Memorable Speech – John Hart’s Poetry Blog

Who is this guy and why is he talking?

November 8, 2020 By John Hart Leave a Comment

I write here as someone with two special angles of vision on the poetry world. One comes from twenty-odd years as an editor—and three as sole editor—of the durable West Coast all-poetry magazine Blue Unicorn. This job entails constantly sampling, and choosing from, a hefty stream of submitted verse. The second is a lifetime of immersion in the critical ideas and teaching methods of Lawrence Hart, mentor of the so-called Activist Group of poets, and my father, who died in 1996. For a quarter century now I have been documenting, applying, and I hope extending these methods.

The elder Hart believed that there is, within the great mass of writings called poetry, a small subset that shows the powers of language being used to their fullest—and that, in the long run, this is the only kind of poetry worth trying to write: the poetry that matters.

I believe this, too. As a poet myself, I know how far and how routinely I fall short; but I also insist on measuring my efforts against this ambition, hoping, at least, for some interesting failures.

In another part of my life I have been a mountaineer and rock climber, so I’m drawn to landscape analogies. The strongest poetry rises above the plains of language like a mountain range; it stands apart from the settled landscape of prose like a wilderness area. It is not always easy of access, either to the writer or the reader. Yet there are trails, routes upward and inward, for both, and the views, to push the analogy, are grand. Poets of every era have made paths. I believe that my father, as he helped a number of noted poets to strong individual styles, found one particularly promising trail.

But to make one’s way toward the core regions of poetry requires one thing first: a recognition that there are core regions; that not every poem, just because it is called a poem, is interesting or rewarding; and that there is, damn it all, a real distinction still to be made between poetry and prose. This itself is a not uncontroversial idea these days.

“Poetry” is a funny word. It doubles as the descriptive name of a type of writing (just what is it? Much to talk about) and as a term of praise. Nobody hesitates to say that there are good and bad novels, good and bad plays. Invoke the magic word “poetry,” however, and critical tongues get strangely tied. Just a few strong voices—John Logan and Clive James come to mind—are sometimes heard above a soothing murmur of mutual approval.

So one purpose of this blog is to highlight critical insights I encounter, and to add some of my own. As far as any one person can, I watch the unfolding poetry scene in English, French, and German—and a bit of what filters in from other languages via translations—with keen attention and, too often, equally sharp disappointment. I have formed and tested some strong opinions. I plan to share them here. These ideas will be debatable. I hope to excite some debate.

Poetry magazine March 2021: The Hallmark issue

March 8, 2021 By John Hart 1 Comment

The March 2021 issue of Poetry magazine arrived. I sat right down with it, on the principle that onerous duties should be tended to right away.

If you’re following the field you have to read Poetry, of course. With its handsome packaging, lavish endowment, and century’s worth of accumulated prestige, it enjoys an unequaled authority. Its associated Poetry Foundation website, open to all, is a wonderful resource. An ongoing collaboration with the PBS NewsHour connects prominent voices in the field to millions of viewers.

What’s not to like? Well, for me, the lion’s share of the verse that is being printed.

I read each issue carefully. I read many poems twice and some out loud. I read in the hope of pleasure, which of course sometimes I get. I read as an editor—would I print this? I read as a student of the scene—what do these poems and essays tell me about trends and preoccupations in the poetry world today? I guard against rejecting something just because it is unfamiliar.

That’s just the problem with March 2021 Poetry: far too much of the language in it is absolutely familiar. Predictable. Lazy. Sentimental. Off the shelf in some poetic dollar store.

The first piece, Jennifer Woodson’s “Weight,” sets the tone. “When I was a kid,” it begins, “there was this song that played on the radio all the time.” The song ( “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” as sung by The Hollies) mentions “a long and winding road.” Musing on recent political and cultural troubles, the poet picks up the theme. “And still—ahead of us, the road keeps winding into a place we cannot yet see.”

A poem, or an editorial? I had to check twice to see that it was in fact billed as a poem.

And so it goes through 80 more pages, the linguistic level often dropping to that of a Hallmark card. A red-crowned crane is “wondrous white.” Nathalie Handal tells us: “I’d like to be a poem, to reach your heart and stay.” Michael Simms, teaching a daughter to swim, says: “Watching you I grew stronger—/your courage washed away my fear.” In the issue’s final piece, Margarita Engle instructs us: “Children and poetry were born to love each other”—and yes, this too is part of something published as a poem.

There is a certain amount of labored wit. Chen Chen writes, “One day you will create an online personality quiz that also freshens the breath.” Linda Sue Park has a stanza: “Walk./Bike./Walk some more./Recycle.” And then: “(See what I did there, bike—recycle?)” Even this tiny foray into play with words, it seems, requires a self-deprecating elbow-nudge.

Reviews are supposed to be balanced. I did nod at a very few lines by Chen, by Kara Jackson, by Mahogany L. Browne. Elizabeth Acevedo is at least doing something different from most of the rest. But this reader can bend over backwards no farther than that.

As I worked my way through the issue, a complaint made by New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl in an exhibit critique looped around in my brain: “It seems that we’ll never be permitted to graduate from the university of the obvious.”

Certainly not in Poetry magazine, March 2021.

What Elisa Gabbert said

February 10, 2021 By John Hart Leave a Comment

Poets and their cheerleaders—often other poets—don’t like to admit it, but what we call poetry often makes hard reading, in one of several ways.

Poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert has touched on this fact in the New York Review of Books (March 26, 2020). In a piece titled “New Theories of Boredom”—billed as a poem, which it certainly is not—she makes some shrewd remarks.

Gabbert draws a line between language that discourages us because it is banal and language that discourages us because it is difficult. “It’s almost like there should be different words for “boring because simple” and “boring because complex,” she says.

She goes on, “You could also call “boring because complex” interesting boring (boring in an interesting way) or slow-interesting (interesting, but at a pace that sometimes resembles boredom).”

She concludes, “To state the obvious, all good poetry is slow-interesting.”

Is this true? Surely not quite. There is such a thing as a poem that speaks to the reader instantly and continues to speak for years, decades—sometimes centuries—after.

But there are many also that appeal once and then are through with you; and there are many that take some time to make their case—but then stick with you forever.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had this argument two hundred years ago and more. Wordsworth wrote in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads of 1798: “The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being . . . .”

Coleridge wasn’t so sure about that word “immediate.” In his brilliant if rambling Biographia Literaria, he declares that it is “not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, [that] possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry . . .”

The first half of the twentieth century in poetry tended to follow Coleridge, producing a lot of “slow-interesting” poems. Lawrence Hart’s “Activist” poets worked on similar lines. Poets who studied with him, and later with me, have developed many styles, but certainly these, when successful, also tend toward the “slow-interesting.”

One widespread attitude in the current poetry world is dislike of the “slow-interesting.” Many reviewers—and editors—feel that to pose any obstacle to immediate understanding is to show off, to demonstrate contempt for the reader. And many poets whose gift tends to lead them off the accessible track don’t dare to diverge too far, for fear of being judged “obscure.”

One very eminent poet and teacher, criticizing a student writer for pretentiousness, barked: “I heard better language coming over on the bus this morning.” I find this unlikely. “Boring because simple” would cover a lot of the language heard on the typical bus.