July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Dropping a line to a certain Mr. Rooney (07/26/06)
Back in the Saddle
By By JACK RONALD-
Dear Andy,
The cranky coot shtick you have cultivated over the past 30 years is getting a little old. We continue to run your column on The CR's editorial page, and I know some folks are still loyal readers.
But I don't think there's much doubt you're past your prime.
Case in point, last week's column sniping at Donald Hall, the current American poet laureate.
Now I'll be the first to admit some bias in the matter.
A bookshelf at home has nine of Hall's books of poems, nine of his books of prose, a book about his poetry, and two books of poems by his late wife, Jane Kenyon. So I'm a little prejudiced.
About 20 years ago, I also had the pleasure of having dinner with Hall when he read his poems in Indiana.
Having said that, I think it's also fair to say I'm a little more familiar with his work than you are. I also like it, though much of it is challenging. The best of it strikes a chord in the human heart.
So when you stepped into your curmudgeon role last week, I took it a little personally.
And as an editor who has published your column nearly as long as I've been reading Donald Hall's poetry, I found it disappointing. Worse than that, I found it lazy.
If you'd done your homework, you'd know that Hall has been one of America's most prolific writers for decades. He left academia in the 1970s to make a living with his pen, writing about everything from baseball to rustic life in rural New Hampshire. Along the way, he continued to write poems and write about poetry, trying to expand its audience.
Obviously, there's more work to be done in that regard.
Hall follows in the footsteps of the past three poet laureates - Ted Koozer, Billy Collins, and Robert Pinsky - in trying to promote good poetry, to improve the teaching of poetry, and to help folks get past their self-imposed hurdles.
(If you're interested, you'd probably like the poems of Koozer and Collins more than Donald Hall's.)
I won't argue your point that much modern poetry fails to connect with readers. I find much of it opaque. Some of it, in the words of the poet X.J. Kennedy, amounts to "faintly labored verses."
In other words, it's self-indulgent laziness, much like a column I read last week by a guy named Rooney.[[In-content Ad]]
The cranky coot shtick you have cultivated over the past 30 years is getting a little old. We continue to run your column on The CR's editorial page, and I know some folks are still loyal readers.
But I don't think there's much doubt you're past your prime.
Case in point, last week's column sniping at Donald Hall, the current American poet laureate.
Now I'll be the first to admit some bias in the matter.
A bookshelf at home has nine of Hall's books of poems, nine of his books of prose, a book about his poetry, and two books of poems by his late wife, Jane Kenyon. So I'm a little prejudiced.
About 20 years ago, I also had the pleasure of having dinner with Hall when he read his poems in Indiana.
Having said that, I think it's also fair to say I'm a little more familiar with his work than you are. I also like it, though much of it is challenging. The best of it strikes a chord in the human heart.
So when you stepped into your curmudgeon role last week, I took it a little personally.
And as an editor who has published your column nearly as long as I've been reading Donald Hall's poetry, I found it disappointing. Worse than that, I found it lazy.
If you'd done your homework, you'd know that Hall has been one of America's most prolific writers for decades. He left academia in the 1970s to make a living with his pen, writing about everything from baseball to rustic life in rural New Hampshire. Along the way, he continued to write poems and write about poetry, trying to expand its audience.
Obviously, there's more work to be done in that regard.
Hall follows in the footsteps of the past three poet laureates - Ted Koozer, Billy Collins, and Robert Pinsky - in trying to promote good poetry, to improve the teaching of poetry, and to help folks get past their self-imposed hurdles.
(If you're interested, you'd probably like the poems of Koozer and Collins more than Donald Hall's.)
I won't argue your point that much modern poetry fails to connect with readers. I find much of it opaque. Some of it, in the words of the poet X.J. Kennedy, amounts to "faintly labored verses."
In other words, it's self-indulgent laziness, much like a column I read last week by a guy named Rooney.[[In-content Ad]]
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