Chekhov's Mistress
Poets Afraid of Alice Quinn?
The New York Times’s Mitoko Rich covers the controversy over the new Elizabeth Bishop book (“New Elizabeth Bishop Book Sparks a Controversy,” April 1). Controversy? Hardly. Helen Vendler wrote her opposition in The New Republic, but, as I wrote here, that seemed a matter of form rather than substance.
In absence of any real controversy, Rich claims that “Few poets are willing to go public with their complaints.”
Is this so? Is that how it works in the poetry world? Apparently:
“The New Yorker is one of the few general-interest magazines that still publishes poetry, and appearing in it is a major coup. ‘Alice is a very important person in the literary world,’ said Ms. Swenson [of the Academy of American Poets], who had a difficult time finding a poet willing to talk to a reporter about the contretemps. ‘I’m not surprised that some poets would not want to be critical of a book that she edited.’”
The New Yorker publishes pretty much just major mainstream poets. It’s hard to imagine, say, John Ashbery quivering in silence from fear of Ms. Quinn banning him from the magazine. Portraying this non-event as a Vendler-Quinn smackdown sounds to me like a little p.r. job aimed at nothing more than boosting sales, but with the unfortunate affect of portraying the poetry world in a bad light. Poets should be insulted more by this article than the publication of a dead poet’s drafts.
More opinions
Cahiers de Corey
Bemsha Swing (On Orr’s article, not this one)
comments
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 03, 2006
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:0
- Links to this Post: Technorati
