Po Biz Blues

This morning I went to Ron Silliman’s blog and followed a link about ‘the deep image poets’ to a post by a poet who is reading a book of criticism about the Deep Image poets, bly in particular. The gist of the post is that while a lot of deep image poetry sucks, not all of it does, and much of the criticism is actually outdated, in the sense that twenty years ago LangPo chose Deep Image as its whipping boy, and the whipping continues to this day. There is a spirited exchange in the comments section too, and what emerged was a common experience among the commentators that in MFA programs in the 80’s and 90’s you were taught that Deep image poets did not earn their images. They were ‘soft surrealists’ (Silliman’s phrase I believe), whatever that means. To remedy this situation poets were advised to break their images and syntax, to establish some sort of fact? ‘poetic situation’ some sort of what, argument? That would lead to an image. What the poet is trying to establish isn’t clear to me. The approach seems more like a recipe. “Well, you know, you can’t make meringue if there is even a teensy weency bit of grease in your bowl.” “Don’t open the oven until 20 minutes have passed or your cake will fall.” “Carefully dry meat before browning or it will braise.”

This is the problem with going to writing school.

Someone along the way suggested that in 2035 avant-garde poets will be making fun of LangPo and its descendents, in fact, it has already started to happen. Has this thought really only dawned on this person now?

If you read enough poetry and are willing to explore your own mind and spirit and commit to working at the craft that ought to be enough. Some people plunge into the unconscious and find inspiration and subject matter there. Others don’t. There is no theory here or basis for aesthetic judgment.

They moved onto the usual ideological arguments, with everyone reminding everyone else that in this regard, bly had the goods on them. Poetry for the ramparts, poetry of the heart, poetry full of clichés. They criticize the trope of darkness. If the language is worn out, the dark will simply be a black piece of construction paper. It isn’t so in Milton yet. Half of Milton’s politics is repugnant to me. Most of his theology. I don’t even like his style. But he was a political poet, engaged, and he certainly earned his images. Boredom with Milton fueled a poetic revolution. But poets would be fools to not to read him.

Blake had 12 readers. Everyone who knew him thought him the sanest man alive. The few outsiders who read him thought he was mad. Yeats and Joyce grew out of the soil of Blake. Blake was a political poet who had strong ideas about the nature of images. Blake never took an MFA class and he dismissed fools easily, whatever the common opinion was.

Art is made by individuals in spite of what they are taught. There is no recipe.