How Can You Read That Stuff? or Why? by Chris Lott At least twice a week-- and often more-- I will be approached by a complete stranger, or someone I know only in passing, and they will ask me what I’m reading. When I tell them that it’s poetry or criticism I almost invariably receive one of three common responses: a nod of the head and then the questioner returns back to whatever she happened to be doing at the time(usually staring at their fingernails), a blank stare as if I had just answered their question using a private language (generally this segues effortlessly into the previous response), or the dreaded “How can you read that stuff?” or “Why?” It used to be enough to just say that it was interesting, or that I loved it. I learned to read early and words became my solace during a tumultuous childhood, and they have remained an integral part of my life ever since, displaced only partially by the desire to write them myself. Poetry became my main interest in late adolescence, and criticism was, at its best, the perfect blend of philosophy, another strong interest of mine. Lately, though, my standard response has become inadequate. Last week, flipping through the pages of two anthologies that are well-regarded by professors and critics,* I found myself with a weary feeling that was quite familiar to me… a feeling which has begun to overwhelm me almost every time I sit down to read. I was suddenly confronted by the fact-- or suddenly realized-- that for the most part, poetry is damn boring and criticism a waste of time. Poets accuse critics of navel-gazing, jealousy and lack of creativity while they themselves produce trite, rehashed, broken prose that’s attached to their own bellies with a microscope. Critics accuse poets of shallowness, while they themselves use “postmodernism” as an excuse for their lack of knowledge of tradition and productivity in their own writing while attempting to “deconstruct texts” that they understand even less than we understand their impenetrably jargon-laden prose. Both parties are often right! On both fronts abstraction is mistaken for profundity, precise detail for relevance, ignorance for experimentation (and vice versa) and intense emotion for looking at intense emotion. Political statements and big ideas have been abandoned in favor of timidity and interminable examinations of the everyday. And I won’t even get started on philosophy qua philosophy or philosophy proper, which often manages to maintain the worst aspects of poor poetry and bad criticism at the same time! But for all that, the moments of clarity and insight, passion and understanding, and simple amazement-- even if found only rarely-- make up for the tedium that inhabits both of these intellectual arenas. Sturgeon’s Law states that “90% of science fiction is crap… but then 90% of everything is crap,” and poetry and criticism are no exceptions. Any semi-sane person expects that three hours in front of the television will, if they are lucky, yield twenty minutes of non-insulting, entertaining viewing. Moviegoers expect that most of the movies they see will range from average to extraordinarily bad (Brad Pitt achieving nirvana in Tibet? The viewer certainly won’t). Buying CD’s is akin to playing the lottery. Why do we expect poetry or criticism should be different and denigrate it when it isn’t? The answer lies in a number of different areas, all of which influence our perception: We compare writing today with our favorite writing of the past, despite the fact that the filters of time have sifted away the kind of detritus from previous eras that we object to today. Literature as a whole is not worse off today than it has ever been, but it is not necessarily better either. Those who defend the state of literature today point to the sheer numbers that characterize the literary scene today: there are more poems and stories being published today than ever before, not to mention the Internet and the World Wide Web, technologies in their infancy that are sure to influence writing as radically and completely as the printing press. But this is also the problem. This kind of growth needs fuel. It needs content (and what of demand?). We are faced with ever more places to read... the majority of which are, of course, populated by the work of unpracticed amateurs happy to have a place to publish, seeded lightly with the seconds, thirds and fourths of otherwise good writers who are, rightly, publishing whenever they have the opportunity. The life of a writer is a tenuous one... who can blame her for publishing when they get the chance? Criticism as a genre which seeks to explain and generate productive additions to the literary experience has largely been victimized by a philosophical climate which revels in language’s deepest complexity and the generation of reflexive analyses, and in which having “no meaning” and “no end” is a mark of pride rather than a marker delineating a wholly different intellectual activity. In other words, criticism and theory are often generated as if they are the same thing, when in fact they are often radically different and criticism, the more useful enterprise for most readers and writers, has become subsumed within an almost unintelligible philosophical framework dictated by academics. Finally, university workshops are churning out writers in factory-fashion, despite the already glutted market both in publishing and academia and, worse, despite the fact that many of the people in these programs are deliberately misled as to their own skill and talent in order that they will stay in the program and continue paying the tuition dollars that feed the monster that brings them in, etc. But despite all of this, for every peck of poorly disguised and over-written love poems out there, there is a poem with the clarity and love of language of Kinnell’s “Little Sleep’s Head Sprouting Hair”. For every maudlin poem about childhood, there is a poem with the intensity and honesty of Olds’ “Satan Says”. They are out there. Seek them out, find them, don’t be afraid to dislike even those poems which others think are good but, most of all, don’t buy into the chestnut that nay-sayers have been saying every decade since the written word was first recorded, the old saw that “the writing’s just no good anymore.” So what do I say to the questioner who wants to know how I can read that stuff? Maybe nothing, when I don’t feel like proselytizing. Or maybe I’ll say that I love words, stories, poems, criticism and all of their cousins, warts and all. Maybe I’ll say that I know my unhappiness will pass, my nausea will subside and, eventually and even somewhat consistently, my reading will generate its rewards. Or maybe I’ll just say that if I didn’t, I don’t know what else I’d do. ------------------------ *The Pittsburgh Book of Contemporary American Poetry andThe Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets. STARTING POINTS A good piece of writing, regardless of genre, is distinguished by its moments of discovery. These points can come in the form of “Eureka!” moments, when the words or lines strike the reader like a lightning bolt out of blue sky, “slap-yourself-in- the-head” moments when an unexpected turn suddenly becomes perceived as inevitable, the long, exhaled “Wow” followed by minutes of introspection at the end of a good piece, or anything in between. Unfortunately this happens all too rarely, and many people have given up completely on finding poetry or criticism that contains any elements of discovery. Here are some starting points that should hook even the most reluctant reader: Poetry That Won’t Drive You to Drink Satan Says - Sharon Olds The Book of Nightmares - Galway Kinnell Next - Lucille Clifton Brass Knuckles - Stuart Dybek Killing Floor - Ai The Incognito Lounge - Denis Johnson The Circle of Totems - Peggy Shumaker A New Path to the Waterfall - Raymond Carver Mystery Train - David Wojahn The Essential Etheridge Knight Selected Poems of Marilyn Hacker you don’t miss your water - Cornelius Eady Criticism that Actually Says Something Helen Vendler - Soul Says Helen Vendler - The Music of What Happened Annie Dillard - Living by Fiction Mary Oliver - A Poetry Handbook William Gass