¡Bemsha SWING!

2 ago 2005

I might be an asshole and a great poet.
I might be a great guy and and a great poet.
I might be an asshole and a lousy poet.
I might be a great guy and a lousy poet.

Or any combination in between. In most cases there will be flawed human beings writing flawed poetry, not monster genuises or saintly genuises or talentless saints. There is really no inherent correlation between my general worth as a human being and how good my poetry is. The work is not me. I'm thnking of how Gary Sullivan responded to various reviews of his comic book recently. Some got what he was trying to do and gave him high marks. Others were not as comprehending and criticized various aspects of it. Obviously one is happier with good reviews than bad, but I didn't see Gary claiming that the less complimentary reviews were done by evil hypocritical snobs. That's how I would like to respond to criticism of my work, if I am mature enough by the time any book of mine appears. If someone doesn't like it or get it, ultimately they can't be bullied into it. And this bullying creates a climate in which no discussion is possible.

UPDATE: Kent Johnson asks me to clarify. I wasn't talking about Kent's reactions to reviews of his own work, but solely about Chris Daniel's review, which I took to be bullying, as did Gary S. I took the position that anyone should be embarrassed to be writen about like that. Kent, while not embarrassed by the review, does not subscribe to any view I might have imputed to him in the post above, by implication.

2 comentarios:

C. Dale dijo...: I really do believe, though I cannot explain it well, that poems are made things and, therefore, even if they tell us something about the concerns of the writer, it isn't a window to the writer. I have, at several times in my life, met poets and have been completely shocked--at their personality and the basic way they carry themselves through life--because I thought their poems told me something about them. One such poet had been an idol of mine because his work seemed large, breathtaking, beautiful, dark, complicated, painful. I just felt this man had to be an angel of sorts. In life, he was an absolute asshole! After I met him, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe he had written all of those poems of his. That said, I was also 21 and just didn't know much about poets. But it was a good lesson.; 11:02 a. m.
Patry Francis dijo...: I think the angel must have existed somewhere in this poet, but angels are highly susceptible to corruption. Sometimes an excessively glorified angel becomes an asshole. Occupational hazard for angels maybe?; 12:47 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

2 ago 2005

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