I was asked by Denver’s Westerlind (via e-mail) about my thoughts on ‘poetic integrity.’ At once I felt a real clarity and real pause of position. Here are a few thoughts.
(As preamble: my concern lay majorly with Poets, not poets—those whom imagine poetry more a gnostic duty than a mode of pleasure, popular repute, academic repute, or general ‘outlet.’ I do not mean to imply that the former type of poet is without joy in her composition and reading, only that such joy is not her primary writerly impulse.)
(i) If, in one sense, ‘integrity’ implies unity and cohesion, ‘poetic integrity’ must be interrogated.
Personally, I should not like to write the same poem twice; I may explore certain themes many times, but hope to deepen, broaden, or transmute my cause (or effect) each time. If I notice the sestina becoming a crutch, it must be left—perhaps for good. One should interrogate most vigorously the forms and styles wherein he writes what he (currently) deems his best work. In terms of his oeuvre and his understanding of self, a Poet should not seek ‘integrity.’
(ii) If, in another sense, ‘integrity’ implies a development of strong, principled poetics, let us have it.
You see the interesting line here: for a Poet, possessing a philosophy of art is integral, but it must not ossify. To defend Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” based on grammar school patina is not integrity; to re-read the poem every few months, harrow it a bit, and still come out reeling—that is the thing. Reminiscence is not poetics; ‘integrity’ is rather a wraith, always demanding to know why it should be boss. (And, in this case, it should be boss.) In the Gawain Poet’s terms, integrity ‘Hef hyȝly þe here.‘
This line of comment speaks to the growing and deeply amorphous critique of ‘shrillness’ in academic contexts. In her (quite substantive) critique of Rita Dove’s editorial work in Penguin’s Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry, Helen Vendler’s tone (and thus her article in toto) was critiqued as ‘shrill’; the exposé that was foetry.com—which unmasked Jorie Graham and Bin Ramke as educators and artists of deeply questionable morality—has been almost entirely set aside because of its ‘shrill’ tone (at least insofar as we see both poets retaining high academic profile). This is an injustice. It is, I would suggest, such vapid imperatives of ‘good behavior’ or ‘collegiality’ that stop poets short of becoming Poets—that stifle growth into ‘poetic integrity.’ Criticism of content is quite different from criticism of tone, even if one may inform the other; when an academic or artist-academic hews his critiques with a head to student evaluations, tenure, or further magazine publications, it is the academy (and students) that suffers for its loss of ‘integral’ faculties. Poets should be morally and aesthetically rigorous before they are ‘social’ (something a major artistic socialite, Gertrude Stein, knew very well).
(iii) ‘Poetic integrity’ may imply something about poetry’s history—but I’m not sure what.
It is generally unwise to level a loose critique of Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Brontë, or Herman Melville in my presence; I think my desire to shepherd and protect their ‘poetic integrity’ is part of that pique. Because they are no longer ‘producing’ poems (or very poetic prose), their poetics are not active in the same way a living Poet’s may be—and this complicates our first point, since perhaps it is a (justified?) bracketing of produce and method that I want to call for in this case, and this that I want to defend. The resultant desire to qualify this bracketing with reiteration of the ever-expanding purport of Dickinson’s or Hopkins’ poems as enduring art-objects—ones that ‘pass’ their actual dying—strikes me as requiring further reflection.
There’s also a bit of the ol’ Romanticism in this mastiff, liking to hunker down at the grave with his relics and bared teeth.
Your thoughts are very welcome.
SHARKPACK Poetry Review 
12 responses to “A Short Organon: ‘Poetic Integrity’”
I read this 3 times and think you are a genius/snob. I kind of hate it and love it.
But love more OK
Thanks, Mom. I like the thumbnail.
LOL that was good Spece
LOL. But really does this mean that u think lowercase-poets can’t have integrity?
N: My differentiation between Poets and poets was made mostly because I think there are different ways of thinking about ‘p’oets’ integrity—a poet who loves poetry and writes poems daily in a journal may never interrogate his unity, and live quite happily with poetry at-large and his own work, thus writing ‘integrated’ poems that are fulfilling. The separation was more for streamlining this particular argument, not for barbs.
If there’s a note of bile in my differentiation (and there likely is), it’s meant for those poets who would wear the academic and popular status of Poet, using the same old formal and subject-based strategies that ensure popular or academic recognition. See what I mean?
“It is, I would suggest, such vapid imperatives of ‘good behavior’ or ‘collegiality’ that stop poets short of becoming Poets—that stifle growth into ‘poetic integrity.’”
I could comfortably substitute “scholar, teacher, or thinker” for Poet in these lines.
Keep those bristles raised high, Spece!
Bot helde þou hit neuer so holde, and I here passed,
Founded for ferde for to fle, in fourme þat þou tellez,
I were a knyȝt kowarde, I myȝt not be excused.
Good to see thee, and—of course!—agreed.
It’s too late in the evening (morning) and I’m too tried to think straight, but. . . : The distinction between “Poets” and “poets” is spot-on. And certainly not a call for denigration of the latter. But, speaking as someone whose writerly impulse is melancholic rather than joyous–and whose poetic efforts ascend, admittedly, not even to the level of the lower-case (the hierarchy is dogging me here)–the meta-reach for “unity,” “cohesion” or “integrity” seems irrelevant and even a bit weird. In the service of such bland and crafty directives, Dickinson’s 19th-century editors ruined her poetry, but in the process also inadvertently reified (for the discerning reader, as Melville might say) her resolute refusal and embrace of that which both reveals and obscures. Dickinson’s “integrity,” if it must be named, issues entirely out of an impeccable (and thus threatening) moral grounding. There are so few “Poets”–or even “Writers”–it seems to me, precisely because there are too few people (wish I knew how to italicize here) who actually give a crap about being a person of moral “integrity.” And this is why–if we’re wandering around in the 19th century–Dickinson and Melville consistently thrill, while (in my opinion) Whitman and Cooper do not. I therefore very much applaud your pairing of morality with aesthetics, the broadband absence of which lends academia its stench.
Yea! Ms. Graham, we share a bit of the mastiff, methinks. Thanks for this.
[…] This question stemmed from a tweet by Boston’s Spece: […]
Poets should be morally and aesthetically rigorous before they are ‘social’
—on this: I was rethinking morality, a term soiled by ill-use, and came to embrace the notion that morality is a form of empathy: it is seeing the truth of something and understanding the effects of various choices, and making deciding in light of that truth in favor of the choice that does the least harm. But to make that call, one needs to be able to recognize the guiding principle, the “truth”. For Seers and expansive poets (Poets), that truth is like a blinding white light that is stuck to the open eye–it’s a gift and a burden, both. But to most, I think, it is less clear. The vision blurs and the social sphere becomes the largest and the poet’s choices are limited by a boundary that is not necessarily conscious to him or her. So I propose that it’s not useful to say what a poet “should” be, unless you are talking about choices that are in the conscious arena. Better to say what I would like to accomplish in poetry, as a teacher, and as a citizen of this planet. Believe it or not, Spece, when your mastiff lowers the hackles, I’ve seen minds turn in their beds and glisten—It’s the deep listening power you have, the acknowledgement. THAT is the power that opens “the social” to make room for the Other. For the god.