To Be Great...

In a recent blog-post, Amy King challenged me and other poets to define "greatness." It is a daunting task; the idea itself, of being "great," has the feeling of the New Critical era around it. Nevertheless, all of us need a standard of greatness; if we do not, our work becomes meaningless. We define the cohesiveness and possible success of our endeavors by how close we come to a possible, self-posited greatness. Greatness is, must be, of necessity, relative and context-dependent; there is no centralizing, accepted rubric for greatness. We all have to decide for ourselves what greatness is; that, or listen to someone like Harold Bloom, who will be happy to make our decisions for us, if we let him. So, I think the smartest approach to Amy's challenge is a resolutely subjective one, rather than an answer that makes a bid for objectivity. I will lay down here the precepts that, for me, constitute poetic (and artistic) greatness. Because quantitative evaluation is not relevant to art, and because qualitative evaluation is simultaneously amorphous (hinging as it does on context, historical circumstances, intellectual and aesthetic trends) and the back-bone of solid criticism (if there is such a thing), my approach to, analysis of, and conclusions drawn from "greatness" will begin and end with me.

So many of my core ideas about what constitute poetic greatness are drawn from the High Mods that I am tempted to just refer the reader to Eliot's Tradition and the Individual Talent. As the essay is widely known, studied, and copied, there would seem to be no need to reiterate Eliot's formulations here. It might be possible, however, to create a neat meta-irony by taking one of Eliot's ideas a step further. Eliot, in this essay, discusses in some detail the process by which new, major works of poetry transform and transmute our ideas about old(er) ones. Well, perhaps the task of this essay can be to transform and transmute (to whatever extent possible) our ideas regarding Eliot's essay. My motivating idea is to fill in some gaps in Eliot's construct. What if Eliot were writing today? Eliot encourages "past-consciousness," a necessary internalization of poetry's history. However, post-modernity in general encourages the exact reverse of this: the dismissal of "past-consciousness" as irrelevant, petrifying, and antithetical to the distinct brands of humor and irony that are relevant now. If Eliot were writing this essay today (at what might be, willy-nilly, the closing of the post-modern era and the opening of a new one), he would have to take account of this discrepancy between his own method and formula for greatness and the post-modern method/formula (the whole basis of which is that "greatness," as it has been handed down to us, is no longer possible.) Eliot, after all, published the essay in 1921, when he was still part of the avant-garde elite. How can "greatness" be reconciled with its own effacement? Can it be?

"Greatness" is either now, or never. What would a great poet (and great poetry) look like now? Not a simple question to answer, and any definite answer must demonstrate an authority that is tenuous, at best. A great poet now must, in fact, develop, hone, and maintain "past-consciousness"; he or she must also demonstrate comprehension of the limitations that "past-consciousness" imposes. This must be an ambiguity that is dynamic in the books; that bespeaks a consciousness in which binaries are in constant ferment; that is willing to drop precipitously into no short-cuts or rote moves. The Zeitgeist must not be ignored; political realities must be included (though not necessarily fore-grounded); form and formal elements must be reworked and in a continual flux. What I am enumerating is a poetics of responsibility, and that shows an awareness of audience. Bloggers are constantly complaining about the lack of audience for poetry; the truth is that more people are writing and publishing poetry than ever before. I see no use and no greatness in hieroglyphic poetry, hermetic poetry, or poetry that chafes at the idea of accessibility. If I have an ideal, it is of a completely responsible poet: not a "dull sheep," but a poet who understands what is worth being read in an era that demands constant, unstinting labor from everyone. Leisure-class poetry will not suffice, and there is as much leisure-class poetry in experimental circles as there is anywhere else. In 2009, toughness is greatness, hardness is greatness, sinewy narrativity is greatness, and lazy disjunctive curlicues have little utility value for an audience that cannot afford to be lazy. "Greatness" means taking that from your time which is unique and making something timeless from it. This is why my moral outrage with poets who are ignoring the economic crisis has aesthetic overtones. How can you write anything pertinent if you bury your head in the sand? How can you write from another era while things collapse around you?

I do not mean to imply that everything we write must directly concern the economic crisis. I do mean to say that responsibility consists in not writing what has been written before, and specifically what was written before economic issues became super-prevalent. Poetry must reflect a wider reality than just poetry if it is to have any practical value. A great poet will see and internalize this reality; a poetics of responsibility necessitates that not wasting our time becomes a primary concern. This moment will not last forever; it is possible that, ten years hence, we will be surrounded by the peace and prosperity that were ours to enjoy in the Nineties. The "great poet" I envision for our moment carries a knife, rather than a notebook; lives on cheap food and in a Spartan way; is compelled by an instinct to survive, rather than enjoy; wants catharsis more than praxis (though both are important); is ready to tell the absolute, bare-bones truth at the drop of the hat; accepts contradictions but not without pain; is not a "joiner"; and believes in giving love and compassion to those who deserve it. This new moment needs a new kind of poet in a new mode of greatness. Time will tell if others find these pictures congenial, or if there is another mode of "greatness" nascent, that I have yet to anticipate.

Living Contradictions

When you give a substantial amount of time to an art-form that offers no material compensation, it is difficult not to feel a sense of the contradictory, or of internal contradiction. It is what psychologists and sociologists call cognitive dissonance, and it refers to a state in which the psyche is out of harmony with itself. In a world dominated by materiality and material interests, why put heart and soul into something that doesn't pay? This kind of recognition may not set in until a certain amount of maturity has been attained. Different poets grow at different rates; the kind of thought-pattern that is old hat to a poet of thirty may be yet to dawn on a poet of forty (or, of course, vice versa). Whenever mature recognition of what the world is sets in, the question begins to loom. Certain poets are exempted: trust-funders, for example. Let's face it: the history of poetry (and all art, for that matter) is largely the history of trust-funders. Why did Gertrude Stein never have to wait tables? Because she was hard at work writing Tender Buttons? No, because she was supported for her entire adult life by family money. Ditto lots of other people. But for those of us with no such luck, and who refuse to blow themselves up with illusions and delusions, the contradiction of working hard for nothing is important and impossible to ignore. It's not like I have a list of material goods I want to purchase: but what if I want to be a Daddy? What if I have someone to buy a wedding band for, and I can't afford a wedding band? I could be teaching high school in the burbs right now and making $80,000 dollars a year. Why aren't I?

One crux of this is that I see too many poets these days living in la-la land, as if this Depression weren't happening, as if things are as they've always been (easy, flexible, comfortable). Poets who keep spending when they have nothing to spend. Poets regressing into complete dependence on friends and families, to the point that accusations of laziness and irresponsibility are well founded. The contradiction I am living has everything to do with the sense that the last thing I want to do now is regress into complete material dependence. So, I wake up every morning ready to fight. I fight with myself to grant myself the space I need to create the way I want to create. I fight with myself to let difficult people win certain battles so that I might win the war. I fight with myself not to become disillusioned, bitter, or resigned. What are my weapons? A more or less complete belief in the redemptive powers of art and legitimate creation; a complete faith in my ability to feel my way through my life as an artist; a complete acknowledgement of both my vulnerability and my strength; a complete sense that I am doing the best I can, both as an artist and as a person, and that anyone that messes with me unnecessarily can go to hell.

There are a few danger spots I have located: I am having a harder time than usual locating a sense of humor and irony. The economic crisis has brought with it, for me at least, a sense of seriousness and earnestness that renders the old Jewish humor thing moot. I also feel more invested in protecting myself, to the extent that I have closed ranks a little bit (though I am wary of all through the day, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine). When you feel like you're fighting for your life every day, it's difficult to reach out, be compassionate, self-transcend. The irony, of course, is that self-transcendence happens to be the basis of most great art (even when the art is auto-biographical). As artists, we are most who we are when we go beyond ourselves. It is also hard to create when and if you find yourself in warrior mode. To be a warrior, you have to know exactly who you are, and be able to guide yourself from this position; to be an artist, you have to know how to efface yourself, as thoroughly and painstakingly as possible. The two modes, warrior and artist, are not naturally compatible, and must be yoked together by force in the manner of the great metaphysical poems. Once you are sitting in front of the screen, can you get into the space, that space, in which all serious composition happens? Have you trained yourself to know what that space is, and what it isn't? Are you prepared to throw out what needs to be thrown out, even if it means you've just wasted a big chunk of time?

I have a prediction to make, and it isn't a pleasant one. I think there's a decent chance that not all of us who call ourselves poets will survive this Depression. Some will survive, but will lose their capacity to create. Some will sink into a torpor that may be irremediable. Some will be forced by circumstance to give up writing. Some will lose their edge. Of course, I hope I'm wrong. Who knows? Maybe things aren't quite as drastic as they seem right now. And, if they are, I in no way privilege myself as someone who will undoubtedly survive. But we know that poets are often the poorest artists (materially) so it stands to reason that a genuine Depression would hit poets harder than, say, classical musicians or portrait painters. Few-to-none of us get steady pay-checks for our work. But to those of us who burn with a perpetual need to create, to express internal realities, stopping is not an option. So, willy-nilly, the contradiction I started with winds up completing the circle. We may investigate the interior room, glean pertinent insights, but the bills are not going to pay themselves. So, for me, and for many of my friends, the fight is on, though it has yet to escalate into full-scale war. I have my fingers crossed that this does not need to happen; that all of us can live on a razor's edge without losing any blood. It may or may not be quixotic for me to believe that this is possible.

Poetry in a time of Depression

I think a solid argument can be made, McGann aside, that good poetry courts timelessness. We can trace in a good poem ideologies, preoccupations, and delusions endemic to specific times and situations. Yet if there is not something about the poem that transcends these contingencies, what we have is dead meat. There is a rich history available to anyone with the will and stamina to investigate it, and no Zeitgeist has yet surfaced so singular that it has effaced our collective interest in what has come before. Though all these things are true, I have spent the last few days wondering (in spare moments) what kind of poetry a time of Depression calls for. This is, I might add, a time of Depression in America. Everything is becoming more difficult; certainties that we have all taken for granted (availability of jobs, affordability of goods, reliability of funds) are no longer certain; consequently, people are becoming hesitant, discontented, and shackled by circumstance. This goes for me, as much as for anyone else I know. For those of us who take our art seriously, and for whom going on your nerve is no longer as desirable as it used to be, it stands to reason that this new socio-economic Depression should lead us back to fundamental questions of value and identity. Why write poetry now? What qualifies you or I to apply the appellation "poet" to ourselves in a time of Depression? If we are, in fact, going to write poetry and be poets, what should we write about, and how? All the old modes could fail us: lapidary, epiphanic, anti-epiphanic, disjunctive, paratactic, disassociative, objective. McGann does say that poets most rooted in their time wind up being most universal. I don't know if I agree, but I think it's true that a poet in 2009 has no business going on with his or her endeavor until some semblance of an answer has been posited.

For me, these questions lead directly back to the issue of narrativity. Experimental poets have spent more than half a century pushing against the confines of the straightforwardly narrative. The work has been productive and useful: we have seen shown, in myriad ways, that narrative, a linear thread enacting a standard sense of temporality in the process of enacting plot/story/characterization, is limiting and often one-dimensional. However, it has become clear to me that the strightforwardly narrative has some definite advantages. What if, for example, you do have a story to tell? What if you want to tell it in a way that is readily comprehensible? At this point, I do not feel that wanting to tell a story is necessarily symptomatic of a retrograde sensibility. This is especially pertinent in a time of Depression; I anticipate that many of us will crave enough linearity that we can at least gain a clear sense of where we are in a poem. There are ways to do this without going backwards. The best way is to have a story to tell that demonstrates awareness of itself as a story: a meta-story, as it were. It also depends on the quality of the story being told: does it work on many levels, as (perhaps) allegory, biography/autobiography, formal investigation, and representation of dynamic selfhood at once? Disjunctive work requires incredible levels of readerly diligence, often with little payback; at a time when many of us are getting paid almost nothing, who wants to be engaged in this? We want to be paid back for reading someone's book, if for nothing else. I will make my apologies for being corny, and demand catharsis, humanity, and the availability of comprehensibility without the demand for more unpaid labor. It remains to be seen whether others will join with me or not, and these questions will take years to answer.

Ideology and Hypocrisy

I have been thinking a lot about ideology and its relationship to language and art (specifically, the art of poetry.) Jerome McGann's book focused on ideology as being often semi or unconscious. What about poets for whom ideology is a sine qua non of poetic practice? What about poets who are, for want of a better term, ideologues? Of course, McGann would say that all poets are ideologues to some extent, but I am talking about poets who foreground ideology in their work. It could be feminist, queer, working class, black, bourgeois, materialist, spiritualist, any number of things. When ideology is foregrounded, what effect does it have on the work? I have always felt that ideologues generally write lousy poetry. I used to call poetry ideologues "agenda poets." There would seem to be a price to pay either way. What is the cost for adopting and maintaining ideologies at the expense of the aesthetic, and vice versa? What are the wages of ideology and verse?