All criticism is argument, of course, and critique (as in criticism) by one blogger of another blogger’s blog is the urging of a particular way of seeing the world.
Curtis Faville, who blogs at The Compass Rose, has written this rather energetic critique of my advice, not on his blog, but to mine:
If the book is, in whole, as you quote Frost as claiming, itself a “poem” then it should be subject to the same requirements as any art-form. If your conception of the “book” is a traditional form established over time, what’s implied is that it’s an enormous cliché, which is like a metaphorical quotation of something already done. Creative thinking, and writing, and book-making, demand that we re-think the form every time we indulge in it. Your whole list is like a recipe for a completely predictable, dull book. Which is pretty much what we have in the poetry world. Have you checked the poetry shelves, lately? Fully 97% of all you find is instantly forgettable, in large measure because of the common acceptance of the formula you offer here.
Curtis Faville’s argument (if I may, based upon many readings of Curtis’s reviews, as well as of his blog, not to mention his above comment) is for something new in the world of poetry. Something that transcends the ordinary and, therefore, the previous. And so, I might argue, is mine. My argument, that is.
Which makes me wonder whether my advice does, as he suggests, rule out the creation of something new: new ways of seeing a poem, new ways of seeing a book. I invite others into this discussion.
For me, it’s interesting to think about those early, fervent urgings of Whitman for something new in poetry, and later, a perhaps derivative but no less memorable philosophy of W.C. Williams. Each argued for the new: for the shattering of molds. For a way, or ways, a poem might sound that sounds nothing like it sounded before. But it seems important to add here that Williams and Whitman wanted innovation rooted in intentional, disciplined decision-making.
There’s Whitman writing (and writing) to Emerson about “Individuality, that new moral American continent . . . .” (Leaves of Grass, 2nd Edition) W.C. Williams, one of “The Others,” those early-on American modernists, gobbling up Joyce and Duchamp, Man Ray, H.D., and of course getting his pounds’ worth from Pound’s edict to “make it new.”
But let’s get back to the essential question of how to make a book of poetry out of a batch of poems (and let’s sort of accept that anything memorable – anything worth reading – must in some ineluctable way be “new”). I have urged taking various ways of looking at order (as in ordering a manuscript) as useful in generating new ways of looking at the poems themselves – revising, sure, but re-visioning. How does a poem want to mean? What discoveries does it want to make? What technical ministrations might prepare the poem to set off on this course of discovery?
And so I thought it might be interesting to consider how we think about the question of what goes with what. First off, I started thinking about what sorts of decisions must curators of art galleries make—and how do they make them—when hanging a show? Obviously, there must be shows that cry out for an “easy” sort of order: chronological, or oils with oils, charcoal with charcoal, and so on. But suppose you’re hanging an exhibit of Fauvists and you have 50 pictures by a good half dozen painters. What sorts of aesthetic decisions are involved?
Well, I say “started off thinking” because I’m not, after all, either a curator or a painter. But one could sort of imagine ways of thinking about this problem: tonalities, color, space, shape, and so on. But, rather than ask you to read my musings on the finer points of producing art in galleries, I thought I’d ask an actual curator or two to discuss the art of hanging art. I’m hoping to have that, or some of it, for you soon, and hoping that their responses might prove useful to our inquiry.
Meanwhile, how about other cognates? Contemporary culture is filled with guides to figuring out which of this order of things goes with what of that order of stuff. What herbs and which spices goes with that food? Sort of a useful cognate when you think about it, as (obviously) each herb and each spice added to a particular food changes that food, and by consequence, what it tastes like, and by consequence, what it goes with. If a chef is paying attention, or you in your own kitchen, you are reinventing your recipes as you add and subtract, keep your notes, taste this and try that. If you’re blessed with a really good palate you might even come up with something wholly new, even something memorable.
Same goes for wines (or shoes, or ties, or—one imagines—shades of lipstick). What wine with what food? Different foods will make different wines taste, well, different. You can find wine-pairing tables all over the place, but here’s something I chanced upon the other day: fabulous tables of food pairings. For example, do you need to know which foods go best with Peruvian chocolate (and frankly, who doesn’t?)? Somebody has given a LOT of thought to Peruvian dark chocolate. Was there a Platonic ideal to consult? Is there one now?
Think about how classical piano recitals are organized (i.e., “programmed”): often chronologically. You get your Scarlatti, then you Mozart, after than your Schubert, later maybe a little Chopin. Why? Is this the Platonic ideal? Well, then, it turns out that I do have an argument.
Poets write to me, despairingly, “but there are so many equally good orders for a poetry manuscript!” And I suggest, of course there are. But, well before you settle on the order that suits, the key to creating a memorable book is to take the matter of creating order as an opportunity to look so much more closely at your poems.
Along those lines, as you lay your poems side by side by side, here are some (arguably useful) questions you might want to ask of each and every poem with respect to the ones alongside it. In what way or ways does that poem (the one under the spotlight):
- deepen
- open up
- interrogate the premises of
- expand upon
- enlarge upon
- focus down on specifics of
- decorate
- glaze
- gloss
- experiment with
- innovate from
the poems it abuts, and the ones by the door and the one that’s nearly under the rug.
What we want—you, me, the editors who read your newly submitted manuscript, Curtis Faville when he reviews your book, and most important, your readers—is, without any argument, something wholly memorable. Whether that means that it must be post-avant in feel or must instead pay consistent homage to the received traditions, two notions seems certain:
- How you create your poems and the way you form the book itself will need to be rooted in intentional, disciplined decision making (even if those disciplined choices lead to something wholly aleatoric http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aleatoric); and
- You won’t get there by treating the poems as made things, gods at a feast, ready for prime time, unless you understand what I’ve been urging: that you use the litany of manuscript-making tools as an essential scaffolding for discovery.
Jeffrey Levine 
Jeannine Hall Gailey
October 19, 2011
I’ve always liked the metaphors of poetry book as mix tape, or recipe, because they suggest some kind of aesthetic taste and judgement and artistic whimsy on top of ‘what makes a good chocolate mousse’ – maybe a touch of cassis or basil where the recipe doesn’t call for it – that can really move something from “solidly good” to “excellent, wonderful, etc.”
Margo Berdeshevsky
October 19, 2011
in my humblest opinion…the best art exhibits are made of works that talk to one another. That does not mean ‘similarity,” necessarily, but passionate in conversation. Grand example of such curating is in Paris right now at the Grand Palais, and offers insights into Stein’s collecting, her brother’s collecting, and the many seminal works they gathered. Each room and each piece there bears echos and suggests a conversation happening with its neighbor.
(http://www.rmn.fr/english/les-musees-et-leurs-expositions-238/grand-palais-galeries-nationales-257/expositions-258/matisse-cezanne-picasso-the-stein)
That said, same does go for an author…my preferred notion is that not only may (could/should/hope they-do) individual poems, or stories, or chapters speak to one another just as paintings on a wall (or installations) are whispering their secrets and seductions…but also, I love the thought that an author’s individual books speak to one another, contain a sentence heard earlier, an echo, and so invite her readers to join that conversation. A furthering of the overall collage (my favorite global view,)—as an ongoing conversation between elements, contradictory, friendly, fierce, and …yes, perhaps, new. (Tho, as my mama liked to say,”Nothing is new under the sun, but everything is new to man.)
Paul Gibbons
October 20, 2011
I’ve often thought that what editors and judges do with a poetry book may differ from what readers these days are doing. Are most readers of contemporary poetry readings poetry books from beginning to end? Many that I know seem to flit around in a book, which to me suggests a different reading experience from what one may do as an editor who receives a stack of manuscripts to be judged. Is there any truth to this idea?
Jeffrey Levine
October 20, 2011
A beautifully put-together manuscript, a book with an “essential” order is a work of art, and deserves to be read as a work of art, and probably, as urged in the Poetics, in a single sitting. Who has the time — I don’t know. Who has the patience? Ditto. I know plenty of people who are quite religious about reading a book of poetry in the way intended by the poet, and are amply rewarded by the experience. I know plenty of people who dip in and out. But my job, as publisher, is to put a thing of beauty out into the world, and the only way to know what I have at the submission stage is to read a manuscript in the order given.
Grant Clauser (@GrantPoetCore)
October 20, 2011
I don’t know why the insistence here has to be about a work being “new.” How about GOOD, Very GOOD?
Jeffrey Levine
October 21, 2011
Grant, You make a good point. But the larger question has to do with the meaning of “new.” You, for example, make vivid and compelling choices in your (terrific) poem, Metal (from Cortland Review?) in which you find, though language and thought, “new” ways to talk about yearning. So we need to address all of the ways in which “new” signifies. Obviously, the terms “new” and “good” or “very good” aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re necessarily linked. After all, every time we revise we’re making the poem new. Every time we find a way to say something so that it sounds distinctly unlike the way the same old subject has been treated before, we’re making a wholly conscious decision to sound unlike any other poet: i.e., to sound new. From your writing it’s easy to see that you’re intuitive enough to find in my blog post support for exactly the point of view you urge in your message.
Chloe Ledbetter Brown
October 20, 2011
Your suggestions for how to present a manuscript for a book of poems is timely for me!
I have the poems and I have had a plan in mind for them to be in a book. I have been
writing with the basic subject in mind over the past few years. I came across the title some time ago and that has helped me choose the ones for this book. I have written other poems as well, not all for this book. I am now 81 years old so I need to hurry with my preparation for the manuscript, don’t you think?
You would not have to read it all in one sitting, but you could because they all relate to the main subject. They also stand alone so that a person might “dip in and out” as you suggested. Thank you for so much helpful information. Chloe Ledbetter Brown chl4830@aol.com
Unity
October 28, 2011
Just cause it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s not super hlepful.
Kim Triedman
October 20, 2011
it seems to me that what you (jeffrey) are providing in your earlier blog post is less a formula for manuscript assembly than a set of tools for digging around and turning over new (and old) earth. there is very little in the way of prescription there, beyond the simple and complicated task of remaining open to what the poems themselves are saying. creative book-making does indeed require that we re-think the form with every new iteration, but my sense is that the only way that we can get ourselves to this point is by re-imagining and re-imagining and re-imagining the endless permutations. eventually, one declares itself. it may be mold-shattering or “traditional,” but in some ineffable way it is simply right. This can only happen when (as you suggest) we marinate in the poems, allowing them the time and space to seep in and cohere.
my own feeling is that “traditional” is a dangerous word. surely two people can hit upon the same idea/answer/conclusion in their own time, in their own universes. cannot, in broadest terms, what works for one group of poems also work for another? The whole notion of the book as a poem in itself presupposes that it is, like each poem within, a collision of inspiration and craft — that there is a real and necessary place for both of these elements in the process. what i appreciated about your recommendations is that there are, in fact, very few imperatives; to me they read as an invocation to break down walls — not simply accommodate them.
Mike Michaels
October 20, 2011
While I agree with Curtis that 90 some percent of what one finds on the self is forgettable, I also think that’s always been the case. To have a list of things that tell you if a certain poem or book of poems carries the water is good and useful. I also think that the order in which they reach you is important but let’s not forget that you are an editor ( 1 one who edits; one who corrects, compiles, etc. 2 one who selects the contents of a publication.) and I would expect just a bit of help. What my Signet Pocket New American Webster Handy College Dictionary does not tell me is that help won’t be forthcoming. I’m good but I’m not perfect.
G Poet
October 20, 2011
I usually read poetry books from beginning to end–such as Seven Ages by Louise Gluck right now–and there is nothing wrong with advice about how to order a book. There are wonderful books that appear quite coherent as a whole–maybe Philip Levine’s What Work Is. Some of Levine’s other books are not as ordered–maybe A Walk With Tom Jefferson. Whitman’s first Leaves of Grass is an amazing whole; his later books compendiums. I don’t think that contemplating these choices can prevent true experimentalism or innovation or just rewarding reading. As Jeffrey Levine’s blog post points out, Pound’s “Make it new” and other like imperatives were not just about style. In that sense, rethinking form for ‘something new’ is a cultural phenomena today among many, but it is not always necessary. I’d prefer a good poem that makes me feel, especially, and think, surely, than just language or line breaks in a new manner.
Thanks for the well-thought out blog post.
James Pollock
October 20, 2011
Curtis Faville writes, “If your conception of the “book” is a traditional form established over time, what’s implied is that it’s an enormous cliché, which is like a metaphorical quotation of something already done.”
But this doesn’t make any sense. A traditional form established over time–the novel, the sonnet, the book of poems–may be attempted anew by bad writers and good, who may produce cliches or masterpieces or something in between; but the form itself is not a cliche. It’s a form–or, to be more precise, a genre.
Faville goes on to say, “Creative thinking, and writing, and book-making, demand that we re-think the form every time we indulge in it.”
Agreed. But the word “indulge” is hardly apropos. It’s damn hard work.
Patricia Solari
October 20, 2011
Thank you, Jeffrey Levine, for these thoughtful essays on organizing one’s poems into a meaningful whole. I so enjoyed your first essay it never occurred to me anyone could or would take exception to your ideas. Wow was I wrong! Welcome to the world, I said to myself. Such vitriol! J’accuse! I don’t know. Your essay made perfect sense to me.
anthony dimatteo
October 20, 2011
There seems to me to be different ideas of orders circulating promisingly now but still largely unrealized since we are at the beginning of something new.
Digital technology with its hypertextuality affords internal linkages between and across poems, and within phrasings and images of individual poems. It promotes non-linear relations like ripples in a stream, or better yet like streams of sub-atomic forms in a particle accelerator. One page after another – the old order of things – was just that, an idea of an order of things, a certain narrative of lyrical time first evidenced in Petrarch’s Canzoniere.
Contemporary lyrical poems seem to me to exist in a simultaneity that our daily exposure to the hypertextual quality of digital reading provokes or simulates. This new experience is perhaps why contemporary poets find it so irksome, reductive of their work, to impose linear direction…Still, I can appreciate the expectations Jeffrey Levine has as a book publisher – but is there a way to simulate the leaving behind of a book, so to speak, in a book? Not poems in search of a book but poems taking off from a book in search of new forms?
Molly Tenenbaum
October 20, 2011
At one time I was thinking of ordering a particular manuscript like a sleepless night: Here’s the tossing-and-turning part; here’s the getting-up-for-a-glass-of-water part; here’s when you turn the pillow over for the cooler side; here’s when the cat comes in…
Jeffrey Levine
October 21, 2011
I love this, Molly!
Russell Buker
October 22, 2011
To be sure as I follow all arguments I keep thinking of Thomas Wolfe,TSEliot, even Emily Dickenson who may or may not have needed help with their ms. Seems to me that everyone produces something new to the reader and the reader handles it according to his own make-up. Writers certainly want to be found/liked by readers but I do not think that when I put a bk together that I will be knocking the socks off every reader, rather, the hope is for a certain dialogue even if it ends in reader dismissal, nor do I think that I will enter my century’s anthology of the best as, at best, I write from a not completely understood impulse that keeps pulsating AND I positively hate the business end of the process with the fondest wish that MBA’s were forced to accumulate courses in the business
A M Clark
October 23, 2011
Just a word or two about hanging pictures, which I’ve done a lot of, that may be useful in arranging poems in books. There’s a power in the nature of contrast, and in hanging exhibitions this has been very much my fundamental impulse: that each painting not bleed into the next but be viewed, to the degree it’s possible in a room filled with them, as entities unto themselves. The “conversation” will still be there, but in a perhaps more vivid way. Would this be similar to the dynamic of the fugue? Wonderful conversation here, on this intriguing, essential topic.
neelthemuse
October 26, 2011
Thank you for your post…..it is extremely useful for poets to think about. Often there is a tendency to think of poems as single units rather than as wholes. How many poems would you need to ideally create a poetry manuscript, to create that sense of order?
Jeffrey Levine
October 26, 2011
Thanks for your kind comment. Alas, I’m not going to be much help here, as the answer is wholly dependent upon the poems, the vision, the context, and the project itself. I will say, though, that the shorter the book, the more likely it is that a poet will find a way to tether those poems successfully. Clearly, one can create a compelling sense of order in a chapbook of 16 pages — or fewer. But a book of 80+ pages ( 50 poems, give or take) can be just as successful.