When people ask me why I have such a dim view of contemporary American verse I will, at times, avoid the obvious retort, “Because the overwhelming number of published poets & books are awful.” When that occurs I usually speak of the unspoken “other poets”- y’know, the kind in Cosmoetica’s Hall Of Shame, but whom other writers always touch upon with phrases as, “Unlike so many poets today Poet A not only  cures Cancer & AIDS with his/her majestic tropes toward irrectitude, but also defines who we are in a time when pastrami is considered unhealthy.”- never mentioning those “other” poets whose genetic discoveries, righteousness, & lack of vision re: deli foods are somewhat suspect. Or I may counter with a rail against workshops & their spawn. But to be honest, the main problem is probably connected to the horrid state of poetic critique & editing. As someone who started & runs a poetry critique group that specializes in combating this I do have a particular saw to wield- or ax! This malady was brought home to me (literally) with the recent receipt of my March/April, 2001 edition of Poets & Writers magazine. While the magazine’s main value is its postings of resources & submission ads, occasionally a good article surfaces amidst the banal interviews of careerist writers unwilling to step on academic toes & tips from bad writers on how to attain nadirs they only dream wetly of. But, alack!, too often a horrible piece appears that screams for a stiff rebuttal.
  Such a diaphragm-inducing urge hit me upon scanning p. 83 of said issue- a piece called “Experience Through Language: How An Editor Chooses A Poem” by one Marion K. Stocking, editor of the long-lived The Beloit Poetry Journal. Ms. K. (dare I mere K?) essays a defense of her profession with a meagerly written, poorly cogitated piece on the grandeur of a demonstrably bad Philip Booth poem Seventy- I shall quote it in a bit! I shall also quote her poor analysis of the poem.
  But K starts her essay  telling us that TBPJ was founded in 1950 & published the folk you know all too well- the good & bad. She pins the dirty deed of bad editorship on about 7 other souls who go unnamed (sense a pattern?), while telling us she scans through about 38 poems a day- parenthetically adding for the innumerate that that is nearly 14,000 ppa (poems per annum). My arduous dash past long multiplication to the trusty Texas Instruments calculator confirms her ballparking at a prodigious 13,870 ppa- quite a gal this K! No wonder the bespectacled mien gazing off into the distance that her snappy B&W photo reveals! Now TBPJ (tuberculosis pajamas?) is no better nor worse than the typical poetry journal of this era- its longevity is best ascribed to sheer luck- but it is as good a target as any.
  Their editorial process comes down to a quarterly set-to with these criteria: accuracy of information (in what sense- historical, scientific, perceptual? But isn’t it the point of an artwork to highlight only certain things?), accuracy of image (how may skies have ever prompted visions of etherised patients laid upon a table in you?), ontological & political stance (religiots, theists, & moderates need not apply?), dashes to dictionaries & encycopediae (to ground their ontologies), flair their passions (my!), & then end with “an understanding of each other’s response to every poem (ontological grounding has its advantages!). They laugh, cry, kissy-kissy- then send off acceptances & contracts. As K relates their process, “Carelessly worded, self-indulgent, single-dimensional, and merely descriptive poems drop out early, as do many that are flawlessly workshopped but fail to ignite. The rare poems with fresh and distinctive language, or with a comic spirit, or that broaden our cultural perspective- these get special attention.” She then gives a perfect example of not practicing her preachments by republishing a recent poem by lifelong mediocrity Philip Booth (a TBPJ “Discovery of 1952!”), a poem “of exquisite music and with transformative power” that moves K to Levertovian nourishment. The poem is Seventy:

Zero out the kitchen
window. Up 2° from
noon. Too cold for snow

we used to say. The radio
says flurries. Our bones
know better now, our noses

smell the metal sky.
By three a big low
off the coast; we know

its January weight.
Power lines down. Whorls
of horizontal snow.

At iron dusk, the white-out.
No other house in sight.
Drifted beyond compass,

we light two candles, bank
the woodstove, move up stairs.
In this barely anchored bed

we let our legs warm up
our feet. Which mingled, heat
the rest of us against

the deep old dark. All night
the constant roar: as we once
dove from rocks to swim, we

let old waves wash over us,
waves like this storm,
fetched from a far shore.

  Now, to say this is not a bad poem is to reveal your poetic ignorance. The 1^st 7 stanzas are merely mediocre workshop pabulum- classic tropes & themes- but its last 2 stanzas are excruciatingly bad writing. Each of the 6 lines houses a cliché: either in word or trope; in order- “deep old dark”, “constant roar”, “dove from rocks to swim”, “waves wash over us”, “waves like this storm”, & “far shore”. Again, to argue these are not cliches means you need to read a lot more poetry- period. Taken as a trope, & add in “metal sky” & “iron dusk” from earlier, several poor line breaks (lines 2, 21, 23, 24) & you have a bad, bad poem- but one that is salvagable, perhaps, with a good stern critical rebuke- for it does have some good sound qualities.
  Let’s see how Editor K handles the situation!: She starts off with the obvious points of sound- although her interpretations are a puzzle. The initial “o’s and oo’s and ou’s establish and control the first section”. If you say so, K. Lines 11-12 become “almost onomatopoetic”. This is classic- what I dub- bigwordthrowingarounding! Look up onomatopoeia, please. Now- does this make sense? K hopes to impress the ignorant with her bigwordthrowingarounding, yet we see no onomatopoeia here. “But”, say you, “K said almost onomatopoetic!” This is another term known as coveringyourbareassing! K is proficient at this. A few more banal observations gets K revved up to spiel on-
 NARRATIVE- we find out this poem is linear, but more complex than linear; not strictly metrical; that “enjambed” lines help maximize each word’s impact. I highlight enjambed because here is another misuse of criticism. Enjambment is merely the breaking of poems into lines. Therefore, unless you are writing a proem, all of your poem’s lines will be enjambed. K is banking on the reader’s ignorance again, or their misbelief that enjambment only means lines broken mid-sentence. She hopes that by using this common term as if a rarely used device it will heighten the perceived skill-level of Booth- whom she admires! K then indulges in more bigwordthrowingarounding by speaking of the poem’s “delicate syncopation between lineation and syntax” & “the small silences of the sharp caesuras”. OK, let’s take a 2^nd looksy.
  Syncopation is basically elision of a sound or letter- like “y’know”. How this is used by K to describe the lineation & syntax is a mystery- but it sounds good. Caesura is just a fancy term for brief pause (usually- but not always- midline)- therefore to say a caesura has small silences seems redundant- no? But how are they sharp? No explication is offered.
  We do learn the 9 stanzas are really 4 parts- don’t ask. Also that Seventy has “dialectic force”. I.e.- it argues with itself via opposites as “cold/heat”, “light/dark”, “intimacy/distance”, etc. In other words it achieves the bare minimum any art should- although K rationalizes this: “A Philip Booth poem always rewards attention to the poet’s handling of time and space”. Again, K states the obvious of a very obvious poem, while gliding over its huge chunks of meager construction, lack of reworking, & poorly thought-out themes. But she saves her worst justifications for the poem’s abysmal ending. Ach du lieber Gott in Himmel!
  K actually lauds the last 6 lines. Cliches are “colloquial and crisp”. The last 3 lines are a “synchronicity”! Once a bigwordthrowerarounder always a bigwordthrowerarounder! She ascertains that “metal sky” & “iron dusk” are “weighty tropes”- that’s New Age for cliché. The phrase “the deep old dark” is “wonderfully resonant” while the final 3 lines she almost unbelievably lauds as “so compressed and original as to (quite properly) defy paraphrase”. Well, K, no paraphrase is needed for trite, hackneyed, and/or clichéd! The lack of knowledge about even the most fundamental criteria of the art of poetry is so mind-bogglingly absent as to stupefy one into rictus. Is it any wonder the loathsome state of American Poetry as practiced in Academia?
  K ends with platitudes about the poem’s being about raised consciousness, balance, volition, the half-submerged psyche, & takes her to a place, a fellow editor chimed, “irreducible to language.” Notice, novice poetry readers & writers, her lapses into bigwordthrowingarounding again! This is a telltale sign of someone bullshitting you. Nearly 14,000 ppa for decades & poor K still hasn’t learned a thing of the craft! K sums up her feelings with another old trick of the literary charlatan- quote someone else! For K it’s Denise Levertov, again, “[poetry is] experience through language”- another seemingly obvious statement which when examined is only partly convincing. Poetry can be that- but often it is just language itself. Another charlatan red flag- use of superlatives. But whether you agree with the quote or not, as applied to the Booth poem it’s an experience you won’t regret forgetting to bring your Kodak along for.
But now perhaps you see the depth of the problem. It’s not just that Booth writes such a bad poem. He probably got no real hard critique on it. His editors/publishers gave no hard criticism. K is so moved as to write a banal essay justifying its flaws. And to top it off Poets & Writers publishes a bad critical piece on a bad poem. And sure as can be there will be letters praising both Booth’s poem & K’s defense in the next bimonthly edition.
  You see, the reason for poetry criticism’s decline is that most poets need to be taught to think critically. Because they are not they merely consult one another’s texts to find support for their arguments- i.e.- they regurgitate each others’ secondhand regurge. And because the folk they consult likewise have not learned critical thought processes the regurge just gets passed around from mouth-to-mouth, text-to-text. Thus you end up with people like K- a marvelously proficient bigwordthrowerarounder, but a dismal & unschooled critic. The point is that you as a reader should not believe something & respew it merely because you read it in print- think! It does not matter whether I said it in Cosmoetica, K said it in Poets & Writers, or any other opinion you may happen upon. Do not mouth the regurged opinions of any writer or professor. Learn how & why a poem works or fails- then convey it on your own!
  Because if this is how an editor chooses a poem the real problem goes out a step further- to the readers who accept such tripe. But that is another essay’s target!

  Now, to say this is not a bad poem is to reveal your poetic ignorance. The 1^st 7 stanzas are merely mediocre workshop pabulum- classic tropes & themes- but its last 2 stanzas are excruciatingly bad writing. Each of the 6 lines houses a cliché: either in word or trope; in order- “deep old dark”, “constant roar”, “dove from rocks to swim”, “waves wash over us”, “waves like this storm”, & “far shore”. Again, to argue these are not cliches means you need to read a lot more poetry- period. Taken as a trope, & add in “metal sky” & “iron dusk” from earlier, several poor line breaks (lines 2, 21, 23, 24) & you have a bad, bad poem- but one that is salvagable, perhaps, with a good stern critical rebuke- for it does have some good sound qualities.
  Let’s see how Editor K handles the situation!: She starts off with the obvious points of sound- although her interpretations are a puzzle. The initial “o’s and oo’s and ou’s establish and control the first section”. If you say so, K. Lines 11-12 become “almost onomatopoetic”. This is classic- what I dub- bigwordthrowingarounding! Look up onomatopoeia, please. Now- does this make sense? K hopes to impress the ignorant with her bigwordthrowingarounding, yet we see no onomatopoeia here. “But”, say you, “K said almost onomatopoetic!” This is another term known as coveringyourbareassing! K is proficient at this. A few more banal observations gets K revved up to spiel on-
 NARRATIVE- we find out this poem is linear, but more complex than linear; not strictly metrical; that “enjambed” lines help maximize each word’s impact. I highlight enjambed because here is another misuse of criticism. Enjambment is merely the breaking of poems into lines. Therefore, unless you are writing a proem, all of your poem’s lines will be enjambed. K is banking on the reader’s ignorance again, or their misbelief that enjambment only means lines broken mid-sentence. She hopes that by using this common term as if a rarely used device it will heighten the perceived skill-level of Booth- whom she admires! K then indulges in more bigwordthrowingarounding by speaking of the poem’s “delicate syncopation between lineation and syntax” & “the small silences of the sharp caesuras”. OK, let’s take a 2^nd looksy.
  Syncopation is basically elision of a sound or letter- like “y’know”. How this is used by K to describe the lineation & syntax is a mystery- but it sounds good. Caesura is just a fancy term for brief pause (usually- but not always- midline)- therefore to say a caesura has small silences seems redundant- no? But how are they sharp? No explication is offered.
  We do learn the 9 stanzas are really 4 parts- don’t ask. Also that Seventy has “dialectic force”. I.e.- it argues with itself via opposites as “cold/heat”, “light/dark”, “intimacy/distance”, etc. In other words it achieves the bare minimum any art should- although K rationalizes this: “A Philip Booth poem always rewards attention to the poet’s handling of time and space”. Again, K states the obvious of a very obvious poem, while gliding over its huge chunks of meager construction, lack of reworking, & poorly thought-out themes. But she saves her worst justifications for the poem’s abysmal ending. Ach du lieber Gott in Himmel!
  K actually lauds the last 6 lines. Cliches are “colloquial and crisp”. The last 3 lines are a “synchronicity”! Once a bigwordthrowerarounder always a bigwordthrowerarounder! She ascertains that “metal sky” & “iron dusk” are “weighty tropes”- that’s New Age for cliché. The phrase “the deep old dark” is “wonderfully resonant” while the final 3 lines she almost unbelievably lauds as “so compressed and original as to (quite properly) defy paraphrase”. Well, K, no paraphrase is needed for trite, hackneyed, and/or clichéd! The lack of knowledge about even the most fundamental criteria of the art of poetry is so mind-bogglingly absent as to stupefy one into rictus. Is it any wonder the loathsome state of American Poetry as practiced in Academia?
  K ends with platitudes about the poem’s being about raised consciousness, balance, volition, the half-submerged psyche, & takes her to a place, a fellow editor chimed, “irreducible to language.” Notice, novice poetry readers & writers, her lapses into bigwordthrowingarounding again! This is a telltale sign of someone bullshitting you. Nearly 14,000 ppa for decades & poor K still hasn’t learned a thing of the craft! K sums up her feelings with another old trick of the literary charlatan- quote someone else! For K it’s Denise Levertov, again, “[poetry is] experience through language”- another seemingly obvious statement which when examined is only partly convincing. Poetry can be that- but often it is just language itself. Another charlatan red flag- use of superlatives. But whether you agree with the quote or not, as applied to the Booth poem it’s an experience you won’t regret forgetting to bring your Kodak along for.
But now perhaps you see the depth of the problem. It’s not just that Booth writes such a bad poem. He probably got no real hard critique on it. His editors/publishers gave no hard criticism. K is so moved as to write a banal essay justifying its flaws. And to top it off Poets & Writers publishes a bad critical piece on a bad poem. And sure as can be there will be letters praising both Booth’s poem & K’s defense in the next bimonthly edition.
  You see, the reason for poetry criticism’s decline is that most poets need to be taught to think critically. Because they are not they merely consult one another’s texts to find support for their arguments- i.e.- they regurgitate each others’ secondhand regurge. And because the folk they consult likewise have not learned critical thought processes the regurge just gets passed around from mouth-to-mouth, text-to-text. Thus you end up with people like K- a marvelously proficient bigwordthrowerarounder, but a dismal & unschooled critic. The point is that you as a reader should not believe something & respew it merely because you read it in print- think! It does not matter whether I said it in Cosmoetica, K said it in Poets & Writers, or any other opinion you may happen upon. Do not mouth the regurged opinions of any writer or professor. Learn how & why a poem works or fails- then convey it on your own!
  Because if this is how an editor chooses a poem the real problem goes out a step further- to the readers who accept such tripe. But that is another essay’s target!

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