Chekhov’s Mistess

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June 2007

The Lion Tamer Gets Wrapped Up in His Whip

In a tour de Logan David Mason surveys a handful of new poetry books for the latest issue of the Hudson Review. He begins “The Poetry Circus” by taking down Mark Strand:

“Perhaps this is why Mark Strand seems the representative poet of our time. He has had a major career without ever writing a great poem. The best thing I can say about his new collection, Man and Camel, is that its pages are exquisitely designed and printed.”

While you’re still shuddering from the sting, Mason whops Stephen Dunn with “his new book occasionally exhibits a style so plain it’s like old bread” and then unleashes on Paul Muldoon just a bit before putting some newer poets up on the pedestal from where he knocked their predecessors off. Indeed, his compliments toward two newer poets Caroline Bird and John Menaghan seem a bit backhanded by the time he gets to them and the excerpts he chooses for them (he’s spare with those altogether) are, I doubt, the best representations he could find. Traveling up the Big Top, Mason finds in his friend H.L. Hix a poet who does not “wear his style superficially”, getting I think, to the point of Mason’s diatribe toward the established poets.

But you wonder how Hix got to be included in this crowd when Mason says “he makes style out of rigorous inquiry, and while I cannot pretend to understand everything he writes, I usually find it intriguing.” Keep in mind that Mason began the essay quoting Schopenhauer’s words as a model: “…nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep things in such a way that everyone must necessarily grasp them.”

Finally, when Mason devotes time to Bill Coyle’s first book – winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize – he concludes with:

“Truth is, what I really want to do is take Coyle’s lucid, humane poems and wave them like flags in the poetry circus. This is how it’s done, you clowns! It’s not about your careers. It’s about the world and the poor sots who live in it and sometimes buy the books and actually want to read them.”

The problem I have with Mason’s essay is that his takedown of established poets serves little to no analytical purpose and his survey-like approach does little justice to the poets he wished to praise. I don’t write this in defense of those poets (as though they need me to defend them). Truth is, I’m not a great fan of Mark Strand’s poetry (besides some terrific pieces in Man and Camel that I will talk about later), mostly because I too often find there platitude when I’m looking for meaning couched in words that make meaning memorable, which is maybe why I do like Muldoon so much. As Mason says (only to use this characterization against him right after) “nobody else has fun with words quite the way he does,” which reminds me of the adage that the writer expresses, he does not communicate.

No wonder then that the piece is titled “The Poetry Circus” as though to imply just being in the ring is to be a clown. There’s no winning in this ring – that is in being a professional poet – so it would seem that Mason’s problem is more with Poetry as represented by three established poets more than their poetry. If he had taken more time than to just sling a few zingers against them (the Hudson Review prides itself on giving their writers all the space they need, so he can’t blame editorial constraint) I’d be writing here about some great new poets I’d never heard of rather than this critique of failed criticism.

• posted by Bud Parr
• 18-Jun-2007
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