Here's the thing. Reading 90 books of poetry in a couple of months would be ridiculous. I'm assuming, though, that reading is usually rereading, and that the point is to have a mix of books--some I've lived with for many years, others I might have looked at once or twice, and a few that I am reading "cold," for the first time. If someone were beginning a similar project without having read many complete books of poetry in the first place, it would be a completely different task.

I used to think there was a category of MFs. Those to whom devotion is due, once they are recognized. Miles and Casals, Rothko, Joseph Cornell. My theory of invisible cities, though, locates the response in the person making the personal investment, not in the pantheon of MFs per se.

That raises the question of whether there might be bad investments. In other words, objects of devotion who aren't worthy. For me, maybe cummings, Vonnegut? I can't think of too many others. I would argue that no, there are no bad investments. One made during adolescence might cause embarrassment later, but they are appropriate at that age.

ON THE OTHER HAND

How can someone be despised for "taste"? It is assumed that the person with that kind of bad taste has made a deep personal investment in, commitment to, say Ayn Rand, Thomas Kinkade, or Kenny G. That IS the person; those are the markers of subjectivity that that person has voluntarily chosen as socio-cultural identity. To act as though those markers are not open to critique seems rather odd. Just as it seems logical to me that someone might despise me as an elitist shit.

Ortega y Gasset argues that the purpose of dehumanized art is to provide the basis for just such a cultural differentiation.

(25)

Calvino, Invisible Cities. Trans. Weaver. 1972; 1974. 165 pp.

This didn't stand up to my memory of it, quite. It wasn't that it was bad, but that I thought I could invent more imaginative cities myself. It was great as a stimulus of my own ideas, but I thought (arrogantly) that I could outdo Calvino. In fact, my memory had outdone him by inventing a more exalted image of this book.

And I never did finish that Carme Riera novel that was number 24...

My idea of reading poetry is based loosely on the imagery of Calvino's Invisible Cities, certainly one of my favorite novels. Each poet is an imaginary city, which may or may not be associated with the real city associated with the poet. Pessoa's Lisbon, say, or Lorca's Granada, Montejo's Caracas. Even Ronald Johnson's Topeka.

The personal investment one feels in a poet has to do with the fact that poets shape one's subjectivity, carve it up into regions. Someone like me has suffered that particular déformation professionelle quite a bit. A particular person has only one subjectivity, but multiple in terms of its subregions. It's kind of difficult because one feels a certain responsibiity. Sometimes I feel like the protagonist of Ishiguro's The Unconsoled visiting a city where I have certain responsibilities--but what are they exactly?

The model of poetry criticism I see sometimes is more like that of a presumed expert in fabrics. Imagine this gentleman in his office. He is brought samples of fabrics from multiple regions of the world and asked to judge their quality. He writes up his reports: this one is a bit flimsy, isn't it? This one is one we've seen many times before--no novelty there! This other one is over-ornate. Even a very good judger of fabric samples is confined by the metaphor I've constructed for him. He's still an expert on fabrics and not a traveller to far-off cities.

So if someone sends me a book to review, or tells me to read this other poet I have little previous acquaintance with, I am in some sense being asked to find a place on the map, another city. i could give my fabric expert's advice too, but that is inherently limited. The problem is not that judgment is wrong per se, but that there is wider context that needs to be brought into play--the imaginary city, not the swath of fabric.

It seems to me that the main factor in reading poetry is the level of personal investment involved. I have my poets--mine because they inspire a level of personal identification beyond merely liking or admiring their work, or knowing a lot about it. It is not that the admiration is uncritical in this case. I know my poets have numerous flaws and shortcomings. I could also freely admit that a poet who is not mine might be superior to one who is not. Rilke is not one of my poets--just because he's not--while Creeley is. Duncan isn't and Spicer is. Huidobro most definitely isn't and Neruda is.

I would say I have about 60. I can't make a list because the act of making the list modifies the reality it's supposed to reflect.

Imagine being intimately acquainted with 60 separate towns. Each has its own "local color," its independent reality of sights and smells. These are not places where you merely visit, but all, each one of them, your "home town." There are other places you might like to visit, or that you've heard are pretty nice towns; others you've merely passed through, or lived in and hated.