{"id":61066,"date":"2025-11-06T10:57:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=61066"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:04","slug":"two-ways-of-disliking-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/two-ways-of-disliking-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Ways of Disliking Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was 14, a friend invited me to stay a week with his family on the Outer Banks. What I remember most vividly about that week is a book. The book belonged to my friend\u2019s mother, though I don\u2019t remember ever seeing her actually reading it. Still, the book did change tables in the living room, so I assume she did. This book produced a commotion in me that I can best describe by saying that the book seemed to offer an invitation to luxuriate<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At first, this copy of The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore<\/em> (1967) offered a physical appeal. The paper had a heavy, textured quality (something I learned much later to identify as laid<\/em> paper), and simply running a finger across the page was pleasing. And then there was all that white space: what extravagant wastefulness!<\/p>\n

I might have zeroed in on \u201cPoetry,\u201d one of Moore\u2019s best-loved poems, as exemplifying such luxury of blank space.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoetry\u201d<\/h4>\n

I, too, dislike it.<\/p>\n

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one dis-<\/span><\/p>\n

covers in<\/span><\/p>\n

it, after all, a place for the genuine.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After these words, a snowy field flows to the bottom of the page, broken only by the page number at bottom left. The page is both too small to contain the poem (the long second line has to be bent back on itself) and much too large for it. This visual isolation draws one in, but one quickly discovers a flip side: the prickly quality of the verse itself keeps understanding at bay. The two are bundled together: the invitation to luxuriate is also an invitation to take your time being confused.<\/p>\n

Moore finds two ways to derogate poetry in a mere three lines. What\u2019s the difference between \u201cdislike\u201d and \u201ccontempt\u201d? I take \u201cdislike\u201d to be an everyday affair. \u201cI dislike ironing my shirts, but somebody has to do it.\u201d \u201cI dislike so-and-so at work, but we can manage to work together.\u201d Dislike is something one lives with, something one manages. But \u201ccontempt\u201d is considerably stronger\u2014it pushes away. Contempt denies the possibility of a shared space. We \u201chold\u201d someone in contempt, from above, as if with tongs. And yet, disliking poetry, Moore says she reads it with contempt.<\/p>\n

The difficulty here is distinctly modernist: like Eliot\u2019s, to take just one example, Moore\u2019s poetry is studded with quotations and allusions you need footnotes to understand. For example, Moore\u2019s poem \u201cMarriage\u201d is such a dense weave of quotations that it is very unclear what Moore is actually saying about this important topic. Still, all this was\u2014and is\u2014part of the incomprehensible commotion: the pleasure of not<\/em> understanding.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I should describe the feeling more strongly: my failure to understand was a kind of humbling. The \u201cperfect contempt\u201d directed at poetry, its spotlight of scorn, spills over to take in the reader as well. We are invited in\u2014\u201cI, too<\/em>, dislike it,\u201d Moore writes (emphasis mine), as if we were in cahoots\u2014but also quickly shown the door. Moore\u2019s poems play hard to get.<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s point, I think, is that you have to read<\/em> poetry to dislike it; poetry is, for some of us, an everyday annoyance. Those who never pick up a book of poetry may be indifferent or dismissive, they may mock the very idea of poetry, but they can\u2019t really be said to dislike poetry, much less have a purified, a perfected, contempt for something they do not encounter.<\/p>\n

But if we\u2019re reading poetry at all, we are already luxuriating, dawdling in a space in which love and contempt\u2014for the poem, for poetry itself, for ourselves\u2014are inseparable.<\/p>\n

\n

The poet writing now who meditates most insistently on poetry\u2019s combination of the alluring and the contemptible is Diane Seuss. For years she has been subjecting inherited poetic forms\u2014sonnet, villanelle, ballad, and so on\u2014to a rather violent form of roughhousing. Her latest book, titled Modern Poetry<\/em> (which may be an echo of Moore\u2019s famous poem), tells us how she came to poetry from an unlikely place, how hopeless she really thinks it is, but also how, in the end, she\u2019s not sure she has anything else of greater value. Here is the opening poem:<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle Fugue State\u201d<\/h4>\n

Far have I wandered not knowing<\/p>\n

the names of where,<\/p>\n

long have I woven this dress<\/p>\n

of human hair, here<\/p>\n

I have pitched my tent, here and there,<\/p>\n

not knowing my name,<\/p>\n

or where, not even the color of my hair<\/p>\n

nor why<\/p>\n

it tangles so, now where my comb goes,<\/p>\n

nor where my brush,<\/p>\n

how far I wandered through underbrush,<\/p>\n

into onrush,<\/p>\n

nor where my body was, nor what it called<\/p>\n

itself, nor the nature<\/p>\n

of my calling, nor what my scrawling meant,<\/p>\n

not that scrawl then,<\/p>\n

nor this scrawl here, nor what a self<\/p>\n

could be,<\/p>\n

nor what a bee could be, nor breath,<\/p>\n

nor poetry,<\/p>\n

this dog I\u2019ve walked and walked<\/p>\n

to death.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The poem displays the gratuitousness of poetizing: its submission to sound and beat, its jury-rigged quality. We follow Seuss as she adds line to line as rhyme suggests (from \u201ccalled\u201d to \u201ccalling\u201d to \u201cscrawling\u201d), and as she drops in bits and bobs of language that come in handy, whether those are trivial phrases (\u201chere and there\u201d) or pompous clich\u00e9s (\u201chere \/ I have pitched my tent,\u201d \u201cthe nature \/ of my calling\u201d). The dog is being walked to death even as we watch.<\/p>\n

Many of the poems in Modern Poetry<\/em> tell stories of Seuss\u2019s education in poetry and the homeliness of that apprenticeship. In \u201cMy Education\u201d she tells us:<\/p>\n

What I know of literature, of history, is spotty.<\/p>\n

I was a poor student, disengaged from the things<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t need, and I knew what I needed,<\/p>\n

and that the time to get it was now.<\/p>\n

When I needed Keats, I got him. I read enough<\/p>\n

to get the point, then tuned into his ghost.<\/p>\n

I read most of Joseph Conrad, having figured out<\/p>\n

that I could find some things repulsive and still<\/p>\n

require them for my project. My project<\/p>\n

was my life. There was no vision or overarching<\/p>\n

plan. There was only foraging for supplies,<\/p>\n

many of which were full of worms or covered<\/p>\n

in dust, like apples on the orchard floor,<\/p>\n

and furniture junked on the side of the road.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s the luscious Keats, and then there\u2019s the \u201crepulsive\u201d Joseph Conrad. Like Moore, Seuss sees that the alluring and the unlikable are bundled together. But what makes Seuss\u2019s dislike of poetry different is the reduction of both Keats and Conrad to the status of \u201csupplies.\u201d Moore\u2019s \u201cperfect contempt\u201d can seem fussy and genteel; Seuss\u2019s judgment of poetry is just as severe but comes from a blinder need: her \u201csupplies\u201d are \u201cnot to be displayed but hoarded, \/ like canned goods in a storm cellar. \/ Go back for the garbage and deal with it.\u201d Poetry as survivalism.<\/p>\n

A \u201cmonody\u201d is a poem of grief, a form that Seuss salvages only by turning it inside out like a glove:<\/p>\n

\u201cMonody\u201d<\/h4>\n

Kindness, like enthralling<\/p>\n

madness after<\/p>\n

shock<\/p>\n

treatments, is first to go.<\/p>\n

In the past, I snapped<\/span><\/p>\n

the beans\u2019 spines, aware<\/p>\n

that something died<\/p>\n

so I could thrive.<\/p>\n

But this emptiness<\/p>\n

makes even a nightingale<\/p>\n

consumable. As for<\/p>\n

the song and red tailfeathers,<\/p>\n

take them, here.<\/p>\n

I just don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

To grieve is a dilettantish<\/p>\n

stand-in for the subject<\/p>\n

of my grief. What I\u2019m saying<\/p>\n

is the verb<\/p>\n

is a canned performance<\/p>\n

of the missing noun.<\/p>\n

Or I\u2019m saying<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how<\/p>\n

to feel anymore.<\/p>\n

Use metaphor,<\/p>\n

but don\u2019t adhere to her.<\/p>\n

As more than once<\/p>\n

I was used but not adored.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The \u201cdilettantish\u201d song of Keats\u2019s nightingale may feel disposable, as pointless as \u201cred tailfeathers.\u201d Still, for Seuss, poetry nevertheless continues to demand adherence and adoration, both of which will be\u2014must be\u2014repudiated. And yet these attachments are not entirely destroyed but remain audible: Seuss\u2019s five final lines spin a sonic thread\u2014anymore<\/em>, metaphor<\/em>, adhere<\/em>, more<\/em>, adored<\/em>\u2014that binds us to a genuineness of sentiment, hiding in an envelope of contempt.<\/p>\n

For Seuss, Keats is the name for the contemptible, yet necessary, luxury of poetry. The very last lines of the book find her clinging to this necessity:<\/p>\n

\u201cRomantic Poet\u201d<\/h4>\n

You would not have loved him,<\/p>\n

my friend the scholar<\/p>\n

decried. He brushed his teeth,<\/p>\n

if at all, with salt. He lied<\/p>\n

and rarely washed<\/p>\n

his hair. Wiped his ass<\/p>\n

with leaves or with his hand.<\/p>\n

The top of his head would have barely<\/p>\n

reached your tits. His pits<\/p>\n

reeked, as did his deathbed.<\/p>\n

But the nightingale, I said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The power of that final riposte\u2014Seuss\u2019s refusal to give it all up utterly\u2014lies in its odd combination of the feeble and the implacable.<\/p>\n

Poetry may be a mangy cur nearly walked to death, but it\u2019s not dead yet and it demands constant attention from Seuss. It\u2019s a responsibility. But it\u2019s also a dream of negligence and luxury (an invitation to luxuriate), as the poem \u201cLittle Song\u201d makes clear:<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t stay vigilant and remain alive.<\/p>\n

Or infinite vigilance is a kind of death.<\/p>\n

Or you can\u2019t be present tense.<\/p>\n

That is, tense about the present.<\/p>\n

Here, you said in school. Present. But you were not.<\/p>\n

Your mind back home eating sweet elephants from a jar.<\/p>\n

Or placing Thumbelina in a milkweed car.<\/p>\n

What luxury, to think of milkweed cars<\/p>\n

and cookie jars and turning lights on in the dark<\/p>\n

or lights off in the light or dreams of dropping<\/p>\n

vigilance or memories of negligence, heedless<\/p>\n

in your posh knee socks, your ritzy lamb, your<\/p>\n

lush pop beads, your lilac jam, your breathless,<\/p>\n

deathless, feckless little song.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A \u201clittle song\u201d is a sonnetto<\/em>\u2014a sonnet\u2014and, sure enough, Seuss gives us both the 14 lines and the vaunts of \u201cdeathlessness\u201d such poems often make. But the pleasure bomb is in the \u201cnegligence\u201d and \u201cluxury\u201d of putting Thumbelina in a milkweed car and the gaudy nonsensicalities of the ending: the \u201cposh knee socks, your ritzy lamb, your lush pop beads, your lilac jam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the ravishments of this little party, the judgment of poetry is never lost to view entirely. It may be \u201cbreathless and deathless,\u201d sure; but poetry is also \u201cfeckless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Interviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Beyond the \u201cBurden of Belief\u201d: P\u00e1draig \u00d3 Tuama on Religious Trauma, Eros, and Poetry as Prayer<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Kate Millar <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Each of Seuss\u2019s poems manifests an energy of invention, in the face of each poem\u2019s unique failing to answer the world\u2019s failing of her. She can be angry and dismissive. She verges on contempt from time to time. But mostly she writes her poetry from the more intimate space of everyday dislike, the rub and stain that accompanies any attempt to put Thumbelina in a milkweed car. Still, despite it all, Seuss\u2019s poems offer an invitation to luxuriate: embracing heedlessness, \u201cdropping\u201d vigilance, taking pleasure in the gritty and the jejune.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we should accept such an invitation. Our vigilance feels so helpless and hopeless, anyway. Perhaps poetry is the only kind of uselessness we require. We might call it futile, if only we had something better to do with beauty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was fourteen, a friend invited me to stay a week with his family on the Outer Banks. What I remember most vividly about that week is a book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":61093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497],"tags":[2479,1277,2478,125],"pbpartner":[],"section":[1630],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-61066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-diane-seuss","tag-graywolf","tag-marianne-moore","tag-poetry","section-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Ways of Disliking Poetry - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was fourteen, a friend invited me to stay a week with his family on the Outer Banks. 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