{"id":103098,"date":"2016-09-27T11:51:33","date_gmt":"2016-09-27T15:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=103098"},"modified":"2016-09-27T12:28:28","modified_gmt":"2016-09-27T16:28:28","slug":"six-public-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/27\/six-public-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Six More Public Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"madrid1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In March 2016, our correspondent Anthony Madrid began composing\u00a0a set of quasi-k\u014dans (on the theme \u201cWhat is poetry for?\u201d) for the Chicago arts and commentary magazine\u00a0<\/em>The Point<\/a>.\u00a0What follows is\u00a0the second of two sets written for the <\/em>Daily. (The first one ran in July<\/a>.) <\/em>Madrid\u2019s unwieldy and indeed unusable title for the first set was \u201cBoth speech and silence are involved in transcendent detachment and subtle wisdom. How can we pass through without error?\u201d His unusable title for the\u00a0present\u00a0set is \u201cI always remember Jiangnan in May; where the partridges call, the hundred flowers are fragrant.\u201d (Taken together, the two titles constitute Case 24 in the Song Dynasty k\u014dan collection\u00a0Wumenguan.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Public Case 6: Ancient Chinese<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our teacher said: \u201cHas anyone ever noticed that many of the most attractive ancient Chinese poets have the same ideas about poetry as modern American high school students? Anyhow, the themes are the same.\u00a0What am I doing today. How am I feeling. What\u2019s my philosophy. What can I see from where I\u2019m sitting. What just happened. I am kind of a loser. What are my favorite quotes<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the students said: \u201cJames Schuyler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment.<\/strong> It is hard for twenty-first-century USA poets to really understand old Chinese poetry: no surprise there. The surprise is that we find our own childhoods as difficult to \u201crelate to\u201d as the literary world of premodern China. We rub our eyes in disbelief when we have anything in common with either.<\/p>\n

Tao Qian, James Schuyler, our own sixteen-year-old selves\u2014of\u00a0course<\/em>\u00a0they write about what they can see from where they\u2019re sitting. What else can be seen?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The truth is almost everyone has almost everything in common. The main exception is the people who are \u201ctoo smart for that.\u201d They make a point of not having anything in common with anybody.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Public Case 7: Berryman<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our teacher said: \u201cDoesn\u2019t everyone feel it\u2019s bs, what Berryman says at the beginning of\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Dream Songs<\/em>\u2014?\u201d\u00a0She opened the book and read:\u00a0<\/p>\n

The poem, then, whatever its wide cast of characters, is essentially about an imaginary character (not the poet, not me) named Henry, a white American in early middle age sometimes in blackface, who has suffered an irreversible loss …<\/em><\/p>\n

She cut in impatiently: \u201cI\u2019ve read the biography. Henry\u2019s not Berryman, okay, but he\u2019s not\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0Berryman either. Henry is a dramatization of Berryman\u2019s inner climate, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the students said: \u201cHe pleads innocent, and you want him to plead guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our teacher said: \u201cI want him to plead\u00a0nolo contendere<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment.<\/strong> In other words, she would have rather there\u00a0be<\/em>\u00a0no note. But the note itself is part of the show, is it not? One more \u201cdream song,\u201d one more performance of sophistication within hysteria. (Both the sophistication and the hysteria are at least partly made up.)<\/p>\n

The teacher is right, just the same. Disavowals, disclaimers of this sort are always a matter of speaking to the concerns of readers who don\u2019t want to \u201cwaste time\u201d reading anybody who was a Bad Person. But why should\u00a0literary<\/em>\u00a0people care about such readers? Shouldn\u2019t they be ignored?<\/p>\n

A witty student who had swallowed a library once named\u00a0Strong Opinions<\/em>\u00a0(a book composed almost entirely of interviews) as his favorite Nabokov novel. This is more in the spirit of things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Public Case 8: The Cat Door<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our old teacher said: \u201cInspiration is like a cat. It comes when\u00a0it<\/em>\u00a0wants, not when\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0want. We can cut it a cat door so it can get in, but everything else is down to the cat. Here in art school, all we do is show you how to cut a cat door.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somebody objected: \u201cI thought anybody could write whenever they wanted, if they would just\u2014quote\u2014sit down doggedly to it<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our old teacher said: \u201cWell, there you go. Cats and dogs\u2014take your pick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somebody muttered: \u201cThat\u2019s no answer.\u201d And somebody else added: \u201cYeah, the whole question is who gets to pick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment.<\/strong> The only good thing here is \u201cCats and dogs\u2014take your pick.\u201d The students don\u2019t seem to have understood it. The old teacher himself came in through the cat door; he was counseling patience. The students, as they always will, were trying to get around needing patience, so he calls them cats and dogs and tells them to think whatever they like.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Public Case 9: Troilus<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the students said: \u201cHave any of you ever looked at Chaucer\u2019s\u00a0Troilus and Criseyde<\/em>\u00a0translated into modern prose? It\u2019s awful. The\u00a0meaning<\/em>\u00a0becomes clear, of course\u2014clearer than ever\u2014but the charm is almost entirely wiped out. The poem becomes a hideously inefficient short story, told in the wrong tone of voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somebody responded: \u201cSo you\u2019re saying versification amounts to a\u00a0tone of voice\u2014<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment. <\/strong>Someone else might\u2019ve said:\u00a0If the\u00a0<\/em>charm\u00a0<\/em>is wiped out, how can you say the\u00a0<\/em>meaning\u00a0<\/em>is intact?<\/em>\u00a0But that is a fruitless line of inquiry.<\/p>\n

Versification is a tone of voice\u2014there is something to that. I want to call that tone of voice \u201carch,\u201d and not just in the case of\u00a0Troilus and Criseyde<\/em>. In general.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Public Case 10: Moratorium<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the older students (shallow, a great reader of poetry reviews, not too bright, list-keeping) said: \u201cI hereby declare a moratorium on the following words: breathtaking<\/em>,\u00a0stunning<\/em>,\u00a0astonishing<\/em>,\u00a0astounding<\/em>,\u00a0heartbreaking<\/em>, and\u00a0devastating<\/em>. Also the word\u00a0arguably<\/em>. These should no longer be used in reviews of poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somebody responded: \u201cSuppose your moratorium were respected for twenty-five years. Could reviewers be allowed to use the words then?\u201d<\/p>\n

The law-giving student said: \u201cNo. Those words should never have been used.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment.<\/strong> The slow and shallow are in many ways reliably correct and wise, simply because abstractions hold no allure for them. They are immune to the sophomoric, and so they would never come up with a statement like\u00a0Why am I allowed to find a poem heartbreaking, but not allowed to say so?<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The slow and shallow also trust their boredom more than clever people, who are apt to scold themselves for being bored. This is why the slow and shallow mature more quickly than others.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Public Case 11: Mabinogion<\/strong><\/p>\n

A guest lecturer, learn\u00e8d, visionary, unreliable, said: \u201cOn the first page of the\u00a0Mabinogion<\/em>, a king rides out, hunting, and sees someone else\u2019s dogs running down a deer. He goes to the fallen deer, sends away the other person\u2019s dogs, and takes the deer for himself. Presently the owner of the other dogs rides up\u2014looking very much like someone of importance\u2014and says he has never seen such rudeness. The king asks him who he is. The man says he is the Lord of the Underworld. The king says something to the effect of\u00a0How can I make this up to you?<\/em>\u00a0and the Lord of the Underworld proceeds to unfold a scheme …<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I don\u2019t want to get into the scheme. I want to point out rather the way the storyteller doesn\u2019t say a word about the king\u2019s motivations. You expect the story to make some kind of exculpatory moves there, but no. The message seems to be:\u00a0This is what happens. People just sometimes do bad things<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMedieval narrative is often like that. The interiority of the characters is sharply limited. And the weirder the morals, the more clearly this appears. The Icelandic sagas are like this. In fact, the Old Testament is like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I want to ask all of you: Given the obvious superiority of this older narrative style, at least in terms of momentum, is it not surprising that this style has been almost entirely wiped off the face of the earth?\u201d<\/p>\n

Comment.<\/strong> So many good things have been wiped out. Stories where the characters have no interiority; long poems that tell you everything you need to know about something (e.g., beekeeping); epigrams. It\u2019s not at all clear these things were set aside for good reason.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time there was a sage who only had one insight. It was that the great Modernists achieved what they did, all of them, by mining the archaic. True, this insight caused the sage to love every single crank who came along, including ones whose only merit was that they mined the archaic. Still: the archaic. It\u2019s good stuff.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go now. But before I do, I want to point out that meddling with deer seems to carry some kind of occult connection to verbal dexterity. It\u2019s how Shakespeare got his start. And one of the most memorable passages in Mengzi (1B.2) is about poaching deer. One could multiply examples very easily. Perhaps this relationship reveals one of those acupuncture meridians we\u2019re always looking for. Petrarch 190 and Wyatt\u2019s famous transfiguration of same. Also, the medieval Welsh poem \u201cEiry Mynydd\u201d has deer behind every corner.<\/p>\n

\n

Anthony Madrid now lives in Victoria, Texas<\/i>. His poems have appeared in <\/em>Best American Poetry 2013,\u00a0<\/em>Boston Review, <\/em>Fence, <\/em>Harvard Review, <\/em>Lana Turner, LIT,\u00a0and<\/em> Poetry. His first book is called<\/em> I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say\u00a0<\/i>(Canarium Books, 2012).\u00a0He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March 2016, our correspondent Anthony Madrid began composing\u00a0a set of quasi-k\u014dans (on the theme \u201cWhat is poetry for?\u201d) for the Chicago arts and commentary magazine\u00a0The Point.\u00a0What follows is\u00a0the second of two sets written for the Daily. (The first one ran in July.) Madrid\u2019s unwieldy and indeed unusable title for the first set was \u201cBoth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22700],"tags":[22908,35,24778,1785,24774,6037,24777,7012,18540,2861,24783,16896,24776,23219,687,24697,24784,9537,7403,165,24775,24779,24781,4342,1457,6488,23237,24780,24782,2393,6633],"class_list":["post-103098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-correspondents","tag-anthony-madrid","tag-art","tag-berryman","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist","tag-chinese","tag-chinese-poetry","tag-doubt","tag-epigrams","tag-history","tag-icelandic-sagas","tag-instruction","tag-japanese","tag-koans","tag-language","tag-medieval","tag-medieval-narrative","tag-old-testament","tag-philosophy","tag-poetry","tag-public-cases","tag-strong-opinions","tag-student","tag-teacher","tag-teaching","tag-the-dream-songs","tag-the-point","tag-thought","tag-troilus-and-criseyde","tag-words","tag-zen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat 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