Trouble and strife in the world of American poetry. About a month ago, the New Yorker published a (very) lengthy piece by Dana Goodyear, in which she takes to task the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation and its "businessman-poet" president John Barr. Barr is scolded for succumbing to a blatantly consumerist aesthetic as he aspires to "aspires to reunite poetry with the current of popular entertainment" in the wake of a $200m dollar bequest from wealthy recluse Ruth Lilly.
Her piece has sparked off a rumbling debate about how brazen poetry's appeal to potential readers should be. This became a full-fledged standoff this week when David Orr responded vigorously in the New York Times, picking apart Goodyear's arguments (and prose style), returning fire with an attack on the New Yorker's own record as purveyors of verse, and concluding that "the Poetry Foundation, however misguided or impolitic, hasn't given up on poetry. The question is: Has The New Yorker?" Bracing stuff.
With the perspective afforded by the breadth of the Atlantic, I'd say both have a point: the Foundation's raft of initiatives and awards (not to mention its really-rather-good website) are undeniably doing great work in improving access to poetry, but I can't help feeling there's some merit to the argument that Goodyear puts forward, via a quote from poet Joel Brouwer, that "contemporary poetry's great good fortune (despite contrary claims from certain hand-wringers mad to see poems affixed to every slot-machine, taxi stand and flowerpot in the land) is that it has no mass market, and so no call to pander."
Either way, both pieces are well worth reading (Orr's in particular is deliciously pernickety) - and it's nice to see poetry making the headlines for once, even in the form of an internecine spat.
