Reviewing the Reviewer

The main book review in The New Yorker a couple of issues ago was actually devoted to poetry! Dan Chiasson reviewed Mark Strand's New Selected Poems and Robert Hass's Time and Materials.

Despite the fact that Chiasson is, to me, that guy who thinks Buddhist meditation consists of "thought-gimmicks to rid ourselves of consciousness" (as he says in his Poetry review of Jane Hirshfield's After), I nevertheless had high hopes for this review. Even though Hass is sort of Buddhist, I figured Chiasson would be less confused here, since Hass is more thinky and self-doubting, and therefore gets closer to what Chiasson seems to mean by "consciousness." I want to better understand Hass's poetry, so this review looked promising.

Unfortunately, I'm left with the same level of bafflement regarding Hass. Chiasson starts off with a bang, making a very insightful comparision between the big American poets of the 1960s (Lowell, Plath, and Berryman) and their heirs, Strand and Hass. For those earlier poets, "the recipe for poetic power was misery mixed with braggadocio." In contrast, "Strand and Hass, more comfortable than despairing, write in [a "temperate middle"] zone." So far, so good.

I'm not familiar with Strand's work, so I'll ignore that part of the review, except to say that the poems Chiasson refers to don't exactly make me want to run out and devour Strand's new book.

On to Hass: Chiasson makes an interesting argument that Hass's project for the last few books has been "to ransack his own lyric gift." Hass, unsatisfied with the easy lyricism that comes easily to him, has sought to challenge and complicate that lyricism. A good point; so far, so good.

But Chiasson loses me when he claims that "Then Time," from the new book, is Hass's "best ever" poem. Chiasson explains that "'Then Time' shows how lyric poetry can do what novels do so well, if at excruciating length: track the paths of consciousness and counter-consciousness across plots and characters." Well, woo-freakin'-hoo. This is a good thing? My paraphrase: "Then Time" is a great poem because it's kind of like a novel, but a lot shorter.

Well, I ask more of poetry. My quest to understand why Hass is such a big deal continues. Tony Hoagland's essay "Three Tenors" (in the excellent Real Sofistikashun) has some excellent insights on Hass, and there was a good essay in a recent American Poetry Review that actually made me buy Time and Materials. (I'm about half-way through it; not ready to comment on it yet.) But I still feel I'm missing a big piece of the puzzle with Hass. I guess I just don't get the whole "I'm suspicious of language, but I'm still a poet, so I'll write poems but I'll be sure to question my own language all the time" aesthetic.

Chiasson has succeeded primarily in making Strand and Hass appear almost unbearably tedious (especially in comparison with Plath, Berryman, and Lowell). He makes a good argument about their occupying a temperate zone, but not a good argument about why they merit the description "two of our finest contemporary poets."