Matthew Zapruder in action.
A few days ago, the Poetry Foundation published “Show Your Work!” an essay by Matthew Zapruder, in which he calls for a sort of renewal of the spirit of poetry criticism. You should read the whole piece for yourself, but here’s the part that I take to be his thesis:
Critics can do one of at least two things. The first is simply to insist that something is good, or bad, and rely on the force of personality or reputation to convince people. The second is to write, with focus and clarity, about how the piece of art works, what choices the artist has made, and how that might affect a reader. Only then can the reader grow to meet work that is unfamiliar, that he or she does not yet have the capacity to love.
In short- Yes, absolutely. For more, flip to page A16.
"there is no method except to be very intelligent"
It seems to me that what Zapruder is calling for, in essence, is a sort of return to the ideas of the New Critics, only modified for use in a world radically different than the one they lived and wrote in. Of course, our world—our poetry world, anyhow—in large regard is the result of the New Critics’ existence and the battles they waged and won (and lost), so any sort of neo-New Criticism we might strive to engender or develop would necessarily look very different from the original incarnation, since this new incarnation will have to take the original set of developments, insights, failures, and all the artifacts of their actual criticism into account, and go from there. (That is, if it can. There’s no particular guarantee that lost knowledge is ever fully recoverable.)
Perhaps, in the more general sense, what Zapruder is asking for is a renewal of commitment to engagement with the art form—dedication not just to one’s own poetry, and the six journals that publish one’s own poetry, but to the entire state of the art.
The proof of how prescient such a call is is in the mostly miserable pudding of the comments thread on the post, which I’ve now been following for several days. Much like the UDP-NYT thread Mike Young posted about the other day, the few attempts at rational, intelligent discussion in Zapruder’s comment thread are drowned out by narcissistic yahoos, soft-skulled weirdos, opportunistic axe-grinders, and Bill Knott. I can’t tell if these people are declining to critically engage with Zapruder’s criticism of criticism because they would simply prefer to hear themselves talk, or if it’s because they’re actually too stupid to understand that what they’re writing is not, in point of fact, a contribution to the discussion.
Anyway. Moving along.
Without a vital critical tradition, and a living critical practice, an art form—and, no less importantly, the sub-culture dedicated to that form—has no way in which to describe itself to itself. It cannot engage in the process of what Harold Bloom calls “self-overhearing.” What Bloom is refering to is the process by which Shakespeare characters clearly demonstrate metacognition, aka the ability to think insightfully about one’s own thought processes and then respond to their own understanding of themselves. I’ll put it even more basically: Shakespeare’s characters seem to hear themselves speaking, and it is from this most human of traits/skills that their realism derives. They have consciousness, in other words.
Criticism, if it is to be useful at all, must perform a somewhat analogous function, though the metaphor obviously strains if we try to match its component parts up. Nonetheless, if we are to speak at all of art forms as singular entities (the field of poetry; the world of avant-garde ballet; etc) then it can hardly be too radical or ridiculous to claim that that form’s corresponding field of criticism is—or anyway, ought to be—the space where the art form self-overhears, and thereby self-actualizes, grows, changes, etc. In some sense: the criticism is—or anyway, should aspire to be—the consciousness of the form to which it is attached.
In my view, some kind of of self-overhearing is a necessary condition for the sub-culture’s being able to sustain its existence, to say nothing of achieving anything like progress, or to even broach the question of meaningful interaction with the culture at large–and this last, interestingly and commendably enough, is Zapruder’s goal, or anyway hope for poetry.
If I’ve gone somewhat afield from what Zapruder has written about here, I think it’s because even though I agree heartily with the argument he’s making, I’m not sure that the incredibly modest pre-conditions necessary for rising to his imminently reasonable challenge have yet been met. He writes:
Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader. As a consequence, very few people love contemporary American poetry. Many more might, if critics attempted to truly engage with the materials of poetry—words and how they work—and to connect poetry with an audience based on an engagement with these materials.
I’m not 100% sure of the cause-and-effect relationship here between the pitiful state of poetry criticism and the pitiful state of poetry readership. I’m similarly uncertain of what, if anything, can be done to reverse or alter the situation. There is no guarantee that even with Zapruder’s suggestions implemented poetry won’t fail to broaden or even sustain its present readership; without his suggestions, however, failure can be guaranteed absolutely. It seems to me that we’re better off taking the chance than not. The question, I suppose, is whether poetry criticism has its own house sufficiently in order to even attempt the things Zapruder is asking for.
One thing Zapruder writes about that I especially appreciate is the formulation that the critic’s job should be first to understand what the work is attempting to do. Anyone unwilling to ask “why was this written” and “who was it written for” shouldn’t bother asking “does it succeed?” How could you possibly know? All Bill Knott’s love for Sharon Olds–emphatic as it might be–isn’t going to help him with his reading of Mathias Svalina’s The Viral Lease. (Lucky for Knott, he seems unbothered by his own ignorance, but then he also doesn’t seem to suffer from the humanizing effects of self-overhearing.) I think that Zapruder is writing against Eliot here—Eliot opposed the practice of purely “technical”or explanatory criticism, which would seem to include the sort of “introduction to ___” method Zapruder suggests—but if he is against Eliot here, I think I have to side with Zapruder. Our poetry world is very different from Eliot’s, and much of what he would have (rightly, at the time) assumed his audience would already know, even take for granted, is for us essentially lost knowledge.
So we’re going to need to build our critical vocabularies back up, but in order to do that we’ll need to first build back up the vocabularies of the form itself. What do we talk about when we talk about poetry? Until we can answer that question articulately and succinctly to ourselves, we don’t have much of a chance of explaining it to anybody else.
In the meantime, since neither poetry nor criticism will stop while we all go to summer school, I think the best gift any critic can give to a work of art is sustained engagement—even if that engagement comes in the form of savage opposition. More than once I’ve heard it said of my old undergrad teacher, William Logan, that even though he’s about the nastiest poetry critic that there is, finding yourself on the wrong end of his shotgun is one way of knowing that you’ve arrived. If he took you for anything short of vitally important, he wouldn’t have bothered to try and destroy you, and it’s very clear when you read one of his reviews that he probably spends more time with a book of poetry he’s trashing than its top ten fans combined.
Of course, praise is nice too, but 1000 words of empty praise doesn’t offer anything more substantial than a “two thumbs up!” would have. An unqualified “good review” quickly becomes an embarrassment of riches, and the critic in question is often all too quickly revealed as a second or third-rate writer using the pre-text of a “good review” as an excuse to show off what they misunderstand as their own “writing skills.” They’re angling shamelessly for a spot on the book jacket and/or the publisher’s website–probably because they want to count it as a “pub credit”–and what they end up producing reads like cheap costume jewelry: not an embarrassment of riches, just an embarrassment—to all parties involved.
A critic of poetry (or anything else) needs to be able to identify his or her own aesthetic and artistic values, his or her own highly informed but still hopelessly (and unapologetically) subjective position relative to the form, including any and all biases both positive and negative, and then go from there. (Hopefully somewhere awesome and useful.) If he or she can’t do those things—articulately, succinctly, and convincingly—then s/he is incapable of offering a critical contribution to the art of poetry (and has nothing to contribute to the art of criticism, period).
In his introduction to The Sacred Wood Eliot wrote that “the great bulk of the work of criticism could be done by minds of the second order, and it is just these minds of the second order that are difficult to find. They are necessary for the rapid circulation of ideas.” What he meant by “second-order” minds was people who are not quite geniuses—intelligent, committed people who happen to suffer the ignominy of not being once-in-a-generation human comets like Emily Dickinson or Beckett. This perhaps painful self-knowledge of one’s own limits (cf. Mr. Ramsay in To The Lighthouse) is for better or worse a necessary component-part of establishing one’s abilities, and of making the most of them—whatever they are or aren’t.
A critic is a person who can combine extraordinary passion with extraordinary dispassion, or at least discipline. He or she believes so passionately in the value of the subject s/he’s writing about—the particular artist, or the art form in general—that s/he will devote his own best creative energy to writing about somebody else’s work: exploring that person’s project, theorizing about the artist’s intentions, cataloging references and influences, asserting an original judgment concerning the work’s success, etc etc. That’s the first part. The second part, the dispassion or discipline, is necessary in order to ensure that the critic’s passion-inspired job is actually performed competently. Passion is a great engine, but unreliable as a steering wheel, and even worse as a set of tires.
Tags: Matthew Zapruder, Poetry Foundation
Really great post. It’s stuff like this that keeps me coming back to Giant every day. Thanks. I’m gonna chew on this all day.
Really great post. It’s stuff like this that keeps me coming back to Giant every day. Thanks. I’m gonna chew on this all day.
That was a nice post.
That was a nice post.
i am honored to have read that. crisp clear, your words express thoughts rather than themselves. your sensibility possesses curvature and nudged me into the fullness of perspective that i am often frustrated by the lack of elsewhere. the last line made noise come out of my throat. this is exciting.
i am honored to have read that. crisp clear, your words express thoughts rather than themselves. your sensibility possesses curvature and nudged me into the fullness of perspective that i am often frustrated by the lack of elsewhere. the last line made noise come out of my throat. this is exciting.
This makes me think about a lot of things. But immedate:
The (few) poetry readings I’ve been at recently make me feel there’s a great culture out there that keeps people writing and helps ‘poetry’ survive, in its manifestation of people writing small books and being read by a few people, and coming together to talk about it and have a sweet time. My sense is that there isn’t much engagement with practice in this community though, and that disappoints me a little. Or perhaps I haven’t found the right people to talk to about it yet.
Another thing, the visual art/poetry analogy pushes my buttons — does poetry need a spectacle before people will try to understand it? If the exposure a few hundred million people get to poetry is the Inauguration, their crack will be that it’s boring, not that they can’t understand it. Now when it comes to actual poetry, the stuff that goes on that we think will last, you’re dead on — we need to ask how it is written and who for. But getting people to care enough to even think about that? Tough.
I need to struggle with poetry a bit more than I do now.
All this is a London perspective (oh, except the second bit, having written it), don’t know shit about anywhere else.
This makes me think about a lot of things. But immedate:
The (few) poetry readings I’ve been at recently make me feel there’s a great culture out there that keeps people writing and helps ‘poetry’ survive, in its manifestation of people writing small books and being read by a few people, and coming together to talk about it and have a sweet time. My sense is that there isn’t much engagement with practice in this community though, and that disappoints me a little. Or perhaps I haven’t found the right people to talk to about it yet.
Another thing, the visual art/poetry analogy pushes my buttons — does poetry need a spectacle before people will try to understand it? If the exposure a few hundred million people get to poetry is the Inauguration, their crack will be that it’s boring, not that they can’t understand it. Now when it comes to actual poetry, the stuff that goes on that we think will last, you’re dead on — we need to ask how it is written and who for. But getting people to care enough to even think about that? Tough.
I need to struggle with poetry a bit more than I do now.
All this is a London perspective (oh, except the second bit, having written it), don’t know shit about anywhere else.
is zapruder simply calling for a return to the new criticism of the 40s, 50s, 60s?
i mean, what was that kind of crit if not concerned primarily with “describing what the poems are trying to do, how they are doing it, and why anyone would be driven to write (not to mention read) these poems”?
is zapruder simply calling for a return to the new criticism of the 40s, 50s, 60s?
i mean, what was that kind of crit if not concerned primarily with “describing what the poems are trying to do, how they are doing it, and why anyone would be driven to write (not to mention read) these poems”?
I enjoyed this post a lot. It has given me things to think about (and may cause me to change the manner and method in which I review poetry).
I enjoyed this post a lot. It has given me things to think about (and may cause me to change the manner and method in which I review poetry).
i enjoy how my comment has made me look utterly retarded
i enjoy how my comment has made me look utterly retarded
Nicely written Justin. I’ve read a lot of blogs/comments against Zapruder’s piece, but none of them articulate why they are opposed to his ideas nor do they offer viable alternatives.
Also, I’m starting to feel like Bill Knott spends more time writing comments than poetry these days-ha!
Nicely written Justin. I’ve read a lot of blogs/comments against Zapruder’s piece, but none of them articulate why they are opposed to his ideas nor do they offer viable alternatives.
Also, I’m starting to feel like Bill Knott spends more time writing comments than poetry these days-ha!
I don’t think your comments have made you look utterly retarded. I mean, Zapruder seems to be writing about writing about writing (i.e. ‘poetry’). And there is no perfect methodology for doing that. One may argue, as Zapruder does, for a certain critical approach to writing about ‘poetry’ or other kinds of writing, but privileging one approach over another is probably the worst thing someone could do. A familiarity with the history of criticism is important as is a familiarity with the history of ideas. But there are other things, too, that are more intangible, more idiosyncratic, more uncertain that are also important when it comes to evaluating text.
When I write about a book, I am not concerned with intention or function per se. I am more concerned with play and possibility. Does the text create tension with certain ‘ideas’ or ‘forms’? Does it disturb ‘experience’? What is happening? Is it really that important to understand what is happening? And on and on and on. The questions never stop, but the text usually informs the ‘play’ of criticism.
I mean, I am reading these two texts right now: Blake Butler’s EVER and Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart . . . . And already–without really knowing what Butler is doing–I am totally fascinated with the obsession for bracketing that mark but never quite enclose the text, separating sentences and chunks of text in ways that almost demand a re-grouping of certain portions of texts and, thus, a shuffling of the text, which could compel a shuffling of the reading of the text. Fun. However, what the bracketing cannot also contain is this monstrous preoccupation with a certain of ‘dwelling’ and this narrative concern–intentional or not–that haunts the text and may perhaps create a kind of tension with other conceptual interpretations that concern ‘dwelling’. (Clumsy sentence. I’m improvising.)
On the other hand, Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart . . . seems to mark a reinvigoration of a certain conceptual tradition of poetry attracted to everyday life and the poetry internal to it. It is written–and I have only read it once (along with Blake’s book)–in a simple, unadorned style, which I like. The poems contain speed, which is almost always attractive to me. And it is engaging precisely because it doesn’t seem to try to ‘transcend’ or ‘get inside’ anything. At the same time, the stories and poems in Sometimes My Heart . . . don’t seem to risk enough–surface has its risks, it is risky, sometimes dangerous (e.g. Kathy Acker)–but the ‘surface’ writing that makes up so much of the stuff in Kennedy’s book makes me more curious about the politics of pretension that it makes fashionable and that it implicitly advocates.
Anyway, I have only read these books once. These are merely general impressions and they will change–become more clear, more weird, more focused in an odd way. I guess I just wanted to say that criticism is fun. It is a way to write along with other writers, a way to think about other writing. It shouldn’t be prescriptive or descriptive but something else. And perhaps, it shouldn’t even have a function–other than to re-inscribe the ‘differences’ internal to each text.
There, Justin Marks. Now, I am the retarded one!
I don’t think your comments have made you look utterly retarded. I mean, Zapruder seems to be writing about writing about writing (i.e. ‘poetry’). And there is no perfect methodology for doing that. One may argue, as Zapruder does, for a certain critical approach to writing about ‘poetry’ or other kinds of writing, but privileging one approach over another is probably the worst thing someone could do. A familiarity with the history of criticism is important as is a familiarity with the history of ideas. But there are other things, too, that are more intangible, more idiosyncratic, more uncertain that are also important when it comes to evaluating text.
When I write about a book, I am not concerned with intention or function per se. I am more concerned with play and possibility. Does the text create tension with certain ‘ideas’ or ‘forms’? Does it disturb ‘experience’? What is happening? Is it really that important to understand what is happening? And on and on and on. The questions never stop, but the text usually informs the ‘play’ of criticism.
I mean, I am reading these two texts right now: Blake Butler’s EVER and Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart . . . . And already–without really knowing what Butler is doing–I am totally fascinated with the obsession for bracketing that mark but never quite enclose the text, separating sentences and chunks of text in ways that almost demand a re-grouping of certain portions of texts and, thus, a shuffling of the text, which could compel a shuffling of the reading of the text. Fun. However, what the bracketing cannot also contain is this monstrous preoccupation with a certain of ‘dwelling’ and this narrative concern–intentional or not–that haunts the text and may perhaps create a kind of tension with other conceptual interpretations that concern ‘dwelling’. (Clumsy sentence. I’m improvising.)
On the other hand, Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart . . . seems to mark a reinvigoration of a certain conceptual tradition of poetry attracted to everyday life and the poetry internal to it. It is written–and I have only read it once (along with Blake’s book)–in a simple, unadorned style, which I like. The poems contain speed, which is almost always attractive to me. And it is engaging precisely because it doesn’t seem to try to ‘transcend’ or ‘get inside’ anything. At the same time, the stories and poems in Sometimes My Heart . . . don’t seem to risk enough–surface has its risks, it is risky, sometimes dangerous (e.g. Kathy Acker)–but the ‘surface’ writing that makes up so much of the stuff in Kennedy’s book makes me more curious about the politics of pretension that it makes fashionable and that it implicitly advocates.
Anyway, I have only read these books once. These are merely general impressions and they will change–become more clear, more weird, more focused in an odd way. I guess I just wanted to say that criticism is fun. It is a way to write along with other writers, a way to think about other writing. It shouldn’t be prescriptive or descriptive but something else. And perhaps, it shouldn’t even have a function–other than to re-inscribe the ‘differences’ internal to each text.
There, Justin Marks. Now, I am the retarded one!
Justin, I read your Coldfront review of Valzhyna Mort’s “Factory of Tears” yesterday. I have to say, after studying with her this semester, that she is savvy about poetry and extremely well spoken. However, your engagement of the book and its coming into being is really good, appropriate, and very practically the sort of critical work that you’re calling for here.
Justin, I read your Coldfront review of Valzhyna Mort’s “Factory of Tears” yesterday. I have to say, after studying with her this semester, that she is savvy about poetry and extremely well spoken. However, your engagement of the book and its coming into being is really good, appropriate, and very practically the sort of critical work that you’re calling for here.
ok. maybe now i can actually express some (half-baked) thoughts:
there’s something kind of pointless, i think, to what zapruder is saying; or if not pointless, then smacking of a strong rehash element and irrelevance.
new criticism–if that is what zapruder is proposing a return (of sorts) to–is very problematic. it was useful in its day, but poetry was very different. poets like robert lowell, for example, were in many senses writing FOR the new critics, and constructed works that were very new critic user friendly.
this is not the case today. new criticism can be useful for teaching undergrads the fundamentals of reading poetry, but is pretty much useless beyond that.
i recently read an article on the yeah yeah yeahs in which karen o said something about how she used to think of being a rock singer as something she did, but now thinks of it as something she is.
new critical work is something one does, but being a poet is something one is. poetry exists as something outside the classroom. reading is an experience, something that amounts to more than the intellectual/technical sum of a poem’s parts. i don’t see how what zapruder proposes can accomodate that version of what it it to read.
i feel like i may slip into abstractions, but when i’m moved by a poem i feel that it has enabled me to imagine what it is like to be the poet, to think, feel and exist as that self/space/what-have-you in the poem. t
perhaps what we maybe need to do is be more up front about what a completely subjective experience reading is, that helps us move toward understanding reading as an imaginative act.
what can one do, really, except try to describe what it was LIKE to read a text, bringing to bear on it all one’s personal/intellectual associations and biases.
zapruder’s approach, by comparison, seems less than useful, and, in a sense, reminds me, in a way, of orr’s essay in the times about greatness. is zapruder not, after all, proposing a narrow, monolithic way of discussing/criticizing poetry that does not actually take into account the many ways in which the art is being practiced?
ok. maybe now i can actually express some (half-baked) thoughts:
there’s something kind of pointless, i think, to what zapruder is saying; or if not pointless, then smacking of a strong rehash element and irrelevance.
new criticism–if that is what zapruder is proposing a return (of sorts) to–is very problematic. it was useful in its day, but poetry was very different. poets like robert lowell, for example, were in many senses writing FOR the new critics, and constructed works that were very new critic user friendly.
this is not the case today. new criticism can be useful for teaching undergrads the fundamentals of reading poetry, but is pretty much useless beyond that.
i recently read an article on the yeah yeah yeahs in which karen o said something about how she used to think of being a rock singer as something she did, but now thinks of it as something she is.
new critical work is something one does, but being a poet is something one is. poetry exists as something outside the classroom. reading is an experience, something that amounts to more than the intellectual/technical sum of a poem’s parts. i don’t see how what zapruder proposes can accomodate that version of what it it to read.
i feel like i may slip into abstractions, but when i’m moved by a poem i feel that it has enabled me to imagine what it is like to be the poet, to think, feel and exist as that self/space/what-have-you in the poem. t
perhaps what we maybe need to do is be more up front about what a completely subjective experience reading is, that helps us move toward understanding reading as an imaginative act.
what can one do, really, except try to describe what it was LIKE to read a text, bringing to bear on it all one’s personal/intellectual associations and biases.
zapruder’s approach, by comparison, seems less than useful, and, in a sense, reminds me, in a way, of orr’s essay in the times about greatness. is zapruder not, after all, proposing a narrow, monolithic way of discussing/criticizing poetry that does not actually take into account the many ways in which the art is being practiced?
hi steve,
thanks. i just wrote a whole reply to you, but it vanished some how.
here’s the gist:
i sort of tried to get at something like what you’re saying in a reply that came after yours. it doesn’t mention yours because i didn’t see your in time.
i like speed. speed in books is good.
hi steve,
thanks. i just wrote a whole reply to you, but it vanished some how.
here’s the gist:
i sort of tried to get at something like what you’re saying in a reply that came after yours. it doesn’t mention yours because i didn’t see your in time.
i like speed. speed in books is good.
Well let’s not saddle Zapruder with the New Critics. I brought them in, because I thought they were relevant in a sort of limited way, and because I see a kinship between their ideals and what I think Zapruder is calling for, but their use in this conversation may well be even more limited than what Justin M. is describing as their limited use in general.
Zapruder’s essay does not mention any critics or critical schools by name, and I don’t think that the omission is accidental. You can accuse it of being an evasion, if you want to, but for my part I think it’s more interesting to think about his choice as a way of avoiding the kind of potential historical bogging-down that I have now thoughtlessly put us all at risk of.
I don’t see anything particularly monolothic or narrow about what Zapruder is asking for. Yes, a return to mechanical New Critical-derivative practice would result in a diminished critical scope, but that doesn’t seem to be what he’s asking for.
I think we should refer ourselves back to the title of the essay- “Show Your Work!” This is a classical injunction from the hard sciences: math, chemistry, etc. The idea is that if the teacher can see what logical paths you followed to get where you wound up, then they can give you something more nuanced than a “right/wrong” grade– they can see for themselves where your thinking might have gone off-track, and offer you partial credit for a good faith effort.
The analogy, in order to work in the critic/readership context, requires some serious re-arranging, but the general gist is clear. If the critic renders the operations of their criticism transparent to their readership, said readership is in a position to learn something about (1) how the art form itself functions, in one particular instance, and (2) one learned person’s approach to understanding a particular art form.
What Zapruder argues–and I think he’s absolutely right about this–is that if poetry critics spent more time fostering a public understanding of how the form “means,” then that same public would have an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary with which to comprehend that same meaning, and they’d be more capable of generating original and contrasting meanings for themselves. Whether or not they WOULD actually go ahead and do this is another question. I’ll defer to Zapruder’s optimism, because the alternative just sucks.
A strict New Critical approach won’t satisfy those objectives, at least not all the time. It seems like the basic unit of poetical expression today has shifted from the individual poem to the sequence or collection. It seems increasingly as if “chapbook” is the smallest unit poets today think in. Forget whether that’s good or bad– it’s just different. But if a poet is working to develop and sustain a mood, or create a sort of environmental experience with a large body of work that the reader moves through as if through a space, then yeah, you’re going to need a new way to talk about that work, at least if you want to be of any use to anyone who might be listening.
But before you can figure out what you want to say or how you want to say it, you have to know what it is you’re talking about, and that means–first and foremost–sustained attention to and engagement with the work itself, on its own terms, coupled with a commitment to try and honor those terms when you set down to review the work. And that commitment holds whether you “liked” it or not.
That seems to me to be what Zapruder is after. If I’ve misread him, then the error is mine. But if that’s really what he wants, I just couldn’t be more supportive.
Well let’s not saddle Zapruder with the New Critics. I brought them in, because I thought they were relevant in a sort of limited way, and because I see a kinship between their ideals and what I think Zapruder is calling for, but their use in this conversation may well be even more limited than what Justin M. is describing as their limited use in general.
Zapruder’s essay does not mention any critics or critical schools by name, and I don’t think that the omission is accidental. You can accuse it of being an evasion, if you want to, but for my part I think it’s more interesting to think about his choice as a way of avoiding the kind of potential historical bogging-down that I have now thoughtlessly put us all at risk of.
I don’t see anything particularly monolothic or narrow about what Zapruder is asking for. Yes, a return to mechanical New Critical-derivative practice would result in a diminished critical scope, but that doesn’t seem to be what he’s asking for.
I think we should refer ourselves back to the title of the essay- “Show Your Work!” This is a classical injunction from the hard sciences: math, chemistry, etc. The idea is that if the teacher can see what logical paths you followed to get where you wound up, then they can give you something more nuanced than a “right/wrong” grade– they can see for themselves where your thinking might have gone off-track, and offer you partial credit for a good faith effort.
The analogy, in order to work in the critic/readership context, requires some serious re-arranging, but the general gist is clear. If the critic renders the operations of their criticism transparent to their readership, said readership is in a position to learn something about (1) how the art form itself functions, in one particular instance, and (2) one learned person’s approach to understanding a particular art form.
What Zapruder argues–and I think he’s absolutely right about this–is that if poetry critics spent more time fostering a public understanding of how the form “means,” then that same public would have an increasingly sophisticated vocabulary with which to comprehend that same meaning, and they’d be more capable of generating original and contrasting meanings for themselves. Whether or not they WOULD actually go ahead and do this is another question. I’ll defer to Zapruder’s optimism, because the alternative just sucks.
A strict New Critical approach won’t satisfy those objectives, at least not all the time. It seems like the basic unit of poetical expression today has shifted from the individual poem to the sequence or collection. It seems increasingly as if “chapbook” is the smallest unit poets today think in. Forget whether that’s good or bad– it’s just different. But if a poet is working to develop and sustain a mood, or create a sort of environmental experience with a large body of work that the reader moves through as if through a space, then yeah, you’re going to need a new way to talk about that work, at least if you want to be of any use to anyone who might be listening.
But before you can figure out what you want to say or how you want to say it, you have to know what it is you’re talking about, and that means–first and foremost–sustained attention to and engagement with the work itself, on its own terms, coupled with a commitment to try and honor those terms when you set down to review the work. And that commitment holds whether you “liked” it or not.
That seems to me to be what Zapruder is after. If I’ve misread him, then the error is mine. But if that’s really what he wants, I just couldn’t be more supportive.
Me, too.
Me, too.
It’s funny, Justin Taylor, but it seems that to a certain extent there has been a shift in the criteria of criticism. A shift that also has its traditions. However, I don’t believe it is necessary to possess a certain knowledge in order to write about a ‘poem’ or a ‘book’ or a ‘collection of poems’. Attention is important. Attraction is, for me, more important.
Anyways, I don’t know if it is possible to designate something as a ‘work [in] itself’? I don’t believe that a ‘work’ or ‘text’ or whatever really possesses it own terms. That is, I don’t believe that the writer is in total control of those terms that might be designated as the work’s own. Does that make sense? And since I suspect that a writer cannot control–or be responsible for every possible interpretation of his/her text–the appropriate terms by which a critic might sustain an attentive engagement with the text become something else, something perhaps closer to play than property, something closer to anarchy than to the commitment to work, something closer to disruptive criminal activity than the protocols of reading, whatever those may be. So, I don’t know.
Anyways, I am totally enjoying this post. And I agree with you on many things you have written today. And even though there are many assumptions that I question in the Zapruder article, his article is still a terrific call to arms for critics, readers, poets, and lovers of text.
Another very awesome post, Justin.
It’s funny, Justin Taylor, but it seems that to a certain extent there has been a shift in the criteria of criticism. A shift that also has its traditions. However, I don’t believe it is necessary to possess a certain knowledge in order to write about a ‘poem’ or a ‘book’ or a ‘collection of poems’. Attention is important. Attraction is, for me, more important.
Anyways, I don’t know if it is possible to designate something as a ‘work [in] itself’? I don’t believe that a ‘work’ or ‘text’ or whatever really possesses it own terms. That is, I don’t believe that the writer is in total control of those terms that might be designated as the work’s own. Does that make sense? And since I suspect that a writer cannot control–or be responsible for every possible interpretation of his/her text–the appropriate terms by which a critic might sustain an attentive engagement with the text become something else, something perhaps closer to play than property, something closer to anarchy than to the commitment to work, something closer to disruptive criminal activity than the protocols of reading, whatever those may be. So, I don’t know.
Anyways, I am totally enjoying this post. And I agree with you on many things you have written today. And even though there are many assumptions that I question in the Zapruder article, his article is still a terrific call to arms for critics, readers, poets, and lovers of text.
Another very awesome post, Justin.
Hey Steven, thanks a lot. And yeah, absolutely, all your criticisms of what I’ve written are dead-on. They designate the limits of the approach I’m advocating, or at least the limits of the sketch I’ve made of it thus far. I’d like to think that the call to attention, and the attempt to understand art on its own terms, does not necessarily preclude a sort of agonistic involvement with or play-response to a work of art. Once the sense of play and joy have been evacuated completely from criticism, the entire enterprise is truly bankrupt. And ditto what you call “attraction.” Without some sort of eros-equivalent (or eros-proper, as the case may be) there’s nothing to draw you to the work in the first place– so yeah, attraction is definitely a pre-condition for engagement, period, so it only follows that sustained engagement is the result of undiminished attraction. Look at how long some people stay married! Look at the way Bloom writes about Shakespeare!
And of course we can see a version of this back in Zapruder’s opening example–itself rather playful, in its way–of being “turned on” to a record by a hot girl at school. It would be easy to just say that the attraction for the girl gets projected onto the record, a sort of basic Freudian operation, but I think it makes more sense to read it as a process of knowledge-seeking. The attraction to the girl makes Young Matthew want to know more about her, and what makes her tick, therefore he is primed to a position of attention and interest in this thing that he knows she likes. If he can “get it” in the same way she gets it, then he’s got some sense of what it’s like to be her, because she is also a person who ‘gets it,’ and this feeling of “both of us get it” is part of the happy illusion of being-there or being-her seems to be close to what Justin Marks was arguing is the method by which poetry succeeds–at least in his own experience as a reader of poetry.
No, a writer can’t obtain total control over their work, their own intentions, or how the work will be read. And neither should the writer seek total control. Some degree of control is necessary, in order for the work to have a shape at all, but the works that place control as their highest value tend to be epic failures, or else successful for reasons almost exactly in opposition to what the writer *thought* s/he was achieving (I think immediately of Lovecraft, the Sade of the 120 Days (with apologies to Dennis Cooper, who I know disagrees with me) and of course Ezra Pound).
Anyway, I had another thought to add, but I’ve got to run, so just let me say thanks again for your sustained engagement with my work and with Zapruder’s. Cheers!
Hey Steven, thanks a lot. And yeah, absolutely, all your criticisms of what I’ve written are dead-on. They designate the limits of the approach I’m advocating, or at least the limits of the sketch I’ve made of it thus far. I’d like to think that the call to attention, and the attempt to understand art on its own terms, does not necessarily preclude a sort of agonistic involvement with or play-response to a work of art. Once the sense of play and joy have been evacuated completely from criticism, the entire enterprise is truly bankrupt. And ditto what you call “attraction.” Without some sort of eros-equivalent (or eros-proper, as the case may be) there’s nothing to draw you to the work in the first place– so yeah, attraction is definitely a pre-condition for engagement, period, so it only follows that sustained engagement is the result of undiminished attraction. Look at how long some people stay married! Look at the way Bloom writes about Shakespeare!
And of course we can see a version of this back in Zapruder’s opening example–itself rather playful, in its way–of being “turned on” to a record by a hot girl at school. It would be easy to just say that the attraction for the girl gets projected onto the record, a sort of basic Freudian operation, but I think it makes more sense to read it as a process of knowledge-seeking. The attraction to the girl makes Young Matthew want to know more about her, and what makes her tick, therefore he is primed to a position of attention and interest in this thing that he knows she likes. If he can “get it” in the same way she gets it, then he’s got some sense of what it’s like to be her, because she is also a person who ‘gets it,’ and this feeling of “both of us get it” is part of the happy illusion of being-there or being-her seems to be close to what Justin Marks was arguing is the method by which poetry succeeds–at least in his own experience as a reader of poetry.
No, a writer can’t obtain total control over their work, their own intentions, or how the work will be read. And neither should the writer seek total control. Some degree of control is necessary, in order for the work to have a shape at all, but the works that place control as their highest value tend to be epic failures, or else successful for reasons almost exactly in opposition to what the writer *thought* s/he was achieving (I think immediately of Lovecraft, the Sade of the 120 Days (with apologies to Dennis Cooper, who I know disagrees with me) and of course Ezra Pound).
Anyway, I had another thought to add, but I’ve got to run, so just let me say thanks again for your sustained engagement with my work and with Zapruder’s. Cheers!
Zapruder posted a comment on his own essay, which expands on some of the things he wrote, and is especially illuminating re the “back to New Critics” thread, which also got going over at the Poetry Foundation. I feel like I was reading him pretty correctly, and I feel pretty good about that. Here he is in his own words:
>>>
On March 31, 2009 at 4:44 pm Matthew Zapruder wrote:
Hi Everyone, I’ve been following this conversation with great interest and appreciation. I thought I would wait to jump in for a while … I think with the mention of penis enlargers I can (somewhat) safely conclude everyone has had his or her say. First and foremost, thanks to everyone here and elsewhere who has taken the time to read and think about and comment on this essay. I had hoped it would be a catalyst for discussion, and I’m very pleased about how it’s worked out. There are way too many interesting points for me to respond to in this discussion, but I just wanted to make a couple of points. My choice of Hillman and Armantrout to discuss was not in any way an attempt to support one particular so-called “school” or “type” of poetry over another. In fact, my point in the essay is that while they are often considered of the same “school,” in fact their poems are (often) very different. Perhaps an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of choosing to write about two poets who are so often pigeonholed is that it appears as if I am arguing for so-called “avant-garde poetry” (whatever that is) over the “mainstream,” when in fact I don’t believe that distinction is particularly meaningful or interesting, nor do I support one side of this imaginary distinction over another. Really, the essay isn’t about those two poets at all in particular, or what “type” of poetry is better. I could have picked Tao Lin and John Ashbery to talk about, or Elizabeth Bishop and Bill Knott for that matter. In fact, that’s what I hope other people will do. It hopefully is also clear from the essay that this distinction I am making is but one possibility; while it is I think useful in some cases, people will come up with other and better rubrics. The discussion about New Criticism is an interesting one. Because of my use of close reading in the essay, I can see why it might seem to Tony and other people as if I am advocating a return to New Critical practice. While I do value close reading as a method, the purpose that I advocate using it for in the essay is really different from that of the New Critics, who were primarily interested in the text itself as a linguistic field of conflict and paradox for its own sake. While I think close reading is extremely useful, New Critical goals do not resonate for me as a poet or reader. As far as critics who are doing good work, apparently there is a very interesting review of Merwin’s most recent book by Helen Vendler, in the New York Review of Books. I haven’t read it, but I have heard that it focuses a lot on lack of punctuation in his poems, and what effect that has on a reader. If that’s the case, that seems like the kind of thing that would be very useful: to take a really basic and important decision the poet makes, and to ask oneself as a critic what the possible effects of that decision are on a reader. That strikes me as a lot more interesting than whether or not Vendler “likes” Merwin’s new book or not, or whether she thinks it’s as good as his last one or better than someone else’s new book, etc. Thanks again to everyone for reading, for pointing out where I fell short, and for taking the ideas and pushing them much further and in interesting directions.
<<<
Zapruder posted a comment on his own essay, which expands on some of the things he wrote, and is especially illuminating re the “back to New Critics” thread, which also got going over at the Poetry Foundation. I feel like I was reading him pretty correctly, and I feel pretty good about that. Here he is in his own words:
>>>
On March 31, 2009 at 4:44 pm Matthew Zapruder wrote:
Hi Everyone, I’ve been following this conversation with great interest and appreciation. I thought I would wait to jump in for a while … I think with the mention of penis enlargers I can (somewhat) safely conclude everyone has had his or her say. First and foremost, thanks to everyone here and elsewhere who has taken the time to read and think about and comment on this essay. I had hoped it would be a catalyst for discussion, and I’m very pleased about how it’s worked out. There are way too many interesting points for me to respond to in this discussion, but I just wanted to make a couple of points. My choice of Hillman and Armantrout to discuss was not in any way an attempt to support one particular so-called “school” or “type” of poetry over another. In fact, my point in the essay is that while they are often considered of the same “school,” in fact their poems are (often) very different. Perhaps an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of choosing to write about two poets who are so often pigeonholed is that it appears as if I am arguing for so-called “avant-garde poetry” (whatever that is) over the “mainstream,” when in fact I don’t believe that distinction is particularly meaningful or interesting, nor do I support one side of this imaginary distinction over another. Really, the essay isn’t about those two poets at all in particular, or what “type” of poetry is better. I could have picked Tao Lin and John Ashbery to talk about, or Elizabeth Bishop and Bill Knott for that matter. In fact, that’s what I hope other people will do. It hopefully is also clear from the essay that this distinction I am making is but one possibility; while it is I think useful in some cases, people will come up with other and better rubrics. The discussion about New Criticism is an interesting one. Because of my use of close reading in the essay, I can see why it might seem to Tony and other people as if I am advocating a return to New Critical practice. While I do value close reading as a method, the purpose that I advocate using it for in the essay is really different from that of the New Critics, who were primarily interested in the text itself as a linguistic field of conflict and paradox for its own sake. While I think close reading is extremely useful, New Critical goals do not resonate for me as a poet or reader. As far as critics who are doing good work, apparently there is a very interesting review of Merwin’s most recent book by Helen Vendler, in the New York Review of Books. I haven’t read it, but I have heard that it focuses a lot on lack of punctuation in his poems, and what effect that has on a reader. If that’s the case, that seems like the kind of thing that would be very useful: to take a really basic and important decision the poet makes, and to ask oneself as a critic what the possible effects of that decision are on a reader. That strikes me as a lot more interesting than whether or not Vendler “likes” Merwin’s new book or not, or whether she thinks it’s as good as his last one or better than someone else’s new book, etc. Thanks again to everyone for reading, for pointing out where I fell short, and for taking the ideas and pushing them much further and in interesting directions.
<<<
I’m curious to know what critical procedure that’s not out of new criticism would usefully help one to an appreciation of a poem as a work of literature? To me, new criticism is just common sense applied to poetry as opposed to gush. But I don’t see many critics using it. The few who do, like Vendler, do it competently only, and apply it only to mediocre living poets, and canonized poets long past the need for further analysis.
–Bob G.
I’m curious to know what critical procedure that’s not out of new criticism would usefully help one to an appreciation of a poem as a work of literature? To me, new criticism is just common sense applied to poetry as opposed to gush. But I don’t see many critics using it. The few who do, like Vendler, do it competently only, and apply it only to mediocre living poets, and canonized poets long past the need for further analysis.
–Bob G.
interesting. it’s a sound reply, but i think there are still some rhetorical dodges here. i’m still not convinced that he isn’t arguing for a new critical approach. i mean, he can he’s not all he wants, but a lot of his essay, to me, says otherwise.
“to take a really basic and important decision the poet makes, and to ask oneself as a critic what the possible effects of that decision are on a reader. That strikes me as a lot more interesting than whether or not Vendler “likes” Merwin’s new book or not, or whether she thinks it’s as good as his last one or better than someone else’s new book, etc. ”
i’m basically with him there, but i’m not sure how what this paragraph argues for is anything other than a sound critical exploration of a poem. that it’s couched in the idea of a new or reinvigorated call to action for critics is odd.
i’m not saying there isn’t a need for more rigorous critical discussion of poetry. in theory, there always is, because really, the more the better, but i don’t feel like zapruder has really done the work of showing that there is a lack of the kind of discussion he’s calling for. to simply say, as he does, that “Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader” isn’t enough, and also not true to, say, my reading experience. K. Silem Mohammad, Mark Wallace, The Constant Critic, Coldfront, Jared White, Elisa Gabbert; hell, even Silliman himself–these are just a few of the people and places doing the kind of work (and more) that zapruder is calling for.
i’m not trying to pick on zapruder, or belabor the point, but is, it seems to me that zapruder has this idea about criticism but is ultimately out of touch with his subject.
interesting. it’s a sound reply, but i think there are still some rhetorical dodges here. i’m still not convinced that he isn’t arguing for a new critical approach. i mean, he can he’s not all he wants, but a lot of his essay, to me, says otherwise.
“to take a really basic and important decision the poet makes, and to ask oneself as a critic what the possible effects of that decision are on a reader. That strikes me as a lot more interesting than whether or not Vendler “likes” Merwin’s new book or not, or whether she thinks it’s as good as his last one or better than someone else’s new book, etc. ”
i’m basically with him there, but i’m not sure how what this paragraph argues for is anything other than a sound critical exploration of a poem. that it’s couched in the idea of a new or reinvigorated call to action for critics is odd.
i’m not saying there isn’t a need for more rigorous critical discussion of poetry. in theory, there always is, because really, the more the better, but i don’t feel like zapruder has really done the work of showing that there is a lack of the kind of discussion he’s calling for. to simply say, as he does, that “Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader” isn’t enough, and also not true to, say, my reading experience. K. Silem Mohammad, Mark Wallace, The Constant Critic, Coldfront, Jared White, Elisa Gabbert; hell, even Silliman himself–these are just a few of the people and places doing the kind of work (and more) that zapruder is calling for.
i’m not trying to pick on zapruder, or belabor the point, but is, it seems to me that zapruder has this idea about criticism but is ultimately out of touch with his subject.
From the response to my question, I take it thatthere is no critical procedure that’s not out of new criticism that would usefully help one to an appreciation of a poem as a work of literature?
On Zapruder’s behalf (if I have him right) let me add that he’s talking about visible critics, not K. Silem Mohammad, Mark Wallace, The Constant Critic, Coldfront, Jared White, Elisa Gabbert. Silliman, if his blog statistics are accurate, may be visible but is certainly not part of the mass media.
–Bob G.
From the response to my question, I take it thatthere is no critical procedure that’s not out of new criticism that would usefully help one to an appreciation of a poem as a work of literature?
On Zapruder’s behalf (if I have him right) let me add that he’s talking about visible critics, not K. Silem Mohammad, Mark Wallace, The Constant Critic, Coldfront, Jared White, Elisa Gabbert. Silliman, if his blog statistics are accurate, may be visible but is certainly not part of the mass media.
–Bob G.
Could you recommend any specific resources, books, or other blogs on this specific NLP topic?
Could you recommend any specific resources, books, or other blogs on this specific NLP topic?
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