Dean Young - Tony Hoagland or "An Excuse to Repost Photos"

On his blog (which I frequently read) John Gallaher posts up a letter from Dean Young that appears in the current APR:



Dear Editors,

After years of being a defect, it is a pleasant surprise to be upgraded to an effect in Tony Hoagland’s characteristically insightful and cogently hectoring essay (“The Dean Young Effect,” July/August 2009). Equally flattering is to be blamed for so much that he perceives as being wrong with contemporary poetry as particularly evidenced in a group of younger writers, who I am sure are deeply influenced by my work regardless if they have read it or not. Before I quaff the proffered drams of hemlock for my corrupting crimes (apparently to the chagrin of my poor comrades doing the reading for admission into creative writing programs across our fair land), I wish to humbly suggest a flaw in Mr. Hoagland’s essay, a flaw shared by much writing about contemporary poetry. It is a lack of, to use T.S. Eliot’s phrase, historical sense, to acknowledge that poetry has been around a long time before Apollinaire. Far beyond my misguiding of younger poets, I feel as a matter of pride that I must point out the awful effect my work has had on poetry in general. Surely I am as least in part to blame for John Donne’s willful obscurities and distortions; and what about those stylistic fripperies of Gerard Manley Hopkins? Not to mention the obviously inflated self-mythologizing of Whitman, and, even, the smarmy ironies of Chaucer. The list, as any delicate reader knows, goes on and on.

Sincerely,
Dean Young


This, of course, again, is a great opportunity for me to redisplay a couple of my favorite Hoagland and Hoagland-related photos.

Tony Hoagland's Single-Mom-Moon -- & An Uncontrollable Itch to Throttle

"The moon rose up in the western sky
with an expression of complete exhaustion,
like a 38-year old single mother
standing at the edge of the playground."





This is from Hoagland's "Hard Rain."

I'm feeling in my thousands of hands an itch to throttle a chirpin' herd of Tony Hoagland bobble head dolls. Just me?

Tony Hoagland - Again (Genius, Contempt, Vomit,....)

over at his blog today "Nothing to Say and Saying it" John Gallaher has some interesting things to say about Hoagland's APR article

Gallaher quotes extensively from the article.

And sums Hoagland's thrust up as follows:

His thesis: Dean Young is a genius, and all these young male writers out there who are younger than he is are writing in his shadow and are not geniuses.

I'm going to re-read the Gallaher article now (especially the Hoagland quotes) and might say more later. But in the meantime this is a great opportunity to post up the same pictures I used in a post (Goransson going after Hoagland, etc) i put up a while back

To follow's an excerpt from that post

---------------------------------------

I saw that hack (Hoagland) at an Austin AWP Panel where he talked about the sort of poetry many young poets are writing. Poetry he's not so excited about. All I remember's him being so damned fucking smug. O, yeah, I remember him reading a poem and then saying something like:

I admire the total contempt this poem has for me
I admire the complete disregard blah blah
I admire blah blah blah

Most of the audience were lapping it up.
I was throwing up.
(chunks of Donkey Gospel, etc, etc)

------------------------------------

Gorannson's Still Putting it to Hoagland, etc

Over at Exoskeleton Goransson continues to clarify and hammer away at Hoagland, etc:

here's one of the highlights

Hoagland give me a break nobody reads your poetry for wisdom! Don't make me laugh!

Goransson Goes after Hoagland (and Wojahn)

Goransson goes after Hoagland for his comments about younger poets.

And doesn't like what Wojahn has to say either.

check it out. and check out the Comments Stream for both posts. Some good back and forth.


I saw that hack (Hoagland) at an Austin AWP Panel where he talked about the sort of poetry many young poets are writing. Poetry he's not so excited about. All I remember's him being so damned fucking smug. O, yeah, I remember him reading a poem and then saying something like:

I admire the total contempt this poem has for me
I admire the complete disregard blah blah
I admire blah blah blah

Most of the audience were lapping it up.
I was throwing up.
(chunks of Donkey Gospel, etc, etc)