Poet Critic

[I wrote this several years ago for the journal Kenning. I don't think I've put this online yet. I think the question posed to everyone was how one thought of oneself in relation to the term "poet critic."]

I haven’t found the term “poet-critic” very useful since it suggests that one could tack on hyphenated nouns endlessly to the phrase for every new activity that a poet might engage in (though I like the ring of “poet-programmer” since it’s a relatively new and confusing creature). A “poet-critic” is really not new, and most neologisms in criticism are bad (such as “poethics”). I think there could be a richer community of critical writers on poetry, people who are interested in creating flexible, lively terminology for further discussion and not keywords for academic roundtables, though there is often a fine line between these two categories. I think some poets could write very great criticism if they found a way of being excited about the language of criticism itself, but also about the drama of the critic in the world (searching for one’s own “lettre du voyant”). My sense is that the listserv critic would be a more interesting phenomenon were people more careful with their prose styles in emails; of course, since much of that writing is considered ephemeral, it’s understandable that many are not willing to take this extra step, and so I wonder if the listserv, rather than increasing our communal interest for extra-poetic verbiage, has in fact been detrimental to “criticism.” Impatience and a sense of wonder might be the two best qualities of a critic, though neither is very useful without a decent prose style. I guess, in the end, I would be interested in critical writing that had a theatrical bent, animating the entire stage of critical and cultural activity and how we work within it, shedding an optimistic light on the state of affairs while also providing a sense of urgency and focus.