D35-DES26
Weapon Of Verse Destruction #1
The American Poetry Review- A Review
Copyright Ó by Dan Schneider, 12/4/04

The Spawn   The Issue   The Root   The Cure

The Spawn

  In the last few decades that have seen the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) elbow its way into virtually every facet of American, if not global, existence the field of poetry has hardly been immune. Long before the Internet made every doggerelist who could afford a connection and a website delude themselves into thinking they could edit a zine, American Poetry took a tailspin after a several decades long unprecedented efflorescence (~1910-1970). While precise dates of such nebulous matters are up for debate there is no doubt that the year 1972 was pivotal in this downturn.
  That was the year the American Poetry Review (APR) was founded by poetaster Stephen Berg, in Philadelphia. On its own website it tells its own tale:

  It (APR) had no capital but significant support in the national poetry community. In its first four years it developed efficient, inexpensive production methods and a distribution network combining newsstands, bookstores, and subscriptions that made it the most widely circulated poetry magazine ever, with subscribers in 55 countries. In 1977 the magazine began small salaries for the editors and staff and small payments to authors.

  After some self-congratulatory blurbery it continues:

  In the 1970’s the magazine established a reputation for publishing a broad range of material -- interviews, literary essays and essays on social issues, translations, regular columns, fiction, reviews, and poetry (more of its pages are devoted to poetry than to any other kind of writing) -- by the most distinguished authors, by writers working in new forms of contemporary literature, by younger poets now at the center of American poetry, and by writers from other cultures. 

  What it does not mention is that APR also began the idea of poet as celebrity- that is not famous poet, but poet as celebrity, someone famous for celebrity with no tie for that celebrity to accomplishment. The major innovation they came up with, or at least the first and most pernicious, was the inclusion of photographs on the front cover of the newspaper-like magazine, as well as accompanying most of the poetic selections. In essence, APR heralded the People magazining of poetry, a few years before People magazine, itself, made its debut. Its second ‘innovation’ was the total engagement with the left-margined bland prose broken into lines that is fobbed off as poetry nowadays by thousands of other, less financially successful magazines.

  Meanwhile, APR soon ensconsed itself in the grant-giving gravy train:

  From 1978 to 1989 the magazine’s finances stabilized with gradual increases in every area of its budget and increases in circulation. During this period, there was steady support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dietrich Foundation, all of whom continue to support APR. In addition, over 180 individuals make annual donations to the magazine ranging from $2 to $3,000.

  Later, they proudly detail how they became one of the biggest, most wasteful expenditures in many arts organizations’ budgets:

  In 1990 the three editor-publishers, Stephen Berg, David Bonanno, and Arthur Vogelsang, felt that the magazine’s potential had been only partially tapped. Expansion of the board of directors was the first step toward realizing the goals of creating an endowment to perpetuate the magazine’s existence, increasing circulation, bringing salaries up to publishing industry standards, and awarding prizes and authors’ payments befitting the international reputation of our writers.

  From 1993 to 1996, marketing grants from the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation made extensive subscription-raising activities possible, and allowed plans for growth that were formerly dependent on donated income from the fledgling board of directors. A three-year grant from the NEA’s Advancement Program provided a bridge of support until new continuing levels of earned and donated income were achieved.

Many of APR’s goals were reached. Authors’ payments and prizes more than doubled from 1990 to 1996. Subscription income increased 50%. The board of directors grew from the three editors to sixteen total members. 

  Of course, little is said about how cliquish the pool of poets and critics is, nor how utterly similar the poetry is- so much so that I will endeavor to show in this essay that almost all of the poetry published in APR is interchangable, and indistinguishable from each other.
  To those who might argue that the same is true with all poetry, i.e.- this is how all poetry is, I will counterpoint my contrasting of APR’s generic tripe with some excellent poems by people who used to attend the Uptown Poetry Group for critique, in the Twin Cities. My guess is that most readers will be utterly unable to pick the lines and selections from the APR apart, while those of UPGers will be comparatively easy to do so.

The Issue

  The issue that I’ve selected to take work from is the current November/December 2004 issue of APR. I should say, in fairness, before I rip the work within, that APR sells for only $3.95 in America ($4.95 in Canada), making it a relative bargain vis-à-vis other ‘quality’ poetry journals out there. This is because it is printed in a tabloid newspaper style, loaded with photos of its writers in stereotypical ‘scholarly’ poses- the sort that adorn book jackets. The cover boy for this issue is the well known, and formerly great, poet John Ashbery. His mien is in an odd sort of scowl- perhaps he knows that an appearance in APR, especially a cover shot, means that his poetic obituary has been written. I’ve tackled the problem with JA before, and perhaps saying ‘formerly great’ is too harsh. After all, his great book of poetry, Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror, from the mid-1970s, is still filled with a dozen or so great poems, and he had a handful before and after. But, there’s something sad about a writer who merely repeats his own work, in progressively paler copies of its former glory.
  JA really started the intellectually discursive sort of poetry that most directly picked up from where Wallace Stevens left off. Like W.H. Auden, his career trajectory can be broken into 3 distinct sections. Early JA saw him struggle with the limits of form and meld into his discursiveness, Middle JA saw him reach the pinnacle of SPIACM, and Late JA descend into writing occasionally interesting, but ultimately flaccid poems that lack the verve and originality of the Middle period. His ‘poetry’ always leaned toward the prosaic, but at his zenith there was no question that it was still poetry. Not so with the later verse. It’s almost pure prose broken into lines. This is the stuff that APR has always fed off of- in fact, APR is the leading proponent of left margined free verse doggerel, and has been since its inception.
  They always published poets who were imitators of JA, and in recent years JA has unwittingly descended to fit into that mold himself. Of the 8 poems of his they feature 3 are written in full paragraphs. They are what can most judiciously, and generously, be called American Proems. The national signifier is important because any reader of proems in the last century or two knows that there is a fundamental lack of concision and focus in such ‘paragraphs’ that is not so when looking at the proems of French Symbolists, or even Georg Trakl.
  This snippet from the 16 paragraph proem Where Shall I Wander (page 4) is typical:

for though we wander like lilies, there are none that can placate us, or not at this time. Originally we were meant as a backdrop for ‘civilization’, the buses and taxis splurging along ring roads, anxious to please customers though the latter proved to be in short supply. Like so many figure-ground dilemmas, this was resolved with moderately pleasing results for all concerned....

  One might holler that I’ve taken it out of context, or chosen a particularly banal snippet, but this is very typical of the rest of the proem, and the 2 others APR printed, as well as JA’s prosetry output of the last few decades. It’s interesting to note that he, like may other proemists that followed in his wake, seeks to ‘poesize’ the piece merely by the mention of flowers- for imagery and ambience- as well as a forced metaphor (‘we’ as ‘backdrop’) and a simile so odd (wander like lilies) that it seems that JA was merely forcing it into the piece, in a way that would flow naturally from his earlier work.
  Here is one of the 5 actual ‘poems’ published in this issue of APR:

New Concerns

Sulfurous, Mrs. Hanratty’s apron floats
above the sunset, auguring extreme cold.
The guest’s advantage doesn’t undermine
their green goalie days.

Wind-driven pea-shoots strew the skies.
All is tremor, modesty, a waiting to be told.
Several speakers impugn at once
the veracity of a late brook in August,
and all it would have meant on the same day
in another year. By now, runners will have reached
the northern border, plunged fingertips
in the flame. And, yes

this is one of those times.

  Let’s just go chronologically. I don’t know if this is based upon a myth, a known work of fiction, or just pulled from JA’s recesses. Its provenance should not matter, because the poem should stand on its own. Line 1 gives us the sort of metaphor that passes for surrealism these days- the ‘poet’ plucks two disparate things from the ether and tosses them together. Is there any real similarity between aprons, or Mrs. Hanratty’s particular apron, and sulfur, or the sky? I guess one can see this as meaning a cloud formation, but the end of line 2 is a disconnect. How do we go from aprons and sky to a guest and green goalie days? Were the poem majestically filled with metaphors and images this would not be a problem, as the poem might have a dream logic. This does not. The diction is prosaic in both senses of the word, and just dull, not dreamy.
  The last 2 lines of stanza 1 are even further afield. A tortured rationale might be made that in 4 lines and 2 sentences JA has defined the poem’s title. And the poem, thus far, at least musically, has a nice jingle sort of feel, with its alliterative and assonant qualities.
  Perhaps the green of the goalie days is a transition into the pea-shoots of stanza 2? But, this is a classic example of a poet just tossing things together in a puzzle and expecting the reader to be engaged, fascinated, and ‘play’ with the words and ideas. I can write of kangaroos and sodomy in a poem, but if there’s no real ‘connecting’ element’ then the ‘disconnect’ better be negatively capable. Failing that you have naked laziness on the poet’s part. Of course, JA is never called on it because of his name value and because sycophants, like those at APR, will publish anything he writes, thus perpetuating poetic laziness in JA worshippers.
  The rest of stanza 2 is sort of poetic (but could lose the flame), but has absolutely no logical connection to what’s set it up, and the logical disconnects are not that intriguing that readers will want to engage the puzzle. This is where apologist critics come in- they will render utterly tortured explanations for the most ridiculous poems, then pooh-pooh the few dissenters as Philistines, forgetting it was the Philistines, not the dissenters, who purveyed the bad culture. A good/great poem will have connections that are fuzzy, yet the poem is not dependent on a single bit of knowledge. If a poem can fail for not knowing the name of a Mesopotamian monarch, or an obscure philosopher, then it’s probably not that good. Good poetry does not balance on a single leg. As for the last line- very weak. Meant as some definitive statement or summation it is almost parodic in its self-importance, yet I doubt JA intended that.
  As contrast, read this opening snippet from a poem of JA’s from SPIACM- a poem called De Imagine Mundi: 

The many as noticed by the one:
The noticed one, confusing itself with the many
Yet perceives itself as an individual
Traveling between two fixed points.
Such glance as dares dart out
To pin you in your afternoon lair….

  Note how poetic and direct the narrative is. Here, JA is pulling the reader along, as if looking at a blueprint, or explaining an algorithm. I’ll bet that ‘To pin you in your afternoon lair’ makes you want to read on. Compare that to ‘their green goalie days’, or any other line or phrase from the later poem.
  JA has clearly lost his way, not only in poetry in general, but from his own earlier good impulses. Through my poetry career I’ve gone through waves. I wrote doggerel for my first 6 or so years, then almost nothing for 2-3 years, then nearly a decade of great poetry, but I’ve slowed down in the last year or 2, and started writing more prose. I’ll never abandon poetry- right now merely letting the muse strike when it will rather than churning like a machine, but it may be a few years before the overwhelming rush to poetry, and poesizing all in life, returns. My mind was moving too fast, poetry became almost autonomic. I can still, with an idea, write a great poem, but the ideas are less common, and I don’t want to force poetry that’s not up to my highest standards. My mind simply is more interested in working with prose for the time being. I believe by not expending my energy in a place where I would need to force things, currently, and by allowing my muse to do its best in prose, that I will be that much more energized and engaged with poetry when the impulse returns.
  Unfortunately, few poets do this. They write and write even if nothing to say, often fracturing their verse into unintelligible word games, not poetry- and games so dull and/or abstruse that no one is moved to engage, thereby furthering the bad poet’s delusion that their work is somehow genius, merely because it’s unintelligible, or lacks mass appeal (even in poetry’s relatively shallow appeal pool). JA has spent the last three decades doing this, even though his poetic fire, so to speak, has clearly dimmed- if not been totally doused. But, his name alone can get him a cover of APR, so he persists. Instead of having 50 or 100 truly excellent poems to rest his laurels on he’d rather have 50 or so good ones utterly diluted by another 950 or more really bad poems. I must say, as an artist, I’ve never viscerally understood this, although I intellectually understand JA, and artists in his position, may simply be unaware they’ve lost their skills- usually because they do not see such gifts as innately ‘them’, rather the largess of some benevolent muse, or the like. This accounts for the reams of bad poetry out there- especially by those who have/had actual talent. The really bad, of course, have no excuse. Now, that I’ve compared JA to an earlier poetic incarnation of himself I want to give an example of a discursive poem, much in the JA vein, by a poet I know, who came to my old Uptown Poetry Group for years- Don Moss, an admirer of much of JA’s work:

Soda Fountain 

That Mall bridal shop has lost its lease:
Signage reads: If It's Here It's Remaindered!  
I wonder if real shoulders will ever fill
The gown sun-baked pale yellow.
Perhaps it's of acetate, which
I've heard reacts to gamma rays.
Nearby, the Woolworth's soda jerk
Once spun drinks to twice their volume,
And the extra (plus(?) in French) was set
Beside the straw-topped glass, bright canister
Frosting white for all three flavors.  
That was when downtown really bustled,
Ladies shopping and all those big black cars.
The windows recorded that like a fixed-lens Kodak,
The countless consultations, the refittings,
The mother's mother's failing to give an inch
(For the bridesmaids contrasting color).
Transactions were entered in Indigo ink. It goes
Without saying that renters and their private
Ceremonies seldom saw the Basilica.
One was to store what was never again worn,
Nor the cake's small top layer
Maneuvering the messy melting ice,
I give way to a flower delivery man,
His chin steadying a large, shrink-wrapped box,
Which so confined his point of view he drops,
And with no time to shout, through an uncovered manhole.
The box, somewhat square, hits the hole and covers it up.  
Frantically looking for help, I notice a named street,
I'd always thought an alley, right before me
Between numbered avenues and streets.

  Note, as in JA’s earlier piece, the discursiveness is held taut by the narrative. DM is not merely tossing together gamma rays and soda jerks to sound learned. A side-by-side comparison of the three poems’ openings will show just how much more JA’s earlier poem shares in common with DM’s vs. the utter flaccidity of his later poem:

  I’ve said it before, ‘Greatness is its own company.’, meaning that the great/excellent work of all poets has more in common with lesser works by those same poets have with their greatness. A common marker of excellence and greatness is the utter uniquity of the poet’s voice- i.e.- all those poetic tools in their particular kit, and how they deploy them. Only the later JA poem, New Concerns, is generic. It reads as an ‘attempt to be Ashberian’, rather than JA ‘being Ashberian’.
  That said, let me turn to the next poet, Michael McClure, who appears in a photo smiling, and a trend in APR that is disturbing, to say the least. That is the encomial nature of much of what appears in APR. They feature a poet, then usually have an article that wildly overstates that poet’s contributions, then also publish some ‘worship’ poems. MM, apparently, was tasked with this for this edition on JA. Most know MM as the recalcitrant Beatnik who was never quite as Beatnik as the rest. His poems are almost nearly totally declamations with wild imagery, and all centered in the middle of a page. His Selected Poems features the dozen or so best from his fifty year career, but that’s about all MM wrote, of quality. Like JA, he never knew when to quit. It’s like poring through the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock and laughing at the tortured extrapolations, then weeping that someone with real skill wasted a career on such. Nonetheless, the first of MM’s 7 poems is titled Suite For John Ashbery.
  But, I wanna quote from another of the poems, From The Stone, to show how tired and hackneyed not only MM’s verse is, but much of the ‘experimental poetry’ of the last few decades is- poets like Michael Palmer, or Languagists like Ron Silliman (what an apt name!). Here ‘tis:

I have been here for centuries brushing the lanugo
of the instant. Holding this half-shiny penny
of a sexual kiss rising out of the pool. Goldfish
move this way and that in the green-black water.

THIS

IS

MY
SWORD

I have pulled it from the stone!

  Water, stone, removing the sword. Gee, teehee, think he’s talking about (whisper) s-e-x? Oh, wait, he even tells us this is ‘sexual’, and a kiss is too! MM’s canon is filled with this sort of clichéd and banal poetry ‘made new’, it is claimed, by the fact MM uses capital letters, and centers everything. The truth is that APR rarely publishes ‘experimental’ poets like MM, because they don’t like their aesthetic, not that they recognize the writing as doggerel. However, in a bow to capitalism, they know that MM’s name value will probably result in a few hundred more copies of this issue being sold to his relentlessly hipster fans who need to have everything MM writes.
  Now, I want to compare this ‘experimental’ poetry (so rife with the banalities of most contemporary verse) with some truly experimental poetry written by a UPGer, whose work, at first blush, will not even register as experimental with the hipster set.
  His name is Bruce Ario, and I’ve written of his invented titular poetic form before. The ario is a free verse form in 4 stanzas of 3, 3, 3, and 1 line, with the last line/stanza functioning as a summation or taking off point for the main thrust of the rest of the poem. In a sense, it is the ario equivalent of the Shakespearean sonnet’s end couplet. I’ve chosen a poem of BA’s not only for its quality, but for its subject matter, and relevancy to the hipster aesthetic of the MMs, and the Abstract Expressionist mindset. Read:   

Speculation on Dots

Highly blended dabs as a surface
Rebounds the mirror of minds
Come to on waves from somewhere else.

Eager to differentiate the glows
Opposing preconceived opinions
Wax now in sleep.

To the contrary, amusement plays keys
On a piano of dreams in the sky
Bluer than your cold lips

Or a lexicon from your general direction.

  Note how BA’s poem has a title that grounds the reader right away. The first line picks up on that and the abstractions of lines 2 and 3 are therefore not as difficult for a lay reader to follow. Stanza 2 is the meditation upon the titular subject, and describes the speaker’s inner state. The counterpoint in stanza 3, and its metaphor is striking, but seems to be well in line with the negative capability of the unconscious, as is the last line/stanza.
  Yet, few ‘experimental’ poets would call this poem ‘experimental’. BA is not playing around with typography nor punctuation, and the poem ‘looks’ like a straight-forward ‘poem’. Yet, the poetry is in the narrative, the metaphors, and even the highly musicked alliteration and assonance. Is there a single metaphor from MM’s almost identically long piece? Is there a single cliché in BA’s ario?
  Onward! The next poet that APR features is Martha Ronk, who apparently has a book out from the University of California. Her photo shows middle-aged Martha with the classic pose of the head resting on an open palm, except the baggy-eyed poet seems worried, or distressed, as if Cossacks had raided her village. APR publishes 7 seeming excerpts from Vertigo, presumably a long poem. Each snippet is about 15 lines long, classic APR left margined verse, each snippet with its presumed title in quotation marks, like this piece:

‘I sat at the window and watched it cover everything by nightfall’

The fugue is too large in the ashen hands
of the tenor we can’t talk about.
I am tired of getting over things.
In the complete darkness it takes over the darkness:
a voice as a color you could see through.

  These are the last few lines from that snippet. What comes after it I don’t know, but what preceded it were some gems like ‘We no longer choose pain, not in the time that’s left us, not like before.’ As you can tell, that abomination of PC thought ties in well with what is quoted above. Aside from the last line’s metaphor, and the enjambment of the piece, is this piece even remotely poetic? An apologist would state, yes- it uses alliteration and assonance in fugue/too and ashen/hands, tenor/talk/tired/getting and complete/darkness/color/could. But, this reminds me of when, at a poetry event, poetaster David Mura once explained to a layman that similar sounds the person heard, separated by over 10 lines, showed he knew how to use alliteration and assonance, although given the limited number of sounds in the English language, it’s virtually impossible to write a sentence without some alliteration or assonance. Just count up the number in the previous prose sentence. What makes those two tools special and useful is when they are use outside of regular syntactic words (i.e- articles, participles, etc.), and in fresh ways. MR achieves the former with her music stemming from nouns, verbs, and modifiers, but those words are so banal and/or trite that the clichés outweighs the music, by a long shot- ‘can’t talk about’, ‘tired of getting over things’, ‘complete darkness’, and ‘takes over the darkness’ are just bad prose- unoriginal in themselves, and in context with each other. Yet, the poem uses a musical metaphor. Let me use a poem by a young woman who came to the UPG named Lizzy Cooperman. Her poem deals more specifically with music, but look at each stanza’s phrasing, the tautness of the enjambment, and the overall relation of each stanza to the others.

Sonata 

Staccato

              If there is a God,
              he keeps handing me
              this toothless piano
              that makes no sound
              unless I crawl in
              and move around.  

Legato

              If there is no God,
              then society presents
              this toothless piano
              that expels no chords
              unless I press
              against its boards.  

Pianissimo  

              If there is no society,
              then my family installed
              this toothless piano
              that begs for divorce
              unless my sonata
              keeps timing its voice.

Crescendo

              If there is no Rest toothless piano,
              I am left with God, society,
              and my family, making an orchestra
              to avoid my keyless gums of noise.

Repeat

  The last command is a perfect end to this poem-cum-musical piece. It uses the strictures of one art in another as it would be were they literally transferable qualities. But, let’s do a side-by-side, again of MR’s and a stanza of LC’s verse:

  Both pieces deal with music and the use of hands. Both deal with bleakness. I could tell you why, in great detail, why LC’s is ‘real poetry’ and MT’s is prose cut into lines, but anyone reading the two can sense that, without even reading at a deeper level. MR’s piece is just telling you, flat out, that things are blasé, while LC’s uses music to talk of music, and metaphor to dramatize the speaker’s dilemma. The metaphor, and similes, of MR’s verse are just added on, to give the illusion that it’s poetry. This is a classic formula for poetry of the last few decades: speak in a ‘plain voice’ (i.e.- write prose), then adorn it with some metaphors (even if inapt), and call it poetry.
  But, more than show MR’s lack vs. LC’s poem, let me compare it with a snippet from the prior discussed JA ‘poem’:

  I would argue that even JA’s pallid later verse is still a bit more ‘poetic’, but it’s not up to LC’s standard, and it certainly shares far more in diction with the MR poem. That’s a point that will recur.
  Another poet that appears in print (sans photo) is Arda Collins. Her byline states that she’s got an MFA from the dread University of Iowa, spawning ground of the workshop plague. The second of her two poems is titled Spring, and here is a sample of Master’s level creative writing from it:

I could get in the car right now
and drive all night,
as soon as I had a sandwich.
Turkey, tomato, mayo,
Swiss, lettuce. It was exciting.
I still had my shoes on. I drove to a truck stop.

  And, no, I am not selectively pruning. The whole poem is a litany of domestic crises as that described. This is manifestly prose. Nitpickers would argue that the tomato/mayo alliterative rhyme makes it poetry, but, as said, alliteration can occur in any sentence. There are only a few dozen sounds in the English language. What defines alliteration is not its regular occurrence in the casual use of prepositions and articles, but when used in modifiers, nouns, and verbs whose usage is not a necessary function of communication, and used in original ways.
  AC tries to make her poem humorous and ‘magical’ while prosaically rendered, but the lines quoted show that to write about banalities AC writes banally. Here’s a rather prosaically rendered poem (at least structurally) by a UPGer named Dave Nelson. It also contains humor:

Bugaboo Bugaloo of the Bagabos  

Ideas of the Hairy Ainus or
the Bagabos of Mindanao- oh
like the poor bastards we put down for fools,
amused by their absurdly sloping chins,
their noses crooked in comical contortion,
eyes that bug out or skew about their sockets,
so you just can't keep a straight face, but smirk,
suppress a snicker that escapes in splutters,
snort-downright chortle-pointing at the rubes-
rolling with uncontrollable hilarity
-only to look up after hours of laughter
to see the clowns are laughing too; in fact
that they surround us like Tibetan Yogis
in levitation to a chant of chuckling.

  Note, how DN’s poem is filled with alliteration and assonance from words that are more than functional pieces of grammar. He tells a tale- an odd one, and allows the reader to enjoy the silliness, without being over-the-top silly as AC is under-the-bottom dull about her dull poem’s stated adventure.

  Another side-by-side:

  Music, humor, metaphor- which example has it? The one that does is superior verse, yet the one that lacks such is published in the industry’s major magazine. Is a pattern emerging?
  Here’s another one- let’s compare two APR pieces to each other, and two UPGers’ poems:

  I have juxtaposed Martha Ronk’s poem selection with Arda Collins’. Aside from their subject matter, I would wager that few people could tell that the lines emanated from different sources. In fact, they both come from that collective hive mind called the ‘workshop’. Now, let’s compare the two UPGers’ poems that served as contrasts to these two poems:

  Note the different diction, the clipped music of Lizzy Cooperman’s stanza vs. the breathy alliterative lines of Dave Nelson. These two snippets are obviously from different poems and different poets. Recall my injunction that individuation is often a sign of excellence. There’s no mistaking Robert Frost’s poetry for Walt Whitman’s, nor Robert Lowell’s for Sylvia Plath’s. Could any reader tell Martha Ronk from Arda Collins? But, I bet, even from the brief pieces quoted, you have an idea of what differentiates Lizzy Cooperman’s poetry from Dave Nelson’s.
  Next up in APR is lesbian activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, and a series of four work/office poems. This bit is from Opening The Mail:

there’s something new every day, the letters come in,
hundreds, thousands, from all over the place, and she
gets to open every one. The message in a bottle, the note
slid into the cashier’s cage, the letter left on the bed
when she walked out the door, the handkerchief dropped
behind him during the game at recess....

  Did you think you were reading an Arda Collins poem? Let’s compare the prosaic dictions of the two pieces:

  Only the length in lines distinguishes these two ‘voices’. That’s it, save for MBP’s egregious cliché midway through her selection. I won’t point out the obvious.
  Rather than pointing out another UPGer’s poem to contrast the banality of this published verse I’ll compare some of it side-by-side. The 1^st comparison will between British refugee and toilet paper connoisseur Michael Dennis Browne and Welsh poet Dannie Abse. Here are stanzas from poems of each of them:

  Both are unrhymed quatrains, and both use similar imagery and metaphor. I dare you to tell me who wrote which? If that seems unfair, if either poetaster is unknown to you, I then ask if there’s anything notable which sets either verse apart from the other. Does either unknown poet write in a way that is distinct- even in a quatrain?
  No? How about these two sets of quatrains? Both are rhymed, although with different schemes; yet both deal with the ethereal.

  Note how the C stanza differs from D. All 4 lines start off with a heavy stressed sound emphasis early in the lines, as if subliminally suggesting the import of that word of phrase that the rest of the line fills out. The D stanza differs- it has a more mediated tone to the lines- more like the King James Bible. Stanza C is brisk and playful, while Stanza D is more a homiletic. This is not just an opinion, but an objective difference. Of course, the 2 stanzas that differ are from great poets. C is W.B. Yeats’ Towards Break Of Day and D is Robert Frost’s Sitting By A Bush In Broad Sunlight. Notice, I chose fairly obscure poems by each, poems without ‘instant recognition’ like The Second Coming or Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, yet you could tell two different poets wrote it; and the 2 were contemporaries. Now, think of some of the classics by each of these two Masters and you’ll probably recognize that these stanzas are fairly typical of the two men’s work.
  Ok, back to the poetasters- Stanzas A and B. Which is DA’s & which MDB’s? Both of these poets are contemporaries of each other, published for decades in major magazines, and well-known players of the Academic game (and we’re fortunately spared their photos). They’ve certainly been around long enough to make a poetic impact, and easily long enough to at least make their works distinct. But, they have not, because they have no style, much less poetic skill Stanza A is from DA’s The Yellow Bird (page 45) and Stanza B is from MDB’s Night Thought (page 43- even the title is limp). Oy!
  There is also a ‘Special APR Supplement’ containing 59 poems of Jean Follain translated from the French by W.S. Merwin. Aside from the People Magazining of poetry that APR does, it also has learned a thing from laundry detergents and online spamming. Every issue features a ‘Special APR Supplement’- yet if it’s in every issue, what makes it special? Certainly not the quality of the poems themselves. JF’s poetry is vaguely familiar from a handful of translations in some French anthologies, but nothing ever stood out. As for WSM? Anyone who’s read his poetry and followed his career knows that in the late 1950s and early 1960s he was one of the most promising poets to come along- seemingly destined, along with John Ashbery and Robert Bly for greatness, albeit for wholly different reasons. Yet, by the early-mid 1970s he basically turned his back on producing any really good poetry on his own. First, he simply started writing banal ‘verse’ whose great innovation was the total loss of punctuation. Then, he almost exclusively devoted himself to translation, usually of philosophic poets he shared an aesthetic with- although he seemed to always force their verse into his box of poetry. Witness these two translations of JF:

  First off, if these are meant to be little morality plays in the Greek tradition of C.P. Cavafy or early George Seferis they fail. They come up even shorter if meant to evoke that Stephen Cranean wryness in his famed ‘lines’. Yet, aside from the blandness of the word choices (which could be WSM’s fault) there is the subject matter and the narrative trope (which must be JF’s). Since it is so banal (as are the other 57 selections) the query always arises in me- why did this translator feel it necessary to foist this mediocrity (at best) into another language? Perhaps the only thing more egregious that translators do is endlessly translate classics from Dante, Homer, Virgil, or Tu Fu, as if last year’s edition of The Iliad was not sufficient.
  That brings me to two queries that are specific to WSM- 1) is the lack of punctuation in these two poems a faithful rendition of JF’s work (APR provided no en face originals to compare) or sign of WSM’s continued obsession? 2) Why is there no possessive apostrophe after others in line 8? The latter query is minor and could simply be a typo, but the former query is important, because a translator should try to be as faithful to the original intent while also making the most effective ‘poem’ in the new language. This is one of the reasons that Bly is such a bad translator- he Blyviates poems by robbing them of their music and making them pallid free verse- especially egregious is his ‘Rape of Rilke’. So, it’s important to know if the bad poems that APR publishes are faithful renditions of bad poems by JF, or Merwinized bastardizations. Unfortunately, one cannot tell from the poems, nor is there any written explanation/defense from WSM.
  Back on page 35 we get two excerpts from a long poem called Prodigal, from poetic Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. DW is one of those poets who also had potential, but got lazy. He’s tended to write long, bloviated pseudo-epopee for the last few decades. His take on The Odyssey being Omeros- which is fairly good for about 30 pages (almost the absolute upper limit for long poems of any kind), then utterly flakes away with ennui for its remaining several hundred pages. These two excerpts are similarly gusty, with nothing to relieve the dullness. While they give two excerpts I’ll be kind and give only one- from the end of part 1 of 2 from the first excerpt:

The small station was empty in the afternoon,
as it had been on the trip to Philadelphia.
I sipped the long delight of a past time
where ambition was too late. My craft was stuck.
My deep delight lay in being dated
like the archaic engine. Peace was immense.
But time passed differently than it did on water

  Oh, hell, here’s another excerpt:

within your life. How is it that the whales
perceive their mates, massive barges
from the depths of the salty haze,
spuming their radiant syllables into the open
world, their steep, up roaring bursts that twist

  Wait, you say. That second excerpt is pretty good. Well, it is. That’s because it’s from a different poem, from a different poet. I just grafted DW’s excerpt with a piece from a poem of my wife’s, Jessica Schneider’s poem The Animals Lay Time. But, it’s important to note that you could tell there was a change in diction. It gets back to my point that good poetry is individuated by poet, and even down to individual poems. But, if I gave you no hint as to where the two poems selections came from and told you that one of them came from a Nobel Laureate, the presumption being the better piece of writing would be the Nobelist’s, I’d wager more than 90% of people would pick Jessica’s selection as the Nobelist’s verse. For the record, here’s the whole poem:

The animals lay time

Small sea creature, such a range for size
are you, delightful, yet non-specific.
Know your home, coral reefs, the timepieces
of the sea, and further down, a cathedral
of history has met eyes of  great explorers,

and lower still, pharaohs once built structures as you-
throughout the oblivious arranging and rearranging sweep
of the tides, individually phased
by your own mobile, soft and current strength,
moving you just a single inch

within your life. How is it that the whales
perceive their mates, massive barges
from the depths of the salty haze,
spuming their radiant syllables into the open
world, their steep, up roaring bursts that twist,

their free, unrelenting bubbles, spin drifting
no hint into the creation you lead? From the tiny
vortexed spawn of your showers, lifting love
into the seas for intelligent futures to witness this art:

the dominant powers unseal ten thousand years.

  Now, let me do another side-by-side, comparing a selection from Jessica’s poem with another selection:

whisssst. sssstinfickertick. sssssshhhooom. 
mouths of the dark birds shatter.
roaring in the sky, three knocks above the hill.
death of a god, birth of another.
now the sea and air are their own gods, restless.

  Again, fairly similar subject matter and narrative, but the B selection, while very good, is quite different from Jessica’s A. It’s more sensual and imagistic, whereas Jessica’s is abstract and philosophic. The point is you can easily tell that the selections are from two different works and writers.
  The B selection is from UPGer Art Durkee’s The Books Of Binding- a poem built of ‘books’ in his own durku form. Here’s the whole poem:

The Books of Binding

The Book of Spells 

the drumbeat. all things enclosed in the circle.
their cycling rhythms, the dark voices of stone altars.
from this rough place, another is made, is touched.
seahorses stride across the plowed fields.
breezes stir the leaves. the weakening sun.

The Book of Air

whisssst. sssstinfickertick. sssssshhhooom.
mouths of the dark birds shatter.
roaring in the sky, three knocks above the hill.
death of a god, birth of another.
now the sea and air are their own gods, restless.

Atlas of the Dead

come see: how quietly they move through the stones.
parchment fingers rustling their leaf tambourines.
the dew is on the grass. their feet, in all their wanderings, do not touch.
they float above the earth, or dissolve near to it, into it.
their compass rose is of the greater earth: these leaves fall through them.

The Book of the Sea

the sea speaks fiercely, cursive waves and shouting spray.
surge. pull. the tides rock under the sky, chariot rhythm.
foaming at mouth and mane, the green mares race ashore.
prairie grasses break in waves over the river’s edge, churning.
leaves fall into the eye of the ocean. whales sing of hot, dark love. 

The Last Wave

God is a huge encircling round, like the ocean, permeating everything.
like the ocean.
the eye of the ocean is the heart of time. the Dreaming.
dreaming true of a rose, a shell, four moons, a crescent scythe.
sickle moon pricks these trees, the earth into humming. 

A Book of Elements 

Earth says: I turn. I adhere to myself, lichened unto time.
Air says: I fill. There is no burning without me, and no living.
Fire says: I consume. Living is dancing, the immolation of love.
Water says: I flow. I slowly wear it down, seeking the lowest ground.
Spirit says: I spin. Every grain a web, a lantern, a long  weaving.

  Now, let’s compare two more poetic selections:

  Can you already tell that I’ve returned to APR for my selections? The only difference between these two selections is that A has 22 words, B has 18, A has 3 lines, B has 4, and they rely on slightly different types of mawkishness. But, they are from two different poems by two different poets, although both share the same first name.
  A is from The Physics Of Memory (page 42) by Elizabeth Williams, and B is from the unwieldily and banally titled Ars Poetica #10: Crossing Over, by Elizabeth Alexander, which says more than its meager poem. Both are truly horrible poems, and their selections prove it- utterly workshopped banalities larded with a string of clichés; either of which could be the worst poem in the issue, although EW’s A selection is probably the worse of the two selections. One might argue that I’m selectively pruning but, go ahead, read the full monstrosities.
  The truth is that these poems, and indeed any of the poems in this issue, would have been shredded and vetted at any average meeting of my old Uptown Poetry Group. Yet, here’s the kicker. EA’s blurbery says she has three published books of poems, a collection of essays from the execrable Minnesota press Graywolf, and actually teaches at Yale University. No wonder her photo shows her in a broad smile, having snookered yet more poetic fools into publishing her. As for why I don’t quote all the poems in full- several reasons. First, to avoid bullshit claims over copyright infringement, secondly because many of the poems and poem selections are so long, and thirdly that typing out bad poetry takes something of a psychic toll on me- especially when the poetry isn’t even bad enough to be funny in that Plan 9 From Outer Space sort of way.
  Now, let’s get back to a final side-by-side comparison and see if you can tell who the UPGer is and who the APR poetaster is:

  Ok- A or B? Again, similar sized selections (A is 45 words, B is 35 words), and both deal with love. It should be obvious that A is from APR- look at all the clichés strung together in just 6 lines, not to mention a pointless breaking of the line after a in the 2^nd line. The poetaster’s name is Leonard Gontarek, whose blurbery and photo suggest he’s into Zen, graffiti, sunglasses, and The Hair Club For Men. The selection is from Arrangement, on page 49.
  B is from UPGer Jason Sanford. Its staccato presentation of images and emotions is far more suggestive of how real memories of loved ones and treasured moments works. Even in only 35 words and 9 lines he leaves a far more indelible impression in a reader’s mind than LG does in his whole poem. Here’s the whole poem the B selection comes from:

The Oxford Book of English Verse

Henry, from Nancy.
            to Christmas. 1926.
            browned ink. limned paper.

            bought. Smart & Mookerdum.
            booksellers. Rangoon. 

by Nancy, for Henry.

            for British in Burma.
            no knowing. to come.
            between. all war.

            Henry finds. only dates:
            Wordsworth: 1770 - 1850
            Tennyson: 1809 - 1892  

Henry reads. them all. 

to Nancy, off Henry. 

            the book. returns.
            death railroad. down Kwai.
            Major Dunn. delivers. 

            “a good chap. held fast.
            to ends. Henry did.” 

           Henry: 1901 - 1943  

so Nancy, no Henry.

            well versed. rests down.
            dog-eared.
            those times.
            that won’t book.
            their becoming. 

still a while, far away.
for Nancy. anyway.

           Nancy: 1904 - 2001

  The rest of this issue of APR is as poor as the rest. There is an obscenely long excerpt from doggerelist Donald Hall’s memoir detailing, yet again, the death of his poetaster wife, Jane Kenyon. There is absolutely no insight into his wife, death, nor the cosmos- the only marginally interesting bit in the piece is his comment on his dog. But, it’s mostly yet another litany of his suffering. I’ve commented on this necrophilic tendency of DH’s before, but I just wish publications would stop allowing him to exploit her death. It’s unseemly- has anybody ever exploited a dead loved one to the degree that DH has? DH’s use of JK’s corpse makes the vile Ted Hughes seem almost decent by comparison. He is doing to his wife in death what TH did to his in life. Of course, I’m biased about this aspect of him after having witnessed DH pull his phony, weep-on-cue, vampiric act at a church reading in Minneapolis some years ago. To make matters worse, poetaster Liam Rector then follows up with an essay of banalities about JK, excerpted from a whole anthology devoted to JK.
  By the end of the issue, page 60, we get the infamous Back Page of APR, which along with the ‘special supplement’ is the most prized spot in the mag. A few years back poetaster Kent Johnson pulled his infamous Araki Yasusada hoax [LINK] with a feature in the pullout section, which APR has yet to live down. But, as so few ever learn the lessons life tosses them, so too APR insists on publishing bad poetry by PC-seeming poetasters- real or not. At the end of this issue APR published a poem called Even A Phantom Gets Thirsty, by some female poet named Kazuko Shiraishi, of which we are told she is ‘one of Japan’s leading poets’. The work is translated by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura. Here’s a small sample from it:

people who come to pray     in front of a guardian god and receive
the precious tears of the donkey     never stop coming
Minoru Yoshioka     appeared     from time to time
to eat a bowl of shaved ice with sweet beans
even a phantom gets thirsty

  The last line is a repeton that apparently has some meaning, but what is really said in this piece? We get some banal images, the dropping of ‘potent’ words like ‘guardian’ and ‘precious’, which suggest that this poem is someone of import, socially or spiritually, and caesurae plunked into the middle of lines for no apparent reason. And this assessment is reinforced by the poem having its own footnotes.
  Of course, none of this heft comes across in the words themselves, because the American Poetry Review, like its many lesser known and funded competitors, does not seek out poets and poetry that does big things, expands the art form. Instead, they rely on dull Academics, aging has-beens, and the occasional name ‘experimental poet’ who has not ever dared anything truly experimental, nor produced a single great poem. Risk is inherent in real success, but APR gutlessly promotes poetry that, literally, anyone can write. If you cannot tell the difference between a Nobel Laureate’s verse and that of some odd poetaster off a street corner then, hey, is it any wonder the Elizabeth Alexanders and Elizabeth Williamses of the world get published in its pages, with poetry as utterly generic as their names?
  It would be far easier to accept their publishing of bad poetry if they at least tried publishing all types of poetry- even if bad. At least then one might argue they were trying to promote the art form. But, they do not even do that. They are like John Ashbery, in that they are writing/publishing without a single valid reason, save to stave off death. They are going through rote motions that they have no real clue of the provenance of, but unlike JA they don’t even have a worthy past to fall back on. One sign that there may be some hope for APR (yes, I’m joking) is that on page 55 they run an ad stating they are finally seeking Letters to the Editor, that APR wants to hear from you, and will try to get the poets and writers, themselves, to respond in print. Of course, I’m sure that the letters will be the typical kiss ass sort that require no thought, or the rotely banal reply that ‘so and so was a poet of immense integrity’. Regardless, I suggest all readers of this essay, who loathe bad poetry either go to APR’s website and email them, or start a letter campaign complaining of the horrid verse they peddle, that perhaps they should read this essay and seek to publish good poets like the UPGers quoted, or the UPG poets themselves! Here’s the listed address:

Letters To The Editor
American Poetry Review
117 South 17^th Street
Suite 910
Philadelphia, PA 19103

  Now, don’t be nasty- simply state that you think they should change direction. Although online poetry is, on average, even worse than the printed world (due to the sheer volume of poetastry weighing down the whole) the truth is that there are websites like Cosmoetica, and poets like me and the other UPGers, whose verse is demonstrably better than that APR and its ilk push. I have shown this by comparing the poetry of an APR poet with his earlier, superior verse, comparing the APR poems against each other to show their lack of distinction, and compared APR poems with poems from UPGers that deal with similar themes, or in similar styles.

The Root

  It’s almost humorous to note that I often get emails from outraged poets wannabe and old hacks complaining when I point out the manifest flaws in the work of their favorite poet, idol, or -ism. They will accuse me of not being a good critic because I’ll rewrite bad poems in my This Old Poem essay series, or not go into an extended explanation why an egregious cliché is an egregious cliché. Then they may go into a point-by-point rebuttal attempting to say that the cliché was not a cliché, that’s only my opinion, only further revealing their ignorance and/or myopia, for clichés are clichés because they appear so often. The refusal to allow any objectivity into art discussions is evidence of the fascistic thought that dominate Academia, and even the PC elitist ‘underworld’ that vies for power with it.
  Of course, any quick scan of online poetry reviews for magazines, or websites, will show that I dispense of much of the hoidy-toidy nonsense that stolid critics do. I don’t need to dazzle with wordplay, for I seek to show plainly why contemporary published poetry (published being the key word) sucks. You’ll find no airy blurb-ready assessments, nor abstruse pseudo-delvings into the sciences or mysticism. I understand that most readers of poetry criticism know most of the basics, and I trust my readership, even knowing that statistically the best readers will be few. Unlike so many critics, and poets, I engage my readers eye-to-eye in the hopes that they will seek better poetry and writing in general.
  It’s the very condescending tone of editors, publishers, and critics that does far more harm than the bad poetry. By foisting demonstrably poor verse to the public in unending waves, then trying to rationalize away the manifest ills with tortured extrapolations/justifications they are telling readers you are dumb, you must believe us that there is something great in these poems we give to you. If you don’t understand the poem it’s your fault, not the poets’. While that may be true when I or Yeats or Baudelaire have rung that ‘greatness’ bell it’s certainly not true for the generic Elizabeths from the last issue of APR.
  Of all the general arts writing is the most difficult, therefore the highest, because it deals in abstractions. Words are not sights nor sounds, for which we humans have been equipped with evolutionarily since our ancestors acquired those senses over 600 million years ago. Language, at least that written, has been around for only 6000 years, or only 1/100,000^th as long. That’s quite a headstart the arts dependent on those senses have had. And of all the written arts poetry is the highest because unlike prose forms it does not need the spine of a narrative to sustain it- it can be purely emotional/lyrical. In that sense it is both the most abstract yet simple of the arts. Mnemonics plays a bigger role in poetry than any other art- we recall phrases, images, and rhymes in a way we can never recall a painting. Perhaps only an art form based on the sense of smell could be more tied to memory than poetry.
  Yet, is there a single quoted line or image from the selected APR poets that sticks? The two Elizabeths seem to be poster girls for HOW TO WRITE BADLY AND GENERICALLY. I’d wager that a few lines or images from the UPGers’ stick. Why? Because they do not repeat each other- they are specific, and they play with form and words. Any word is abstract. So? The Languagists proved that simply by tossing abstracts like words around you cannot come up with any words that will engage- save for those rare times random chance helped them achieve a ten thousand monkeys moment. My belief is that the PC tendency to make everyone feel special has led to the blandeur of poetry.
  If, as is stated, we’re all creative, and all can be poets, simply with pen and paper, then, by dint of logic, there is no special gift that a poet has- we’re all the same. A Shakespeare, Bishop, Cullen, or Tsvetaeva were merely chosen by the powers that be above equally worthy poets. But, this is patently false- the differences between the quoted UPG poets, or that between Yeats and Frost, is palpable, manifest. So, not all poets are alike, therefore there must be gradations. But, the political beliefs of 1960s era Academics, fused with PC sentiments ascendant in the 1980s, led to the communization of poetry, rather than the democratization. One cannot impose standards on poetry from the outside, especially if they run counter to hardwired human realities. A democracy allows all to participate, but not all to ‘win’. Communism, at least in its embryonic theory, seeks to make all winners, thereby effectively neutering the term. This is why a Wanda Coleman is accorded equal or greater status than a Walt Whitman, or a James Tate’s poetry is dissected as though it had the hidden layers of a Rilkean Duino Elegy.
  Now, I’m not suggesting that all poets should be Neo-Formalists, for their formalism is as bland in the mnemonics and originality area as their free verse counterparts, not to mention that the dualistic reductivism of the metric fallacy is absurd, however perniciously longstanding (imagine music written in just two notes). What I state is that all poetry be given that chance- let the work rule, not allegiances to –isms. I can recognize a great poem by Li Po, James Emanuel, Boris Pasternak, Judith Wright, Paul Blackburn, e.e. cummings, Hart Crane, or Allen Ginsberg, despite their being from all different mindsets poetically. But, I can also discern the excellent ‘black poetry’ of an Emanuel from the crap of a Nikki Giovanni, the excellent formalism of a Wright from the mummified stiltings of a Richard Wilbur, the experimental successes of a Blackburn from his own failures, or those of a Wilfred Watson, etc.
  To deny objectivity in things like mnemonics or clichés (mnemonics gone bad) for the purpose of demoticism may seem noble, but ultimately makes nobility just a word. To call prose poetry merely because it’s cut up into lines is silly. Let’s re-look at Leonard Gontarek’s Arrangement selection again:

The fascination. The fire. In the fire.
This is your heart. That is why it is a
Good thing the heart is not always open.
This is why the heart is sometimes closed.
But you smell like milk. Red hair. Freckles.

Connect the dots. Tongue....

  Ok, that’s it in its original ‘verse form. Now, as prose:

  The fascination. The fire. In the fire. This is your heart. That is why it is a good thing the heart is not always open. This is why the heart is sometimes closed. But you smell like milk. Red hair. Freckles. Connect the dots. Tongue....

  I argue this is a superior rendering of the words, if only because you lose the poor enjambment after the second line. But, as prose this is very bad. It’s bathetic. Teenagers write this sort of thing in their diaries, then either laugh at or burn them when they hit 30. I have a book of ‘poems’ culled from New York Yankees’ sportscaster Phil Rizzuto, describing such things as a rundown double play, that is broken into lines and more memorable than this. I’d sooner see The Scooter be published in APR than LG, because at least there’s whimsy in his descriptions. Yet, APR publishes this bad prose chopped up into lines. If you disagree with my assessment I can only say you are very stupid, or willfully maleficent in your approach to poetry. Go ahead- fill in the blank space with your curse at me       . It won’t change the verity of my statement.

  Yet, the effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the works of APR-level poetasters is read and praised then the next generation says, ‘Hey, I can fart about my latest bitch, call it a poem, and then claim some bias if others don’t ‘get it’.’ I’ve written often of the deliberately airy, meaningless, and/or obfuscated praise hurled at poetasters by their former teachers, students, and/or lovers, but that is just a symptom of the destructive demotic urge.

  Elitism is a good thing, when based upon achievement, or merit. When a poet was famed, years ago, he/she had achieved something literarily. Now, there are no famed poets, merely celebrity poets- like a Maya Angelou, or Robert Bly. Democracy is meaningless unless based upon meritocracy- not upon the desire to be thought of as good (Carolyn Forché’s ridiculously bad and PC anthology Against Forgetting and the anti-atomic war anthology Atomic Ghost come to mind) nor spiritual (any anthology edited by Bly or Jerome Rothenberg) nor cutting edge (the Languagists and Nuyoricans).

  I don’t care if Forché will get into heaven before me, nor Rothenberg have visions I’ll never deludely fall into, nor be as ‘cool’ as the Nuyoricans. I’m a better poet, and in this arena that’s all that matters. I’d gladly trade the thousand worst Holocaust poems for a single poetic gem from the pen of an Albert Speer, or the boner that a Dana Bryant would give me as she sassed her ‘poetry’ across MTV a decade ago if the woman had written a single great poem.

  Instead of pushing boundaries poets and magazines like APR are content to publish the indistinguishable verse of poetasters as long as some ‘name’ will tie the poetaster in with the work of another, greater poet. This is why you can see the stolid Dana Gioa’s verse declaimed as the closest thing to Wallace Stevens (save for wordplay, humor, originality, skill, and philosophic depth) or any young female poet who writes self-loathingly compared to Sylvia Plath (save for the vocabulary, intellect, operatic emotions, and ability to turn a poem on a word or enjambment).

  It is this basic dishonesty that readers (even those lay) can sense. I’ve gotten countless emails from people who’ve read my poetry essays and said that I pointed out things about why they thought a ‘good’ poem was bad that they could not discern, then thanked me for not allowing them to think they were nuts because a bad poetry critic said the tripe they unconsciously discerned was a work of genius. That is why essays like my TOP series, and this new series of Weapons of Verse Destruction are so needed. Lovers of great poetry (in its sundry forms and schools- for all great poetry keeps company with other great poetry, for it has far more in common with it than with lesser poetry- even if from the same poet) need to know that when they read APR, and its ilk, that they are not ‘missing’ something. It is the poetry that’s bad, not their acumen.

  Sadly, and ironically, it is the very urge to demoticize poetry for the masses that has led to its utter marginalization as an art form. That is because the concern was demoticizing the art for the practitioners of it, not the readers. Thus, if anyone can be a poet there’s nothing special to poetry, therefore- why read it? Poetry used to be a source of inspiration and uplift, filled with ideas and phrases that layfolk could not produce on their own. There’s nothing special. Poetry used to be like movie stars- you could move beyond the humdrum. Men would fantasize over sleeping with an Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly because their neighbor’s wives, daughters, or their female co-workers were average. But, nowadays, poetically, all the wives, daughters, and co-workers are starring in film, and it does little to the aesthetes like me who still fantasize of a nude romp with Halle Berry or Catherine Zeta-Jones. In a sense, poetry has gone the way of reality tv, yet I’d still rather boff Halle or Zeta than my next door neighbor’s wife.

  Poets solipsistically write only for their –ism, group, or affinity, thereby producing poems that are tautologies, if not outright versions, of poems that their ‘clan’ writes. Hence the dread Submissions pages that tell prospective poets that the best way to get published by them is to read our magazine and see what we ‘like’. Like being the key word, because it has replaced ‘good’. Yet, like has no objective critical basis- I like Godzilla films and the verse of Ogden Nash, but realize that Orson Welles and John Donne they are not.

The Cure

  It is only when poets, editors, publishers, and critics recognize that poetry is the highest of art forms, thereby meaning that only a select few merit publication and propagation, that the art can recover. By stringently weeding out and criticizing the bad, and publishing only the good, and hopefully great, that being ‘published’ can become a thing of merit, not celebrity. This is why there are so may ‘poets’ and not enough poetry readers. Most of the poets, years ago, would have been poetry loving readers, forced to see what heights their scribblings need attain before publication is granted. Yes, there have always been bad poets- I’ve read the anthologies larded with bad poets- from Elizabethan no-names to those 1970s ‘names’ that have faded already- but never so many, and never so many at the very bottom- this because online and in print there are over 10,000 outlets for poetry in America alone (and probably more, as I type), whereas fifty years ago there were about 50- a two hundredfold increase as the nation’s population hasn’t even doubled. If all the bad poets were consumers, rather than producers then the 50-60 worthy publishable poets (of which perhaps only 5 or 6 are actually published nowadays, in this system) in any given time frame might actually be able to make a living by selling their poems to magazines that were supported by the poetry loving amateurs, who would still to, and appreciate great poetry .

  Instead, the amateurs run the largest poetry magazine in the country, American Poetry Review, and do so with the same impunity, arrogance, and utter scorn for their readership and professed art form that only recently has trickled to many online venues. I’ve shown the ‘poetry’ they propagate, how they fail, and contrasted it with alternative poetic modes, poets, and some solutions. Still, I urge those who read this to write to APR and demand better.

  Bad poems all fail for the same handful of reasons. In doing my This Old Poem essay series, and others, I’ve almost numbed to how often, in different poets, from different ages, in different modes, the poetry fails, and for the same reasons- poor music, bad imagery, no mnemonic phrases, poor enjambment, clichés, and a few others. Yet, great poems succeed in many ways, with an infinite amount of possible ways to succeed. The choice is with you, the reader. Willful blindness or not. I end with this apropos sonnet of mine. Kings/Publishers of APR? Hmmm….

On Milton 

The idea of the eternal is not
Oracular in nature. Speed is not
inclined to the Divine, but to the thought
muscles which bid at this Poetry brought
to the few who can know, and the masses
who cannot. Witness, as the Life passes
from Light to you, whose Heart attempts to read
words buried like the Vision of the Dead
would do if it was; simply if it was-
not a higher caste is needed to cause
these lines of a Son of Delphic Descent
to impress their way to Disorderment
sought for by Kings, who for lack of it lie,
with both eyes blended in the World’s reply.

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