Greetings from the middle of week two of midterms! I just received a grade and feedback on my first big paper for Introduction to English Studies, where we've spent the first half of the course studying poetry. The prompt for this paper was to investigate in 1,000 to 1,200 words whether and how it is appropriate for a literary critic or general reader to evaluate twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry according to the expectations of Sir Philip Sidney (whose essay "Defense of Poesy" has been the focalizing text of the course thus far), hinging the argument on a close semantic reading of a modern/postmodern poem chosen from a provided list. In hindsight I realize that I didn't address the prompt explicitly, and the material probably would have been better suited to a term paper where I'd have room to explore the connections between Beat poetry and Renaissance standards. Nevertheless, below is my hard-earned B attempt.
The Beatnik poetry of the 1950s, particularly Gary Snyder’s “How Poetry Comes to Me,” fails to meet Sir Philip Sidney’s Renaissance standard of true poetry by embodying the postmodern ideals of reflexivity, epicureanism, fragmentation, and subjectivity regarding experience that are antithetical to that standard. In his Defense of Poesy, Sidney defines true poetry as being “an art of imitation… with this end, —to teach and delight” (Sidney 11). Postmodernism is a contemporary, cross-disciplinary movement that questions traditional objective notions of meaning, particularly within a literary context (Klages). While not then recognized under the designation of a specific title, the concepts associated with postmodernism began to materialize in the 1950s with the emergence of the Beatniks, or Beats, a counterculture of writers and poets who exhibited many of the postmodern ideals. As the movement strengthens in the twenty-first century and the notions of meaning and purpose associated with Sidney grow more and more antiquated, replaced by ambiguous concepts of literary theory (Culler 2), it is imperative to examine whether Sidney’s criteria applies to the poetry of changing generations.
In his Defense, Sidney sets forth as the marks of true poetry a certain “teaching” and “delighting” with the ultimate intention of increasing knowledge that moves toward virtuous action (25). He claims that heroical poetry is the “best and most accomplished kind of poetry” because it not only teaches and moves to truth, but to the “most high and excellent truth; who maketh magnanimity and justice shine through all misty fearfulness and foggy desires” (29). Sidney uses the characters of Ulysses, Achilles, and Aeneas as examples of heroic figures that fashion forth the merits of virtue in their best attire. The concrete narratives and clear depictions of virtue present in heroic poetry stand in direct opposition to the characteristics of postmodern poetry.
While specific postmodern ideologies are as difficult to nail down as a comprehensive definition of postmodernism itself, the rhetoric of the twentieth century poetry that it encompasses has a few trademark characteristics. Fragmentation, or randomness, of narratives and ideas; reflexivity, an artistic self-consciousness of art’s own production; epicureanism, a philosophy that insists the highest good is found in pleasure; and a subjectivity regarding experience are all marks of this poetry. These characteristics do not possess the same ability as heroic poetry to clearly depict virtue because they shroud their literary manifestations in obscurity and abstractions.
The Beat generation, although associated as much with certain styles of dress and the settings of North Beach in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York City as it is with any explicit doctrine or concept, embodies this postmodern ambiguity. According to an article by Dr. F. Allen Briggs in a 1960 volume of The English Journal, the core philosophy of the Beats involves “a frenetic insistence on epicureanism, a frantic seizing of the joys of the present in the face of a persistent belief that only the present exists” (312). Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac are perhaps some of the most notable Beat writers, and their respective works “Howl” and On the Road are broadly-scoped demonstrations of the ideology that would later emerge under the banner of the postmodern movement.
Gary Snyder’s “How Poetry Comes to Me,” reproduced below, is an exceptionally succinct case study for the application of Sidney’s criteria to Beat poetry, because it displays the qualities of postmodernism that are in opposition to his standard:
It comes blundering over theThe title, meter, and content of the poem present the reflexive, epicurean, fragmented, and subjective aspects of postmodernism that fall short of Sidney’s criteria for true poetry.
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light (Snyder 361)
The title of the poem alone is an example of the poem’s reflexivity, which extends to the epicurean tendencies of the work. Immediately, Snyder draws attention to the act of the art’s creation by titling it in a way that indicates the following words will explain his creative process, not attempt to impart any sort of meaning to the reader. This sort of self-awareness is a manifestation of the epicurean values of the Beats, dictating that the highest good is pleasure for the individual (Klages).
The fragmented rhythm of the poem’s free verse form displays a lack of structure that is inherently postmodern. In his Defense, Sidney does make qualifications regarding verse by stating, “There have been many most excellent poets who never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets” (13). The lack of steady rhythm does not disqualify Snyder’s poetry according to Sidney’s criteria, but the fragmentation of ideas that it represents does. The mostly random meter can best be categorized as an oft-interrupted anapest applied to three complete sentences that do not adhere to the boundaries of the lines. The basic subject-predicate combinations of those sentences, “It comes,” “it stays,” and “I go,” are in no way connected to the poem’s outer form. As Ezra Pound said of rhythm: “Rhythm must have meaning. It can’t be merely a careless dash-off, with no grip and no real hold to the words and sense” (“Rhythm and Versification” 497). The rhythmic free-for-all of this poem is inherently postmodern: it provides no “grip” on the words and sense of the poem, and in turn it can be extended to the fragmented, random narratives typical to postmodern literature, specifically Ginsbergs’s “Howl” and Kerouac’s On the Road.
The way and manner by which the poetry comes, which is the content’s primary concern, is of particular relevance, as it reveals the subjectivity of Snyder’s encounter. His choice of the words “blundering” and “frightened” to describe poetry’s course in coming to him is curious, as these are two adjectives not generally attributed to the heightened language of poetry. Further, the poetry’s location at the edge, where it hovers on the brink and stays on the outskirts of the “light,” is an example of the typical postmodern subjectivity, or its existence in reality only as the speaker perceives it. This is not Sidney’s noble rhetoric that clearly depicts virtue through all “misty fearfulness and foggy desires” (29). On the contrary, Snyder’s poem makes no effort to reveal any sort of truth at all. It concerns him and his art alone, and that encounter itself is a “blundering,” “frightened” affair. The poetry itself is as subjective as Snyder’s experience meeting it. The poem may very well delight the reader by abstractly revealing Snyder’s artistic process, and in so doing perform a kind of teaching akin to Sidney’s poetic criteria, but to what end? Along with much of the Beat literature, it is characteristically aimless.
Where Snyder’s poem and Beat literature in general fall short of Sidney’s standard does not concern the relation of a counterculture rising in opposition to an established tradition as much as it does that counterculture’s lack of enduring purpose. Rather than to the Renaissance’s standards of virtue, truth, and justice, modern poets are called to no standard at all. Postmodernism cares naught for what one says or how one says it; it only matters that one has spoken. If the Beats have no higher purpose, no “golden world” to strive to represent and toward which to aspire (Sidney 10), their work will only ring loud until their experiences are obsolete and then fall deaf on the ears of those who long for the heightened experience of meaning. Rhetoric, after all, is useless play at games of dress up if it has not some figure such as virtue to adorn.
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