Well, what does Horace say? “But men and gods won’t put up with second-rate poets! …A poem…if it falls somewhat short of the top, / Sinks right down to the bottom.” (And why do people that can’t do keep trying?) But Horace also says,
“A poem is much like a painting” and means that some are for the laboratory and some are to be seen when the elevator doors open but it isn’t your floor, or anybody’s—and you’re moving on; To be read once, or many times—and some poems are best read never at all (that is their genius and makes them holy: an offering for the gods alone to see). Therefore, what Horace doesn’t mean is that every poem has to shoot for the top every time but rather that whatever it shoots for it better hit. He had been to enough bookstore readings to make him nauseous (I know the feeling, too.) –what Milton might call ‘scrannel pipes of wretched straw.’ I have found the redeeming qualities in the worst of films, of paintings, of music—but there is something rather foul-smelling in the failure of a poem. (Why just the other day I opened up the current issue of Poetry…) But most often we judge poems by saying they aren’t pointed in the right direction, or the shot was rather close and easily struck and so easily ignored. Too many poets spoil the everything...
The more controversial statement I’m willing to agree with, however, is when Horace commends those who refrain from composing without “Minerva’s consent.” Too many poets with too little to say. ‘Vanity! Vanity!’ says the Teacher. ‘All presses are vanity.’ Poetry for poetry’s sake is narcissism and Dead On Arrival. The only one making sense is old Ashbery babbling in the corner: “I like the sound of my own voice. I like the sound of my own voice. I like the sound of my own voice.”
The voice of my generation is an 80-year-old man ‘more sinned against than sinning.’ Well, if we, my dearlings, have nothing good to say, we best say nothing at all and decrease the surplus publication.
