A Review of a Review

Philip Nikolayev on Henry Gould on Ben Mazer's Poetry

What follows is Philip Nikolayev's comment on Henry Gould's January 2012 review of Ben Mazer's collections POEMS (among other texts) for The Critical Flame. on Friday, January 27, 2012. Nikolayev has given his permission for this reposting of his thoughts. -- ZWB

At long last, a thoughtful, sustained endeavor -- the first of its kind and scope, and by no less a person than Henry Gould, himself a poet whom I hold in high esteem -- to figure out and come to terms with the poetry of Ben Mazer, who in my biased and partial view is one of our times' very finest poets.

Gould, by dint of his particular sensitivity, taste and learning, is better equipped than most poets today to review this work, and the limitations of his honest effort, which I feel succeeds only partially, highlight the peculiar challenges of the task. The essay wins my applause in spite of these limitations.

I find much in this review to be off the mark, e.g. the overemphasis on Ashbery (who -- did I spell him right? I am not American! -- will yet serve for some decades as the catchall digestive pill to process anything that is perceived as opaque in current American verse; that said, Mazer himself alludes to Ashbery) and on John Beer (whom I have not read, but the discussion here did not pique my curiosity); or the naïve remark in passing that Mazer "doesn't care for exactitude; his olympian indifference even extends to spelling and syntax" (Henry, that’s precisely exactitude, those things you mention are *exactly* as Mazer wants them, and every comma in the writing is carefully decided upon). I wish the ostensible difficulty –- the complexity -– of the verse had met with a more technical discussion than its dismissal as mere "sea-washed vagueness" (though I am strangely grateful that the N +1 "types of ambiguity" are not invoked for the school children).

Nevertheless, there are many true, nuanced reflections here, and the general take on things has many merits. There is the true admission that Mazer's poetry  is "full of beauty and pleasure," even if the essay, possibly somewhat against its own intention, paradoxically fails to reveal a genuine excitement. In spite of all this, Gould's review is groundbreaking and will certainly influence further critical analyses of Mazer's work.

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Henry Gould left a few comments in gracious response:

Thanks, Philip. Just a couple points : "sea-washed vagueness" was not intended as a dismissal (I like sea-washed vagueness). And, 2nd, the poet's playing fast & loose sometimes with spelling and syntax certainly may have been exact & purposeful : but if so it's a purposeful indifference. Nevertheless I really don't want to over-emphasize this aspect in Mazer's POEMS: it plays a very minor role in a few poems, I think.

Ben Mazer certainly warrants a full-scale stand-alone review, where his work is front & center (as does John Beer to some extent). But what I was trying to do in this essay was map out a dynamic, a larger context, a "way of reading". I don't think this happens often enough - in the roar of chit-chat & PR we tend to lose our bearings...