It is difficult to argue with Noah Berlatsky’s skewering review of Mark Strand’s latest collection [“Pulitzer vs. Penguins,” October 20], partially because I am not familiar with that text and partially because he raises some points. Drinking whiskey at dusk is something of a cliche, but no more than claiming that an art form is dying or dead. Referring to Strand’s book as “another nail in the coffin of contemporary poetry” is about as cliched a thing as one can write, and far less interesting than the idea of being drunk at sunset.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
When Berlatsky writes, “The one saving grace of contemporary poetry is that virtually nobody–hoofed or otherwise–reads the stuff,” I have to wonder why he feels he can claim the authority to relay this as fact. I am always suspicious of statements that boast such authority, especially when they come from a writer who is considerably less read than, say, Mark Strand. Not that I think Berlatsky imagines that he is well-known or widely read, nor would I assume he feels that is the issue. But the truth be told, contemporary poetry has a wider audience than Berlatsky can imagine, perhaps because Berlatsky cannot imagine readers outside of those who half-attentively breeze past his columns on the way to Savage Love and phone-sex ads.
snobbish as he tries to seem, invoking those before-mentioned canonized poets makes him appear to be a former English major, familiar enough with the big names, who feels it his duty to report that poetry is dead because it doesn’t look like the poetry he studied as an undergrad. I mean, Strand’s verse contains no alliteration or rhyme, and that’s what all good poetry is made of, right? And besides, as he says, no one reads it anyway. If a poet writes alone in the woods and no one reads it, is it still poetry?
The cliche you pointed out was in the headline, which was written by the Reader’s editors, not by me. To read some painful statistics on poetry’s market share, or lack thereof, you can check out this article: artscouncil.org.uk/documents/publications/371.pdf. And I’ve always found “Eating Poetry” to be one of Strand’s most annoying efforts, though I know many people like it.
