D7-DES6
On American Poetry Criticism;
& Other Dastardly –Isms
PART 2:
Slopes Slippery, Spirals Downward, & The Cliché As Fulfillment:
Forché, Rich, Hall, & Stafford
by Dan Schneider, 10/4/01

  Too often American Poetry Criticism [APC] gets ripped for being too insular in protecting the Academics [largely Dead White Males- DWMs] while savaging ‘Outsiders’ [read: ethnic minorities, plebeians, gays, & others of those nasty ilks], even though the very true weaknesses of the 'Outsiders’ are mirrored in the Academics. I, too, have ripped on both sides in essays. But the far more difficult game to bring down is that represented by the Academics- nicely selected above. What I endeavor to achieve in this essay is to point out the blurbs these writers have received, give 1 poem from each as an example of bad writing [save for 1 of the 4’s which is here for its contrast & is a good poem!- guess whose?], explain some of the defense mechanisms these poems & poets use (& others use for them), & tie it in to the wicked idea that was interred long ago by the New Critics, yet unfortunately resurrected by PC Elitists in both the aforementioned camps: that being the Intentional Fallacy.
  So let’s get going in our plumbing downward, save the ‘Outsiders’ for another day, & let’s go get whitey! & while I’m in a beneficent mood, I’ll be gentlemanly & say, “Ladies 1^st!”:

Carolyn Forché: The Hypocrite-Cum-Cassandra-Come-Lately

  In this portion of this essay I am about to do something that no other critic of poetry has ever done. I am going to be upfront about what may be a possible source of bias I have towards a particular person & poet. I do so because it is my nature & I will let you decide if any bias inhabits my criticism. I believe my criticism will be so thorough as to alleviate any such charge. Nevertheless, herein a brief recounting of my personal disposition towards Carolyn Forché (CF) before moving on to the critique. In late 1996 or early 1997 CF came to the Twin Cities to hawk her then still current books Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry Of Witness (an anthology she edited) & The Angel Of History- a book that she claimed could be read as either a long poem or a collection of poems. Both books are atrocious- the former showing no editorial hand & being a disparate assemblage of ill-written complaints against ‘bad things’. While the latter being a dull, prolix reply to The Waste Land- only 7 or so decades too late.
  This particular night CF was to read at the Hungry Mind Bookstore [now the ill-tagged Ruminator Books] in St.Paul. The Hungry Mind was notorious for both its self-published & atrocious magalog Hungry Mind Review [now Ruminator Review], & its being the main stopover point on book tours by mediocre authors. The back of the store was usually cleared, shelves moved & 70-100 folding chairs spread out, so that the author could read 20 or so minutes, field a bevy of inane queries from the crowd [‘Who’s your favorite poet/novelist?’, ‘How did you 1^st become a poet/novelist?’, & ‘What’s your opinion on the latest literary controversy/national crisis?’ being inevitably uttered!], & sign books from a horde of dull-eyed troglodytes. I arrived about an hour early for the reading so I could scope out the poetry titles before its section was cleared to make way for the reading. A short gray-haired, plump woman asked me if I had any recommendations for poets. I had noticed her a few minutes earlier when she was speaking to some local Academic poetaster professors [I believe they were Diane Glancy & Patricia Kirkpatrick] about local PC Elitist & Sansei [read: 3^rd generation Japanese-American whose grandparents were interned during WW2] poet David Mura. CF particularly excoriated Mura’s self-admitted addiction to pornography. CF railed against his misogyny & hypocrisy. I had dismissed the woman as a wacko until I was taken aback to realize that this woman was none other than CF herself. Now, I’d never seen the woman in person- only on the back jacket photos of her book. Always presented was a young, sexy, big-eyed, raven-haired babe-&-a-½. That this aging babushka of a broad was CF was a startlement. My 1^st thought was ‘Vanity, thy name is Forché!’ Apparently the woman took delight in her babehood of a quarter century gone to the point that she never updated her photos with the intervening toll of years & books- perhaps to catch the eye of young hand-in-the-pants male poets? That this truth stood in stark contrast to the woman’s known indictments of sexism was only the 1^st revelation of hypocrisy the evening had to offer. Nonetheless I cheerfully pointed out the dullards- both locally & globally- & picked out a book, Red-Haired Android by Brit poet Jeremy Reed, that I had recently come across & found very well-written. I briefly explained that he was not laden with the PC-angst of so much contemporary American verse & went to get a seat. CF scanned the book briefly, looked at a poem or 2 I pointed out- I believe it was 1 on pop singer Madonna & one of Reed’s erotic poems- sneered, & put the book back on the shelf & went in the opposite direction. The reading shortly started & CF read a few poems from her anthology collection, explained to the band of dimwits slavering that such things as genocide, racism, & nuclear war were not good things, & then proceeded to read from The Angel Of History. Those who have never seen CF read are in for a comic treat in her unintended hilariously melodramatic renderings. In 1 poem she affected the accent of a little WW2 French girl & elicited chuckles from the crowd when she refused to break from the character after the poem’s finish- this display lasted a good 3-4 minutes. Then someone requested CF read her most famous poem- The Colonel- from The Country Between Us. CF delighted in explicating that the sadistic main character of the brief proem [he cuts off the ears of his murdered victims] was, indeed, a wicked man. So enthralled by this denuding to truth was the crowd that they insisted on beginning the Q & A session right then. The aforementioned softball questions were slow-pitched to CF, who knocked the motherfuckers out of the ballpark! The crowd was electric. After the roar dimmed I raised my hand (it had been up for the prior 15-20 minutes of orchestrated asskissing) & CF chose me to query her. I stood up & asked: ‘Poets often pay lip service to other poets in public while backstabbing them in private- I know, I’m a poet. Could you please name some well-known published bad poets & explain what makes them so bad- in your view?’ The crowd gasped to silence. In the world of PC Elitists it is absolutely VERBOTEN to admit your personal & petty opinions in public- private disses to other poetasters, however, are OK. CF was nonplussed for about 10 seconds as her once beautiful, but now blood-shot & baggy, orbs lasered their way at me. She was on the spot. She had to gracefully back down- someone had indeed challenged her- & it was that punk who’d shown her that filthy erotica! CF then spoke- the 1^st ½ of her reply was a robotic & stiff retort- 1 could be relieved, I guess, that it was not the standard bullshit; but the 2^nd ½ was where she revealed herself as a hypocrite. Quoth CF: “I refuse to answer that question- ” Me: “Why?” CF, infuriated: “I refuse to answer why?- [long dramatic pause] Besides, WE ALL KNOW WHO THEY ARE ANYWAY!” CF then saw the crowd react not too favorably. Rattled, she ended the Q & A so to move on to the booksigning. I smiled as the troglodytes sneered at me. My thought at the time- still valid today: “What a hypocritical bitch!”
  So, there it is- my admission of possible bias towards this nasty & hypocritical woman. But, in fairness to CF, I must admit she is far from alone in her hypocrisy. The source of her scorn that night- David Mura- is similarly renowned for his own hypocrisy. & a few months later another PC Elitist poetaster was at the Hungry Mind to read. This time it was Naomi Shihab Nye- a woman who lacked even the early potential CF displayed. In similar fashion I asked Nye almost the exact same query I had of CF. Guess what? She gave a nearly verbatim reply! The Hungry Mind staff had learned to expect my denuding of their icons by this time, but Nye was rocked even worse than CF!
  This selected poem is from The Angel Of History, p. 72, 1994 by Carolyn Forche¢. It was also the poem that I selected to represent the Bad poem at the June 14th, 2000 Poetry Forum WHY ALL POETRY DOESN’T SUCK! This was a response organized by me, & local poets Art Durkee & Laura Winton to a November, 1999 article on me in local tabloid City Pages. Local fictionist Jason Sanford also participated. Winton had chose Allen Ginsberg’s A Supermarket In California as the representative Good poem. But more on the Forum & its fallout after we address the poem, CF’s oeuvre & career, & some insights & opinions. The poem:

The Testimony Of Light   

Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.
            -Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi

Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women shimmered.
They held their arms in front of them like ghosts.

The coal bones of the house clinked in a kimono of smoke.
An attention hovered over the dream where the world had been.

For if Hiroshima in the morning, after the bomb has fallen,
              is like a dream, one must ask whose dream it is.

Must understand how not to speak would carry it with us.
With bones put into rice bowls.
While the baby crawled over its dead mother seeking milk.

Muga-muchu: without self, without center. Thrown up in the sky by a wind.

The way back is lost, the one obsession.
The worst is over.
The worst is yet to come.

  The best way to approach critiquing a poem is generally chronologically. So let’s start from the top with this bad & clichéd poem. Given that the poem is on a clichéd topic- the bombing of Hiroshima- 1 would hope for a better title. 1 of the misfortunes of 20^th Century poetry was to replace the trite braggadocio of earlier WAR IS GOOD poetry with the equally stale WAR IS BAD whimpering! There is no real room for intermediates [although by clicking here you can see my remedy for that with MacArthur!]. The title The Testimony Of Light is a classic example of this banal whimpering. 1^st we get testimony- i.e.- THIS IS THE TRUTH!- because we all know the purpose of art is truth! As if that is not bad enough we get light- which represents both a reiteration of the devotion to truthtelling & the act of revealing said truth. Kind of gives one goose bumps- eh? What a pretentious & didactic title. But in a foreshadowing of what this poem offers I ask you all to briefly glance at the poem’s last line!
  On to the epigraph! In researching the poem last year I discovered Boehme was a noted Mystic! As the Jews rightly say- Oy gevalt! You know a poet is pretentious when they start quoting seriously from folk like a Boehme, an Edgar Cayce, or a Nostradamus. Note how its source is also an attempt to tell us- the making of words is an act of creation linked to the destruction the epigraph itself implies! ‘Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.’- such depth. Let’s see- creative fires?, nuclear fires?, the smoldering rubble left in either’s aftermath?, the ceaseless march of time [represented by stone]?, the power of the inanimate [stone, again] to merely stand why we foolish animata do our deeds? Boy, I just can’t figure out what this symbolism means! Also, epigraphs serve 2 purposes: to distill the essence of a very deep & complex work that follows, or to provide a backdrop off of which the work can play against or off of. Given the poem that follows- a trite transparency which merely numbs one into boredom with its constant recounting of the title’s & the epigraph’s theme- the superfluity of the epigraph is manifest.
  Stanza 1: long cinematic lines. OK, but what do they show or tell? Line 1- a nice image contrasting nature with the all. Maybe this poem is NOT as bad as I think it’s going to be! one hopes. Line 2: still no cliché- see what happens when one assumes the worst! Line 3: trouble abrewing- ‘They held their arms in front of them like ghosts.’ The image is stale, its message not subtle, the narrative melodramatic, & the line could have at least been phrased or paraphrased better. But we can allow a poem its excess if it rewards us elsewhere. We wait & pray!
  Stanza 2: hit & miss. The nice ‘kimono of smoke’ at best makes this line mediocre after the bad start of ‘coal bones’- even applied to the house the phrase is just too worn & unevocative. That’s 2 clichés in 4 lines & counting. Then we get the 1^st total clunker of a line: ‘An attention hovered over the dream where the world had been.’ From Kafka to 1950s Beatnik rants to Hollywood films’ cheap attempts at metaphor, this visual image is as hackneyed as they come! Why would a poet do this? Of course, she’s commenting on the irony of pop culture’s backhanded demeaning of things sacred! But where’s the context for this irony? Damn! Foiled again!
  Stanza 3: the italics tell us this is VERY important! Pay attention because: ‘For if Hiroshima in the morning, after the bomb has fallen,/ is like a dream, one must ask whose dream it is.’ Now we definitely know what this poem is about! Ain’t it wonderful to refer back to the cliché just uttered a line before? In case you’d forgotten it, of course. The question of italics is answered by the fact that this couplet is, indeed, what the poem is about. Got it!?
  Stanza 4: ‘Must understand how not to speak would carry it with us./With bones put into rice bowls./While the baby crawled over its dead mother seeking milk.’ 3 lines all cliché. Read any anthology of anti-Vietnam War poetry if you don’t believe me. 1 can only imagine the 1^st line having some freshness if read in an over-the-top William Shatner/Captain Kirk mode: ‘Must....under....stand....how...., etc.’ the call to dig within oneself that the naked Must implies is also trite. Only 5 lines stand between the small promise of the poem’s 1^st 2 lines & this burgeoning disaster of a poem; yet, was it REALLY only that long ago? The next line recalls so many Vietnam era poems it’s ridiculous. The only positive conclusion is that CF must never have heard of- much less read- Robert Bly’s The Sixties magazine! The 3^rd line is also so trite that to not even attempt to spin it is mind-boggling. BUT, don’t you get it? She wants you to FEEL THE PAIN, dammit! I do- but not the pain intended! The only time I attempted to play off that cliché I was wise enough to set the poem, Shonisaurs Drying On Nevadan Beaches, a few hundred million years in the past. 
  Stanza 5: long filmic line- ‘Muga-muchu: without self, without center. Thrown up in the sky by a wind.’ OK, here’s another bad poet’s way of trying to cover their ass! We already had the didactic title, superfluous epigraph, & italics. Now we get the foreign word- to show the poet’s breadth & depth of thought & background. That we get this italicized shows extra pedantic brazenness! That we get its supposed definition right after is condescension to the max! As the brothers say: Shit, bitch! I dun gots what you say! Word! Then the definition itself! When all else fails invoke the specter of a better poet- in this case W.B.Yeats’ The Second Coming- to show that this weak work is of like mind- didn’t you see the connection all along? But let’s not let our smugness rest there- now we must heap a final cliché.
  Stanza 6 (the last): 3 lines. The 3 worst clichés in the poem. Let’s recite it, I REALLY want you to experience the Kurtzian dilemma! ‘The way back is lost, the one obsession./ The worst is over./The worst is yet to come.’ Yes, it’s THAT bad! It’s THAT out there! To argue that this end is not TERRIBLE & that this poem is not VERY BAD is to display an ignorance of poetic craft & history nonpareil. It is ridiculous! Go ahead, reread this piece of shit! It’s unadulterated garbage. This poem has no real music: rime, alliteration, good enjambment. But 1 cannot even argue that that’s forgivable since it’s an image & message poem since both of those are so drab & trite! Forgive the tautologies but there are indeed folk who just DO NOT GET IT, & will alibi for even the worst tripe.
  In fact, at the Poetry Forum there was someone who stood up to defend this poem. He was local poet, Communist, & fetishist Lyle Daggett. Daggett is a poet of some talent who suffers from the typical bleeding heart syndrome that afflicts almost all Latino writers- he writes good personal lyrics & terrible political screeds. He wants to make up for the lack of his self-worth [he is bald, obese, myopic, & prone to many physical maladies] by seeking the approval of others by being for any cause deemed humanitarian. Typical of Daggett’s nonsense is that he took me to task regarding the Forum’s title: WHY ALL POETRY DOESN’T SUCK! for being a misnomer. Daggett, unfortunately, could only read it to mean ‘Why all of poetry is good!’. Despite telling him it actually could & did mean ‘Most poetry sucks, some doesn’t, & we’re gonna show why!’ Daggett continued in his self-satisfied stupor all night. He is, unfortunately, 1 of many who seek such self-serving approbation. Out of the crowd of 45 or so people Daggett refused to accept that the poem was bad; instead he stated the end to Ginsberg’s poem was worse. When pressed by me to explain such, Daggett refused to speak. He said he refused to accept the premise that CF’s poem was bad. I let his silence speak for itself. Frustrated, & publicly denuded, Daggett later spun into a cloud of self-destructive self-pity. But his blind acceptance to not question the prevailing dogmas & his refusal to back up his arguments is all-too typical. It mirrors CF’s earlier hypocrisy. CF intends the poem to be a beacon for change. She is prophesying about things long ago acknowledged & trying to fob it off as insight. Instead, it is just a trite scream for attention by a woman who knows she has lost her artistic way. She is a Cassandra without doubters- only believers who mutter, “So?, no kidding!” But given the woman’s sneering condescension toward her obtuse audiences it’s no feat to imagine her being oblivious to the poem’s rankness, & not flinching in the least as she penned the words!
  But such was not always true. Earlier in her career CF showed some real poetic talent. Her 1^st 2 books of poetry, Gathering The Tribes & The Country Between Us, balanced her PC urges with some actual poems of skill & craft. Here is Song Coming Toward Us, from Gathering The Tribes:

I am spirit entering
The stomach of the stones.

Bowls of clay and water sing,
Set on the fires to dry.
The mountain moves
Like the spirit of the southeast morning.

You walk where drums are buried.
Feel their skins tapping all night.
Snow flutes sell ahead of your life.
Listen to yourself.

I am spirit living
Thin wooden years
Around the aspen.

You live
Like a brief wisp
In a giant place.

  This is not a great poem, & a bit slight. But compare it to the preceding atrocity. It’s 2 lines longer but reads so much more crisply & the images are not overbearing. In the end she lets simple imagery speak. She trusted the reader to do some work- or at least gave enough to make the reader want to. But then she settled on the DWM track: become a professor, visit other- especially  3^rd World- countries to really understand life, translate bad poetasters from those countries, edit anthologies & magazine, & generally play the bon vivant while disguised as an emissary for some higher cause the layety just NEEDS to understand!- all the while letting what talent you once had wizen. Remove her breasts, stitch on a penis & testicles, & she’s Gary Snyder! Or W.S. Merwin! Or- well, you get it by now! To do so strongly suggests a personality in constant need of proving itself ‘good’. Perhaps this obvious lack of self-esteem explains why a 25 year old photo adorns every 1 of her book jackets?
  & as for said book jackets- let us see what the blurbs on the book The Angel Of History indeed said. Did they point out the facts that I just did? I mean, this is not a difficult poem to dissect. From the back of the book itself Nobel Poet Laureate Derek Walcott: ‘[CF] has never undertaken less than the responsibilities of conscience....’, ‘The tone is that of a distant echo of a far train....’, ‘....written in secret by a poet whose name we do not know....’, & ‘But she was. She is. She will be, bless her.’ Ugh! Do I really need to assail this tripe? I guess I do. Ok, Derek, so I grant the 1^st quote- so what does that say about the book? Hmm? 2^nd quote- uh-huh. What exactly does THIS tell us about the book? Point 3- this is kind of the cutesy line that published poets like to give to each other as blurbs that says- you’re DEEP &- oh, by the way- remember to give me a similar blurb when I next come acallin’! The final quote. This is deep post-Modernism run amok. Earlier in the blurb he has said the poet is not who she seems, SO whoever the poet is- bless the spirit of poetry to trump all of evildoing! Yee-hah! Walcott, it should be noted, is not known for his prescient poetic commentary. In an old Voices & Visions documentary on Robert Lowell he tried to convince viewers that in the beginning of For The Union Dead the fact that the words snow & now appear reveals the lurking presence of nuclear annihilation- this all signified by the significance of the lack of an s in the word now. Yes. Believe it! & this clown is a Nobel Laureate!
  Who else blurbed for her? Well, on the inner cover 2 blurbs exhale deeply- 1, from the now deceased James Merrill, shilling: ‘I don’t think I have ever come across a poem of such length which is nevertheless so beautifully transparent and haunting.’ The skinny- this phrase says absolutely nothing. It’s a blank check that a reader can use in any way they want. The real question is: Was their relationship as friends or a former student/teacher? Masterfully-minimal-to-the-point-of-negligible poet Robert Creeley chimes in: ‘The poignant cri de coeur of this singular work must affect all who have an integrity still possible in this painfully despairing time.’ Hmm. Kind of makes Merrill’s blurb look Shakespearean- no? In fact 78.3% of Creeley’s published poems have less words in them than this nonsense. Note the italicized foreign word dropping- ain’t he a smart son-of-a-buck? Then the absolute [must] injunction to conscience, ending in despair. Moving, eh? Still doesn’t tell you Shit-1 about the poem- does it? Ask the same query we applied to Merrill!
  Then there is the all-encompassing blurb from the book’s publisher HarperCollins. In order, they remind us: CF is ‘one of our most important contemporary poets’ [aren’t they all?], that her 1^st book won the Yale Younger Poets Award & her 2^nd the Lamont Poetry award & that this book ‘is a departure from her earlier books’ but ‘contains echoes of both earlier volumes’, that ‘these lines become a haunting mosaic of grief, evoking the necessary accommodations human beings make to survive what is unsurvivable’, ‘poems that bear witness rather than explain or resolve’, this book ‘may also be groundbreaking’, & ‘link the past with the future’. OK, let’s assail this nonsense & be done with CF- other poetasters await! These 6 generic statements [amongst others, & how many times have we seen these nearly verbatim lines on countless other poetry books?] are easily explained: 1) the point of a new book is to show it departs from earlier books, lest a writer would only publish on their deathbed their lifelong opus. 2) this shows you that she’s grown! But still the same lovable scamp you knew before! 3) since an accommodation is ‘something supplied for convenience or to satisfy a need’ [Merriam-Webster’s] it is hardly necessary; the 2^nd illogical point is that the unsurvivable produces no survivors; despite weak attempts at hyperbole! 4) how dare a poet do the hard work of an artist! 5) the may indicates the publisher’s attempt at humility- bless’em! 6) does not all existence link the past with the present? Hmm….
  But pretentiousness in poetry KILLS the art like little else can. She took the easy way to publication offered by lowest common denominator banality, & is a sterling example of that dogged quality of intellectual sloth & pretension run amok in contemporary poetry. Her bile toward her readers is evident in her condescension. Yet, as we have seen, it was not always so with CF. Despite her seeming celebration of her sell-out of her talents, once upon a time she was a poet of some originality & potential. What a waste of such! But such are the rewards for 1 who ventures the slope down to didacticism! CF became that which she seemingly holds most dear- a cliché!
  So, let me end in asking again: despite my thinking she’s a hypocrite, & disliking such, was I fair in ripping this bad poem?

Adrienne Rich: The Persistence Of Mediocrity 

  Unlike CF, I have never had the (mis/dis?)pleasure of making the acquaintance of Adrienne Rich [AR]. Therefore I can state that you, the reader, can put down your radar re: my personal bias. What I do know about the woman is the standard known through her disseminated bio. She 1^st rose to prominence as 1 of the Great Triumvirate of 1950s American Poetesses. Yes, they were still called poetesses back then! AR was always known- even then, by both emerging feminist critics & the mainstream DWM critics- as the 3^rd member of that group; behind the 2 other generally acknowledged [& correct, by God!] superior poets: in order- Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, & AR. Yet, unlike those other 2 icons, AR was not so fucked up internally that she offed herself. Her lone good career move was that she chose to keep breathing. Academia has a long history of rewarding the persistent. Combine that with a latter-day guiltfest over rewarding any writer who’s not a DWM, & any writer who consciously declares their solidarity with good left-wing causes & voila- a poetic career is born! AR has always been- at absolute best- a mediocre poet. Even in her early formal verse 1 does not see any unique ideas or wordplay- she is a very static poet whose work has gotten even less tight & more political with age. Unlike CF, AR never had the potential to be anything other than a mediocrity. She might best be described as a poor woman’s Muriel Rukeyser. Witness this well-known but trite little poem First Things from AR’s self-describe ‘breakthrough’ volume of poems- where she 1^st found her ‘true’ voice, Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law (1963):

‘I can’t name love now
without naming its object-
this the final measure
of those flintspark years
when one believed
one’s flash innate.
Today I swear
only in the sun’s eye
do I take fire.’

Or these 1^st 2 stanzas from After Dark, a poem from Necessities of Life (1966):

‘You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you
old tree of life
old man whose death I wanted
I can’t stir you up now.

Faintly a phonograph needle
Whirs round in the last groove
Eating my heart to dust,
That terrible record!....’

  Someone once said of the English poet Stephen Spender [paraphrasing]: ‘He’s the most famous poet in the English language who has never written a memorable line or image.’ Well, AR is America’s answer to Spender!
  Originally I was thinking of devoting a whole essay to AR herself. I reconsidered whilst imagining this essay- AR is very much in this continuum of 4 poets & really is not significant enough- despite press clippings to the contrary (see below!). Let us look at a poem that recently came to my attention at the behest of poet Clayton Eshleman. CE really admired the poem, although he expressed reservations on AR’s take on Robinson Jeffers. I retorted that it was a transcendent example of all that is wrong with AR’s oeuvre, as well as most Academic verse of recent decades. In short, the only thing that I can say positively about this poem is that it makes CF’s above poem look good by comparison- if only because of that poem’s relative brevity. The poem is from page 75 of Your Native Land, Your Life, 1986:

Yom Kippur 1984

I drew solitude over me, on the long shore.  - Robinson Jeffers, "Prelude"

For whoever does not afflict his soul throughout this day, shall be cut off from his people.
   - Leviticus 23:29

What is a Jew in solitude?
What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid
far from your own or those you have called your own?
What is a woman in solitude:   a queer woman or man?
In the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert
what in this world as it is can solitude mean?

The glassy, concrete octagon suspended from the cliffs
with its electric gate, its perfected privacy
is not what I mean
the pick-up with a gun parker at a turn-out in Utah or the Golan
                        Heights
is not what I mean
the poet's tower facing the western ocean, acres of forest planted to
                        the east, the woman reading in the cabin, her
                        attack dog suddenly risen
is not what I mean

Three thousand miles from what I once called home
I open a book searching for some lines I remember
about flowers, something to bind me to this coast as lilacs in the
                        dooryard once
bound me back there -- yes, lupines on a burnt mountainside,
something that bloomed and faded and was written down
in the poet's book, forever:
Opening the poet's book
I find the hatred in the poet's heart:...the hateful-eyed
and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have
                          them

Robinson Jeffers, multitude
is the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys
and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines
are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling
                         its scrolls of surf,
and the separate persons, stooped
over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering
                         skies of harvest
who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds have their various dreams
Hands that pick, pack, steam, stitch, strip, stuff, shell, scrape,
                         scour, belong to a brain like no other
Must I argue the love of multitude in the blur or defend
a solitude of barbed-wire and searchlights, the survivalist's final
                         solution, have I a choice?

To wander far from your own or those you have called your own
to hear strangeness calling you from far away
and walk in that direction, long and far, not calculating risk
to go to meet the Stranger without fear or weapon, protection
                        nowhere on your mind
(the Jew on the icy, rutted road on Christmas Eve prays for another
                        Jew
the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street: Make
                        those be a woman's footsteps; as if she could believe in a
                        woman's god)

Find someone like yourself.   Find others.
Agree you will never desert each other.
Understand that any rift among you
means power to those who want to do you in.
Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.
But I have a nightmare to tell:   I am trying to say
that to be with my people is my dearest wish
but that I also love strangers
that I crave separateness
I hear myself stuttering these words
to my worst friends and my best enemies
who watch for my mistakes in grammar
my mistakes in love.
This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me?
If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud.

To love the Stranger, to love solitude -- am I writing merely about
                        privilege
about drifting from the centre, drawn to edges,
a privilege we can't afford in the world that is,
who are hated as being of our kind: faggot kicked into the icy
                        river, woman dragged from her stalled car
into the mist-struck mountains, used and hacked to death
young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening
                        walk, his prizes and studies nothing, nothing
                        availing his Blackness
Jew deluded that she's escaped the tribe, the laws of her exclusion,
                        the men too holy to touch her hand; Jew who has
                        turned her back
on midrash and mitzvah (yet wears the chai on a thong between her
                        breasts) hiking alone
found with a swastika carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs
                        (did she die as queer or as Jew?)

Solitude, O taboo, endangered species
on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend
                        you
In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can't have:
your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant's hand outspread
her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true
And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away?
have I traded off something I don't name?
To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist?
What will I do to defend my want or anyone's want to search for
                        her spirit-vision
far from the protection of those she has called her own?
Will I find O solitude
your plumes, your breasts, your hair
against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird's
singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song?
in the old places, anywhere?

What is a Jew in solitude?
What is a woman in solitude, a queer woman or man?
When the winter flood-tides wrench the tower from the rock,
                        crumble the prophet's headland, and the farms slide
                         into the sea
when leviathan is endangered and Jonah becomes revenger
when center and edges are crushed together, the extremities
                        crushed together on which the world was founded
when our souls crash together, Arab and Jew, howling our
                         loneliness within the tribes
when the refugee child and the exile's child re-open the blasted and
                         forbidden city
when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are
                         chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in
                         multitude
in that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will
                         solitude mean?

  OK, this is a startlingly bad, & easy poem to pick apart! It is not only laden with clichés but has many poor technical points to gnaw at. By the way, when I pointed this out to CE & others in email conversations, CE’s lone comment in defense was to say that the poem [retrieved from an AR fan website] had several line breaks that were poor. While the line breaks were, in fact, accurate there were a # of lines placed a bit farther leftward on the page. I have corrected that & this poem appears as closely as it can to the text from the actual printed page. So, with that as no defense to criticism- let’s go!
  The title refers to the Jewish Day of Atonement- the poem’s coming self-indulgences ask 1 to think if this may be an unintended parody? Nonetheless it quickly proves to be inappropriate thematically- I mean the Day of Atonement done so self-indulgently- fasting, purification, etc.? The epigraphs are no better. Unlike CF, here we get 2 epigraphs. As I stated earlier, epigraphs serve 2 purposes: to distill the essence of a very deep & complex work that follows, or to provide a backdrop off of which the work can play against or off of. Epigraph 1: ‘I drew solitude over me, on the long shore.’ Since the work that follows is neither deep nor complex there is no need for distillation; & the point on solitude- well, aside from the repeated use of the word in the poem there seems no real use for this epigraph; especially considering how self-centered its speaker is. Obviously, the epigraph does not play off the poem- in fact, there is little or no play, in any measure, in any of AR’s work- prose or poetry. Her misreading of Jeffers within the poem seems to be the only connection needed for this quote. Epigraph 2: ‘For whoever does not afflict his soul throughout this day, shall be cut off from his people.’ Old poetic trick- quote from the Bible when nothing original to say! The last clause is the only thing vaguely pertaining to the poem- i.e.- the speaker’s solitude [addressed in Epigraph 1]. So, does this epigraph distill the poem, or give play? No better than the 1^st epigraph. So why 2 epigraphs for a poem that really is fine without any? Because AR wants the reader to KNOW that this poem’s subject matter is IMPORTANT enough to demand 2 epigraphs. & their divergent sources tell you how well-read & devout AR is!
  Stanza 1: How prosaic. Is there any attempt at music? Line 2’s ‘What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid’ is almost cringe-inducing in its sappiness- especially given the poem that follows & the little preceding. There’s not even an attempt to address the ensuing query artistically- it is so out there in its banality as to make 1 miss its stunning treacle. Line 5 hits us with 3 egregious clichés in a row: ‘the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert’. Thus far the epigraphs have no bearing in nor on the poem. Its last line ‘what in this world as it is can solitude mean?’ must be self-parody- no? No poet can be so condescending as to believe that in 1984 such a query could be asked without a twinkle in the orb? Would that it were parody!
  Stanza 2: Lines 4, 7, & 8 are very poorly broken- a result of pagination?- No, because in the several online & book versions [with varying page sizes] these breaks are retained. There is no metric, syllabic, nor dramatic rationale. The veer from the querying of Stanza 1 is sharp- but since that was so banal the reader is left to wonder if the emotion invoked is genuine. A good poem makes you buy into its thrust that such a wondering is never broached. This does not & the sloppy line breaks only muddy matters.
  Stanza 3: Another old poetic ploy rears itself here- when you want to seem grand, & your poem is sliding downhill, by all means invoke a great artwork or artist! Harold Bloom is getting chills! 3 stanzas have passed & there is no real connection between any of them. Images are tossed hell-mell, the repetons of book & poet’s ____ really tire, because no rhetorical power has been built by the images or sound, & it only reinforces how inferior these lines are to Whitman- the presumed ‘aped’. & what ends this stanza in the heart? Something so important that italics are needed: ‘...the hateful-eyed/and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them’- note the melodramatic ellipsized breath & then the italicized! This HAS TO BE parody- no?
  Stanza 4: The best stanza so far; yet still quite meager, with only a little music. The poet’s voice is its most natural here- i.e.- you buy into what is said as being a bit more genuine- perhaps because of the picked up pace?: ‘the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys/and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines/are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling/its scrolls of surf,/and the separate persons, stooped/over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering/skies of harvest/who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds’ & ‘grey Pacific unrolling’- boy, ain’t that original- & in the context of Robinson Jeffers, to boot! Yet the melodrama drains from it, as well the trite ocean description. We know that this speaker is a very pale imitator of Whitman or Sandburg. That Jeffers is invoked somehow smacks of desperation for relevance this far in to the poem. Yet his persona is stereotyped- the speaker is obviously not referring to a real person they’ve known. The invocation of words prominent in the epigraph defuses the very need for them: solitude, multitude, etc. If this stanza is meant as a slam on Jeffers it only, again, points out the inferior quality of writing vis-à-vis his poetry!
  Stanza 5: The best stanza so far- if the preceding ones were as good this would be an interesting poem to this point. But look at these 2 bad line breaks: ‘the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street: Make/////those be a woman's footsteps; as if she could believe in a/////’ Why are they broken at Make & a? & why the need for italics- this is a poet grasping for all they can get to keep the poem afloat! Plus the last 3 lines rob the power of the stanza’s start. Yet, all the stanzas seem to go in different directions- thus far this ‘finished poem’ feels more like a 1^st draft of an idea than a polished poem. Another obvious point that few, if any, critics would state 5 stanzas that could easily be 2 or less stanzas. Thus far this poem is prosaic, bland, dull, & lacks concision.
  Stanza 6: Let’s revisit this atrocity:
‘Find someone like yourself.   Find others.
Agree you will never desert each other.
Understand that any rift among you
means power to those who want to do you in.
Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.
But I have a nightmare to tell:   I am trying to say
that to be with my people is my dearest wish
but that I also love strangers
that I crave separateness
I hear myself stuttering these words
to my worst friends and my best enemies
who watch for my mistakes in grammar
my mistakes in love.
This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me?
If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud.’
  The 1^st 4 lines are just pedantic, preachy & plain old bad! Why the space/breath? Is this so emotionally draining at this point? Line 5’s ‘Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger.’ Again a bad poet & poem invokes old Yeats- & again from The Second Coming- it’s an Apocalyptic fave! Lines 7-9 are ghastly in their bathos! Pass the barf bag! Line 11 is a two-for-one clichéfest! This is now off the cliff bad! This is a stanza that cannot really be defended on intellectual, artistic or even humane grounds- the reader is SO condescended to & so treated as a boob. This would be cut not only from a typical UPG gathering but from 75% of MFA workshops. Absolute tripe! The suspicion is that laziness produces writing like this; that or smugness so complete as to be nearly inhuman- not meant to invoke the Jeffersian variant of this term. REPEAT AFTER ME: Show, do not tell- unless you can match Stevens or Crane!
  Stanza 7: 3 bad line breaks end lines 1, 5, & 12. Foreign/Hebrew words are italicized for emphasis. The whole stanza is unrelenting PC elitist bleeding heart garbage. AR must PREACH to the choir: 6000 years & all that. This stanza is indefensibly bad. Blackness, swastikas- oh, you get the fucking point you stupid ass poetry-reader! [AR is really saying that, I’m just clarifying!] I really could go on & on but by this point any intelligent reader has left this poem in hopes for better on the next page.
  Stanza 8: The 1^st ½ of the poem was merely dull & meandering. The 2^nd ½ has been an abomination. Witness:
‘Solitude, O taboo, endangered species
on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend
                        you
In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can't have:
your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant's hand outspread
her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true
And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away?
have I traded off something I don't name?
To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist?
What will I do to defend my want or anyone's want to search for
                        her spirit-vision
far from the protection of those she has called her own?
Will I find O solitude
your plumes, your breasts, your hair
against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird's
singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song?
in the old places, anywhere?’
  OK- in order: Line 2 ends with a bad line break, which leads to line 3’s melodramatic single world line: ‘you’- did you hear the word echo in solitude? Lines 7-12’s queries  MUST be parody- no? Then we invoke the aboriginal in line 11- another poetic shorthand for- I am deep & HOLY! OY VEY! Ach du lieber Gott in Himmel! & to end this we get further references to breasts & more italics on- you guessed it- LOVE! coo softly in the background! Ain’t you moved?
  Stanza 9: By now we return- as if a circle- of love? Violence? Fear? Hate? Hope? Fill in the cliché? & the ceaseless questions. AR knows that in a post-Modern world the C, the artist, & the like, dare not GIVE [much less propose] answers; instead, it’s good enough to merely ask the right questions!
  Ask yourself this: Is there an original thought in this poem? This was a mediocrity to start but by the end it is begging for some intellect. Where is the music? The epigraphs are- as stated- superfluous because their theme harangues us in every line. There is no give. There is nothing new tried here. If AR had spent ½ the thought in writing this that I have in critiquing it even she could see how really flawed this poem is. To invoke Whitman & Jeffers is absurd. This is typical of AR’s oeuvre. I cannot argue with someone if they find this moving. But it is NOT good writing. It’s bathetic & shows no poetic skill: no rhetoric, no music, no invention. It is preachy & at times sloppy. Is it the worst poem ever written? No. But it is not a good poem. I have a poem called NINTH MURDER: FACE OF EVIL or A SPIC TAKES ON A NIGGER: YOU DECIDE WHO WILL DIE! Even its title is more engaging than this poem. There the poem confronts racism (a wrong) but puts the reader in an active role. That it’s done in a form (ballade) that sounds so genteel only highlights its ballsiness. It does not condescend to the reader. It is not pretentious. AR has always been- at least when not dull.
  But let’s take a look at how bad writing is rationalized & bad writers feted. On Sunday, 9/16/01 the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a story on AR. It was written by Pop Stand columnist Kristin Tillotson, ktillotson@startribune.com, & titled ‘Rich chooses calming words to claim poets’ role in difficult world’. Underneath the title is William Carlos Williams’ famed quote ending in ‘of what is found there.’ KT is serious about her pop! The article details AR’s visit to the Twin Cities a day after the 9/11/01 attacks. She is described as a ‘strong, quiet presence’. KT laments AR is not with CNN- love this initials thing, don’t you? - DS! We are told she was driven by a University of Minnesota flunky 11 hours from Missouri just to make the gig! Her driver, Roy, intones: ‘All they want to do is bomb. Why don’t they have any idea how to talk?’ [Note- as of this writing 10/4/01- the USA has yet to take any military action!] AR laments his lament to the gathered crowd. We are told that AR’s poem An Atlas Of The Difficult World ‘brought us an oasis in the midst of Desert Storm’- you recall Desert Storm, the war that was over at halftime? We are then privileged to have a snippet of said masterwork:
‘Streets closed, emptied by force   Guns at corners
with open mouths and eyes   Memory speaks:
You cannot live on me alone
You cannot live without me
I’m nothing if I’m just a roll of film
Stills from a vanished world
Fixed lightstreaked mute
Left for another generation’s
Restoration and framing   I can’t be restored or framed
I can’t be still   I’m here
In your mirror   pressed leg to leg beside you
Intrusive inappropriate bitter flashing
With what makes me unkillable though killed’
  You recall how hard the Gulf War was on us- don’t you? Even a newspaper columnist or editor should be able to discern at least 6 or 7 clichés in a glance. Add in a bad line break & the damnable breathing spaces & this could have been Yom Kippur 1985 [This Time It’s Personal!]. We then get the typical hyperbole that most artists spout- the kind that unwittingly makes the rest of the non-artists out there take us all for vapid fools. AR declaims: poets in the USA are ‘under house arrest’- especially during crises. This ridiculous statement is then defended by KT who calls AR a ‘true poet....whose primary mission is greater understanding.’ & not one of those ‘mealy-mouthed bleaters who obscure emotion with empty New-Age speak’. Obviously KT did not read the quote her editor chose to run with her story- nor read the above mentioned poem. AR enjoins that political poetry is good only when a poet’s deep feelings come through. Even in life AR cannot get rid of the clichés! But then, who cares?, since they come from ‘her round, beautifully wrinkled face imparting wisdom, sorrow and optimism.’ I swear, this WAS actually in a newspaper! AR said war is electroshock treatment for national depression, & numerous other pieties, but KT ends with, ‘Adrienne Rich’s heart might bleed, but it’s not splashing on her mind. She stops by the ivory tower, but lives at ground level. When national anger threatens to crush reason, her voice and others like it must be heard.’
  You may ask why I included this drivel since it is not really a piece of criticism. Good question. But how is it any different than your typical review in your typical poetry magazine of the last 20 years? There’s a bad excerpt, bland axioms, mild to glaring exhortations of the poet’s innate goodness, wisdom, or both, & absolutely no hint of-  you got it!- CRITICISM! You see, when you start down that slope of refusing to do what is required to do it becomes awfully difficult to separate criticism from pop writing. & clichés are among the best instruments in blurring what little boundaries remain. Such the spirals of both poetry & criticism. It’s difficult to actually do the grunt work needed to produce consistently top-flight art. Better to play it safe, & persist mediocrely, is what AR chose, especially when the rewards for mediocrity are so fulfilling. As with CF, AR’s writing has ended up with the qualities of that she revels in fulfilling- lack of innovation, predictability, &  condescension; in other words: a cliché!
   Let me end this section with an anecdote & a question. When he did his profile piece on me in City Pages a few years ago, writer Brad Zellar paid me 1 of the highest compliments a writer can get- & especially so since it came from a fellow scribe. He told me my poetry had made him a better reader. It forced him to pay attention, to question assumptions on the subject matter & narrative. A better encomium could not be given by an auditorium of asskissing MFA students & professors. In turn, let me ask you: Does AR’s poem make you a better reader? Does it ask anything of you save for not to grit your teeth?

Donald Hall: The Deadest Whitest Male Alive! 

  Before I light in to this man’s poetastry I must come clean & tell of my past dealings with Donald Hall [DH]. No, I’ve never had personal dealings with the man but I must recount 2 ‘incidents’ of note with the man & then let y’all decide if I am fair in gutting the man & his doggerel.
  In 1986 I was 21 years old & rapt by & with Walt Whitman. Not only did my verse ape the Good Gray One’s, but I decided I would follow his approach to his poetic career. I sought to self- or subsidy-publish my own magnum opus & ‘take it to the people’ as old Walt did. Unfortunately I did not heed 3 things: 1) Whitman was a much better & more mature poet than I was at that time. 2) Whitman’s demoticism was for years a personal & financial failure. 3) Poetic times in the 1980s were far more daunting than they were in the 1850s. The book I decided to finance was a long poem called Od Infinitum. It was a bad poem, however- it was bad because it was imitative at times, prolix, & callow. It did have brilliant moments, though, was never dull nor trite. Even when bad a trained eye can easily see where seeds of great things to come lay. But- it was still a bad poem! In true youthful fashion, however, I mailed the book around to many newspapers & poets to review. A few wrote back. 1 was DH. His was the only reply that came flat out & said the book was not good. He wrote only 2 or 3 sentences, but I was grateful for the feedback- because I really knew his opinion was right & the other mealy-mouthed encouragements were just that. Hopefully, these many years later, I can return the favor to the man because a part of me has to believe that the man truly knows he is not a good writer- of poetry or prose. He’s simply an apparatchik in the American Poetry Game.
  My 2^nd encounter with the man came a few years ago (1998 or 1999) when DH was in town to push a book of his & his dead wife’s. He read at a local church just south of downtown Minneapolis. DH was to read & sign books. Hourlong galas as this usually include a Q & A session. I was hoping to corner the man on his horrid verse & why he persisted in poetry when he really lacked any talent. But it was not to be. DH fielded no queries & it’s a good thing. The man broke down into tears after the reading. He did it during a recitation of his wife’s- doggerelist Jane Kenyon’s- poems. Now, I’ve seen many a poet manipulate an audience with slogans or emotion but this was beyond anything I’d seen. After 20 or so minutes of stultifying poetry from his own pen- including the poem discussed below- he said the 2^nd ½ of the reading would be devoted to the poetry of his deceased spouse- the ‘great poet’! DH then hammered the crowd of 40-something+ white suburban MidWestern drones with a batch of the most banal verse ever penned- & printed- in this country! Included in the assault was Kenyon’s most famous poem- the insipid fluff poem, The Shirt. Incredibly, the man removed his overcoat & pulled out his shirttails to dramatize the attempted naughty little poem. Then Hall went in to a longer poem that I cannot even begin to recall the name of- & then it happened! The man openly wept & broke down & called for his dead mate! Even the crowd of bleeding hearts rutsched in their seats. After dabbing his face, quivering his lip & finishing the poems- punctuated by a few more tears- DH retreated to wild applause over his ‘bravery’ in reading his dead wife’s trite poems. I simply left shaking my head- it was a very unique experience. Even had there been a Q&A I would not have spoken because the man had been so pathetic as to boggle one’s senses. ‘Twas the audience should have wept. DH is- in truth- 20^th Century American Poetry’s answer to Eugene Field!
  So, there you have it. On to the poem from Epigenethlion: First Child, from Exiles and Marriages, (1956):

My Son, My Executioner 

My son, my executioner,
I take you in my arms,
Quiet and small and just astir,
And whom my body warms.

Sweet death, small son, our instrument
Of immortality,
Your cries and hungers document
Our bodily decay.

We twenty-five and twenty-two,
Who seemed to live forever,
Observe enduring life in you
And start to die together.

[I take into my arms the death
Maturity exacts,
And name with my imperfect breath
The mortal paradox.]

  Note that the last stanza is bracketed. That’s not how the poem actually appears, but is because this stanza was originally the last stanza of this poem- as 1^st published in the 1950s. In subsequent editions of books & anthologies DH axed the last stanza- going for the more trite & melodramatic end. I contend, & will show, this was a bad choice. However, neither version of the poem is good- it is a trite rime on a triter theme. DH’s editorial choice merely made a bad poem into a really bad poem. I will later contrast this choice, which I believe was based on personal- not artistic- reasons, with a poem by another poet where the opposite choice was made- & with good results. That this is DH’s most famous poem & the only poem likely recalled in 100 years is a testament to the banality of the man’s verse, & the poetic public at large. & unlike the 2 previously discussed women DH lacks both CF’s early potential & AR’s dogged persistence. Let us now dissect this drivel stanza by stanza:
  But 1st the title: My Son, My Executioner. Plainly stated the theme is not new. Centuries are encrusted with the proposition of the disposable male, the king usurped by his son- uh, let’s see….I guess it would be easier to name a human culture that did not tackle this subject- that would be none. So it would seem incumbent upon the poet to- especially with so blatant a title- to tease us & move away from the manifest & trite theme. Does he? What do you think?:
  Stanza 1: ‘My son, my executioner,/I take you in my arms,/Quiet and small and just astir,/And whom my body warms.’  Aargh! We start off with what is 99.9% of the time a big no-no! Do not recap the title in the 1^st line of a poem. & yes that’s what he does- this poem is not 1 of those anonymous ditties where there was no published title so the 1^st line functions as such. No, he recaps the whole bland sentiment of the title again in line 1! Line 2 echoes Roethke’s famous poem on his father, My Papa’s Waltz, although very dimly compared to Roethke’s far superior poem. The last 2 lines are OK, but after 2 such weak openers a good poet would have started major damage control about now!
  Stanza 2: ‘Sweet death, small son, our instrument/Of immortality,/Your cries and hungers document/Our bodily decay.’ Whoo-boy! No improvement acoming. Line 1 starts off with a totally naked cliché: ‘sweet death’. In the context of this poem it is especially egregious. Then we get ‘small son’. Only 2 lines after its 1^st appearance the word ‘small’ is mentioned again- in an even more trite context than the 1^st mention. Does the poet believe we have forgotten the child is a babe? Could not have stanza 2 started with a conscious effort to veer away from the banal? Then we get the phrase ‘instrument/Of immortality’- while not bad soundwise, yet another total cliché; & worse- a cliché that merely reiterates the whole theme pounded into the reader from the title, & each line until this point. Line 3 is inoffensive & serves merely to bridge us to- you know it- yet another cliché implied within the title & text of the poem. This is a really, really odious poem to this point! The only positives worth mentioning in this poem are the slight off-rhymes that end each line, & the shifting syllabics to offset the poem’s rhythms. But given that DH has to this point shown absolutely no requisite poetic skill an astute reader is left to conclude that this seeming plus is merely the happenstance of a bad poet unable to make a good music intentionally- thereby stumbling in to a poetic positive unwittingly!
  Stanza 3: ‘We twenty-five and twenty-two,/Who seemed to live forever,/Observe enduring life in you/And start to die together.’ To beg a cliché in a similar vein- stanza 3 is where the sins of the preceding stanzas are visited on this stanza. While this is not a terrible stanza- merely mediocre to bad- if left on its own; coming on the heels of stanzas 2 & 3- & being required to end this brief poem- this stanza is stuck in the poem’s ooze & really starts to rot. Line 1 is just descriptive, but line 2 has another cliché: ‘seemed to live forever’. Line 3 is passable alone, but in the poem’s context, & as the penultimate line to the bad & melodramatic line that follows, it sucks big time. The thrust is that this line is the couple’s awareness of the holy, the divine that has sprung from themselves- the notion is trite while the phrasing is OK. But, again, situated where it is in a poem like this- WOW! DH shows again [how many times is this in 11 lines?] he is clueless on how to construct a good poem. The last line is exactly where the reader expected the speaker to be where the poem started, & exactly where the introduced spouse was to be once she was introduced. In short, the narrative veers nowhere away from the formulaic, the sentiments are trite & not played with narratively, dramatically, nor linguistically. That we end on the melodramatic faux religious note is in perfect step with the wretchedness of the rest of this poem. On a scale of 1-100, this poem does not even reach the midway mark. But let’s look at how the omitted 4^th stanza helped mitigate a bit of the poem’s travesty- not enough to make the poem passable- but just to make it a little better. The important point is to show DH’s lack of poetic intellect here, & that it is a little bit better end to the poem- not that the poem was salvageable.
  Stanza 4: ‘I take into my arms the death/Maturity exacts,/And name with my imperfect breath/The mortal paradox.’ Line 1 alone is quite weak & a recap of the 1^st 3 stanzas- until we get line 2, which makes the 1^st 2 lines probably the 2 strongest in the original poem. The last 2 lines are another trite sentiment, however coming after the previous 2 lines they are not as bad as ending with the trite ‘And start to die together.’ Another reason  the last line works better is it is less soap operatic. While just as clichéd as stanza 3’s end it is far less melodramatic, & given all the clichés rife within, a better end. Better to end this crap with a staid cliché than an over-the-top cliché.
  But the query lingers: Why did DH ax the last stanza, opt for the more melodramatic end, & make a bad poem terrible? The short answer is the only real valid one: because he is a bad poet whose poor skills only deteriorated further with age- in re-editing he may have known the poem was bad, but in his bumble to make it better he fucked it up even more. Yet, the man is obviously not ‘dumb’ in the conventional sense. He simply has the least creative of the 3 human intelligences. He is a Functionary mind trying to swim in creative seas. It shows. This poem is merely typical of his whole poetic oeuvre. The good choice [really not since he probably was unaware of it] to go with a less bada-boom straight on rime scheme is a rarity. Most of Hall’s poems are merely bland straight-forward prose broken in to lines. Not coincidentally- so were his dead wife’s poems.
  Yet, most critics who have written on this minor poet’s most well-known poem have come to- surprise, surprise- different conclusions than the obvious ones I detailed. Let’s deal with those & explicate reasons for their erroneous conclusions. Let me interject at this point- 1 of the best things the Internet provides is a shortcut to tedious research. Instead of going through many old books & magazines at a library to extract opinions on this poem I can, with a brief search, find an article that summarizes almost all the major points that many critics have made about this poem. So, here now, a woman named Kathryn Mullins, ABBYDAYS@worldnet.att.net , & her 1998 online take on the poem:
  ‘In the poem My Son, My Executioner by Donald Hall there are two themes. The first and most obvious deals with the realization young parents have when they have a child. They realize that they are actually not immortal. They realize that they are now adults, and they will only get older. They have begun to die. They have given their lives to their new child, he is now the immortal one. He is full of life, and his life will become more exciting with age, he will have more opportunities, his body will become more fit, and he more agile with each year. While his parents enter middle age, and for them each new year brings new aches and pains, life becomes less exciting and more sedentary. The other theme of this poem is also about a realization parents have when their first child is born. This theme too is about a kind of death the parents experience, but this death is a beautiful experience. This is the death of the life they lived before their child was born; the life in which they put themselves first and their worries and fears were much simpler. He calls his son his "executioner" because he realizes that life as he knew it is over.
  Now they find they live for their child. Everything seems insignificant when weighed against the welfare of their son. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker writes that his body warms his baby. This demonstrates that the heat generated from the speaker's body has a greater purpose. He has become an instrument to ensure that his son is comfortable and well cared for.  When Hall writes "sweet death, small son, our instrument of immortality" he is telling the reader that the death they are experiencing is not tragic, but rather natural and sweet. It is "death" in the sense that it signals the end of their own youth, but it is also a rebirth in to a new life; a life in which the child is the primary focus. Their son gives them true immortality because when they die, part of them will live on in him. The baby's cries and hungers document the onset of not only their bodily decay, but also the decay of their lifestyle. The sound of a child's crying is unbearable to a parent so when their son cries they almost have no choice but to react. When the child is hungry they must feed him. The needs of their new child dictate the way that they will now live. At 25 and 22 the speaker and his wife are still young and full of life. If it were not for their child, their immortality would not yet have been revealed to them. But now after seeing the life in their son – a life given to him by them - they are content to have begun the procession through adulthood to their graves. The poem is beautiful. Any parent can identify with it. It is heart felt, so it is easy to envision the tiny but vigorous boy snuggling in loving arms happily drinking in the warmth from his father. The father looks lovingly at his child glad to have given him the ultimate gift - his life.’
  This is a good summary of the excuses given for this poem- but a bad critique. Let’s have at it!
  In paragraph 1 we get a classic misreading of a text- the culprit is the writer’s own assumptions: ‘he is now the immortal one’- well, no- this is her reaction to the rote hyperbole ‘our instrument/Of immortality’. DH does not mean this verse to invoke the real immortality KM assumes; however he does KNOW that there are plenty of poor readers who will imbue even the most banal clichés with import. This is an example of the Whitmanian invocation for great audiences: DH, the poet, purposely writes banally all the while knowing there will be misreaders, like KM, willing to grant meager words with greater import because of a personal connection- brought forth by Mullins here: ‘the realization young parents have when they have a child. They realize that they are actually not immortal. They realize that they are now adults, and they will only get older. They have begun to die. They have given their lives to their new child, he is now the immortal one. He is full of life, and his life will become more exciting with age, he will have more opportunities, his body will become more fit, and he more agile with each year. While his parents enter middle age, and for them each new year brings new aches and pains, life becomes less exciting and more sedentary.’- whew! That’s an awful lot to invest in such a phrase as ‘our instrument/Of immortality’! KM’s 2^nd misreading?: ‘this poem is also about a realization parents have when their first child is born. This theme too is about a kind of death the parents experience, but this death is a beautiful experience. This is the death of the life they lived before their child was born; the life in which they put themselves first and their worries and fears were much simpler. He calls his son his "executioner" because he realizes that life as he knew it is over.’ KM’s evidence?: ‘Sweet death’. 2 clichéd words! Yet this cliché is revealed as a naked cliché by DH by what occurs 2 lines south: ‘Your cries and hungers document/Our bodily decay.’ If DH truly intended what KM assumes would he truly have written these 2 lines? Forget whether or not they are good lines literarily, do they truly extend the metaphor KM assumes ‘Sweet death’ implies? No. Because if they did he would have not inserted those lines here. Coming where they do there is a morbid dread of something along the lines of ‘the uselessness of a dying salmon after spawning’. Nowhere is there anything but the standard lament of the King’s passing on to his son. This is a lament, not a celebration. Granted, this poem’s being a celebration would only slightly improve the poem’s status as a cliché [putting aside the poem’s consistent poor word choices & narrative trope], but it would then justify KM’s misread!
  Paragraph 2: So full of misreads I will tackle it claim for claim: ‘ Now they find they live for their child. Everything seems insignificant when weighed against the welfare of their son.’ The evidence? Perhaps ‘Observe enduring life in you’? But given that ‘And start to die together.’ ends the version of the poem KM critiques it is a poor reading. At this point the jeremiad is at its most bathetic- the act of observing spoken of is not watching in any sense- merely marking [or taking note of] the start of their lamented decline. Next: ‘In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker writes that his body warms his baby. This demonstrates that the heat generated from the speaker's body has a greater purpose. He has become an instrument to ensure that his son is comfortable and well cared for.’ Probably not! Warms seems merely a convenient near-rime for arms- KM gives nada in support of her claim. & ‘instrument’ in the poem refers to the SON! Either KM is willfully misreading or her explication is sloppy in using such a key word from the poem in a different context- either way it ballockses things to a great degree. Next: ‘When Hall writes "sweet death, small son, our instrument of immortality" he is telling the reader that the death they are experiencing is not tragic, but rather natural and sweet. It is "death" in the sense that it signals the end of their own youth, but it is also a rebirth in to a new life; a life in which the child is the primary focus. Their son gives them true immortality because when they die, part of them will live on in him.’  No, KM, he is not stating that his death is sweet- see reasons detailed above. The last 2 sentences are so manifest in the poem that they reek- that KM needs to rehash- sheez! Next: ‘The baby's cries and hungers document the onset of not only their bodily decay, but also the decay of their lifestyle. The sound of a child's crying is unbearable to a parent so when their son cries they almost have no choice but to react. When the child is hungry they must feed him. The needs of their new child dictate the way that they will now live.’ Au contraire- there is the tone of resentment all under this poem- the usurper in waiting. DH tries to modernize this sentiment by including the female presence but his lack of narrative innovation reveals the standard plaint of the father rather clearly. This type of willful misreading should be obvious from the amount of verbage KM spends on imbuement.
  On to the final paragraph’s misread: ‘At 25 and 22 the speaker and his wife are still young and full of life.’ OK- the poem states that by giving definite ages! ‘If it were not for their child, their immortality would not yet have been revealed to them.’ A stretch- but not as egregious as her earlier claims. ‘But now after seeing the life in their son – a life given to him by them - they are content to have begun the procession through adulthood to their graves.’ Again- no! This is a lament- however, even if 1 accepts KM’s posit on the poem- why such a melodramatic end if contentment is the emotion being evoked? Hmm? ‘The poem is beautiful. Any parent can identify with it. It is heart felt, so it is easy to envision the tiny but vigorous boy snuggling in loving arms happily drinking in the warmth from his father. The father looks lovingly at his child glad to have given him the ultimate gift - his life.’ Here is where KM reveals her true aims & biases: she wants parents, especially, to identify with this poem. That it is the standard dread of the dying king eludes her totally. Her misreadings to this point make her justifications foregone conclusions.
  But here is the most important point re: KM’s misreading [& those of many other misreaders/alibiers who have written similarly of this poem]- even were we to accept all of her ideas the poem would still be a total CLICHÉ! We would merely be substituting the dying king cliché for the immortality through procreation cliché! & the poem would still be as rife with poorly chosen phrases, images & ideas- as well grooved into a tired narrative! & even had KM re-added the original last stanza 4, given her poor reading comprehension, she would have declared, ‘I take into my arms the death/Maturity exacts,/And name with my imperfect breath/The mortal paradox.’, some great uplifting passage, as well!
  To those who are saying, ‘C’mon Dan! Leave KM alone- aren’t you being awfully picayune?’ I will answer yes & no. Yes, but it is only in response to her classic & oft-agreed with extrapolations upon a very bad poem! I am attempting to connect the problems of a misreading- which may indeed afford KM some joy- with how that misreading echoes out to others & dulls the readership’s ability to think critically, & even how the will to think critically is dulled by the peer pressure of critical condescension to those who refuse to elevate misreading to a goal. For when such misreads are written up in journals by professors [on this & many other famous bad poems] who are charged with teaching literature to young minds, & actually misteaching them, then the picayunity of my retort does not seem so picayune! Because these misreads [& bad ideas] get recapitulated, distorted from their original distortions, then engrained in the critical canon, poor reading skills are not only perpetuated- but CELEBRATED! It’s all part of the downward spiral! The fulfillment of yet another cliché: like breeds like, unfortunately. But on KM’s joy I do not really care. No, because the very point of true criticism is to detail the workings & achievements of a thing. That such is conveniently overlooked & actually needs statement is testament to the poverty of rigorous criticism in this nation’s day! A poverty that started with, & is still perpetuated by, Dead White Males as DH, in their poetry- & their criticism. Thus, they are at the top of the Poetical & Critical Sins list- isn’t that fair, after all?

William Stafford: Lowered Standards Or Lowered I.Q.? 

  I never met & will never meet William Stafford [WS]. He is dead. I had nothing to do with that. In fact, I am here to give a thumbs up to a poem. I choose it because it stands in stark contrast to the previously described poem by DH. It is a good [not great] poem bolstered by some good choices made by WS. I will contrast these to DH’s poor choices. He is a solid poet at best- although the best of the quartet detailed in this essay.  I also chose it for a reason related to this section’s title. WS was known for the infamous quote: ‘Well, then I just lower my standards!’ after being asked how he writes a poem if he’s not up to his usual standards that day. & WS often did lower his standards- sometimes to the point of making their existence debatable. WS was also known for being imprisoned during WW2 as a Conscientious Objector, his nature poems, left-wing views, pleasant demeanor, bleeding heart do-good liberalism, & a certain simple-mindedness associated with such views. All this was well-documented in his writings, & in his appearances at poetry festivals, & on film. Usually his poems are brief ruminations, such as the poem- his most famous- at hand:

Traveling Through The Dark 

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
the road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason-
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all - my only swerving-
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

  Let’s veer from the syllabi of the other poems’ critiques & start this time with a typical take on this poem & tackle it along with its writer, Laura Whitehead . This was culled online, but is typical of the writings on this poem over the years, & dated 11/4/98:
  ‘William Stafford’s Traveling Through the Dark is beautifully written poem that expresses one of life’s most challenging aspects. It is the story of a man’s solitary struggle to deal with a tragic event that he encounters, an example of the torment that can be found along the road of life.’ The poem has a certain loveliness, no doubt. LW’s only mistake is that nowhere in the poem does the speaker experience torment- only a brief ‘swerving’- hardly torturous. Let’s write that off to novice hyperbole, though.
  ‘Driving down a narrow mountain road, “traveling through the dark,” the narrator of the poem encounters a deer. This line might fool the reader into believing the poem has a happy theme; after all, a deer is a beautiful creature that most people associate with nature or freedom. The first word of the second line, however, reverses this belief. The deer is actually “dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road.” The traveler decides to send the deer over the edge of the canyon, because “to swerve might make more dead.” This line indicates that if he fails or “swerves” in his decision, the deer could cause an accident on the narrow road that might cost more lives.’ LW states that the deer’s appearance ‘might fool the reader into believing the poem has a happy theme; after all, a deer is a beautiful creature that most people associate with nature or freedom. The first word of the second line, however, reverses this belief. The deer is actually “dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road.”’  Well, no. Given the title & its repetition in the 1^st line any reader over 12 would likely expect something foreboding- or at the very least-    dark? It’s really unfortunate that poets never learn that repeating a title in the 1^st line is almost always a death blow to a poem. & the road’s size is never described- I’ve been on some pretty capacious mountain roads! The 1^st word of line 2 merely states the expected. Thus far this is not a good poem.
  ‘The narrator, armed with this purpose, proceeds with his unfortunate task. He approaches the deer and observes that it is a recent killing. He drags her off to the side of the road, noting that she is “large in the belly.” The narrator soon discovers that the deer is pregnant, and that her fawn is still alive. At this moment he hesitates, distraught over the decision he knows he must make.’ This is a pretty obvious statement of the poem’s facts; except that hesitation can hardly be rendered as distraughtness on the speaker’s part. Note, how often critics hyperbolize & imbue things not stated, nor even implicit in a poem. The speaker is remarkably calm in this poem- a fact unlike that which most average people would display. Who is this speaker that can remain so cool? It certainly is NOT Stafford himself. Any reading of Stafford’s prose & poetry tells us the real man would have whipped out a pocket knife, delivered the fawn, & taken it to the nearest proper authorities. Here is where Stafford does what so few poets do nowadays- he makes a choice to go for the dramatic element, rather than what his ‘conscience’ would say in real life. I.e.- he tells a lie- & it works! & note LW states the speaker drags the deer off to the side of the road. The speaker merely ‘dragged her off’’- watch how this misread shortly blooms!
  ‘Faced by the implications of this decision, the narrator considers his surroundings: his car stares ahead into the darkness with its lowered parking lights, purring its steady engine; he stands “in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red,” and can “hear the wilderness listen.” All of these describe the anxiety he feels about his responsibility. The personified car is expectantly awaiting his decision, eager to get moving again. The wilderness takes on human abilities also, silently witnessing the outcome it knows must be, but wishing it was otherwise. As the narrator ponders all of this, the tail lights of the car illuminate him in their red light. This is reflective of the heightened emotions he is experiencing, but also brings to mind the bloody fate of the deer and her unborn fawn. The narrator thinks “hard for us all” and proceeds with the task he had committed to since the beginning. He pushes the deer and her unborn fawn over the edge into the river.’ While the speaker does face the implications of his act the car is hardly personified- it is given some animate qualities; but hardly human. From this slip up LW then imbues the car with impatience- a quality absent from the poem. The speaker is in full control of this tale- & very deliberate. Neither is nature personified- that it listens is hardly evidence for such. That the speaker gives in to the more natural urge that WS- in real life- would have denied suggests the speaker is becoming less human & more natural- as it were. Lest why would his hesitance [derived from his cogitation] be deemed my only swerving? LW does make a nice interpretation of the red tail lights, though.
  ‘There is much more to Traveling Through the Dark than its literal story. The title, along with the story itself, suggests Man’s disregard for nature. Humans seem to travel through life like a horse with blinders on, oblivious to the consequences or implications of their actions. The driver who killed the deer is an example of this theme. He was also traveling through the dark, as the deer was a “recent killing.” The fact that he left it in the middle of the road, with no further thought for it or anyone else behind him, implies his immoral or dark nature.’ With only a loose grasp on the poem’s straightforward tale, LW now veers alot from the actual poem. If LW’s interpretation of the title is so then the speaker would do what WS would- & disregard Nature’s impulse. But he gives in to it. LW now totally imbues the poem with something not found in it: ‘Humans seem to travel through life like a horse with blinders on, oblivious to the consequences or implications of their actions. The driver who killed the deer is an example of this theme.’ No. The poem is a very specific set up to a very specific action & its consequences to an individual at a specific moment. The poem is highly internalized- witness the speakers imbuing of inanimata! The other driver is of no consequence, because there is NO evidence of there being another driver. This deer could have been killed by bullet or crossbow, having wandered to the road after being injured. In fact it is the more likely possibility because an impact severe enough to kill a grown deer would almost assuredly have done far more damage to an unborn fawn than its mother slowly bleeding to death! I recall being told such a few years back when a hunter I worked with mentioned reading this poem & thinking the deer had been roadkill. I there, also, pointed out that it was probably NOT roadkill! Then the poem made sense- he assured me. The only evidence 1 can possibly marshal for a belief that the deer is roadkill is the speaker’s car- but IT did not hit the deer, there is no other car, no mention of skidmarks, a ruptured bleeding abdomen, etc. Before the evidence of this being a deer killed by other means, the roadkill surmise pales. Reread the poem fully & see the lack of LW’s evidence. Mark how these misreads snowball into bigger & bigger blunders. We then end with an incredible bit of misreading by LW. She states the ‘phantom’ driver left the deer in the ‘middle of the road’ while the poem clearly states the deer was ‘dead on the edge of the Wilson River road’! & incredibly in her 2^nd paragraph LW even states: ‘The first word of the second line, however, reverses this belief. The deer is actually “dead on the edge of the Wilson River Road.”’ Has she forgotten what she said earlier? Again, you cry: ‘Do not be so picayune!’ But note how these little misreads mount, distort, & then ossify into general beliefs about poems & poets! The last 2 sentences are just total imbuement by LW into what she wants the poem to be about- not what it is about!
  ‘The main theme of the poem, however, is the sadness and misfortune that accompany us on our journey through life. The Wilson River Road, in which the events of the poem take place, is symbolic of the road of life that we all travel upon. The darkness and the setting of the poem point to the seclusion and indecision that we experience when dealing with life’s tragedies. Many people feel as confused as the narrator as he was “stumbling back of the car” in his attempt to do the right thing. In his moment of decision, though, the only company the narrator had was the silent and unaiding world around him. Unfortunately, many situations we must face in life are like this. People are not always around to help us through hard times, and most tragedies, such as death, are obstacles that we must overcome individually. As described in the poem, though, death is an inevitability that we cannot change, and therefore should not detour us from our path. Like the narrator’s car staring toward the road, anxious about moving on, we all are eager to put these events behind us and continue on with life. This last aspect is symbolized by the river in the poem that runs adjacent to the road. As we push life’s obstacles off to the side, they fall into this symbolic river and are swept farther and farther away from us by the current of time, allowing us to continue on our way.’ By now LW has gone so far afield in her view of this poem that ideas about ‘the road of life’ are inevitable- despite the fact that this is a poem not about motion. The stumbling in the poem also seems a mere description of the speaker’s movement, not a symbolic thing at the point it appears in the poem. The ‘river of time’ conclusion is yet a further manifestation of the accumulating misreads by LW. A single man is hardly going to be able to push a deer [even if off an embankment] far enough into a river for the corpse to be swept away. It’ll merely be scavenged & rot. LW’s unfortunate misread of the poem is all-too frequent in poetry layfolk & critics. Note all the assumptions are borne of slight misreads due to laze of thought or concentration- even though this poem is a lot more vivid than most contemporary poetic crap! But read what follows next:
  ‘William Stafford does an excellent job of holding to his objective in this poem. His style of story-telling kept his main theme at focus, and did not allow the more emotional aspects to take over. His story gives clarification to the overwhelming and chaotic nature of life. We must learn to deal with tragedies such as death, as they are unpreventable. These events do have an everlasting effect on us, but they should not deter us from our natural course.’ Despite her continued misreads LW actually scores a bulls-eye! WS did do an excellent job of reaching his objective- which was giving an objective description of a plausible [if fictional] event. The point is LW was totally lost by the poem- evidenced by her explanation’s veer into emotionalism & lack of clarity!
  Yet, as bad as LW’s criticism is- & it’s a very typical misread of this good poem- it is a lot better & more thoughtful than most contemporary criticism; just compare it to Kathryn Mullins’ take on DH’s My Son, My Executioner. Is this due to WS’s poem being better than DH’s? Probably not. Again, the 10,000 Monkeys Syndrome is at play. To be a good critic does not mean having correct opinions on something, but having correct opinions, for correct reasons, expressed well! While I am glad that LW finds meaning & comfort in this poem, she does so for the wrong reasons. That is OK for her, but for those who pay more attention to the poem her reasons are meaningless.
  This is a good-very good poem. Some of its clichés early on really dig it into a hole. This was no doubt due to WS’s innate sentimentality. But he recognized he was on to a narrative gem & recovers nicely. Most of this recovery is due to the man’s decision to drop sentimentality, be objective, & go against his grain. Yes, there are the standard apologists who deny that this poem is atypical of WS’s oeuvre, that he was always a man of raw nature, etc. To that I can just say- NO. Reread his work. This poem, while not a great work, stands as many other poems by greater poets do- as a unique work different & above- in relation to their other poems. Think of this as WS’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, Four Preludes On Playthings Of The Wind, or Ozymandias. It has a nice subtle music to it: stanza 1’s d & short e sounds; it has a very subdued imagery throughout; & we are dramatically left hanging as to the speaker- his act is the last image. The poem is well-structured & not too long. If only the start of the poem were stronger this could have been a very great poem. But, we do learn more from near-misses than from the hermetically great.
  WS was always better with nature & philosophy as his themes. His personal & family poems are sappy & mawkish. Too often the knowledge of these other poems clouds people’s view of this poem. Robert Bly, in his introduction to The Darkness Around Us Is Deep- WS’s selected poems, falls in to this trap. On this poem Bly goes off into unintended comic aeries: ‘The artist owes language to the human community. Every poem we write, every day we live, we think about what we owe to each. By knowing what to take from the world of culture and what to give back, what to take from the world of animals and what to give back, we become adults. That awake people are aware of the two communities- the human beings and the animals- is assumed, and the decision between those two is not easy.’ & he closes with this bit of further humor: ‘The wild things are interested in the discriminations a human being makes standing beside his car.’ You see, now, why I chose a relative unknown’s POV on this poem? Bly so characteristically goes off into his own little world that a reader knowing this poem only from Bly’s discombobulation is likely never to reapproach the poem. Note how Bly also misses the true thrust of the poem- & worse, uses his misread as a pulpit! But I will address Robert Bly’s criticisms more fully later on in this essay series.
  Back to the poem & WS’s critical choice to not veer into his immense propensity for mawk. This is what separates WS from DH. Granted, lines such as this: ‘They say the hurt is good for you. It makes/what comes later a gift all the more/precious in your bleeding hands.’ Or ‘Forgive these shadows I cling to, good people,/trying to hold quiet in my prologue./Hawks cling the barrens wherever I live./The world says, “Dog eat dog.”’ sprung all too often from WS’s pen- respectively the ends of Consolations & the of Some Shadows. Yes he could be that bad- both with titles & as a 10^th rate Robinson Jeffers- but he also produced this poem & a few other little gems. DH, however, did not. In opposition to WS’s sometimes ability to rise above his muck DH always chooses the melodrama or the personal- compare the end of My Son, My Executioner to the end of Traveling Through The Dark. Both represent classic ‘moment’ poems- the speaker experiences something that can have a profound effect. The object of such poems is to relay that effect to the reader. But look how fresh & objective the latter is compared to the triteness of the former. Part of the reason- if not the whole- is that DH refuses to drop his own true-to-life personality in favor of an adopted persona for the sake of making a better narrative. Simply put- WS made a good & correct artistic choice; DH did not. That DH’s poem has some nice abruptive rhythms, & that the off-rhymes work better than straight on rimes seems to be happenstance in a very sloppy poem. Too often poets do not know when to end a poem- DH’s problem is that he had the rare poem that should have gone longer to make it better. While not a great stanza, the excised 4^th stanza does make DH’s poem better. But WS’s poem is just the right length. The only excision WS’s poem could survive would be the 1^st stanza’s. He may have titled the poem On The Edge Of The Wilson River Road. Stanza 2 would have been a bit jarring but all the elements would remain- plus the 2ble triteness of Traveling Through The Dark would be gone- yet the rest of the poem would not have felt as ‘natural’- for lack of a better term. So WS was correct in the length of the poem- only failed in its start. DH fails all around.

    A point that flows out of this contrast is that 1 of the recurring reasons an artist fails in a particular artwork is that they take a too-structured approach to the intended artwork. This means they have ideas that are set in stone- they need to SAY exactly what they intend- & any deterrence from this end only weakens the art. Rather, an artist should have a general or central aim, then give over to the creative process that churns both consciously & not. If the person is determined enough those processes will guide the artist to the end result they wanted- or damn near! The result may not be exactly what was envisioned but odds are it will be alot better work of art. & if not what originally desired- so what? Keep the good work & try again from the initial premise! This is what WS did in his successful poem & what the others did not do in their travesties. The important point for an artist? DAMN the message- art is in how the message is constructed (conveyed)! Fuck the truth & the desire to boost one’s ego with an import garnered from the easy out of telling the truth! WS was untruthful in his poem- but it worked. In other words- the INTENTIONAL FALLACY still dominates contemporary poetry. & because it does- & was 1 of the major pillars of the myopic New Critics, a lot of New Critical errors still survive- like it or not- because this 1 great artistic evil they identified still thrives- in fact, greater than ever!
  A final word on the cliché as fulfillment. Note how laden with clichés the 1^st 3 discussed poems are. Compare that the WS’s relatively cliché-free poem. Simply put, WS- in this poem- was not as lazy as the other 3 poets were in their respective poems. He did not settle on cliché. That poets settle for such is their own matter. When critics allow their bland homilies & retread ideas to pass for poetry, then readers- especially those who are young, & those in future generations, are due for some bad things. Inertia is a powerful force- when things, or poets, or critics, start to avoid the art in art, the spiral gathers force & a slip-sliding they all go.
  Amongst the biggest sliders have been the Academics- largely DWMs- but we’ve seen that DWFs can be just as bad, & know that the ‘Outsiders’ are no better. Yet they all are published, lauded, alibied for, & worst of all- imitated. APC has done a lousy job of correcting this, & other, ills in the past- thus the situation perpetuates: that is their intention- both of the bad poets & the worse critics! Let’s hope readers wise up & choose to make their intention one not fulfilled too much longer- & that’s no fallacy!

A Supermarket In California   

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman,  for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
  What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! -and you, Garcia¢ Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
  (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
  Will we walk all night through the solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Copyright Ó 1984 by Allen Ginsberg, from COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1980, p. 136

Shonisaurs Drying On Nevadan Beaches

Epicontinental moans from the seas
fill the ichthyosaurs' day, as their night,
while the sun squeezes life from a crying
mother, as its baby crawls from beneath

its belly and feels the draw of the waves'
salt on its skin, and a choice to be made:
whether to stay with its kind [a score right
here) or to head for the water it craves,

the future life it can crawl to begin,
as the beached adults [beyond all trying)
wheeze on the dunes, devoid of any shade-
but the baby loves the feel of the skin

of its dying mother, so joins the dirge:
pioneer of a just-discovered urge.

Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider

The Shirt 

The shirt touches his neck
and smoothes over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt-
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.

Copyright Ó by Jane Kenyon

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