Comments on: Clamor

By: Raymond McDaniel

Raymond McDaniel — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:33:23 +0000

Oh, I don’t think prize judges or critics or readers in general are looking for different things. All are equally free to prefer the chicken, or the duck, or the swan, or the tofurkey – and each will elect and define what they find good.

But it’s worth admitting a preference, if one has one, and it’s worth understanding and appreciating the preferences of others, even if one doesn’t share them.

By: D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 01:34:42 +0000

Prize judges are usually looking for good work over familiar aesthetics. Let’s not get them confused with critics, especially those critics who think they’re reviewing a whole bunch of different restaurants but are always applying the same standard. Each of the restaurants might indeed be capable of producing a wide menu, but of it is of no consequence if they know that the critic is always ordering the chicken.

By: D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:00:06 +0000

Decorous: “characterized by dignified propriety in conduct, manners, appearance, character, etc.”

Shares its root with decorum. As in “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

It doesn’t mean the same thing as decorative.

By: Jordan Davis

Jordan Davis — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:18:20 +0000

> I can usually identify what aspects of any individual
> book might appeal to a certain subset of readers, which
> means that I can engineer what preferences and
> convictions a reader would need to have in order to
> extract that value.

This is what blurbs are for, right? To declare which authority figures co-sign, and therefore what preferences and previous reading experiences will be affirmed by the contents.

In the case of the book under discussion, though, I had the feeling that the book itself had the in-quotes quality you describe above — that while there was clearly a real, lived experience of the home front, it was an apolitical, freaked-out, traumatized permanent-present experience. Part of it was what you call the beautification — the not-but rhetoric, the variable pacing of the sentences, the intermittently memorable images — but mainly I couldn’t shake the numb feeling I got from these poems.

It may be that I imagined I got what she was saying too quickly, or it may be that I failed to bring enough to the poems; I may just be anxious about the subjects of war, absence, colossal insignificance; and more than likely I don’t have enough training in the codes of the blurbers and the prize judge and the press.

The usual way around these problems is to declare victory and leave.

By: HTMLGIANT

HTMLGIANT — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:52:29 +0000

[...] reviewing: John Cotter on John Cotter at WWAATD and Ray McDaniel on Elyse Fenton’s Clamor at the Constant Critic. Tags: Book Reviews, constant critic, john [...]

By: Arielle Greenberg

Arielle Greenberg — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:30:42 +0000

I love this review. I am going to use it for teaching purposes, if that’s ok with you guys. It’s so smart (and in a real person sort of way!) about poetry, aesthetics, criticism…

Also, Ray really articulates something that bugs the hell out of me, too, in poetry. I often think of it with the term “decorous”…and then I think of Mary Karr’s essay “Against Decoration” which is funny because although I love many things about Mary, she and I do not share taste in poetry. But the idea of being “against decoration” as I interpret that for myself is important to me.

And so hard to fight, right? I mean, as poets, we have this urge to splash around in language, go all starry-eyed over its possibilities. How to do this AND be honest, authentic, plain in places, weird in places, and not just “pretty”? Or, even when not JUST pretty, I wonder why make something *pretty* out of something complicated and strange and open?

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this review. Thanks!

Arielle