(poets) on poetry criticism

Why don’t more people ready poetry?  It’s because poetry critics aren’t doing their job—at least that’s what Matthew Zapruder would have us believe.  His essay on the subject calls for new “ways of talking about poetry” and offers fine readings of poems by Brenda Hillman and Rae Armantrout that serve to point out the flaws in many of the current modes employed by poetry critics. That’s all very good.  Still, I can’t get past this bold claim:

“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.”

Really?  Zapruder goes on to explain that: “Readers, sophisticated and beginner, need critics to explain why and how poets are using language for these different purposes, and what those purposes might be.”  Furthermore, it’s the critic’s duty to reveal “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.”

That’s a bit much.  Again, I’m all for poetry critics practicing their trade a bit more rigorously, but would those efforts really lead to some broad revival of interest in American poetry?  Let’s pause for a minute to consider who writes and reads poetry criticism.   Zapruder compares poetry critics to art critics, opining that “the public generally accepts paintings that derange our ordinary ideas of how things should look” and citing our acceptance of abstract art, specifically Picasso and Rothko, as proof that critics make a difference.  Of course, Picasso and Rothko are canonized painters not artists working on (or beyond) the fringe of audience expectations.  Acceptance of their work wasn’t just the work of a few good art critics, but rather successive generations of art critics mediated by art historians, museum curators, and, most importantly, the public.  People got used to abstract painting, but that’s only because they made an effort to get used to it.  A more suitable comparison would focus on the post-modernist art populating the galleries of Soho.  If Zapruder dropped by those galleries on a Thursday night, he’d see plenty of art that is working to “derange our ordinary ideas.”  He’d also find that this art doesn’t have a mainstream audience. Most of the crowd would undoubtedly be artists just as most of the people responding to Zapruder’s essay are all poets (guilty!).  In other words, poets read poetry criticism, and that’s about it.  Better poetry criticism may enrich these readers, but it would do little to grow the poetry audience.

The other analogy Zapruder offers is more telling.  In it, he describes a high school friend who gave him a copy of the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat (an album I also discovered in high school and grew to love) and how he played it over and over until it “made glorious sense.”  Tellingly, this anecdote has nothing to do with the quality of music criticism.  Zapruder was put on to the album by word of mouth and driven to listen to it repeatedly until it all clicked.  What drove him? I can’t say, but I’ve had similar experiences, and those were driven by a powerful curiosity to discover new music, a curiosity built on the belief that new music would have something to offer me.  Where did that belief come from?  Not from music critics.  It came from being exposed to good music—if I had to thank an institution, I supposed it would be college radio (in my case WFMU)—and the poetry world should expect no different.  If America’s poetry audience experiences significant growth, it’ll be on account of better poets

by Martin Woodside