The game changed : essays and other prose

173 Pages·2011·1.142 MB·English

by  Joseph, Lawrence

The Game Changed

Lawrence Joseph
The Game Changed
essays and other prose
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor
Copyright ©2011 by Lawrence Joseph
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law
and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
(cid:1) Printed on acid-free paper
2014 2013 2012 2011 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Joseph, Lawrence, 1948–
The game changed : essays and other prose / Lawrence Joseph.
p. cm. — (Poets on poetry series)
ISBN 978-0-472-07161-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-
05161-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-472-02774-3 (ebk.)
1. Joseph, Lawrence, 1948– Knowledge—Poetry. 2. Poetry.
I. Title.
PS3560.O775G36 2011
814'.54—dc22 2011014828
For Laurence Goldstein

Acknowledgments
“The Poet and the Lawyer: The Example of Wallace Stevens” was
presented as a talk at the Eleventh Annual Wallace Stevens Birthday
Bash, sponsored by The Hartford Friends of Wallace Stevens, at the
Hartford Public Library, on October 7, 2006.
“Michael Schmidt’s Lives of the Poets” originally appeared in The
Nation, December 13, 1999, under the title “New Poetics (Sans
Aristotle).”
“A Note on ‘That’s All’” originally appeared, in slightly different
form, in Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, edited by David Lehman
(Macmillan, 1987).
“Tony Harrison and Michael Hofmann” originally appeared, in
slightly different form, in The Village Voice, March 20, 1990, under
the title “Men of Irony.”
“Frederick Seidel”originally appeared, in slightly different form, in
The Nation,September 24, 1990, under the title “War of the Worlds.”
Parts of “Enzensberger’s Kiosk”appeared, in different form, in Jacket
#4,and in the “Preface”to Kiosk(The Sheep Meadow Press, 1998).
“‘Our Lives Are Here’: Notes from a Journal, Detroit, 1975” origi-
nally appeared, in slightly different form, in Michigan Quarterly Re-
view(Spring 1986).
“John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich”originally appeared, in slightly
different form, in The Nation, April 20, 1992, under the title “The
Real Thing.”
“James Schuyler’s The Morning of the Poem” originally appeared, in
slightly different form, in Poetry East(Fall 1992).
“Word Made Flesh”originally appeared, in different form, in Com-
munities: Contemporary Writers Reveal the Bible in Their Lives,edited by
David Rosenberg (Archer Books, 1996), under the title “Jeremiah
and Corinthians.”
The first two parts of “A Few Reflections on Poetry and Language”
originally appeared, in different form, in “Theories of Poetry, The-
ories of Law,” Vanderbilt Law Review (Volume 46, 1993).
“Hayden Carruth”originally appeared, in slightly different form, in
The Kenyon Review (Winter 1994), under the title “Journeys to
Love.”
“Marilyn Hacker”originally appeared, in slightly different form, in
Voice Literary Supplement, February 1995, under the title “A Formal
Life: Marilyn Hacker’s Deep Structure.”
“Aspects of Weldon Kees” originally appeared in Verse (Summer
1997), under the title “Aspects of Kees.”
“Smokey Robinson’s High Tenor Voice” originally appeared in
Michigan Quarterly Review(Fall 2000).
“Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde”originally appeared in The Nation,May
8, 2000, under the title “Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?”
“Marie Ponsot” originally appeared, in slightly different form, in
Commonweal,December 18, 2009, under the title “Between Silence
& Sound.”
“Conversation with Charles Bernstein”is transcribed, in slightly dif-
ferent form, fromA New Close Listening and Reading and Conversation
with Lawrence Joseph, PENNSOUND, July 7, 2008, http://www.writing
.upenn.edu/pennsound/daily/200807.php.
“Working Rules for Lawyerland” originally appeared in Columbia
Law Review (Volume 101, 2001).
“Being in the Language of Poetry, Being in the Language of Law”
was presented as the Colin Ruagh Thomas O’Fallon Memorial Lec-
ture, University of Oregon Humanities Center, April 16, 2009, and
published, in different form, in Oregon Law Review (Volume 88,
2010).
The selections in the “Poets on Poets and Poetry”sections are also
included in “Notions of Poetry and Narration,” Cincinnati Law Re-
view(Volume 77, 2009).
My thanks to Andrew Simons, William Manz, and, especially, Mari-
lyn Hacker and Peter Oresick.
viii
Contents
Poets on Poets and Poetry
The Poet and the Lawyer: The Example of
Wallace Stevens 3
Michael Schmidt’s Lives of the Poets 10
A Note on “That’s All” 18
Tony Harrison and Michael Hofmann 21
Frederick Seidel 26
Enzensberger’s Kiosk 33
“Our Lives Are Here”: Notes from a Journal,
Detroit, 1975 42
John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich 50
Poets on Poets and Poetry
James Schuyler’s The Morning of the Poem 59
Word Made Flesh 68
A Few Reflections on Poetry and Language 78
Hayden Carruth 89
Marilyn Hacker 95
Aspects of Weldon Kees 99
Smokey Robinson’s High Tenor Voice 104
Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde 106