[lit-ideas] Re: Bad Poetry Competition 2011
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:35:52 +0100 (BST)
--- On Tue, 14/6/11, David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> You are all three very kind. I knew I wouldn't
> achieve what I hoped, for reasons I already suspected when I
> set out on the task.
>
> My intent was to write something within my own limited
> understanding of the current agreements about what a poem
> looks and sounds like--that would be the second one--and
> then to attempt an equivalent to what I thought the poet who
> started all this was trying to do. He seemed to me to
> have written a version of what I've heard at readings here:
> a work that bridges the gap between audience and writer with
> a list of references.
> In the English case the list was from high culture;
It is David who is being very kind here, to "Look".
A rough patchwork of names and quotations does not make a beautiful quilt.
Although described by the judge as "wise" and "extraordinary", how does its
banal conclusion, after inept handling of the theme [the limits of what we know
by looking, dissecting etc.], amount to "wise" or "extraordinary"? Anyone who
knows anything about the philosophy of science, will know that opposing
scientific 'method' to 'imagination' ["Method, not imagination"] and a host of
other attitudes that underpin this poem, are based on a naive and untenable
view of science, for example as some grinding and dissecting machine that
generates theory from data input. These attitudes are convenient for the
highminded literary type who may tell you that Einstein showed everything was
relative, Darwin that only the fittest survive etc. [they didn't btw] - that
is, they have a lame-brained understanding of science but one that helps them
believe their 'poetry' is touching some much deeper
than science ever could [this hostility to science is a very old theme in
poetry: hence Dawkin's book title, drawn from a famous poem, "Unweaving The
Rainbow"]. It is this sense of misconceived superiority that underlies "As if
by delving deeper and deeper, all will be revealed." Though depicted here as
engaged in a futile and foolish pursuit, what these scientists may actually
have thought was that by delving deeper in the way of experimental science
something might be revealed, something perhaps a magnitude more insightful than
the poet's own denouement:-
"Death and unhappiness
will come. But also happiness. See." Pop that in post to the Royal Society.
Give that man a Nobel Prize.
That sense of misconceived superiority is evident from the first lines, which
attempt to put Fibonacci in his place and suggest by use of "merchant" "market"
etc [facts about him that have less to do with his 'theory' than Einstein's
being a patent clerk had to do with his] that he's selling us short. [Also
using a rhythm surprisingly close to "Peter Piper picked a pepper.."]. No. It's
the poem that is selling us short. Its failure is part of a wider story, as it
is fairly well-known that the only place whole swathes of largely discredited
theories, like Freudianism or Marxism, are still taken seriously - indeed as
"wisdom" - is in modern literature studies. A certain kind of
'cod-Wittgensteinianism' is still taken v seriously there too, and this poem is
an example of that.
Admittedly, parts of "Look" might be fine if they weren't part of a
pseudo-intellectual fabric that's as thread-bare as the emperor's new clothes -
but then this can be said of manys a bad poem. I also concede that it's more
engaging, and less guano, than the excerpts of the judge's poetry, which do not
rise above adolescent wittering. After all, _it is interesting_ that all
snowflakes have a certain pattern but each one is also unique. "And then what?
What then?" It's the poem that doesn't have a clue, as the fortune-cookie
'wisdom' of its conclusion reveals.
Of course, it could be just that its higher wisdom escapes me: I confess I
don't get what the poet is getting at when writing "Necessity is unmusical,
says Plutarch. And intolerable, says Empedocles." But I suspect the poet
doesn't either [I mean is 'lack of necessity', whatever that means, musical?
And tolerable?]; and if he does, and it was worth saying, it is a failure of
the poem that it does not convey what was worth conveying. Perhaps someone
could explain the import of these italicised and somewhat Delphic utterances
and the whole thing would fall into place: but as with
"Bacon, Hobbes and Locke just think they do, like Rousseau, Kant
and Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and Mao", what I suspect we have here is the
ill-considered melee of quotations and names. And really - aside from it being
an outrageous falsehood - where is the poetry in
"Bacon, Hobbes and Locke just think they do, like Rousseau, Kant
and Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and Mao. " That "just think they do", like the title
"Look" and the final "See", is more the in the declamatory register of a
whining, self-regarding adolescent than of the wise soothsayer.
So though perhaps 'interesting' on a first read, on closer inspection "Look"
goes nowhere interesting but reveals a very hoary literary attitude to science
and indeed philosophical speculation, without having anything more insightful
than its conclusion to offer as an alternative. With unintended irony, it is
the thoughts and activities of those dismissed as not 'having a clue', and the
aspects of the natural world described, that are by far the most interesting
thing about it, not its banal denouement. Though these criticisms centre on the
poem's ideas, or lack of ideas, the 'poetic language' used is far from adequate
to save it - but that would take another discussion.
As with the judge's own "She is everything that is the case", I suggest "Look"
might fairly be classed as 'cod-Wittgensteinian'. That is not a good thing.
Donal
[Eliot's "Four Quartets", a great achievement, show that poetry with a
Wittgensteinian outlook can be great - the criticism of "Look" is not here a
criticism of Wittgenstein or to imply Wittgenstein's influence on artists is
necessarily for the worse; if they hadn't cod-Wittgenstein they'd always have
cod-Freud and cod-Marx etc].
Here and now
And in England
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