The Blurb As Argument Platform II

Part One is here:

http://jjgallaher.blogspot.com/2010/03/blurb-as-argument-platform.html

Part Two, Then 

What he wrote on the back of the book:

“With complete dedication and seriousness Michael Dickman has absorbed his influences and taught them to work hand in hand with his own unique genius to produce a style like no one else's, one as instantly recognizable as that of poetic masters such as Dickinson, Follain, and Simic. To me, he is one of the younger American poets who are hiddenly heralding the end of the randomness, the glib irony Rilke strenuously warned against, the gratuitous non sequiturs and obscurities for obscurity’s sake which have been fashionable in our poetry for the past couple of decades, and which make it so difficult to determine whether or not a poet has talent or anything significant to tell us. His work achieves all that is most valuable and most difficult in writing: simplicity, clarity, specificity, mystery, primal sincerity, and emotion as Pound used the term, that is, artistic allegiance to whatever is universally shared and unalterable over time in the human experience. With the utmost gravity as well as a kind of cosmic wit, Dickman gives a voice to the real life sorrows, horrors, and indomitable joys that bind together the vast human family.” —Franz Wright

My reaction to what he wrote:

The first sentence: “With complete dedication and seriousness Michael Dickman has absorbed his influences and taught them to work hand in hand with his own unique genius to produce a style like no one else's, one as instantly recognizable as that of poetic masters such as Dickinson, Follain, and Simic.”

OK, so first he writes that Dickman is like no one else, and then he names off three poets who are somewhat like him in their recognizability? (And it’s not just their recognizability he’s thinking of here, as he’s using poets recognized for a spare, open line, with whom Dickman has been compared in other places.) It’s not a terrible thing to say, but it has at least the tone of contradicting itself, which is a very common thing for a blurb (and for most reviews). First, say the author of the book is utterly original, and then name some poets that writer resembles. Ah, what sweet irony…

Speaking of irony, it’s the second sentence that I want to concentrate on. It’s an unnecessary straw-man argument over the back of a book:

“To me, he is one of the younger American poets who are hiddenly heralding the end of the randomness, the glib irony Rilke strenuously warned against, the gratuitous non sequiturs and obscurities for obscurity's sake which have been fashionable in our poetry for the past couple of decades, and which make it so difficult to determine whether or not a poet has talent or anything significant to tell us.”

I really can’t stress it enough how much this kind of thing irritates me. Why does Wright need to do it? Does he really need to make Dickman the poster-child for an argument with a segment of American poetry? Who are the friends he’s trying to win? Who are the enemies he’s trying to make?

An argument against many poets could be made, sure, but “glib irony” isn’t going to do it. We all make arguments all the time about what’s good and bad in poetry (I’m doing it right now). I’m not against Wright making an argument, just its location in a blurb on the back of a book, where there’s no room to make a real argument with support and examples. So it just sits there, a call to arms without saying who the enemy is, just a kind of wild “they’re out there and we know who they are” mistiness.

What I’m saying here is I understand Wright’s motivation to want to fight with a lot of poets, mostly younger, who he feels are going awry. In this, he joins a growing group of male poets (including Tony Hoagland, David Wojahn, and others) who seem to be making something of the same argument (I think) against (I think) the same younger poets. It’s an interesting sociological study. Is this just a boy thing? I wonder. When I do find examples about what’s wrong in American poetry (mostly from Hoagland), they are all (or nearly all) male. And now the corrective is also male. It’s fascinating.

And while I’m on the subject, why not list out these poets who’ve been writing for a couple decades with this “glib irony” thing? I’d be interested in that list. If Wright is going to make an argument, I wish he’d just make it, and not euphemism his way around it. If there’s going to be a fight, there should be a fight, but not in jacket blurbs.

Depending on what he’d say in return, I might possibly agree with him (OK, I’m sure I wouldn’t, but as I haven’t seen his list, I don’t know), but as it is, I strongly disagree, because I’m guessing he’s talking about all (assuming totality, which is, of course, absurd) the poets published by Verse/Wave, Fence, Action Books, Octopus, Black Ocean, Ahsahta, Letter Machine Editions, and many of the poets published everywhere else. That’s a pretty big net. Of course, he can’t mean all of them, so the accusation just kind of floats out there, swinging wildly.

But, even so, all those presses are fairly new still. Twenty years takes us all the way back to the end of the 80s, which is right about when what was called “Elliptical Poetry” started up. So is Wright blaming all this on Jorie Graham? Or was she one of the names? I get so confused by it all . . . which is precisely what happens in this kind of “blurb as argument” situation: since no one really knows who is being attacked, they just fill in whatever names they want. Some glib, ironic X. I consider it a useless argument, both hyper-aggressive and rather powerless.

So then, knowing that I like many of the books published by the above presses, I receive Dickman’s book as if hostile fire, and I didn’t need to receive it that way. The publisher should have never let the book go out without editing that blurb down.

Look how much nicer it could have been, for all concerned:

“Michael Dickman’s work achieves all that is most valuable and most difficult in writing: simplicity, clarity, specificity, mystery, primal sincerity, and emotion as Pound used the term, that is, artistic allegiance to whatever is universally shared and unalterable over time in the human experience. With the utmost gravity as well as a kind of cosmic wit, Dickman gives a voice to the real life sorrows, horrors, and indomitable joys that bind together the vast human family.” —Franz Wright