Retirement

 

What Arrangements?

 There was a review of one of Keith Jarrett's live trio albums of standards that said the arrangements were nice. In an interview, he said something like "What arrangements?" It was him improvising and the bass and drums playing along. 

On t.v. I saw a video of Chet Baker, playing trumpet and singing with a bass and a guitar, in a nightclub in Belgium. They play things like "Love for sale," standards like that. And at several junctures he gives credit to the arranger (Don Sebesky).  Yet this music does not seem any more "arranged" than Jarret's standard albums. Maybe even less so. 

So the lesson is?  

10 ranks of poet (7) (8)

 7) # 7 is the good poet in a particular style, like a Philip Levine or James Tate. Here we are getting to poets who are actually good, with no apologies. There will be some sense of musicality here, not like the novelist poets who aren't really giving us something to sing to. Of course, these two poets wrote a lot that was not up to the level of their best work.  But you can see why they are famous poets.  Maybe Barbara Guest falls here? I can like some of these more than others. 

8) The poet with a distinctive personality and voice, that makes you think differently about poetry itself. Here I am thinking of Koch, William Bronk, or Ammons. These poets are whole worlds unto themselves. Maybe Notley is in this category, though she might be better than most of these. This category is somewhat similar to 6, but you can easily see why Ammons is better than Brautigan.  

Levels 5 and 6 (out of 10)

 5) The local hero, the respectable mediocrity, the professional academic poet with some claim to fame, like a Celeste Turner Wright. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=100&issue=1&page=41. Maybe a poet working in an old, unoriginal style. Someone who never had an honest critique of their work, or who has very limited range, like a Billy Collins.  

6) The poet without any particular pretension to being great, but who manages to make a good poem or two out of very little (apparent) artifice. A Richard Brautigan, or Charles Bukowski.  You might wonder why it is a poem at all, yet it actually beats out the more respectable and earnest modes we have discussed so far. Sometimes a prose writer writing poems will achieve this level, like a Raymond Carver or like the two I've already mentioned. John Updike writing a poem can achieve a 5 level, maybe a 6. On the same level as a 6 might be a poet like Gilbert Sorrentino, who is brilliant in prose but only so-so in verse, despite his extreme degree of poetic culture. For this level, a poet would have to be have a distinctive personality as a writer, even if the poem itself doesn't come off.  I'm not sure why all the names I'm thinking of are also writers of prose? 

5 levels of poets (3) (4)

3)  Here is the person with some talent, who has not read a lot.  A naturally verbal person who can turn a phrase, but without a deep poetic formation. Or it could be an earnest beginner.  Or a person without too much talent but who has learned some formulas that work out ok for a decent poem. They are trying hard, but probably getting rejected a lot. I think I might need more than 5 levels, here, maybe ten. 

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4) Here is the professional poet who simply isn't very good. They may have a teaching position and published books, but they just don't have the ability to write poems, despite their extensive education. There was one guy in creative writing here at KU who was like this. Just the dullest possible poet imaginable. It's a step below the respectable mediocrity.  

5 levels of poet (1) (2)

 I saw a YouTube video about 5 levels of singer. From tone deaf to singing god. 

I was thinking of five levels of poet. 

1) The person who writes a poem but has no concept at all. They just fill a page with their intimate thoughts.  This is not necessarily bad, if you don't consider this page in relation to any other concept of poetry. 

2) The second level: they fill their pages with their thoughts, but they mistakenly relate this to some concept of poetry in the more exalted sense. This can actually be worse, because the gain in pretentiousness makes the poem worse, rather than better. Yet if there is some concept of a poem as something more, then the poet can develop this later on. A subcategory of this is the versifier, the person who writes with rhyme, but no meter. The doggerel poet.  Once again, trying to be poetic will make the poem worse at the lower level.