Today's NY Times has an obituary on Daryl Hine, characterizing him as "an admired poet who adhered to classical themes, complicated formal structures and intricate rhyming patterns to explore themes of philosophy, history and his own sexuality."  The article explains that Hine "wrote more than a dozen books of poetry, using traditional forms like the sestina."  It continues to say that:  "His work . . . often put him out of step with the times, which were more apt to celebrate the raw, free-form work of poets like Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso," and that "Louis Dudek, a literary critic who focused on modern poetry, once described Mr. Hine's poetry as 'a series of extremely recherché, abstract, contrived word forms, containing oblique and ambiguous philosophical essays and meditations.'" 

Most poets and critics today tend to think of poetry as occupying two poles of a spectrum, either the "formalist" style of Hine or the "free verse" style of Ginsberg.  An assumption is made that "modern poetry" embraces the latter style.  People who hold this view are misguided.  The two poles of the spectrum are between "formalists" and the "modern poetry" style of José Garcia Villa.  Free verse is disqualified because, contrary to popular belief for the past half century, it is not poetry, not even verse, and most important is not art.

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Tags: Jose Garcia Villa, Demise of Poetry, theory of poetry, free verse

As mentioned elsewhere on this website, the website's mission is to promote publication of a book entitled "Poetry is," which presents the theory of poetry of Jose Garcia Villa as distilled from his lecture notes for poetry workshops he taught from 1952 until his death in 1997.  The editor of this book is the sponsor of this website, Robert L. King, who studied with Villa from 1970 until 1997, and who utilized Villa's papers, now residing at the Houghton Library at Harvard U., his own notes of Villa lectures and those of other Villa students, and various recollections of Villa loyalists to distill and recreate Villa's voice and views on what poetry is, what it can and cannot do, and how it (as high art) is written. The result is a manuscript which can truly be described as authored by Villa himself.

The manuscript presents the only comprehensive organized and structured theory of poetry to date.

Most persons who have attended poetry workshops will wonder what there is about poetry that could possibly fill an entire book. After all, poetry workshops - they believe - consist of presentations of poems followed by analysis of what the poems say.  Student poems are usually welcomed and discussed, enforcing the notion that there is nothing about poetry that must really be studied.  With a few suggestions as to how these student poems may be improved, the students believe they are well on their way to becoming true poets and they either depart to forge their own path or pursue a MFA degree, which they believe is academic accreditation of their status as poets and critics of poetry.

Thus, it may be helpful for persons attending poetry workshops as described above to consider what they may have missed in not attending the Villa workshops.  I reproduce below the Table of Contents of the manuscript, which will give an idea of the subjects covered in these workshops.

 

Tags: Jose Garcia Villa, theory of poetry

In his theory of poetry, José Garcia Villa outlined a “Spectrum of Poetry” which, in simple terms, segregated poems – again speaking of poetry as art and not as popular culture – into three “regions”: the region of “pure poetry” at one end of the Spectrum, the region of “general poetry” in the middle, and the region of “great poetry” at the opposite terminal from “pure poetry.” The Spectrum polarized poems on the basis of their “purity” and “content,” where content is what is generally referred to as the “meaning” of the poem. In this Spectrum, meaning is seen as an adulterant, a pollutant, and a non-poetic factor.

The medium of poetry is music and magic in language. In “pure poetry,” the medium uses itself as its sole and only source of power. This is based upon the premise that ideas are not the life of poetry – poetry’s life is its authority to spellbind us. Oscar Wilde said: “Art never expresses anything but itself.” When a poem is pure, it is centered in poetry itself.

Tags: theory of poetry, Jose Garcia Villa

A controversy has erupted over a 69-line “poem":  “What Must Be Said,” written by Günter Grass, the German novelist and Nobel laureate, that appeared in several German newspapers on Wednesday, April 4, 2012. As reported in The New York Times on April 5 and 7, in his “poem” Mr. Grass wrote: “What do I say only now, aged and with my last drop of ink, that the nuclear power Israel endangers an already fragile world peace? Because that must be said which may already be too late to say tomorrow.”

José Garcia Villa’s paramount “don’t” in the writing of poetry was: “If you can say it in prose, don’t write it as poetry.” Among Villa’s most-important messages in his theory of poetry was his counsel: “After reading a poem, the question to ask is: “How did the poet do it?” – not: “What did he say?” In simplified terms, Villa said this because, as he also said: “A work of art is not what it is about, but what it actually is.”

Villa also said: “The ‘poems’ of prose-writers have a laxness and imprecision of language – they are not language yet for they use the language of prose. That satisfies prose; it does not satisfy poetry. And these prose ‘poems’ have a looseness of technique – prose-writers do not know how to tighten the vise of a poem to that finality of authority that is required.”

Jakob Augstein, the publisher of the weekly magazine Der Freitag, said of Grass’s “poem” that it “was neither a great poem nor brilliant political analysis, but that ‘one should thank Grass’ for starting the debate about the threat that Israel poses to peace.'"  For his part, Mr. Grass said he did not mean to attack Israel but Mr. Netanyahu’s policies, adding: “I should have also brought that into the poem.”

Villa, in his theory, said: “We must not think of poetry as in the service of something else. We speak loosely of poetry as narrative poetry, satirical poetry, didactic poetry, dramatic poetry, but none of these is related to the art of poetry.” That a Nobel laureate should present as a “poem” this particular piece of didacticism is his greatest offense, far more harmful in the long run than any imputation of anti-Semitism, bad politics or moral blindness.  

Tags: Jose Garcia Villa, theory of poetry

The obituary of Hilton Kramer, the Art Critic, in today's New York Times reminded me of an article he wrote in the New Criterion in February 1993 under the title "Poetry & the silencing of art." That article is accessible on the web at the following site: http://www.newcriterion.com/articleprint.cfm/Poetry---the-silencing-of-art-4691 It should be read by everyone interested in rejuvenating poetry as a high art in America. Among other things, it summarizes views expressed by Dana Gioia on the state of American poetry, agrees with those views to the extent that they note the demise of poetry as art in America, comments on some of Gioia's other views set forth in his book "Can Poetry Matter?", and concludes with the following observation: "In Mr. Gioia's discussion of these problems, something very important has been left out - the subject of popular culture. For as the silencing of high art proceeds at a rapid pace in our society, what is taking its place on a scale never seen before is the noise of the most noxious and degraded varieties of pop culture. High culture cannot compete with its lethal effects on the minds and bodies of the young - and not only the young, of course - and neither can serious education, not as it is now conducted, anyway. And as long as the juggernaut of pop culture continues to swamp everything in its path, not only will poetry remain confined "to the private world that is the poet's mind" but so will all of high art - whatever remains of it - be confined to the private world of its subculture. And what was lost? No one can judge will be a line applicable to many things we now cherish. Can Poetry Matter? is an important book, but it does not yet have an answer to the question posed in its title."

Tags: Demise of Poetry, Dana Gioia, Jose Garcia Villa, theory of poetry

Did you ever ask yourself why poets cannot or will not write poems that can be understood?
Did you ever have an idea for a poem and find that you could not execute it?

Chances are that you were never taught that poetry is not prose, that the "poet" who begins a poem with the deliberate intent of "saying something" is working by the prose process, not by the poetic process.  One does not make poetry with ideas but with words.

If the poet does not start with an idea, how does he or she begin a poem?
How does the poet propel it forward?
How can the poet possibly expect to bring it to a successful conclusion?
What does "meaning" mean in the context of poetry?

Tags: theory of poetry, Jose Garcia Villa, Dana Gioia