Poeta Doctus

Bookninja‘s back, and worth keeping an eye on.

Yesterday, George Murray posted an article on Instagram poetry, with the commentary, “I work hard to be progressive. I work hard to be forward-thinking. I work hard to find joy and worth in as much of life’s silliness as possible.” As much as I share Murray’s estimation of the literary-media (media-literary?) phenomenon, the article, by scholar Seth Perlow, teaches an important lesson by example.

In the article’s introduction, Perlow sets out his purpose:

In what follows, I’ll nonetheless try to learn something from the Insta-poets, something about the technological scene of contemporary poetry, without advancing a judgment about their work. The complex intersections of Insta-poetry’s political, commercial, and literary significance have frustrated literary critics’ efforts to evaluate it. So for now, I want to suspend questions of value in order to ask how Instagram structures poetic forms and participatory reading practices.

By suspending “questions of value” what comes into view are not only otherwise overlooked aspects of the verbal art of poetry in general, but no less pressing questions concerning media, composition, reception, and various blindnesses that inevitably accompany whatever insights poets and critics might otherwise have. Canonical figures, such as Emily Dickinson and Charles Olson, come into play; the no less urgent and perspicacious studies of Byung-Chul Han on digital media and society might as well have been included. The point is that the critical (judgemental) sensibility all-too-often obscures the reality of what it judges. And however much I agree with Murray’s and Perlow’s low estimation of Insta-poetry, Perlow’s example is instructive as to what resolute, clear-eyed, and informed study can reveal, revelations of no little pertinence or consequence to “serious” poetry.

By lucky happenstance, just this morning, a review of the William Blake show at the Tate Gallery came up in the newsfeed. What struck me about this chance juxtaposition is what Blake, weirdly, shares with the Insta-poetry Perlow investigates. Both are, in a sense, cottage industries; in both, text and image are inseparable (regardless of Blake’s stripping the text from some paintings and engravings to sell them independently), and both present themselves via the handwritten as opposed to schematized typography. And who, reading the Songs of Innocence for the first time, has not been initially perplexed by the high critical regard they now receive?

The theme, as Whitman (that other great self-published self-promoter) wrote, has vista, even when what is scrutinized is silly.