Josh Corey kindly comments, and poses a question:

Nada has it going on today. I like the Laura Riding critique. And this paragraph: “I know there are many poets who, to borrow Riding’s term, want to transubstantiate their ardor for the good into their poems. In doing so, they can create interesting effects, because their ardor will fight with their form’s inherent ineffectuality. But “at the end of the day” they are still creating interesting effects.” Does she mean, “and that’s all they’re doing,” or does she mean that interesting effects are a necessary by-product of trying to realize the Good in a poem? Guess I’m just rephrasing it.

Hmm. I’m a little scared to answer that one. I don’t want to just come out with a blatant display of bad faith reductionism. I have said before that I don’t really have a taste for overtly political or “virtuous” poetry, unless it’s satire, to which I’m magnetically drawn. “Virtuous” poetry usually sounds altogether too heavy-footed. I’ve said before that I simply cannot read George Oppen. But at the same time, I don’t mean by that to a) denigrate anyone’s intentions or b) limit the possibilities of what the work can do “in the world.” Perhaps some people really have come to political awakenings through poetry, but surely poetry is not the most practical sphere in which to enact (not sure if that’s the right verb here) Tikkun Olam. It’s simply too irrational — I mean, if it’s any good. I don’t want to read or have anything to do with rational poetry. I suppose then that I don’t exactly mean either of the things you say above, Josh, although I lean closer to the first, if it’s rephrased as “that’s mostly what they’re doing… for me.”

I’m all for genre-blending, but the poetry as journalism thing just doesn’t work for me. If you want to do journalism, you can still keep the fancy tropes and alliteration if you want, but please get rid of the line breaks — I mean if you want me to read it.

And to further clarify, I do relish and require lament*. Lament is an unavoidable reaction to the horrors of the zeitgeist. But unless that lament is understood under a rubric of an ongoing human crisis, which because it is eternal is pathetic, and because it is pathetic it is ironic, and because it is ironic it is humorous, then it just doesn’t work for me.

*and outrage, too, but that’s a different form… which usually works on the strength of cadence alone.