B105-DES60
The Roger Ebert of Poetry Criticism: Jack Foley
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 6/14/03  

Update

  This is another 1 of those essays where I must, upfront, reveal a small backstory so as to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions as to the verity of my viewpoint. A few years back, perhaps a year or so before I started Cosmoetica, I received 2 solicitations from the same magazine/organization- 1 by post mail & 1 via email. I believe the entity was known as The Temple, or something akin. Both entreaties painted the entity as a haven for your typical Left Wing artiste wannabe types. Both invited me to join- I believe there was a small fee for membership- the entity was some sort of arts collective. I did not join, & the writing was pretty awful- with an exception or 2, but I did start getting emails from some of ‘the members’ re: their own poetry websites. So, as is Cosmoetica policy, I culled the several dozen emails of the members & put them on my Cosmoetica email list. I got a few objections, which prompted removal as long as they reciprocated, but a handful of the folk still remain, correspond, & forward me stuff. 1 of them is a fellow named Jack Foley. He has a regular poetry review column at the Alsop Review.
  His emails have been rather genial & late last year I stumbled across a couple of books of his in a used bookstore. I finally got around to reading them a few weeks ago & found some interesting bits, along with alot of the same old same old nonsense propagated by Lefty artiste types. Nonetheless, the writer who 1^st came to mind as an analog to JF was not another poet- nor even a creative writer- but film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, currently the TV show Ebert & Roeper, & long hailed for his landmark series of film review shows with his now deceased competitor critic from the Chicago Tribune, Gene Siskel. Why? Well, basically JF is a pretty good-good prose writer, whose criticism is pretty much the usual- I like this stuff mode, as opposed to the this is good even if it does not appeal to me mode. His poetry is rather generic & nothing to write home about- at least the dozen or so I’ve seen online- but his lasting impact on the world of poetry, if there will be 1 measurable, will be as a critic & historian of West Coast poetry, not as a poet. Like RE JF can prosaically ruminate very fluidly on his subjects, & his writing can often be quite good & make interesting points. But, like RE, JF is too biased- letting his own cogent points about the art dissipate whenever he reviews a poet he likes or knows personally. This goes to the crux of the old query as to what makes a good critic? Is it someone whose writing or dialectic is persuasive enough to convert you to their POV? Or is it someone with a knowledge of the craft, who’s just OK at conveying points & opinions? Of course, a great critic does both. But, someone like GS- in my view- understood art more deeply, even if his ability to explicate it was not as sharp as RE’s.
  Before I hit the 2 books lemme give some more info on JF- a name more well-known for a character played by George Clooney in Steven Soderbergh’s film Out Of Sight. No, this JF is no heartthrob- he’s a 60ish fellow who far more resembles a Beatnikized W.D. Snodgrass. Of course, his online bio is far more ‘pristine’:

  Jack Foley is an innovative, widely-published poet and critic who, with his wife, Adelle, performs his work frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the past several years he has hosted a show of interviews and poetry presentations on Berkeley radio station KPFA. His current show, "Cover to Cover," which can be heard by streaming audio at www.kpfa.org, is on every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Pacific time. His poetry books include Letters/Lights--Words for Adelle (1987), Gershwin (1991), Adrift (1993, nominated for a Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award), Exiles (1996), and (with Ivan Argüelles) New Poetry from California: Dead /Requiem (1998).  A contributing editor to Poetry Flash, he has also published two poetry chapbooks, Advice to the Lovelorn (1998) and (with Ivan Argüelles) Saint James (1998), an homage to James Joyce.  A third chapbook, Some Songs by Georges Brassens, is forthcoming. O Powerful Western Star and Foley’s Books, companion volumes of Foley’s essays, reviews and interviews, have recently appeared from Pantograph Press. In a review, San Francisco Chronicle Book Editor David Kipen describes the books as “galvanizing”: “an unparalleled cultural history of the past half century from Bodega Bay to the Pacheco Pass.” O Powerful Western Star is the recipient of the Artists Embassy Literary/Cultural Award 1998-2000.

  3 points- 1) JF is hardly innovative- but that’s a typical throwaway blurb word. 2) The name Ivan Argüelles will reappear a # of times in this essay because 3) JF uses the last 2 books mentioned (which I will focus on) to shill for this pal- IA- ceaselessly, although for no real artistic merits. This being 1 of JF’s biggest downfalls as a critic- the cronyistic tendencies.
  But, let me briefly deal with JF as poet. The majority of his poems are your typically left-margined free verse poems, lacking any real music or structure or logical enjambment, that tell a basically prose story with 1 or 2 good lines or images per poem. That his criticism occasionally picks out these points in others’ poems harkens back to my long held belief that greater than transcendence is its recognition. That to know how a great poem works allows its replicability- making excellence not just a lucky toss of the dart. This JF is lacking in. However, he is, at his best, capable of cute little poems as this:

Missing U

this is a poem abot
missing yo
i know what dr. fred wold have thoght
and what carl jng wold have cleverly taght
oh, hear my nhappy shot:
I miss yo!

  Get it? Unfortunately most of his poems are of the Gary Soto Left Marginal Academy sort. Here’s a bit from a poem called El, Eli:

In the night when dreams are wet
They will see me smiling yet
Holding out God’s helping hand--
There’s a sweet and sacred band!
Till Hell turns to ice and freezes
You’ll make Love to me--and Jesus
I’ll apply the priestly arts
To your troubled private parts
Here, my lad, ’s a welcome solace
Let me touch your throbbing phallus
Hear the Sacred Choir thrumming
As I prepare my Second Coming!

  This poem is another of the better online pieces- deliberately doggerelized, & a satire on a pedophilic priest named Father O’Fondle. But, when more ‘serious’ his verse weighs down. Here’s a bit from a poem called An Epithalamium For My Son Sean And His Bride, Kerry Hoke:

(What does it mean to be lonely?) There is
another kind of loneliness
which appears initially
to be
sexual
but which cannot
be resolved
by sexuality.
(What does it mean to be lonely?)
There is another kind of loneliness
which is nothing less than
the search for self
a search which is finally
fruitless, frustrating
because selfhood
can only be created
not found
and so uncreates
itself
continually.
It is the search for the self
in the other
the search for the other
in the self
which transcends
the task of pleasure.
What is a marriage?

  As you can tell, some heartfelt sentiments to be sure, & a nice thought- but a poem utterly lacking in structure, larded with- go ahead, you count the # of clichés within, & utterly unmusicked. It’s not really a poem- but a wholly generic piece of writing. If there is an individual behind the sentiments he is well-hidden. Here’s another piece from The Temptation Of Sixty:

the temptation of sixty
is to believe
that everything
is possible
and not to believe
that anything
has changed
the temptation of sixty
is to justify
behavior
by
delusion
and to justify
delusion
by
need
to justify
everything
by
fiction
the temptation of sixty
is to believe
anything

  The poem later chronicles some childhood memories. Utter banality. I guess JF would argue the word by being its own line is to rhyme with justify, but dramatically the word has no weight, & the poem is not exactly memorable in its musicality. But, this is your typical poem from a poet who’s not REALLY a poet, & knows it. He justs wants to hang around the locker room & smell what real poets are like, in the hopes that some odor will stick & others will view him anew, yet not know why. Excelsior!
  On to the 1^st of the 2 books: O Powerful Western Star is a takeoff on Walt Whitman’s line from When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d. The book actually comes with a CD where JF & his wife Adelle actually read 3 of the essays within. They do the usual whooping & hollering- trying to play the tired part of the poet/prophet, yet there are some funny moments- however unintended. & of the 2 books OPWS is the better book, although it suffers from too much unfounded backpatting & politicization. Both books are published by Pantograph Press, founded by- you got it- Ivan Argüelles; keep that in mind. The book starts off with an Introduction by the new National Endowment for the Arts honcho, critic & poetaster Dana Gioia. Here are some of DG’s comments (& my addenda):

  ‘Jack Foley’s O Powerful Western Star is not only an engrossing and original book. It is also–for Californians–a necessary one.’  

[DG is struggling for words not in the Blurbists’ Top 10. But he fails with the silly & obligatory adjective necessary. You know art is in trouble whenever an artist calls it necessary!]

  ‘O Powerful Western Star naturally divides into two contrasting but interconnected parts–like two voices engaged in a rapt conversation. The first part is a brilliant speculative account of the cultural situation of poetry at the end of the twentieth century. In deeply provocative essays like "Words & Books, Poetry & Writing" and "What About All This . . ." Foley explores the radical changes now affecting the serious literary artist.’

[We’ll see how provocative some of these essays are in a bit. Reread that last sentence- another drowning grasp for relevance.]

  ‘Although genuinely learned, Foley’s theoretical essays are in no sense academic articles. They are not even conventional essays in the sense of offering a single linear argument. Like the critical work of Marshall McLuhan or Ezra Pound, two writers he admires, Foley’s prose proceeds by contrast and allusion, juxtaposition and suggestive leap. He is a master of that most difficult and often abused form, experimental prose, because he understands that good innovative writing is not only original but also interesting.’

[Trust me when I say only a blurbist grasping for comparisons would link JF’s work with McLuhan’s or Pound’s. When they are good they are lucid & make a few good points- that’s it.]

  ‘Artists are usually the first to pick up the vibrations of cultural change. Consequently, major shifts in poetics are usually registered first by practicing artists with a reflective bent. The artist witnesses something surprising in his or her own creative process or milieu that current theory does not explain or accommodate. In trying to describe the new development–indeed sometimes just by providing an evocative image or metaphor for others to develop–the artist articulates a decisive shift in cultural sensibility long before academic critics ever notice its existence. Kafka, Borges, and Beckett preceded Kristeva, Barthes, and Baudrillard. And will also survive them.’

[DG apes JF in making an excellent point, yet also NEVER actually putting it in to practice- recall my earlier admonition- greater than transcendence is its recognition.]

  ‘"Words & Books, Poetry & Writing" simultaneously provides the intellectual stimulation of criticism and the imaginative pleasures of poetry. What one remembers from the essay is not only the remarkable argument it unfolds (and they are numerous), but also its many moments of lyrical insight. The great modern poet-critics–Eliot, Pound, Auden, Jarrell, and others–always understood that ideal criticism was not merely intellectual but emotional, spiritual, and sensory.’

[Ditto my last point!]

  ‘No critic since Thomas Parkinson has written with such generous attention and persuasive intelligence about Northern California’s literary bohemia. Being a hard-hearted critic, I sometimes wish Foley were more demanding of certain writers. High standards are the necessary precondition for regional culture of enduring significance–a lesson inevitably forgotten by local literary boosters. But I understand the nature of Foley’s critical enterprise, which is to establish with intelligence and historical purpose the context for appreciation. Consequently, Foley never condescends to mere objectivity.’

[An interesting snip, because it starts off with the trite ‘No critic since’ trope, then contains the closest thing you’ll see in poetry criticism to a rebuke- ‘I sometimes wish Foley were more demanding of certain writers’- then ends with a totally non-sequitured oxymoron- ‘Foley never condescends to mere objectivity’. As if objectivity- the bedrock of true criticism- is a bad thing. This is why DG is such a hit & miss writer himself.]

  ‘Perhaps no recent writer has done more than Foley to foster a serious and informed critical conversation about West Coast literature.’

[Back to utter textbook blurbism]

  So, you now see why DG is such an annoying twit of a writer. Let’s actually peruse some of JF’s pieces in the book OPWS. The best point JF makes in either book comes from a speech called Multiculturalism And The Media, which takes on the issue of race in America:

  ‘To be 'white' is to engage in dominance behavior. Insofar as one does not engage in dominance behavior one is not white. But one remains Italian or Irish or German or Swedish or Jewish or whatever.’

  An interesting argument which can be both true & false- yet this provocateur status is at its height in non-poetic subject matter. The best essay in the book, poetically, is 1 on Lawrence Ferlinghetti- a wide-ranging piece that properly boosts LF’s work, even if his choice of poetic selection is hit & miss. An interview with Allen Ginsberg actually gets a little seriousness from the pedophilic imp- & some depth.
  But, let me now dissect, briefly as I can, a couple of the more well-known & praised essays in the book. ‘Words & Books, Poetry & Writing’, we saw, was called by Dana Gioia ‘remarkable’ & ‘lyrical’. He also notes that the piece started out as a performance piece for 2 voices. Let’s see what is remanent of that within.
  1^st he quotes an ancient Chinese poetry critic (translated by the grandstanding poetaster Sam Hamill), whose admonitions are really just a string of banal metaphors. This leads in to discussions of sight, blindness &- guess who?- Homer- translated by Lawrence of Arabia. This leads to JF’s 1^st major posit:  

  ‘Homer’s “beloved minstrel,” like the poet of Lu Chi’s Art of Writing, bursts into song, but he is not listening to “an inner music”; he is not “lost in thoughts and questions”; despite his blindness, he is directed outward, towards his audience; he is, precisely, performing. Indeed, he is not even necessarily the author of the poem he is performing, a poem which Homer describes as dealing with “the great deeds of heroes, as they were recounted in verses whose fame had already filled the skies.” The author of the poem is not specifically mentioned, but that doesn’t seem to matter very much. If anything, the Muse is the author of the poem—as the Muse is certainly the inspiration of the poet. Odysseus doesn’t drink to the wonderful poet who composed the poem which the “divine singer” is reciting but pours “from his loving cup a libation to the God.” Song, it seems, originates in mystery—but it is not the mystery of selfhood, as it is in Lu Chi. Lu Chi (born 261 A.D.) and Homer (born, perhaps, 850 B.C.) both present us with an image of the poet—and they are in a way rather similar images. The poet in the act of speaking his poetry is definitely something to see. But Lu Chi’s image represents precisely the transformation of the image Homer gives us. The divinely inspired poet for Lu Chi is suddenly thrust inwards and away from his external circumstances:

Eyes closed, he hears an inner music; he is lost in thoughts and questions—
His spirit rides to the eight corners of the universe, his mind a thousand miles away.

  His eyes are closed because the external world is no longer present to him. The Muse, on the other hand, thrusts the Homeric singer outward towards his audience as his “power of harmony” (which is no “inner music” but dependent in part upon the very real “resonant lyre” that hangs “on a peg above him”) moves Odysseus to tears. He does not transport his auditors “to the eight corners of the universe” but reminds them of their life; tells them what it means to be human as he sings “the great deeds of heroes.” He does not pour forth “the essence of words” but stirs specific memories in his audience. As the text makes clear, Odysseus is listening to events in which he has participated; he is listening to his own life.
  Is the poet public or is he private? Do his words move outward to the world or inward towards a pure subjectivity, an “essence of words”? Are both these stances myths—and, if they are, what are they expressing? What do they have to do with Wen Fu, “the art of writing”?’

  These are valid points, but only if they remain specific to the actual poems spoken of- not conflated to poetry, in general. JF further observes:

  ‘“Not a listener, not one of the crowd, but an individual isolated with a text.” The isolation of Lu Chi’s poet is indeed linked to “the art of writing.” Writing for both writer and reader tends towards isolation—towards separateness, towards “privacy.” I need to be alone so I can write. I need to get away in order to finish my novel. The image of Lu Chi’s poet is the image, by now enormously hackneyed, of the sensitive, isolated, perhaps even “misunderstood” individual—a figure whose isolation mirrors the isolation of the reader alone with his book. The reader’s eyes are not in fact closed, as the poet’s are, but they are nevertheless turned away from the world. They are focused on a book, not on the world around him.’

  So far, so good. JF is on target & dealing with the base idea of the art form, whether you agree with his assertions or not. Will he slip into dogma?:

  ‘At its beginnings, poetry is rooted in physical presence and in sounds, and, whatever the labyrinthine complexities of its history—and they are many—it always maintains some sort of connection with its purely oral past….Written discourse, writes Plato, is “only a kind of ghost” of “the living, animate discourse of a man who really knows.”
  The shift from Socrates, who never wrote anything, to Plato, who was a writer, is the shift from an oral culture to a culture in which writing is of enormous importance. It is the beginning of the myth of subjectivity, of inwardness, a myth which finds its apotheosis in the conception of the “unconscious,” a conception of an area of the mind so “subjective” that it is for the most part inaccessible. The history of this myth of subjectivity is bound up with the history of writing. Do we speak our words aloud as we write or read them or are we silent before the page?’ 

  Not necessarily being dogmatic, but here JF veers away from what is mutually acknowledged by all poets & historians of the art. 1) poetry, like all writing, did not begin orally. Orality was merely the material projection of immaterial thoughts- abstractions. What we call a tree is not a ‘tree’ but just what we call a tree- see? Poetry is the ability to shift between these nooks- old Johnny Keats’ Negative Capability & all. 2) it’s odd that Dana Gioia praises JF for never descending to mere ‘objectivity’, yet JF excoriates ‘subjectivity’ as a myth. Who’s correct? JF’s stance, or DG’s perception of it? This is what happens when 1 blurbs without thinking of the logical consequences of what is being blurbed. Of course, subjectivity is no more mythic than its opposite- they are just tacks to attempt knowing the world. As for poetry, here is probably the most apt definition of it you’re ever gonna read- 3) Poetry is a written art whose quality of, & concision in, word choice is structurally non-prosaic (in both major senses). Period. Other things can loosely be termed poetry- the Gettysburg address, a ballerina’s motion, higher mathematics- but those are all metaphoric approximations, not the thing, itself. JF then offers up an e.e. cummings poem & this:

  ‘The following poem, published by E. E. Cummings in 1935 in his volume, No Thanks, is, literally, unspeakable:

                                                                                      r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r 
                                                                               who
                                                       a)s w(e loo)k
                                                       upnowgath
                                                                        PPEGORHRASS
                                                                                                     eringint(o-
                                                       aThe) :l
                                                                   eA
                                                                       !p:
                                                      S                                            a
                                                                                        (r                                                       rIvInG                               .gRrEaPsPhOs)
                                                                                                   to
                                                       rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
                                                       ,grasshopper;

                                                                       [Speakers are silent while
                                                                       audience examines poem]

  Cummings’ poem brilliantly places us at the exact point at which letters turn into words. The struggle to see the grasshopper as it moves and leaps in the grass is mirrored by the struggle of our eyes to make sense—and words—out of Cummings’ disarranged letters. But it is an entirely visual struggle. R-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r cannot be pronounced except as individual letters until one turns the letters around and perceives them to be “grasshopper.” It is as far from the oral as a poem can be.’ 

  A nice observation, then JF digresses about Stéphane Mallarmé who ‘not only accepts the silence and whiteness of the page as the primary means for the dissemination of his poetry, he makes active use of it.’ It’s this kind of mixing of metaphor with the real world that has undone too many critics. Not too mention the requisite hyperventilation: 

  ‘Writing is itself at this moment in a state of crisis.  For the first time in its history it finds itself in competition with other modes of expression. Our children, we complain, don’t read enough. Literacy is declining. For many years writing was the only way of preserving human speech—but this is no longer the case. The cassette tape or the phonograph record or the radio or the television or the CD-Rom can give you the exact sound of the person who is speaking.’ 

  Anyone who has lived through the last 50 years or so knows the utter fallacy & silliness of that statement. The myth of an earlier time when folk were more intelligent & well-read, is just an extension of classic Chicken Littleism. More people read now than ever before. Yes, most of it is crap, but ever read the pulps of the late 19^th Century, or the Great Depression/World War 2 years? Not very impressive. This is what folk were reading back then. A few more Zen-nish comments, then we get a little more grandiosity: 

  ‘Lu Chi’s inward-looking poet, the type of the subjective man, may strike us as oddly old-fashioned.  The figure of the Homeric singer, with its very different sense of personality structure, has been a haunting presence in modern literature, whether one speaks of James Joyce or W. B. Yeats or H. D. or Ezra Pound or Jack Kerouac or Judy Grahn. What are we likely to experience next?  We don’t know, but we have an intense sense that it is likely to be different.’ 

  Judy Grahn? An ‘intense sense that it is likely to be different’? Okay, but a tad silly. A few pieces later comes another interesting essay, originally a speech, called The Current State of Poetry. Here, he starts off with some good & salient points:

  ‘Poetry is not an absolute entity. It changes constantly. What might have been a “poem” for someone in the eighteenth century would perhaps be for us nothing but greeting-card verse. What is for us a “poem” would very likely be prose for someone living in the eighteenth century. There is always a wide range of what constitutes “poetry,” but the range by no means necessarily includes exactly the same elements. What is poetry now?’ 

    Then he slips back into the mythic mists of poetry’s origins, etc.:

  ‘The Greek word for poet simply means “maker,” and the word can mean the maker of anything—a table and chair, for instance. The German word for poet is closer to the truth of the Homeric figure. It is Dichter, and it goes back to the Latin dico, dicere, I speak, to speak. The poet is someone who speaks. At its beginning, poetry is rooted in physical presence and in sounds—particularly in the sounds of speech.’ 

  He then admits poetry’s origins have little to do with its currency. Now, recall how JF’s earlier essay stated poetry was in ‘crisis’? Read on:

  ‘We live in the most literate of ages, an age which is flooded with books. Yet much of modern literature is haunted by the presence of a non-literate bard who spoke his poems centuries ago. The energy of the “Spoken Word” movement is nothing but a (re)discovery of some of the energy of the Homeric figure.’ 

  This is the problem with poorly thought out rationales. Dissonances occur that bipolarly clash. Then we get more on Classical thought, & a spurious comparison: 

  ‘If I were to ask you to “read” a bit of sheet music for me, you might be able to do it. There are many people who can “read” music. But there is no one who would consider the art of music to be defined by the sheet of paper on which the notes are written down. Music is not merely understanding the notes as they appear on the page. Music involves sound, whether the sound of the human voice (which is itself a multiple thing) or of instruments. Without sound, music is incomplete. The art of music is taken in with our ears.
  The art of writing, however, for Ambrose and for us, is taken in with our eyes. Instead of remaining what it may have been initially, a notation for speech as a musical score is a notation for sound, writing became instead an art of silence.’

  The point? Writing has always been an art of silence. Spoken word is no more writing than music video is music- although they are related. We then get another wan comparison to end the piece: 

  ‘“The synthesizer,” wrote Miles Davis in his autobiography, Miles, has changed everything whether purist musicians like it or not.  It’s here to stay and you can either be in it or out of it.  I choose to be in it because the world has always been about change.  People who don’t change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker.
  Current poetry remains “local as a motherfucker.” But it has within itself the potentiality to be considerably more.’  

  The tuning chamber of the mind is the highest of all places for art to exist. To suggest that it is not shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the arts, in general, & poetry specifically. JF’s 2^nd book is not as interesting as OPWS. Simply called Foley’s Books, it is a selection from his online column at Alsop Review, & starts off with a beatification of his publisher Ivan Argüelles. JF admits he & IA are collaborators, yet that does not pardon his praise of such crap as this, from a poem called Madonna: A Poem:  

I spent a fortune on her Honest I did
there was no guarantee the sex would be good
the way she looked at me from the magazine
I felt I was gonna just die

  Or this from Saint James:

what is poetry
if not the other
eternally trying to name the Other…

other than naming the Other
what is there
to say

  Neither snip is well written- the 1^st is clichéd prose broken in to lines & the 2^nd is trite sentiment, a bit more poetic, yet poorly structured. Yet, what is JF’s assessment of this poetaster? JF says it is difficult, problematic, & maddening, yet he’s a risk-taker. That’s code for- he has no qualities that are manifest, but I want to make him sound sexy & important. Too often hagiography is JF’s normal mode of writing of his pals & acquaintances.
  In a piece on William Carlos Williams & an unknown (Harold Norse) JF makes some nice points about formalism vs. free verse, but his ending leaves no doubt where he stands:

‘When Yeats began to write in ottava rima or when he decided that ‘Leda and the swan’ should be a sonnet, it wasn’t because he’d been reading in a handbook of forms and wanted to try out a couple….The forms were part of the ‘meaning’ of the poems….Similarly, why was ‘Leda and the Swan’ a sonnet and not another form?’

  Assuming JF lacks clairvoyance, there is no way he could ever know the intent of a poet- & intent in art is utterly meaningless. Only accomplishment matters. A great poet can easily fool a reader with what their intent was, & use that to unsettle the reader, by undermining the trope’s cliché. Instead of asking why ‘Leda and the Swan’ was a sonnet. he could as easily ask why any poem is what it is. The answer is the poem itself- at least if it’s successful. This kind of poseur questioning is a weakness JF shares with virtually all published critics. The questions sound deep but really avoid the meat of what the particular poem really ‘is’. Similar posing pops up in a piece on Ishmael Reed, placed- oddly- between Robert Pinsky & Michael Palmer, for regional reasons. A piece on Charles Bukowski treads familiar ground, as well a hagiography of Diane Di Prima’s ‘epic’ doggerel Loba. This dull scattershot, structureless poem, laced with self-consciously ‘deep’ & ‘ooh-ah’ moments, is called brilliant & transformative. Here is a ‘powerful’ snip that ends Ave:

ay-a
ay-a ah
ay-a
ay-a ah ah
maya ma maya ma
om star mother ma om
maya ma ah

  Bland, banal, utterly silly- but how lupine! Yet, JF does not criticize the poem more than he does advertise it. Like others, JF too often tries to ‘explain’ what the selection is saying, because he likes it, without understanding why. This lack of discernment between personal ‘like’ & understood ‘excellence’ damns most published critics & JF is not immune- in fact, he indulges this propensity. If the poem were actually well written it would not need explanation- but merely a detailing of its successes.

  But, the utter nadir of the 2 books is JF’s ‘A Letter To Mumia Abu-Jamal’- the contemptible & cowardly cop-killer. I’ve detailed this sick Loony Left icon before. This bizarre piece- even for the Loony Left!- attempts to get MAJ to send JF some recordings of his writing. Needless to say, I’ve read some of MAJ’s work- Jack Abbott he’s not! The entreaty ends:

  ‘You may be familiar with the poem already- and, for all I know, you may read French- but if you think the prison officials would permit it, and you’re interested, I’d be happy to send you a copy of the poem with my translation. Horrible as your situation has been, you’ve never found it unspeakable.’

  Go ahead, take a moment to vomit. The piece again puts MAJ in a martyr position- with JF as the supplicant to a higher power, even though everything MAJ has done in his life has landed him right where he is. & unspeakable? Please, why would it be since that’s the bread & butter of the MAJ propaganda machine?
  So, we see that JF is an- at best- passable poet, a very hit & miss critic, yet this puts him near the very top rank of those published poets today. Instead of someone who should be waiting to squeak into the ‘system’, JF is- literally- 1 of the 2 or 3 best published critics out there. This is faint praise, but not out of malice toward JF but out of disgust for the current state of poetry, its criticism, editing, & publishing.
  JF is also very provincial- reviewing mostly the usual suspects that a latter-day Beatnik might. His opinions on Confessionalists, or the Dead White Males that inhabit current Academia, or Nuyoricanism, are absent- these have no currency in ‘the poetry’ that JF sees as the real ‘poetry’ worth arguing over. In fact, in an interview posted at http://www.baymoon.com/~poetrysantacruz/interviews/foley.html JF is interviewed by a Dennis Morton. Some of his replies are telling, especially that they contradict some of his points made in his own books. Like many artists JF rarely follows his own advice:

DM:  What's the biggest mistake a poet can make?

JF:  To believe that poetry can be anything other than poetry, do anything other than what poetry can do.

[Now, go reread some of his points on orality in poetry.]

DM:  What's the worst poetry mistake you've made?

JF:  To envy another poet.

[A good point to make.]

DM:  Give us the names of five contemporary poets we should be reading, but probably aren't?

TE:  Ivan Arguelles, Jake Berry, Mary-Marcia Casoly, Reginald Lockett, Koon Woon.

[We know JF’s relationship with IA- wanna bet he’s chummy with the others, too?]

DM:  What advice would you give a young poet?

JF:  Write about what you don't know; steal.

[Again, some good stuff- yet, is the best JF could steal some of the blandness we saw at this essay’s start?]  

  Another interesting point is that JF’s OPWS spurred some online debate about the relevance & worth of Californian poetry. On the pro side is JF. Here are some snips from the Fallen Western Star Debates: 

  ‘Flying in the face of the popular conception of San Francisco as a wonderful place for writers-a conception which this tourist-oriented city is eager to foster- [Dana] Gioia's challenging piece immediately aroused interest. Like the author's earlier and equally challenging "Can Poetry Matter?",…."Fallen Western Star" had its passionate adherents….all greeted the article as a breath of fresh air-a moment of refreshing honesty in the midst of a situation which had grown increasingly murky.

  Controversy began almost at once….The most detailed response to Dana Gioia's article was written by Richard Silberg, respected critic and Associate Editor of Poetry Flash. It was titled, "On 'Fallen Western Star': Dana Gioia Stirs it Up in the Hungry Mind Review" and it was published in Poetry Flash, Number 285, May-June 2000….Is the controversy over "Fallen Western Star" a tempest in a tea-pot-Californians arguing over regional trivialities-or are larger issues involved? Gioia, like Scott Timberg a native Californian, asks, ‘Is urban culture still a viable reality for American cities outside the Northeast corridor? Or is some new social means of concentrating human talent needed? Is the delocalized and disembodied cyberspace of the Internet the American writer's only alternative to New York?’….Our challenge is not only to find the right words to describe our new and complex experience but also to discover the right images, myths, concepts, and characters. For us, this is an essential task, and one impossible to have done elsewhere….

  Richard Silberg's or Howard Junker's list of "important" California poets would be very different from Dana Gioia's. As all these writers know, the question is not merely a matter of taste but of history….

  Gioia's criticism of the Bay Area's poetry scene in turn arises partly out of his thrust towards "a reality that has never been fully captured in English": it is a deliberate movement towards a possible future. But a new future means a redefinition of the past, a new naming of predecessors. Interestingly, three distinguished California writers who are extremely important to Dana Gioia- Weldon Kees, Yvor Winters, and Janet Lewis-are nowhere to be found in James D. Hart's supposedly "comprehensive" A Companion to California (Oxford University Press, 1978)….

  Like Coleridge, Gioia recognizes "the strong, self-contained mind as the creator of its own values." California literature is filled with such rugged individualists. But, like Coleridge, Gioia also insists upon "the general modes of writing and reading great poetry-which requires a literate and thoughtful public and a poet who knows how to communicate with other minds and needs to do it."’

  While JF pretends to be ‘objective’ (What was it he once called that?) it’s clear that he’s goombah with DG. An alternative view was penned by a Richard Hughey:

  ‘Gioia's essay "Can Poetry Matter?" for the Atlantic Monthly a decade ago produced the most extraordinary response in the magazine's history, which surprised me, as I didn't think poetry mattered to that many people any more.

  Gioia's thesis was that poetry once written for popular consumption has been co-opted by the Academy, and that poets have sold their souls to university administrations for junior professorships with limited potential for tenure teaching creative writing, deemed vocational training by the tenured faculty of the English department.

  Gioia also pointed out that literary criticism had devolved into a back scratching contest….

  Literary criticism today is like painting whiskers on the Mona Lisa.

  The genius of Gioia's piece was to articulate so beautifully the thoughts that all of us - well, most of us - were thinking but couldn't find the words to express. And to do it with elevated language -- unlike mine -- worthy of a master prose writer….

This time Gioia questioned whether the San Francisco Bay Area is any longer a literary region. "No" he said, "it's not." Then he proceeded for another 8997 words to explain why it's not….

  Junker missed Gioia's point entirely. It isn't that the artists aren't there; it's that they don't interact with each other on a regular and ongoing basis, which is how a literary region operates.

  Other responses were more temperate and principled….But I shouldn't complain. After all, I was just as dumbfounded when Richard Silberg read out the roster of the Berkeley regiment of the Avant Guard in his in his excessively long reply to Gioia's thesis. Please don't get me started on avant gardism.

  The point is, you can't talk about San Francisco as a literary region today without knowing what is was like yesterday.

  Richard Silberg, associate editor of Poetry Flash, issued a papal bull spelling out in excruciating detail his objections to Gioia's dialectic….I know Richard. I took his poetry workshop at Cal Berkeley in the early eighties. I turned in a sheaf of poems I had assiduously written for the workshop at the first meeting. I got them back a few weeks later. There wasn't a mark on them except for a note scrawled at the top of the first page: "I've never written in forms, so I can't help you with these. Sorry!"

  I about fell off the chair….I soon gave up writing poetry again as I had in the sixties. I got tired of feeling like a well-fed Christian in an arena full of lions.

  I should have known better, for on the first evening, Richard announced The Paramount Principle of Modern Poetry: "Whatever works, works!" Right! And any poet can be a pro playing tennis without a net.’

  RH is a tad sycophantic- I mean words like genius & master belong nowhere within at least 7½ pages of DG’s name. Still, RH is absolutely right, & so is RS. But, far more salient is that RH commits the very sins of hero worship (& copying of better poets) that has led to the decline of American Poetry. He has cultic tendencies even as he claims to dislike cults. The same is true for JF. Too immured within his own ideas of poetry- which are really just regurges of others’ benighted ideas- he seems stuck in perpetually seeming able to break out of the hamster cage- but that somehow alluring wheel just, as Al Pacino once said, ‘sucks him back in’.
  Nonetheless, he is 1 of the better published poetry critics out there- however backhanded that compliment is, & note the most important word in this sentence is published! The same could be said for Roger Ebert, except I think his thumb is raised upward just a little bit more often, & more correctly. Would that Gene Siskel loved poetry, too!

Update

  Sadly, the subject of this essay was not mature enough to accept valid criticism w/o incessant whining, & making a fool of himself in the process. As each subsequent email from Jack Foley proceeded, note the growing level of frustration & anger building as I eviscerate his arguments & point out his hypocrisies. Dan (annotations in bold red!)

  Here's the transparent attempt to blow off the criticism- but you know what's coming- note also the 'you did not see my best stuff' trope. I comment on that later on.

There's a poem of mine in the text of "O Powerful Western Star" (pp. 25-27) and another one recited on the CD ["Chorus: SON(G)"]. Neither of them is anything like the material on the McClure site. You seem not to have noticed either of them--?

Came upon this.
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B105-DES60.htm
This guy, Dan Schneider, sends stuff to me (among others). He did a piece on "O Powerful Western Star" and "Foley's Books."
It's interesting because he really doesn't know quite what to make of me--and his only reading of my poetry is from the hardly typical McClure web site. He goes up the steps and then down the steps and then up the steps and then down the steps. I don't like it I do like it I don't like it I do like it. Etc. Note his definition of poetry as a "WRITTEN" art. His boldface is a little desperate, I think. He'll probably bring people to look at The Alsop Review.
-----
Schneider's article is a kind of literary nervous breakdown (I like it, I don't like it, I like it, I don't like it) by someone with a strong need to be judgmental who is suddenly faced with a whole slew of ideas he never knew existed. In calmer mood, even he must be aware that his boldface "definition" of poetry is nonsensical: "Poetry is a written art whose quality of, & concision in, word choice is structurally non-prosaic (in both major senses)": poetry is NOT prose! He seems to believe that I am arguing for "the myth of an earlier time when folk were more intelligent & well-read"--which I'm not. He also seems to believe that I am Roger Ebert and he is Gene Siskal, who "understood art more deeply, even if his ability to explicate it was not as sharp as RE's."
----
I wrote him:
Thanks for the review, which I found pretty funny (and sometimes contradictory). I think it will probably attract people to the Alsop Review site.
Send me your address and I'll snail mail you a book of my poetry--poetry which doesn't return to the left-hand margin. The stuff Michael McClure posted--which is all you seem to have seen-- isn't particularly typical.
I'd be curious to see an actual review of Arguelles' book, "The Madonna Septet" or something of Jake Berry's (you don't mention him). I think you'd be rip-snorting on "Brambu Drezi."
Roger

  Of course, he did not come upon this- it was sent to him. Another attempt at pooh-poohing this to 7 of his cronies- some feted in his books.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 8:57 AM

Subject: Dan Schneider

Came upon this.
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B105-DES60.htm
This guy, Dan Schneider, sends stuff to me (among others). He did a piece on "O Powerful Western Star" and "Foley's Books."
It's interesting because he really doesn't know quite what to make of me--and his only reading of my poetry is from the hardly typical McClure web site. He goes up the steps and then down the steps and then up the steps and then down the steps. I don't like it I do like it I don't like it I do like it. Etc. Note his definition of poetry as a "WRITTEN" art. His boldface is a little desperate, I think. He'll probably bring people to look at The Alsop Review.

***If you read to the end of the piece I do give a summation of the books & you as poet critic

-----
Schneider's article is a kind of literary nervous breakdown (I like it, I don't like it, I like it, I don't like it) by someone with a strong need to be judgmental who is suddenly faced with a whole slew of ideas he never knew existed. In calmer mood, even he must be aware that his boldface "definition" of poetry is nonsensical: "Poetry is a written art whose quality of, & concision in, word choice is structurally non-prosaic (in both major senses)": poetry is NOT prose! He seems to believe that I am arguing for "the myth of an earlier time when folk were more intelligent & well-read"--which I'm not. He also seems to believe that I am Roger Ebert and he is Gene Siskal, who "understood art more deeply, even if his ability to explicate it was not as sharp as RE's."

 

***How is it a breakdown? As for the like-no like mode, that's what I detailed in your criticism, as well as slews of other critics- the piece even specifies this as what is wrong w most 'criticism'. As for ideas- I've heard them all before & they're pap used to justify bad writing from a Eugene Field to a Sapphire. Dismissing things is not fear over confrontation- itself a tired trope that bad artists have constantly used. In the essay posted along w yr piece I showed the diff between good & bad poems writen by old WCW himself. Intent is meaningless, as I sd in the pce. The definition of poetry I give is about as accurate & dead-on as you'll read. Spoken word is no more poetry than music video is music- although related. Actually the closest art to poetry is filmmaking- it too is capable of Keats's NC. As for the myth of an earlier time- you do contradict yourself in diff pieces- what you actually believe I cannot know- just as you cannot know an artist's intent. But I can read what you convey. I did not claim to be Siskel- he was the other 1/2 of what makes a good critic- Ebert his counterpoint. My last line merely sought to convey that all we have are the Eberts of crit- a few Siskels wd be a nice change.   DAN

my wife wd have a shitfit if I gave that out

well, try looking for them in one of those used book stores you frequent--though they don't show up that often: evidently, people hold onto them

  This is Jack's petulant inner 6 year old talking.

There's barely any heart beating to his writing, he appreciates and assaults you and your writing.  You may very well however get some readers drawn to Alsop.  Such assertions do prompt one to go find out for oneself, I think.
Thinking of you Critickin, more than meets the eye...

I apologize for last message. It was meant to be sent as a private first impression/ reaction.

  1 of Jack's cronies soils herself, then is embarrassed. It's about feeling, feeling, feeling.

I've attached this in MS Word for Windows. If you can't open it, I'll send it another way.

            I could go on in this vein, but it is probably better simply to send my readers to Schneider’s site--and let them decide what to think of this terror of the Internet.      

  This is Jack's 1st attempt at a rebuttal, as I tattoo him with emails he starts rewrites that get sillier each time. I'll crit the final piece later, but this is him trying to be a man & fight back!     

  A rebuttal to Jack's female adorer.

In a message dated 6/14/03 1:01:49 PM Pacific Daylight Time, writes:

Just get the URL right

  Rewrite #1!

  Recall how Jack claimed I misquoted & took things out of context? I did not, & Jack had no examples to use. But, note how he misdefines my poetry definition, I point it out, & Jack refuses to acknowledge he did so.

You write, "Harold Bloom- a scholar? Is that what 1 is to aspire to? In any 3 essays of mine- on poetry or not- you'll see more original thought, & better writing, than in all the work Bloom has published in his career."

You are misreading what I said. I didn't say that anyone should "aspire to" be Harold Bloom. I said you WERE Harold Bloom--albeit a blue-collar one. You manifest the same haranging, judgmental mode--the same desire to be the judge, the arbiter of opinion--that Bloom manifests. Were he aware of your work (which I expect he is not) he might well say--just like you--"In any 3 essays of mine- on poetry or not- you'll see more original thought, & better writing, than in all the work he has published in his career" (though he probably wouldn't use the ampersand). You're STUCK in that need to judge, and, if my casual reading of your work is any indication, you don't know how to get out of it. "Negative Capability," indeed.

  Actually the Bloomster has read the essay on himself, & declined my offer to rebuttal.

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 6:08 PM

Subject: Re: Fw:

In a message dated 6/14/03 3:21:04 PM Pacific Daylight Time, writes:

Jack, it's interesting how you so often undermine your own ideas- 3 brief examples: 1) You say I've no original ideas yet you quote 1 of many within: Greater than transcendence is its recognition. What other critic has posited that, much less shown it in use in assorted essays? As for quoting from others- that's often the purpose of the essays- to show how critics fail as much or more than poets. To bitch about that is like calling the dogcatcher a doghater cuz he throws his net over the poor pooches. 2) Harold Bloom- a scholar? Is that what 1 is to aspire to? In any 3 essays of mine- on poetry or not- you'll see more original thought, &better writing, than in all the work Bloom has published in his career. You realy don't wanna be defending someone as lacking in poetic knowledge as HB, do you? He's the classic water boy who wishes he could be varsity poet. Has he ever understood a poem outside of his 10 or 12 favorites? Of course not, since he's never really read a poet outside of those golden dozen. 3) You criticicize my definition of poetry, yet then misdefine it in the next breath. I say in both senses of the word- being non-prosaic (in all the mnemonic &structural aspects that entails).
This is 1 of the major reasons 1 cd argue bad criticism is more at fault for the bad poetry of the last 30 or so years than the bad poetry itself- a refusal to do the task of pruning, &do it honestly. Of course, that wd require the acknowledgement that a poet's task is singular- write poems well; not save the world, touch divinity, or any of the other loony posits put forth by people as diverse (& wrong) as TS Eliot &June Jordan. It wd also require putting forth opinins without regard to whether this will get me in dutch w a pal, crony, publisher, etc. Until that's done more of the gladhanding, fellatio, &deceit will keep out worthy writers, while eminently forgettable drecks in all field get published. Unless, the ganga's too sweet you know this too. The 1st target of your machete might be old Gioia &the NEA. I await THAT essay!    DAN

did I not get the URL right?

  My retort to Jack's pallid attempt at being as witty as me.