I was referring to the academic critics of today, whose
dissertations, monographs and articles published for promotion make up
the vast majority of criticism. We're talking about the 20th century,
right?
> >You can write
> >reams on Yeats' symbolism or Celtic Twilight; Eliot's allusions,
> >borrowings, Christian redemption, whatever; Pound's Chinese; but most
> >of what I've read on Auden concerns his prosody, not his grand scheme
> >for humanity.
>
> I wonder what serious critic judges poetry on the basis of
> "grand scheme[s] for humanity."
I'll turn that one back on you--what is the basis by which a
so-called serious critic judges poetry? Seems to me that critics
approach poetry from a method (New Criticism, deconstruction) or
a philosophy (Marxism, Christianity)--or all of the above--and
judge the poetry on that basis. So the critic has a grand scheme
by which s/he judges the poet's grand scheme. If the critic can't
find a grand scheme, or doesn't like the one found, the poet is dismissed.
> >It's also possible that Kenner and Bloom react
> >against Auden because he was the leading poet of their youth (assuming
> >that their respective youths occured during the 40s-50s!).
>
> Yes. Bloom has said his formative experience as a reader of
> poetry was stumbling upon Hart Crane at the age of 12 or 13.
> That would have been in the early 40s. But their reasons for
> disliking Auden are far more complex than you are suggesting.
Like maybe Auden doesn't fit in to Kenner's or Bloom's grand critical
scheme? Their dislike may have begun as I suggested, and the complexity was
piled on later.
> >If the dominant criterium for this list is influence, then you have
> >to include Auden and WCW, I think.
>
> Why should influence be the most important criterion? If
> it were, we'd still be judging Cowley, Denham & Waller as
> giants.
Well, what are the criteria? We come up with these Top Ten lists and
proceed to argue about the picks; most of the arguing seems to revolve
around one poet being more important than another (whatever that means).
I got into this because someone said Mina Loy was more influential than
Adrienne Rich...
Tom
Orion Auld
>Looking at the above, it seems I even my choice of lowbrow poems are
>excessively highbrow. I guess I need to loosen up... Any
>suggestions?
>Millie (guilty of taking this thread too seriously)
How about Kenneth Koch's abbreviated Hamlets?
--
***** Orion Auld ***** *------------------------------------------------*
"We are only fabulous | If we took the bones out, it wouldn't |
beasts, after all." | be crunchy, would it? -- Monty Python |
-- John Ashbery *------------------------------------------------*
William Voelker
>even Auden may not make it. And, again, where is Yeats?
>It is impossible to take a list seriously that does not include
>Yeats -- like making a list of the top ten 16th century poets and
>not including Shakespeare.
Yeats is right where he belongs---off the list. Yeats, with his dreadful mysticism and lack of fun (excepting his Wild Old Wicked Man, the only bit of
Yeats that manages to work at all, having spirit unlike so many of his other poems (before jumping on me for "not doing my homework" I have read more
than a smattering of Yeats---I read the whole _Complete_, reading as I always do---with anticipation of something. What that something is I am never
sure of---and as I read it I was shocked at the complete lack of spark any of his poems had. The something I discovered was an amazing ability to be dull.
Where's the life? Where's the fire? Eliot can be tedious at times but at least he has strong, memorable passages in almost all his work.
Perhaps if we looked at American and English/Irish poets (after say, 1850 or so, Whitman and Dickinson being the Declaration of Independence of sorts) as
two radically separate traditions, instead of as one. Though we do speak the same language, the cultures are quite different and the poetic sensibilities
are not comparable one-to-one. I personally prefer Latin to Greek poetry, and the same sort of choice falls between American and English poetry (I
hesitate to bring poets such as Walcott, as they stand in neither camp. I think they are the new frontier in poetry...). There are certain forms that
work better in Greek than Latin (Homer is so much better than Virgil it isn't funny), and vice-versa. Each culture has its own influence, and remember
that the Roman poets we remember knew Greek poetry like the backs of their collective hands and went from there to write their own, while a comparable
group of Greeks was flourishing in their own tradition at approximately the same time. We're talking apples and oranges here.
Just a (far-too-long thought).
zaphod
William G. Sacks
: In article <316sid$p...@panix3.panix.com> tr...@panix.com (Daniel Sterling) writes:
: >Wallace Stevens
: Ezra Pound? One of the great Am Lit Mod debates. See eg. Perloff's
: fine essay "Pound/Stevens: Whose Era?".
: Stevens was an important thinker and a very clever poet, but I ultimately
: find him a trifle annoying. The group of sun worshippers in "Sunday
: Morning" (is that the right title?), for example -- oh, really.
: >Robert Hass
: >Carolyn Forche
: >TS Eliot
: Good thing Eliot wrote more poetry than drama. If he were remembered
: for his drama, he'd be second or third string in the canon (like
: Christopher Smart or Anne Finch, but less readable).
: >Eavan Boland
: >Louise Gluck
: >Robert Frost
: Tangent: is Frost a modernist? (I'd group him with Fitzgerald and
: Wharton as a cusp figure, marking the transition in Am Lit from the
: premodern to the modern, I guess.)
: >Adrienne Rich
: I dunno about this one. Rich is an important and readable essayist,
: and a competent poet, with a long and varied career (and a large and
: varied poetic corpus). I'm not sure that I'd call her one of the
: "ten best", though I'm not sure what my criteria for "ten best" would
: be. My tastes run more toward the lyricism of the American
: Confessionals: Lowell and Snodgrass (the ur-Confessionals), Sexton,
: Plath (though I don't think her work is quite as sophisticated as
: Sexton's). And let me put in a plug for my friend and teacher
: Joseph DeRoche.
: In terms of the history of twentieth century poetry, too, there
: might be some challenges (on the grounds of innovation or influence),
: though the length and variety of Rich's career supports her here.
: But Moore, Bishop, H.D., and Mina Loy were arguably more important
: in determining the directions of English-language poetry.
: >Wm. Carlos Wms.
: >Richard Hugo
: More suggestions:
: Amiri Baraka
: Basil Bunting
: Hugh MacDiarmid
: Edward Kemau Braithwaite
: W. H. Auden
: That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
: Michael Wojcik
: mwo...@lynx.dac.neu.edu mwwo...@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu
: Software Engineer, Micro Focus Ltd.
: Graduate Assistant, Department of English, Miami University
And James Dickey
Donald Hall
John Ashberry
W.S. Merwin
Hart Crane
Geoffrey Hill
Which is to say, top ten lists don't count for much when you're
dealing with a culture that successfully resists reification. Cheers.
Katherine Catmull
Will be at the funeral, check. Look for me in the back in violet dress,
a green thought, and green shades.
Kate
PS I'm not sure there isn't as much disadvantage to a loooong poetic
career as to an abbreviated one. Wordsworth had time to write so very
many drippy gooey poems.
Vance Maverick
> Looking at the above, it seems even my choice of lowbrow poems are
> excessively highbrow. I guess I need to loosen up... Any
> suggestions?
Bukowski. Try "40,000 Flies" for a start (it's in _Play the Piano
Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a
Bit_).
Vance (it's so easy to be a poet....)
Vance Maverick
> Seems to me that critics
> approach poetry from a method (New Criticism, deconstruction) or
> a philosophy (Marxism, Christianity)--or all of the above--and
> judge the poetry on that basis.
I'm not sure I know what the method or scheme is in Kenner's case. He
clearly comes out of the New Criticism, and he is a Christian, but
it's not his style to argue explicitly from such tenets. I'd say he
judges by a taste which has been visibly marked by school and
religion, and argues this taste (sic), with a vigorous and witty but
hardly rigorous rhetoric.
Vance
Millie Niss
>In <31hn9t$4...@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> mil...@shire.math.columbia.edu (Millie Niss) writes:
>
>>Looking at the above, it seems I even my choice of lowbrow poems are
>>excessively highbrow. I guess I need to loosen up... Any
>>suggestions?
>
>
Whatr is Koch's poetry like? I took a literature (20th C poetry)
class from him, which was great (he made us write in the style of the
poets we studied, which really helped to understand what was going on
formally), but somewhat strange because he and I disagreed completely
about which poems/poets are good. He went on about Frank O'Hara's
free-verse things about pop culture, which I absolutely hate, since
there is nothing more stale than 30 year old pop songs & movies, and
the language is so ordinary it seems as if it's only poetry because
the author says so. On the other hand, I like Seamus Heaney which
Kock find's hopelessely sentimental and awkward. So I'm not sure I'd
like Koch's poetry.
Millie.
Vance Maverick
> I have yet to meet any EngLit. professional types who don't like Auden.
As Allan pointed out, Kenner and Davenport don't care for him much.
(Johns Hopkins and the University of Kentucky, respectively.) I'm not
satisfied, though, with what they've said about him; and though I
dislike him too, I too have trouble saying why. My feeling about him
is a little like my feeling about Richard Strauss -- that every word
(bzw. note) is placed with evident but irritating cleverness and
effect, an endless facility that consistently misses felicity.
(Sorry, I've been reading Gibbon.)
> YMMV.
That's what we get for letting the EPA rate poetry....
Vance
roger m squires
>.... My feeling about him
>is a little like my feeling about Richard Strauss -- that every word
>(bzw. note) is placed with evident but irritating cleverness and
>effect, an endless facility that consistently misses felicity.
>(Sorry, I've been reading Gibbon.)
You need to include the word `specious' :)
Dick Cavett was on the radio today, and mentioned a
book of parodies in which a writer rewrote the
Gettysburg Address in the style of Eisenhower(sp).
Anyone seen this.
> Vance
rms
Daniel P. Hanson
Allan Burns <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>Why should influence be the most important criterion? If
>it were, we'd still be judging Cowley, Denham & Waller as
>giants.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--Allan Burns
in my heart.
-----
Daniel P. Hanson
Micanopy, Florida
Allan Burns
fac...@cats.ucsc.edu (Tom Listmann) says:
>
>In article <94212.13...@psuvm.psu.edu>, Allan Burns
><AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>> In article <facman-2907...@perform-mac19.ucsc.edu>,
>> fac...@cats.ucsc.edu (Tom Listmann) says:
>> >I've noticed over the years that poets like Auden and critics don't.
>>
>> Too sweeping a generalization, but quite possibly a tendency.
>
>It's a generalization about a tendency. Isn't everything said in this
>newsgroup a generalization?
No.
>It's tendency I noticed from discussions with
>poets such as Karl Shapiro, Richard Eberhart and Sandra Gilbert many years
>ago, and also just a general impression I get.
Probably you are drawing a false distinction between "academic
critics" and "poet-critics." See below.
>> >I think the reason for this is that poets admire the craftsmanship
>> >and are less concerned with the philosophy or message behind the
>> >poems (or the belief system behind the poetry);
>>
>> Do either Kenner or Bloom judge poems in this manner?
>
>Yes [. . .]
Guess again.
>Is it your point that the best critics are poets?
No. My point is that literary criticism as an activity
is something separable from academic institutions. Bloom,
I understand, will have something to say about this in
his next book . . .
>> >You can write
>> >reams on Yeats' symbolism or Celtic Twilight; Eliot's allusions,
>> >borrowings, Christian redemption, whatever; Pound's Chinese; but most
>> >of what I've read on Auden concerns his prosody, not his grand scheme
>> >for humanity.
>>
>> I wonder what serious critic judges poetry on the basis of
>> "grand scheme[s] for humanity."
>
>I'll turn that one back on you--what is the basis by which a
>so-called serious critic judges poetry?
There will usually be many bases. See remarks on this
subject by R. S. Crane & Harry Levin.
>Seems to me that critics
>approach poetry from a method (New Criticism, deconstruction) or
>a philosophy (Marxism, Christianity)--or all of the above--and
>judge the poetry on that basis.
Here's where the distinction between academic critics & poets
breaks down. Who were the New Critics? Ransom, Tate, Winters,
Blackmur & Warren. All except Brooks & the late comers were
poets. If you're suggesting, though, that bad critics
often judge poetry on inadquate grounds ("it isn't furthering
the social dialectic") well, yes: but I wasn't writing about
bad critics.
>So the critic has a grand scheme
>by which s/he judges the poet's grand scheme. If the critic can't
>find a grand scheme, or doesn't like the one found, the poet is dismissed.
Too simple. Most critics recognize the achievements of Yeats,
Eliot & Stevens. A sort of Celtic mystic, an authoritarian
Christian & an exotic atheist. How is this possible w/o
reference to some aesthetic standards beyond a political,
philosophical or whatever 'grand scheme'?
>Like maybe Auden doesn't fit in to Kenner's or Bloom's grand critical
>scheme? Their dislike may have begun as I suggested, and the complexity was
>piled on later.
Criticism as rationalization? I would expect more of these
fellows . . .
>> >If the dominant criterium for this list is influence, then you have
>> >to include Auden and WCW, I think.
>>
>> Why should influence be the most important criterion? If
>> it were, we'd still be judging Cowley, Denham & Waller as
>> giants.
>
>Well, what are the criteria?
I was merely pointing out influence is not the sole criterion.
It is one. There are many others, and a list that included
'originality,' 'craftsmanship,' 'variety of achievement,'
'influence on the language' and so forth would still be
incomplete.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Allan Burns
pac...@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu (Daniel P. Hanson) says:
>
>In article <94212.13...@psuvm.psu.edu>
>Allan Burns <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>Why should influence be the most important criterion? If
>>it were, we'd still be judging Cowley, Denham & Waller as
>>giants.
>>
>If you're referring to Fats Waller, he'll always be a giant
>in my heart.
Try Edmund Waller (1606-1687). He was considered in the 18th C
to have contributed, along with Denham, to an ideal 'smoothness'
in English verse. I think he still gets one or two things in
the Norton.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Allan Burns
fac...@cats.ucsc.edu (Tom Listmann) says:
>
>By 'influence on the language' do you mean the English
>language as a whole or the language of poetry--that is, the influence
>on other poets?
Both. Certainly exerting a considerable influence on the
language as a whole has been part of Shakespeare's posthumous
achievement.
>The poets I studied with--Shapiro, Eberhart, Sandra Gilbert--all referred
>me and others to Auden to study. they were fascinated by that 'endless
>facility.'
Of course. But facility in itself isn't enough.
>Tell me again why we would still be discussing Denham, Waller and
>Cowley as giants.
If short-term influence (not the stuff Bloom writes about) were
the sole criterion. Pound & Williams may, in the long run, look
like the Denham & Waller of our century.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Tom Listmann
<AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> wrote:
I would say that Auden meets all these criteria with the exception of
originality. By 'influence on the language' do you mean the English
language as a whole or the language of poetry--that is, the influence
on other poets? I think that Auden has had that influence, perhaps for
the same reason that Vance decries in an earlier post: that 'irritating
cleverness.' I don't find it irritating, but an attempt to comment on
modern life by combining traditional forms with contemporary speech.
The poets I studied with--Shapiro, Eberhart, Sandra Gilbert--all referred
me and others to Auden to study. they were fascinated by that 'endless
facility.' I have to admit, though, that Vance is more than half right.
All the poets admire Auden (and Yeats and Dylan Thomas) their facility,
but it would certainly be more than irritating if all poets had it!
Williams meets all the above criteria, to my mind...
Tell me again why we would still be discussing Denham, Waller and
Cowley as giants.
Tom
Mark Taranto
Allan Burns <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
> pac...@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu (Daniel P. Hanson) says:
>> If you're referring to Fats Waller, he'll always be a giant
>> in my heart.
> Try Edmund Waller (1606-1687).
I would, but his feet's too big.
Mark
Joseph M Green
>gree...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Joseph M Green) writes:
>>even Auden may not make it. And, again, where is Yeats?
>>It is impossible to take a list seriously that does not include
>>Yeats -- like making a list of the top ten 16th century poets and
A fellow from a college named after a Swedish King suspires:
>Yeats is right where he belongs---off the list. Yeats, with his dreadful mysticism and lack of fun (excepting his Wild Old Wicked Man, the only bit of
Nothing dreadful (in your sense) about Yeats' mysticism. In fact,
it was part of his sense of fun. It is all quite burnt away
in the poetry -- that is, the "silly like us" part.
You are, I hope, the only person who will ever claim that Yeats did not
write any strong, memorable passages. There are of these in Yeats than
in any other English poet except Shakespeare and Milton. Nattering
on about Greek and Latin fellows will not make up your lapse. What
can be said? If you read through Yeats and can still claim that there
are no memorable passages, you can't be helped. James Joyce says
so, most poets say so (some don't say anything), Hugh Kenner
says so etc. But you won't be troubled by this. This is the
problem. Rain raineth.
Joseph M Green
Allan Burns (may his tribe increase) is tolerating a discussion
with a fellow who wonders whether, in fact, all crtics and especially
20th century critics have a "grand scheme" by which they do what
they do and suggests that he knows the answer by deploring
academic criticism -- all those monographs, articles, books
setting out the academic critics peculiar views so that s/he
can continue to work in a park-like setting.
The answer is that the best academic critics do not have
a grand scheme for much of what they do unless one insists that
what is meant by scholarship is what is meant by ideology.
These critics spend a lot of time doing what a scholar does --
They spend a lot of time
simply trying to get at facts, determine context etc etc.
facts that usually suggest that grand schemes are instances
of fraud.
Over the past two years I did this everyday -- ah, another fool --
Example: Fellow from Yale suggests that Mary Shelley published
Frankenstein anonymously because she wuz a woman and celebrating
how wonderful that was by defying her famous poet husband and all
wicked males who want glory and immortality.
The scholar/hero... Takes 15 minutes to find Mary Shelley's
letter to Walter Scott in which she sets out her reasons for
publishing anonymously. Adds details of the Shelley's
situation -- a situation that suggests the many good reasons why
Frankenstein published anonymously. Oh, the fact that Shelley
was being hunted down like a dog for debt, that Harriet's suicide
was "in the news etc. etc. etc. Scholar hero then brings up the
fact that Lyrical Ballads published anonymously -- a strange
thing for the wickid male fellows who wrote it to do if, in fact,
publishing anonymously means what the Yale fellow says it does.
Fellow from Yale suggests that Mary Shelley criticizes the egotistical
sublime by creating characters in Frankenstein that have nothing to
do with herself. Walton cited as example.
Scholar/hero. Takes ten minutes to find passage after passage in
Mary Shelley's journal in which she quotes from the speeches
given to Walton and applies them to herself -- word for word.
Fellow from Yale want to provide novel interpretation of
Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." Interpretation --
Keats as a lower middle class poet is here asserting that he
doesn't need to know Greek or Latin to be a poet -- Oedipal
move against bad aristocratic poets -- that's why he merely "looks in"
and then asserts that he can appreciate classics without knowing the
languages. Keats choose "stout Cortez" instead of "stout Balboa"
because he wants the military metaphor -- he is the conqueror --
while, incidently, the men who remain silent as Keats looks out
into the sea of sublime poetry represent the lower classes -- Keats
denies them a voice. hahahah.
Scholar/Hero/Unlikely Ever to Be Employed except at Alabama
Chrisitan Normal replies:
Keats knew latin -- in fact, received a prize. Poem entitled
"looking In" because poem written after Keats and his buddy
spent the night reading selected passages aloud to each other --
all they did was "look in." Poem written quickly after Keats
walks home that morning. Cortez for meter and/or because Keats
didn't know .... and etc, blah, blah, oh my dear.
What I did incredibly easy -- but never done by those who need
grand schemes. Plenty of scholar/critics around tho damn
few will be left in twenty years. Instead persons will babble
and babble about their own grand scheme or babble that, after all,
everyone has one and the fellows who thought they didn't did.
Makes the world safe for the mediocre.
Joseph M Green
Other and the same fellows are discussing Auden's facile verse.
One fellow asserts that this and that poet (with whom he studied)
admired this facility and others suggest (by quotation, by assertion)
that this is a flaw -- perhaps all there is.
Auden's verse is not facile. That is the impression he wants, of
course -- just as the Cavalier poets, other "gentleman" poets want the
course -- the "Cavalier" poets, other "gentlemen" poets wanted
to make the same impression. Easy enough to check. Look at the
manuscripts, look at revisions, estimate the labor. Auden had
persons to seduce and impress -- a cunning fellow.
David E. Latane
>> >whereas the critics
>> >need something to analyze to death (and for tenure).
>>
>> Not the good ones. Aristotle? Coleridge?
>Both Aristotle and Coleridge were poets.
?????
Is it your point that the
>best critics are poets? I'll buy that--it comes back around to my Auden
>statement! I was referring to the academic critics of today, whose
>dissertations, monographs and articles published for promotion make up
>the vast majority of criticism.
News flash -- let's remember the academic poets of today, whose theses,
dissertations, log-rolling unread literary mags,
and wee little books that sound just like each other published for
promotion make up the vast majority of POETRY.
Despite their mantles of heterodoxy, penchant for ephebophilia,
and operaphobia, mortlignification sets on them too.
My list.
W.B. Yeats
Ezra Pound
Louis Zukofsky
W.H. Auden
Wallace Stevens
& then I could think of about twenty more (yes including women &
people of color).
D. Latane'
Tom Listmann
Green) wrote:
> Allan Burns (may his tribe increase) is tolerating a discussion
> with a fellow who wonders whether, in fact, all crtics and especially
> 20th century critics have a "grand scheme" by which they do what
> they do and suggests that he knows the answer by deploring
> academic criticism -- all those monographs, articles, books
> setting out the academic critics peculiar views so that s/he
> can continue to work in a park-like setting.
Tolerating? I guess r.a.b. really has gone downhill...I thought this
was a discussion group.
> The answer is that the best academic critics do not have
> a grand scheme for much of what they do unless one insists that
> what is meant by scholarship is what is meant by ideology.
The 'best' critics? What percentage are 'the best?' Is it possible
the 90% are as I described and rest as you say? This 'best' stuff
reminds me of my father, who defends all businessman as reasonable,
up-standing folks by claiming that the greedy bastards I deal with
everyday are just the few bad apples, not the 'good' ones.
You're mixing up research with criticism. My ragged little desktop
dictionary describes research as 'a systematic inquiry into a
subject in order to discover or check facts.' Criticism is defined
as 'The act or art of judging the quality of a literary or artistic
work.'
> These critics spend a lot of time doing what a scholar does --
> They spend a lot of time
> simply trying to get at facts, determine context etc etc.
> facts that usually suggest that grand schemes are instances
> of fraud.
> (tale of interesting detective work deleted)
That's the kind of stuff I loved doing back when I was in the academic
lit. field. I dropped out when the grand schemers took over.
> What I did incredibly easy -- but never done by those who need
> grand schemes. Plenty of scholar/critics around tho damn
> few will be left in twenty years. Instead persons will babble
> and babble about their own grand scheme or babble that, after all,
> everyone has one and the fellows who thought they didn't did.
> Makes the world safe for the mediocre.
My point exactly. Perhaps we should separate 'scholar' from 'critic.'
You don't need to be a professional scholar to be a critic. What
bothers me is that criticism seems to have become the exclusive domain
of professors. Among whom I work every day, and it's not a pretty sight.
Tom
Douglas Clark
Just as I head for bed I see Allan saying that Pound and Williams will
come to nothing. Presumably before Harold Bloom's and Helen Hennessy's
Wallace Stevens. This is rubbish and should be pointed out instasntly.
Goodnight.
--
Douglas Clark Voice : +44 225 427104
69 Hillcrest Drive, Email : D.G.D...@bath.ac.uk
Bath, Avon, BA2 1HD Books : http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/poetry.html
Francis Muir
Just as I head for bed I see Allan saying that Pound and Williams
will come to nothing. Presumably before Harold Bloom's and Helen
Hennessy's Wallace Stevens. This is rubbish and should be pointed
out instantly. Goodnight.
I am surprised that you are surprised, Douglas Clark. The Byeways of English
Poesy are strewn with the words of imperfect poets which touch us now and
then. Do you really give a rat's ass for the aca-waca-demics?
Let Dodo rejoice with the purple Worm,
who is clothed sumptuously, tho' he fares meanly.
For I bless God in the behalf of TRINITY COLLEGE in CAMBRIDGE
and the society of PURPLES in LONDON.
Fancis Muir
VerveCom
Green) writes:
Most people read
poetry because they enjoy bad
prose.
"Poetry must be as well written as prose."
In article <94214.09...@psuvm.psu.edu>, Allan Burns
<AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> (and others in this thread) wrote about the
difference in the way critics and poets look at poems:
# Who were the New Critics? Ransom, Tate, Winters,
# Blackmur & Warren. All except Brooks & the late
# comers were poets.
How many movements or classifications in poetry have been invented by
critics? Zero. Poets do all the work. With few exceptions, academic
critics are of no consequence. "Critics are eunuchs. They can tell you how
to do everything perfectly, but they don't have what it takes to do it
themselves."
Poets can tell you why--in nuts and bolts terms--they like another poet's
work. Critics drop a name and assume you know why. Rare is the critic
who'll publish an essay about how or why s/he enjoyed a specific poem.
Critics are always more comfortable with dead poets. The further in the
past, the better. It's much easier to separate the good from the bad in
past literature than in current literature. After all, much of the bad has
been forgotten. Poetry must be memorable language. To say who the good
contemporary poets are and why is to take a greater risk; it forces the
critic to demonstrate an actual sense of poetic taste that isn't simply
defined by works of the past. It's much easier just to ignore all the
contemporary poetry and settle down with Homer. It takes courage to say
who the good poets are writing today, and it takes humility. Now, whoever
heard of a courageous or humble academic?
I won't forget the subject here is TOP TEN. I could never reduce the best
20th century poets in English to a TOP TEN; my judgements are fluid, and
evolve from year to year...
Robert Hass -- _Human Wishes_ was somewhat disappointing because it was
too self-indulgent in a number of places, mostly in its subjects. His
earlier books _Field Guide_ and _Praise_ sometimes caused me to wince at
the childishness of his politics, such as in the anecdote about Hubert
Humphrey in "Paschal Lamb." Yet, Hass is consistently brilliant in his
form. The structure of the contents of _Praise_ and _Human Wishes_ is so
carefully built, section by section, that I am in awe. Hass is also one of
the finest poets when it comes to finding the poetic in contemporary
situations. In "January" there is the line: "Rachel has just had an
abortion and we all went for a walk in San Francisco near the bay.
Everything was in bloom and we were being conscientiously cheerful, young
really, not knowing what form there might be for such an occasion or, in
fact, what occasion it was." Later there is the last passage about Rachel
looking for a new house, but loving the old, impractical one. The subtle
undercurrent of edenic myth is deftly handled, so that the myth isn't
simply adapted, but transformed. That's art. "January" should be as
remembered as "The Waste Land." It's that good. The other thing I love
about Hass is his ability to picture. He makes moments of uncommon lyrical
and sensual beauty. Hass is difficult, but rewarding.
Elizabeth Bishop -- Every one of the 88 is a masterpiece.
Stephen Dobyns -- Tiresome at times, but in _Cemetery Nights_ he has some
marvelous poems. I don't know any poet with as original an imagination as
he has.
Denise Duhamel -- Young, she is one of her generations outstanding poets,
already. Published widely in the journals, she also has a knack for
capturing contemporary life. Poets have been lamenting that no one writes
successfully out of the suburbs. (Simpson doesn't count; he wasn't born
there.) She does, but also out of the city. Her collection _Smile!_ is
titled with an audacity we haven't seen since Wallace Stevens began a
poem, "Hi!"
James Wright -- He created some of the most beautiful, heart-breaking
poems of this century or any other.
----more-----
VerveCom
Randall Jarrell -- I love the compactness of his extended metaphors, as in
"90 North." I admire his clarity, and his coupling of high and low
culture...something Robert Pinsky currently aspires to but doesn't quite
pull off. I particularly value his unflinching vision. "Pain comes from
the darkness / and we call it wisdom. It is pain."
Dana Gioia -- Though I'm uneasy with his work, in that it seems lacking in
passion, I generally admire what he's trying to do: writing in forms, long
poems, historical poems, narrative poems, and doing it damned well. His
criticism means more to me, though. He takes risks.
Okay, that's enough. There's others. I hope some of the other posters to
this thread can be more specific about their top ten. Put some passion in
it, people! A male poet once told an audience I was in, "poetry was
invented so men could trick women into falling in love with them!"
Allan Burns
Clark) says:
>
>Just as I head for bed I see Allan saying that Pound and Williams will
>come to nothing.
Not what I wrote, Douglas. I wrote they may be remembered as the
Denham & Waller of their century. In the larger scheme of things,
not at all a trivial achievement. Waller was widely regarded as
the finest lyric poet in English even into the later 18th C.
Will Pound enjoy comparable accolades in, say, 2075? What I was
getting at is this: Denham & Waller created a mode of writing
poetry ('smooth' numbers, balanced antitheses, mimetic effects)
that was widely imitated. Few, in the late 17th & early 18th Cs,
I suspect, would have left them off a top ten list (if they were
'into' such things). Certainly Pope & Johnson held both of them
in high regard. But fortunes changed, especially after the
watershed of Romanticism.
Pound & Williams have been the presiding deities of American
verse for some time now, but I don't think that alone, if history
provides any indication, secures them a permanent place in the
pantheon--at least not, let's say, in the first rows. Waller, after
all, is still back there somewhere singing "Go, lovely rose . . ."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Daniel P. Hanson
I tried him.
Fats has nothing to fear.
Neile Graham
for talking about some contemporary poets.
Here are a few for mine:
Linda Gregg--While for some people she might go overboard on her interest
in spiritual and emotional matters, I find the power of her language and
her syntax and the construction of her imagery immensely effective and
like her intense interest in spirit and emotion. Her poetry makes the
narrator (herself?) seem human, real, alive, intense. Her sentence
structure makes the relationship of each sentence, each word, important
and active. My favourite books of hers are her first _Too Bright to See_
and her most recent _Chosen by the Lion_:
I am the one chosen by the lion at sundown
and dragged back from the shining water.
Yanked back to the bushes and torn open, blood
blazing at the throat and the breast of me.
Taken as meat. Devoured as spirit by spirit....
Robert Hass--While my true affection is for _Praise_ I also appreciate the
careful craft of _Human Wishes_, which is probably the better book. But
there's something in the power of the poems from _Praise_ that makes me
read and reread it. The irony and earnestness of the voice. "All the new
thinking is about loss / in this it resembles all the old thinking," "the
way her hands dismantled bread," "such tenderness those afternoons, saying
blackberry, blackberry, blackberry." (Sorry, this is my memory, and I
haven't a good one--I wish I could quote from "Song to Survive the
Summer" of the whole of "Meditation at Lagunitas").
W.S. Graham--a Scottish poet who lived in Cornwall, W.S. Graham (no
relation, worse luck) wrote some wonderfully arch yet powerful poems about
poetry and communication, and some gorgeous lyrics (from "Enter a Cloud":
"Slowly disintegrate me / said nothing at all...") stunning elegies, (from
his poem about his friend the artist Bryan Wynter: "Dear Bryan Wynter /
this is just a note to say / how sorry I am you died / you will realize /
what a difficult position / this puts me in [...] / I could not have died
for you / If I were so inclined." (Again these are from my faulty
memory.) And the tenderness of his "To My Wife at Midnight," and the eerie
directness of "The Nightfishing."
Jorie Graham--(again, no relation). Her recent book just got trashed in
the NYTBR, but what I like about her is that she is willing to take
outrageous chances. Okay, she often misses, but she often succeeds, as
well, and there's no one else I've discovered as willing to integrate
philophophy and "higher thinking" and art with life and poetry as if it
all is part of the same thing (well, isn't it?) There's so much flat
kitchen sink poetry, and Jorie Graham is the antidote.
Bronwen Wallace--Speaking of flat kitchen sink poetry, that's what I
first thought Bronwen Wallace's work was, but I kept reading it and
realized how she brings her subject matter to life and gives it power.
Poetry really lost someone who could have had a huge impact when she died
all too young a few years ago. Find a copy of _The Stubborn Particular
of Grace_ if you can manage it. Published by McClelland and Stewart in
Canada.
There are others like Gail Tremblay, Joy Harjo, Erin Moure', Robert
Bringhurst who write incredible, wonderful stuff and who are writing now
(Stephen Spender wrote in his journal that Robert Bringhurt's work was
stunningly good), but I haven't time to write about them all.
But I would like to see more of us talk about the writers we really like
and what about them strikes us the most, rather than list-making in and
of itself.
--Neile Graham
ne...@u.washington.edu
Vance Maverick
> In article <31ra9i...@news.gac.edu> zap...@dion.gac.edu (William Voelker) writes:
> > Yeats puttered about bewildered until Pound came along.
> Have you reason to think Pound helped Yeats write?
And have you read what Pound wrote before he met Yeats?
Vance
Joseph M Green
There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Yeats stumbled about until
he met Pound. A slight acquaintance with biography, a listen to the nattering
that goes on provides this impression. These are not reasons --
one does not expect reasons from a person who claims that Yeats wrote
no memorable verse. The fact that Stephen D. stumbles about in
Ulyssess reciting "Who Drives with Fergus" or a brief reading
of accounts of Dublin -- where every other person declaims Yeats --
might be enough. Or -- one could ask the shades of Auden, MacNeice etc. etc.
You would read their poetry, read their essays.
The fact that the fellows about you screwed up their faces at the
mention of Yeats should also give pause. As a fellow dweller
in this forlorn state -- haunting similar scenes one suspects --
I might caution you that the natives -- and those who come to dwell here, it
seems, have the literary sensibilities of moose.
Joseph M Green
David E. Latane
>How many movements or classifications in poetry have been invented by
>critics? Zero. Poets do all the work. With few exceptions, academic
>critics are of no consequence. "Critics are eunuchs. They can tell you how
>to do everything perfectly, but they don't have what it takes to do it
>themselves."
>Poets can tell you why--in nuts and bolts terms--they like another poet's
>work. Critics drop a name and assume you know why. Rare is the critic
>who'll publish an essay about how or why s/he enjoyed a specific poem.
Complete grotesque overgeneralization, based on a facile, puerile need
to align oneself with the notion that being a poet is being some sort
of "sojurning demigod" (since you won't cite your obscure quotations,
neither will I). I know dozens of critics who routinely do all the things
you say none of them do, and more than a few so-called poets who don't
have the foggiest notion what they're doing,
or why they like what they like ("it flows") etc.
>Critics are always more comfortable with dead poets.
What nonsense. Literary scholars who specialize in say medieval lyric
are supposed to be comfy with the material they've devoted themselves
to studying. The people I know who write criticism of contemporary poetry
are most comfortable with TA DA!!! contemporary poetry.
> Poetry must be memorable language.
Damn insightful; you must be a POET!
>defined by works of the past. It's much easier just to ignore all the
>contemporary poetry and settle down with Homer.
Good LORD. Have you ever tried to learn Homer's Greek? It's excruciatingly
difficult, and no critic of Homer ever existed who hadn't mastered it. (You
do know that Homer wrote in Greek?) (Post-scriptum--while critics of Homer
know Greek, there have been poets who translated him without it.)
It takes courage to say
>who the good poets are writing today,
Know it doesn't--it takes five seconds on r.a.b.
and it takes humility. Now, whoever
>heard of a courageous or humble academic?
95% of today's poets are academics. They have academic degrees and
academic jobs. Where in the world have you been--oh, I forget you've
just defined yourself as courageous and humble (tell me, how risky was it to
post your list--what feats of courage?).
The indescribable blather of "courage" and "risk" in describing something
as fundamentally safe as yakking about poetry -- please.
D. Latane'
Joseph M Green
asserts that Yeats was "stumbling" until he met Pound. His
companions urge him to "slime" yeats.
Yeats and Pound -- Let's see what K. Raine had to say in 64:
"The current notion was, as I remember, that it was astonishing
considering the nonsense that he read (Thomas Taylor, Plotinus,
and the Upanishads in preference to Freud, Marx or Lancelot
Andrews, Shelley and Blake rather than Shaw and Hopkins) that
Yeats wrote verse so obviously magnificent; curiously enough we
did not draw the obvious conclusion that effect must be related
to cause. Far from concluding a connection so obvious, Auden in
his poem summed up the view of his school: that although Yeats
was "silly like us" (and surely "like us" was put in to temper
the accusation of "silliness") he would be "pardoned" under a
"foreign code of conscience" for "writing well." It was also
fashionable to make a distinction between the "early Yeats" of
the Celtic twilight, embroidered, mythological and coloured by a
romantic view of love,and the "late Yeats" for whom his one-time
secretary Ezra Pound was given much credit. Social realists,
the political left wing, and those influenced, through Pound,
bythe American Imagist style, could recognize in "late Yeats"
certain stark images, crude words, and ragged personages which
might have appeared in works of their own school. They had not
looked closely enough to see that these were but a new embodiment
of those "heroic and religious themes, passed down from age to
age, modified by individual themes but never abandoned" which
Yeats had declared to be the unchanging substance of sublime
poetry... "The young Cambridge poets write out of their
intellectual beliefs (Yeats wrote) and that is all wrong. I have
no such pleasant world as they do. Like Balzac, I see decreasing
ability and energy and increasing commonness..."
....
This gentleman's views are, of course, much cruder than the views
expressed by this and that social realist of the forties. Just
as Yeats wrote...
Joseph M Green
What is really funny about the assertion that Yeats stumbled about
until he met Yeats is that Pound preferred the "Celtic Twilight" Yeats and
continued to prefer it -- as his selection in "From Confucius to
Cummings" indicates. In fact, early Yeats was by far the greatest
English language "poetic" influence on the early Pound.
William Voelker
>In <31jmbf...@news.gac.edu> zap...@juno.gac.edu (William Voelker) writes:
>>gree...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Joseph M Green) writes:
>>>even Auden may not make it. And, again, where is Yeats?
>>>It is impossible to take a list seriously that does not include
>>>Yeats -- like making a list of the top ten 16th century poets and
>A fellow from a college named after a Swedish King suspires:
(At least I can breathe. "Fresh Air" surrounds me and I have enough oxygen for my poor, poor cells.)
Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
(Yeats, "Vacillation")
(Alright, a misquotation, but for a purpose...) Now, for ye of flaming breath:
>>Yeats is right where he belongs---off the list. Yeats, with his dreadful mysticism and lack of fun (excepting his Wild Old Wicked Man, the only bit of
>Nothing dreadful (in your sense) about Yeats' mysticism. In fact,
>it was part of his sense of fun. It is all quite burnt away
>in the poetry -- that is, the "silly like us" part.
I do not mean "Silly like us" or any other such nonsense. Yeats tried so, oh so hard to be a poet, which requires High Seriousness. Reminds me of some
people I knew in college. Yeats puttered about bewildered until Pound (praise be the master editor) came along.
>You are, I hope, the only person who will ever claim that Yeats did not
>write any strong, memorable passages. There are of these in Yeats than
>in any other English poet except Shakespeare and Milton. Nattering
>on about Greek and Latin fellows will not make up your lapse. What
>can be said? If you read through Yeats and can still claim that there
>are no memorable passages, you can't be helped. James Joyce says
>so, most poets say so (some don't say anything), Hugh Kenner
>says so etc. But you won't be troubled by this. This is the
>problem. Rain raineth.
I discussed my position with a number of other people before I made my first foray. Their faces (none of them Swedish, though by your first remark your
bias is more than apparent) curled in horror at mention of Yeats and urged me to slime him much more than I did (which was little. I did not call him
bad, merely dull and unmemorable. Remember that many bad poets write memorable verse.) "Nattering on" is not what I did (except in your mind); instead, I
attempted to draw parallels between our modern situation and an older one (or have you no historical sense? The past is there for our edification, if
we would only look and learn). Do read Ellmann (and others, they do seem to agree)---Joyce had a terrible critical sense when it came to his
contemporaries (though I more than love his own writings). Kenner is a critic and entitled his opinion, as are you, though I have no reason to
respect either opinion. I suppose you love most contemporary "masters" too, such as Ashbery. A pity.
zaphod
Vance Maverick
> editor) came along.
> I did not call him bad, merely dull and unmemorable.
This is just to say that
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
is, while perhaps overly famous and marked by a somewhat distant
sensibility, (a) good, (b) musically subtle, (c) memorable, (d)
before Pound, and (e) one of many. (a, b, c IMHO of course.)
Have you reason to think Pound helped Yeats write?
Vance
PS. Please cut your line length down to 70 or so -- it's running
about 120 or more, which makes response difficult.
nik...@husc3.harvard.edu
> There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Yeats stumbled about until
> he met Pound. A slight acquaintance with biography, a listen to the
natterin> g that goes on provides this impression.
I wonder though if Yeats's late fascistic leanings were not in point
of fact inspired by Pound. I wonder also if it is not altogether
trivial to insist that Yeats wrote oodles of 'memorable verse'. Memory
is a daffy whore, easy prey to the wrong charms. Does not Yeats's
fascination with fascism bespeak a horrible wrongness that pervaded
from the start his entire murky mediumistic mumbo-jumbo-laden
mentality? Is this not relevant to his poetry? Or should one swallow
the moth-eaten lie that poetic genius, whatever that may be,
justifieth everything?
> The fact that the fellows about you screwed up their faces at the
> mention of Yeats should also give pause. As a fellow dweller
> in this forlorn state -- haunting similar scenes one suspects --
> I might caution you that the natives -- and those who come to dwell here, it
> seems, have the literary sensibilities of moose.
Should not the occult sensibilities of Morning Dawn wallahs also
bloody well give pause?
Philip Nikolayev
nik...@husc.harvard.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
'Likewise in respect of truth, I said, we shall regard as maimed in
precisely the same way the soul that hates the voluntary lie and is
troubled by it in its own self and greatly angered by it in others,
but cheerfully accepts the involuntary falsehood and is not distressed
when convicted of lack of knowledge, but wallows in the mud of
ignorance as insensitively as a pig.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vance Maverick
> Does not Yeats's
> fascination with fascism bespeak a horrible wrongness that pervaded
> from the start his entire murky mediumistic mumbo-jumbo-laden
> mentality?
Uh, it seems like this can only be established by looking at the
poetry. Got some early examples in mind? How about "Down by the
Salley Gardens"?
> Or should one swallow
> the moth-eaten lie that poetic genius, whatever that may be,
> justifieth everything?
Or the moth-eaten...prejudice that any biographical fact or claim is
part of the poetry -- that, once established, it is part of the
reading of any aspect of all the works?
Vance
David E. Latane
>I wonder though if Yeats's late fascistic leanings were not in point
>of fact inspired by Pound.
I don't think so--Yeats was a slight fellow traveller of a particular
British isles Zeitgeist; Pound was off in Italy.
I wonder also if it is not altogether
>trivial to insist that Yeats wrote oodles of 'memorable verse'.
It is a trivial point if one doesn't care anything for the art of poetry;
like saying it's trivial to insist that Einstein wrote many memorable
equations if you don't care for physics.
Does not Yeats's
>fascination with fascism bespeak a horrible wrongness that pervaded
>from the start his entire murky mediumistic mumbo-jumbo-laden
>mentality? Is this not relevant to his poetry? Or should one swallow
>the moth-eaten lie that poetic genius, whatever that may be,
>justifieth everything?
How fascinated do you think Yeats was with fascism? Certainly less
than Henry Ford. (What sort of car do you drive, by the way?) Yeats wrote
great memorable moving poetry--the stuff people value who know about poetry.
It's true that he was not only a man of his times but a peculiar
man of his times. So what? When I want to read a great poem, I reread
"Easter 1916"--when I want to get the grocery store, I drive my Escort. When
I need to be submerged in twaddle, I look here.
D. Latane'
Louise Van Hine
: In article <gree0072.776040596@gold>
Ahem: if I may, the reference to "Morning dawn" occult group. Yeats was
involved with a mystical society known as the "Order of the Golden Dawn",
a Rosicrucian-like mystical society which flourished and died in a brief
period of time in Britain. If you're going to condemn Yeats as a mystic,
make sure you lump in Herman Melville (Rosicrucian) Benjamin Franklin
(Rosicrucian and Mason) Erik Satie (Rosicrucian and composer for the
Grand Master of France), Robbie Burns (Scottish Rite Mason and
Rosicrucian) to name a few notables.
Joseph M Green
mud of ignorance? Are we to celebrate this? What I said
about the dangers of some slight acquaintance with biography and
the absorption of this and that opinion that is "in the air" applies.
When you dismiss Yeat's mysticism you dismiss, oh, neoplatonism,
Mallarme, Blake and on and on. Not easy to do one would hope.
You need to read the life and letters before nattering about Yeats
as fascist. Yours is an opinion that requires a willed ignorance.
Of course, you may just be embarrassed by Madame Blavatsky.
Joseph M Green
from the start. UNless you mean a taste for the Pre-Raphaelites --
I might be inclined to agree there -- or a rejection of Huxley --
I would disagree -- or you might mean a sensibility thatleads some
to suspect that he married his wife George to find a rhyme for forge --
I would disagree -- or you might mean his affection for Maud Gonne --
I would agree.
Simon Hardy Butler
thought him so. Actually, for all of Blake's "prophetic"
writings (Urizen, etc.), his sensibilities seem to be quite
terrestrially inclined. :-)
- Simon
daniel newell
<nik...@husc3.harvard.edu> wrote:
>I wonder though if Yeats's late fascistic leanings were not in point
>of fact inspired by Pound.
I'm new to this thread, so forgive me if the evidence has already
been pointed to or laid out, but I have been reading Yeats for a very long
time and have never conjectured "fascistic leanings" were present in his
poetry. Could you please make the argument for me? What do you account
as fascism?
I do know that Yeats wrote in the introduction to *A Vision*
(which I have been re-reading as of late) this:
"Ezra Pound, whose are is the opposite mine, whose criticism
commends what I most condemn, a man with whom I should quarrel more that
with anyone else if we were not united by afection, has for years lived in
rooms opening on to a flat roof by the sea."
> Does not Yeats's
>fascination with fascism bespeak a horrible wrongness that pervaded
>from the start his entire murky mediumistic mumbo-jumbo-laden
>mentality? Is this not relevant to his poetry?
Well, would you say the same thing about James Merrill's
mediumistic claims? What textual evidence is there that it *is* relevant
to his poetry? Got a particular poem in mind? Or has someone just scared
you of the modernists in general? (Sorry, I don't mean to be so
confrontational.) Stanely Fish has a essay that I myself am not too
familiar with, that many people say is the last word on the relationship
between ideology, politics, and aesthetics. He argues that there ain't
necessarily any relationship at all.
--daniel.
MICHAEL WISE
>of fact inspired by Pound.
Yeats's background as a member of the Irish Literary Revival and the
Abbey Theatre would seem to suggest that fascistic tendencies came along
fairly early. At first, the connection would seem strained, but the
Literary movement, like early fascism in Germany and Italy, was concerned
with the revival of Irish nationalism. For that to be possible, it was
necessary to piece together a sense of Irish history, a past that the
Irish could consider their own. The revival of Gaelic (all but supplanted
by English by the time of Yeats), of ancient fables in new retellings
(Kathleen ni Houlihan, Deirdre of the Sorrows, dozen of Cuchulain
retellings), of mysticism (which many would poo-poo as a strange quirk of
Yeats's; mysticism would be integral to the reforming of a nation which
had been under the yoke of a foreign power, political or religious, and,
in the case of Ireland, under the yoke of both, for hundreds of years),
all contributed to the fanatical nationalism that led to the Easter 1916
uprising and to the declaration of the Irish Republic in 1921.
Nationalism is not fascism per se, even though we've seen in recent years
how fanatical nationalism can result in disturbing echoes of nazism
(ethnic cleansing in Bosnia; has this thread gone on long enough for
Godwin's law to come into play?); other elements must come into play as
well. For the Irish, the outsiders, the scapegoats, were the English and
Anglo-Irish Protestants, even though they as individuals did much to push
the Irish revival. People like Yeats and Lady Gregory were members of the
Anglo-Irish ascendency, not peasants, yet they held up the Irish peasant
as a mystical paragon. Those who challenged this notion were roundly
shouted down, even when they were members of the clique. J. M. Synge's
_Playboy of the Western World_ was booed off the stage; since Synge was a
charter member of the Abbey and a gifted playwright, Yeats and Gregory
felt compelled to defend him and the play, though both did so with
distaste. The realism of Playboy challenged the mystique growing around
the peasant at the time. Yeats was dead center in the middle of all this.
How does all this ring of fascism? It is first essential to distinguish
what it is called and what it actually is. Fascist is a perjorative that
is applied with great effect to those who are politically conservative
and who make statements that can be construed as preferring a nation,
class, race, etc. over all others. The Nazi stain of blood indelibly
marks the word: one might just as effectively state that a person would
as soon murder five millions men, women and children for the crime of
being born as call them a fascist. This is as it should be: some words
need to carry their stigma with them. Communism should not be separated
from the deaths under Stalin; fascism should never be divorced from the
Holocaust.
Stating that, and in no way seeking absolution, Yeats's nation-building
proceeded in a fascistic way, by emphasizing a heroic past, by excluding
certain classes of people who were more or less assimilated into the
society, by silencing voices of dissent, by emphasizing militant action
over reasoned discussion (Sinn Fein and the IRA were both born at this time).
Yeats was certainly well on his way to being a fascist long before he met
Pound.
___________________________________________________________________________
Michael Wise (wwhi...@nevada.edu) UNLV English
"Now I want you to tell me just one thing more. Why do you hate the South?"
"I dont hate it," Quentin said quickly, at once, immediately; "I dont
hate it," he said. I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air,
the iron New England dark: I dont. I dont. I dont hate it! I dont hate it!
--William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!
Zack T. Smith
>In article <1994Aug6.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
> <nik...@husc3.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>>I wonder though if Yeats's late fascistic leanings were not in point
>>of fact inspired by Pound.
>
> I'm new to this thread, so forgive me if the evidence has already
>been pointed to or laid out, but I have been reading Yeats for a very long
>time and have never conjectured "fascistic leanings" were present in his
>poetry. Could you please make the argument for me? What do you account
>as fascism?
I recently attempted to find something -- anything -- in Yeats' poetry
that even remotely resembled a love poem. Couldn't find a one; of course
I was applying the standard that a love poem cannot and should not include
morbid references to death or decay... Ahhhh, poor WB, he had no glee.
Hearing that Yeats had fascistic leanings (if indeed that's true, who knows,
perhaps he was really going bonkers in his old age) does not surprise me TOO
greatly, for the reason that his emotional outlook seemed to be so negative in
general, and that all his rambling about Druid this-and-that did seem to me
to be a somewhat juvenile flavor of negativistic mysticism.
Plus we all know that jolly old Hitler's reliance of pseudo Christian, pseudo
Nordic negativistic mysticism was juvenile indeed. I would assert that fascism
of any flavor is a result of little more (1) hard upbringing (2) a stalling of
socioemotional development at the early teenage level, and (3) reliance on
negativistic mysticism to explain reality and deliver a moral code.
My two cents, discuss amongst yourselves.
Zack Smith
Millie Niss
Nationalism was quite informative, but to be fair, Yeats seems to have
regretted stirring up violence, and was disgusted with some results of
Nationalism. For example (is this the first time someone has posted
poetry in this thread?), in "The Circus Animals' Desertion," Yeats
reflects on all the mistakes in his career. One stanza is about _The
Countess Cathleen_, a nationalist play which helped to create the myth
of Ireland which the previous poster so well explained:
And then a counter-truth filled out its play
The _Countess Cathleen_ was the name I gave it;
She pity-crazed had given her soul away
But masterful heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanatacism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
The dream itself had all my thought and love.
The last four stanzas refer to Maud Gonne, whom Yeats loved and who
was obsessed with Irish Nationalism, and inspired Yeats to join that
cause. This is certainly not Yeats at his poetic best. The other
stanzas (which do not deal with politics) are better IMO.
Another example (from Meditations in Times of Civil War, part VI)
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen day of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O Honey-Bees,
Come build the empty house of the stare
Many of his best poems, while not specifically about Irish politics are
nonetheless strong condemnations of fanatacism. "The Second Coming"
is perhaps the best example:
[lns 3-8]
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intesity
I think these passages show that Yeats was very suspicious of
extremism of any kind, and was therefore no "fascist." If he was
guilty of inspiring it, it is because his particular gift was poetry
which is "full of passionate intensity" and he was able to make things
seem much more important than they really are.
Millie
Millie Niss
>I recently attempted to find something -- anything -- in Yeats' poetry
>that even remotely resembled a love poem. Couldn't find a one; of course
>I was applying the standard that a love poem cannot and should not include
>morbid references to death or decay... Ahhhh, poor WB, he had no glee.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May I suggest you rent a Care Bears video? You will find many
touching songs about love with no morbid reference to death and decay,
accompanied by cheering songs without any of those subversive rythms
which lead the youth to take drugs or become perverts....
>Plus we all know that jolly old Hitler's reliance of pseudo Christian, pseudo
>Nordic negativistic mysticism was juvenile indeed. I would assert that fascism>of any flavor is a result of little more (1) hard upbringing (2) a stalling of
>socioemotional development at the early teenage level, and (3) reliance on
>negativistic mysticism to explain reality and deliver a moral code.
This is not only wrong, it is extremely dangerous! Hitler did not
commeit his crimes because of Nietzsche or Wagner or a trauma during
toilet training. He committed them because of a general level of
anti-Semitism in Germany and resentment of the terms of the Versailles
treaty. If you blame it on personal psychology, you ignir everything
which could cause it to happen again.
>My two cents, discuss amongst yourselves.
I'm afraid your opinions don't merit rational discussion...
>Zack Smith
Millie, who is engaging in her first real flame in quite a while...
Francis Muir
FM
Mark Taranto
> I recently attempted to find something -- anything -- in Yeats' poetry
> that even remotely resembled a love poem. Couldn't find a one; of course
> I was applying the standard that a love poem cannot and should not include
> morbid references to death or decay... Ahhhh, poor WB, he had no glee.
Of course, if you rid yourself of your foolish standards, you would
find lots of them. How can you deny that anything with:
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
is from anything *but* a love poem.
Some might consider "A Deep Sworn Vow" a love poem. I certainly do.
If you want glee, try Hallmark. I'll stick with Yeats.
Mark
daniel newell
Francis Muir <fra...@oas.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>Yeats never rhymed with Keats.
Yes, Thank you. That is improtant to note.
Keats rhymes with fates.
and Yeats rhymes with streets.
Actually, and visiting Indian professor here had his EE and
his AAy mixed up in just that way.
It was incredibly funny. But, how was he to know?
Thought he was doin' pretty good knowing that they
were to be pronounced differently at all. (!).
--daniel.
Tim Sullivan
First, Yeats' alleged pro-fascism is rooted in the hysterical
interpretation of some pro-German statements he made (statements
quite common for Irish nationalists). Comparing his politicalism
to Pound's is a mistake. Besides, we all ignore a poet's politics
when he leans toward Communist totalitarianism; why make a fuss
over the mirror-image?
To sum up Yeats as a "pseudo-Christian", glee-less, Druidic, rambler,
is to cheat yourself of the genius of perhaps the greatest artist
of the twentieth-century. I really could not believe the previous
post: "he had no glee." Yeats perfected the transformation of reality
into poetical experience. His joy is subtle, but overwhelming;
he possesses the happiness of the saints (or at least of Blake).
He is probably the single greatest influence on writing and writers,
whether they realize it or not, in our time.
Anyone who dismisses him because of some ill-founded rumor, or
because of a bad experience in some Lit. survey course, is doing
himself a tremendous dis-service.
Tim
US Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, CA
Bob Ingria
What is really funny about the assertion that Yeats stumbled about
until he met Yeats
I assume this encounter took place during his Golden Dawn period and
goes a long way to explaining his name within the order: DEDI (= Demon
est Deus inversus). Obviously each Yeats was topsy-turvey from the
point of view of the other.
--
-30-
Ye Fra Irrumabo, His Marke
John McCarthy
>Plus we all know that jolly old Hitler's reliance of pseudo Christian, pseudo
>Nordic negativistic mysticism was juvenile indeed. I would assert that fascism>of any flavor is a result of little more (1) hard upbringing (2) a stalling of
>socioemotional development at the early teenage level, and (3) reliance on
>negativistic mysticism to explain reality and deliver a moral code.
This is not only wrong, it is extremely dangerous! Hitler did not
commeit his crimes because of Nietzsche or Wagner or a trauma during
toilet training. He committed them because of a general level of
anti-Semitism in Germany and resentment of the terms of the Versailles
treaty. If you blame it on personal psychology, you ignir everything
which could cause it to happen again.
>My two cents, discuss amongst yourselves.
I'm afraid your opinions don't merit rational discussion...
>Zack Smith
Millie, who is engaging in her first real flame in quite a while...
Very likely what Hitler was kooky about except anti-semitism wasn't
very relevant to his success in getting power and in motivating the
crimes he committed.
Consider, however, Zhirinovsky. His specific form of kookiness is
quite relevant to the danger he represents to Russia and its
neighbors.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
baumler alan t
>
>First, Yeats' alleged pro-fascism is rooted in the hysterical
>interpretation of some pro-German statements he made (statements
>quite common for Irish nationalists). Comparing his politicalism
>to Pound's is a mistake. Besides, we all ignore a poet's politics
>when he leans toward Communist totalitarianism; why make a fuss
>over the mirror-image?
his politics were a bit too wierd to fit any of the standard 20th century
slots, but he clearly had affinities with Fascism. He praised O'duffy, the
irish fascist leader, and was convinced that ordinary people were quite
incapable of running their own affairs and needed some vaugely Nicheian
supermen to do it for them. Orwell wrote a good essay on this which is in
"Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters.
Alan Baumler
Al...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
ge?
Abigail Ann Young
>of fact inspired by Pound. I wonder also if it is not altogether
>trivial to insist that Yeats wrote oodles of 'memorable verse'. Memory
>is a daffy whore, easy prey to the wrong charms. Does not Yeats's
>fascination with fascism bespeak a horrible wrongness that pervaded
>from the start his entire murky mediumistic mumbo-jumbo-laden
>mentality? Is this not relevant to his poetry? Or should one swallow
>the moth-eaten lie that poetic genius, whatever that may be,
>justifieth everything?
>
>
>Philip Nikolayev
>nik...@husc.harvard.edu
[.sig also munched]
I'm not sure about moth-eaten lies, but it does seem to me that Bad
Men have written Good Poems just as Good Men have written Bad Poems
(or novels, or what you will). Perhaps Auden should have the last word
on Yeats:
Earth, receive an honoured guest
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie,
Emptied of its poesy.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
A.
--
Dr Abigail Ann Young, Records of Early English Drama| young@epas.|
Victoria College, University of Toronto | utoronto.ca|
daniel newell
Abigail Ann Young <yo...@epas.utoronto.ca> wrote:
> Perhaps Auden should have the last word on Yeats:
Oh, Please. No. Let Bloom at least
(and he isn't so praising himself of WBY
but at least he is true to his spirit
and allows him to Sail To Byzantium and
be gathered. Auden would rather have
him scattered for some reason.) --Ah,
hell, I've done it again...discovered
(no...constructed, that's better) the
secret strength of a poem that I don't
like (!). Damn! :(
>Earth, receive an honoured guest
>William Yeats is laid to rest.
>Let the Irish vessel lie,
>Emptied of its poesy.
I think its "Emptied of it poetry."
That's line that I have always hated. And I suppose that it was
because his dream in Byzantium was to still be singing. I think that
Auden meant to praise, and well...I just don't think that he does it very
well. He does a violence to him that I can't sympathize. Most of the
lines seem like they were written for somebody else beforehand. Compare
these stanzas with "Sailing To Byzantium" (I'm just supposing you have
that one in your memory--Yeats did write many memorable poems you know...
(smile).)
Auden:
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar afections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wook
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
If only Auden would have said the words of a dead man are wrenched in the
guts of the living. I think even that would make the poem more palatable
for me. It would at least give a hint that he knew what he was doing, and
thereby be truly "In Memory of." (It would make that last line a "better"
too, don't ya think?) But the stanza is topical to the discussion. The
fellow from New Mexico (long and excellent post) was in deed even after
what was looking like an apology, willing to punish him. (I hope my
memory is true to me on that one--if not...apologies. It was someone else
that posted shortly thereafter.
--daniel.
Joseph M Green
see that I am too late -- the natterers are already at large
and now we have the assertion that Yeats never wrote a "love
poem" along with the assertion that Yeats was a Fascist and
was, perhaps, a fascist all along -- something terribly wrong
from the start.
I don't wonder at this. The fellow who can't find a love poem
also writes that he ain't suprised to find out (from reading
a post here) that Yeats was a Fascist. This is usually all the
research these kinds of fellows do. Nattering is the mot juste.
Here are the facts about Yeats and Fascism -- available from
any biography.
Hell, I'll even copy a passage from Ellmann's bio:
"During these years [1933-1935] he [Yeats] arrived at his first
conclusions about politics. He began badly in 1933 by involving
himself slightly with a group of Irish fascists who wore blue
shirts and at one time seemed likey to threaten the De Valera
government. Their leader was General O'Duffey, whom Yeats met
not many times as has been said, but only once. Yeats recognized
from the first, as his letters prove, that O'Duffey was a
demagogic, fictile man, but hoped that he might develop
leaderlike qualities which he never did. Eventually O'Duffey
went off with an Irish brigade to fight for Franco in the Spanish
civil war. Yeats, like most of his fellow countrymen, was by
thistime thoroughly disaffected, and hoped O'Duffey would not
return from Spain a hero. The general happily did not prove a
very helpful acquisition to the Falange. [In fact, the Irish
brigade returned with more men than left]
Although Yeats was seen in a blue shirt at this time, he had been
wearing blue shirts since 1925 or 1926, and the reason was not
political but esthetic. If he learned the habit from anyone, it
was from William Morris. His brief encounter with O'Duffy must
have shown that they were more at odds than in accord. What
Yeats wanted was a political party which would espouse Unity of
Being" and turn it into a "discipline, a way of life," even a
"sacred drama." In February 1934, still toying with the
unofficial army, he wrote some marching songs for O'Duffey's men
which included such lines as: "What's equality?-Muck in the
yard:/ Historic nations grow/ From above to below.
But by August of the same year he had realized his error and
rewrote the poems so that nobody could sing them; and ,in
addition, to show that his earlier utterances had been
transitory, he made another poem to embody his growing
disaffection with politics: "What if the Church and the State/
Are the mob that howls at the door!"
In 1935 Yeats still urged in conversation the despotic rule of
the educated classes, but as the terror of Fascism and Nazism
increased he ceased to speak in favor of any existing government.
His friend Ethel Mannin, the novelist, tried on one occasion to
persuade him to take a definite position against totalitarianism.
They asked him to recommend Ossietsky, whom the Nazis had
imprisoned, for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeats refused, and in
letters defending himself indicated his disaffection with every
known governmental system:
"Do not try to make a politician of me, even in Ireland I shall
never I think be that again -- as my sense of reality deepens,
and I think it does with age, my horror at the cruelty of
governments grows greater, and if I did what you want I would
seem to hold one form of government more responsible than any
other and that would betray my convictions. Communist, Fascist,
nationalist, clerical, anti-clerical are all responsible
according to the number of their victims. I have not been
silent, I have used the only vehicle I possess -- verse. If
youhave my poems by you, look up a poem called "The Second
Coming." It was written some sixteen or seventeen years ago and
fortold what is happening. I have written of the same thing again
and again since... I am not callous, every nerve trembles with
horror at what is happening in Europe "the ceremony of innocence
is drowned.""
....
Joseph M Green
> - Simon
Certainly Blake was a mystic -- even if of this type -- unless you
have some special definition of mystic (or mysticism -- or esoteric
beleifs --) that we should know about.
Joseph M Green
of stuff as Michael Wise in an article written in 1964. "Yeats'
adherence (in art, politics and human relationships) to
aristocratic and traditional values was indeed resented as an affront
to the rising lower classes then first becoming articulate and powerful.
To question the values of the new era was, at that time, to invite the
accusation of "Fascism."
Of course calling Yeats a fascist and then finding that he was one
all along is a game that has been played for some time. Yeats
caught on to what, in fact, Europen Fascism meant a lot more
quickly then all those (and these were legion) poets, artists etc
who took years to catch on to what Stalinism meant. Took the Hitler/
Stalin pact for them to feel betrayed.
One wonders how long it will take those who dabble in the construction
of theories based on nothing but vague feelings and a complete lack
of scholarship to realize the clownishness of their opinions.
Joseph M Green
One should also mention -- before we hear more about the influence
of Pound on Yeats in political ways -- that Yeats called Pound
"a revolutionary simpleton."
Just thought I'd introduce a fact.
Joseph M Green
then I di at first. I see that Michael is a grad student in English.
This explains the absolute lack of scholarship and logic in the article.
Michael is indulging in the latest half-assed theory -- the theory
of nation-building -- a theory devided by the same fellows who
bring you all the other dreary, self-serving theories designed
to give them something to write about -- they certainly
cannot write about literature. Examine his last two paragraphs.
Notice that the nation built by a number of political parties
with a number of views -- towards revolutionary violence among
other things -- becomes Yeats building of the nation. Historians
should be alerted that Yeats was so all-powerful. Wise lists
fanaticism as an instance of Yeatsian nation building. He does this blithely.
Would a fanatic describe Ireland as a place of "great hatred, little room?"
Yeats does -- and again and again he refuses to participate in political
action of the fanatic sort, expresses his contempt for fanatics, and
even tries to examine his character to see if this is part of it. Yeats
didn't make any revolution -- amazed at the 1916 rising. His program
based on what he thought O'Leary's program was -- and it included
specifically a contempt for the fanatic. Has Wise ever read any
of Yeats' poetry?
All Yeats sees as a result of violent revolution is the beggar on
horseback lashing the beggar on foot.
Yet -- Yeats is a fascist. What a perversion! How typical.
Yeats' poetry recalls a heroic past --- ooooohhhhh -- he must have
been someone like Wagner. The Fiddler of Dooney with a Nazi armband.
Yeats wanted to create a national identity -- so that politics with
all its brutality could be surpassed. This was naive, one supposes --
but it is nothing like what Wise accuses Yeats of doing. And --
Yeats worried that by doing this -- by providing myth -- everything
would be perverted by politicians. He did worry that the mythof
Cuchulain would have the effect it did -- that certain words of
his might have sent the fellows who participated in the Easter
risong out to be shot.
Has Wise ever read any of Yeats poems on Maud Gonne? Yeats
thought that she -- like so may including Eva Gore Booth and Con
Markievicz -- was ruined by revolutionary fanaticism. There
was nothing he abhorred more.
Was Yeats a fascist becasue he helped form a national theatre?
This is what Wise insists, it seems. In the current theory
that Wise adopts (uncritically -- he will be employed for sure)
any attempt to instill national identity is fascist.
In this model there is nothing more wicked than heroic myths --
after all this is where all violence begins. Yeats swans, towers,
mysic trees, red roses upon the rood of time etc. etc. are all
instances of this primitive fascist instinct.
And his post is so innocent of history! And the result is that
Lady Gregory -- operating from the same folkloric impulse that
brings us Darby O'Gill and the Little People -- might as
well have been the she-beast of Dachau.
There is no awareness of the complexity (of any complexity) in the
post, it perverts history, it is written in the smarmy tone of
the professional academic informing us in his priestlike way
that here at last are the pure waters of ablution, it is
fatuous -- I'd say it's ready to be published.
Jeffrey Davis
+Simon Hardy Butler writes:
+
+> Blake was not a mystic, even though Yeats apparently
+>thought him so. Actually, for all of Blake's "prophetic"
+>writings (Urizen, etc.), his sensibilities seem to be quite
+>terrestrially inclined. :-)
+
+Certainly Blake was a mystic -- even if of this type -- unless you
+have some special definition of mystic (or mysticism -- or esoteric
+beleifs --) that we should know about.
Blake was undeniably odd. The little glimpses of him from his
contemporaries don't always gibe with the written record: the
rancors which show up in the margins of his texts don't quite match
the benign personage who saw angels in his apple tree. There's a lot
of humbug about him that's hard to sort through. Nowadays, it's
assumed that people who hear voices are schizophrenic, but Blake's
work is of a different order from the Biblical style rantings
of the crazed who usually report from God. But Blake loved irony which
isn't the usual tool of the mystic. Optimystically, if we get to gas
with our fellow men come Judgment Day, there'll be a long line of people
waiting to talk to Blake.
--
Jeffrey Davis <da...@keats.ca.uky.edu> Lots Available
Doug Quarnstrom
: One wonders how long it will take those who dabble in the construction
: of theories based on nothing but vague feelings and a complete lack
: of scholarship to realize the clownishness of their opinions.
Forever, I would imagine. I still cannot resist the urge...
doug