by David Lehman
INTRODUCTION
* * *
by Terrance Hayes
“What we end up making, whether it’s something we do by ourselves or with others, is always a form of conversation.”
—Eugene Gloria
Terrance Hayes begins his introduction to the 2014 edition of The Best American Poetry with a recollection of the first poetry book he ever purchased. Some manner of luck, he tells us, led him to the sole shelf of poetry in the sole bookstore of his very small college in a very small town in rural South Carolina. The book, Jorie Graham’s 1990 edition of The Best American Poetry, became his first contemporary poetry teacher. “I am a proud mutt of poetic influences, having been reared by seventy-five parents,” Hayes begins in a passage that goes on to elaborate (for six pages) the ways those poets and indeed the poets of every edition of The Best American Poetry anthology (Hayes owns them all) represent a “unity of contradictions,” a gathering of styles proving, one after the other, year after year, just how resistant a contemporary American poem and contemporary American poet can be to any homogeneous notion of American poetry.
Let me pause here to comment on Hayes’s massive introduction. Having read the Best American Poetry series so closely—having depended on it so deeply for literally all of his life as a poet—he naturally had much to say. In the end he sent the gargantuan text to me (I am a practiced poetry scholar and literary advisor) for feedback. So unwieldy was his 182-page introduction that it promptly “unwielded” my commentary! (I returned it to Hayes with thirty pages of suggestions.) What follows in lieu of the introduction is my interview with Hayes about poetry, poetry introductions, introductions to poetry, and art in general.
—Dr. Charles Kinbote
Dr. Kinbote: It is a graupelous December evening and I am with Terrance Hayes in the wine and coffee shop of a quaint American neighborhood. Before we go too far, what explanation or polite excuse can you offer regarding this unconventional “interview as introduction”?
Terrance Hayes: David Foster Wallace argues in his intro to the 2007 Best American Essays that since the guest editor’s introduction is rarely of interest to a reader, the editor has some freedom to do and play as he pleases. I thought I’d test that theory. I thought inviting your scholarly assistance could spice things up. Thanks for agreeing to help me with this.
CK: No one ever accused scholars of being less wordy than artists, of course! But I am glad this format will allow a more succinct conversation.
TH: Initially, I thought editing this collection would be similar to guest editing a poetry journal, but it was at least three or four times more challenging. I found myself obsessing over the concept of “best.” I wanted to include the best poems by established as well as emerging poets. I wanted to include the best poems from various regions of the country, the best poem in print, the best online poem, the best formal poem, the best experimental poem—I was on an overwhelming hunt for the best “knowns” and “unknowns.” I wanted to base my choices on something other than taste, but I don’t know if I found one. . . .
CK: Your introduction goes to great lengths about such things. Perhaps it is a kind of Don’t-Blame-Me-If-You-Don’t-Like-These-Poems flag of surrender?
TH: No, no exactly. There are all kinds of bests, I realized, just as virtually every Best American Poetry guest editor before me has acknowledged.
CK: To whom, then, should the task of naming the best fall? Critics, publishers, poetry teachers? Students of poetry teachers? NPR listeners, magazine subscribers? Other poets and poetic coteries? Is a poet better equipped than a nonpoet to appreciate poetry? Many seem to believe so.
TH: Nonpoets—not just readers who aren’t poets, but even other writers and writing teachers—assume near total ignorance when it comes to contemporary poetry. But I believe a reader knows good poetry when she encounters it. You know when a poem moves you just as you know when good music moves you, regardless of its genre or style. The problems arise when we are asked to explain why we like what we like. It’s a problem for everyone, save a few deluded scholars, I guess.
CK: Ha! Let us toast the grand delusion of expertise!
TH: Sure thing. I can’t say I “literally” understand Rae Armantrout’s poem “Control” or Kiki Petrosino’s “Story Problem,” but I love the “hunch” those poems spark. I love the moment of “not knowing” more than the moment of “knowing” in a poem.
CK: That sounds a bit like Keats’s Negative Capability. And, of course, one example of Negative Capability is accepting that one cannot define Negative Capability. Tell me: how do you judge something you do not understand? How does anyone value something he does not understand?
TH: That could describe Man’s relationship to God: the process of engaging a force you can never understand. Mystery is good enough for religion, why can’t it be good enough for poetry? And who says poetry is about understanding, anyway? Flannery O’Connor says it is the business of literature to embody mystery.
CK: She says that of “fiction,” not poetry. She is referencing a Henry James comment—
TH: Right. She says the mystery of our lives on earth is the work of—let’s just say Art. I have the quote here on my smartphone: “manners are those conventions which, in the hands of the artist, reveal that central mystery.”
CK: Ah, but don’t unhip words like “manners” and “conventions” make you bristle?
TH: I take them to be synonyms for “craft.” Language is figurative when it has shape. Language casts a shadow when it has shape. You can’t give it shape without setting it in some manner of craft.
CK: Are you thinking of Martin Heidegger in Poetry, Language, Thought here? You must be!
TH [A sort of diagonal “yes” nod and “no” shake issues]: Heidegger?
CK: His theory of throwness (geworfenheit) and projection (entwurf) in Art? “Art then is the becoming and the happening of truth,” Heidegger says. Which I take to mean that Art evidences our material thatness, on the one hand, and the possibility of our immaterial thereness on the other. Is this what you are suggesting?
TH: That sounds interesting. What did you say was the name of the book?
CK: I will write it down for you. I am asking if you believe that poetry, the poetry of our contemporary moment, apropos of this anthology, has any relationship to philosophy, to Truth with a capital T?
TH: Wow, hard question.
CK: My sense of contemporary poetry is generally one in which the poet is diligently hacking a path through a thicket of tangled language—I only ask that he look over his shoulder occasionally to assure us readers he knows we’re behind him. It is essentially the glance Orpheus flashed Eurydice that a reader requires.
TH: Well, we know how that turned out for Eurydice—but certainly I agree: a writer hopes his readers are following.
CK: And what is it that you think readers want from poetry, from literature, from Art?
TH: Every reader comes with a different desire, I guess. Every poem offers a different gift. An interested reader need only come armed with curiosity and generosity. Openness. I wouldn’t even require “patience.” If the poem can’t keep you in your seat, get up. Maybe come back later.
CK: I disagree. Poetry being poetry does indeed demand patience. The task of critics like myself is to show readers the value of remaining in their seats. We are not unlike clergymen in this way. We are not always loyal to the text, but we are always faithful to it. Apologies, apologies: I’m preaching. I digress as I said I would not. Would you like another glass of wine?
TH: OK.
CK: Your introduction also talks extensively about themes in contemporary poetry.
TH: Yes, I inevitably gave up trying to explain the significance of certain recurring themes in the collection, and instead made centos reflecting the themes. Each cento consists of lines culled exclusively from poems in this book. There are three in the introduction: “The Sex Cento,” “The Political Cento,” and “The Death Cento.”
CK:
“Cento” from the Greek, kentron: patchwork? A poem built from the writings of other authors, yes? A humorless quodlibet, the form seems to me. Shall we hear the sex cento?
TH: All right, but don’t ask me to explain it:
SEX CENTO
I, too, love the devil. | It is hard to have faith in this. | I am not smart about love, is what I’m saying | I pray without speech. | that’s the price the wind pays. | Even if you don’t know how it feels to fall, you can get my drift | the sweet, sweet air as it makes its way around the curve | If the best thing the world discovered today is that at the inside of the universe is a cat | The water is flat like fur licked down by a clean animal | Yes, I am anthropomorphizing goddammit | I’m a hog for you baby | what we end up making, whether it’s something we do by ourselves or with others, is always a form of conversation. | I will never contain the whole of it.
CK: “I, too, love the devil,” from the opening of Traci Brimhall’s quite memorable poem—I heard that in there. From what poem is “If the best thing the world discovered today is that at the inside of the universe is a cat” excerpted?
TH: That’s from Eileen Myles’s poem, “Paint Me a Penis.”
CK: Clever, yes, but I am still on the fence about these little postmodern desipiences.
TH: What does “desipience” mean?
CK: As Horace says in “Ode 12” of Book IV of The Odes: “Dulce est desipere in loco.” It is pleasant to be frivolous on occasion.
TH: I wasn’t trying to be frivolous. I have an actual theory—well, I’m working on a theory about heat in a poem, the charge of its language. In my classes I ask students to name a poem’s hot spots. The idea is that in any poem there is a line or two that heats the rest of the poem. A kind of focal point that both anchors and charges it. The centos are compiled of hot spots in the poems collected here.
CK: I see. There is a similar “linguistic fleetness” in many poems. In Steve Scafidi’s “Thank You Lord for the Dark Ablaze,” Sandra Simonds’s “I Grade Online Humanities Tests,” and Rachel Zucker’s “Mindful”—where we actually see “GO GO GO GO”—there is a similarly animated, scantily punctuated syntax. Was one such poem not enough? I think these poems reveal your biases, Mr. Hayes, your limited tastes.
TH: These poems are very different, Doctor, although I do find “linguistic fleetness” appealing in general . . . “Velocity” is a good word. Velocity of mind and tongue and feeling. Maybe I’m limited by my penchant for what Frank O’Hara called Personism. I don’t mind a poem of more meditative intensity, though. The David Wojahn poem, “My Father’s Soul Departing,” comes to mind.
CK: I should not be drinking both red wine and espresso at this hour.
TH: Often I can look a poem in its mouth and find its sounds are beautiful, but the question is inevitably, “Am I always drawn to the same music?” As I selected poems, I often asked myself whether others would hear the music I heard. Ultimately, I can’t be sure readers will agree with what’s superlative here. I can only let the poems speak for themselves.
CK: James Dickey, on the first day of his classes, I was once told, often climbed onto what was surely a very strong table, oak most likely, and into what was surely a very strong chair, and declared to his pupils: “Now ask me any question about life and I will answer it using this book!” He usually held a book of Shakespeare, the sonnets, the plays—I am told it worked every time. Could you perform such a feat with this book?
TH [frowning and fidgeting for a spell]: Yes.
CK: Perhaps later, then, we shall try it out. Your introduction includes a few pages discussing poems left on the cutting-room floor. Is there one in particular that you wish you had included?
TH: A poem by the late Alan Dugan. It came late in the year from Ploughshares. I’m cheating a little to include it outside the table of contents:
PRIAPUS
I am the only man in the world
because I have no tits. I have
a permanent hard-on as long
as I am tall and it
outweighs me.
They say that I
have horns, hooves, and a tail, but this
is a myth or a lie: my forehead
is knobbed, my coccyx is protuberant,
and my toes are flanged.
Most
people run away when I walk down the street,
but some of the women tear off their clothes
fall down on their backs and open their legs
as far as they can and scream “Fuck me,”
and some of the little boys drop their pants,
bend over and spread their cheeks
and yell “Do me! Mister, do me!”
They say
that I have wings to fly me away from all
this obscenity, and that
they are either on my organ or on my back,
but this is a myth or not,
so come to the towns of northern Greece
or bloody Macedonia on your vacation,
and find out.
CK: The little boys yell, “Do me, Mister”?
TH: It’s a ballsy poem, right? You know who Priapus was? He was the minor god with the big—
CK: Yes, yes, I know who Priapus was! Let us change the subject. There are a few diagrams and illustrations in your introduction. The poem by Michael Earl Craig, for example, is accompanied by what looks like an ornate map of roads around a hat-shaped city. Take a look at this diagram by Jacques Maritain from his chapter, “The Internalization of Music” in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry:
Maritain describes this as an illustration of creative intuition in search of expression in modern poetry. Can you offer some thoughts regarding your own diagrams?
TH: I hope my drawings aren’t quite that complicated. I admire Maritain’s effort to demystify poetry. Words fail, so he resorts to diagrams. Ironically, things remain bewildering even drawn out. What does he mean by “process of spiritual production” and the “structure of the work of words,” for example?
CK: “The creative process is free to start developing in the nest of dynamic unity of image and thought where the music of intuitive pulsions takes place, and where emotion and nascent images are pregnant with virtual intelligibility,” Maritain says. The diagram makes this quite clear.
TH: The diagrams in my introduction are sort of tongue-in-cheek. When I realized I couldn’t explain what makes a poem great, I thought I’d try illustrating it. “Show don’t tell.” Something like that.
CK: You have picked several poems written in ad hoc forms. I am thinking of Rosemary Griggs’s “SCRIPT POEM,” Anne Carson’s “A Fragment of Ibykos Translated 6 Ways,” and Sherman Alexie’s subversive “Sonnet, with Pride.” But there are poems in “pre-established forms” as well. Linda Bierds’s “On Reflection” is a pantoum, Hailey Leithauser’s “In My Last Past Life” is a villanelle. Philip Dacey’s “Juilliard Cento Sonnet” is both cento and sonnet. If I ask you to explain this, I am sure you will say, “A good poem is a good poem,” or some such platitude.
TH: A good poem is a good poem.
CK: Instead I would like you to address the diversity that seems more than anything to have guided your decisions. A formal poem here, an experimental poem there, a poem by a “person of color” here, a poem by an old white guy there—how is anyone to really understand the essence of “American Poetry” if it amounts to a gumbo and get-along of choices?
TH: Some might say memory is the soul of imagination; that we seldom can imagine something before we have remembered an experience of it, a sense of it.
CK: Who says that?
TH [ignoring the question]: But let’s consider diversity as possibly the soul of imagination. I’m not ashamed to say I wanted a diverse mix. In my introduction I describe my poetic tastes as something like a yard with a fence I cannot see. If I leave my porch and walk over a few hills
, cross a few rivers, I suspect I will find my border: the place where I say this is a poem, this is not. But ultimately, I want my yard to be bigger not smaller, and this editing process made that possible. Still, I’m sure you can find styles or schools I left out.
CK: Some of your choices could be construed as political. I am reminded of Harold Bloom’s pugnacious introduction to The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1997 wherein—
TH: Where while decrying political poetry, Bloom writes one of the most political introductions in the series—
CK: Is that how you read his introduction?
TH: I’ll stick with my fenced yard analogy. Bloom’s fence comes right up to his door. Which would be fine if he wasn’t such an anxious neighbor—the sort who not only confiscates the balls inadvertently tossed inside his fence, but also means to outlaw any ball games he doesn’t recognize.
