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Tuesday, March 2, 2004 |
I failed to include John Latta and Crag Hill among the indefatigable bloggers. I did include Jonathan Mayhew, but he certainly didn't display any wit or insight with this formerly inane post.
First, neither Wilbur nor Hecht are even remotely New Formalists, having already achieved reputations before most of the Newbies were out of diapers. Wilbur and Hecht belong to the generation of Donald Justice, Edgar Bowers, and X. J. Kennedy, only a little younger than Louise Bogan, J. V. Cunningham, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Frederick Nims, and only slightly older than Robert Mezey, who, pace Silliman, was born in 1935. Does Jonathan mean to suggest that none of these poets, all significant formalists, ever wrote a good poem?
But even being charitable and assuming he meant to say merely (merely!) that none of the New Formalists have ever written a good poem ("show me a good poem from this tendency"), I can only say such a display of arrogance and apparent ignorance is appalling and breathtaking. It's a good thing, I suppose, that he discounted the effect of politics on poetics. Good for the avant garde, that is, many of whose heroes have supported murderous tyrannies of either the left or the right.
I really hope Jonathan was just having a bad day, and he's better now.
Update: Even though it's true, that was cheap shot at the avant garde, which has also included many people who labored tirelessly and risked their lives for human rights. Both statements are also true of formalist poets. Being a poet doesn't give one any special insight into liberty, no matter what kind of poetry one writes.
Another Update: Jonathan does feel better. He's edited his post, so I've added the word "formerly" to the above link.
7:53:38 PM 
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I try to keep politics out of this blog, except as it directly affects writers. This does. Kudos to Chris Murray and, especially, Shanna Compton for pushing this issue.
Understand me—as far as I'm concerned, the governments of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Libya, and the other proscribed countries are odious in the extreme, and no US administration has ever begun to approximate the evil those governments have done to their own people and to others. But this preposterous stance by the US Department of the Treasury significantly erodes our own freedom and makes it more difficult, not less, to aid the victims of oppression and those who work to free them.
This New York Times article will soon disappear into their archives, but I have a copy if you want one.
7:01:05 PM
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Thanks to Chris Murray for suggesting this theme. The request lines—a comment or an email—are still open.
Faithless Anyhow
If all goes well, the first to go is the heart.
A moment then, then nothing anymore.
Others may grieve, if that's their chosen part,
But not for long—their own hearts shut that door.
They've better things to do, or better have.
That long-legged boy just took a second look,
And now a third, and oh, his look could salve
More grief than fills the saddest storybook—
At least until his own heart fails, or yours,
Or worse, chorea shakes those legs, a cancer
Boils in your blood, stroke snaps the ligatures
Of thought and when you call there is no answer,
Only his heart's relentless pantomime,
Since no one's there to know it's closing time.
6:29:31 PM
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
2006 Michael Snider.
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