First things first: I've decided to take a note out of Torte de Lini's blog/book and provide you with some charming music to listen to as you read. On these sweet notes, here we go!
Well; I’ve been trying to make a start on this wretched thing for about an hour now, my thoughts being continually distracted by the movie 500 Days of Summer, which is on in the background. I sometimes leave the TV on when I write, in the vague and somewhat ambitious hope that some of its bleating will subconsciously infiltrate my writing. I know that John Lennon used to write songs in this way: fragments of advertising jingles and catch phrases for cornflakes making their way along the soporific waves into his work. It doesn’t seem to be going as well for me, though perhaps comparison to John Lennon is a little self-defeating. He, for example, was even able to turn an instance of extreme writer’s block into a great song: Nowhere Man. There is one line in this song which commands particular attention: Lennon, writing of the nowhere man, that is, himself: ‘He doesn’t have a point of view/knows not where he’s going to’. I’d like to discuss with you today the implications of this little vignette for the amateur critic of the written word, giving special study to the criticism of poetry. Beware that, though this isn’t very long, I may stray from the course a little; you have been forewarned.
Lennon’s observation is acute, for surely the most torturous aspect of writing is having to contrive opinion. Orwell writes splendidly on this, as have others. Indeed, it seems that writers have partly been able to escape from this mire by contriving opinion on the act of contriving opinion, a fact which impresses on us only the desperation of writers (or perhaps their expedience). For me the process goes a little like this: having read a book, or essay, or poem that I am obliged to write about, I will sit and nitpick the text for a time before scribbling some quibble or two down on paper. These little criticisms are not so much considered diagnoses of the writing’s ‘problems’, but rather hurried attempts at keyhole surgery: I fumble in the dark for some grasp on whatever tumour it is that I’m so convinced is there. In the end I will find something, albeit bloody and largely useless for the purpose of demonstrating any malignancy in the work. Starting with this small and impotent thing, I contrive ad hoc criticism of the piece, making sure to meet all requirements of my assignment.
Rarely then do I have much to say about the merits of a text, for it is much easier to find faults with someone’s writing than to laud it. Any praise is usually couched in such ambiguous terms as ‘successful’, or ‘effective’: words equivocal enough to yield to most interpretations a reader is likely to bring to the table. The term ‘successful’ is especially useful, for it implies that the writer is actually engaging in a far more practical act than writing, as if instead he is baking a cake or building a chair; the chair is ‘successful’ if I am able to sit on it without its breaking, and any man who proclaims it a success is not likely to be questioned much: his assessment is as good as anyone’s.
(A little aside: you will have to pardon my frankly excessive use of household objects as metaphors. In the above paragraph alone I mentioned tables, cakes and chairs. There is some explanation for this: I work part-time as a carpenter’s lackey, building decks, tables, chairs, wardrobes, etc. My job mainly consists of passing tools to burly men, buying discounted Powerade for drinks breaks, and feigning knowledge of either Rugby League or the merits of hex shanks; forgive me for bringing my work home with me.)
Of course, unlike most chairs, writing is not always merely functional. It is difficult to say with great conviction that any piece of writing is successful without first presupposing some criteria against which to gauge its success. A political pamphlet may be considered a success by influencing popular opinion; instructions on how to roast chicken may be considered successful depending on the tenderness of the chicken. And as for a poem? Let me say first that it is not my intention here to discuss art theory, whether success be beauty, beauty success; this is more than we need to know at present; let us content ourselves for now with shooting for meaner ground. Certainly one could argue that a poem is successful (I think the popularity of poetry speaks for that), but this is not the point I want to elucidate; you see, it is not that it can’t be shown to be successful, rather the fact that it isn’t often done so very easily.
I feel that people sometimes struggle with poetry because they are never quite sure as to what purpose it serves. My dad is like this; he claims that he simply ‘doesn’t get it’, supposing not only that there lies hidden beneath the words a ‘secret’ worth getting at, but also that there must be some obscure cipher which unlocks it. It is understandable then how we come to believe that poetry demands something of us, a response, a reaction, an opinion: always there is that lingering sense of compulsion to have a point of view. In this way poetry can be perplexing, for without purpose the degree of its success is hard to quantify. It is better thus to conceive of the study of poetry as being without a single and primary purpose: it should not seek to solely edify, solely instruct, nor solely serve as a font of reflections on beauty or beautiful things; rather it must embolden the soul of all to, in the words of Yeats, clap its hands and sing, for this divine tune need not accompany a game of musical chairs, where all hasten for a seat and one poor laggard is left standing.
So, all should be privy to the delights of verse, and none should feel any compunction about lacking special opinion or insight into it. Enjoy it if you can, and if it’s not your thing, so be it. If you do not expect anything from poetry, it will expect nothing from you, and thus you will be freer to disgorge its pleasures. As a student of literature and criticism myself, I am dimly aware that this piece may have been written in the full spirit of self-denial: the pressure to contrive a point of view is tedious indeed. Perhaps I simply yearn to be on the other side of the wall, such as when Alice comes across the little doorway leading to an enchanted garden. But I am, as she was, simply too big for the thing; sadly it will only accommodate my toes. If you happen to be on the same side as myself, let me know, for together we may cloister ourselves from the gloom of criticism for a time and peer through that little door to freedom, fancying ourselves the happier twins of a dark hour.
Appendix
For those interested, here is Nowhere Man by the Beatles:
And here is George Orwell's essay on ad hoc criticism: Confessions of a Book Reviewer (though it is mainly to do with financial incentive). It is quite short.
You can find fault in what you read, even the masters, and this detracts from your appreciation. I'm not sure what the second half of your essay is. Can you write it with simpler words. I am genuinely interested b/c I too see fault every where in lit yet I know I'm not able to offer up a solution.
rUiNati0n United States. January 18 2012 14:23. Posts 968
lol Did Torte de lini organize this so that while he is banned we wouldn't want for posts in his style? More seriously I enjoyed your blog even if it strayed a bit from what I thought was its original intention. I quite enjoy reading novels and poetry but am not much for analysis or writing myself (in fact I'm terrible at writing). I really enjoy just reading the words other people have written without looking too deeply into their meaning. I hope I didn't miss the point of your blog entirely, you did get a bit fancy with your vocabulary
Mobius_1 United Kingdom. January 18 2012 15:33. Posts 2719
On January 18 2012 13:21 husniack wrote: You can find fault in what you read, even the masters, and this detracts from your appreciation. I'm not sure what the second half of your essay is. Can you write it with simpler words. I am genuinely interested b/c I too see fault every where in lit yet I know I'm not able to offer up a solution.
Certainly. I have this awful impulse to wax lyrical when i write, and this only detracts from the clarity of my ideas.
It's not the fact that finding 'fault' detracts from your appreciation per se -if anything detailed criticism of a work usually demonstrates a deeper understanding of it- it's rather that actually commending a creative work is far more difficult than deriding it because of the ambiguity of the word 'success'. Other forms of writing can unequivocally be called 'successful' because, in having a distinct purpose, they can satisfy it. The majority of creative writing in general, and poetry in particular, is different in this regard because its 'purpose' is more ambiguous: some people seek instruction from poetry (artistic, ethical, philosophical, etc; in fact The Prophet, by Lebanese/American poet Khalil Gibran, which consists of 26 didactic, poetic 'essays' on marriage, love, death, etc has been one of the highest selling volumes of poetry in the U.S over the past 100 years); others look to poetry for beauty, or, in more modern times, ugliness. Because of this complexity in analysing poetry, it is much easier to find the shortest distance between two points (reading and contriving opinion) by simply criticising it for its faults and ignoring its merits (if any).
So because ad hoc (i mean only done for one purpose and thus forced) criticism of poetry tends to favour deriding it, it also tends to exclude people rather than include them because it demands this attitude of derision (even elitism if you want a stronger term). This derision is not always fully justified because often it is a consequence of simple laziness; poetry should instead encourage people to involve themselves more fully in life (pardon the sentimentality).
Otherwise, thank you for taking the time to read what I've written.
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