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The Potentate and the Pontiff

by Joseph S. Salemi

I have often argued that the formalist techniques of traditional poetry are ideologically neutral, and can be made to serve any agenda or cause. I still believe that. If the Communist Pablo Neruda, the Fascist Ezra Pound, and the High Church Anglican T.S. Eliot could all employ the devices of formal verse, then those devices are tools, and nothing else.

However, I sense a growing conviction among those who discuss such matters that the issue is now more complex. Some people are coming to believe that there are certain inescapable non-aesthetic implications in the choice and use of formal techniques in verse. Paul Lake, for example, has argued that there is an inherent bias towards conservatism in formal verse simply because of its acceptance of fixed meaning and orderly discourse as givens. And an omnibus review some years ago in the TLS presented us with three books that assert the religious substrate of poetic expression in general (see Stephen Prickett, “Religion will keep breaking through,” Nov. 11, 2011).

I’m troubled by these rumblings, since it seems to me that they are part of a larger trend towards domesticating poetry by giving it a purpose, a place, and a labeled niche in our already hyper-organized world. And that is the very last thing we need. Modern industrialized society hates anything that is free, uncontrolled, and not subject to regulation. What better way to denature and geld poetry than to insist on its connection to secular or divine order?

Poetry always gets into trouble when it tries to subordinate itself to what I call “The Potentate or The Pontiff.” By Potentate I mean political orthodoxy; by Pontiff I mean religious orthodoxy. When a poet feels that his work must pass a doctrinal litmus test administered by worldly or otherworldly watchdogs, he tends to paralyze himself. And shut your mouth about Dante and Milton—even in their cases the poetry is more important than the theology or politics.

Any poet who has spent decades submitting work to small magazines (as I have) can tell you about the stubborn recalcitrance of editors with strong religious beliefs, and how difficult it is to get them to publish any sort of poem that someone somewhere might consider “impious” or “offensive to morality.” And this isn’t a political divide: soi-disant conservative editors who are also Bible-thumpers have given me much grief about my “immoral” poems, while the more typical airhead left-liberal editors have refused to consider any poem that doesn’t comport with the catechism answers of the Church of the New York Times. The attitude of both sets of editors seems to be “Let video games and the internet be the venues for sex, violence, and unorthodox thinking—we’ll just continue to produce Victorian embroidery suitable for framing.” And so we have the peculiarly middle-class phenomenon of mainstream American poetry (whether formal or free verse), all carefully orchestrated by State Poetry Societies and discussion groups and MFA programs and public readings and editorial boards so as to be positive, child-friendly, and focused on what is “decent” and “appropriate.” My gorge rises in disgust when I think of such people and their Smiley-Face blandness.

What lies behind this prissiness is the notion that religious beliefs or morals or political principles (or even more commonly, the bourgeois imperatives to “positive thinking”) are absolutely paramount, and that everything else in our universe has to play second fiddle to them. It’s a horrible, freedom-stifling notion that every true poet should reject with contempt. The people who nurture this notion say to themselves “No matter what else I do, I’ll never write an immoral, indecent, negative, or politically incorrect poem.” To which one can only respond: “Oh really? Then you’re just a cowardly little schmuck with deficient creativity.”

What about the suggestion that formal verse’s discursive and semantic formality is in itself profoundly conservative? Well, I’m a bit doubtful. The underlying supposition there is that the enemies of conservatism are by definition incoherent, disordered, and surrealistic. But that’s not always or primarily the case. Liberals tolerate all sorts of incoherence and freakiness because of their glandular need to be “inclusive” (look at the DEI hysteria), but they can make use of the tools of ordered discourse as well as anyone else. Tools are, after all, just tools—and anyone who rejects rational discourse and fixed semantics on principle simply leaves the discussion. Tristan Tzara was cute for a while, but he is nowhere today.

As for religious conviction, some people think that if you are a religious believer you must be religious all the time. That might be true for a Carthusian monk, but it isn’t so for the rest of us. We all go off duty once in a while to get drunk and screw around. That’s why we have Mardi Gras and the Feast of Fools and All Hallows E’en. I’m always amused when persons confuse my far-right Roman Catholic integrisme with what they assume is a concomitant urge towards proselytizing moralism and the missionary impulse. They couldn’t be more wrong. On the contrary, I associate the latter tendencies with Protestantism, particularly in its detestable Low Church and evangelical manifestations. And I see poetry as in no way bound up with the teaching of lessons or the improvement of the human condition or the salvation of souls or the bringing of enlightenment to anyone. Poetry is just poetry. As Auden famously said, it makes nothing happen.

We should all be glad of this fact. Poetry is one of the few things left to us that isn’t subject to moral criteria or religious strictures. It bestows its favors or spews its venom in a happily non-partisan way.

I don’t want religion guiding poetry, any more than I want secular politics or ephemeral trendiness to govern it. Poetry makes use of religion or morals. But it is not the handmaiden of religion or morals. And this same principle can be applied to any real-world material that poetry may appropriate for its fictive task: politics, history, philosophical ideas, prejudices, legends, biographical information, fashions, economic theories… you name it, poetry can make use of it. But a poet does this in the same way that a carpenter grabs wood out of his lumber pile. It is for the sake of the made object, not for the sake of the wood itself.

After-the-fact interpreters and commentators often feel impelled to read a poem and domesticate it to current concerns and attitudes. That’s why we have stupid feminist professors trying to construe every text from the past in the light of the Seneca Falls declaration. But it is also a temptation for earnest Roman Catholics and other religionists. Let me give an example.

I recently re-read Gavin Douglas’s 1513 translation of the Aeneid into Scots (there’s a new edition of the text in the Tudor and Stuart Translations Series). Douglas was a devout clergyman—he was the Bishop of Dunkeld—as well as a learned reader who loved Vergil’s poetry. Besides translating Vergil’s epic into rhyming Scots couplets, Douglas also included introductory poetic prologues of his own to each of the poem’s books. These prologues are fascinating to read, since in them one can see the devout Christian churchman struggling to warn his readers (and himself) about the moral dangers of a work that deals so freely with love, hatred, murder, raw sex, pagan gods, suicide, sacrifice, augury, bloody warfare, betrayal, and all the other brutalities that the Aeneid lays before us in limpid Latin hexameters.

Gavin Douglas cherished the Aeneid enough to dedicate years of labor to its translation, but his Catholic conscience seems to have constantly bothered him concerning its decidedly un-Christian subject matter. His prologues do what they can to “moralize” Vergil’s text, very much like the Old French Ovide Moralisé that renders Ovid’s erotic verse palatable to churchgoers, or like the Italian writer who tried to turn Petrarch’s Canzoniere into pious Franciscan verse.

Reading Bishop Douglas’s prologues can make one laugh. Here’s his monitory comment to young Scottish girls who might be corrupted by reading Dido’s story in Book IV:

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Ashame, young virgins, and fair damsels,
Furth of wedlock for to distain your cauls!
Traist nocht all tales that wanton wooers tells,
You to deflower purposing, and nocht else;
Abhor sic price or prayer worship sells;
Where shame is lost quite shent is womanhede.
What of beauty, where honesty lies deid? (194-200)

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In other words, “Watch out, my bonny lasses—Jock and Angus are after your cherry.” And here’s his preachy defense of the descent of Aeneas to the underworld in Book VI:

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Shaws he nocht here the sins capital?
Shaws he nocht wicked folk in endless pain?
And purgatory for sins venial?
And virtuous people into pleasant plain? (41-44)

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In other words, Vergil is acceptable reading because he gives us moral lessons, and can be seen
as a precursor of Christian truth. Now Gavin Douglas was essentially an Aristotelian writing in the medieval accessus ad auctores tradition, so one can understand his profound need to find an acceptable teleology in a literary work that he admired. But what’s our excuse? Why do we have to justify or defend a poem by finding some way in which it helps improve the world or save souls?

The answer is unequivocal: We don’t. Poems aren’t obliged to end racism, or to present a slum clearance plan, or to save the environment, much less bring us to eternal bliss. They are just obliged to be well-wrought urns, as Cleanth Brooks said.

If there are any inherent implications in formal verse, they are neither religious nor political. They are solely aesthetic in nature. To me, the only ones are the following:

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1. Our language is a priceless inheritance that we must preserve and pass on.

2. Tropes, figures, and the various metrical arrangements are delightful in themselves.

3. Symmetry and balance are better than disorder, and closure is better than open-ended uncertainty.

4. Subject matter is no more important than anything else that helps make up the poem.

5. A well-crafted poem is a self-limiting goal, and is not answerable for whatever reaction it may or may not stir up in its readers.

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That’s all. There’s nothing else. Learn to live with it.

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Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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17 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I am amazed, Dr. Salemi, by your erudite essay so effectively illuminating poetic considerations. Before I found the Society of Classical Poets, I spent a couple of months submitting just a few poems to three magazine publishers. Three of my poems were accepted by two different ones and one made their honor list. Then I submitted three rhyming poems to another place and was given a one-year subscription for their publication, but my poems were not accepted. When I began reading their publication, I realized that not a single rhyming poem had been accepted from anywhere. I also tried three contests and none of the winners or honorable finishers had poems than rhymed. I have learned that meter alone can matter, but beyond that, what I consider narcissistic drivel, low level quality rhetoric, and often liberal biased subject matter with anticultural, abusive, and asinine features are considered better. Fortunately, I found SCP shortly thereafter and eschewed sending my poems to the Philistines. Thank goodness for SCP and thank you for such a great essay.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, LTC Peterson. Editors are human beings, and they have their prejudices. What’s sad is that the liberal-left has an almost total hegemony over the current po-biz world, and they have imposed a stifling orthodoxy on publication, grants, awards, aid to younger writers, and anything else that involves the public face of our art. That is why there is a deadening sameness to what appears in poetry journals (whether print or on-line) in regard to political and cultural attitudes.

      But I also have found that when persons of intense religious conviction try to fight this phenomenon, they have the unfortunate tendency to generate an inquisitional orthodoxy of their own making, as if their viewpoints, assumptions, and attitudes were the only acceptable ones in the making of verse.

      If we are going to refuse orders from the secular Potentate, we should similarly refuse obeisance to a divine Pontiff. Poetry MUST remain a licensed zone of hyper-reality.

      Reply
  2. James Sale

    A great piece of writing and invective, Joe! I wouldn’t express it as you do, but the Spirit – the Muse – blows where she lists, and so the containers and their contents can be of only minor import – especially if the Muse is not there. There is a purity about the Muse that we recognise when we read/hear it: it energizes the language. And by purity, I do not mean moral or religious purity: Rochester is a favourite of mine, as is Milton, and the Muse spoke through them both. In one sense the Romantic identification of the poet and the prophet is true; and just as in the Old Testament there are many false prophets, it is the living words of the true prophets we remember. But returning to the containers – the forms – some forms are better, are more important than others: sonnets are far more important than haikus! And as for the contents: some topics are more important than others . However, one’s attempting to write about a ‘big’ topic, doesn’t mean one is writing well or even writing poetry. The C19th was choc-a-block full of epic poets who wrote total epic cr*p! But thanks for this – an important contribution to the poetics of today.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, James. I do agree with you that there are levels of importance in poetry, whether in genre, subject matter, or verse forms. What I object to is an unspoken assumption (people of all different persuasions seem to hold it) that what one deals with and how one writes about it will determine whether or not one’s work gets the honorific title of “literature.” A silent assumption of this sort gives carte blanche to all sorts of censors and gatekeepers.

      Reply
  3. Brian A. Yapko

    Joe, this is a spectacular piece which challenges any and all poets to get over themselves and their ideologies and to understand that poetry, like music, comes in countless shapes and forms. I love Bach and I love the Beatles. Very different but both have their virtues and a place at the table. Poetry is much the same. I love Shakespeare and I’ve learned to love Plath But neither one is charged with the responsibility of edifying me. If I want to read the Psalms, I know where to find them. Writing poetry is not an act of communion. It is an act of expression. As such it needs the freedom to state whatever it needs to state without running afoul of the literary gestapo. It needs to breathe. Sometimes it will edify. But sometimes it needs to offend. For every Wordsworth there is a Rochester. Now I don’t especially love Rochester, but I respect him and ensuring that his work is published and studied is a cause for which I will fight tooth and nail.

    You raise several important points for us to ponder. Must classical poetry inherently be conservative (politically, theologically, thematically) or can it be transgressive, experimental, addressing subjects that are sordid as well as lofty? Does poetry have a right to exist if it is not edifying? And if so, where should such poetry be published?

    I am one of those who happens to think there IS a correlation between the use of classical forms and conservatism. But the significance of a mere correlation should not be overstated. I liked Kubla Khan and Death Be Not Proud no less when I was a Democrat than I do now that I’m a Republican. And I liked them just as much when I was a borderline agnostic as I do now that I possess a deeper faith. Conservatism is not necessarily a predictor of taste any more than the idea that my being gay dictates that I should like Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman or Allen Ginsberg. Demographics is an interesting but hardly conclusive predictive model. I am politically quite conservative but I’ve written plenty of poems that have transgressive themes and which use salty language. In the end, I would describe the conservative love of classical poetry as an appeal to those who have a love of tradition and order, irrespective of where they fall on the spectrum of faith, politics and libertarianism. Speaking only for myself, I know how I view my conservatism vis a vis literature: it is a deep desire to build upon history and to take one’s place in the chronology, irrespective of religion or politics. I want deeply to continue charting the path begun by Homer, illuminated by Ovid, Chaucer, Milton, Coleridge, Browning and others. My conservatism is such that I desire to build on their work rather than reject it. My conservatism honors what came before me and sees honor in continuing their tradition as best I can rather than reject it.

    In the end, I believe your essay is a valiant defense of the poetic impulse irrespective of where the Muse takes one but with the recognition that history is alive in us. And should be. Yours is a clarion call for artistic freedom and it is also a statement of concern for the soul of both classical poetry in general and for that of our own beloved poetry site, the Society of Classical Poetry. There are voices on this site which would have it become a tent so extensive as to almost lack any meaning or structure. And there are voices on this site which would have subject matter and taste be narrowed and constricted solely into work that is devotional or philosophically lofty. I believe the best course is what you are espousing – artistic freedom within the constraints of the classical tradition, irrespective of voice, subject matter, morality, scientific justification, historicality, ethereality, depravity or rationality. Anything less would be a disservice to the poets here and to the future of poetry.

    Joe, I appreciate greatly your ultimate conclusion concerning poetry’s aesthetic purpose and the factors that should carry the most weight in assessing a poem’s literary merit. I fully adopt your list and would like to emphasize the importance of recognizing that all poetry – ALL of it – is fictional. Even when characters are historical, even when conversations are described which actually took place – all has been fictionalized. By necessity. People don’t speak in iambic pentameter. Poems are not transcripts. There is no such thing as a “realistic” poem any more than there is a “realistic” song or painting. As with all fiction, language is used as a tool of word-craft while events are compressed, edited and reimagined.

    Poetry is owned as much by Caliban as by Ariel. It is the highest act of imagination possible in the use of language. As such it must not be chained. It must be allowed to soar.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, my deepest thanks for this extensive response. I can always depend upon you to see as clearly and as sharply as a laser into my intended points.

      Concerning “edification” — I have always found the term problematic, because I cannot unlink it from ideas that irritate me, like “didacticism” or “moralizing” or (worst of all!) what Mencken called “the Uplift.” I admit that some excellent poems do serve that kind of purpose, and there is no need to belittle such work. But “edification” is like the Tar-Baby in Joel Chandler Harris — it’s very sticky, and gets you entangled in an entire range of things and beliefs and expectations that you might prefer not to be attached to. Mencken ridiculed “the Uplift” because it presumed to act upon other persons in ways that required them to change their behavior to suit some higher standard of one’s own.

      Yes, I do want poetry to be free and unshackled, regardless of whatever form or formlessness the poet chooses to work in. And I don’t want any particular sect or party to organize what we do to satisfy a partisan or proselytizing end. I don’t want the SCP to become Piety Corner, but neither do I want it to become Atheist-Agnostic Alley. What I hope for is to see all of us here do the best and most accomplished classical work we can manage, on whatever subject, without being overseen by moralists of any stripe.

      Thank you again for your incisive comments.

      Reply
  4. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, every single paragraph of this admirably crafted and much-needed essay speaks volumes to me as a poet who has suffered for her art – not from writing poetry (my joy) but from the bizarre and overbearing reactions from many who cannot look beyond the subject matter because they’re too embroiled in pushing their personal ideologies – whether political or religious.

    This is why I wholeheartedly embrace, with a sense of relief, your list of “inherent implications in formal verse” with special attention to and appreciation for numbers 4 and 5. Why should my choice of subject overshadow the aesthetic appeal and craft of the piece. And why should my moral character be questioned for choosing the subject I opted for? I like engaging in conversations about my poetry. I object to being pilloried publicly or privately for thought crimes.

    For me, this beautiful and eye-opening observation explains everything:

    I don’t want religion guiding poetry, any more than I want secular politics or ephemeral trendiness to govern it. Poetry makes use of religion or morals. But it is not the handmaiden of religion or morals. And this same principle can be applied to any real-world material that poetry may appropriate for its fictive task: politics, history, philosophical ideas, prejudices, legends, biographical information, fashions, economic theories… you name it, poetry can make use of it. But a poet does this in the same way that a carpenter grabs wood out of his lumber pile. It is for the sake of the made object, not for the sake of the wood itself.

    I have never fully understood Auden’s poetry-makes-nothing-happen quote. That’s because I tackle tough subjects satirically and always hope my words make a difference. The significant thing is they don’t have to, they’re not expected to, and (most importantly) the poet is not answerable to the Potentate or the Pontiff.

    Joe, thank you very much indeed!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Susan, many thanks for these appreciative words. In the case of Auden’s remark, I think he meant to suggest that poetry could never accomplish what real-world activity or face-to-face discussion could accomplish. Poetry is just a web-work of written language, making use of its own special codes, vocabulary, and traditions, and designed to delight, amuse, and entertain.

      I know what you mean about people who give trouble to a poet because he or she doesn’t follow a certain established Categorical Imperative. I’ve put up with all sorts of nonsense from such types, and they infuriate me. The very first serious poem that I ever composed was written as I strolled alone, along a long stretch of beach, and the Muse just poured the words into me. I have never felt more free, more unconstrained, more released from psychological shackles than I did on that day. The idea that I should submit my finished work to be censored for proper adherence to someone else’s sociopolitical or religious-ethical decalogue was unthinkable, and remains so for me today.

      Susan, just keep on doing what you’re doing.

      Reply
      • Julian D. Woodruff

        Joseph, thank you for another very informative and also quite encouraging essay. I think people who write poetry (or think they are writing poetry) are by and large working in the vein (forms, style, and maybe even subject area to some extent) of the poetry they are most drawn to reading or have read most extensively. I have done so, and feel my way along, gaining as I do a clearer idea of what I can do decently and where danger lies. I am bothered by prejudice of the kind Roy referred to above; I think it arises both from a smug contempt for practices and usages that are of long standing (e.g., meter, rhyme) and from sheer ignorance. (As a substitute teacher, I once found myself before a hs English class that was reading Hamlet, trying–to the regular teacher’s later amazement–to introduce the students to iambic pentameter. It mattered to me.) A second prejudice that also irks me, and which you also address here and elsewhere, involves subject matter and its treatment. I echo your opinion: if a thing’s done well, and in manner that suits the subject, it is worthy of respect at least, if not enthusiasm.

  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    There is no exaggeration at all in what Roy described above. The po-biz network is so utterly under the control of a free-verse, anti-rhyme, left-leaning mafia that most poets who try to maintain classical traditions and practices haven’t got a chance. There is a small New-Formalist rebellion, but unfortunately it has been hijacked by the dead hand of academia, and been sidelined.

    People call me a hidebound reactionary. But in reality I want freedom for poets to compose in the manner they want, about subjects that are of interest to them. The SCP actually allows that for many of us. What we actually need to be on guard about is the tendency of some persons to not be satisfied with freedom, and to want instead new policy guidelines to suit their beliefs and aims.

    Reply
  6. Paul A. Freeman

    Not much I can add, except to recommend a reading of Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale, with all its genital grabbing and arse kissing – or is that what actually got kissed?

    Not a preachy poem, more like implicit advice on Medieval trophy wives.

    Thanks for the read, Joseph.

    Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    Bocaccio, Chaucer, the Goliardic poets, Villon, Rabelais, and many Renaissance Neo-Latin poets wrote stuff that a lot of today’s tight-assed moralists would look upon with severe disapproval, and try to censor.

    Absalon kissed Alisoun’s “nether eye,” which I assume was her vulva. Nicholas simply farted in Absalon’s face.

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Indeed, there was nether eye kissing and letting flee farts so loud they were thunder claps.

      Yet Nicholas also ‘prively … caughte hire by the queynte’ – ‘queynte’ politely being translated as ‘crotch’.

      Reply
  8. Bill Harder

    Joe, I think thou dost protest too much. You inveigh against reducing poetry to religious or political orthodoxies and then conclude by reducing it to a five point aesthetic orthodoxy while closing off all debate.

    I agree with James Sale’s point about our meager effort as poets to contain the free moving Muse. But there is a difference between the perceptual containers which poets use,which bracket a moment in time, and the conceptual containers of our more prosaic works which tend towards ex temporal (i.e. eternal) decrees. While the latter is necessary
    for effective communication, the former remain more insightful and liberating.

    I do agree that poets should not have any limiting agenda, but they would do well to aim at those transcendent truths, those moral goods, and that aesthetic beauty which inform our religious, political, and aesthetic institutions.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you for your comments, Bill. As for “closing off debate,” that was not my intention at all. I ended with those five points not to impose an orthodoxy of my own, but to describe what the heart of poetry is and always has been. The sum of their direction is this: poetry is about excellent language, perfect technical control, and the poem itself should be an objet d’art. That’s not an imposed orthodoxy, but a definition.

      You speak of “perceptual containers.” For me, that would be a good metaphor for successful poems. Like a precious vase or a jewel-encrusted box (what Cleanth Brooks called “the well-wrought urn”), the most important thing about a good poem is how it appears. Can it contain things, as any vase or box might? Sure. But that’s a secondary consideration.

      When you talk about “transcendent truths” and”moral goods” and religious or political institutions, that’s where the trouble starts. Yes, of course poetry can describe or support such things. But the problem with concepts such as transcendence and categorical moral imperatives is that by their very nature they are tyrannical and uncompromising. I have noticed that whenever a poet allows them to dominate his writing, they become much more important than his devotion to the excellence of his craft.

      Reply
  9. Dusty Grein

    Joseph,

    First off, thank you. Your ability to elucidate your points in a manner that is enlightening, without being pedantic, is a breath of fresh air in a world that has become over-indoctrinated by the current educational oligarchy.

    I am not as well-read as a lot of folks here, and I have never had the opportunity to study many of the old masters whose work lies at the foundations of today’s best classical poetry, but I do love translations of well-crafted works, regardless of their moral or political correctness.

    At heart, I am a pretty simple man; as a caring father, and a concerned grandfather, it pains me to see the basic building blocks of classical poetry being eroded by those who think freedom can only be found through anarchy and chaos.

    I work in metric verse, and consider myself a neo-classicist, using forms that span the gamut from the oldest ballades to more contemporary forms, such as the Trijan Refrain. As a poet, I must admit I have published many works with high and lofty principles and messages, guided by my own morals, both religious and secular… but I have also published just as many that are simply genre based fictional stories, be they mystery, romance, or my favorite subject matter, horror. One of these, titled Greymoor Hall, is about the deflowering of a virgin and the awakening of a demon, and this tale was met with both accolades, and harsh and vocal condemnation.

    I must agree that poetry is a tool which poets wield, achieving greater or lesser degrees of success. Just as not every artist with a chisel is Michelangelo, not every poet can create beautiful works in classic metered lines, but in my humble opinion, this has more to do with the mastery of the tools than the subject matter or ideology behind the poem.

    As a final note, I applaud your imagery, even in this essay format, and wish more of us could simply “go off duty once in a while to get drunk and screw around.” Sigh… I miss Theodore Giesel and Shel Silverstein a great deal.

    Reply
  10. Joseph S. Salemi

    Dear Dusty —

    I’m very glad to hear from you, and my deepest thanks to you for your supportive comments.

    The way that you describe the wide range of your work, and your happiness in the product, and your willingness to publish without worrying about audience reactions, is music to my ears. The entire argument that I tried to advance in my essay (and in many discussion threads here at the SCP) is the argument for FREEDOM. You’ve shown that you have it, and are never going to relinquish it. God bless you.

    It doesn’t matter if you decide to publish poems that have messages, or that support you moral views, or your religious opinions. Every one of us does that to some extent. My enemies are those who (no matter what their ideology or religion or moral categories) have determined that everybody who writes a poem has to follow their lead and maintain their orthodoxy. I don’t care if a poem sings the glorious praises of a Saint, or argues trenchantly for agnosticism — if both poems are well-made, then I’m happy. But if the authors of those poems start trying to dragoon us into their respective belief-systems, then I will fight back very hard.

    As for my tough Noo Yawk imagery, I also wish that more essayists would indulge in it. Why does every essay have to be as chaste as a sermon, and as pallid as an academic paper? Giesel and Silverstein — we need replacements for you!

    Reply

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