{"id":117,"date":"2008-03-09T10:47:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T17:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=117"},"modified":"2008-03-09T10:50:57","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T17:50:57","slug":"poetry-is-still-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/09\/poetry-is-still-cool\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Is Still Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/03\/09\/books\/review\/Longenbach-t.html\" title=\"click to view full article in the New York Times\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1> <nyt_headline version=\"1.0\" type=\" \"> Formalities <\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n<p><script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text\/JavaScript\">function getSharePasskey() { return \\\\'ex=1362632400&en=5e7a4e31b9a1693c&ei=5124\\\\';}<\/script> <script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text\/JavaScript\"> function getShareURL() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/03\/09\/books\/review\/Longenbach-t.html\\\\'); } function getShareHeadline() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'Formalities\\\\'); } function getShareDescription() {   \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'Mary Jo Salter\u2019s elegant poetry can hide eviscerating questions.\\\\'); } function getShareKeywords() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'Books and Literature,Poetry and Poets,Mary Jo Salter,Phone Call to the Future, A (Book)\\\\'); } function getShareSection() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'books\\\\'); } function getShareSectionDisplay() {  \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'Books \/ Sunday Book Review\\\\'); } function getShareSubSection() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'review\\\\'); } function getShareByline() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'By JAMES LONGENBACH\\\\'); } function getSharePubdate() { \treturn encodeURIComponent(\\\\'March 9, 2008\\\\'); } <\/script>   <nyt_byline version=\"1.0\" type=\" \"> <\/nyt_byline><\/p>\n<p class=\"timestamp\">By JAMES LONGENBACH<br \/>\nPublished: March 9, 2008<\/p>\n<p><!--NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 -->     <nyt_text>   \t <\/nyt_text><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Phone-Call-Future-Selected-Poems\/dp\/0307267180\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1205084570&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"click to purchase Mary Jo Salter\u2019s A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE - New and Selected Poems\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/maryjosalter.png\" alt=\"Mary Jo Salter\u2019s A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE - New and Selected Poems\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"15\" \/><\/a>Back in the 20th century, when such things seemed to matter, poets argued about the virtue of meter and rhyme. Occasionally the debate produced insights of lasting consequence, like <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/f\/robert_frost\/index.html?inline=nyt-per\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"More articles about Robert Frost.\">Robert Frost<\/a>\u2019s snarky metaphor for free verse (\u201cplaying tennis with the net down\u201d) and Charles Wright\u2019s brilliant response: \u201cthe high wire act without the net.\u201d But the debate was perpetuated more often by tribal loyalties than by artistic necessity. An argument that forecloses possibilities for art \u2014 that says X is good because Y is bad \u2014 can rarely be trusted.<\/p>\n<p>Mary Jo Salter came of age as a poet in the 1970s when two tribes, the Language poets and the New Formalists, were sparring. The Language poets (named after a magazine called Language) represented a new surge of experimental writing, while the New Formalists (with whom Salter was associated) wanted to resist the influence of modernism, re-energizing poetry\u2019s relationship not only to traditional form but to narrative. Like Salter, many of the New Formalists modeled their work on a strategically narrowed version of Elizabeth Bishop, a poet who wrote both free and formal verse with homespun virtuosity. But while Bishop continues to be read, the polemics associated with both the New Formalism and Language poetry feel dated, part of the niggling history of taste rather than the grand history of art.<\/p>\n<p>Salter\u2019s latest collection, \u201cA Phone Call to the Future,\u201d offers severely winnowed selections from her previous five books along with an ample collection of new poems. What she has omitted is as revealing as what remains. While her first book, \u201cHenry Purcell in Japan,\u201d is introduced here with a poised villanelle about King Lear\u2019s daughters, it once began with a poem far more suggestive of Salter\u2019s sensibility \u2014 a sensibility repulsed by gory images of the dead Jesus in a Catholic church, preferring to dwell in an aesthetic realm of pure spirit: \u201cHis wounds look fresh, but it\u2019s not this sight \/ that shocks me so much as His man-made skin: \/ He\u2019s waxen, slick as a mannequin.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Phone-Call-Future-Selected-Poems\/dp\/0307267180\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1205084570&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"click to purchase Mary Jo Salter\u2019s A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE - New and Selected Poems\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41xpLl48XTL._AA240_.jpg\" alt=\"Mary Jo Salter\u2019s A PHONE CALL TO THE FUTURE - New and Selected Poems\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" height=\"240\" hspace=\"15\" width=\"240\" \/><\/a>This poem, \u201cFor an Italian Cousin,\u201d is cast in envelope rhyme (abba), the form that Tennyson, most elegant of English poets, employed in his long elegy \u201cIn Memoriam.\u201d Reading the elegy, Verlaine said that Tennyson had a lot of reminiscences when he should have been brokenhearted. Salter\u2019s elegance feels similarly motivated by a distaste for the unseemly.<\/p>\n<p>But what makes Salter worth reading \u2014 what makes her stand apart from the merely polemical elegance of the New Formalism \u2014 is that she herself is appalled by this distaste. While many of her poems are burdened by a need to dispense wisdom (\u201clove dooms us to earn \/ love once we can speak of it\u201d), her best are driven by a compulsion to confront the inexplicable. Her second collection, \u201cUnfinished Painting,\u201d includes \u201cElegies for Etsuko,\u201d a long poem about a friend who committed suicide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 30px; margin-right: 30px\"><em><span class=\"italic\">And now love\u2019s pain, your curse,<br \/>\nis all I have. Forgive me &#8230; What worse<br \/>\npunishment for suicide<br \/>\nthan having died?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here, the blunt rhyme between \u201csuicide\u201d and \u201cdied\u201d makes the poem\u2019s confrontation with mortality feel witheringly unavoidable. Rather than dispensing wisdom, Salter asks eviscerating questions.<\/p>\n<p>[ click to view full article in the <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/03\/09\/books\/review\/Longenbach-t.html\" title=\"click to view full article in the New York Times\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a><\/em> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from the New York Times Formalities By JAMES LONGENBACH Published: March 9, 2008 Back in the 20th century, when such things seemed to matter, poets argued about the virtue of meter and rhyme. Occasionally the debate produced insights of lasting consequence, like Robert Frost\u2019s snarky metaphor for free verse (\u201cplaying tennis with the net down\u201d) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}