{"id":175,"date":"2013-06-30T10:18:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T10:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/?p=175"},"modified":"2018-01-06T11:35:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T17:35:32","slug":"critical-alchemy-on-seth-abramsons-the-golden-age-of-american-poetry-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/critical-alchemy-on-seth-abramsons-the-golden-age-of-american-poetry-is-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Alchemy: On Seth Abramson’s “The Golden Age of American Poetry Is Now”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Theune, SRPR Review Essay Editor<\/h2>\n

**Seth Abramson’s entire essay<\/a> is now Available for free access**<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

The new issue<\/a> of Spoon River Poetry Review<\/i> (38.1 (Summer, 2013)) is now out, and it is chock-full of treasures, including new poems by the likes of Rusty Morrison, Lyn Lifshin, Michael Burkard, Virginia Bell, Danielle Pafunda, Kevin Craft, Susan Briante, Sharon Dolin, Kit Robinson, and featured Illinois poet Allison Joseph.\u00a0 Along with this new work comes Seth Abramson\u2019s review-essay, \u201cThe Golden Age of American Poetry Is Now<\/a>.\u201d [read the entire essay<\/a>]<\/p>\n

The thinking in Abramson\u2019s piece comes at the right time.\u00a0 Abramson recently came to the defense of contemporary American poetry by publishing \u201cWhy Is Contemporary American Poetry So Good?<\/a>,\u201d an extensive response to an article in the Washington Post<\/i> called \u201cWhy is modern poetry so bad?<\/a>,\u201d itself a meditation on Mark Edmundson\u2019s essay \u201cPoetry Slam (Or, The decline of American verse)<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 In his Spoon River<\/i> review-essay, Abramson lays out in great detail why exactly American poetry currently is in a Golden Age.\u00a0 Anyone following this debate certainly will want to read \u201cThe Golden Age of American Poetry Is Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, I believe Abramson\u2019s review-essay is necessary reading for all those engaged with contemporary American poetry.\u00a0 I so greatly admire \u201cThe Golden Age\u201d for a number of reasons.\u00a0 However, here I want to put Abramson\u2019s piece in explicit conversation with Donald Hall\u2019s \u201cPoetry and Ambition\u201d–a conversation Abramson invites by mention of Hall\u2019s essay.\u00a0 For me, it is by listening in on this conversation that I come to more fully appreciate many of Abramson\u2019s insights.\u00a0 I also find myself better able to formulate some questions I have about this being a Golden Age of American poetry.<\/p>\n

In \u201cPoetry and Ambition<\/a>,\u201d Donald Hall critiques a great deal of recent American poetry for its lack of ambition, for churning out McPoem after McPoem.\u00a0 One of the reasons for such debased production is the poetry MFA.\u00a0 Section 10 of Hall\u2019s essay begins with a cry to \u201cAbolish the M.F.A.!\u201d\u00a0 And this undoubtedly should be the case if MFAs really are as Hall describes them, as \u201ca garage to which we bring incomplete or malfunctioning homemade machines for diagnosis and repair.\u201d \u00a0While recognizing, in section 11, that \u201c[m]ost poets need the conversation of other poets,\u201d Hall still condemns the MFA, calling it an \u201cinstitutionalized<\/i> caf\u00e9\u201d one that hires and pays mentors who then \u201cmake assignments\u201d that then \u201creduce poetry to a parlor game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abramson argues, however, that this understanding of the MFA is wrong.\u00a0 According to Abramson, the caf\u00e9 has long been institutionalized.\u00a0 Additionally, understood phenomenologically, the MFA is a much more complex and multifaceted offering\/participatory event.\u00a0 According to Abramson, the workshop itself provides an \u201cintensely juxtapositive space,\u201d a space which also opens further out: the MFA \u201cis also the space in which MFA-seekers use social media, non- or quasi-academic program events, and impromptu social gatherings to share their other artistic obsessions–be they musical, dramatic, studio-art, couture, or literarily \u2018off-genre.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Abramson says that the avant-garde consistently has worked to move beyond objectification and commodification to more closely approach \u201cthe praxis of life.\u201d\u00a0 Similarly, he tries to move discussion and assessment of the poetry MFA away from the (mere) objectification and commodification (and demagoguery) one might find in an analysis such as Hall\u2019s to an understanding and appraisal of the MFA as praxis, as it is lived, experienced, and even co-created.\u00a0 In short, it is wrongheaded to think of the MFA (merely, or even centrally), as Hall does, as an assignment-giving institution.<\/p>\n

And just as the writing program needs to be understood and investigated as praxis, so does the writer herself–and Abramson, I believe, does a masterful job of describing \u201cthe \u2018Golden Age poetics\u2019 produced by the children and step-children of the Program Era\u201d (on page 110 in Spoon River Poetry Review<\/i> (38.1)–this is vital reading). \u00a0Again, Abramson notes that \u201cGolden Age poetics cannot be treated primarily as a locus for canonization practices\u201d–rather, now, we must \u201cwitness poetry as practice, as culture, as civic engagement, as way-of-life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abramson\u2019s review-essay is a masterful critical work, one that demands that its readers experience and interact with the full praxis of today\u2019s writers and writing.\u00a0 However, even though Abramson\u2019s piece generally eschews (and sometimes critiques) assessment–defined one time by Abramson as \u201cmaking self-aggrandizing stabs at permanent assignations of value\u201d–one part of the practice of contemporary poetry is<\/i> evaluation.\u00a0 Judgments of value are being made all the time<\/i>.\u00a0 So: if evaluation (a practice at the core of an essay like Donald Hall\u2019s) is the blinkered remnant of old ways of conceiving poetry, how might the protocols of poetic evaluation be done away with, or productively revised?\u00a0 Should they be?\u00a0 Can they be?\u00a0 Can we even refer to the contemporary era of America as a \u201cGolden Age\u201d without some degree of evaluation being incorporated into that description?\u00a0 \u201cGolden,\u201d at least, often designates the best.\u00a0 (Why not simply refer to our current era as a \u201cVery Productive Age\u201d?)\u00a0 And, at least to my thinking, it simply is the case that there\u2019s some amazing poetry being produced nowadays, including, for example, Frederick Seidel\u2019s Ooga-Booga<\/i>, Jorie Graham\u2019s Place<\/i>, D.A. Powell\u2019s Cocktails<\/i>, Arda Collins\u2019s It Is Daylight<\/i>, Laura Kasischke\u2019s Space, in Chains<\/i>.\u00a0 It is because of such works (and many others) that I feel we just may be in a \u201cGolden Age of American poetry.\u201d\u00a0 But without such excellent work I would not be as apt to make this claim.\u00a0 Is this an outmoded way to think?<\/p>\n

I look forward to many, many people reading Seth Abramson\u2019s truly significant review-essay, and continuing the conversation–perhaps here, or else in other venues–it has so powerfully engaged.<\/p>\n

\u2245<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMichael Theune is Review Essay Editor for Spoon River Poetry Review<\/i>. Theune also is the editor of Structure and Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns <\/i>(Teachers & Writers, 2007), and the host of the<\/span> Structure and Surprise blog<\/a>. Along with Kim Addonizio, he co-edits <\/span>Voltage Poetry<\/i><\/a>, an online anthology of poems with great turns in them, and discussion about those poems. Theune’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. He is an associate professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Theune, SRPR Review Essay Editor **Seth Abramson’s entire essay is now Available for free access**   The new issue of Spoon River Poetry Review (38.1 (Summer, 2013)) is now out, and it is chock-full of treasures, including new poems … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[9,10,11,8],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regular","tag-issue-38-1","tag-michael-theune","tag-review-essay","tag-seth-abramson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}