“I get pretty impatient with people who consider any fourteen-line poem to be a sonnet. The turns of thought are crucial, as is the number of turns.”
(Carl Phillips, interviewed by David Baker, www.kenyonreview.org)
The interview inspiring these illustrations is a pas de deux of metapoetics performed on campus by two massively degreed* panjandrums.
Altisonant palaver among cognoscenti is devoutly to be shunned by the lay reader seeking insight into poetry’s mysteries. It graces me with what I get from the poetry itself: a sense of being kept on the outside of something that is cold, severe and not obviously enjoyable. (The words are those of Rob Doyle about Peter Handke’s work.)
But here’s my own volta if not volte-face: Well into the interview, Phillips starts pushing back on Baker’s abstruse queries with some sensible responses. My irritable hot take ceded grudgingly to a recognition that Phillips was not blowing all gas.
Here’s the exchange where I glimpsed light:
David Baker: I mean to identify places where the voltas fall, where the poems turn, where and how they open, and where, in the final couple of lines, they recapture or recapitulate each narrative… But just as vivid here is the mysterious primary pronoun “it.” This little word may be easy to overlook, but it seems central to fully understanding the poem. What is “it”? Something grand, like myth? Or something tangible, like a real artifact? Inside “it” we find the whole narrative. Does it matter whether or not we can identify “it”?
Carl Phillips: I can honestly say I have no idea what the “it” is supposed to refer to.
His confession of cluelessness as to the referent of his own pronoun gives me hope that Carl Phillips may have something to teach me after all.
*Carl Phillips has an AB (Bachelor of Arts) degree in Greek and Latin from Harvard, an MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) degree in Latin and classical humanities from the University of Massachusetts, and an MA (Master of Arts) degree in creative writing from Boston University. David Baker has a BSE (Bachelor of Science in Engineering) and MA (Master of Arts) degrees from Central Missouri State University and a PhD from the University of Utah.
(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
How I Do Reading, Sadly
It seems when I encounter a poem I start an argument with it; I approach it as a provocation. Why is it written this way? What is it trying to tell me? What should I feel or think after reading it? I almost never ask, Did this entertain me?
It doesn’t seem right to treat signals sent by writers labeled poet as hermetic scriptures to decode, sort out, translate into apprehensible utterance. Not constructive; doesn’t speak well of me as a well tuned — or even competent — receiver. To read this way is to adopt an offensive lineman’s crouch, ready to deck the blocker and concuss the QB.
Paul Mariani quotes Wallace Stevens: People read poetry nervously, afraid that something [will] “go wrong with the sentence after next.” In my experience, something goes wrong even sooner.
I revel in non-figurative painting: line, stroke, color put to the pure purpose of expression, not just depiction. On the other hand, I’m afraid I read words for clarity, understanding, illumination. I have to say to many poets of my time and place whose art I strive to take on board: It’s not you, it’s me.
I must grow into poetry. Lately, as I take the dubious initiative to pepper my lucubrations with dabbles, it occurs to me to think of poetry more as painting with words than as hinged discourse. Let’s see where that goes.
(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved