Critical texts

In response to, and as an extension of, a discussion I recently had about the "art of criticism," I've present an unranked list of a baker's dozen critical works I consider to be important. I'm not going to provide extensive commentary at the moment (other than a few notes by way of conclusion), but may do so in the near future, if the mood so strikes; nonetheless, a general and unqualified endorsement applies in each case.

Patricia Crain. The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter.

Ulla Dydo. Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises: 1923-1934.

Umberto Eco. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts.

Jay Fliegelman. Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, & the Culture of Performance.

Susan Howe. The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history.

Michelle Leggott. Reading Zukofsky's "80 Flowers".

Nathaniel Mackey. Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality and Experimental Writing.

Sianne Ngai. "Raw Matter: A Poetics of Disgust."

Marjorie Perloff. The Poetics of Indeterminacy: Rimbaud to Cage.

Jerome McGann. Black Riders: The Visible Language of Modernism.

Nancy Ruttenburg. Democratic Personality: Popular Voice and the Trial of American Authorship.

Juliana Spahr. Everybody's Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity.

Jalal Toufic. (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film.

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A couple of quick thoughts, each deserving of more attention than I've allowed for at the moment:

1. I've omitted from this list texts that might more properly be considered either/both statements of personal poetics or/and manifestoes. Thus, essays akin to (and including) Lyn Hejinian's "The Rejection of Closure" have been deliberately omitted. At the same time, drawing such a line reminds me that this is a difficult distinction to make, especially given the number of poets who work as critics, and the necessary act of criticism that accompanies, and is implied by, any creative act (in writing or any other art) or product thereof. In fact, some works on the list — those by Howe, Mackey, Ngai, Spahr, etc. — might be omitted along with Hejinian's; or hers might be included.

2. Given the extent to which aesthetic production constitutes a criticism (both negative, referring to that which is rejected, and positive, referring to that which is projected, by the text) of the work's precedents and contemporaries, the case could be made for including poetry itself. At the same time, a list so inclusive would risk meaninglessness, inasmuch as it would be distinguished from a list of important poetry only via the presence of works that cannot be considered poetry.

3. Another line that cannot be placed precisely and unproblematically: the distinction between ("pure") criticism and ("pure" — or "impure," if you're so inclined) theory. The thrust of Eco's career as a whole might suggest we consider the above work an example of theory, or of philosophy, even; the same may also be said of Toufic. Furthermore, a number of writers I reflexively describe as theorists are in fact engaged in criticism: Blanchot's reviews, certainly, and perhaps The Space of Literature, even if Writing of the Disaster might more readily be called "pure" theory (or philosophy — this distinction is similarly fraught). Similarly, it's worth recalling that Derrida's key essays, by and large, emerge from attentive readings of particular texts. In the end, a statement from note one might also be applied here: any act of criticism necessarily relies upon — whether explicitly stated or not — theories of criticism, of meaning, etc.

Critical question

A question came up in conversation the other day, and I wasn't able to answer it: whether the act of criticism, as performed by a scholar or critic, is the same as a comparable act performed by a poet.

In an aim towards answering this question, we might consider the matter from two perspectives: first, whether there are differences of goal; second, whether there are differences of approach. Again, I'm not sure I know how to answer the question, or, in the end, if it even matters much, but I thought it might be an interesting exercise to map out the terrain just a bit, in thinking-out-loud fashion.

If we approach this from the matter of the end-aims of the projects, we might find some differences, arguably crucial. Certainly, both the poet and the critic are engaged in the fundamental business of criticism, which I take to involve investigation, the act of coming to a deeper understanding of the poetic text. The argument could be made that the critic ("pure" critic?) has a different goal for this understanding of the text than does the poet: where the latter's investigation is directed, perhaps, towards a deeper understanding of her/his own practice, the "pure" critic's goals might be thought in terms of scholarship, or (to place abstract "scholarship" within its material context), an inquiry into the cultural production of meaning.

Certainly, the poet's critical inquiry resembles that of the "pure" critic — for examples, vide Pound's inquiries into the history of poetics, Lyn Hejinian's philosophical investigations, Bruce Andrews' scrutiny of the economic and social relations embodied by textual production, Susan Howe's archaeology of American literature and examinations of the work of Emily Dickinson, Olson's reading of Melville, and so forth, ad infinitum.

In the end, I'm not sure I can answer the question any better than I could when I began writing this; I'm instead hoping others will weigh in with some opinions. I am willing to venture a few more thoughts — less well-formed than even the above — on the matter, not least of which is that I tend to feel a bias, somewhat unexamined, in favor of the poet, or the poet-critic, over the "pure" critic.