Sherry Chandler » The New Yorker Poem?
The New Yorker Poem?
As a poet, I am neither experienced nor successful enough to speak much about the politics of poetry in the big world. Nor, since I no longer subscribe, have I read Dana Goodyear’s February article, The Moneyed Muse, pillorying The Poetry Foundation.
So I can’t speak to the accuracy of David Orr’s critique of Goodyear’s critique in Sunday’s New York Times. I was amused by this little passage here, though, which I’ll share with you because I think it’s spot on:
First, The New Yorker tends to run bad poems by excellent poets. This occurs in part because the magazine has to take Big Names, but many Big Names don’t work in ways that are palatable to The New Yorker’s vast audience (in addition, many well-known poets don’t write what’s known in the poetry world as “the New Yorker poem” — basically an epiphany-centered lyric heavy on words like “water” and “light”). As a result, you get fine writers trying on a style that doesn’t suit them. The Irish poet Michael Longley writes powerful, earthy yet cerebral lines, but you wouldn’t know it from his New Yorker poem “For My Grandson”: “Did you hear the wind in the fluffy chimney?” Yes, the fluffy chimney.
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