My post yesterday seemed to garner some attention (thank you, both of you) and so I thought I would continue to think through this question of what we value in a work of art. To be clear, Iām writing about what I value. Iāve given up trying to foist what I love upon others, especially upon students. And what I hate - with a private vitriol that brings me, perhaps contradictorily, immense joy - I more and more often keep to myself. But Iām very passionate about the necessity of holding strong opinions. Weāve been deprived of so much - affordable healthcare and housing, a living wage, a healthy intellectual culture of free speech and vigorous debate - that I hold even more closely to the pleasure of deciding whether something is good or not. There is a great scene in John McGahernās great story, āKorea,ā in which the narratorās father is remembering a man he watched be executed during the Irish War of Independence. Hereās the scene:
They blindfolded the boy, but the man refused the blindfold. When the officer shouted, the boy clicked to attention, but the man stayed as he was, chewing very slowly. He had his hands in his pockets.
āTake your hands out of your pockets,ā the officer shouted again.
The man slowly shook his head.
āItās a bit too late in the day for that,ā the man said.
You can imagine how it ends. The only power that could make that man take his hands out of his pockets was death, not another man telling him to. Maybe a melodramatic example, but no one can keep me from loving what I love, or make me love what I hate. Love and hate are strong words, I know. But Iām only referring here to what registers on my emotional radar. If I love something, I love it fiercely. Some things Iāve loved today:
āThereās a Rugged Roadā by Judee Sill
āMadonna dei Pellegriniā by Caravaggio
āKoreaā by John McGahern
The way a woman thanked me for letting her go first at a fountain, turning her face to me and smiling while she cooled her wrists in the water
A piece of salami I was offered to taste because, I was told, it was from the country
The kid who knows me now at the panini shop, who winked at me because he was helping a somewhat obnoxious American (not me) and was letting me know that he remembered and appreciated me
So those are just a few things I loved, from a song to a painting to a story to certain things that happened over the course of the day. All of them, whether they were works of art or social interactions, share an element of grace and rightness. Even when they werenāt pleasant, like the execution scene in āKoreaā or the dirty feet (though I love them) of the pilgrims in the Caravaggio painting (which got him in trouble), there was nothing extraneous about them. But here I need to distinguish between excess and extraneousness, because I adore excess (which is why Iām so excited for Becca Rothfeldās forthcoming book Essays in Praise of Excess). Maybe the dirty feet in Madonna die Pellegrini are excessive, but theyāre not extraneous. Something extraneous lies outside the field of the work, disrupting its unity, whereas excess is somehow contained within it, adding to what would have been sufficient if left alone, making it more than sufficient, which is what art must be if it is to be considered great. The music that plays in an elevator is sufficient to keep strangers from feeling awkward as they stand next to one another, but itās not great.
The art I hate has elements of extraneousness about it. Iām told things I didnāt need to be told, shown things I didnāt need to be shown, etc. Good art is luscious, bad art messy. Good art is complex, bad art confusing. I may not āunderstandā a Paul Celan poem, but his poems never confuse me. I get them. As Keats said, a poem should require no working out. He then uses the metaphor of jumping into a lake, reminding us that we donāt jump into a lake to āworkā the lake out, but to luxuriate in the sensation of water. I love Caravaggio because I donāt have to work his paintings out - I stand before them and am immediately immersed in them, as if Iāve just leapt into them. Same with Judee Sill today, or John McGahern, or those moments I mentioned above. This may be why one of the worst qualities an artist can possess is to be āsmart.ā Faulkner was getting at this when he insisted that he had no ideas. For awhile a few years ago, the fad was to describe every book one read as being āsmart.ā The way I interpreted it, people were saying that the book was aware enough of itself not to be embarrassing. But great art is embarrassing.
Yesterday I attacked a poem I hate without sharing the poem, which I feel bad about, because I should put my money where my mouth is and let others decide for themselves. My main beef with it is that itās clever, smart, etc. It comes from the head, when great art, at the risk of being cliche, comes from the heart. The worst art that proceeds from the head is the art that, proceeding from the head, pretends to have proceeded from the heart, so this poem is doubly guilty. Of course, I didnāt get along with the poet who wrote the poem, so one could argue that I canāt be objective in my approach to the poem. That may be true. But, just as Christ said, āYou will know them by their fruits,ā I would say, āYou will know them by their poems.ā
Of course, any of the many poems Iāve published on this Substack could be given the same treatment Iām about to give the poem I keep putting off sharing. Actually, someone already attacked my āChrist at Fortyā poem, which is great. Iām glad he disliked it so strongly. Maybe I shouldnāt have snapped back with such vitriol, but we have such little fun anymore, I found it amusing to clap back. Then he got the last word by telling me good luck with my āstories,ā implying I guess that I donāt actually write poems. We need much more of this in the literary world! Iām all for it. But if you dish it out, you have to be able to take it.
Ok, the poem I dislike. See even now Iām softening my language. I'm getting nervous. Maybe itās actually a great poem! Maybe Iām completely wrong and everything Iāve said here is bullshit. I mean, it was just published in The NY Times Magazine, and I guess they know something about literature. Who am I, a modern-day John Clare, a hick-turned-poet (a hick whoās made good in the world is called a hickup), to doubt the decisions of this veritable institution? There must be a reason why, of all the poems they could have chosen to publish, they would publish Joshua Cloverās āMy Life in the New Millennium,ā which was published in a collection called Red Epic, which was published in 2015. For all this talk of the ānewā (the New York Times, āthe New Millenniumā) this poem old af. Thatās fine, though! So are Caravaggioās paintings! Maybe it will stand the test of time.
An interesting feature of poems that appear in the New York Times Magazine is that theyāre introduced by the editor who chose them. Now Iād like to invent a fictional reader encountering this poem on a sunny Sunday morning in, oh, Portland, Maine. Her name is Barbara. Her whole life sheās wanted to like poetry, but itās never quite caught on for her, like someone who, no matter how many times theyāve been shown how, has never quite been able to juggle that third ball. On her shelves she has the usuals - lots of Mary Oliver and Billy Collins but also some harder fare, Sharon Olds, say, Seamus Heaney. She dutifully reads the poems in The New Yorker, but complains that she doesnāt understand them. They make her feel stupid. Though Keats said she mustnāt, she tries to work them out, such that her husband sometimes figures sheās working on the crossword, so knitted is her brow. See, she trusts New York generally, that city somewhere down there, to give her all that is good and true, and if she canāt figure out the poems they give her, it must be her fault. When she gets one, she feels immense joy, sometimes even cutting the poem out and putting it on the fridge next to a bucktoothed photo of her daughter (who never calls). And her husband, who doesnāt give a fuck about poetry (though he has memorized a ribald collection of limericks he sometimes shares with the college kids who work for his contracting company), will read the poem bemusedly and sometimes even allow that itās not āhalf-bad.ā By the way, if something isnāt half-bad, that must mean, proportionally, that itās more than half-good, right? So itās something like 53% good and 47% bad.
So on this Sunday morning, she sits down with her iPad in her sunny kitchen nook and clicks on āPoem: My Life in the New Millenniumā (Feel free to read the poem before I get up to my shenanigans below). The subtitle prepares her for what might be a bit of a rough ride: āJoshua Clover begins with hating people and loving cats, quickly adding juxtapositions and surprises.ā Ok, helps to get her bearings a little before embarking (sheās used to thinking nautically from living for thirty years on the coast). Good thing he loves cats. So does she. One is curled up on the top of the couch, the other is hunting birds in the garden (theyāve belled him so that, in lunging, he scares them off). She reads on:
Joshua Cloverās āMy Life in the New Millenniumā begins with a thorny, if familiar, either/or. Then the poem moves quickly to accrue its juxtapositions and surprises, providing room for both Whitney Houston and the world system, for both wit and committed seriousness, for gravity and light. By the end of the poem, its initial dilemma has found a resolution: a shared category, capacious enough for both people and cats ā and for history itself.
This is gonna be fun! Barbara thinks. She loves Whitney Houston. Sheās prepared now for some thorns at the beginning, an initial dilemma, but it sounds like at the end of the poem everything a poem could possibly contain (people, cats, history) will be there, in this little poem that fits onto the single screen of her iPad.
But before she can get to the poem, thereās a picture! Looks like a cat, a not very happy one, wearing a mask (is it a raccoon maybe? was there mention of a raccoon?), rakishly posing with a sword. Notice that Barbaraās brain has had to sift through quite a bit of information before encountering this poem. She would do well to stand up and see what Bob is up to in his shop, come back to the poem with fresh eyes. But she can see the end of the poem in her peripheral vision. It wonāt take long, like when, failing to use clippers, you proceed to just pull off, painfully, the hangnail. Weāre not going to leave Barbara hanging, though. Weāre going to work through the poem with her.
First, the title:
My Life in the New Millennium
Bold! Literally. Titleās in bold. Ah, so this is a poem with a strong autobiographical bent. Itās not Barbaraās life, but the poetās, or, more accurately, the speakerās (letās not conflate poet and speaker, people! It wasnāt Frost who had miles to go before he slept, miles to go before he slept, but a man he imagined had miles to go before he slept, miles to go before he slept).
By Joshua Clover
Nice name. Very poetic. Barbara imagines a field, a kind of poetic field, a few lucky ones strewn through it. Also, sort of biblical, āin it? She trusts this Apostle of the Fields to bring her his wisdom for this new millennium (even if weāre about a quarter of the way into it now).
Time to dive into this poem (Iāll use italics so as to separate my prosaic thoughts from Cloverās poetic ones).
It was true that the more I hated people the more I loved cats.
Ha! Barbara thinks. Thatās funny. Makes sense, too. If you donāt like people much you might turn inward, become a bit ornery, prefer company of the feline persuasion.
Then people started to surprise me.
Surprise! Maybe the poet is coming out of their shell a bit then. People are worth loving, too. But does the connection between hating people and loving cats described in the first line mean that, by hating people a little less, the poet loves cats a little less? Hope not, Barbara thinks. Cats are so lovable!
Often this involved fire or coca-cola
Weird! Barbara thinks. The way in which people started to surprise the poet often involved fire or coca-cola (Bobās favorite soft drink), which she thinks maybe should be capitalized but maybe you can do that in a poem? They seem to be very different things, fire and coca-cola. Interesting that only one can put out the other. She likes this poem! So far it involves some things she can understand - cats and fire and coca-cola.
bottles with petrol which amounts to the same thing.
Hmm, that was strange. Here she was, thinking about coca-cola, the cold brown sugary beverage, but because of a move she learned from Dorianne Laux is called āenjambment,ā meaning where a sentence is broken by a line break, the poet really meant bottles filled, not with coca-cola, but with petrol, a weird way to say gasoline. Is the poet British? Wait, so heās saying that fire and coca-cola bottles with petrol are the same thing? Or amount to the same thing? Maybe the people the poet is starting to like are people who are lighting bottles full of gasoline on fire? That sounds dangerous! Is this poem about Antifa?
Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem
āOnce fire is the form of theā¦ā The fuck? Barbara says. Wait a second, I thought this poem was about cats. I was promised cats. Barbara, growing uncomfortable, glances up at the funny cartoon of the cat in the mask. Is comforted. Returning to the line, she kind of likes it now. Itās kind of cool how itās like one big blurt of words. āOnce fire is the form of the spectacle the problemā¦ā
becomes how to set fire to fire.
Hmm, Barbara thinks, that would be hard. Because fire is already on fire. Hence, setting fire to it would be redundant. But why would someone want to do that in the first place? Why would it be a problem?
Some friends were prepared to help with this which
Oh good, Barbara thinks. The poet has friends. He doesnāt have to sit around sadly with his cats. Heās getting out of the house, socializing. But she still doesnāt understand why he needs help setting fire to fire. Sheās glad he has friends but she doesnāt like how heās talking now. Heās trying to burn fire down. Not cool (literally).
Michael Jackson having died and then Whitney Houston
Ok, now weāre talking, thinks Barbara! I know these names. This poem is kind of hip and edgy, actually. It mentions celebrities, which makes it relevant.
was the new pop music. Without an understanding
Wait, whoa whoa whoa, what happened there? Barbara has to reread that part because the syntax is crazy. If it were written out as a sentence it would say, āSome friends were prepared to help with this which Michael Jackson having died and then Whitney Houston was the new pop music.ā But that makes no sense! Barbara thinks. Bob has just walked in. āWorking on the crossword again?ā
Ok, maybe what heās saying is, having some friends who are prepared to help set fire to fire is the new pop music! Or maybeā¦ no, I donāt think thatās what he means.
of the world system and the underlying truth of land
Ok, wait a second, Barbara thinks. There was mention earlier of āthe world system.ā Was it in the poem? No, no it was in the introduction. She was told to be prepared for this world system part.
as the place of politics and the sea as the place of commerce
Whoa, she thinks, this poem is getting crazy! There is a lot of commerce on the sea, she often walks down to the shore and watches the big ships come in. But if sheās being honest with herself, sheās kind of lost this guyās drift. So for this poet, land, the burgeoning green land, is not really real, itās āthe place of politics,ā and the sea, the bitter green sea, is not really real, itās āthe place of commerce.ā This poet seems to do a lot of thinking. That must be why his writing appears in the NY Times Magazine while she, with her more earthly and nautical thoughts, is a subscriber. Sheās paying for this.
it is hard to integrate that other
Sheās finding it hard to integrate anything the poem is saying.
most important fact of our era. Pirates. My friends
Interesting! she thinks. Oh wait, thatās why the cat was wearing a mask in the picture! Heās a pirate! Oh and there are the friends again. The most important fact of our era is pirate friends. Maybe the same friends who help light the fire on fire? But it is hard to integrate the pirates into all that stuff about Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and the world system. Doesnāt seem to quite fit.
and pirates and cats - it comes down
Oh, Barbara says. He wasnāt quite done there. If I read that as prose, it would read: āPirates. My friend and pirates and cats.ā So the pirates arenāt friends. The friends and the cats are still there, and now there are pirates too (though in the picture, the cat is a pirateā¦anyhoo).
to comrades known and elsewhere.
Thatās it! Thatās the end! She made it! What heās saying is, what it comes down to is comrades (kind of like pirate-y friends, maybe?) known and, well, sheād have expected the word āotherwise.ā Or āknown and unknown.ā But the poet had one last surprise up his sleeve.
Wow, what a journey sheās been on. Tempestuous, at times, but sheās made it safely to the bios of the editor and poet. So this is what contemporary American poetry is, she thinks as she allows the iPad screen to dim. Itās a little crazy, a little political, a little confusing perhaps. It leaves you feeling kind of dizzy, like she feels when, after being out on the boat all day, she steps onto the dock, and, taking her time, begins to make her way tentatively towards solid ground.
*
Well, all in good fun, of course.
enjoyed this post (and the last one) - it seems like poetry criticism has suffered from its own sort of regulatory capture, and it's hard to find a poetry reviews in major publications (apart from maybe William Logan) that aren't, at worst, ambiguously complimentary.
It's interesting that you mention Keats and Faulkner, figures who are both a little disingenuous in the way they downplayed the care and exactitude they put in both their reading and writing in order to claim a loftier kind of inspiration.
Keats, who claimed "if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all", yet was plagued with self-doubt over his own laborious work. Faulkner, who often retreated behind a facade of the semi-educated country bumpkin/farmer, who was a voracious intellectual who consumed vast quantities of french philosophy (an interesting look at his library: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26473869).
I'm not a fan of the way poetry is often taught in schools, with each poem a puzzle to be puzzled out. But if the writer has shed some sweat - is it unreasonable that the reader should work a little too?