16 June 2004. Today, my topic is a guy named Dan Schneider, "a poetic provocateur," who was recently the subject of an article in an apparently prominent Minneapolis online publication called City Pages. Here's what I said (slightly revised) about it at New-Poetry, where I learned of it: "Pretty funny. One sub-mediocrity raging against other sub-mediocrities. I agree with a lot that Schneider says but somehow wonder how much substance there is behind his hostilities. At one point, he comes out with the Emperor's new clothes cliche, for God's sake; later, he uses the one about the blind men and the elephant. And the two poems of his that were quoted are . . . well, not very good."

After reading this, New-Poetry Webmaster James Finnegan remarked that he was "surprised (that), despite some deep aesthetic differences, (I was) not a little more sympathetic to someone like DS who seems to so gleefully like to play 'whack-a-mole' with contemporary poets."

"He and I have a lot in common," I admitted, "and I enjoy his attacks--but you hit it when you spoke of 'deep aesthetic differences.' Aesthetics is just about everything with me.

"Also," I went on, "I mainly knock the attitude that the Ashbery-to-Wilbur continuum is all there is in American Poetry, I don't knock every poet on that continuum. Unlike Schneider, too (at least so far as the article on him indicates), I am a fairly energetic appreciator of many poets--though not so much at New-Poetry, because poetry outside the Ashbery-to-Wilbur continuum gets discussed so seldom here."

I then wondered why no one in Minneapolis, where Schneider goes to poetry readings and lashes out at the poets whose work he thinks bad, even if (or especially if) they're big name poets like Robert Bly or Carolyn Forche, seems able to stand up to him. I think a problem with poets across the country, in fact, is that they're so incapable of defending their art, and so pathetically whiny about those who find something wrong with it. They should welcome attacks--as opportunities to find out if their work does have flaws, and to batter the idiots who say it does when it doesn't, at the same time forwarding their kind of art, and educating those unfamiliar with what they're doing.

Professor David Graham, a frequenter poster to New-Poetry, also commented on Schneider after going to Schneider's website, averring that "Dan Schneider's critical prose speaks for itself. Alas:" He then quoted the first two, very politically incorrect paragraphs of an essay by Schneider on a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, which includes Schneider's positive opinion of Nye's ass.

Graham often uses the same technique against me, so I fired an annoyed post back at him. Said I (almost--I corrected one word and added a word to this before using it here): "David Graham's quotation of a critical essay's ungenteel and politically incorrect introductory paragraphs by themselves as a sufficient example of the critical prose of its author speaks rather more accurately for itself." I went on to give my opinion of the rest of Schneider's essay, which didn't impress me, but was certainly more than an ad hominem attack. I'll say more about it in my next entry.

I finished my counter-snipe at Graham with the opinion that the poetry world could use more Schneiders, and fewer complacent stasguards voicing sage dismay at the bad manners and opinions of poets insufficiently admiring of Wilberia, while carefully avoiding subjects they can't be measured, thoughtful and sometimes mildly entertaining about. Yes, I introduced another new term, "Wilberia." That's the Wilbur-to-Ashbery Continuum that stasguards want to keep everyone from finding out is only one segment rather than the whole of the actual American poetry continuum.

While I'm not yet an admirer of Schneider as a poet or critic, I commend him for his website, which (among sundry other essays) has a hundred or so analyses of poems by various authors. In other words, he's out there, fighting for his poetic beliefs, and stimulating thought about poetry. And he rates each poem he analyzes numerically, something I've long thought would be a good idea for critics to do but haven't yet done myself. Thus, a reader can get a much more accurate idea of Schneider's taste than he'd otherwise be able to.

Last thought. At first, I agreed with one poet in the City Pages article who criticized the publication for covering Schneider after never covering far better poets. I've changed my mind. What's the point in covering poets who just repeat received opinions and sentiments? Cover one and you've covered them all. Schneider is probably as predictable as the better poets, but from a minority viewpoint--and often with verve.