Robert Bagg: Poems, Greek Plays, Essays, Novels, Memoir

Mar 16, 2010 4:52 PM EDT

VTPOET wasn't wrong in recommending this essay. A funny thing has happened since self-publishing with my own press; my reading of the poetry of others has increased geometrically, even as I have begun to struggle with how to generate critical comment that will help me improve my craft in ways that are different -- read 'audience grounded' -- from those I have enjoyed for a dozen years as a member of weekly and bi-weekly writers' groups before whom I have presented and re-presented my work as it has evolved.

Before retiring and getting increasingly more committed to writing poetry, I was an academic administrator responsible for evaluating faculty credentials and performance in the professional field of education. One of the salient experiences at that time was helping departments invent ways to evaluate advances in clinical achievement and performance. It turned out it could be done, but what is of interest to me in the context of Bagg's argument is that clinical performance or accomplishment is quintessentially __self-published___! It was a short step from that to realize that self-publishing was not an "evil" in and of itself, but simply created a new situation require the invention of assessment strategies on the basis of which sound judgments could be formulated.

I'm retired, as I said, and I have the luxury of being able to decide how I spend that small amount of my income that is left after housing, food, clothing, medical care, and good booze. Some people travel, some people sail (I used to before my shoulders gave out and it became too dangerous) or ski, or collect medallion art. I recently put it into the costs of self-publishing, and have had the satisfaction of gifting family, friends, and my fellow writers with (I think, thank you Sarah Margaret!)a very well-packaged collection of work I'm not ashamed for others to see. And now that people other than my very supportive and helpful group of fellow writers are beginning to see my work and respond, I'm learning new things about it and my assessments of it. It has led to conversations with artists
of other kinds (musicians, sculptors, etc.) about the surprises of discovering how the public's responses to one's work can sometimes broaden one's own awareness of its worth from the narrower range of what we may value most in our own work, especially how it speaks to others who have not lived with it as we have. If we didn't publish it ourselves, how would we ever know?

One last thought. My voracious reading in the past six weeks since receiving and marketing my work has included the reading of, especially, web-based reviews, and I must say I haven't always been thrilled with what I've seen. 'I like, I don't like' is useless without grounded-in-the-text explication of why, but far more annoying are reviewers whose idea of critical skill seems to be treating the poetry they read as inkblots the interpretation of which, through their verbiage, is something they believe any of us would be interested in. Who cares if a reviewer trots out an almost endless string of "this is what these lines made me think of"? Of course, that may be the readers reverse side of the coin to a lot of what seems to be too many contemporary poets' penchant for writing stuff and 'throwing it against the wall to see what sticks.' That's not what __I__ think poetry ought to be, but then what do I know . . .

- Hendrik D. Gideonse