Digging for Gold

I suppose it's a good thing Elizabeth Bishop is dead; otherwise, I don't know how anyone could get away with lines like this:

You are living in a world created by Elizabeth Bishop. Granted, our culture owes its shape to plenty of other forces--Hollywood, Microsoft, Rachael Ray--but nothing matches the impact of a great artist, and in the second half of the 20th century, no American artist in any medium was greater than Bishop.

This is how David Orr begins his review of Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments in yesterday's NYT Book Review. His first paragraph concludes this way:

The publication of [this book] . . . isn't just a significant event in our poetry; it's part of a continuing alteration in the scale of American life.

Don't get me wrong. I love Bishop's work. One of the professors in my Master's program, Anne Shifrer, sold me on Bishop long ago, and I presented a long paper on Bishop at two conferences (it had something to do with Bishop's use of color). Bishop also comes with the requisites of any great, tragic poet: orphaned at a young age, alcoholic, gay, and with at least two suicidal lovers. These are the kinds of biographical details that win the immediate sympathy of bookish lit students and sensitive MFAs. But her poetry is not the work of some fluttering housewife or some overburdened artiste (Hello, Sylvia Plath!). You can read Bishop in large doses without feeling compelled to either slit your wrists or snap your fingers.

But does the ever-struggling world of poetry need the kind of hyperbole that Orr delivers in his review? Especially for a book of fragments?

I find myself in complete agreement when Orr bemoans the tragic fact that "Bishop's poems are less well known to many people than the lyrics to 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'." And I would be delighted to see someone besides bookish lit students and sensitive MFAs pick up a book of Bishop's work, fragmentary or otherwise. But I'm not sure Orr does Bishop any favors by showering her with the kind of canonical praise generally reserved for poets who have been dead for longer than 25 years.

The publication of this book also raises questions about the legacy owed to our finest writers, questions about the delicate balance between useful literary research, the marketing concerns of publishers, and the morbid curiousity of readers. These questions are, to some degree, addressed in another article published by the NYT, this one outlining the war of words between prominent poetry critic and scholar Helen Vendler and Alice Quinn, poetry editor for The New Yorker, one of the few popular magazines in America still publishing poetry.

The argument is one familiar to any literary student: Is it ethical to publish work that an artist did not see worthy of publication during their lifetime? Courtney Love will tell you that the world needed to see her late husband's private journals, just as Charles Scribner will gleefully share with you the sales figures for the latest novel fragment from Ernest Hemingway. I make it a point not to buy or read these kinds of books.

On the other hand, I have no moral compunctions about buying over-priced Beatles or Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen bootleg CDs that preserve, in often excruciating detail, everything those artists happened to commit to tape in the studio. Seriously, I get jazzed listening to Paul & John run through 15 rehearsals of "She Loves You," so who am I to point fingers at corporate greed or the latest scheme by a junkie widow to pay off her creditors and dealers? And speaking as one who has a literature degree, I cannot underestimate the scholarly value of poring through whatever notes and fragments a writer leaves on the floor next to their deathbed. These scribblings often tell us more about the writing process than any number of official biographies or approved journals.

So while I can't say that I'm going to run out and pick up this new book of Bishop's fragments (though, at 367 pages, it is nearly 100 pages longer than the edition I own of Bishop's complete poems), I cannot turn up my nose at either Alice Quinn or Farrar Straus & Giroux for putting it out there. Nor can I entirely dismiss Orr's review. Hyperbole aside, it is sensitive and persuasively written.

When and if I die, there will be a large number of painfully bad journals and at least five overstuffed portfolios of completely rancid poetry for my survivors to pore over. I wish them all the luck in the world getting that shit published. Somewhere, some bored net surfer is dying to know the tragic history behind Chazzbot. Or at least that's what I tell myself when I sit down to post.
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Does anyone know what's happened to Chronicle West? For at least a week now, all I've been able to pull up is a blank, blue screen. I fear some household disaster, perhaps another chimney fire. Schrand, check in!

UPDATE: Huh. Mabye my computer's gone batty. Everything looks fine at CWest today.
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As a semi-professional radio DJ, I feel compelled to distance myself as far as fucking possible from assholes like this.
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Since today marks the first weekday of National Poetry Month, I feel compelled to post a poem of some kind. Maybe I'll get to that later. For now, I'll leave you with links to some of my favorite venues for online poetry: Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor's daily radio reading, The Writer's Almanac.