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Welcome to Poetix 6/2009

COVER STORY

By Richard Modiano

 

 

Great Art? Great Poetry?

A Personal Reflection

There are two extreme positions in the larger debate about where great art comes from. One is that great works of art have eternal values and speak to timeless issues and achieve universal forms of perfection. The more extremists of these extremists might go on to talk about how all this perfection can only come from God. I certainly don't agree with this view.

The other, the postmodern opposite, is that matters of aesthetic value are always culturally based, or, worse, reflect the authoritarian cultural powers that enshrined so-called "masterpieces" as masterpieces. In this view, "Shakespeare" is only considered a great poet because we have all been told by authorities that he is a great poet. This is an even bigger load of bull, and is often held by people who care little for aesthetic values in art—and who never were moved by Shakespeare.

It took me a few years to come to terms with certain nineteenth-century American poets. I read Emily Dickinson more than once and her work didn't do anything for me. Then, in 1975, on a cross-country bus trip I happened on an abandoned copy of her Selected Poems in the Omaha Greyhound Station of all places; suddenly, I saw through the surface to something deeper. I wasn't especially "trying" to like Dickinson at the time. Finally, her work really got to me. I've never taken a poetry appreciation course, in fact, and had then read only a few anthologies of nineteenth-century poetry. I have come to my position that the "great poets" are actually great poets pretty much just through reading their work—and even then, I can't quite accept all the received wisdom. (Wallace Stevens? Forget it.)

I think the messy truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes. Surely it’s true that many "great" artists who went unrecognized in their time are now lost to us. But Herman Melville wasn't much recognized in his time, apparently, and is very much a "creation" of twentieth-century criticism. But in this case the critics are right, as anyone who has read enough of his works ought to know. Despite my dislike of the talk of universals, there has to be some sort of explanation for the enshrinement of Homer, Shakespeare, Bach, and Rembrandt. I won't accept the post-modern argument that their work is valued because the authorities value it, because as my early love of Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso shows, I don't pay much heed to what the authorities value, and have been incredibly moved by all four.

This doesn't mean we don't all have cultural biases. Someone who can see past some of my prejudices perhaps can love Stevens. Maybe the love of Herman Melville is partly influenced by twentieth-century tastes, and if our civilization should make it as far as the twenty-second century, perhaps people will see his work differently, and hitherto neglected poets will get their due.

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