Some time back, a Facebook friend posted a link to the Poetry Foundation article on the decade in poetry and commented that it should have been called a decade in American poetry since it didn’t reflect British or Irish poetry.
Or Indian or African or Caribbean, I pointed out feeling a little miffed, perhaps unjustly so since there’s much more English poetry happening in Britain than in India. But it got me thinking about the surfeit of discussion available to us about what’s happening in the west poetrywise. In contrast, there’s very little writing or discussion on what’s happening here. There are the introductions to the anthologies edited by Parthasarthy and Mehrotra. Online, PIW has some essays. Bruce King’s essay talks about Indian poetics with regard to a number of poets right up to Arun Kolatkar and Meena Alexander. Other than this, I haven’t come across much. Muse India’s latest issue focused on Indian English writing but there was no essay on Indian English poetry as such and the editorial gave suitably vague nods to the fact that Indian English poetry is “alive and kicking”. That’s good news but in which direction are the feet pointing?
All of this is a bit limited compared to the vast gigabytes of west-centric lists, reviews and manifestos we can consume.
Partly — and only partly — the reason for this lacuna is that the world of Indian English poetry is so small and incestuous. Nobody wants to disagree with each other on what constitutes good poetry, or even poetry for that matter. The small and incestuous problem exists everywhere to some extent. A few months ago, there was an avid discussion on Harriet about reviews, the necessity of truth and so on. It’s hard to tell a fellow poet that you think their work sucks. It’s even harder in our situation when there are fewer of us. But forget giving nasty reviews, we* seem reluctant to talk about what we think about poetry even in general terms, its purpose, means of production, craft and so on. This is despite all the freedom the Internet allows. Maybe we should have a site where people can post anonymous opinions about these things.
A few days back I wrote a snarky post pointing to a poem published on the front page of The Hindu Literary Review. An hour later, I was guilt-ridden because I’m rarely nasty in public. I removed the post. Of course, by this time super-efficient feed readers had picked it up and some people read it anyway. Some people agreed with me. Some said I should put my post back online. One reader argued with me because he liked the poem and that I should’ve explained why I didn’t like it. I realised that he was probably right. If I was stepping into choppy waters, I needed to wade in a bit more.
I couldn’t bring myself to post the full critique that I wrote quite painfully. It seemed too rude, even cruel. So the culture of politeness clearly has me in its grip. But in a nutshell: the thought does not work for me. At its worst, it subsides into a public service message against using your cell phone while driving. There are hints of interesting themes in there but they’re never fully developed and buried too deep in ugly lines, banal words and cliche. Cheesy horror film images like “statued stalkers” do not help. Plus I do not like poems that say “Slap!” to convey the sound and sense of a slap.
I’ll also say that Eunice D’Souza’s collected poems Necklace of Skulls has just been published and Dilip Chitre died last month and deserves to be remembered. There is no lack of good poems (and poets) to choose from if HLR has decided to encourage poetry. I hope they won’t stop publishing poetry on the front page of Literary Review. I hope I’ll like the next one more.
I also think we should be less attached to individual poems we write and less ‘careful’ about critiquing other poems. Though they’re often compared to babies, they’re not really. You can’t revise a baby’s nose (oh well, now you can but you know what I mean) and you don’t have hundreds of them. A poem, one can revise. And since hundreds are expected, we’re going to keep trying to get it right. We may as well tell the truth about our relentless progeny. It will help.
*By ‘we’, I mean my generation of Indian English poets.
well, yes, of course. but – and forgive me if this is slightly snarky – we’ve moaned enough. all of what you say it true, but what is stopping us from putting up (even half-formed, work-in-progress) thoughts on contemporary indian poetry on our blogs? we’re not really looking for editorial validation for what we might write, right?
we’re all equally culpable: for not being supportive enough when support is needed; for not describing, arguing, holding each other responsible for out work.
(i’m working on something; so this is very timely).
and good luck! you have time to do all this days away from leaving?!
@SB: You’re right, we have moaned enough…which is why I put my comments about Kesavan’s poem back as part of this post.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this business about what’s okay to put on the blog. On the Poetics list, there was a long discussion recently about negative reviews and Alison Croggon talked about what the useful review looks like. Because the blog is such a fluid space though and the lines between opinion, snark and review are so blurry, I’ve been wondering how much of that applies.
I think there are several issues worthy of discussion in their own right here: what is a blog? What is a criticism? What is each good for?
My brief opinion is, you should do whatever you are comfortable with.
My expanded opinion is:
(a) What is suitable material for a blog?
1. A blog is more informal than a published material, but while the writing may not be as polished, and opinions may not be as carefully considered, ordinary standards of human interaction and behaviour should apply.
2. Though opinions on a blog may not be as thoroughly thought out as opinions in a scholarly book, the writer should still have thought a little about them, and be willing to stand by them, at least until persuaded otherwise. It should not be a medium for spouting off without thinking at all. (Of course this applies especially to you since you blog under your real name, but I’d say it equally applies to anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers.)
(b) What is the purpose of criticism?
It has several purposes:
1. Sometimes it is solicited, for self-improvement (which is what you are mainly talking about in this post), but this is probably not true of the particular poet you commented on. And, of course, there wasn’t much constructive criticism in the post that you deleted.
2. It can be meant to inform the reader to make a choice. This is useful if you are reviewing a book of poetry, for example, that requires some investment (both mental and monetary) to dig into. I don’t think that applies to a short poem in HLR, though. It is available a click away and doesn’t take an effort to read. I usually enjoy your pointers to stuff that you consider good (Pat Boran, for example), but why bother to point to stuff that you don’t consider good?
3. Criticism can be an art form in itself. One reads Martin Amis or Christopher Hitchens largely to enjoy their verbal brilliance, even if one disagrees with the content (which can be quite often, especially with Hitchens). Again, that wasn’t the case with the post that you deleted.
4. It may be just a way of spouting off, especially when it’s on a blog. To that, I’d say, do it only if you’re comfortable doing it (and that applies equally to those who don’t use their real names).
You are right about the small circle and incestuousness of Indian English poetry. I think any art form — art, music, literature — should be a continuum, from folk forms to the “high art” forms, and poetry is not an exception. Nilanjana had some thoughts on the subject of Indian English fiction, but I think it applies even more to poetry. Art must appeal to the public, at least to those members of the public who make an effort. Wagner and Debussy were considered daring and revolutionary, Stravinsky caused riots, but they are all hugely popular; but who listens to Stockhausen or Boulez? The early 20th century had Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats, T S Eliot; how many people since then are in the same league? In my opinion, “serious” music in the 20th century ceded the avant-garde “high ground” to jazz, and perhaps “serious” poetry ceded the high ground to the beat poets, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Some reconnection with the public is required.
A last thought: could some people’s reluctance to criticise be caused by a fear of looking silly in retrospect? (“How trite, feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! … Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!” – a review of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.) But I think it’s OK to be proved wrong now and then, and that should not stop a reviewer or critic. It should not stop you, but there should be substance to the criticism. I’m sure Gershwin’s critic had a pretty good track record for the most part. And, of course, not everything needs to be criticised: some things are best ignored.
So who is an Indian English poet, Anindita? And how do you know if you qualify? I’m Indian, I write poetry, which I’ve hardly published…am I one? Is it a self-conferred title?
It’s a lot like the titles of Ustad, Pandit and Vidushi in the genre of Indian classical music, wouldn’t you agree?
I hope I’m not coming across as snarky, but I would really love to know…
There are various points I’d like to make here (and thank you in advance for the space).
Firstly, I agree with SB about this being tired. We keep complaining and never do anything. It’s still interesting why we don’t write about each other’s poetry (since after all ‘we’ seem to constitute the majority of contemporary poetry readers) because everyone’s reasons are a little different.
Secondly, the word ‘critique’ gives me pause. I tend to associate that word with workshopping, which may or may not happen on blogs but generally doesn’t. I *think* you mean reviews, criticism and a combination of both, which generally come after the fact.
I’ve thought about this a fair bit, wondered why I don’t do much reviewing myself, and I’ve come up with two main reasons:
1. I’m used to writing critiques not criticism. I went through three or four years of writing critiques, and occasionally I’m good at it, like when I’m dealing with someone whose writing doesn’t intimidate me but is good and promising. I’m lousy with people who are way off and people whom I admire in an extreme sense of the word.
Most of my experience with criticism came from being a lit student, and that is not a good thing. You train yourself to write for each lecturer, slowly learning what each likes. The result is good grades, but very little development of critical skills. No voice. Like someone said, criticism is a skill too and needs to be honed. The best critics have a distinct voice, and may be appreciated for that voice even when the opinion itself is disagreeable.
I think that if you gathered all the essays I wrote as an undergrad, you’d see how schizophrenic my essay voice is. I go from radical commie to formal elitist to structuralist to my-own-ist.
I consider this a huge failure of higher education today. It could just be my education, but having read essays written by other Indians, I don’t think so. There is some horrendous work out there. Occasionally you find something you like (by an Indian), then you go look up the author and find they’ve studied abroad. You think ‘No wonder.’ I’m not saying, ‘All Indians who had an exclusively Indian education write bad essays,’ but most of us do.
2. I don’t trust other people. I trust a few friends and acquaintances (real and virtual) to not go ballistic when they disagree with me. But I don’t trust most others. This is partly due to actual experiences I’ve had (not so unpleasant that I’d delete my blog and go into hiding, obviously, but bad enough for me to think someone might want to send me a virus) and partly due to horror stories I’ve heard.
In other words, the environment often is absolutely hostile to criticism. All you have to do is think how offended someone gets when you tell them you don’t think much of their favourite author or director, then imagine how much worse it would be if you told them you didn’t think much of their own work. I don’t think I’m being polite when I shut up, I’m simply responding to my instinct for self-preservation.
To conclude my great thesis: these are reasons and not excuses. I’m disappointed with how dainty I’ve become, and have made a resolution to write some essays, or at least, essay-like blog posts. I know I want to write something on Vivek Narayanan’s Universal Beach. In one way, it’s a safe choice, because the book is quite good, and even if you didn’t think so, he’s unlikely to throw a hissy fit (from what I’ve heard; an incestuous world means you get to hear these things). On the other hand, a lot of his work is very demanding. So, bah, my work is cut out for me.
Also want to write something on Kamala Das. That one is unlikely to be positive.
Ok, these are really long comments and I’m not sure I’ll have time to respond now (since I’m in Chennai and taking a train in a bit. But…some thoughts.
@Rahul: “ordinary standards of human interaction and behaviour should apply.” — which are?
“It should not be a medium for spouting off without thinking at all.” A positive pointer is also often as thinking or unthinking as a negative. Why is that okay and not the negative? Or should blogs be cleaned of such ”unthinking” posts altogether?
“Art must appeal to the public, at least to those members of the public who make an effort.” — this is too much to tackle in comment space I think.
Agree with you that reviewers are allowed to be wrong. More later, when I have time.
@Mamma: I don’t see it as a title, more as a professional label / marker. A person who writes a few articles a year and publishes only in one place has as much right to call themselves a journalist as someone who edits the Guardian. How that label is perceived by others depending on the surrounding factors is a different matter. Why don’t you send to journals? It would be nice to read.
@Aditi: I use the word critique in the dictionary sense. As I said in my post, I’m asking about everything ranging from half-formed opinion as Dala put it, to critical essays.
I agree about our higher education not preparing us well. But blog posts don’t demand much, I think. They’re way easier than writing proper critical essays, I think. Understand the “simply responding to my instinct for self-preservation.” I think that affects a lot of us. But one of the things I asked therefore is how come we don’t even have more general discussions about what we like and don’t like. That would offend nobody. It’s hard to discuss poetics without examples, but one could always pick more remote people or poets.
Great resolution. Look forward to your essay on Vivek’s book…
More later, when I’m back.
@
Anindita — all I meant was “Google remembers everything you say.” (And, as you found out, even things that you delete.) And I wasn’t trying to lecture you in particular: it was a general observation.
I was going to pen something longer on my own blog, but then I realised it had been gone through before. I re-read it today for amusement. I especially liked some of JF’s comments (though he goes on far too long, and no, I don’t know who he is). Eg,
Too much poetry is clever turns of phrase without any of the values that are traditionally considered poetic. But, generally, what is a poem is a matter of taste. Most of the great poets were also very good writers of prose, and vice versa. Kesavan is a very good essayist, better than any of us commenting here. So I’d take his effort in the Hindu seriously, and based on informally asking non-poets around, many of them seemed to have liked it. Meanwhile, what do you think of his effort in Pratilipi, here? I wasn’t very impressed (he’s trying way too hard, it seemed to me, both to be clever/witty and to stay in “form”). Which is OK — good essayists can write bad poetry, or it could be a good poem that didn’t resonate with me. But presumably the people at Pratilipi liked it.
Dear Anindita, Nice to meet you yesterday, if briefly. As I said– I don’t agree with you about the Mukul Kesavan poem, I actually think it’s pretty interesting (especially after you explained the game of London Statues to me), so it would be good to hear in more detail about what you don’t like about it.
Just to give the link to the poem, for archival purposes: http://www.hindu.com/lr/2010/01/03/stories/2010010350080100.htm
Firstly, in the things I admire in a geeky sort of way dept., I want to note that the iambic tetrametre in this poem is pretty much flawless, quite alive and interesting in its variations, and never less than fluent and natural: each linebreak makes sense independently of the metre. That’s not really a big deal by itself, it’s more related to the craft of verse-making, but it counts for something in that I wonder how many of our generation can even hear metre anymore, let alone use it to make interesting and nimble music.
What I don’t like is the postcolonial echoes (intentional or not) that happen when an Indian plays with the word London. That’s a misdirection. But basically, it’s a poem about memory, an investigation of the sometimes strange way in which memory works: that I find interesting. This is a constantly revisited theme in AK Ramanujan’s poetry: some relatively innocent memory suddenly turned incongruous and even bizarre when it crops up in some completely different context. There’s a lack of proportion as you said– a fairly innocuous (or what we, as adults, would consider fairly innocuous) childhood fear is suddenly amplified and pops up when the adult is about to be hit by a truck on the highway. But it’s precisely that lack of proportion that I find interesting, and somehow authentic, true to what does happen in life. What is a little confusing is that the point in time from which the poem is told– the “time of narration”– is actually in the second half of the poem, so what happens is that it seems to start out as one kind of poem and then becomes another one entirely. But again, this also what I find interesting about the poem. I also found, I guess, the language reasonably deft– “grinning truck” was a pretty vivid turn, I thought. The sudden explosion of sound and alliteration that you point out in the mid-section of the poem–ending in Slap–is a risky thing for this poem to try, a bit showy, no doubt, but it works ok for me here because it conveys, in my reading, a child’s relationship to language.
Anyway, not a life changing poem maybe, but it did hold my interest and turn and turn in my mind; that’s all one asks for anyway. As for the larger concern, whether editors and decision makers at newspapers (and journals) have really read enough poetry for them to be the judge of what is good or bad, or whether they merely go by reputation and publish whatever someone they consider to be a Big Name sends them, that doubt lingers on.
Yeah, yeah, complaining again etc. But maybe all this complaining is a way of revving our engines up for a more lively and meaningful poetry world. One hopes. I’ve said it before, and I don’t seem to tire of saying again: what passes for criticism in our neck of the woods is either vague, favour-currying praise or its rarer evil twin, the sweeping, equally vague, dismissive or hateful vat of bubbling bile. Neither ends up being much help.
@Rahul: I didn’t think you were lecturing me. Was genuinely curious about what you think ‘ordinary standards’ are. People tend to be subjective about this a bit. I’m saying this from my experiences with UV that one person’s freedom of speech can be another person’s rudeness. And vice versa.
Poetry can be very subjective, of course. Billy Collins, Charles Bukowski and (differently) even Sylvia Plath or John Ashbery are examples of how subjective–there are people who hate them and others who form fan clubs. I’m sure Kesavan will not be overly upset about varying reactions to his poetry
.
There are poets who liked the poem as well. I was speaking to Vivek Narayanan yday and he did. In fact, he’s written a long comment on what he liked about the poem. So I am just going to approve that and then respond to it.
Anindita – standards of behaviour differ, of course; what I meant was that the standards should not be different online and offline. Don’t write about someone what you would not say to them face-to-face.
Criticism can be vigorous without being mean or nasty. What you wrote in the blogpost above is a legitimate expression of your point of view. Others can disagree, but there’s no reason for anyone to be offended or find it “mean”… I can’t say about the “full critique” that you couldn’t bring yourself to post (perhaps you can post it now, as a counterpoint to Vivek’s praise?)
I agree with pretty much all of the reasons Vivek liked it. I don’t know what “the game of London statues” is, but it seemed to me there were cricket allusions there, and (as I said on FB) “ellowen” was both London and the eleven in cricket. I liked the “grinning truck” (vehicle manufacturers are of course well aware that vehicle fronts look like faces). Even the phrase you suggest is cliched, “statued stalkers”,
sounds unusual to me (but, as I said, I don’t know the London statues game). In fact, the only phrase I’d consider cliched is “died a thousand deaths.” And I liked the fact that it was in meter (not quite “flawless”, but it doesn’t matter… )
I didn’t like the trees poem because, I think, the lines seemed strained and contrived to fit into the meter and rhyme-scheme (and the Indian words seemed to be chosen for the same reason): it didn’t read very naturally to me. The London poem flows very well, it seems to me. Perhaps the fact that he chose not to rhyme it opened up his language.
Rahul, when I say “pretty much flawless”, I include in this the occasional inverted feet, spondee-like emphases etc that are very much part of acceptable variation in certain metrical approaches; indeed, as I indicate in the later clause, such variation–playing against the set expectation of the metre– is as you probably know part of what makes the rhythm of a metrical poem interesting as opposed to monotonous. And as far as I can hear, I think Kesavan is sure of what he’s doing on that account–the standard inverted foot at the start of the line and so on…?
I also don’t like his verse in Pratilipi very much, but I don’t know if it’s because he’s getting stifled by the rhyme. It’s a very different mode altogether, a kind of comic light verse style (and in comic verse rhymes are often deliberately emphasised) that’s the sort of thing I usually associate him with. But in this Hindu poem and also in a similar one he had in Mint there is something more tender going on: http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/11/27222338/Free-verse–Mukul-Kesavan.html ) In this second one, incidentally, every line rhymes but more quietly; it’s also about memory but is less ambitious and more pat.
All this is not to say that Kesavan is a very original or distinctive poet, or that he should automatically be compared with those that have given their life over to poetry, you understand. He’s not, at least not from the evidence of these two poems–the second one especially is clearly an imitation of the Movement–but I wouldn’t discount that he has both something honest he’s trying to say and a sense of a technique and skill with which to begin to say it.
Nice to see a poem being discussed in such detail.
@Vivek: It was lovely to meet you. I’m a little torn up about posting the details of what I don’t like because it feels like I would be laying into it but…
I have no argument with the fact that the poem has some interesting thoughts. Like you say, memory. Also, like I said yesterday, the ironic contrast between the childhood freeze of fear and the adult one. Then, there is the metaphor of the touch-me-nots which I really like for its connotations of privacy, shyness and the sort of painful closing that shyness brings on.
The metric variations, however, did not work for me. The spondees are clunky in places. The iambic metre relies heavily on too many filler words which make the poem fluffy, non-dense. Coupled with the almost comic ending (the image of the man shouting London) this might have worked as a light, tripping poem with an absurdist touch. But there are too many lines at odds with this — the exaggerated seriousness of the statued stalkers teetering out of stillness, the sting of death, paroled from panic, sudden death, drawn-out doom and so on. Of course, the poem is also riddled with abstractions. In this case, I tend to agree with Pound on “dim lands of peace”. There are poems which can carry it off, but in my opinion, this one doesn’t really.
I was very bored by the choice of words in the poem, especially verbs. For a very active poem — play, movement, death — the verbs used are dull. The start with “trembling” was not encouraging. Haven’t children and flowers trembled a little too much in poetry already? But shout, whirl and teetering did not help. I’m not saying that every poem must come loaded with unusual verbs but this poem might have done more for me if it had a couple of verbs that seemed less lazy. I found some of the imagery stale — “last one (man) standing”, “safe in middle age”, “died a thousand deaths”, and “sudden death” are so cliched that three of them are band names, movie names and so on. “grinning truck” was okay though very Stephen King. The plain childishness of the middle is a bit too obvious to be interesting.
I hope that explains my lack of love a little. But language works strangely. Different strokes?
@Rahul: I’m sure lots of non-poets liked it. Lots of non-poets disliked it too. Not that I think popularity is any measure of craft but just…since you mentioned it earlier. I’m unsure of what you meant by that statement though. Was it meant to be substantiating of something? I’m not really a fan of the ‘well, lotsa people like it so it must be good.’ I can think of too many examples of that.
I used to play London Statue when I was a kid and frankly, I can’t see how it’s like cricket. I’m wondering why you do…is it possible that your knowledge about the poet’s other work is informing this? I agree that some of the imagery could be cricket. In which case, what is that layer adding? And in which case, I must say I’m slightly perturbed by everything the poem is trying to do.
@Aditi: “I think that if you gathered all the essays I wrote as an undergrad, you’d see how schizophrenic my essay voice is. I go from radical commie to formal elitist to structuralist to my-own-ist.”
Oh, what is the my-own-ist? Wouldn’t that be the right voice to write in?
@Vivek: I didn’t see your last post before commenting. Hmm, I don’t disagree strenuously with the fact that he has “both something honest he’s trying to say and a sense of a technique and skill with which to begin to say it.”
“to begin” is important for me.
My original point was that I didn’t think it was good enough at all as a finished poem / or to be on the front page of HLR. I want to clarify that I have no sweeping opinions about him as a poet as such. I haven’t read enough to have an opinion on that.
Vivek: I found “when statued stalkers teetered / out of stillness. The game would thin” a bit clunky in meter, as also “to him, the last one standing”. It’s not just spondees or inverted feet (which, as you say, are acceptable, as are occasional extra syllables at line-ends). But again, as I said, I didn’t have a big quarrel with it.
Yes, I was seeing it as an amateur work. Was the choice to publish it influenced by Kesavan’s stature as a writer? Perhaps. (But the same could be said of Andrew Motion. I found this example ghastly, even though I agree generally both with the poem’s sentiment and with the poet’s in the last line before the poem.) Thanks for the link to the livemint poem. His love of cricket comes through, and the language flows smoothly despite his adherence to the metrical form. But it looks like quite a straightforward narrative, no hidden layers there: only the last line sounds even slightly memorable to me.
Anindita: I wasn’t saying that it should be good because it is popular, or vice versa. The relation between popular taste and artistic merit is complex. But you sounded excessively dismissive to me, both here and (especially) in your deleted post. As a fine writer of prose, Kesavan has, I would say, some literary taste, which (I would think) would restrain him from putting out his efforts if they were too atrocious. (The trees poem, I think, is meant to be light verse — as Vivek also suggests.)
About the cricket, well maybe it was in my imagination — “the shout of Out!” especially evoked it, but also “the last man standing” and “sudden death” (not so much a cliche as a sporting term, not officially in cricket until recently, but common in informal play). I had london statue explained to me a little while ago, and it certainly fits much better. But maybe there was some double entendre, given his other interests. Or maybe not.
If it is not comparable to some of the best works of some people who have spent their lives in poetry, so what? Not all of the prose in The Hindu is particularly memorable, either…
ps – thanks both of you for a very insightful discussion.
Rahul, I guess you’d have to explain to me what exactly about those lines don’t fulfill the metre for you…? If I were to think like Mukul Kesavan, I’d probably say that the “feminine” ending and dropped foot on teetered and the trochees on the next line convey the movement of teetering, which are then righted to iambs after the pause after stillness. “to HIM, the LAST one STANDing” is meant to be read as iambic because of the expectation of the metre; the caesura and the unbalancing of the line is again righted by the pause in the next line:
to him, the last one standing,
paroled from panic, sudden death.
In fact I understand the musicality of this as playing out over the whole four lines–
when statued stalkers teetered
out of stillness. The game would thin
to him, the last one standing,
paroled from panic, sudden death.
–where the dropped syllable in line 1 above is matched in line 3, righted in lines 2 and 4. For this to work out most satisfyingly, you’d have to hear a drastic slowing of tempo
from line 2–and this of course matches the way time is slowed in this scene. I guess I’d have to read it out loud to you to fully demonstrate how I hear it. All of these effects, I think, would be par for the course in Shakespeare, though perhaps not in Donne or Kesavan’s (I suspect) hero, Larkin. I’m not saying that Kesavan’s music is anywhere near that good, I’m just saying that it’s not incorrect.
Of course these are ultimately very subjective questions; but my point is just that there seems ample evidence that Kesavan is fully aware of and, in whatever semi-conscious way even intends his effects. That always counts for something: whether I agree with a writer’s decisions or not, I do respect them when I see that they are aware of what they’ve done and what they’re presenting to us and aren’t just working haphazardly as many do…
Cheers!
Ah yes, and poor Andrew Motion! He has since repudiated most of his Guardian poems. In his case he claims that not only did they print whatever he sent them, but more that they begged and coerced him to write those poems.
Thanks–it would be great to try and sustain this process of close readings with a number of others joining in.
V.
Vivek – thanks, I suppose I wasn’t reading it correctly in my mind, especially the pauses. To include the previous line,
THEN the WHIRL, the SHOUT of OUT
when STATued STALkers TEETered
OUT of STILLness. the GAME would THIN
to HIM, the LAST one STANding
parOLED from PANic, SUDden DEATH.
It works, though there is still a missing syllable in the stalkers line — but as you say, it, and the transition to iambs after “stillness”, may be meant to convey “teetering”. Yes, he knew what he was doing (I didn’t doubt that: he must be more familiar with poetry than me) — but the explanation that this wobble is meant to convey “teetering” is fascinating.
Also, as you say, how many people hear these things any more? I know I was never taught all this in school — what little I know was picked up later.
Yes, indeed– I *was* sort of taught it in secondary school, in such a horrendous and abstract way that it took me years and years to painfully unlearn what I’d been taught and get on the road to listening… Was it that way with you too? Anyway, nice to meet you. It’s good to meet an avowed non-poet or avowed non-published poet (whatever “published” means in this day and age, which is not much at all, you know), and that too, a prose writer (professional prose writers include some of the biggest poetry haters) who hasn’t yet turned off to these things.
And Anindita, for starting this thread. I suppose now we’ve gone and milked this poem for far longer than necessary! Sorry to everyone for that.
all i can say is—do onto others what you would stand others doing onto you.
as ‘Anton Ego’ puts it,
“ays, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
vivek – nice to meet you too. Btw, I found you on fb and messaged you a little while ago — we’re in the same city so should meet in real life. I’m not actually a professional writer of prose (whatever that means), though I do need to write prose, of a sort, as part of my profession — I’m a scientist. But I do try to make my prose readable. Many scientists have been fine writers of prose…
@meow:
I agree to some extent but still feel there is a need for crit.
@Vivek: You’re welcome. Please don’t apologise — it was interesting. You were taught scansion in school –? I was taught it only in college as part of the lit degree course. I must say thought that Sophia College was not too bad at all and I, at least, thought they made it interesting.
@Rahul: Thanks for all your thoughts. It’s terrific to hear from a avowed non-poet, as Vivek says. I take your point about sounding dismissive. It’s important to figure out how to offer criticism, even negative or half-formed, and I have to work this one out. We need to talk about the obscurity thing one of these days. I’m really interested to know what you feel because you’ve mentioned it more than once.
Anindita – do you mean my comments on the FB thread? Well, this particular poem seemed a bit obscure to me then, not so much now that I am enlightened about London statues. I think I mentioned “How soon the servant sun” as an example of an obscure poem, and you observed that Dylan Thomas was pushing the limits of language. I would add that he had the right to do so because he was writing astonishing, form-perfect poems before he became a teenager (and, as an adult, wrote the greatest villanelle ever). As they say, to break the rules you need to know the rules. I’d say you need to do more than know the rules: you need to master the rules. I expanded on that a bit in this comment, which perhaps I’ll clean up and make a blog post in its own right. But basically, Dylan Thomas earned the right for us to take his more obscure stuff seriously and not dismiss it as crap. Someone who only wrote obscure formless poetry would not have the same right to be taken seriously. I’m sure many will disagree with that last statement, but then it gets into the question of whether art that is only appreciated by a few self-proclaimed “cognoscenti” can still be called art. Even an expanded blog post won’t be enough to address that question….
The reason I’m thinking of expanding the thought is that the “breaking the rules” thing applies to science too: I gave an example in the comment linked above, but there are many others.
@Rahul: Hmm, okay. This poem didn’t seem obscure to me. As you say, because I knew about London Statue. How did so many people grow up without playing this?
I’m not terribly affected by this form versus free verse thing. If you like it, you like it. How does it matter what the form is? Form / technique is only a tool finally. I read the post attached to the comment you linked to, and the other comments. Lots of interesting stuff there. But I find the endless defining of what ‘poetry’ is a bit tiring. (I also have some thoughts on self-identifying as a poet but that’s a separate discussion.)
Coming back to the obscure debate — You see to be saying that free verse is obscure. But maybe you mean post-modern poetry? I don’t find Larkin or Yeats obscure at all for example. It would be nice to identify specific poets or schools in relation to the obscurity argument, which might help make it more specific.
Will look forward to that post.
I suppose I’ve mainly read the non-free verse of Larkin and Yeats
I do believe, however, that their ability with the language — displayed in their highly metrical verse — also improved their free (or free-er) verse. (Also, it is useful to distinguish between “blank verse”, that retains meter but abandons rhyme, and “free verse”, that abandons meter as well as rhyme. So I don’t think I’ve every seen any free verse by these poets, but I’m not very widely read.).
It is easy to say “if you like it, read it, if you don’t like it, don’t”. But that is not compatible with worrying about the small and incestuous audience for poetry, I believe. There is a reason Larkin was more popular than, say, his contemporary Ted Hughes…
No, you’re right, of course. I was somehow forgetting about blank verse and looking at it in terms of rhyming versus non-rhyming. and I don’t why I said Larkin at all. I think I’m confused about your argument because you’re talking about obscurity on the one hand and free verse on the other and I don’t associate the two things so much.
I’m not sure why you would connect my concern with the small and incestuous world of poetry with my unwillingness to prefer formal poetry (including metric forms) over free verse or vice versa. I like to read and write both. The subject of a poem often calls for a certain form or freeness. And I wouldn’t judge how good or bad a poem is based only on that aspect. That’s what I was saying, probably a bit casually.
ps: I think I meant Williams. Not sure why I typed Larkin. This is why I should not be doing this now. Will stop this minute and reply to all comments after I’m in England.
Well, you’re right, obscurity and form should not be related or correlated. It just seems to me, as a reader, that they often are. Or maybe it’s just that when a poem has a pleasing metrical structure and rhyme, I am willing to spend more time on it, even if it seems obscure.
A poem should have some qualities that appeal to the reader: if it lacks form, it must compensate strongly in other ways, it seems to me.
Now, you may like to read and write both forms of poetry, but you are a prolific writer and reader of both, and therefore not representative of the public. The question is how to make the audience larger…
OK, was wondering about that. Bon voyage and have fun.
@ Anindita
My-own-ist has not been developed sufficiently. It’s not very different from my talking/blog voice, and that’s problematic, I think, because I come off snarky far too often.
Re: Anton Ego — His character works for the movie, but he’s cliche if there ever was one. We have to move away from this idea of the critic as someone waiting rain on someone’s parade.
Re: the poem — Someone called it doggerel, I think. I don’t think it’s doggerel. It’s simply one of those poems I don’t like to read. It feels too heavily worked upon, like here:
Slap! voice muted mid-gabble,
back livid with the sting of dying.
And this reminds me, I rarely appreciate the dropping of articles and other tiny helpful words. Have they been sacrificed to the metre, I wonder.
There is also something bathetic about the poem, not helped by that ending.
All in all, I don’t have many problems with his craft. It’s more a matter of taste.
On a side note: I wonder if those lines are meant to be double spaced. I sense that these are not single lines on their own, but one large stanza, or four stanzas of six lines each, in which case The Hindu has messed up badly.
Thank you for this blog post, Anindita. This has inspired me to think about the world of Hong Kong English poetry.
@Aditi: Hmm, I wonder if the blog as a medium lends itself to snarkiness because I find that happening with me too. Yes, I wondered about the lines too.
@t: Oh good, hope to see a post from you on that. It would be nice to compare… and we should meet up soon!
Snark can be good — it’s why I read The Economist, for instance. (I once used that word in talking with someone who writes for them, and then felt I had to clarify that I meant it in a good sense. He said no need to clarify, they’re proud of it!) But there is a thin line between that and pompousness. It requires some talent to pull it off
Anindita, my post is here: http://tammyholaiming.com/2010/01/20/small-and-incestuous/. (I used your expression ’small and incestuous’ as the title of the post.) I see that you are coming to London this weekend! But we have already made plans. If you come next time, I’d love to have a coffee/tea with you.
@t: I saw your post.
Oh no problem about that. I’m in Canterbury for three months so I’ll probably be coming to London a few times. We can plan for it next time.