Entry 484 — Another Exchange with an Academic
From New-Poetry yesterday and this morning (slightly revised for clarity):
B.G.: Here’s an easy question, David. Do you think a book by an established critic like Vendler or Logan about 5 poets representing schools of poetry no established critic has every written seriously about, would be more worth writing than one about Levine?
D.G.: Yes, that’s an easy question. The answer is: it depends on what they write.
B.G.: Obviously, I meant if some critic like Vendler wrote a book of criticism at the level of the critic’s other works, which would you rather the critic write about–Five poets as written-about as Levine, or five poets representing schools no well-known critic has seriously written about.
D.G.: I don’t have opinions about work I haven’t read, and I don’t assume anything is automatically “better” based on the criteria that you
B.G.: Whenever anyone poses a question like mine, “better” means “according to the person asked.” Why can’t you meet these simple questions head-on?
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D.G.: This’ll be the last from me on this go-round, Bob.
B.G.: To me, it is, David. To me, what I’m asking, to rephrase to meet your weirdly insistent need to avoid answering my question, is which of the two works I mention do you believe you would turn out preferring having read if you were to read both. The question underlying this is do you believe a book by a prominent critic about poetry doing things no prominent critic has written about would be more valuable than a book by the same critic, at the same level of effectiveness, about poetry doing things many prominent critics have discussed.
Your contention that you don’t have opinions about books that you haven’t read, by the way, seems unlikely. How is it, for example, that you haven’t bought and read a book of my criticism but have bought and read many books by certified critics and read them if you started off having no opinion about any of those books? Do you have to read every book you read through to the end to develop an opinion of it, on the grounds that you can’t have an opinion of any part you don’t read, and that you need to in order to have an opinion of the book as a whole? Do you read every email sent you including spam all the way through? You must if you read any of them since you can’t have an opinion of them without doing so.
I tend to think your outlook is based on a fear of expressing an opinion that most people will consider wrong. I don’t have that fear, so am quite able to form and express opinions without full knowledge of every fact having to do with the subject my opinion is about. I’m confident that if I’m wrong, I’ll be able to change my mind. I’m also confident that this way I’ll be able to say many more interesting things than a person who fears looking bad.
D.G.: Nor do I think, as you evidently do, that it’s automatically “better” to pay attention to a given poet just because that style hasn’t been paid as much attention as, well, as the styles of poetry that most people actually enjoy reading.
But how will you know that you won’t prefer the undiscussed style to the received style if all the commentators you’re willing to read won’t discuss it? Isn’t that really having an opinion of something you haven’t read, the opinion being that it’s not at all a bad thing that only your sort of poetry be discussed by prominent critics?
D.G.: Plenty of great music to be written in C major, and all that. There could be a great book on Levine being written right now, for all I know.
B.G.: There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion before reading it that a book that has a 1% chance of saying something interesting about a much-discussed poet will be better than one that covers an unfamiliar kind of poetry, but why can’t you openly admit that you do? I have no trouble stating that I think another book on Levine by some prominent critic will have no chance at all of being as valuable as a book by the same critic about the kind of poets you consider the equivalent of cowboys kicking moose skulls and calling it baseball (or something close to that).
as I see “it” (said the Blind Man):
(the problem with the critic is that) their application offers little more (and even less than) a salutary reminder that pattern-spotting and pattern-making, as process, that too often lacks in any clear distinction from one another in their
‘piss-ant’ minds …. with the result that (as Dryden said of translation: ‘ many a fair precept ….is, like a seeming demonstration in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the mechanic operation.’
In other words the critic/academic hasn’t got a clue as to what the Holy Grail is
or what a poetic metaphor is or from whence one comes !
Plato got it wrong: ban the poetry critic (academic) from the republic, not the poet