The Anne Winters Challenge - Should a Marxist poet be stylistically ornate? By Dan Chiasson: "The desire to assign proportional representation in poetry, to make poetry resemble, and therefore be palatable to, its subjects, has resulted in some pretty weak art, from Carl Sandburg forward. The fact of the matter is, in poetry the score is always 200-0 in favor of the poet. The poet always has the ball. The poet designed the ball, and invented the game, and can change the rules. You always lose when you're the subject matter of poetry. Attempts to make the subject a worthy competitor feel condescending, like when your tennis coach serves leftie to build up your self-esteem."

This sort of thinking seems to neglect the ancient principle of "decorum" or fittingness. Falstaff must speak as Falstaff speaks; Sandburg, for all his weakness, would not have been better if he had chosen a less populist mode: the meaning of his poetry, and whatever value it has, lies in its populist mode. "The poet always has the ball" is pretty lame reasoning. Hasn't this guy ever heard of negative capability? This game doesn't sound very fun to play, does it?

Does Elmore Leonard write like Henry James? Doesn't the "subject" dictate style in a profound sense in both cases? Leonard's language illustrates the principle of "decorum." Not that it is decorous, but that it "fits" the spirit of his books. Can we write an Elmore Leonard novel in heroic couplets? Leonard is a fantastic prose stylist, and part of his genius is for this sense of linguistic appropriateness.