The post is on something that fascinates me: his reading habits.
Mark, you see, is a reader of poetry. A real reader: upwards of..well, let him do the numbers:
He also evidently re-reads books: 2, 3, 4, 5, dozens of times.I was always astonished by the statement I read somewhere by some recent MFA grad who was gushingly thankful for having been required to read 50 books of poetry during the course of his two or three years in the program. Wow – fifty whole books! (Read that with heavy irony, okay?) Sorry, fella, but it's a really slow year when I don't read at least half again more than that, & lately I've been trying to keep up a pace of at least 100 volumes (counting chapbooks, of course, but also counting big things like The Prelude & "A" & JH Prynne's Poems) every calendar year. And that's not counting magazines, journals, & miscellaneous stuff online....as poet & lover of poetry (not necessarily identical subject-positions, we all know) I simply want to know as much of the stuff as possible, to hoover down as much of that sweet word-work as I can. The Doritos effect.
Now, I'm not a list-keeper, the way Mark and my other friend Lazaraspaste seem to be, so I don't know how many books of poetry, or novels, or anything else I read in a year. I tried to keep a list like that last January, and gave up after about a half-dozen entries, bored with the enterprise. But I doubt I read anything close to 75 books of poetry in a year, and I fear I don't read close to that even if I add in the romance novels. Maybe I'll try to keep track this year, just to see, here on the blog.
Dispiriting, but I'm not going to give myself grief over it.
And I wonder what the critics who pathologize constant romance reading would make of Mark's steady consumption of poetry. What unspoken desires and psychic conflicts are superficially assuaged by each new chapbook, but truly (that is, unconsciously) exacerbated, demanding yet another dose?
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Currently reading (although I'll start the list officially on the 1st) Sherry Thomas's romance novel Delicious, and re-reading The Ringworld Throne, by Larry Niven (SF). No poetry on the table at the moment, although that will change, soon enough.
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This morning's music: Lasairfhiona, a wonderful singer from the Aran Islands, discovered on our last trip to Ireland. Enjoy!
2 comments:
"My friend Mark seems to have disabled the "link to a single post" feature on his wonderful blog, Culture Industry, so you may have to scroll down a bit to find his post from Tuesday, December 29, 2009"
In case you need to know for the future, the link is embedded in the bit at the bottom of each of Mark's posts which reads "posted by Mark Scroggins at TIME." In this case, the link is there in the bit that says "11:41 AM."
I don't count how many books I've read. It would take me too long, I think, because I don't feel there would be much point in just recording the names of the books and their authors. Given how unmemorable some titles are, I'd also want to keep a description of each book, and since back cover blurbs aren't always very accurate, that would mean writing a couple of paragraphs about each one.
I did try it once, for a while, but it kind of spoiled the whole reading experience for me because I disliked having to boil down the complexities of each novel into that kind of summary.
"I wonder what the critics who pathologize constant romance reading would make of Mark's steady consumption of poetry. What unspoken desires and psychic conflicts are superficially assuaged by each new chapbook, but truly (that is, unconsciously) exacerbated, demanding yet another dose?"
Yes, he might be wise to stop comparing poetry to junk food ;-) His use of the "Doritos effect" metaphor brings him dangerously close to the "bon bon"/"mind candy" metaphor for romances, which doesn't seem to have helped the genre gain credibility. And as you pointed out in "Foils and Fakers, Monsters and Makers," Fawnhope's "poetic self-involvement" is "a familiar caricature"; there are clearly already some concerns that poets have a tenuous grasp on reality.
Yeah, thanks Laura--I was about to comment on that linky-thingy.
I think "pathology" is probably the right word; or some kind of late-capitalism-driven consumption ethic. I dunno what the "critics" would make of it, but I know my own crude sub-Freudian diagnosis is that I read poetry in part to assuage my own disquiet at how little I write. It doesn't work, of course -- indeed in the end it simply exacerbates things. But then there's that junk food comparison, which I'm afraid is (for me) right on: ie I just really love the stuff, entirely aside from any vocational or aesthetic justification.
On a serious note: I do think that most of the people who are busy vocationalizing themselves as poets in MFA programs know waaay too little about their own art -- & it irritates me. Maybe irrationally, but still.
As for the "recording books read" thing: pretty anal, no? But a habit I picked up many years ago from my much-missed, largely autodidactic father, who was also given to writing words to look up on the back flyleaves of his books. I know it doesn't serve much purpose beside number-crunching, but it's a habit I've kept up for almost 25 years now, & hard to break.
I think Walter Benjamin did it too, which puts me in the same league as him, just like being bald put me there with William Carlos Williams & being nearsighted there with Lorine Niedecker. :)
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