Yesterday Ron Silliman jumped into the discussion of Charles Simic’s review of Robert Creeley’s Collected Poems. Not surprisingly, Silliman comes down firmly on the side of those who saw the review as an attack on a whole tradition of poetry. Echoing Mark Weiss’s original sentiment, Silliman writes “[Simic] uses Creeley to make a larger—and much more pernicious—argument. His real target is the post-avant.”

Nothing in the discussion on the POETICS listserv that followed my original post convinced me on that point, though Simic’s hand in this year’s National Book Award nominations has certainly made me reconsider it. But since no one seemed especially interested in the point I was actually concerned with—the effect of Creeley’s social standing in certain circles on the reception of his work—it didn’t seem worth carrying on, especially since I wasn’t much in the mood to defend a poet (Simic) whose work I don’t particularly care for and whose idea of good poetry seems blinkered at best.

Silliman’s post takes apart the Simic review paragraph by paragraph, (more…)