The Modern Element (Essays on Contemporary Poetry): Adam Kirsch

The book jacket for The Modern Element claims that Kirsch is “among the most controversial and feared critics writing today,” and that the book is “Sure to cause heated debate.” I’m not so sure. While Kirsch approached a wide variety of contemporary poets in an erudite, if perhaps slightly cautious manner, I get the feeling that much of the controversy surrounding Kirsch stems more from his position as a New Formalist critic than from his actual critiques. I’m not sure what I was expecting in these essays that cover a range of mostly well-known poets such as Derek Walcott, Charles Simic, C.D. Wright and Anthony Hecht, but I was left feeling as though Kirsch did more summarizing that critiquing.

Kirsch was tough on Sharon Olds, claiming that when she writes about sex it’s only that, rather than a symbol of the complications sex represents, and he had reservations about Jorie Graham as well, but the one place Kirsch started to get a bit nasty (and where I lost some respect for him) was Billy Collins, whom Kirsch lambasted for laziness. Kirsch’s summary judgment of Collins is that, “His amused indifference resembles wisdom only, to borrow a phrase from Four Quartets, as ‘death resembles life.’” Well, I don’t disagree, but for Kirsch to whet his acumen only on Collins, the academic poet’s favorite target, is like hunting farm animals.

To understand Kirsch's critical approach to the poets he’s selected, it’s a good idea to examine how he defines a poem’s “modernness.” What makes a poem modern, he suggests, is its capacity for “intellectual deliverance,” a definition borrowed from Matthew Arnold’s 1857 lecture “On the Modern Element in Literature.” It’s an idealistic phrase, and I think Kirsch is an idealistic reader and critic—he’s also interested in the idea of redemption and transcendence. This idea of modern poetry is in contrast with Robert Von Hallberg’s, who speculates in his book Lyric Powers that lyric poetry is a discipline, “built on an expectation of failure,” or, in other words, Hallberg believes that poetry will change nothing and no one.

I, like any sane person, am attracted to the idea of “intellectual deliverance”: the phrase has a noble ring to it, and although a discussion on the transformative power of poetry is for another essay, it’s important to say that as far as Kirsch’s book is concerned, I’m not sure what modern poetry is supposed to deliver humanity—or, the cultured human—from. It’s a moralistic, spiritual phrase, which would explain its 19th century origins, but what does Kirsch mean by “intellectual deliverance” in a poetry world leaning more towards a secular humanism? Is Kirsch suggesting that modern poetry should be capable of delivering us from a flawed, ugly culture? Or does he mean it in a spiritual sense, as in, the modern poem will (buckle up for a vagary) elevate the human spirit? A combination of both? The modern poem will lift a veil from our eyes, allowing us to see the world differently—and thus reinvent it?

One thing I appreciate about Kirsch’s definition of modernness is that it operates under the supposition that modern poetry is timeless—it transcends history—which is exemplified by an example given that the poetry of ancient Greece is more modern than, say, Mary Oliver. Because it continues to liberate the mind. This idea of poetry delivering is evidenced by the characteristics Kirsch routinely praises in poems, namely, a certain amount of clarity, followed by maturity throughout career. One of his qualms with Jorie Graham (and, to a lesser extent, Ashbery) was the impenetrable mystery of some of her poetry. Kirsch does have some tolerance for obscurity—from what I can deduce, he thinks Eliot is the great American poet, and Four Quartets and The Wasteland among the great American poems—but he points out that complexity and confusion are not the same thing, and that often contemporary poets substitute one for the other.

Kirsch’s approach to each subject usually followed the same format. Anecdote about the poet’s life (Larkin looked at porn! Wright and Roethke were boxing enthusiasts!), summary of work, similarities to other writers (again, high praise was comparison with Eliot, closely followed by Lowell, ambiguous praise was comparison to Pound), judgment, conclusion with a quote.

Although it would be too time consuming to summarize Kirsch’s thoughts about each individual poet, a few reviews struck me as of particular interest, such as Frederick Seidel, whom Kirsch praised, writing, "...his ambiguous courage is what makes hom one of the significant artists of a corrupt, chaotic time," although Kirsch he also says that Fred Seidel's favorite subject matter is Fred Seidel. And I'm not sure being the artist of a corrupt time is a compliment, perhaps in a corrupt time. Kirsch caused me to lose some respect for James Wright much in the same way Willam Logan debunked his egotistical son, Franz. It's been a tough year for the Wrights. The essay on Philip Larkin was also of interest, if only because it was yet another sign of an artist whose reputation contemporary critics are trying desperately to revive (with good reason). Although Larkin died over twenty years ago (1985) his stock has steadily decreased in the poetry world due to public exposure of his splentic personality and unpleasant personal habits. As Larkin wrote mostly in verse, I wonder what this critical resurgence says about the view of formalism. Maybe nothing. There was also a lot about Lowell in The Modern Element, though almost nothing on Elizabeth Bishop, which I found surprising since her popularity seems to grow as Lowell's wanes. Still, as loved as Bishop now is, Lowell was a much larger influence on contemprary poetics (first with Lord Weary's Castle and then with Life Studies) which plays into Kirsch's formula for showing what vein each writer is emerging from.

Kirsch is a critic of principles, and while much of what he wrote makes sense, my criticism of him is the same he made of Yvor Winters—at times, Kirsch needs to widen his perspective of what poetry can and should do. He seems to believe in transcendental qualities such as redemption and deliverance, but as a critic, he hasn't discovered those qualities in any contemporary writers, to the point that I'm starting to wonder whether he’d recognize them if he did.