from James Longenbach's review of Jorie Grahm's Sea Change
But the fact that some aspects of Graham’s work are more fully realized than others seems, while not uninteresting, oddly beside the point. What matters, as with Ashbery and Glück, other poets who perpetually challenge the terms of their own achievement, is the shape of the career — not only what she has done but what she will inevitably do next. (New York Times)
Bullshit. What Jorie Graham, or any of us, might do next is get hit by a bus. I'm not sure whether this eye toward the future is merely a facile way of ending the review, or indicative of a more profound cluelessness. Either way, 'next' is bound to be at least a couple years down the line, which makes the expectation here seem poorly feigned. Just go ahead and say you didn't really like the book all that much. Less embarrassing for the reviewer, and less condescending toward the poet.
For some reason, talk like this makes me want to smash pretty teacups and upset the reception goers. I have a ton of respect for what Ashbery and Graham are able to do, but they're POETS for fuck's sake, and it diminishes my experience of their work to hear them discussed as Very Important Persons. Though I'm all for the sloppy gusto of fandom, this gentile genteel crap annoys me (whoops! blogged post-Ritalin, pre-bed last night).
I don't know why people like Longenbach read, but I often do it to experience something more authentic than the neat little packages we're expected to be out in the world. Has this reviewer never sat in a room sharing poems with other people and felt a veil lift, and felt really alive, and felt like all the awkwardness & fucking up & despair in his life were a little less devastating, if only for an hour or two? Perhaps not.
And perhaps that's why I can't relate to him and others like him at all. What they're doing is peddling in exactly the opposite direction of everything I love about poetry.
