Various bloggers are coming down on the SF Chronicle review of Jeff Clark book. (Let me repeat once again that mocking a reviewer's own poetry is not a legitimate criticism of a review; rather than dealing with substance, this kind of attack is a form of ad hominem.)

The argument that an avant-garde is in a precarious position if there is no establishment to advance ahead of, seems to have some merit. I agree that poetry will always be making itself new; I disagree that avant-garde art & poetry will always be a conspicuous feature of every period. Rear-guard critics are mistaken in saying "you can't make anything new because newness has become the new cliche"; however, we should not ignore the fact that a big element of the avant-garde stance as we have known it consists in saying "you can't write like that anymore". The characteristic gesture of postmodernism is the shrug. Well, it's better than the finger-point, I guess. ("dry branches crackling")

Do HG's Poetics show any consistency? Since I'm aware that there are vast ranges of feeling & experience & speech which I'm not very good at writing about, I have to try to counteract that.

So when it's said that you can't write sonnets & sestinas anymore, I write those;
when it's said you can't write long obscure epics anymore, I write those;
when it's said you can't use rhyme & meter anymore, I use them;
when it's said you can't write free verse anymore, I do that;
when it's said you can't imitate Hart Crane, James Joyce, Ezra Pound & a Russian poet from the 20s all at once, I do that;
etc.

(John Berryman once described his poetry career as consistently doing the opposite of what everybody was supposed to be doing. I know what he meant.)

I'm working on short poems with simple clear diction & an interlocking, over-arching set of themes. Do I have any consistency? I'm interested in the integrity/harmoniousness of the image, the image as synthesis and correlation of parts, as yoking of opposites (spirit/nature, time/eternity, reality/dream), the image as cosmic building-block or integral structure, and the role of poetry as presenting versions of this cosmological reality, this harmoniousness. Despite the prosaic flatness of my own poems lately, I'm bored with self-indulgent, talky, oh-so-sophisticated discourse in poems; give me the well-turned, rounded image. As Wally Stevens puts it: "Imago. Imago. Imago." An old poem from Way Stations :

  The child honoring you in dreams,
  embrasure of innocence, tender shoots
  of early radiance – your figure
  landscape, unfamiliar town, scent
  of May lilacs along a worn road.

   
  Not to be known yet,
  only a heavy cloud pregnant
  with summer rain
  (iron mortality, rust
  of decline not yet to be);

   
  gathering up your skirts
  you make your way, slow path
  beyond the jealous decorations,
  fever of scorn, offended pride,
  dry branches crackling – a bonfire.