20 May 2004. Today, I'm supposed to say why I'm bothered by the following words of Orr: "Of course, more rebellious poets might say that this kind of writing spends too little time on pain, passion and injustice, and too much time reassuring droopy suburbanites. The real problem with Dennis's work, however, isn't that it intends to comfort anyone, but that, at its worst, it's incapable of doing so." Here's why:

(1) It is completely subjective. Orr doesn't feel Dennis poems (at their worst) can comfort its readers; ergo, they can't. He doesn't tell us why not.

(2) So what if Dennis's work (at its worst--or even all of it) doesn't offer help to the psychologically needy? I take it that Orr would say that Dennis intends his poetry to do that, so his poetry fails if it does not. Authorial intent is irrelevant, however. What counts is what a poem does as a poem, not as medicine--even if intended as medicine. No fractionally-effective critic would waste more than a sentence on a poem's moral purpose.

(3) What irks me most, however, is Orr's once again reassuring poetry's equivalent of droopy suburbanites that the contemporary poetry world is extremely narrow, and safely predictable. What else can he mean to be saying when he gives us "the more rebellious poets" and reassurers--and no other kinds of poets? At the same time, he implies that poetry fatuates between just two choices: unsettling the middle classes with left-wing propaganda and empathizing with them over their subpolitical personal dilemmas. Worse, Orr's suggestion that "more rebellious poets" are those who--wow--use poetry in the service of "social justice" is idiotic. What safer course in mainstream poetry could there possibly be?