Oh, well. We write the poem we can write, and we anthologize the book we anthologize. The more I think about Rita Dove's new Penguin anthology, the more sympathy I have for her struggles. Should an editor choose works that others have overlooked? Works she is personally compelled to read? Works that other people honor but that she can't bring herself to love? And if she decides to follow all those routes, how does she balance them? How does she create a collection that is her book, as her poetry collections are her book, but that can also surprise and satisfy a reader who is nothing at all like her, neither in education nor politics nor poetic vision nor gender nor culture nor age nor place of residence on earth? The job is basically impossible.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Yesterday I submitted a preliminary table of contents to the publisher of my forthcoming anthology. It's still got holes, but the bulk of it exists. Yet I fear (as most anthologists do?) that I am the only person who will follow the trajectory of these selections. The problem, I'm realizing, is that a collection's editor must focus on the book as a whole whereas the reader doesn't feel required to read the volume from beginning to end. So I feel oddly disconnected from whomever will choose, or be assigned, to read this book . . . as if all my carefully knotted threads and tangents are, in the end, beside the point.
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2 comments:
Dove has responded to Vendler's review of her anthology (in Letters section of 12/22 issue of The New York Review of Books), answering at least a few of the questions you raise here. Vendler in reply holds to her position. I think Dove is the one who comes out looking the better.
Personally, I rarely read an anthology beginning w/ page 1 and following straight to the end. I dip in and out and meander, sometimes starting with the poets whose work I know and admire (if they're included; they may be one reason I purchase the book), sometimes starting with those I know nothing about. I especially like the sense of discovery that occurs when I simply open a collection with no preconceived notion of where to start and come across a poem that leaves me in awe. And if it doesn't, no matter. I don't expect to like everything someone else loves but I can still admire every poem for what it is, unless it truly is poorly written. Typically, I read the work first and then any bio or other notes attached to it. And I always come to any anthology with the understanding that it reflects editorial choice, unless some other objective has been expressed and all the selections have been made with an eye toward realizing that specific goal.
I give Rita Dove the break, and anyone else who takes on the work of creating an anthology. (Dove points to Vendler's own efforts in this regard.) It's hard and time-consuming and necessarily subjective no matter how much objectivity is professed. And whatever questions may be raised about a collection once it is published may be intellectually interesting, as some of Vendler's are, but, ultimately, none makes for me any difference on whether I buy and read and return to reading the anthology.
We readers read as we are wont to do.
"We readers read as we are wont to do." What a beautiful summation, Maureen.
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