Skip to main content

World and Earth

Poet-critic Adam Kirsch has an interesting, if arguably somewhat simplistic, essay on the relationship between Heidegger and contemporary mainstream English-language poetry, in the January 2008 issue of Poetry. One of the essay's problems is that Kirsch tries to suggest that the early High Moderns (Yeats, Eliot, Stevens, for example) were "world" oriented, trying to impose a vision of mastery, remaking the order of things, while the "earth" poets, like "post-Catholic" Heaney (and I think the post may be a little overdetermined here) modestly, and ethically listen to things, and show the ordinary in an extraordinary light, unforcing nature's hand, but being midwife to its exposure and celebration.

The problem with this is that the so-called "metaphysical" approach of poets like Heaney, with its strong, neo-classical emphasis on an austere diction, and an ethos of silence and epiphanic apprehension, is deeply moral in precisely the ordering way of late Eliot - and the critical demands made by those poets who argue for such an earth-based (pace Kirsch) credo are not nearly as unassuming or modest as might be assumed. I also don't feel that all contemporary poetry can be easily subsumed into this dialectic. As Alain Badiou argues in his recent The Century, it was precisely the argument of Two Into One, that is, the refusal to agree as to the nature of dialectical synthesis, which leads to a celebration of power, reality, war and violence, in the 20th century. Kirsch's attempt to synthesise the various poetries into a neatly-defined twosome is admirable, perhaps, but perhaps incorrect. I think the quarrel that various poetics have with each other, language, decorum, tradition, and the world - let alone possibilities of enchantment in a disenchanted time (see Charles Taylor's new A Secular Age) is more complex, and unresolved.

But Kirsch is correct, I think, in noting that metaphysical issues are at stake. However, is it enough to want to notice (as Thomas Hardy did) such things, the small felicities of nature and the world, and inscribe them in words for others? Does poetry - does visionary writing - not have, potentially, more to do than that? The decline of the idea of the role of poet as visionary (after Dylan Thomas) - a tale of two Thomases - is part of this story, though Hughes and Heaney obviously are seeing things, too.

I am enjoying, and reading, his new book of criticism, The Modern Element. While Kirsch is an apologist for one dominant style of poetics, he is also a very insightful critic, and hugely enjoyable to read. Some of the essays in the new book have the wit, verve and apt quotations one associated with the great Poetry and the Age, by Jarrell - someone Kirsch has clearly closely attended to.

Comments

Great article, Todd. Please, you who are politically aware of problems give a look to Tommaso Gervasutti's latest entry in his blog, it's about my country.
best, Davide
Rob said…
Coincidentally, someone recommended I get hold of this book when it comes out (end of February?) and I think I will. It sounds really interesting. I don't know anything about Kirsch. When you say that, "...Kirsch is an apologist for one dominant style of poetics," what style are you referring to?
EYEWEAR said…
What I meant by this is that Kirsch tends to argue for the Wordsworth line in poetry, tinged with pragmatic modernism - in his reviews, he constntly returns to Humean tests for poetry - he's an empiricist - is the language clear, adequate to the experience - his comments on Koch's work, in particular, show how his own poetic cannot fully accept work that intends to be excessive, artificial, inorganic. As such, he is, like Helen Vendler, a supporter of the dominant mainstream lyric tradition in Anglo-British poetry. It's a fine tradition, and he's a fine critic. However, there are other perspectives (and not necessarily better ones, at that).

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".