14 June 2021 – Mistaken Poems / Inspired by Evan Kindley

Wronged Poets / or Mistaken for Poets

“ . . . it can be difficult to tell wrong from wrong.” 

Erica McAlpine, The Poet’s Mistake

A new book on poetry has stuttered over the transom of literature. Evan Kindley reviewed it in The New York Review of Books, 11 February 2021. The review, titled, “To Err is Poetic,” had a keen and piercing look at a work by Erica McAlpine (Princeton University Press 2021). The publisher and the price are both intimidating. The price? Five cents under $100. Oh, the title, you ask. The Poet’s Mistake. Intriguing, eh? “Not so much,” you say? Some would even claim that all poetry is a mistake; however, if we go that far, why not apply “uselessness” to all writing? Poetry, in particular, can be intimidating. What to do with all those line breaks, forms, and forced rhymes?

Ms. McAlpine leads the way. According to her reviewer, “The justification of mistakes, and not mistakes per se, is the phenomenon that really interests her. Her book is more than a catalog of howlers; its aim is not to shame poets for their errors but to question critics’ attempts to explain away those errors at all costs.”

Ms. McAlpine appears to be up to the job; however, I shall take a more modest approach. Starting with definitions is a safe bet.

Synonyms for “mistake” include error, blunder, slip, and lapse. Merriam-Webster says that all these “. . . mean a departure from what is true, right, and proper.” The entry goes on to claim that “. . . error suggests the existence of a standard or guide and a straying from the right course through failure to make effective use of this.” A bit later, the entry states, “. . . mistake implies misconception or inadvertence and usually expresses less criticism than error.”*

Since E. Kindley uses “err” in the title of his review, I’m going to go with “error,” and not “mistake.” But drat! The trouble is that Ms. McAlpine claims that poets make both “errors,” amounting to ignorance, and they also make “mistakes” which tend to merit less scorn and more, “Oh, you poor thing. You just don’t know.” A famous poet (name five - Ha! Gotcha’!) is more likely to be forgiven for verse that hurts the ear or blears the eyes. Why? Well, we say, “She’s just beyond us,” or “She’s trying something new,” or “She’s ahead of her time.” It’s really hard to discern “good poetry” from “bad” and even harder to justify either evaluation. Add to all this, as Ms. McAlpine informs us, some poets, like Ogden Nash, make “mistakes” on purpose! (See end of this post for examples.) She also cautions us that “the broader question of how to distinguish error from poetic license is nearly as old as poetry itself!”

In the next section, instead of presenting “good” or “bad” poetry (who shall cast the first writer’s block?), I’m going to ask a series of questions and put forth my own speculations. This will be, for a change, much more challenging than the usual explorations at the end of posts. So, fasten your couplet dear Emily D.; it’s going to be a bumpy synecdoche.

GOING POETICALLY WHERE NO ONE HAS SCANSION(ED) BEFORE

With definitions in hand, how can we tell if a piece of work (as in “what a piece of work!”) contains mistakes or deviates from accepted standards? Whose criteria shall we use? This is a difficult start, for without criteria how can we identify an error? Take free verse. Many aspiring, emotionally zapped poets think the “free” in “free verse” means “do whatever the heck pleases you.” In poetry in general, despite its practitioners claim to a working toolbox full of methods, standards, and rules, many of those who wield the plume, do away entirely with these constraining contraptions, eschew punctuation, use line breaks like bad katana cuts, and perhaps worst of all, act as if standards existed for those not creative enough to come up with their own rules. And we’re right back over our heads in the briar patch of burrowing and bloodying ourselves in the near-rhyme thorns. 

Contrast this with a rhymester who sincerely brings her verse to heel, avoids every cliché, wipes the chin of every sentimental, mewling phrase, and sweats out clarity of purpose for those who care.  Are these enough to guarantee good poetry or any writing, for that matter? Who can tell? Then there’s the significant confusion as to whether the supposed mistake/error is contrived, intentional, or made out of plain ol’ ignorance. (Think e e cummings’** poetry; in prose think of James Joyce.) If a poem has a whiff of an adolescent armpit about it, could the trouble be simple immaturity? The urge to mess with the reader? The urge to show just how clever clever can be.

Not infrequently, people who write poetry – who even put pen to paper or fingers to keys infrequently – write when they have been emotionally moved by joy or misery, or believe they have been granted an epiphany, insight, or even otherworldly vision. In such a state, every line seems gilded. Have compassion for such a candle in the night that flares up under a soft draft and then recedes on the ethereal spine of the netherworlds. See that!? That last sentence has the ring I’m talking about! Not enough superlatives exist in the dictionaries of the world, to express what can’t be expressed. But some of us try anyway. And that’s where compassion comes in. We try. Our hubris vanishes. When the emotional whirling subsides, embarrassment may set in. Still, we resilient poets take up the pen again and again. Why? Because we must. Could this be the source of what is judged “bad” poetry?

Writers who err, who make supposed mistakes, and who have the hide of an armadillo just can’t stay on the wagon, regardless of the outcome. Could this be due to the company the poor poet keeps? After all, poetry is a b***h wearing black leather, splattered with tattoos, wielding a whip, and smelling of cheap perfume. (Just using a metaphor here – no gender bias intended.) She lures us with promises of bagging the stunning emotional experience, feel the “thing” wriggling within the burlap, and then when the poet unties the bag over an immaculate sheet, it does its business where a poem should be. The dominatrix cackles over our left shoulder.

(Okay, if we must, Poetry is a gigolo smelling of Old Spice, wearing a black codpiece, and sporting a ‘gotta be’ toupee.)

Famous poets are the tidbits of choice for the black-gartered ones. Some poets know they have made mistakes, and know that others know, i.e., critics, professional or otherwise. The best of the bunch (poets) are their own bad-ass critics. More often than not, they know where the “mistakes” lie; they just can’t seem to fix them. Often, the best critics also spot the errors, but won’t call them out, like the lackies of the Emperor “wearing” his invisible robes. In rare instances, a high-standing poet will admit a mistake, and occasionally has even gone out of the way to make a correction – publicly.

Of course, it takes a really good poet to make intentional mistakes. Again, consider e e cummings, plus Ogden Nash and Lewis Carroll. For giggles, see several of Nash’s poems at the end of this post, and a few of cummings’.    

This post’s rambling exposition must pay heed to E. Kindley’s words when he strongly cautions, “. . . Worse. We suggest that poetry is of so little significance that it doesn’t matter whether it’s wrong or not.” More encouraging, Ms. McAlpine claims that with effort, “Readers can get closer to poets and poems by knowing when they are wrong rather than insisting that they are right.”

Background

As I’ve said previous posts, I’ve been in love with words like forever, dude, and fer sher a few years before going to school. Likewise, I have been wary of mistakes, errors, flub up, bark up the wrong tree, get on the wrong end of the stick, screw up, goof up, make a hash of it, or make a boo-boo. After scrutinizing the review cited above, I feel the shackles of symbolism drop off onto the dusty road of chiasmus (chiasmi?). I can always be wrong. I can always be right. They cancel out and I remain bright. Ugh!

Exploration 1: Find a bad poem.

Exploration 2: Explain why it is a bad poem.

Exploration 3: Write a good poem

Exploration 4:  If you think you have written something to rivals Bill’s sonnets, just see if you can stop yourself from sharing it.

*“Mistake.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster.

** Mr. ee (e.e., E.E.) cummings (Cummings) has a few versions of his name floating about.

From the Best Mistaken Poets

A selection of Odgen Nash Poems 

A Caution to Everybody

Consider the auk;

Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.

Consider man, who may well become extinct

Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.

Biological Reflection

A girl whose cheeks are covered with paint

Has an advantage with me over one whose ain’t.

I love Me

I’m always my own best cheerer;

Myself I satisfy

Till I take a look in the mirror

And see things I to I.

Reflection on Babies

A bit of talcum

Is always walcum.

The Dog

The truth I do not stretch or shove

When I state that the dog is full of love.

I’ve also found, by actual test,

A wet dog is the lovingest.

And by E.E. Cummings (or however you wish to spell his name)

'pity this busy monster, manunkind'

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

--- electrons deify one razorblade

into a mountainrange; lenses extend

unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish

returns on its unself.

                          A world of made

is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell

of a good universe next door; let's go

E. E. Cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind

what if a much of a which of a wind

gives truth to the summer's lie;

bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun

and yanks immortal stars awry?

Blow king to beggar and queen to seem

(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)

—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,

the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays

screaming hills with sleet and snow:

strangles valleys by ropes of thing

and stifles forests in white ago?

Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind

(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)

—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,

it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream

bites this universe in two, 

peels forever out of his grave

and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?

Blow soon to never and never to twice

(blow life to isn't: blow death to was)

—all nothing's only our hugest home;

the most who die,the more we live

ee cummings