On Greatness & Them That Do It 26 02 2009

On Orr Off

In a culture where “greatness” is measured by face time via t.v. shows such as “American Idol” and the growing trend of killing people to make your fifteen minutes on the evening news, it seems the factors for “greatness” have devolved into measures I’m not sure poets ought to be distracted by, or rather, remotely invested in.  Nonetheless, David Orr in the NYT Sunday Book Review asks about the conditions by which poets might be “great” today and, indeed, if greatness is possible for poets, post-Ashbery, ever again.

A few notions impatiently gleaned from manly Orr’s efforts:

* People will play golf, even if they aren’t Tiger Woods, but longevity isn’t sustained in poetry.  Poets won’t write for a lifetime if they can’t see themselves as the next Ashbery?  Except, poets certainly do write for lifetimes, with or without Orr’s knowledge, and they do so without worrying about winning the gold cup or whatever prize golfers aim for.  There is no set goal in the “game” of poetry, though Orr’s comparison sets the terms as such (i.e. John Ashbery’s Library of America collection).  How do sports metaphors of the competitive masculine variety so often wiggle their way into measuring poetry and her cultural cache?   What team am I playing for again?  Where’s the goal line?  Who do I have to smear to get there?   Are my subjects suitably dainty as I take up the stick?

* Orr cites Samuel Johnson “exquisiteness in its kind” as a sign of greatness– pretty circular in kind.

* Orr notes, in lots of little ways, how the person’s lived life contributes to the aura of greatness the masses attribute.  I.e.  Biography is something of destiny in poetry.  Such consideration is one distracting way of perhaps indirectly getting at just what the poet’s aims and her stamina/dedication/devotion to the craft are via the usual bio-mythology of just how much she’s willing to sacrifice, study, consider, risk, etc., to the point that alcoholism, who one hangs out with,  suicidal tendencies, etc.–tend to overshadow and get conflated with her image as one of “greatness.”   The quiet poet with a steady life is not typically so “great” (though there are exceptions, especially when mystique is placed upon them a la Emily Dickinson-style).  Following this prescription, I might become a mystery or anomaly or develop a strange air about myself to pique attention and thus encourage my audience to project wild notions upon my persona if I were good at such drama and inclined towards sowing for greatness.  Even poetry movements are doing it these days …

* Ultimately, I like the first bit of Hall’s statement, cited by Orr, “It seems to me that contemporary American poetry is afflicted by modesty of ambition …” [and just a few paragraphs further is where I lost patience with Orr's article -- apologies!].  Ambition in poetry?  I’m all for it.  But we should want to be Dante?  Um, no.  Just as the task of determining greatness should not be left up to one man in a NYTimes article.  Not by a long shot.  If poetry is great, and it certainly has been and can be, then poets should be the ones to set the stage and play the game of promoting greatness in all its technicolor shades and mediums. But is naming “who” really where greatness is?  Must greatness be a signature assigned to one human?  Ashbery is great because of every tenth worthwhile poem he wrote gets attention?   Rimbaud is great because he wrote a few good ones and is followed by a crazy mythology that high school boys take to and movies are made from?

Greatness Exists

So let’s assume greatness exists.  Because it is a concept and does exist.  But it is not synonymous with “popularity,” though the standard miserably leans towards books sold and audience numbers.  Greatness is entirely subjective, despite that conflation with the democratic principle of majority rules.  Are those who don’t agree that Ashbery is great in the wrong?   Does the majority really decide who is great?  Does the majority pronounce what greatness is via the expression of their dollars?   Why does Orr’s essay not question, “What are the duties and responsibilities of greatness?  Who assigns it?”

This concept of greatness, as Orr speaks of it, is just too simple and conservative.  “Poetry needs greatness,” yes, but not the kind Orr haphazardly defines, even that of the historical variety.  We can use but are not stuck in the past.   Great role models exist, but they need not be emulated in total.  They are models, flawed and mostly gone.   The world’s scene can no longer sustain such an atrophied vision of greatness as the one Orr investigates.  We need new greatness that dismantles the status quo, opens up towards more kinds of inclusion (see Barbara Jane Reyes’ take), behaves beyond beautifying and heralding myths in the making.   What a stupid old project this making of masculine heroes has become.

And then there’s this near-definition Orr presents, “When we lose sight of greatness … we stop assuming that poems should be interesting to other people and begin thinking of them as being obliged only to interest our friends –”  I know I’m coming off as just blanketly contrary here, but what?  We must seek Orr’s loose version of greatness or our poetry will only be reduced to dull insular verse written specifically for friends?  I don’t get the presumption–at all.  I think most people who put pen to paper are attempting to “interest people”, whether they are successful or not, regardless of whether they are motivated by the “greatness” Orr has outlined, which is misguided and outdated.

Of course, practically speaking, most poets don’t want to write away in obscurity, but how many of us truly require — as motivation — the masses to pat us on the back for our greatness?  None of the poets I know expect a Tiger Woods’ trophy or his following, nor do they write while holding out for such nonsense.   Poets who have something of the greatness factor in them exhibit a stick-to-it-ness over time, a curiosity for others’ poetics, attention to craft, deep concern with the world, serious engagement with that world in other non-poetic but typically political (small “p”) ways–sans Library of America tome or even the promise of one.

Orr’s essay doesn’t deserve but needs a response–many responses– for even as golfers are folowing their game’s rules, poets are making their own ways, similarly and separately, differently and communally, as multitudes and as individuals, sans a set standard of formulas and rules.    Golf goes after stroke counts and a finish line.  Poetry goes after life and everything the concept entails.  Greatness certainly is not the little box declaring a winner vis a vis book publication or any golden laurel leaf.  Poetry is not merely words on a screen/page or how dramaticaly the poet lived her life.

The Call to Greatness

My version of greatness –the subjective one I work to promote– (& in the abstract) is the poetry that strives to confound expectations and create new awareness, esp of the social and political–however strange or discomfiting–so that from seeming “ugliness,” beauty is fostered and permitted to renew (see Gertrude Stein on Picasso and ugly here).

So with a step towards greatness and an eye towards evolving that definition, I would like to call upon ten other poets to ask how they aspire towards (or despite) this heavy word with all of its newly-polished baggage—>Sandra Simonds, Mendi Obadike, Ron Silliman, Sandra Beasley, Linh Dinh, Gabe Gudding, Adam Fieled, Anne Boyer, Collin Kelly, Jessica Smith, K. Silem Mohammad, and Reb Livingston.  And they, of course, should ask ten.  Please.  Help me understand greatness!

p.s.  okay, make that twelve.  Twelve.

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12 responses to “On Greatness & Them That Do It”

26 02 2009

jazzlives (03:07:10) : edit

Nifty prose there, King. And the whole notion of “greatness” provokes a sour “Says who?” from me. If you look at the books published by the poets considered “great” in their time, the names include Vachel Lindsay and E. A. Robinson among others. Both of them had distinct personalities and recognizable voices: Lindsay for his jungle effects, Robinson for his melancholy, but are they “great” now? Or are they the Billy Collins of their own defunct generations? When I was a wee boy, there were vinyl record collections of “_____________’s GREATEST HITS,” which inevitably was far from “____________’s MOST MEMORABLE MUSIC.” What happens when the definition of “greatness,” so subjective to begin with, shifts over time? This confounds the editors of college literature anthologies and brings out the worst in artistic politics. I know! Let’s have a Poetry Awards Show! Let’s give out statuettes! Call them the LIZZIES (for Eliz. Bishop) and set up categories: “Best Surrealist Poem Over Fourteen Lines,” and so forth. Then we’ll know who and what poems are really great, won’t we?

26 02 2009

Alexander Dickow (10:40:07) : edit

Well said, Amy!
Still, I wouldn’t mind winning Tiger Woods’ trophy. As long as I won it for writing poems. Ha!
Amities,
Alex

26 02 2009

Troy Camplin (15:39:14) : edit

I’m with you that the sports analogy is far from apt. And the idea that a poet will only write if they are getting recognition only shows the author doesn’t understand artists at all. I myself cannot help but create, regardless of my publishing record or level of recognition.

Was Dante aiming for Greatness when he wrote his poems? It seems unlikely. Shakespeare was simply trying to write a good yarn that you pack the seats at the theater. It just so happens he was the greatest writer in the English language. I think those who aim for greatness will probably never find it; those who achieve greatness achieve it because they are pursuing something they love so much they work hard at making it better and better, until they have produced a body of work that is truly great.

26 02 2009

Catherine Daly (17:53:29) : edit

I blogged on this a little bit; there was a discussion on spidertangle but I deleted it / didn’t read it.

The Orr article starts up with some straw greatness thing to seem “controversial” and then veers off into a rant on the culture of celebrity twisted up with MFA program-bashing. Unfortunately, “good” literary journalism seems to have been reduced to this.

Seems obvious to me that Ashbury lived long enough in a cultural center (NY) (being a high profile academic can substitute for this) at a level of accomplishment to survive into greatness. Frankly, there are a lot of people now who are about 15 years younger who will be considered “great” in 15 years. Ususally we poets die younger.

For example, the arguments about Elizabeth Bishop and Frank O’Hara Orr reports on (having been previously reported) being great or not are moot — the discussions took place a while back, and now both of them are actually considered to be great.

26 02 2009

jilly (21:25:51) : edit

I’m glad I missed that (IMHO stupid) NYT piece.

…I agree with Tony above. Craft your art & keep at it seems like the best mode to me.

26 02 2009

Didi (23:31:43) : edit

Your new look on your blog is GREAT.

27 02 2009

Collin Kelley (00:48:55) : edit

Orr’s “essay” exhausts me. This kind of introspective masturbation masquerading as literary “critique” bores the shit out of me. Chances are the poets I consider great wouldn’t pass Orr’s sniff test. And thank god for that. I’ve been writing poetry for about 20 years now and I know that I have moved, motivated and provoked poets and general readers with my words. That’s great enough for me. My body of work will live on as long as there is a world wide web, since that’s where most of my work resides, or will eventually.

Like irascible Bill Knott — who thinks I don’t like him, but I actually quite admire — I plan to put all my work online one day and then the world can read it, not read it, decide if it’s great or mediocre. Only our egos and fear of death make us so manic to find our place in “history” and secure our “greatness.” Orr’s essay is just another in a long line of “death of poetry” pieces that come around every year or so. It’s another tale told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Write on, poets.

27 02 2009

EKSwitaj (06:19:54) : edit

When I think of Greatness, I think of Emily Dickinson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

27 02 2009

Obododimma Oha (10:39:15) : edit

Greatness is small things in voluminous sacks. And poets who write to be great small their ways. Let preference find greatness, if and only if. Orr or raw, it stings if we have to be fed the rations of writing well, like hell! Great poetry finds its own soil and sprouts; you don’t need to trans/plant it.

27 02 2009

Justin Evans (21:33:06) : edit

Dear David Orr:

I have a pony.

28 02 2009

premature talk of greatness « Very Like A Whale (01:28:32) : edit

[...] 28, 2009 at 7:28 am (poetry news) I’m with Reb and Amy on this [...]

28 02 2009

ryan (02:59:46) : edit

Dear David Orr:

Very soon, you won’t have an employer.