Here is more of James Tate, one of those poems that's all about the unexpected "turn" toward the end. The question then becomes--doesn't it?--which of the details leading to that turn might be omitted with no cost to the poem as a whole? That's a complex, nuanced question about rhythm, pacing, tone, and mood--oh, yes, and content.
A Wedding by James Tate : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.
I suspect the only way to address it is to type up the poem without the challenged word, phrase, line or lines, and see what happens. We don't know if we need ten fingers till we cut one off.
I also wonder where poets like Tate, Charles Simic, Dean Young, or John Ashbery fit in comparison to the "School of Accessibility" poets like Ted Kooser, Tony Hoagland, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, to mention only a few (and that list creates some strange bedfellows, it seems to me).
Standing in the wings are ultra-talk poets Mark Hallady, David Kirby and Barbara Hamby.
What would be the parallel questions in the visual arts or serious music? When do we have a legitimate breakthrough in sensibility, formal aesthetics, and intellectual content? When do we have fraud?
And how can we know the answers before each new canon comes out in paperback?
While you're at it, which is better, the Earl Scruggs three-finger picking on the banjo or clawhammer frailing on the open-backed banjo. Don't even mention the four-string tenor banjo of Dixieland. They're not our kind of people.
Surely we must choose. Surely we must hate one crowd. Otherwise, why politics?
A Wedding by James Tate : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.
*
Posts
