I wonder who reads John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974; a Taurus!) anymore, his poetrys so, I dont know, detached and formal, or metaphysically ironic, maybe; and while hes certainly a Modernist - if we believe in Modernism! - ; while he has all the disappointment of a Modernist, sourness, misogyny, (homophobia goes without saying), icy humor, TS Eliotian gentility, stubborn yearning to have God back, or even Nature (counter-Wildean belief in the comfort if not goodness of nature), resistance to form in the guise of practicing achingly expert form - : though Id call the dude a Modernist, his poetry sometimes feels like George Herbert wrote it in 1622. So youll probably hate this poem from Ransoms first collection, *Poems About God* - I think/hope the titles a little bit ironic! Before I get there, however, heres what Ransom says about poetry in an essay about Miltons Lycidas: Anonymity, of some real if not literal sort, is a condition of poetry. A good poem, even if it is signed with a full and well-known name, intends as a work of art to lose the identity of the author; that is, it means to represent him not actualized, like an eye-witness testifying in court and held strictly by zealous counsel to the point at issue, but freed from his juridical or prose self and taking an ideal or fictitious personality; otherwise his evidence amounts to less than poetry. From A Poem Nearly Anonymous, in *The Worlds Body*, 1938 Ransoms trouble with pronouns - everyone is he! - is specific to his time-and-place, of course, and he is so certain! I admire his certainty, though not what hes certain of. And the talk of what makes a good poem! Does literary criticism, critical theory, still concern itself with, as Susan Sontag says, giving grades to works of art? (Sontag, by the way, claimed that she had no interest in grading art, and yet: thats all she ever did!) My larger question, though, is: Does a poem or piece of writing properly intend as a work of art to lose the identity of the author? Because my identity is all over everything I write - my stuff is saturated in personal identity - and Ransom thinks a writer exhausts his material too quickly and spreads it too thin if his strategy is to endlessly appear as author. And do we still believe theres such a thing as an author who appears? So much time has passed since 1938, so many critical theories come and gone! In any case, heres the poem from *Poems About God*, 1919 (the year Saul Bellow was born! and Jackie Robinson, Liberace, Pete Seeger, Eva Peron, Eva Gabor!): April Savor of love is thick on the April air, The blunted boughs dispose their lacy bloom, And many sorry steeds dismissed to pasture Toss their old forelocks, flourish heavy heels. Where is there any unpersuaded poet So angry still against the wrongs of winter Which caused the dainty earth to droop and die, So vengeant for his vine and summer song, As to decline the good releasing thaw? Poets have temperature and follow seasons, And covenants go out at equinox. The champions! For Heaven, riding high Above the icy death, considered truly; My agate icy work, I thought it fair; Yet I have lacked that pretty lift of praise That mounted once from these emaciate minstrels. They will not sing, and duty drops away And I must turn and make a soft amend! At once he showered April down, until The bleak twigs bloomed again; and soon, I swear, He shall receive his praise.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 23:08:23 +0000