How much damage we do with the things we say about other poets! How corrupt and vain we must appear as we flatter each other! I don’t know about you, but I can’t stomach reading the majority of reviews, and every single blurb I read makes me want to throw up or die. What a pack of liars we must seem to be!
We expect politicians and merchants to have a problem with lying. But poets? Isn’t truth, in some form, our stock in trade? Isn’t it crucial people find our words trustworthy? I’m talking about inventing lies to trick other people into buying shoddy merchandise. And to then get other poets to return the favor.
Why do we do it? There is such little at stake. Fame as a poet is so spindly. Book sales usually don’t exceed the hundreds no matter how many blurbs you butter the covers with. 403b’s are fattened with or without the praise. Life is so short.
About ten years ago, the ‘future of poetry’ article in the Atlantic explained how we shrink our readership by lying: The outsider, nosing in, hears us say everything is genius, everything astonishing, every little mutton chop is deathless. Since the readers can’t see the emperor’s new clothes, they give up on poetry, and leave us to ourselves.
I know what Charles Bernstein would do: Instead of judging these little crimes on moral grounds, he would treat them as a literary genre in their own right. I think that might take the edge off. Gain a handle over them by distance and irony. Why not? It’s worked for everything else.
Hey, that might be a good project for somebody casting about for a quick thesis project: Collect the choicer tidbits of this meretricious tripe, and start chopping and dicing.
But promise me, promise me, if you want to keep your self-respect, you will never ever pen a pile of praise-crap for somebody, even if, especially if, you think they will return the favor.
Thanks for letting me vent.
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