In Defense of Poetry

Alongside the best way, we get readings of particular person poems and poetic results which might be fulfilling, if typically idiosyncratic. Is it actually true that “we are able to say with certainty” that “the pentameter derives a lot of its energy and appeal via a numerical imbalance” (that’s, the road has 5 stresses, slightly than 4 or six)? Or is that this like saying {that a} fluffy bunny derives a lot of its adorableness from being rabbit-shaped? It doesn’t matter, as a result of the thought leads Leithauser to match writing in pentameter to “managed falling,” which is an amusing and helpful technique to think about this main construction.

Leithauser has a trove of formal poetry at his command, and his examples (starting from almost misplaced figures like Chidiock Tichborne, who died in 1586, to contemporaries like Paul Muldoon) present a stamp collector’s appreciation for minute distinction. Particularly, Leithauser is an excellent reader of Louis MacNeice, the mid-Twentieth-century Irish author who continues to be undervalued by American poets. MacNeice, he writes, partakes “of the spirit not a lot of the chess participant, who naturally focuses on believable traces of play, because the chess problemist, who relishes positions that wouldn’t ordinarily come up.” The prose all through “Rhyme’s Rooms” is snappily enterprise informal on this method, with pretty concerned discussions of iambic tetrameter stitched via with little pops of coloration like, “Most books ought to most likely restrict themselves to a single anecdote on the expense of dimwitted American vacationers.” The impact may be profitable but in addition odd; as if an accountant saved cracking jokes to you whereas attempting to clarify accelerated depreciation.

The oddity is inevitable, as a result of the e book’s mission is itself odd. What we’ve got right here isn’t a professor speaking about versification for an viewers of scholars, however a poet speaking intimately about technical points of poems for an viewers of — properly, who precisely? Leithauser says that he’s writing for “the reader who loves phrases and literature however perhaps feels some trepidation, and a bit nervous resentment, in addition to varied voiceless cravings, on confronting a poem on a web page.” This describes a reasonably large chunk of humanity, so how may we describe that supreme reader extra particularly? What is that this reader really like?

“Rhyme’s Rooms” appears not sure. This reader presumably doesn’t know who Joseph Brodsky was, since he’s recognized as “the Russian poet and Nobel laureate.” But this reader is seemingly going to be undeterred by the 340-page size of this e book or its fascination with poetry’s structural arsenal (“It’s uncommon for a seven-syllable line to really feel trochaic proper via to its finish”). This reader has sufficient literary savvy to be amused by potshots at hackneyed poetic conventions (“Aggressive enjambments are the bane of up to date poetry”). However this reader wants a framing gadget to know poetry that includes imagining a distant tribe of good readers whimsically referred to as “Funesians” (from a Borges story a couple of boy named Funes, who perceives and remembers all the pieces — and the reader goes to understand this as properly, it might appear). This reader is aware of little or no in regards to the modern American poetry world, however this reader additionally must be informed virtually nothing about it (huge, prize-strewn swaths of that area are resolutely ignored right here). This reader is a cloud blown collectively and aside by opposing winds.

That’s no criticism of Leithauser; it’s merely a operate of the style to which his e book belongs. That style — Be taught Poetry! — makes an attempt not simply to think about a reader, however to think about a world through which that imaginary reader might exist. It’s a job no single e book can accomplish. So these works are both irritating, partial successes like this one, or uninteresting, purple failures through which a prickly, piercing artwork is decreased to corny sayings and walks within the woods. However this doesn’t make the style nugatory. On the finish of “Rhyme’s Rooms,” Leithauser writes, “I suppose what I’m doing right here, in my concluding chapter, may be termed a protection of poetry.” As he factors out, such defenses have a protracted legacy — a legacy that’s, as most poets know, each shifting and doubtful. Right here is the e book’s ultimate line: “Poetry improves folks.” Does it? Leithauser believes it does, and it’s clear he additionally believes poetry has improved him. Maybe, the place poetry is anxious, believing is sufficient.