from nytimes.com
The story at the top of the NYT's most-emailed list for the Books section yesterday and today is not actually about a book. It is about the wildly popular, all-consuming, mass-market phenomenon of — wait for it — poetry. As it turns out, poetry is pretty exciting, because it happens to be the subject of a giant, public, in-your-face smackdown of the New Yorker by the New York Times. Drama!
In this case, poems are made by fools like the New Yorker's Dana Goodyear — not that you'd know from any sort of disclosure on last month's long piece on the Poetry foundation and how it is using its $150 million-odd bequest from Eli Lilly heiress Ruth Lilly, who, as it turned out, rather liked poetry. NYT poetry critic David Orr — who is never one to pull a punch — pulls none here, either, calling the New Yorker on the utter lack of transparency in Goodyear's piece, and then going even further and calling into question just what, exactly, is the motivating purpose behind the New Yorker's poetry selections. As smackdowns go, it's sort of awesome.*
Here's what the casual reader would not have known: Goodyear, who wrote the piece, is a poet herself.** She's also the former assistant to editor David Remnick. She's also had her poems published in the New Yorker more times than most established American poets, including poet laureates. Goodyear is now 30; in 2002, when she was 25, she was the most-published poet in the magazine. A cynic might think there was a coincidence.
A cynic might think a lot of things, actually, after this article, in which Orr meticulously takes apart Goodyear's piece bit by bit. He begins by damning her with the faint praise of calling it "a slick production" and then goes on to call out her careful descriptives, which suggest that New Money + Mass-Market Ideals = Crazy Rich People Ruining Everything. Then he examines her sources, revealing that they are selective, contradictory and, in some cases, quoted entirely out of context (he emails at least one of them to check). And that's just the first half.
Before we get to the second half, though, and then My Larger Conclusions (to borrow an Orrian conceit), it only seems fair to note that Orr can be said to have been as selective with his characterizations of Goodyear's piece as he claims she was of those related to the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine. Goodyear quotes from Poetry Foundation president John Barr at length, including the philosophy behind his changes: "For all its schools and experiments, contemporary poetry is still written in the rain shadow thrown by Modernism... It is the engine that drives what is written today. And it is a tired engine." This is the same dude that she tells us wrote a 150 page epic poem, which sounds pretty impressive. Yes, it contains the phrase "corporate salami" but, well, "there are many quite different poetries thriving in the United States today," apparently; we got that from Goodyear's piece too, quoting UCLA poet and a professor Stephen Yenser. We admit, we're not sure if he's a Good Poet or a Bad Poet; Goodyear did not mention whether he was wearing a Crisp White Shirt or Coral Lipstick. Orr does not seem to be praising Goodyear's piece when he notes: "It is a very long article," but 6,500 words does give more room for nuance than he perhaps allows.
That said, the poetry-world backstory is invaluable, and the light Orr throws on the specifics pertaining to the New Yorker is illuminating, indeed. He notes that the magazine virtually never covers works of poetry, and when it does, it's by poets who are dead or really, really old. That's fine; the New Yorker doesn't make television shows about torture, either, but it covers them admirably just the same. But then Orr turns to the real crux: How the New Yorker selects its own poetry. Not only do we learn that in the poetry world, a New Yorker poem is a specific animal — like, say, a Styles trend piece — but we learn that when fine poets write in that style, they come up with phrases like "the wind in the fluffy chimney." We also learn of Goodyear's provenance, and the New Yorker 's "widely noted fondness for the work of its own staffers and social associates," which hardly seems to reflect "the many quite different poetries thriving in the United States today," now does it? That, of course, is Orr's point, and it's well-taken, as he notes: "[T]he Poetry Foundation, however misguided or impolitic, hasn't given up on poetry. The question is: Has The New Yorker?"
We don't know; we're just glad to see a thorough exegesis like this in the pages of the New York Times about the pages of another august paper. This kind of kimono-opening backstory-excavating piece is more likely to be seen on a blog than made "official" in the Paper of Record — the backstory behind articles, what wasn't mentioned, what the conflicts were, the selective quotage. But blogs don't necessarily have the reach of the NYT, or the resources to hire an award-winning poetry critic to take the entire sausage factory apart, which is why this piece has caused such a stir in literary circles already, despite a number of very active and, er, vocal lit blogs (let no one say that only the poets may claim membership in that "touchy tribe," as per Horace, quoth by Orr).
The best thing about this from a journalistic perspective, of course, is the emphasis on transparency: As Orr says in the accompanying podcast, "My problem with [Goodyear's] article is more one of insufficient information being given out to people than with the conclusions of the article." Since that transparency extends to process, it behooves us now, puny blog though we are, to note that the NYT is well-known for reviewing and recommending the works of its own, both in the books section and NYTBR, and that recently NYTBR editor Sam Tanenhaus went on record admitting that first-time novels were unlikely to be reviewed. As for poetry coverage, we can't say whether poetry does better at the NYT than at the New Yorker; this blogger doesn't seem to think so. Maybe the New Yorker will publish an article about it.
Actually, that would be great — more insights for the rest of us who wouldn't know a sestina if it smacked them in the face. (Iambic pentameter? But I don't even know 'er!) As Galleycat notes, as long as the debate is advanced, all comers are welcome — which is why this piece is, ironically, a terrific learning aid when taken in tandem with Goodyear's piece. It certainly does more to make poetry seem exciting and dynamic than a bunch of of subway panels — and I think we can all agree that kimonos are much more fun when they're open. Corporate salami, anyone?
I don't really know what I mean by that, so maybe I'll bring it back to Horace: "Nothing's beautiful from every point of view." Now that's poetry.
The Moneyed Muse [New Yorker]
The Annals of Poetry [NYT]
*Obligatory disclosure: David Orr is a good friend, but his excellence in reviewing has been well-established, not only by the fact that he got this prize for "Excellence in Reviewing" but also because he uses words like "deeeeeelicious," and then introduces them into the permanent New York Times lexicon.
**Not really a disclosure, but it should be obvious above that I'm not actually calling Dana Goodyear a fool, I'm appropriating the perspective of Orr to make a goofy Joyce Kilmer joke, one of my two stock poetry jokes. Be grateful I didn't use the one about the girl from Nantucket.
