She’s Got A Point
By Mitch Berg
Camille Paglia on women in politics:
Dianne Feinstein is far more presidential than Hillary Clinton, who alternates between smugness and defensiveness before pulling out that tiresome middle-aged .mom card. Feinstein, even when maneuvering strategically, always seems genuinely focused on the idea at hand, while Hillary isn’t really there — she’s just riffling mentally through her team’s cue cards. All politicians are actors, but Hillary’s a bad one. No audience wants to see with such crystal clarity how it’s being massaged.
The whole thing – about Obama, Clinton and Coulter – is worth a read. Since it’s Paglia, it’ll be a mercurial, sometimes infuriating read, but that’s just fine…
March 15th, 2007 at 6:04 am
Speaking as a critic of poetry — and believe it or not I am qualified to do that — Paglia is a sad figure. She wants so hard to be a poet, but all she can do is critique poetry (in a stuck in the late 60’s way) and write an occasional current events column for Slate. Poor Camille, she must have thought, back in 1968, that the dominant form of lit in the 20th century would be poetry. It wasn’t. It is not to be.
Paglia claims she was fan of Ginsberg since she first read “Howl”
Read “Howl” lately? Has anyone ever read “Howl” unless it was assigned? Here are the first few stanzas of “Howl”:
What crap. What the Hell is a “negro street” or an “unshaven room”? Can a “negro street” be paved with pale concrete? Can an “unshaven room” have bare walls? Poetry is precision in language. Wallace Stevens, an earlier 20th century poet more inclined to classicism than Ginsberg, writes like this:
Perfect Iambic pentameter. Every syllable and word communicates a meaning that is difficult sometimes to determine in aggregate, but accessible and precise.
Here’s the bit of Stevens Paglia felt was worth including in her latest bit of published criticism:
Sorry for blogjacking, Mitch. Poetry makes me crazy.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Terry said,
“Speaking as a critic of poetry — and believe it or not I am qualified to do that”
followed by,
“What crap. What the Hell is a “negro street” or an “unshaven room”? Can a “negro street” be paved with pale concrete? Can an “unshaven room” have bare walls?”
I believe you are qualified Terry. Qualified to stand in your open garage in your bathrobe and yell at the kids to get off your lawn and mutter incoherently about how that damn rap music is crap.
Maybe you should stick with what you know…
March 15th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Rap music IS crap.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Doug is self-describing again. I feel for the kids on HIS street.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Wow, the psychology of small differences just became a little clearer to me. Thanks, Doug.
March 15th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Colleen, you won’t get any argument from me there but I wouldn’t claim to be a music critic.
Kernmit said,
“I feel for the kids on HIS street.”
Tell you what, gimme a call if you have plans to stop by so I can alert the police ahead of time.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:25 am
I’m not really sure what “qualifies” someone to be a poetry critic but then I’m from the “I don’t know art but I know what I like” school of thought. In many cases, good or not good comes down to a subjective difference.
Maybe I was in the right frame of mind this morning but having never read howl before, as I read the words Terry posted, I heard a low urgent drumming under them and a Ba-da-da-Ba-da-da-da-Ba-da pacing to them that dropped me immediately into the 11th hour acid trip bouncing from bar to after party to crawling home as the birds greet you in the pale morning light kind of state of mind.
If you’ve never been to a drum jam and never been to a bonfire-at-night poetry reading and never done any drugs, I can easily see how you wouldn’t hear the rhythm. Its there though for those with the past to hear it.
Btw, my interpretation of “negro streets” is a rather un-PC statement. Sounds like he’s talking about a part of town where one might score drugs from African Americans.
The second piece posted (Jove in the clouds…) felt a bit stilted coming after the first one but after a moment, I found its rhythm and was able to get into the imagery and energy it was presenting as well.
The third piece posted (I placed a jar in Tennessee…) didn’t do it for me. When I write poetry or song lyrics, they come out like that which is why I don’t write poetry or song lyrics anymore. It feels too juvenile – like reading the poetry that Tolkein puts in his books. Argh.
However, I recognize that all of this is by nature truly and fundamentally subjective. You’re no better or worse for having different tastes than I do. I theorize that different experiences and backgrounds lead to different aesthetics.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Leonard Bernstein once said that 5% of every genre of music – classical, rock and roll, folk, r’nb, whatever – is good, and the rest of crap. It’s pretty much true.
Rap is not “crap”, by the way. 95% of it is – just as is 95% of country, jazz, techno, or what have you. And I’ll allow that as a guy who used to work as a rap DJ (call for JB Doubtless! Insert sputtering here!), I was around a lot of it, and learned what I did and didn’t like (just like working as in country radio did for me in that genre) – but I STILL love Public Enemy, NWA, the DOC, Tribe Called Qwest, Third Base, and yepper, a lot of Eminem.
I think the same 5/95 ratio holds true for poetry. I was an English major, so I had to read a ton of it. I’ve always appreciated good poetry, but haven’t dug into much of it since college, until very recently. Paglia, by the way, is pretty run of the mill – but I think she probably writes poetry because writing poetry is sort of like doing finger exercises on the violin, or singing arpeggios; it’s a good mental exercise for forcing you to pick words carefully and pay attention to rhythm, tone and subtext – which is a great thing for a writer to do, even if the poetry itself isn’t ready for prime time.
Paglia may or may not be a great poet (I’m leaning toward “May not”), but she’s an excellent writer.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Maybe it’s just me but to claim to be a qualified critic of a poetry and then to rant about how you don’t get it kinda disqualifies you as a critic of the medium don’t ya think?
Poetry is about precision in language yes, but the term “precision” is about as subjective as you can get.
I think trying to comprehend Burroughs and Ginsberg without the benefit of direct or even relative experience is a bit like reading Rumi translated into English. The words are there but you really can’t experience them directly.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Actually, Doug, I majored in English lit in college. True, it was a state college in Hawaii, far from the ivy league, but nevertheless for several years I wrote paper after paper analyzing the structure of 19th century and early 20th century poetry.
Ginsberg’s “Howl” is self expression for the sake of self expression, like a non-piano player pounding on the ivories or a kid scribbling on construction paper. Hence the title “Howl”. This also explains why it doesn’t really have a beginning or an ending. It has no narrative structure.
After WWI the literary world began to chuck out everything that stank of the past. It was thought that a new poetry was needed to describe the modern mind. Free verse became a popular form because (in my opinion) it was definitely not victorian and it was easy to teach. A college sophmore will struggle to write seven lines of iambic pentameter or ABAB rhymes. Free verse? You can do it in class and have the assignment ready to hand in at the end of the period.
“Howl” was published in the 50’s. Paglia went to college in the 60’s. Virtually every english lit person I’ve met from that cohort worships Ginsberg & “Howl” though they can’t say what it is in the poem that they like. Instead they talk about its social context or how it was ground breaking.
Poor souls — they tried to escape the straight jacket of bourgeois conformity but only produced a poetry that mirrored their own neurotic sensibilities.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Terry said,
“Ginsberg’s “Howl” is self expression for the sake of self expression, like a non-piano player pounding on the ivories or a kid scribbling on construction paper. Hence the title “Howl”.”
And yet, the irony is that any tenth grade student can tell you who Alan Ginsberg was but none of them could tell you who Terry, the poetry critic from Hawaii is.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Even more 10th graders know who George Bush is and yet have never heard of Doug from MN. Gee this is fun, Doug! You have an endless store of inane aphorisms!
March 15th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Terry, your statement, “Ginsberg’s “Howl” is self expression for the sake of self expression, like a non-piano player pounding on the ivories or a kid scribbling on construction paper” oozes with smugness and pretense but fortunately for you, you posted it at a site where your peers will give you a free pass.
If something that supercilious would have been preceeded by Doug Says, angryclown Says or RickDFL Says, folks like Kermit would be having a field day.
Hey! Since you are the resident poet laureate, why don’t you post some of your work so we can all bask in your genius? Ginsberg has the distinction of being the master poet of the beat generation. Let’s see if you can do Mr. Kanaka Maoli.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Heh. Doug said supercilious. The Rogets thesaurus is getting a workout today.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
“you posted it at a site where your peers will give you a free pass.”
Wrong. I have no peers.
“Since you are the resident poet laureate”
Wrong again. Didn’t claim to be a poet.
“Ginsberg has the distinction of being the master poet of the beat generation.”
Which is rather like having the distinction of being the greatest Norwegian lover.
With Mitch’s indulgence:
>I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness,
“I” and “my” in the first line tell us that universality has been eschewed in favor of the poet telling us about that interesting creature known as Allen Ginsburg. Not a fatal flaw, but at some point he needs to make the reader feel as though he or she has some involvement.
Minds can be destroyed by madness, so at least it makes sense so far.
>starving hysterical naked,
Now we have a problem. A mind can be literally be hysterical, though there’s a problem with ‘hysterical’ being derived from the greek word for womb. ambiguilty is the enemy of clarity. A mind can be starving or naked but only metaphorically so. Mixing literal references and metaphorical references does not help the reader. And what has Ginsberg got against pronouns? It’s not like they are being sacrificed to save the metre.
>dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
A mind cannot drag itself anywhere physically. That’s what bodies are for. ‘Negro’ is derived from the word for ‘dark’, yet he places the time at dawn when it’s getting brighter.
There is some serious subject/object ambiguity here: are ‘themselves’ the object or is the ‘fix’ the object? Does ‘angry’ apply to ‘themselves’ or to ‘fix’? Is fix a verb or a noun?
>angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
Does “angelheaded” mean they look like angels? Do they have halos? what does it mean to “burn for” something? To desire it greatly or to suffer for its sake? What is an ancient heavenly connection in contrast to a non-ancient heavenly connection? This guy’s overuse of adjectives makes him look like PB. And look! It was dawn in the previous line but it’s nighttime again!
>who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
We know the darkness must be supernatural because it makes dwellings float, not over cities, but across the tops of cities while these cities contemplate jazz. Or maybe the angelheaded hipsters are in the flats contemplating jazz. Anybody who can separate object & subject at this point is better at this stuff than I am.
>who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
Now we’re in the part where Ginsberg decides he needs to put some rythm into his poem to drive it forward. The problem is that he started this poem without rhyme or metric scheme because they were too confining.
There are many ways of adding rhythm to a poem, even in free verse. You can alternate themes (life/death, victory/surrender for example), make the narrative rise and descend symmetrically, stuff like that. But that takes talent. Ginsberg simply begins every line with the same word. He liked the trick so much he did the same thing again in parts 2 & 3 of “Howl”.
Why bother going on . . .
March 16th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Wrong. I have no peers.
Ahhh…! I see where you’re going with this! Maybe you cal ask Kermit to be your Sancho Panza!
Wrong again. Didn’t claim to be a poet.
And yet you claimed to be a critic of poetry? Those who can’t do teach and those who can’t teach, become critics.
Which is rather like having the distinction of being the greatest Norwegian lover.
And yet the greatest Norwegian lover can still produce offspring while the Hawaiian critic of poetry is impotent and barren.
Why bother going on . . .
Why bother starting? You said, “This guy’s overuse of adjectives makes him look like PB”. Go back and look at what you just wrote. You’re writing makes PB’s writing look like haiku.
You know. I’ve gone back and re-read your critique three times now and each time I am more convined that you serving as a critic of poetry is like a child with a Lego set critiquing Frank Lloyd Wrights designs. More precicely, you’re an accountant with a calculator debating theoretical quantum mechanics.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Terry, I recommend you drop some acid or eat some shrooms or peyote or maybe get baked or just dip heavily into a jug of cheap wine. Do this while hanging out at bonfires and drum circles and camp in the woods with a bunch of wild beautiful freaks. Read good poetry and bad poetry together as the rotted blood of grapes sets fire to your veins and your vision starts to swim in the firelight making everyone beautiful and dangerous. Talk to gods and demons in the mirrors and shadows. Empty your stomach into a gutter or behind a tree as you struggle to reconnect the figments of memory of the evening or week preceding.
Then, you’ll have the context to get the poem. If you can’t put yourself there. If you can’t feel the wild beat of the drums in it, you won’t be likely to appreciate it. I understand – its the same way I felt about reading Shakespeare until the first time I saw it performed. It lacks something until you get the context that its created for and in.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:15 am
By the by, no, I don’t actually recommend you do those things.
Appreciating a poem is not worth diving into that life unless it calls to you anyway. Its too easy to become a broken shell. I’ve seen too many destroyed by it.
March 16th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Damn. phaedrus just described my last year of high school into my early 20’s.
March 16th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Duke Ellington famously said “If it sounds good, it is good”. He was talking about music, though, not poetry. Music _is_ sound and nothing else, while poetry is sound + meaning.
Paglia did not include excerpts from “Howl” in her latest book on poetry and her explanation for why she left it out is interesting. While Paglia still holds to the notion that it’s great poetry she notes that its feel of ‘incompleteness’ (the same lack of narrative I wrote of) made it unsuitable for the close reading she was giving the other poems she included. She also feels the poem must be read aloud in Ginsberg’s style (start slow and soft and build to a stuttering ‘howl’) to be appreciated.
The longest Paglia-on-Ginsberg piece I could find on the web is here:
http://www.salon.com/april97/columnists/paglia970415.html
I could find nothing on the web where Paglia discusses the poem as a poem. She talks about how it made her feel to read it, how it was a generational anthem, etc. Her latest comment on the actual content of the poem? “Howl, when I reread it, came across as so garish, stagey, hammy. It didn’t work for this book.”
“Howl” as an important social event? Yes, to people of a certain generation and a certain level of education. As a great poem per se? No.
BTW, a google search for “paglia howl” now returns SITD as the second hit of 17,000.
March 16th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Terry said,
“Music _is_ sound and nothing else, while poetry is sound + meaning”
You know, you really should quit already. You wouldn’t want someone to get the impression you’re a pompous blowhard. Oops too late.
March 17th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Doug, you wouldn’t want someone to think your turning into AC, would you? Oops! Too late!
March 17th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Terry said,
“Doug, you wouldn’t want someone to think your turning into AC, would you? Oops! Too late!”
I’m flattered! Thank you!