John Crowe Ransom. His circle included Ford Madox Ford, Allen Tate, Ezra Pound, and Paul Engle. Robert Lowell left Harvard to study with him at Kenyon.
“One truth about creative writing instruction seems undeniable: the kids love the stuff. They love it suspiciously much, and on the graduate level, too, one rarely hears of a shortage of applicants to creative writing programs, most of them willing to go into debt for the privilege of attending one. This is partly why creative writing programs are a relatively easy sell to university administrators and also why—the odds of any one student making it as a professional writer being vanishingly small—they are subject to being criticized as entrepreneurial exploitations of the American Dream of perfect self-expression. Creative writing is, in sum, as American as baseball, apple pie, and homicide.” —Mark McGurl “The Program Era”
In John Crowe Ransom’s 1937 essay, “Criticism, Inc.,” the influential critic rejects poets and philosophers as true critics, arguing the job must fall to university professors—the group least likely to commit the fatal error of behaving like “amateurs.” The mere reviewer, or journalist, is beneath contempt, not earning a mention in Ransom’s utopia.
These professors should be “scientific,” but if the professors’ science is not a real science, it doesn’t matter, Ransom says, because, after all, “psychology and sociology” are” not real sciences,” either. True.
“I do not think we need to be afraid that criticism, trying to be a sort of science, will inevitably fail and give up in despair, or else fail without realizing it and enjoy some hollow and pretentious career.”
A “sort of science” is the best one can hope for, surely.
“It does not matter whether we call them sciences or just systematic studies; the total effort of each to be effective must be consolidated and kept going.”
Here it is, then: a consolidated industry of poetry criticism in the university. Ransom asked for it, and it happened, with the rise of the Workshop Era, an era accompanied by that specialized, modernist zeal to push out voices of the past.
“Rather than occasional criticism by amateurs, I should think the whole enterprise might be seriously taken in hand by professionals. Perhaps I use a distasteful figure, but I have an idea that what we need is Criticism, Inc, or Criticism, Ltd.”
An East India Company of professional opium trade? Professionalism’s stamp is dubious enough, and to insist on it for the study and criticism of poetry is more dubious still. But let us assume Ransom’s intentions are good, and his desire for professionalism is an ordinary good thing.
Ransom has chosen university professors as the new vanguard of criticism and there they are, an already well-established, professional class of scholars, with impressive historicist credentials.
But here’s the problem. These professors teach literary history. Ransom wants critics, not curators who preserve the past. The professors of history must be purged.
Here’s the Stalinist plan:
“The students of the future must be permitted to study literature, and not merely about literature.”
In other words, take the history scholars out back and shoot them. Every student “of the future” will become his own critic.
What follows, naturally, is the every-student-is-a-poet of the Creative Writing Era. Every-student-is-a-critic was a mere brief step in Ransom’s revolution, one the University of Chicago was already putting into practice.
“At the University of Chicago, I believe that Professor Crane, with some others, is putting the revolution into effect in his own teaching, though for the time being perhaps with a limited program, mainly the application of Aristotle’s critical views.”
Aristotle? Plato would not work, of course, for then students would have to be critical even of things like Criticism, Inc, but we really wonder if it was Professor Crane’s teaching of Aristotle that had Ransom in such a revolutionary mood.
“It is true that the historical and ethical studies will cluster round objects which for some reason are called artistic objects.” In this concession, Ransom admits university professors who care about history (Aristotle, etc) teach aesthetic criticism as a matter of course—to learn ‘about’ Aristotle is to study criticism as much as one can study that subject. Ransom knows this, obviously, but he pushes on: “But the thing itself [the artistic object] the professors do not have to contemplate” and here Ransom makes up a quote of an aggrieved student and its phantom response by one of Ransom’s straw-men history professors, ripe for future slaughter: “This is a place for exact scholarship [Ransom has the professor say] and you want to do criticism. Well, we don’t allow criticism here, because that is something which anybody can do.”
The ‘oppressed’ student who is forced to study Aristotle and not allowed to ‘do criticism.’ Surely Ransom is joking. No, he is very much not joking, for now arrives the reason for the entire essay, the “Make It U.” of Ransom’s dreams, back there in 1937:
“Here is contemporary literature, waiting for its criticism; where are the professors of literature? They are watering their own gardens; elucidating the literary histories of their respective periods.” These foul, unweeded gardens containing Aristotle and Plato and all the ages of literature, choking the poor student who is not allowed “to do criticism.”
Here’s the rub. These gardens are foul because, for Ransom, they are pulling attention away from “contemporary literature.”
Ransom’s essay is not really about “professionalism” at all.
It is also not about the philosophy of Professor Crane and Aristotle.
For who remembers Prof. Crane? And today, in Ransom’s brave new world of English Departments and MFA poetry workshops—where every student is a poet-critic—who even remembers Aristotle?
Ransom’s dream of MAKE IT U. is here.
Where are the professors—of literature? Ah, where are they?
The professors are watering their own gardens.
They are publishing their poems and the poems of their friends.
These professors have absorbed the great lesson of “Criticism, Inc.,” the great wisdom of Ransom, the modern poet-critic, and Ransom’s modern poet-critic friends:
If the public won’t buy your poetry, find a professional niche and build up its significance there, within the safety of that thickly-grown niche where “amateurs” and their “simplistic ideas of good and bad” cannot penetrate.
The “revolution” is complete.
Welcome, university students and university professors of the future!
Make it you.
Scarriet 
thomasbrady said,
March 17, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Don’t be fooled by Ransom’s elegant, formalist poetry.
He was a revolutionary of the first order!
thomasbrady said,
March 18, 2010 at 4:10 pm
In part V of Ransom’s essay, he does get down to nitty-gritty talk of Criticism itself:
“Something is continually being killed by prose which the poet wants to preserve.”
Poetry: Yay! Prose: Boo! Well…OK.
“The critic should find in the poem a total poetic or individual object which tends to universalized, but is not permitted to suffer this fate.”
For Ransom, universality, like paraphrase, is finally the enemy of the poem.
“How does he [the critc] make out the universal object? It is the prose object, which any forthright prosy reader can discover to him by immediate paraphrase; it is a kind of story, character, thing, scene, or moral principle. And where is the tissue that keeps it from coming out of the poetic object? That is, for the laws of the prose logic, its superfluity; and I think I would even say, its irrelevance.”
Is Ransom’s reasoning sound? Is this true? Is poetry found in the “irrelevance” of prose? Can we define prose as the successful paraphrase and poetry as that which repels that paraphrase? Is this a proper and universal test?
Ransom again,
“The poem celebrates the object which is real, individual and qualitatively infinite. He knows that his practical interests will reduce this living object to a mere utility, and that his sciences will disintegrate it for their convenience into their respective abstracts.”
I say, woe to the poet or critic who puts himself at odds with “convenience.”
Should the poet also hate luxury, charm and happiness?
One can almost hear George Gordon Lord Byron laughing at Ransom’s bookworm idyll, with its “living object” called oxymoronically “qualitatively infinite.”
Is science really the enemy of poetry?
How, exactly is Ransom using his term: “mere utility?”
Isn’t he being hopelessly Romantic in a dreary sort of modern way?
Does Ransom’s “mere utility” as used here belong to the so-called Quietists, or their enemies?
If I characterize any poem as good or interesting, its goodness or interest can certainly be explained to some extent, and if it can be paraphrased, how can this be considered a fault? It may be one of the poem’s virtues. No matter how nuanced the connection, the connection in a good poem can be seen.
Christopher Woodman said,
March 19, 2010 at 1:24 am
Thomas Brady writes:
Yes, you can do this, Tom, and you do it repeatedly. Not only do you leap to the personal judgement, “good,” “interesting,” you even have the temerity to go straight for “great” at the one extreme and “crappy” at the other — we’ve been fighting about this for weeks.
For example, I suggested that John Keats’, “Ode to Psyche,” was marred by it’s incapacity to deliver what it promised, and even had the temerity to suggest that in a very important sense it was a “failure.” I qualified that statement immediately by saying that it was extraordinarily beautiful, indeed as beautiful as the world has ever seen, but still you came crashing in with your usual knee-jerk, great therefore perfect.
So what’s the disjunct between us? Why do we disagree so vehemently not just about “Ode to Psyche” (“great”) but about “In A Station of the Metro” (“crappy”)?
The disjunct is that you do “characterize any poem as good or interesting” precisely because you not only feel any poem “can certainly be explained to some extent” but also that it can be “paraphrased.” And you really do feel that this is true, which makes you not only a suspect reader but a very superficial one.
The reason you so hate (no exaggeration in that word either!) “The Red Wheelbarrow” is that you explain it and paraphrase it in a jiffy, and dismiss it as pretentious, modernist junk. And the reason you do that is that you can’t read it as a poem, only as a piece of prose. You can’t read the simple line “So much depends upon” at all — it’s opaque for you, it has no depth or height, just surface.
No, Tom, you’re absolutely wrong on this aspect of John Crowe Ransom’s treatise. I agree with you whole heartedly about the pernicious effect the establishment of the Poetry Professor has had on American poetry, but you only weaken your argument by rejecting Ransom’s whole criticism in order to establish that fact. John Crowe Ransom is not Satan, after all, and your Church of Pure Poetry is not going to be sullied by his mere presence. He’s good too, and he’s good here, and you make a fool out of yourself when you demonize him.
Here’s the crux, then. You write, “No matter how nuanced the connection, the connection in a good poem can be seen,” and what you mean by that is that there’s nothing in poetry that’s hidden or difficult. Well, the “connection” in “The Red Wheelbarrow” is invisible to you, so you dismiss it as superficial. You also don’t understand why Cupid is “hidden” in the original myth because even myths are open books for you, easy, simple. So “Ode to Psyche” is just a confection, and you praise the whole cake for the icing whereas in fact there are huge problems in the “connections,” and the cake is a bit mushy within.
In the end your criticism falls down just here, as it’s so quick, judgmental, and simplistic. And that is a “fault.”
Christopher
thomasbrady said,
March 18, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Let’s do an experiment on the famous New Critical assertion that “paraphrase” is the enemy of poetry.
I quote Ron Koertge’s “Found,” a poem knocked out in the second round by Brad Leithauser’s “A Good List” in our March Madness tournament.
My wife waits for a caterpillar
to crawl onto her palm so she
can carry it out of the street
and into the green subdivision
of a tree.
Yesterday she coaxed a spider
into a juicier corner. The day
before she hazed a snail
in a half-circle so he wouldn’t
have to crawl all the way
around the world and be 2,000
years late for dinner.
I want her to hurry up and pay
attention to me or go where I
want to go until I remember
the night she found me wet
and limping, felt for a collar
and tags, then put me in
the truck where it was warm.
Without her, I wouldn’t
be standing here in these
snazzy aligator shoes.
This is a wonderful poem and the reason it is a wonderful poem is easy to paraphrase.
In the first part of the poem, we meet the wife, who is meticulously patient and kind to small creatures: caterpillar, spider, snail. In the second part of the poem, the narrator (obviously the husband) wishes she would pay more attention to him. In the third part, the narrator recalls how his wife found him when he was as helpless as a stray dog. In the fourth part, he says that without her assistance, he “wouldn’t be standing here in these snazzy alligator shoes.”
The excellence of this poem can easily be glossed in paraphrase. The poem has a cogent structure, an homage with wit.
It is not the specific language of the poem which makes it unusual, interesting, or original. “Yesterday she coaxed a spider into a juicier corner” is nice, but the poem doesn’t triumph in its detail. The essence of the poem, which I have paraphrased, is like an impressively solid element. We can easily describe its success.
Christopher Woodman said,
March 19, 2010 at 2:08 am
Same problem here, Tom — linking back to what I just said in my previous comment.
For you this is a “wonderful” poem because you can paraphrase it, and for you that’s proof that “no matter how nuanced the connection, the connection in a good poem can be seen.” So this poem is proof for you that poetry is more or less prose — and of course, for you that’s why rhyme, formal rhythm and stanza are so important. Without them there wouldn’t be poetry, you feel, because for you so little depends upon anything complicated/inscrutable in the world, in the “Red Wheelbarrow” sense, because everything is so easy and clear.
Well, I’d say you missed the very heart of this little poem with your assessment. I’d say you messed up big.
In actual fact the “excellence” in “Found” is not at all in “what you can paraphrase” — if anything that’s the poem’s main weakness, if it has one. For in fact, what you can paraphrase is anecdotal, but what makes the poem interesting is, in this case, the imagery and the voice which together say something your paraphrase never even mentions. One likes the poem because it’s honest and accessible, yes, but it only becomes “wonderful” when the indefinable quality in it makes you weep! And that’s the connection that makes the poem work, the ability to express for a brief moment something which is rarely said better or more poignantly.
But what is it, Tom? What does this poem actually say that your paraphrase doesn’t?
~
Billy Collins is like this too, anecdotal, but in his best poems he never stops there because he never writes just for entertainment. His poetry is funny, witty and accessible, yes, but there’s always that indefinable element, that little twist or shock, that wholly unexpected glimpse of something you’d never seen or felt or thought of before. But what is it? What is it? You want to know so badly you read the poem again and again.
With a good poem you always read it again and again, you never get tired. Indeed, the more you read it the more you want to read it more.
So what is it in “Found,” Tom? You say it’s so easy, so tell us.
Christopher
[Thank you, Ron Koertge. Wish you’d come in…]
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Christopher,
I explain what I can explain.
I don’t pretend to explain what I cannot.
Thomas
Christopher Woodman said,
March 19, 2010 at 1:27 pm
But are you ever interested in what you can’t explain? It would appear you aren’t and, if that’s so, why are you interested in poetry at all?
Of course you will answer that good poetry is just beautiful prose, that anything that can be said in poetry can be more or less paraphrased in prose with all the connections more or less in place, and that the only thing missing will be the verse.
Of course I have to accept that, and have to respect it too. But it means our dialogue will have to be limited to what you know. And I don’t mean by that that I know more than you do, just that I myself enter into dialogue like an iceberg with my head in the air while all the time longing to know what’s that hanging in the glittery blackness down below — or in Ron Koertge’s wonderful image in “Found”, who’s that guy down there in those snazzy alligator shoes?
C.
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I’m perplexed why you keep reaching the conclusion that I’m not really interested in poetry…?
With all due respect, is that a fair charge?
I think I take more time than most to defend my positions…
I love this debate since you do seem to embody the whole mid-century New Critical point of view…but, really, NO ONE has been untouched by it…John Crowe Ransom has more converts than Christ —-in terms of humans v. poet populations…
Christopher Woodman said,
March 19, 2010 at 2:58 pm
No, it’s not a fair charge — I’m not sure I have ever met anyone as interested in poetry as you obviously are. It’s just that you ask so little of it. You make so few demands.
What’s in it for you, Tom?
C.
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Maybe I’m a frustrated philosopher…
Here’s the crux for me, and this applies to Silliman, Bernstein, Armantrout, any avant one can name, the NY School, the Language Poets, Modernists, post-Modernists of almost every stripe, Deep Image, Black Mountain, etc:
The subtle error is this: Yes, a good poem IS more than its ‘prose paraphrase.’
However, when we automatically assume that the best poem is the one that repels all paraphrase, when we fall into THIS error, we have taken a nifty notion and run with it too far; we have tumbled into a TRAP…a dark, worm-writhing pit of pretentious obscurity… due to this tiny error…
Christopher Woodman said,
March 20, 2010 at 2:51 am
Well said, Tom — I agree with that completely.
The cult of defying comprehension, indeed of deliberate obfuscation, has made modern American poetry not only elitist but effete. And, of course, it’s not just the New Critical philosophy that’s run amok, it’s the teaching of poetry as a professional sinecure that’s run amok, the self-serving creative writing, poetry, and MFA professors serving up dishes so refined they can only be eaten in their presence. You starve as a poet if you’re not in the right classroom!
And then, on top of all that, making sure the credentials are passed on to their own colleagues and students, so that the hiring is kept in the shop. American Poetry as a Medieval Craft Guild!
And I’ve heard that Jorie Graham sitting in the Chair at Harvard is being considered for the Chair at Oxford, so the patronage disease is utterly rampant and out of control!
~
But Tom, you do have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. To say that John Crowe Ransom’s point about paraphrase leads to modernist junk is absurd, as he’s absolutely right about that — as I tried to illustrate using Ron Koertge’s BAP poem called “Found” just above (I’m getting to like it more and more as I work with it!). You’re paraphrase explained nothing whatever about the poem itself, and you still haven’t answered my questions about the POETRY in the poem, the images and the voice.
Even if you take a poem as simple as “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a paraphrase doesn’t remotely account for the depth and significance of the poem — indeed, nothing that I’ve ever seen written about it does. That’s one of the reasons why it so haunts us — it never can be explained away, but has to be read over and over again. Like the Mona Lisa, the answer is hidden within it.
I also worry when you write just above: “I think I take more time than most to defend my positions…” Which indeed you do, but there’s more to reading poetry than “positions.” There’s the POETRY, and that you rarely discuss.
Christopher