POETRY: PRIMARY OR TOTAL ART?



I was surprised to see Ron’s review of Douglas Rothschild’s Theogony yesterday morning.

Not surprised that Ron would review the book, but surprised by one of the leaden passages he quoted as being a remarkable example of Doug’s pointedness:

Mysterious Playwrights

Even as a Joke:

The real mystery is
why some poets don’t
just leave the play

writing to the play
wrights. Really – ever

read any of August
Strinberg’s poems?
or Harvey Fierstein’s?

This might take readers of Auden’s plays by surprise. Or for that matter readers of plays, librettos, and performance pieces by Stein, Elmslie, Bernstein, Harryman, Mac Low, O’Hara, McClure, Kevin Killian, Rodrigo Toscano, Dambudzo Marachera, Ben Jonson, Tzara, Lorca, John Wilmot, Yeats, Baraka, Ashbery, Mac Wellman, Charles Borkhuis, James Schuyler, Breton, Brian Kim Stefans, Kenneth Koch, T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.

The absurdity of Douglas’s point seems missed by Ron, as does, and this is key, the fact that Doug's examples--Fierstein and Strindberg--are nothing if not deeply conservative practitioners of their art. (What happens to the question at the end of the poem if the examples are Richard Foreman and Samuel Beckett?)

None of the poets mentioned above—save perhaps Jonson or Wellman, who are not unknown to theater-goers—have ever had the kind of popular success on the stage that a Strindberg or Fierstein can claim. But is the point of poets’ theater to compete with mainstream theater? Especially, gack!, on its own terms?

What, perhaps we should ask, is the point of a poet writing for the stage?

It comes down, finally, to what we think or imagine “poetry” (or “the poetic”) to be. For Rothschild, and perhaps for Silliman, the most obvious answer would seem to be merely “genre”: a particular branch of writing that is related to other writing, but in the final analysis, its own thing. "Poetry" or "the poetic" is not--can't be, given the terms of the argument--something having to do with a kind of vision or way of working through the world via the arts. (Rothschild is famous for saying that "the first job of the poet is to edit," so his emphasis on poetry as mere genre--a product best manufactured in workshops--doesn't come as a huge surprise.)

How do you feel about it? Is poetry merely a genre of writing? Should Beckett have concentrated on the theater and not wasted time on his novels and poetry? Should Kevin Killian decide between short stories, novels, Amazon reviews, poetry, or plays? Would Clark Coolidge's poetry have still been as great--as ground-breaking--had he not also been a drummer?

How many poets who wrote nothing but poetry do you really love? (I'll let you supply the examples, as I can't think of any off the top of my head.) How many of them have had significant impact on the art?

In comparison, how many poets who did other things, or came from other disciplines (e.g., O'Hara, Shapiro, Cage, music; Linh Dinh, Joe Brainard, Kenneth Goldsmith, visual art) do you love? How many have had significant impact on the art?

Clearly, I'm biased. My own feeling is obviously that poets who do not either come from some other discipline or who practice no other art have a much tougher road ahead of them if they want to do anything more than simply rearrange the preexisting furniture ... but here's your opportunity to prove me wrong.

Nada and I (today is our 5th wedding anniversary) are off to Portland this evening, so I'll turn comments moderation off.

Have a (comments) field day in my absence!