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:
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?
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?