Poetry and the confessional. Scholars of the elegiac poets of the Classical world are at pains to caution us against reading too much self expression into their lapidary plaints. Later, the "Archpoet" startlingly rants on the flimsiness of a charity coat; Byron hints at incest to keep up his publicity profile; & Poe's enemies impute to him every derangement he ever imagined. Eventually, we find acolytes adopting what they construe as a "Poet Lifestyle" before ever reading a poem by anybody else. From one angle we can see in this the evolution of The Poet as a commodity separable from his or her poetry (& also, BTW, an equal separation of Poetry from poems--). Art having come to acquire the trappings of a secular religion, the demand is created: for saints.

Meanwhile, a counterreaction ensues; & perhaps a legendary poet like Sylvia Plath is only now beginning to be read as a craftsman & not a scary martyr. But among unsophisticates (at every level), just as the ghost of anapestic tetrameter couplets lingers wherever adolescents start to jingle, there is a core belief in the poetic efficacy of painful experience.

Clearly, good writing & having something to say, cannot be completely divided, yet we must warily circle slippery Antlion-Cones of Victimhood & watch out for Bamboo-Mantraps of Witness Authenticity at every step. What else was the Yasusada Affair about, but the forging of a Holy Relic?

If i were to spearhead a proper counterinsurgency against this Babelovian Confusion, i would start with the injunction: LET HISTORY BE HISTORY, LET RELIGION BE RELIGION, LET POETRY BE POETRY. There may well be a point in the development of subcultures where the need for testimony outweighs aesthetics. And i think those subcultures will naturally develop the criticism they need in their own time, without outside interference--especially from condescending "mainstreamers".

And there have always been, & will continue to be, cases where pathology & poetics contrive to be indistinguishable. (It may be that these are the most interesting poets of all, after contemporaneity fades--.)

But this needs to be kept from becoming a general principle of equivalence. Poetry, & its audience, will be better served in the end by craft definitions rather than by extraneous personal ones.


Toward this, i observe that the cult of "authenticity" must be destroyed, by whatever means necessary.

04 09 04