Comments for The Pennsylvania Review

Comment on Having It All by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:06:16 +0000

[Please note that I have misspelled "license" in the last line of my most recent reply.]

Comment on Having It All by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 07:55:51 +0000

I must recant my pledge (above) to “say no more” because it appears that my rhetoric may have been flawed. What I meant to say was that the luminaries I mentioned by name have never (to my knowledge) disregarded the constitutive rules of formal poetry. And thus my suggestion that we should despise these poets is purely ironic.

Wilbur, whom I’ve been reading of late, is exact in the metric substitutitions he makes, and what’s funny to me is that I could have studied under him while I was at Wesleyan University if it hadn’t taken me another thirty-five years to figure out that writing poems was my major avocation. He is an excellent, though unwitting, teacher.

To sum it up: It was far from my intention to suggest that poetic license should be issued as casually as a driver’s licence often is.

Comment on Having It All by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:29:46 +0000

No one can object if a master of the craft disregards conventions and rules on occasion in the service of some higher aesthetic goal. But what has happened today is that vast numbers of self-styled practitioners of the craft (most of them hopeless amateurs and dabblers) have blithely assumed that disregarding conventions and rules is standard procedure. The poets whom you have mentioned are all acknowledged masters in the field, and they certainly have the right to bend the rules here and there.

As an editor, the practical problem that I face is the “trickling hole in the dike” danger. I must be strict and even a little rigid, because if I give way to one egregious violation of conventions, there will be a flood of requests from others that I do the same for them. And that way madness lies, and the death of any aesthetic identity. As a poet, of course I recognize the right of competent masters to do as they wish with their art.

Comment on Having It All by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:45:12 +0000

While I appreciate the broader issue you’ve addressed (another well-placed dart under the “ethopathy” rubric), I’ll narrow my comment to the sad plight — the specious altar — on which certain unnamed poets have sacrificed their souls.

First of all, a herd mentality bespeaks a profound lack of sound mentation. One can lament the fact that well-intentioned persons have chosen to “go with the flow,” and nowise does that interfere with their right to make such a choice. But correspondingly, these persons have no right to expect universal approbation.

Furthermore, if constitutive (as opposed to regulative) rules are in place only to be broken, then should we not despise contemporary masters of verse (Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Frederick Turner and Stephen Edgar immediately come to mind.) for refusing to compromise their craft, despite their immense contributions to the canon? Or should we marginalize them as rogue demons?

The answers to these questions will be furtive glances
From those who let themselves forget how fine the dance is.

I shall say no more.

Comment on Electric Chair at Sing Sing by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:20:04 +0000

Jared, this is a magnificent set of quatrains. Every one of them is fresh, sharp, and arresting. I’d say that the verses crackle with electricity, but that would be in poor taste considering the subject. Congratulations on a great poem!

Comment on Electric Chair at Sing Sing by hartt

hartt — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:55:46 +0000

Many thanks from a human rights activist for a moving and thoughtful poem about the horrors of the death penalty. I hope it will provide some much needed light in one of the darkest corners of our society.

Comment on Rule, Britannia by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:47:03 +0000

I believe you are correct. Two sanguinary, fratricidal world wars have produced genetic hemorrhages that have debilitated Britain and almost every European nation. Much of Britain’s best blood is lying in Flanders Fields.

Comment on Rule, Britannia by C.B. Anderson

C.B. Anderson — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:57:06 +0000

How strange it is to think that Great Britain has been colonized by foreign invaders. Your low opinion of R.W. Emerson notwithstanding, perhaps it’s time for another “shot heard round the world.” In what evidently has become The Land of the Freeloader, such a shot might best be directed toward the left-wing politicians who have created and encouraged this outrage. The colonists themselves seem motivated by what they view as self-interest, and it’s hard to blame them for that. In regard to native British self-interest, the prognosis looks grim. You make note of the brave Britons who fought alongside Montgomery et al., but perhaps too few of them ever made it back home to reinvigorate the British cultural and genomic legacy. I suspect there’s more to it than that, but certainly no less.

Comment on Collaboration, Social Control, and Muzak by Marcus Bales

Marcus Bales — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:17:13 +0000

Well done.

Comment on Prelude to Shish Kebab by Joseph S. Salemi

Joseph S. Salemi — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:13:27 +0000

I agree, Kip. But a great many of the proponents of “animal rights” seem to have less than half a brain. Their responses are glandular rather than logical.

Wanton cruelty to animals is despicable and profoundly inhumane (in the sense that it goes against our uniquely human capacity for pity and mercy). But treating animals as if they were the equals of human beings, and insisting that our laws and practices reflect that bogus equality, is a textbook example of what I have defined as ethopathy. See my article “Ethopathy: A Word Whose Time has Come” at http://aman.members.sonic.net/salemi.html