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24 November 2004. Today, a short lesson on the use of the word, "assertion," which comes up a lot in poetry criticism and counter-criticism. My struggle to respond to Dan Scheider's long essay reminded me of how often it is misused, for he throws it around right and left, mainly because I also use the word and he thinks that by pointing out where I do, he renders my use of it defective. (As though my using it incorrectly made his use of it correct.)
An assertion is, for me, an unsupported opinion stated as though it were a Universal Truth. Okay, listen carefully, those of you who deem it a Bad Thing: there's nothing wrong with assertions. Nothing. Unless they are used in lieu of arguments. It is argument by assertion that is wrong, not simple assertion.
I try in my writing to use what I call justifiable opinions. I might say, for instance, that, for me, E.E. Cummings one of the three best pre-1950 American poets of all-time. Many consider this way of working weak. They'd prefer I use the Time Magazine assertion, which, in this case, would be "E.E. Cummings is one of the three best pre-1950 American poets of all-time. (Actually, Time Magazine, I'm fairly sure, would prefer minimum modifiers, so would probably go with something like, "E.E. Cummings, the best American poet of all-time. . . ."
I try to avoid using opinions not identified as such, but certainly use them in personal essays clearly intended to spell out what I think and am like--as information, not argument, you see. No doubt I occasionally use them in those of my essays presenting arguments, for liveliness, and to provide side-views I don't feel I have time to support. An essay intended to argue a point should not do that exclusively; if it does, it will almost certainly be boring. Or so I say, making a flat-out assertion not for liveliness or because I don't have time to support it, but for a third reason: that my assertion is too obviously true to need a defense.
Dan Schneider uses assertions all the time. Here's a stream of them he is quoted as saying in Minneapolis newpaper article on him: "Mura's atrocious," Schneider says. "He's absolutely predictable. He's hiding behind that Sansei shtick. Multiculturalism in art is fine, but without excellence it's just bad poetry. Mura writes nothing but guilty, intellectually vapid bullshit." Okay, he's simply stating an opinion here, however much it sounds like he's trying to argue that Mura can't write good poems. Why is Mura Atrocious? Because he writes bad poetry. Schneider neither defines what good poetry is nor gives an example of the badness of Mura's poetry (with an explanation of why it's bad--or predictable).
In a response in his long essay on me to my splitting of knowstream poets into those who write it because it's the received kind of poetry and those who write it only after long exploration of all of poetry because it suits their needs best, Schneider much more blatantly makes use of assertion as argument: "Here is BG�s rationalizing bared. He thinks that his poems are pushing boundaries- even when a poet he mentions- Scott Helmes � does the same thing. Of course, BG would argue that his gimmick poems are substantively different from Helmes�s, but without their author�s names only he & Helmes could separate them. Whether you �like� my poetry or not, there�s no confusing my great poetry with someone like BG, Bly, or Ashbery. Individuation is 1 of the hallmarks of excellence. I even go beyond that with many poems that no 1 would think were all written by me."
I don't know what his spiel has to do with what I wrote, but that's beside the point. What I want to point out are its bald assertions. One is "he thinks his poems are pushing bounderies." Where do I say that? (He's right, by the way--but his claim is unsubstantiated in his essay, so worthless.) A second is "Scott Helmes does the same thing (in poetry as he)." Does he provide evidence of this? No. "Only he & Helmes could separate them," he then asserts, repeating his previous assertion (but even more imbecilically. Another: "there's no confusing my great poetry with someone (sic) like BG, Bly, or Ashbery." I suspect this assertion is true (except for the asserted "great"), but--like the others--it's unsubstantiated.
What makes these assertions unjustifiable is that they are part of a critical essay the stated purpose of which is to "denude" me and my work, not an essay merely giving an opinion of me.
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