Zadie Smith, pictured here, recently enjoyed two privileges rarely afforded a poet (Margaret Atwood perhaps being the exception): she was nominated for a Booker Prize; and almost simultaneously was misquoted at length across the length and breadth of the British media as saying that, to paraphrase, (living in) London is now crap, and writing isn't a very intellectually demanding craft, unlike, say, philosophy where one has to actually think fully new thoughts.Poets, of course, have their own prizes, but few arrest the attention like those dedicated to prose; and few poets finds their alleged complaints recorded and broadcast like rolling news from Iraq.
Why is this?
There are complicated, aesthetic answers, some of which can be traced back to Longinus. But a simple point can be made here.
We now live in a world of "publishing" not "literature". By literature, I mean, a literate interest in the written word, and by extension, the best words written down in the best ways. The world of publishing we live in has all the vices of any market-trade, without some of the virtues that people who sell, say, legumes, at least possess (humility, honesty and rough good humour tempered by the seasons).
To narrow in: publishing sells "authors" not, per se, "writing". It is true, books are sold, and books are written. But publishing needs a story, and the story is increasingly about celebrity. Publishing is also about profit, Hollywood spin-offs, and deals made at book fairs to translate into 12 languages. Sadly, poetry lends itself poorly to translation, Hollywood formats, and large profit margins. Therefore, as publishing increasingly shapes and determines how the public thinks of writers, books and the world of written words, a very limited - and exceptionally ignorant - sense of the scope and range of contemporary writing emerges in the public sphere.
One might ask, why should it matter, if Joe Blogs doesn't know about the subtle developments in poetry coming from Norwich, Iowa or Toronto? Well, indeed, perhaps if the problem of lack of appreciation of the wider and more complex story of writing could be limited to the public, damage would be minimized (though sales of course would continue to favour famous books by famous people).
But the publishing world view has now colonized the minds of even the bright young things who write prose, and also many of the agents, editors and publishers who might otherwise pay more - and proper - attention - to literature in all its guises - as opposed to its most palpably mainstream, commercial genres (popular fiction).
This is to say, if one were the world's best under-35 poet, and one wandered in the valleys of Islington, Hoxton, Clerkenwell, Soho or Primrose Hill (not to mention other fashionable areas like Marylebone), one could float past the great and good celebrity novelists and they would barely bother to nod. They would, as Hemingway would have said, cut you.
Poets are now regularly cut - cut from the private as well as public conversation that British society is having about art, literature, and itself.
The damage being done is calculable: everyone is becoming less articulate, and less thoughtful. Poetry, at its outer reaches, is the foremost crucible for testing language. Poetry is where language meets thought, and works the relationship out. Poetry, in fact, is exactly what Zadie Smith was misquoted as saying novels aren't anymore: poetry is smart, challenging, and profound.
Pity almost no one sells, buys, or reads it anymore. I partially blame the world of 21st century publishing, and its many printer's devils.
Comments
"..humility, honesty and rough good humour tempered by the seasons.."
This observation does not translate into a reality I have experienced, as many of the folk flogging this paricular fruit who I've had occassion to interact with have actually proved themselves lacking in the exact qualities ascribed to them by the author, particularly in the less specialised emporiums where this fruit sells, especially so in some of the less salubrious Netto and Aldi marts around the greater Dublin area, or the dodgy looking shack of a shop greengrocers I once frequented in a mountain village not far out of Alicante, where I was laying the groundwork of my own trade in poetry a few years back when I was kipping at my sister's gaffe for a month in early summer, just before the initial UK airing of the Big Brother TV show, immediately prior to the first powerful waves unleashing instant non-entity celebrity were upon European shores for the very first time back in mid 2000.
However, this said I am sure that there are lots of legume sellers I have not come across whose humility levels are continually stocked in equal measure with an honesty and rough good humour, no doubt regulated by their exposure to the seasonal change I understand the writer to be alluding to.
Unfortunately I fear that any furthering of my ideas on this point would be irrelevant to Swift until he conducted a wider exploration of it in print; save to say that the image his words rustled up in my head; due to the pitch of his register, is one where an orally derivitive "simple" poet (in the Homeric sense) declaims beautifull poems in a range of classic to pomo genres which London's successfully cash-centric literary philistines of prose and popular fiction are blind to, due to that city's Blakean "chartered" heart legacy pumping its acqusitional beat of financial concern with no regard for the metaphorical offspring of Mnemosyne, Ogma, Dagda, Aengus or whoever else the poet claims lineage from.
The next point I wish to respond to is one stated immediately prior to the legume seller generalisation and relates to, as it appears to me, the somewhat tenuous connection between what he has described as
“complicated, aesthetic answers, some of which can be traced back to” the philosophy of “Longinus”
and the, what I presume to be related, “simple point” he then expounds in, what I discerned as, a form of lament for the demise of a commercial process linked to contemporary poetry appearing in traditional print methods, where books are placed as a constant principle in the equation measuring general poetic quality. The main plank supporting this thesis, as I understand it, is that because less books of poetry (which I assume he is prioritising as the highest possible literary art), are sold than the other genres he appears to attack, then this is somehow proof a poet should accept that the book buying public is in a state of failure, due to their lack of concern over dwindling sales figures those engaged in activity related to commercial poetry are experiencing, rather than it being a reflection on the quality of much contemporary poetry, and concluding logically, the quality of his own work.
The key to the entire tenor of this criticism, it is my current position, resides in the highlighted “publishing” concept of the general argument, which I sense runs contrary to my pathway of understanding on this “simple point.”
My trajectory as a poet has resulted in an effective total circumnavigation of the need to creatively validate and “self-confirm” as a writer through the medium of traditional print forms, which I detect are important currencies and currents trading and shaping Swift’s essential poetic impulse. This was due to the internet and the opportunities I quarried from its ever growing rockface range of interactive information gathering density on the world wide web, which I contend is supplanting the need for writers to train and improve in their effort to put the “best words written down in the best way.” Previously the way poets honed certain areas of critical skills which lead to the platforms where an aptness and alacrity with words is to be found, was to publish in the broadsheets of the “respectable” press.
English language poets have historically been a loose configuration in a pool of literary life whose pond shores faces towards London as its Parnassus or “well of nine hazel trees,” primarily because this urban hub is where they blood themselves in print and battle for intellectual supremacy amongst one another in the paper publications which were, pre net, the sole method of assistance in creating one’s reputation. As there are so many dabbling nowadays and because free verse and its associated off-shoots are the dominat form through which poetry manifests itself, the public have a hard time sussing out the wheat from the chaff, particularly with the numerous, mainly self proclaimed, arbiters of poetic taste on hand offering; at worst, seemingly absolute, precisely tuned either/or definitions of what poetry actually is, the poetic equivalent of a George Bush style of political rhetoric; and at best an “informed” opinion offering only inclusion for the reader which refuses to deploy hackneyed lecture poetraster tricks betraying a straining desire for recognition by the elite of word merchants striving to solely project works of truth, which all qualities of reader recognise as being just the simple poetry of “is” rather than exercises in codology lesser poets, often, unwittingly, deliver to us in their “serious” work.
The third point I would like to address arises from my need to offer a supportive response to the note of dejection on which Swift’s criticism ends; a response which will hopefully aid him in recognising the need for a focus beyond peripheral concerns of poetry as commerce and onto the light of return his muse will hopefully be winking back in view shortly. By rehearsing my thoughts relating to this aspect of personal concern, both Swift’s and my own poetics may derive a benefit; certainly I find it extremely helpful to explore the poet’s creative process via the publishing medium of any web based corner of literary life, no matter how seemingly irrelevant it may appear to the objective reader we writers create as our imaginary audience.
I find that by surrounding oneself with like minded language artists who avoid the trap of grandiose affections and proclomations on the essential substance of their art, then the poet ‘s radar can stay tuned to receive the genuine blips given off by other poets of all persuassions the globe over, including those whose geneoligical chanels linking them with their poetic ehich may cause blockages, and other less sensitive poets to dismiss them as life long non starter planktonion poets cut adrift in the shark infested seas of textual endevour, like Hemmingway empties turned into trash without a second’s thought. By engineering one’s to an elevation where the poet’s position will always see the positive in pieces of writing and their authors, then s/he will, hopefully, never become a perpetrator or victim of sloppy criticism which positively serves no one “with a literate interest in the written word.”
For example, I am one catalyst in a grouping which includes Noel Sweeney, who prefers the professional moniker of “Sweeney,” and who has, as far as I am aware, a unique primary compositional method, which sees him fashioning work in an entirely oral fashion. He will walk around extemporising into a hand held recording device, the oral equivalent of “freestyle” writing bursts where the author has no pre-set notion of what s/he will write, and then cherry pick the unplanned poetry snippets which came out unthought or forced. He then moves onto a memorisational process of orally drafting and editing until the piece is finally fixed as one of his living sound sculptures, most of which have never appeared in printed form. Noel did his early apprecticeship in the bogs of Tipperary and later in Brixton, where he never had to look to hard for a willing and appreciative audience, especially after he plugged into the wider South London culture which spawned the spoken word revival of the 90’s and hooked up with rhythm artists who provided him with the collaborative environment which influenced his now mature lyric style of a rythmicly centred practice.
Using his unique methods he has created some of the finest Irish poetry I have ever heard, and I say this after aurally witnessing Irish poets in recordings, from WB Yeats to Patrick Kavanagh and live from Seamus Heaney through to Maurice Scully and beyond, particularly in the currently returning style one is tempted to imagine as a reconnection to Ireland’s native bardic mode, rather than being any inherently “new” form which other, non memorisational, page bound poets often label as “performance,” one suspects to cover any sense of inadequecy they may generate within themselves when in the company of a poet with Sweeneys obviously prodigious talent, which can dominate a spoken word gathering more completely (if he is firing on the night) than Raven can; although the quality of these two is so close as to be almost insepereable to the untrained ear, similar to debating the reletive merits of the English international soccer players Wayne Rooney and David Beckham, and if one is better than the other. Their registers, once heard, will never be forgotten, although the two do have uniquely different tonal frequencies, due to Raven coming out of a San Francisco influenced West coast poetry of definitve spirituality associated with Snyder and the Zen vibe of a non white american alternative exploration informing the pressing concerns of how and where the root of poetic faith and belief lies; the poet choosing the tradition they anchor to over the course of their careers.
Wheras the listener can follow every word of Sweeney ‘s narrative based pieces, punctuated with the unthought or forced gems of wisdom adorning his work, Raven’s effect is initially one of complete bedazzlement, the audience is so mentally blown away with his skills of delivery, particularly when done in memorisational mode, that at first they do not grasp much, if any of the broader structural syntax on which his compositions hang. I have had a few months of Raven’s company in the grouping and now view him undazzled to see the technician behind the poet blowing everyone away. The night this process began was the first time the core of the grouping had assembled outside of the 4 hour weekly work session, and is a tale I am saving for another time, but keep the faith.