Oliver, Gioia and Form
June 27, 2006
What a bizarre interpretation of Gioia and Oliver. Has he read any of their poetry? How about the poets each has championed? I’m guessing not. Yes, they both feel that form has been given a bum rap in the contemporary scene, but it’s far from the ONLY kind of poetry they are supporting. The essence of each seems to be: don’t forget about form even when writing “free” verse because free verse is really a misnomer when it’s done well; don’t over-privilege “free” verse; if the poetry really is free (rather than “free”) and without the mechanics of form even divorced from a formalist package, then it’s probably a rather shallow poem by an ignorant or shallow poet.
In fact, I think they are in direct agreement with much of what Quackenbush has to say (though the argument against form based on the language is a red herring– English has a long, long history of formalism despite the supposed lack of available devices).
Tags:
dana gioia, formalism, mary oliver, poetics, poetry, poets
All me-stream all the time.
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June 29th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
hey, I don’t think you quite grasped the thrust of what I was saying there. I’m guessing that’s my fault and not yours, I have a tendency towards over abbreviation in blog posts and sometimes crucial details that I think are obvious get left out when they maybe shouldn’t be. I’ll admit i haven’t read a LOT of Gioia or Oliver, but that was mostly because I haven’t liked what I have read, and with Dana Gioia in particular, I found his use of form to be ham-handed, or at the least, pretty clumsy.
I wonder if maybe you’d suggest a couple of pieces that you think are high quality poems as well as good representative examples of their work, and I’ll attempt close readings of them on wetasphalt to see if I can’t illustrate my position a little better?
June 29th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
This is about two things– one lesser than the other. I base both directly from your piece: “There are various conservatives on the poetry scene at present who often bemoan the loss of “Form” in poetry and decry the current tendency toward open form composition; Mary Oliver and Dana Gioia are among the more prominent lights of this misguided notion”
First, to a small extent, it’s about Gioia and Oliver’s own poetry. I don’t feel that either of them are top-drawer, personally, so I’m not too concerned about an evaluation. My point is that they do not write only in forms, so they can’t really be construed as haranguing against free verse. A quick perusal of any of their poems makes this clear (though Oliver writes free verse much more often).
Second is about their position regarding poetry and what they promote as “good” or not. Given that both have a significant audience, I think this is important. They have both been proselytizers for poetry… but neither have focused solely on formal verse.
Gioia is famous for his near-obsession with Weldon Kees. Weldon Kees is not an exemplar of form
He has written extensively about– and promoted– Kooser, James Tate, and many others who are squarely in the world of free verse.
Oliver’s most famous book is “A Poetry Handbook” and formal poetry is just one kind of many she talks about.
I don’t disagree with your thesis about formal poetry and the existence of the conservative cabal. I disagree that Gioia or Oliver are very good candidates for being strung up as representatives of the conservative, formalist poetry movement (in this range of things anyway– from another position, ALL of these mainstream poets are much the same, as I have discussed incessantly on this blog in the past) either in their own poetry or that of those they promote. Not when there are people like Hollander and XJ Kennedy about!
Gioia’s most famous pieces– such as “Can Poetry Matter”– have nothing to do with form but about the institution surrounding poetry. This is the person who put New Formalism in the same category as Rap and Cowboy Poetry after all… I’d hate to see the important things he has to say about these things overshadowed by this characterization.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Here’s another shorter way of putting it: I think the association of Oliver and Gioia as New Formalist proselytizers– which you at least imply agreement with– is misguided and ultimately harmful to poetry. Their positions (and their poetry) are much more nuanced than that, and not at the expense of free verse (which we both support, I think) but bad free verse (which I suspect we both deplore).
Whew. Much better.
July 5th, 2006 at 8:03 am
I think as Oliver and Gioia have become more mainstream they have of necessity moderated themselves a bit, and while it’s true that both have written free verse, the point i was really trying to get across in the article was that they’ve been, and continue to be, supporters of bad formal verse based on very strange notions about meter. See eg Gioia’s essay “Accentual Meter” and the example of any number of his metered poems.
You’re right though that XJ Kennedy is much more deserving of vitriol. He’s not the head of the NEA, however.
July 14th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to hold their past against them… and Gioia, in particular, has been extremely supportive of a lot of good free verse poets. We could do a lot worse in the NEA (and have). Kennedy and Hollander and others, who brook no dissent, are far better targets for condemnation. It just seems conter-productive to go after people who do at least as much good as harm. Or for that matter, those who do any good at all… there are many with no redeeming characteristics at all.