13 September 2005: Jeff Newberry posted the following at New-Poetry today:
"Take a man's mind off the human value of the poem he is reading (and in this case the human value is the art value), switch it on to some question of grammar and you begin his dehumanization." He wants New-Poetry participants to guess who said it. I couldn't care less who said it, but grabbed it as a perfect example of the kind of slush so many reducticeptually-impaired poets and poetry commentators indulge in (and because I was at a loss as to what to put in this entry).
Okay, maybe in context, the quotation isn't wholly moronic, but I doubt it. First off, what's "human value?" What kind of artwork has no art value outside its "human" value? What's non-human about grammar? Is the statement anything more than a pretentious command to poets to keep someone engaged with a poem from drifting away from the central effect every good poem should have? Why is an interest in grammar any less "human" (or valuable) than an interest in the "human value" of some poem? Isn't it gross sentimentality to suggest that people who turn analytical are becoming in some way less than human? (I tend to believe the opposite is true.)
Another point the statement suggests that I don't like is that it's up to a poet to keep an aesthgager's mind on some value rather than the responsibility of the person experiencing the poem. The implication is that a poet shouldn't try anything grammatically interesting in a poem for fear he'll bollux the appreciational faculties of its recipients.
Later note: Newberry has informed the list that the statement is from Ezra Pound's, "Provincialism the Enemy," an essay from a collection called Selected Prose. I confess I was sorry to find this out. But Pound said a lot of stupid things, and the statement probably makes much more sense in context. I would not class Pound as "reducticeptually-impaired," by the way--just not always reducticeptually ticking. I continue to consider him one of the few valuable critics of poetry ever.
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