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26 ago 2004

Henry quotes the motto ars est celare artem, which I interpret as "Art consists of concealing overt signs of artifice." That's all very well, but I don't associate this principle at all with Gould's own poetry, which seems to flaunt its artifice quite a bit:

"Loosen your reason? Hard to, feller, avast
cheskermate centred your creel, the yaksee
sweltered in a fireheaded woolfox brutee!
Around and aground like a termulating ski mast!"

An extreme example, maybe, but not at all atypical. I could have chosen many examples from various sections of Stubborn Grew, the only book of his I own. Many of HG's overt models--Joyce, Crane, Berryman--are also artifice-flaunting rather than artifice-concealing artisans. I associate "ars est celare" more with Creeley: poetry that doesn't seem difficult to write, that conceals its craft, so that someone might even say, "Why is that a poem?" ("Is that a real poem or did you just make it up?") Berryman famously pronounced Creeley "dull."

"He wants to be
a brutal old man,
an agressive old men,
as dull, as brutal
as the emptiness around him."

Not that there's anything wrong with overt artifice: I love both kinds of poetry, in fact. Stevens at his gaudiest, Williams at his sparest. It could be that Henry Gould understands the motto differently than I do. That is more plausible that thinking that he misperceives his own work.

Other poets I associate with this ideal of concealing artfulness: Bromige, O'Hara (in poems like "Hate is only one of many responses").

Poets I think belong to the opposite camp: James Merrill, Derek Walcott, Prynne, Góngora. Poets of verbal excess, verbal play. For me, Henry is in that camp, whether he realizes it or not!

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