I’ve thought about responding in detail to Brian Kim Stefans’ screed over the first half of my Lowell commentary, but found (find) it impossible, at least personally, to untangle his thinking from the ad hominem attacks that he loads into it. Of greater value & interest are Kasey Mohammad’s & Michael Magee’s discussion of the same issue. Though, frankly, Brian’s second approach on the same subject seems less over-the-top & thus more thoughtful. Alas, he slides back into the ad hominem mode for his third commentary.

 

I do want to reiterate that anyone who lived through the 1960s will remember that, in politics, the “third way” strategy advocated by Stefans – Walter Mondale was its apotheosis – invariably came out as road kill. While the intentions of a rapprochement may always be noble, in the world of American letters it requires amnesia to imagine it possible. If you’re anywhere on the post-avant spectrum – as Brian clearly is – the idea of rapprochement is virtually a death wish. Kasey, on the other hand, is exactly on target when he suggests that a “17^th way” will be possible before a “third one” is.

 

Daniel Nester offers a more cogent criticism concerning my comments in his email below:

 

Mr. Silliman:

 

Some quick comments on your otherwise spot-on assessment of all this Lowellmania of late.

 

When you say that when Time "could have focused on the aftermath & implications of the first Harlem riots of the decade, it chose instead to feature Lowell on its cover," I think it misses many points. 

 

To wit: Time could have had another poet, not from his clan, on the cover — Ginsberg, perhaps, an obvious choice, but perhaps a feature on "The New American Poetry."  Granted, that last proposed feature would have been four years late — not so unhip for mainstream media — but my point is by saying Time should have focused on the Harlem riots, you're implying that

 

n       any poet beside Lowell couldn't have competed with him for a Time cover — indeed, if we are to believe poets of your generation (Larry Fagin's asinine bloviating comes to mind), this was a glorious time for poetry, filled with cheap rents, great pot, and hot chicks;

n       Lowell and his lot didn't care about the Harlem riots — they probably did, they being of the aristopoet, armchair purply liberal pedigree;

n       poetry is less important than the Harlem riots — it is not, and to imply it is demonstrates that in the absence of good ideas all we have is moral indignation;

 

Granted, your comparison goes for cheap points, and does point out Time's oversight of engaging with the real world, just as Lowell, in his diction and topics, avoided the real world as well.  But by saying non-pedigreed poets, by right of Time magazine's exclusion, are "down" with Harlem riot concerns suggests alternapoets of the early 60s were political heroes, and the pedigreed ones weren't.  I'm afraid neither is the case.

 

I just don't think you need to invoke the Harlem riots to point out the iniquity of the poetry world back then.  Is all I'm saying.

 

Best, D

 

 

Daniel Nester

editor, Unpleasant Event Schedule

http://unpleasanteventschedule.com/

author, God Save My Queen

http://www.godsavemyqueen.com/

 

Nester is absolutely right in some of his points. I wasn’t trying to suggest that Lowell or his immediate circle were in any way involved in the decision to cover poetry over social eruption on the cover of Time. There is no reason to believe that Lowell didn’t feel some sympathy for the rioters, although frankly at that early moment most of the Left didn’t know how exactly how to react to that event.

 

As an editor, my experience tells me that a “poetry cover” on Time is what you choose for a week of little or no news of great topical importance. In the face of the first modern urban uprising, to have missed that was a major editorial comment on Time’s part. It’s not that poetry is “less important,” but rather that its importance functions on a very different dimension.

 

However, it’s a comment more on the school of quietude’s (SoQ’s) integration into the social milieu of the publishing industry, as such, that Time would think to put Lowell, rather than Ginsberg, on its cover – the latter would almost certainly have sold more copies in 1964. It reminds me of the degree to which many of the quietude poets don’t even know how that world represents their own small press scene. As one Pulitzer-winning SoQ said to me a couple of years back, “It must be hard to come out of college without a book contract.” Yeah. Right.