I read an interesting review essay in the NY Rev. of Books' last issue, by Elisa Gabbert. She’s reviewing recent poetry collections by Christopher Nealon and Carolyn Forché (mostly Nealon’s The Shore), under the rubric of “climate poetry,” which she describes as “a poetry full of fire and flooding and refugees” — which is a pretty good description of much of the world, at the moment.
Of climate poetry, she writes: . . . it’s a reminder of our helplessness. Awareness that we’re more or less doomed—but how doomed exactly?—is a source of constant cycling anxiety, frustration, despair, and finally boredom. If global warming is the only subject, looming as it always does in the background or just above us or all around us, we are doomed to be bored by our own doom. One certainly can write in a boring way about climate change, and many do. Dull writing can make even Armageddon look dull. But that’s not the claim here. The claim is that the topic is boring — inherently boring, because ubiquitous. Gabbert writes that “poetry often has a cooling effect. A poem is yesterday’s or last year’s mood in a still frame, or perhaps a looping gif. We read it with the cool gaze of contemplation.” The problem, for the discriminating poetry reader in the metropole, is that the climate crisis is already passé (“o — that again”). “We” poets feel nostalgic, resigned, and detached, which means “we” poetry readers fall asleep. The theory of the avant-garde, the ceaseless generation of the New, fails to please. “Weather is the prototypical boring conversation topic,” Gabbert writes; “climate too will become boring.” Or already has. Such is the vibe in Brooklyn. But it’s hard to imagine this review having been written by a Kenyan critic. Or one from Bangladesh. Or anybody who lives in Siberia, Tuvalu, Honduras, or (the late) Paradise, California. Weather isn’t boring, if a tornado is bearing down on your town — then it’s plenty exciting (trust me: I live in Kansas). Rather, I think the problem Gabbert identifies is the lack of any sense of personal threat. If you don’t think climate chaos is a serious problem for you in the near term, then of course it’s going to be boring. It’s like watching a documentary about galactic coronas instead of one about the coronavirus. Interesting in its way, but very very far removed. White liberal guilt is just guilt, not fear or rage. Guilt can get boring, too. “Fire and flooding and refugees — sure it's tragic and all, but it’s so been done.” Unless you’ve got fires and refugees in your city streets. Having said all this, I can’t argue with Gabbert’s characterization of USAmerican “climate poetry” (including some of mine). Roy Scranton wrote an essay about climate change titled “We’re Doomed. Now What?” Much elegiac contemplation of the climate crisis could be titled “We’re Doomed. Yeah? So?” One could argue that this apocalyptic ennui is another manifestation of postmodern belatedness and flattening of affect. But part of the problem, perhaps, is the professionalization & academization of poetry in the U.S. The New-Critical ideal of the techno-critic-poet really does still undergird the institutional position of professors of creative writing, regardless of whatever “counter-hegemonic commitments” they may harbor or write about. We are to teach technique; we, like our more research-oriented colleagues, are supposed to write about things, not participate in them. That would contaminate our results. It is possible that the coronavirus crisis and concomitant economic Depression will cause poets and everyone else to re-evaluate what they’re (we’re) doing. What is the relation of literature to ethics, to science, to traumatizing extreme weather events or police actions? Should writing be a full-time job? Or something that everyone does (while they’re not foraging and looking for potable water)? Indeed, is it there to distract us from the asteroid hurtling toward us? As Gabbert writes, “Poems do make things happen, but not enough.” And I’m not sure that switching genres to nonfiction gets one off the hook. For now, we can still publish books and book reviews and, as of this writing, teach poetry workshops. The AWP is still extant. How much longer this state of affairs will obtain is another matter. If writers in the global north really face up to the shift that is taking place, the problem will be less one of aesthetics than of acknowledging the thoroughgoing transformation of our world — which will involve destruction, as well as creation — perhaps for the better, perhaps not. All of that may add up to some very interesting times.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |