The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects, 1940-1990

by Jed Rasula

The American Poetry Wax Reality Effects, 1940 - 1990 (Refiguring English Studies) Jed Rasula

Genres: Criticism, Poetry

637 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Caroline]

An important, dense, complex and driven bunch of criticism. This is quite a tome, so there's no way my review will be representative, but here's a few greatest hits and notes:


*The driving force here is canon. TAPWM is instigated by what Rasula calls the "culture brokers" and the "protective custody" of the cannon and the contradictory nature of the poetry special forces--the notion that, the further from the secular, and the more academically/organizationally santioned, the more "museumified," damaged, unchecked, isolated, poetry seems to become. In Rasula's words, "the terms of perservation are also those of extinction." (Scary, but I totally buy it.)

*..."Poets...laboring under a vast cultural misconception, imagine that authenticity is conflatable with subjectivity, not realizing that subjectivity is simply the most acutely engineered of all our technologies"..."So poetry has been traumatized by an intimation that 'the voice that is great within us' has gotten into us by forces beyond our control."

*The bulk of the book is a roll-call of anthologies/editors--what they've safely chosen to include (preserve) and what they haven't, and why and so what. Wow, he's totally a taskmaster:

-In "The Age of Lowell" he spends a lot of time saying what you've probably been thinking (but in less huge words): what's so awesome about Lowell anyway? (I enjoyed this section in theory, but actually found it to be the most skimmable...I think I already sorta knew/agreed with what he says there).

-I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't think Forche's Against Forgetting is all that awesome. Rasula notes, "Forche's choice of poets seems crassly commercial"... then goes on to list several poets I enjoy, but nevertheless, agree are, and were already "the most heavily anthologized" anyway. Then he perfectly and unflinchingly diagnoses Forche's weakness: "Forche has too literally construed eligibility by biographical accident...so we find no reflection on the Holocaust by Reznikoff, Olson or Rothenberg; no...critiques by Duncan, Ginsberg, Dorn or Eshleman." He goes on: "Forche's editing implies [that] formal innovation is irrelevant to historical experience [!!!]...so instead of the explosive prospects of Silliman, Andrews, Taggart, or Scalapino...Forche favors the centrist workshop mode." If that's not enough, he adds, "For a book entitled Against Forgetting, it's desheartening to discover...much of what passes for American poetry is a product of forgetting." (Holy Toledo!)

-There's a lot more of such criticism, including his take on Vendler's seemingly preachy Presidential Address to the MLA. And then there's "The Empire's New Clothes" in which Rasula worries about MFA programs and poetry affixed with some tag of formal affiliation. A noble worry for sure...(and this came out in 1995!)

-He closes by turning to Whitman, a surprisingly postive (well, by comparison), final call. Rasula nails it. He says, hey, remember Whitman? He had the right thinking, which "cuts against the grain of canonical priorities: you simply can't have experimental righteousness." And the question is, "Can we think of an anthology of poetry that makes comparable claims, and that bears itself with Whitmanesque nonchalance...?"


Overall, I really appreciated his discomfort and curmudgeony-ness with the situation of poetry since modernism. I also believe that there's a lot to be complained about. TAPWM strikes me as as complicated as American Poetry itself and sometimes as overwhelming. Whatever you think of his intuitions and criticism, I think you'll find this worthwhile for the conversation Rasula opens/continues here.

[Joe]

Should be read by anyone trying to reconsider their reading habits or the reading habits/the canons being instilled in them. Love, also, that Rasula ends with a call to consider works in their original contexts and to resist writing for anthologies, the poetic "hall of fame." To write beyond one's immediate context is to erode the ground you have to stand on, to begin the amputation of one's own "voice." Goodbye Frederick! Goodbye Fairfax! Goodbye Leonardtown! Goodbye Lafayette!

[Rusty]

It made me feel my ignorance keenly.

[Anna]

A must read.

[Brendan]

Lots of interesting stuff going on, but the book is a bit baggy and tendentious and dates itself slightly. But I want to look at rasula's other critical work for sure.

[Andrea]

Whoa Rasula!