CPR: Literary Pedantry

Contemporary Poetry Review's recent feature, "Our Steps amid a Ruined Colonnade: Grammar and Expression," is brimming with unintended irony. Its third part, which is essentially a denunciation of free verse, is either a masterful example of self-mockery or the work of a turgid buffoon. Here are some examples:

#1: After all, Kant’s obscurities launched a thousand ships of obfuscation from which philosophy in general has never fully recovered. In contrast, whatever the complexities of the reality he describes, St. Thomas Aquinas found a clear and efficient medium to express that reality—and, crucially, it is the clarity of Aquinas’ writing that helped ensure the soundness of the thought within it. If he were forced to write his articles on the Incarnation of the Word in Sapphics, more people might read Aquinas but even fewer should understand him properly.

Hmmm....talk about obfuscation! Wilson has the audacity to slam Kant for being unclear, but the essay itself is an exercise in prolix conceit and nebulosity. He establishes the dichotomy here between formal clarity ("determination," as he will later refer to it) and the chaos of free verse, but wavers arbitrarily between the poles.

#2: But formal verse certainly does not prevent anyone, student or master, from saying anything that needs to be said. I have always been perplexed by those persons... who seem to believe that the writing of poetry is primarily about self-expression.

Perhaps his perplexity comes from confusing opinion with fact. How can anyone criticize artistic motive or significance? How can Wilson sincerely rely upon his own discursive feelings and free associations as the primary mode of their censure? It's this kind of contradiction that makes me wonder if the whole thing is a joke; the essay champions free verse in form while denouncing it in message.

#3: The freedom of free verse is anarchy like any other anarchy, eschewing form for formlessness; liberty requires discipline and rewards it with accomplishment. Formal verse offers poets the only kind of freedom that actually exists: the freedom to be determined.

Wilson apparently becomes a demigod by the end of the essay; he can tell us what kind of freedom "actually" exists, and equates freedom and determination in near-biblical alpha and omega fashion. I'm sure he would call it a "holy paradox," but any logician or semi-literate yahoo will see it as sophistic contradiction; he takes the most licentious of liberties in decrying the dangers of taking liberties. Here's the kicker:

Only an easy drunk could expose himself to such obvious contradiction.