What is artistic coherence in a body of poetry?
Is it a limitation of concerns, a uniformity of statement?
a clearly defined set of motifs with, as in music, a clear line of development?
or, as in story-telling, a strong narrative?
or a familiarity and consistency of "voice", the same person talking?
or, to change perspective:
an audience that never feels lost, even on first reading?
an audience that, on many readings, feels it "gets it" entirely?
Do we necessarily want this?
When people on the list read, say, Stevens, or, a more recent and popular
writer, Seamus Heaney, how do they talk of their coherence?
Sometimes (and I read and like their writings) I feel their work evidences a
certain incoherence because their discipline of references and studied tone
creates a sort of disconnect between their work and the world as we know it to
be. There is a censoring that goes on.. . to great effect, yes, ..... but still,
a dependable censoring. Is it the dependability of the act of censoring that we
begin to call artistic coherence?
So, is artistic unity closely related to the act of censoring....
Does Davis' opinion stem, really, from the feeling that "He should have said
less, censored and or limited his thoughts and references more, it would make
him a better poet."?
But for those who regard the great sprawling mess of the twentieth century: the
extreme rage, the collisions of ideology, intertwining cultures, the desperation
of a civilization being lost, panic, regret, humiliation and, perhaps, a search
for better references as a search for renewal: then Pound's journey doesn't seem
to lack coherence at all, in fact, it seems to gain in integrity compared to
other voices who limit their concerns.
If I say that Pound's work gains in integrity, am I saying therefore that it
gains in coherence?
Does one really turn to Auden, whose politics more closely resemble mine, to get
a better picture of the 20th century. Or Shapiro, whose sensibility I more
admire?
I think the collected poetry of Brecht has an immense reach, an incredible
poignancy (not a word we normally associate with Brecht) and an integrity, but
he has paid for his coherence with an act of censoring, (which, to his credit,
he is well aware of.)
Pasolini speaks of this century with a frequently unmatched power. (I am reading
through the translations by Mazza). But are his collected works a sort of epic
that one would point to as the best of the century about the century...... ?
Pound will live beyond the critics (and our email list) precisely because he has
not ironed out the contradictions, the ugliness, the confusion, the futility,
the false hopes and the real hopes. I think the missing cantos should be in the
collected Cantos, not because they make for a prettier picture of Pound, hardly,
but the stridency actually increases the coherence of the whole. ... the Pisan
Cantos came after... that!! This is not a disconnect or, if it is, it is a
fruitful disconnect: the rhetoric is forced to change, the degree of change we
can argue about, but change of tone and artistic tactic certainly occurs.
The war is over, we know who won and who lost. We tangibly feel the difference.
Is this discontinuity of voice not really evidence of a greater coherence in
relation to the time in which it was written?
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