Running Into Walls

Yet again Joan Houlihan has got poets running into walls without headgear. Or maybe these poets didn't have their heads or their heads didn't have gears. Maybe some poets don't recognize futility when it's slamming them with dull bricks. Maybe they give Houlihan too much credence. Duh.

Houlihan's got a "re"view of The Best American Poetry 2004 that's agitated the Poetics list and other websites. In her recent piece "The Best American Liturgy," a part of her ongoing diatribe "How Contemporary American Poets Are Denaturing the Poem," Houlihan bares her predictable barbs, supported by but two samplings -- a mere two selections of over dozens of poems in the anthology (she's a master of reduction, ala Karl Rove), that for the anthology's editor Lyn Hejinian there are deficient standards of craft, that "[Hejinian's] standards can only be known by other members of the church of new writing," and "[Hejinian] doesn't believe in standards because there is no “best”—one poem cannot be better than another."

For one, Houlihan has not convinced me that she has read more than a smattering of writing outside her comfort zone (though, surely, more than Karl Rove and his protege George Bush). She hasn't convinced me she understands the kind of craft that carries a poem beyond its generation. She has not convinced me in this series that she is reading and writing about her reading without a predetermined agenda. 

I ask one question tonight: how do poets write today to be read today and tomorrow?

Comments

[tom]

I just want you to know that I think you did a terrific job on this websight.

[Steve Tills]

All three answers to Crag's question here are excellent. I especially like Richard's response, which resonates with my own (albeit sometimes quite cluttered) poetic. :) Steve

[richardlopez]

very good, and very difficult question. the simplest answer is to write as well as you possibly can. let history decide what it will keep and what it will discard. should a writer accept reading/writing as part of the processes of living, and dying, then one can do little more than make a life by writing well. but whether his/her writing will be part of the canon. . .heck, I'm not sure that should be a goal of the varied manifestations of the writing life. what is the canon anyway? shouldn't we do away with these labels and write/read because we participate, in large or small ways, in the creation of our daily and imaginative realities. because if we are serious then our lives do depend on writing/reading. perhaps that is when we enter poetry, in all its richness and definitions. if poetry be honestly wrought then it will find its readers. just a few stray thoughts.

[Michael Hoerman]

I like that Houlihan makes the effort for discourse rather than ridicule, as so many poets did in response to one of her past essays, and, unfortunately, are on trtack for again. If she's wrong, she's wrong. Say why, that's all. She has taken some time to engage in discourse. If all we do (and some of the younger experimental poets do this) is hide in a little group and stroke each other off, dismissing any perceived "other," how does that help anything except to massage egos. There is so little criticism happening from within, especially orginitating from the younger poets, who are probably worried about cutting off future advantage. The closest thing I can find from any younger poet to criticizing the "elders" is Jim Behrle’s recent comment on his blog: “Todays Giant Realization: Ron Silliman is to Experimental Poetry as Ralph Nader is to American politics,” which goes on to say something to the effect of 'once useful, now exploiting for his own gain.' (This post appears to have been taken down and I could only get the quoted portion from Google's cache.) Less than a paragraph of pathos is not the level of crit that is needed.

[Ivy]

Make it excellent.