WILLIAM PHILLIPS
9
gests, in a new poetic form but in the specific gravity of the culture.
Moreover, Gioia blunts the fact that it is difficult for "the common
reader," as he refers to that audience, to read serious poetry, because of its
linguistic concentration and metaphorical allusiveness. Actually, there is
no common reader; there are only trained and untrained, professional and
general readers. Most of the literate audience, that is, general readers, if
they read at all, read easy fiction and digestible social and political books.
Such outstanding poets as Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz, and Derek
Walcott have written about broader subjects. Yet they scarcely have
broken the barrier between the modern poet and the reading public.
Academics, unfortunately, read mostly jargonized literary theory.
Another of Gioia's panaceas is that poetry readings be combined with
popular music and other forms of entertainment. This strikes me as a
gimmick that in effect succumbs to the trendy aspects of the culture.
Gioia just touches upon the fact that apparently poets don't read. For
there are thousands of poets in America who could certainly swell the
sales if not the reading of contemporary poetry and of literary magazines.
The pieces in Gioia's book that are not about the predicament of
poetry, while acknowledging many of the accepted figures, are mainly
given to a reordering of the poetic canon. His praise of Weldon Kees, for
example, made me think I had underestimated Kees's work, though I still
do not think he is a major poet. Some ofhis other resurrection of hitherto
lesser figures are challenging, others seem to go too far. His reclamation of
Jeffers and Robinson appears to reflect Gioia's taste for longer works,
narrative poems, and those with public themes. But it need hardly be said
that length, theme, subject, and form do not of themselves make for
quality. Still, despite any differences we might have with Gioia's judg–
ments or readings of specific poets, we can only commend his critical
boldness and his talent for confronting buried questions.
Intellectuals: A Footnote
There's a curious shift of direction in Wolf
Lepenies's interesting speculations in the form of declarations on the
history and role of intellectuals in this issue of
Partisan Review.
After citing
the tragic blunders of intellectuals in the past, particularly in the utopian
and revolutionary currents stemming from the Enlightenment, Lepenies
ends by extolling the traditions of the Enlightenment and, by implication,
the left, as a political guide to the future .
W. P.
