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The Wright Defense


Men do not always recognize the dangers
that beasts can sense
-- Nosferatu


In responding to his recent Facebook post, various detractors have made Franz Wright out as a monster. I don’t entirely disagree with this characterization; I just don’t think it’s such a negative thing. Monstrous behavior sometimes expresses truths about a culture before more civilized minds become willing to accept them.

My defense of Franz Wright begins where David Biespiel ends his condemnation. After excoriating Wright for the poet’s angry comment on a Facebook page, Biespiel defines the proper roles for a poet. These roles include “seer” and “illuminator,” and they involve activities like “synthesizing lunacy and truth” while being “geometrical and sensual.” (I wonder how Catullus’s fuck poems fit in this list).  After drawing these parameters, Biespiel writes, “But here’s the deal: it never calls on one to be a jackass.”

This final declaration got me thinking about all the times poetry has in fact called out for jackasses, or something worse. André Breton’s Second Surrealist Manifesto (1929) came to mind. In it Breton writes, “The simplest surrealist act consists in going into the street with revolvers in your fist and shooting blindly into the crowd as much as possible. Anyone who has never felt the desire to deal thus with the current wretched principle of humiliation and stultification clearly belongs in this crowd himself with his belly at bullet height.” Breton proposed his gut-shot strategy as a means to overthrow the cultural malaise of a society steeped in rational conservatism.

Then there were the Italian Futurists. In the years before WWI, several in their ranks advocated violence as a cleansing tonic for a societal illness, a diagnosis similar to Breton’s years later. As it happened, violence had disastrous consequences—not just for Italy, but also for several of the Futurists, who lost their limbs and lives in the war.

Whether successful or not, these are only two of many possible examples when poetry called for action that far exceeds “being a jackass.”

And yet, although I like them, I do realize these comparisons are off the mark. Like Breton and the Futurists, Wright is reacting to what he perceives to be unbearable societal conditions. However, unlike his predecessors, Wright does not propose anything that might be described as a philosophy. He does not advocate a coherent alternative to the MFA-saturated landscape. In fact, Wright’s FB comment coheres only at a very high level of generality, which makes it bad philosophy and also difficult to discuss in a rational way. Then again, it’s a FB comment. It’s not easy to talk seriously about FB comments.

Perhaps pop culture provides a better comparison. Remember the 2009 Video Music Awards? If you do, it’s probably because of Kanye West and Taylor Swift. While Swift was accepting the award for Best Female Video, West leapt to the stage, borrowed Swift’s microphone, and announced that the award should have gone to Beyoncé.

With this move, West also belittled Swift, who was merely playing her part in the festivities. If West disagreed with the judges, or even with a cultural system that determines such awards, and if he wanted to be taken seriously, he could have chosen a different venue to speak his mind. He could have been decent about it. That much is obvious.

What may be less obvious is that West’s outburst demonstrated that he cares enough about music to act like an ass. It also showed he wasn’t able to distinguish between a reasonable venue for his opinions from a bad one. It demonstrated that he was less than a consummate professional, and that he was a bit unstable.

Unfortunately, both for West and for music, people tended to see only the ugly side.  Instead of getting people to talk about an issue, West’s unscheduled interruption diverted attention to himself. We speculated about his decency and his sanity. We called him an alcoholic, and a bully. We pointed out how much money West had made from the music industry. In general, we did not wonder about whether Beyoncé should actually have won. If anyone remembers this at all, it will likely be to recall a time when Kanye West went nuts and made Taylor Swift feel like shit.

Subsitute Wright for West and FB for VMA and you wind up with a similar scenario. Despite his poor choice of venue and the gnarly surface of his rancor, Franz Wright is alerting us to what is wrong with the system. We are not supporting merit. We are trapped in an endless awards show. And yet we are inclined to disregard his admonition, because of the way he presents it—and because most of us, myself and Wright included, are inside this award show. Since it’s a pretty small show, we’ve all got decent seats.

Critics looking for an easy target have played melon ball with Wright’s anger, with his name, with his status, and with his personal failings. When a guy is as troubled and messy and well known as Wright, they figure hunting season is open. So they call Wright a “bully,” a “Rush Limbaugh,” and a “misogynist” (btw, there is no evidence of misogyny: men and women receive equally poor treatment in Wright’s comment). In general, they try to put the guy to shame. And yet the thing is: he actually cares.

If Wright didn’t care he wouldn’t be so passionate in his appeal. If poetry wasn’t so goddam important to him, he wouldn’t be confusing a “Comment” section for a “Tirade” section, and he’d let a little thing like a “Like” request slip by. To some it may sound as if I’m confusing anger and sickness for integrity, and perhaps I am. But think of it this way: Wright is a lyric poet. The “I” in his poems inhabits all things high and low and constantly overspills its boundaries. Wright thrives on excess. To quote Blake, one of the examples from his screed:  “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.:

So here’s what I think: If Wright is a jackass, if he is a monster, then he is the jackass and the monster we need. We need to be shocked into thinking more about the way the poetry system is set up. Sometimes we need a monster, a Nosferatu, a disease-bearer, to bite us and re-infect us with a capacity for harsh criticism. That may be the only safeguard against blindness.

Monsters keep us on our toes. They make us feel like poetry matters, or that at least one other person out there thinks this whole set-up might be too civilized for our own good. There is a fiercer alternative, and it is in Wright’s snarl. At some point, maybe he will articulate his views. In the proper venue.

When all is said and done, despite the fact that one person got singled out for the fault of many, I’m glad that Wright, who has done enough himself (Pulitzer, etc.), can still act like he has nothing to lose. And I am glad that, even if we disagree with him, it will be a savage fight. I am even glad to see him running into the crowd and shouting wildly, at whoever happens to be around.

 


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