Blog | Advice to Kent on his Art |
Epigramititis: 118 Living American Poets
by Kent Johnson
BlazeVox Books
These epigrams of yours can barely work—
an ounce of lard in which a thought might lurk;
or an attempt to hurt dressed in a bramble
of brittle thorns that break off as you ramble.
Precise and gleaming, wit’s lightning blade
Requires rhyme to buttress what is said:
One cannot stab with daggers made of dough,
Or vivisect with blades of melting snow.
It’s rhyme that sets the epigram apart
And gives the snicker snack to this fierce art.
(Or at least in English—other poets may
Autopsy dullness in a classic way
With stressed and non, their feet may sharply kick
But their translated spurs can barely stick.)
Slapdash free verse with line breaks here and there
Cannot be honed to an instrument of fear,
But brings down brick-bats on the careless head
And resonates with dullness when it’s read.
So the effect is quite the opposite intended,—
The offender becomes the jest of those offended:
An easy target for their japes and jeers,
A roaring fool; the sheep to his own shears.
Whitman was not a wit, Rochester was:
The rhymester wins hands down in witty wars.
So, Kent, instead of “epigrams” of wood,
Recast your lines, and then seek to draw blood.
March 24th, 2006 at 4:59 am
This is from Joseph Dumer:
Well, if anything — all of these comments, including Silliman’s blog post are making me interested in buying this book!
March 25th, 2006 at 1:28 am
Kent’s a friend, and of course I’m happy if this tiny tempest generates some sales for him. On the other hand, since my own participation in the discussion, Kent’s assumed a bullying tone in his e-mails that I find a bit–well,–silly. In point of fact, the whole book is shot through with a) very bad writing and b) pathology which Kent somehow confuses with wit. Clearly, Kent’s out of his depth here. So if you’re up for that sort of thing, and have some spare cash burning through your pockets, then by all means…On the other hand, you could purchase a real book of poetry by someone like Oppen, Corman, or Eileen Tabios.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:08 am
Hello,
I’m bemused as to why Jesse claims I have assumed a “bullying tone” in my emails to him. Maybe he’d like to share the offending email(s) in question here. He has my permission, so that others may judge whether or not I have been uncivil towards him. Actually, I thought I was quite gracious and good humored in my reply to his riposte. I *did* say in one, and as preview to my epigram-reply below (posted on the BlazeVox site two or three hours after he posted his poem at Poetics) that I thought his poem was laden with some “anxiety.” I also think I said he didn’t seem to “get” some things about the book’s nature, and that his Augustan rhymes, fun in some ways as they are, betray a bit too much effort, even “strain,” in their attempt to show-up my book’s lack of polish, as it were. But that is hardly “bullying.”
Indeed, if Jesse had read the collection’s Praefatio with more care, he might have seen that I make no claims at all for the “poetic” value of the epigrams: To the contrary, I present them as “mere bagatteles” of comparatively “tame badinage”! So why Jesse is getting all in a snit about their “poor quality” is beyond me. They are throw-offs indeed–and this is, though Jesse doesn’t like it, part of their charm. Like the one below for him, which is going into the second edition, along with a bunch of other new ones…
But I also told Jesse that I appreciated, even “loved” the fact that he’d made the effort to write in response, and I had his agonistic retort posted on the BlazeVox site the minute I saw it. There it is.
Anyway, all in all, it’s in the nature of satire, when it’s doing some needed work, to evoke a range of strong reaction: from delight, to contempt, to praise, to dismissal. Or to studied avoidance… So it’s all good. I thank Jesse again. And the beat goes on.
Kent
*
Jesse Glass
He spent a fortnight or so polishing like an academician
a “review,� in couplets, of Epigramititis’s first edition.
Therein, he shames my free verse as a sheep self-shorn
and pleads I recast my prosy lard in Augustan prosody.
Alas and forsooth, I am something of a peasant at Poetry!
And speaking of farm animals, Jordan, isn’t it a pleasing twist
how the final letters of his name recall that figure often kissed
in The Dunciad? Yea, how more redolent than a flea to Donne is to see
his glass-eyed rhymes sucking me, and so richly scented with a minor-born
poet’s…well, in a timbre, as they say (forgive these overly long last lines): Anxiety.
March 25th, 2006 at 11:59 am
Is that an epigram? I think not.
Blow harder, Kent, if that is all you’ve got.
You roar to one and all (as is your wont)–
With every spavined line you prove my point.
March 25th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Kent–by all means “share the e-mails.” I have nothing to hide. The anxiety seems to be all yours, friend, not mine. In addition, the bad writing certainly is all yours.