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| Carol Muske-Dukes |
Yesterday or the day before I posted a comment to a contentious but, from my point of view, on target essay by Carol Muske-Dukes on Huffington Post. In it, she rather neatly flays Ange Mlinko for her essay on Adrienne Rich, in which Mlinko uses the release of Rich’s Later Poems: Selected and New, 1971–2012 to “reevaluate” the poet. My comment on Muske-Dukes’s essay was a bit terse:
One only has to read Ange Mlinko’s poetry to understand her antipathy toward Rich. Insubstantial artists always detest substantial ones.
This inspired a response from one “RowleyBushes”, to wit:
I think Ange Mlinko a very substantial poet, consummately skilful and intelligent in her best poems in a manner and tradition that is not Rich’s.
You have ‘writer’ and ‘poet’ in your handle but not ‘reader’. Would you be prepared to read one of Mlinko’s poems, or an extract therefrom, and say what you don’t like?
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| Ange Mlinko |
Well, I tried to reply to RowleyBushes, but there is evidently a length restriction on HuffPost comments that cut mine roughly in half. So I’m posting it here in full:
All righty then. Let’s take this one—a decade old but typical of Mlinko’s work. It’s from Jacket #15:
Cloud-To-Cloud Correspondence
Mr. If-Then, you have
10 minute
to make out with this painting.
Roman numerals
like “Aryballos in the Form of a Hedgehog”
round off.What kind of day is it out there?
It’s “Concerto for Half a Piano”
and right half of the brain.“Put suet in a dead Christmas tree, and draw the birds.”
But what is it supposed to be?
Many of us have discovered a kind or species of day
and lacked a registry:“Today downgrades the Minotaur to Bullwinkle!”
or the sort of day actuaries interview you
about defenestrated busts.All kinds of days. Unlike the tedium of the tyranny
I used to live under:
“No twin dove
for you til grown up, we let you love.”Later, when I want to be a great painting, I must ask
what shall I be of.I imagine there are readers who find this poem substantial. It strikes me as vapid posing, all grad school wink-nudge cleverness.
We know there is an “I” speaking, which we can infer from the first line—the one addressed to “Mr. If-Then”. The “I” wants Mr. If-Then to kiss “this painting.” We can’t know what painting, though from the penultimate line of the poem we can infer that “I” sees herself as the painting. But we can’t be sure that “I” is a “she”; the poem doesn’t tell us, though because Mlinko is a she, I imagine most readers would reader the feminine gender into the “I”.
Are you tired yet? I am. And I’m only three lines in.
Suddenly, with line four, we are introduced to Roman numerals. They “round off,” “I” tells us. This seems to be a gesture toward the fact that Roman numerals designated only whole numbers; though the Romans did indeed have a system for fractions, if one were dealing only with the numerals one would have to “round off”. How this connects to the painting, the “I” as a painting, Mr. If-Then (could he represent algebra? a system that thrives on fractions?), or the relationship between “I” and Mr. If-Then is a mystery that’s never resolved. Mlinko’s comparison of Roman numerals to “Aryballos in the Form of a Hedgehog” further confuses things: this particular name applies to at least two different pieces of ancient art, one (Egyptian, 664–525 B.C.) in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the other (East Greek, 550 B.C.) in The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. These are small jars, roundish—”rounded off”?—and, in the former case, damaged at the base (again, “rounded off”?). The meaning of this Roman-Egyptian-Greek connection is occluded by the poet’s evident desire to seem very smart. But hey, I’m not nearly as smart and I found it all with Google anyway. So at least we can infer that Mlinko Googles.
We are now 6 lines in and the poem, in my judgement, is all coy distraction. This is what passes for substance in Mlinko’s poems, and it has become a dominant mode.
I can bring myself to go on. Readers can read on and play the game if they wish. Personally, I find nothing “consummately skillful” here, and though the poem is stitched together from scraps of intelligence, it adds up to very little. Mlinko is lucky, in fact, that Roman numerals can’t express negative numbers.
Adrienne Rich Now, far be it from me to tell anyone what to like or dislike. I was merely stating my opinion. I would rather spend a day reading Adrienne Rich’s very worst poems than spend an hour reading the best of Mlinko’s. To be fair, I haven’t read all three of Mlinko’s books; I gave up on Starred Wire halfway through and don’t care for more punishment. But one person’s punishment is another’s ecstasy. Ms. Mlinko is lucky to have readers like you around.
I’m sincere in that last sentence. No poet can please every reader, and bad poetry (if we can ever agree on what it is) is innocuous. Bad poetry doesn’t commit troops to Iraq or attack wedding parties with drones or allow General Electric to offshore billions in order to avoid paying even one nickel in corporate taxes. But bad poetry does annoy, especially when it’s part of a trend. Ange Mlinko’s poetry is part of a trend toward insubstantial cleverness, toward programmatic incoherence and emotional vitiation. It’s a cultural situation that brings to mind a poem from Margaret Atwood‘s 1971 collection Power Politics—a poet Ange Mlinko and her cohorts would probably dismiss even more readily than Adrienne Rich. It is Atwood her most overtly feminist mode, but when I read it, a couple of years after the book came out, I felt as if she were speaking for me:
Margaret Atwood You want to go back
to where the sky was inside usanimals ran through us, our hands
blessed and killed according to our
wisdom, death
made real blood come outBut face it, we have been
improved, our heads float
several inches above our necks
moored to us by
rubber tubes and filled with
clever bubbles,our bodies
are populated with billions
of soft pink numbers
multiplying and analyzing
themselves, perfecting
their own demands, no trouble to anyone.I love you by
sections and when you work.Do you want to be illiterate?
This is the way it is, get used to it.
Even 40 years on from the arrival of Atwood’s message, I don’t want to get used to it. I am determined not to. I refuse.
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
I'll make one concession at least. I'll concede that I can't tell a "bad" Mlinko poem from a "good" one. I don't see how her "Cantata" stands as an advance over "Cloud-to-Cloud Correspondence." But since you see an advance in it and think it a good poem, I invite you to write about it on Lycanthropia. I promise to link to it without negative
This is, I would argue, a bad poem of Ms. Mlinko's to have chosen—not particularly representative. Cf. more recent work on the PoFo website ("<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/242660" rel="nofollow">Cantata for Lynette Roberts</a>") or her <a href="http://lemonhound.com/2012/11/23/ange-mlinko-fiv-sonnets/" rel="nofollow">book of sonnets</a> (!) forthcoming
Andrew, just leaving a note here to say that I've gone to your blog and read each of the four posts you've listed above. I guess I would say while I appreciated the careful reading you gave each of the poems, my preference is usually to approach poems differently.<br /><br />I tend to give the context of the poem (historical/political/social/cultural context), and the poet's intent
I have just one nit to pick: "what shall I be of" is not an inversion, unless you're worried about ending a sentence with a preposition. The phrase is very much normal spoken English, and the trope is the most interesting thing in Mlinko's poem. It's as if she recognizes that the poem lacks substance. Otherwise, why worry what the content of the-speaker-as-painting will be?
I'm writing too fast. "If I pretended that such <i>doesn't</i> waste" is what I meant.
are we-all now on that path towards thinking and pondering and trying to figure things out,<br />seeking comprehension through rationalization ? mere [intellectual opinions] going up in in the flames of ;<br />everything is unimportant, shallow, peripheral, circuitous.<br /><br />what such-much scattered clutter in mind to reduce towards zilch.<br /><br />what comes to MY mind that opening salvo:
Thanks for the links, Andrew. I've read them all, I believe, except the John Agard piece, but I'll revisit them. Here's hoping other folks to as well!<br />
Nobody, I think, is opposed to universities, to poetry written in universities, or close reading such as might be taught in universities. And I, at least, am objecting only to the trend toward the gutting of poetry by theory-driven practitioners. They have reduced poetry to a puzzle, a game. For me, Mlinko's poetry is typical of this stuff: clever and empty. <i>There is absolutely nothing of
Many comments since I posted my brief remark yesterday!<br /><br />I wonder what those of you commenting here (along with you, of course, Joseph) think of the poems I discuss in the following posts (as well as what you think of my discussions of the poems):<br /><br />"Results," by Rae Armantrout<br />http://andrewjshields.blogspot.ch/2012/09/click-here-rae-armantrouts-results.html<br /
I am encouraged by your as a group digging out a definition of this word 'metalepsis'. Yes, I meant swaps or transfers between what is represented and the language doing the representation.<br /><br />If you are opposed to poetry coming out of universities or university-based analysis of poems, I think you should get as quickly as possible to the nearest seminar room, learn all you can
If these are not words that are current in the contexts of your daily life or daily discussions of poetry, then you'll have to look them up in a dictionary. They are current in the university or metropolitan settings in which this kind of poetry is produced.<br /><br />Do you want to enjoy Mlinko's poem? Would enjoying it be like waking up in the morning and discovering you're a
You are right if you're suggesting there's some relation between the first three lines, which point to an unsatisfactory way of judging art, and the last lines:<br /><br />Later, when I want to be a great painting, I must ask<br />what shall I be of<br /><br />which conceive of art in other terms, not through membership of a school or as following of procedures but through somehow sharing
I noted the command form of the first sentence. My reading was that the poet was humorously, ironically taking on the voice of some supposed arbiter of taste who was only happy when people made judgments of art following received priniciples. I think the poem has its own moments of 'self-critique', too (one of which is the title, 'Cloud-to-Cloud Correspondence', which may suggest
Well, I posted a comment here yesterday, and I came back today and found all this… wow.<br /><br />Dipper, in case you're still listehing: I'll take you at your word when you say you've never been in grad school; however, you sure write as though you had lived in grad school your whole life.<br /><br />It's true I didn't read all of Ange Mlinko's review of Adrienne Rich
I frequently confuse the two two<br />it's a comma error sort uv<br />like saying<br />'concerting' when meaning<br />'disconcerting'<br /><br />or saying Lafayette Park when you mean<br />Lafayette Square<br /><br />where across the street William Thomas<br />'hung out' for 30 + years<br /><br />now<br /><br />that s some kind of a record !<br />and he knew how to
"its", not "it's", you idiot!
When I said above, re: metalepsis, that "it's basic meaning is refer to something," I wasn't being arch, though I could plead indeterminacy. Actually, my fingers outran my brain: I mean "it's basic meaning <i>refers to</i> something…"<br /><br />You remember the days when words referred to something real, don't you? I think it went out of fashion with
well<br />now that I have y'all<br />un:divided attention<br />and un:diluted savvy<br />let me 'put on my serious face-mask<br />and ask:<br /><br />is 'prismatic' the same thing<br />effectively<br />as what in Pure Land-Zen is called<br />'scattering'<br />and if so<br />does this-all validate my 1971<br />POINTS / COUNTERPOINTS<br /><br />which I called (and let it be
don't need any clarificationing via a 'click' to Pier<br />as<br />I just got me a ladder so's I can take my appeal<br />to an higher court….<br /><br />and<br /><br />this Gennette guy…<br /><br />didn't he write that Our Lady of the Flowers book ?<br /><br />or<br /><br />was he the guy/gal who metalepsically wrote<br />The Story of O starring Rocky and Bullwinkle ?<br
Joseph,<br /><br />I know there's one good book of poetry appreciation/analysis in you (a la Vendler, Burt, Hall). It really is time for spokespersons for a return to sane poetics to be mustering forces. At least before the language butchery taking place in the airless seminar rooms reaches crisis point.<br /><br />Now back to Samperi…<br /><br />
Conrad, I confess I had to look up metalepsis. We shouldn't be surprised to find that it's basic meaning is refer to something by means of another thing that is remotely related to it. The example I found <a href="http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/m/metalepsis.htm" rel="nofollow">here</a> is pretty clear: "He has a lead foot." This means that the man in question drives too fast, a
You're right about the painting: we discover not that the speaker is a painting but that the speaker expects one day to want to be a painting. This speaker can't even muster the energy to want anything <i>now</i>. As for the speaker's gender, I admit that one can't tell from the poem itself—the "naturalness" of the assumption is outside the poem—but since you've read
Your casting of Mr. If-Then as "the critic" isn't justified by anything in the poem. And it begs the question of "the briskness with which art is judged" by him, since it is not Mr. If-Then who imposes the 10-minute make-out limit; it is the speaker, who is not identifiable either in relation to Mr. If-Then or to the painting or to any of the other details in the poem. But
"In fact, this kind of metalepsis (level-switching), play between and indeterminacy of voices and registers is de rigueur in a lot of contemporary poetry."<br /><br />Huh?<br /><br />Dipper,<br /><br />I think you've said enough to prove Joseph's point many times over. Time to cut your losses.<br /><br />
By 'traducing', I meant a misrepresentation to serve the purposes of argument. I never said that Hong did not know what she was saying in her essay.<br /><br />The part of the essay Mlinko quoted said what Mlinko said it did–that young women no longer wanted a woman of one particular subject-position to represent every woman of every possible situation. The essay as a whole said
Where your assumptions cannot quite measure up to the poem, in my view, are where you say things like 'we find out at the end that the speaker is a painting, so the first lines must be directed by the painting to the viewer' and 'the poet is a woman, so it is natural to suppose that the 'I' of the speaker is female'. No. That is not how poems written in the aftermath of
I find it ironic that you have selected 'Cloud-to-Cloud Correspondence' as an instance of Mlinko's 'vapid[ity]' and perhaps of how that vapidity for you is related to its being programmatic, written in accordance with the style of a 'school', or being exemplary of a certain tendency in poetry (grad-school cleverness). The irony is that one of the things the poem does
Interesting, Dipper. Mlinko's handling of Hong's essay wasn't "too bad of a traducing." <i>Traduce</i>: "speak badly of or tell lies about (someone) so as to damage their reputation." What degree of traducement is acceptable, i.e. not "too bad"? Hong evidently felt differently damaged by Mlinko's traducement. Of course, it could be that intellectual
I forgot to add "adjectives" (pretending to be nouns or verbs) to that list<br />of which "prismatic" is one<br /><br />now<br />take the "add" (above) and marry it to the word "verb"<br />just situated befor the closed parenthesi <br />on the right and you get "addverb"<br /><br />now prune, prune, prune and what is left ?<br /><br />'adverb&
seems like the thrust is now towards<br />selling abstractions and myths and phantasies and testimonials<br />in the Open Marketplace<br /><br />as though they were facts !<br /><br />"prismatic" poetry ? what the hell is that ? so many artificial facets<br />to The New Testamentary Poetry ? as though The Olde Scriptures <br />don't count ?<br /><br />can hardly wait for "More
We agree that Carol Muske-Dukes was angry. I don't think Mlinko's use of Cathy Hong's essay was too bad of a traducing. Mlinko's point was that the generation of women, indeed of feminist activists, that came after Rich, bridled at Rich's supposition that the kinds of oppression they were subjected to were just the same as those besetting white, middle-class women. This is
'Substantial' was the wrong word for me to use in praising Mlinko's poetry. It implies some kind of body or thing that everyone agrees is 'there'. This body can then be assessed in various ways–say, as imposingly beautiful or as ugly–but nobody would disagree with the judgment about its 'substance'. This is not like Mlinko's poetry at all. Her poetry is more
I look forward to your explication. I think you do a disservice to Muske-Dukes, who was clearly angry, particularly (it seems) by Mlinko's misrepresentation of Cathy Park Hong's position on Rich. Hong herself, in the comment stream, writes: "Thank you for your rebuttal to Ange Mlinko's review. I just want to make it very clear that Mlinko misquotes me extensively. My essay that
Glory be, after half an hour of trying, I'm on!<br /><br />Well, Mr Hutchinson, I feel that you have done very well. You have put up representative photos of Carol Muske-Dukes, Ange Mlinko and Adrienne Rich, together with a poem by Mlinko that you can't get on with, a poem that embodies opposing values for you by Margaret Atwood, which you like a lot, and some comprehenisble commentary on
I'm testing whether I can post on this blog. I'm 'RowleyBushes' from the Huffington site come to reply to you about Ange Mlinko.
I mentioned condoms/"safe poetry"<br />and someone mentioned Duncan's H.D book so I <br />not having it I looked around<br />too costly for me<br /><br />but I did, however this Duncan quote that opens the Introduction that is<br />precisely<br />what I was 'getting at'<br /><br />"Today I will allow myself whatever projects of what might come of this mining (You'
I'm surprised that none of you has referred to this line in Mlinko's poem:<br /><br />But what is it supposed to be?<br /><br />Poetry like Mlinko's often includes such lines that can be turned against the poems themselves: what is THIS supposed to be? Well, it's supposed to be a poem …<br /><br />I'm not necessarily opposed to poems that make me work to understand them (and
when practicing<br />"safe poetry"<br />I always wear my<br />1970 LifeSryles Ultra Sensitive<br />it's<br />"almost like using nothing at all"<br /><br /><br />opps… time to rince it out again !<br /><br /><br /><br />
This is one of my favorite Birder comment streams! Such intelligence, commitment, zaniness, thoughtfulness, and brio. It's a puzzlement, as the King sang to the Governess, why poets have fallen in love with the faux, though I imagine it has to do with it being the road to prizes and sinecures. Poetry is being marginalized because poets have decided the real money is in the sanctum, no the
jeesh..<br /><br />now wonder it takes me many years to get any single poem right !<br /><br />shld be<br /><br />"The Supreme Pleasure of discovering<br />the typos along the Way "
ahhh<br />a couple of typos<br />intentional or not<br /><br />I leave it to The Reader<br />to<br />discover the Supreme Pleasure of<br />the errors-along-the Way<br /><br />sure is nice to not give two-hoots (shits) about being<br />nice OR politically/poetically correct<br />so's to protect my chances of getting into<br />(the Mainstream of Things)<br /><br /><br /><br />
still here<br />playin' with this Blinko poem/attitude<br /><br />I guess that there is a dumbed-down audience for this kind of "stuff"<br /><br />kind of vacuous that this is what she and so many other "poets"<br />embrace as something-of-their-own<br /><br />missing the point: the poem doesn't belong<br /><br />BE LONG to the poet it belongs in it s SELF<br />and it
well<br />not to kid-a-dead-horse<br />just in a comment that I made<br />yesterday on a blog-post that<br />was about dementia folks in a nursing home and their replies<br />to drawings of teeth. My reply jus' might fit-in to this discussion:<br /><br />this IS<br />exciting<br />what y'all are doing<br /><br />not so much "off-the-wall"<br />(( (as you posit "it")<br
Because I’m a nice guy I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. So when I read a poem like this and often see that the poet is being lauded left, right and centre I assume that all these people know what they’re talking about and so, since I don’t get and don’t like the poem, the fault must be mine. I feel this a lot. I don’t understand why I can’t get my head around these poems. I’m not
I also read (not all, but as much as I could wade through) of Mlinko's review of Rich, and I read Muske-Dukes' response in the Huff Post. I found Muske-Dukes's response pretty effective. At the AWP panel I attended on Adrienne Rich, at least one of the panelists (Alicia Ostriker as I recall) specfically mentioned Mlinko's review and had nothing good to say about it.<br /><br />In
pee est:<br /><br />just read 5 or six of her poems that are on the net…<br /><br />takes more than a large vocabulary and a well-stocked (poetry) library<br />and a bunch of credentials and a membership in the AWP<br />to write poems ….<br /><br />sure is getting "old" seeing all of these, at best, mediocre Poets Poeting<br />about their boring lives and about their boring
Thanks, Joe (and Ed). I admire your tolerance for boredom. I just don't have it, which means there is much I no doubt miss along the way also. I do think the "trend" does more than merely annoy, though. It overwhelms, and so has the effect of burial, not with bombs, but ruins nonetheless. Nice to hear some sanity.
I've seen A Mlinko's name<br />(where else)<br />on the Ron Silliman blog-roll<br /><br />&<br />almost clicked the link thinking that just maybe<br />she was a writer beyond the normal drivel that is<br /> via this blog-roll<br /><br />"to make out with this painting"<br /><br />what a crock of slick, tricksterism and (frankly) boring<br />crap ! A colossal waste of a