the heel press

October 01, 2007 - 07:52 AM

THE QUOTIDIAN AND SO MUCH MORE

By 2002 American poet Louise Gluck wrote and published nine books of autobiographical poetry. By 2002 I had written, but not published, fifty books of poetry. I trust I had not made in my poetry a fetish of my life, that I had not caught myself in a cul-de-sac of my own subjectivity. Brian Henry described Gluck's work in his review of her The Seven Ages(2001) in Contemporary Poetry Review(2002). Henry wrote of Gluck's predilection for portentous repetition, her inability to embrace spheres beyond herself, to enter into any rich, encompassing and imaginative realm. He says she "ruins ideas with prolixity and overexplanation" and her sense of "crippling self-importance plays itself out in the dreariest ways." Her poetic project, he concludes, is a flawed and trivial self-narrative.

I wondered, as I read Henry's analysis of Gluck's work, if my poetry was guilty of this same obsessive self-reflection or self-love, of the same over-indulgent, self-scrutiny, "ridiculous in its perseverance." My personal life was certainly the subject of my poetry. Like Gluck, I saw in the quotidian a source for my poetic art. Yes, I was guilty of some of Gluck's faults. I had to admit it. Self-love is part of the very clay of man. But--my poetry was so much more. Such was--and is--my claim. Let the reader and future critic decide. -Ron Price with thanks to Brian Henry, "Louise Gluck's Monumental Narcissism," Contemporary Poetry Review, 2002.

There is repetition, prolixity, obsession,

perseverance, self-love, the quotidian

here--but, oh, oh…..so much more.....

over these four epochs when the trustees

of that global undertaking set in motion

more than 100 years ago,inherited

the mantle of a charismatic authority.

I was eighteen during that

great transition point,

that conveyance of authority.

The times were a changin',

as Bob Dylan sang it.

I was starting university

and about to experience

my first episode of a

horrific bi-polar disorder.

Ron Price

23 September 2002