Poets vs. Critics

When Stephanie asked me to join the conversation on this blog, I was nervous to be writing with two “real writers.” I don’t consider myself a writer, in the creative sense. Through my education, I have focused on analytical writing and criticism. Instead of being a poet, I became a critic.

Let me explain the distinction that I draw between “poets” and “critics,” which I think applies outside of the realm of literature as well. A poet is someone who creates. Writing poetry is an inherently creative process. The poet makes something from nothing. (After all, the words “poet,” “poetry,” and “poem” come from the word for “to make.”)

The critic, on the other hand, describes the work written by the poets. The critic’s job is to categorize: to find similarities between the work of different artists and determine a “school,” or to understand the underlying processes that make the poet’s work “work.” As a critic, I am interested in understanding poetry as a whole, not just the expression of an individual poem. Of course, poetry consists of poems, so in order to generalize about poetry one must carefully study the individual works.

The poet creates; the critic categorizes and explains. I don’t think this distinction is only applicable to the criticism of poetry. Criticism seems like more of a science; poetry, more of an art. Consider the work of mathematicians, however. While the study of math in classes is focused on generalizing, and you understand new mathematical concepts by analogy with concepts you already know (working in a “scientific” manner, like a critic), the practice of research in math is a creative process. The research mathematician chooses a particular area to focus on, and studies that area, trying to understand/invent interesting properties it has. (There is often discussion among mathematicians of whether math research is a process of discovering things that already exist, or of creating them. While I tend to sit on the "discovery" side of the fence, there is no question that the act of discovery can feel a lot like the act of creation, as inspiration often has to strike essentially out of the blue.)

The distinction is not complete: poets benefit from understanding general principles of the form in which they work (by doing critical work), while critics can write poetry (although my poetry, at least, is often more informed by my understanding of poetic form than any essential inspiration). In many studies, however, it seems that the work can be divided up between the creative and the critical. What would it mean to bridge that divide? Is such a synthesis something that would improve our understanding and production of art, or is it better for artists and critics to specialize?

Berlin Wall

Berlin Revisited: Photographs by Brian Harris

Berlin, 1989 to 2009

The Economist has a sister magazine called Intelligent Life. In their web publication, I just found this brief photo essay. Seeing pieces like this makes me want to be a journalist: to have been there in 1989, photographing, and to be back in 2009, following up, with an eyewitness sense of what has happened on the ground under my feet. It also makes me realize, though, that while there's luck involved in being in the right place at the right time, good journalism is a serious commitment involving just being there for a long time, in lots of different theres or in one, patiently, with one's eyes open and often very little payoff. In fact, I wonder whether it is possible to practice journalism that is not so much about hunting down stories as about knowing a place and community and cultural reality deeply, so that one can speak intelligently and even wisely about it even if nothing "news-worthy" is happening there.

Which would make journalism much like writing in general: inspiration can't often be scheduled, but "showing up" (whether at a writing desk or camera, or in front of a book, or just by being present to your surroundings with your eyes and brain and pores open) is like maintaining an address where inspiration will know how to reach you. (This is my re-statement of an observation given by so many writers in so many versions that I don't know whom to cite. Somerset Maugham's: "I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.")

Salem, 1989

I am in the middle of the small living room. It has pale blue carpet and the walls are cluttered with pictures and shelves. In the corner there is a small TV, and the adults are clustered around it. The TV’s colors are like the colors of the room: bland, slightly bluish. It is a crowd: blurred crowd noise, blurred crowd colors. There are so many faces I can’t even make out separate heads and shoulders in the glimpses I get of the TV between the heads of my parents and my aunt and uncle. Something, I know, is happening, a category of thing that has not happened before in my memory. They are riveted, but they are not cheering. They are talking in low voices. My parents watch sports, but not with this kind of attention, and not this quietly. And there is no little yellow ball on this screen; nothing, in fact, seems to be happening.

“And to imagine this is happening now, the first time in years we’ve been out of the country for more than two months…” my dad’s voice is wry, half laughing, but also half embarrassed at the thought. And his tone is abstracted, as though he’s not actually present with the words, as though they are drawn out of him while he’s not paying attention—as though his mind needs his voice to make a foundation of sound, to give it something to stand on.