A TESTY EXCHANGE BETWEEN POETS stimulate by William Logan's artful evisceration of the purile Pulitizer Prize winning poety of Franz Wright:
To the Editors:
I have to concur with Charles Simic: I would have to consider myself a complete failure, both as a writer and as a human being, if a grotesquely mean-spirited mediocrity like William Logan liked my work. But that aside--aren't you even a little ashamed at how badly he writes (or to put it another way, how badly he seems to want to be British)?
Franz WrightWilliam Logan replies:
I suppose that winning the Pulitzer does unbalance a man. Mr. Wright has been very busy scribbling letters. I received one myself, which I quote in full:If there is ever the slightest possibility of our finding ourselves in the same room or general vicinity, I want to advise and plead with you to get away from that place, fast, because if I find out about it, I assure you it is distinctly possible that I will not be able to resist giving you the crippling beating you so clearly masochistically desire. I do not wish to kill you or hurt you, and so I beg you to get away from me, without delay, if you realize we are in the same room somewhere.
Best, Franz.
If Franz Wright believes such threats will intimidate anyone, he is to be pitied. I assure him that I will come and go as I please, and would be glad to provide him with an itinerary. If the sight of me will send him off the deep end, he must do his best to avoid me. Though I would like to gratify his violent fantasies, for a man of his character all I can think to offer is pies at ten paces.
William Logan
This is ye olde punch-in-the-nose kind of literary dustup we see all to rarely these days. Pies at ten paces is a reasonable response to the gored ox groans coming from Franz Wright. He has passion, he has committment. The only thing he lacks is a leg to stand on. He is, deep down, a shallow poet as Logan notes:
"Most of Wright’s poems are nasty, brutish, and short—it’s an old joke, but Wright really is Hobbesian man, consoling himself with second-hand religious formulae and the salve of salvation:That has to hurt and hence the truncheon of the aggreived letter to the editor comes out of the scabbard.
Oh build a special city
for everyone who wishesto die, where
they might help one another outand never feel ashamed
maybe make a friend,Maybe make a friend! (This is how Mr. Rogers would talk, if he were an ex-junkie.) Yet for all the tabloid-style anguish, Wright’s minimalism is deft and effective, with the emotional pressure of Louise Glück. These damaged and tormented poets (if they were to collaborate on Passive-Aggression for Dummies, I’d hardly be surprised) have refined the poetic act to short prosaic sentences, brimful with resentment, seething with a rage for which words are inadequate. Behind every poem stands an entourage of nurses, shrinks, and self-help counselors."
Alas, poor Wright, he has yet to learn that if critics say anything nice about you, your best move is to shut up and sit down -- but if critics say anything bad about you, your best move is to shut up and sit down.
Posted by Vanderleun at July 7, 2004 4:08 PM
I think Logan just improved Wright's style by 95%; look:
If there is ever the slightest possibility
of our finding ourselves
in the same room or general vicinity,
I want to advise and plead with you
to get away from that place, fast,
because if I find out about it,
I assure you
it is distinctly possible
that I will not be able
to resist giving you
the crippling beating
you so clearly
masochistically
desire.
I do not wish to kill you
or hurt you,
and so I beg you
to get away from me,
without delay, if you realize
we are in the same room
somewhere.
Best,
Franz.
Well, I'm am definitely not a poet. But himself once wrote:
There once was a poet
that rhymed his wasses
with other wasses.
And himself also wrote:
And now I lay me down with sheep,
I pray to cod, my sole to keep,
And should I dye ‘afore I wake,
Please don’t make me codfish cake.
For on the ‘morrow,this tale must go,
Sleep and stance alters woe.
Wouldn't Ogden Nash be proud
To be amongst this crowd.
I hereby end my poetic career.
Posted by: ellen's brother at July 7, 2004 8:54 PMWhat was the adage about the viciousness of argument being inverse to the stakes involved? (or something like that).
I don't really read poetry, so I could care less, but its always entertaining to see actual threats of physical violence out of poets and writers over a review of their work.
That says more about them than their work ever could.
Posted by: Eric Blair at July 8, 2004 12:09 PMWhat would you know about how to respond when spoken of by "critics" like Logan? As a nonentity and moron who will never be noticed for doing anything, it's all pretty theoretical for you. You people are so strange. Wright's work is "puerile" yet it is quite clear you have no familiarity with it. Do you realize there is an actual living human being on the other end of these comments of yours. There is something monstrous about mediocre minds.
Posted by: FW at February 22, 2005 10:39 PMI have read James Wright and his heavy elaborate
words. And then a small light, with a
tiny powerful voice that was his son- shone
through a tiny window. The most astounding
things in nature can be described in two words
by a craftsmen, while the old poet flounders prolifically to describe the sun, or rivers or briges or the way death leaves the room momentarily and never returns with millions
of metaphors. True poetry is "sudden" like a heart attack and minimal like the last audible words. That is Franz Wright. Vive le son!
I wonder if I was the first to come up with the idea of the title> ©(When Poets Collide)©.It was my brain-child for our new Book.© Steve Chering & Barbara Elizabeth Mercer.©
Posted by: Steve Chering at May 21, 2007 8:34 AMHard to say since it is unclear from your book when the title was first thought of.
Overall, doubful however. Since it can be seen by searching the phrase in Google that this particular entry clocked in in July of 2004.
I also note a poem with the title "When Poets Collide" in Exquisite Corpse #10 published in by Rebecca Lu Kiernan in 2001, so the poem would have to have existed before that time. [ http://corpse.org/issue_10/poesy/kiernan.html ]
The Logan/Wright verbal jousting reminds me of Pope and his detractors in eighteenth-century Britain. As the novel rose in popularity, poetic skirmishing became the trend.
Posted by: chella courington at October 18, 2009 1:11 PM
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