Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

What I am bothered about in these refusals is that just at that point when a
genuine critical reading looks about to be achieved, Ms Stafford throws in the
towel. Again, an opportunity to assist the "unenlightened reader" to deal with a
strange looking text is waved away in favour of the agenda that requires that
these poets must be belittled and insulted rather than read critically. And of
course the problem with reading attentively, generously and critically is that
there is the severe danger of having to change one’s opinion as the result of
reaching genuine findings.
The news about elitism
As a lecturer in English at a university, Ms Stafford is a member of a small
band of elite, specialist readers of literature. As an academic, she can claim
uncommon status as an expert, and as a professional worker in the field of
literary criticism. The number of people who get paid a salary in New Zealand
for teaching literature at tertiary level is, in relation to the population at large,
very small. Now, books of poems in New Zealand are typically published in
editions of between 500 and 1000 copies, and are very rarely (except in the
case of anthologies used for teaching purposes) ever reprinted. There are some
exceptions above and below these figures, but 500 to 1000 copies is the typical
range. There are, at least, 1.5 million literate adults in New Zealand. A
thousand copies (let’s be kind to the argument) as a percentage of 1.5 million,
is 0.066% of the literate adult population. Anyone who thinks this constitutes
the democratization of poetry in relation to the literate population at large has,
in my view, a lot of explaining to do. If that percentage was closer to 66% for
so-called "mainstream" poets and 0.066% for the likes of Edmond and Leggott,
I’d have to admit there was a point to be made along these lines. But, it isn’t,
and there isn’t. What it means is that poetry is an elitist proposition per se, at
any level at which anyone reads any of it. It also means that ‘the general reader’
or ‘the general public’ is not the target group for any publisher of poetry in
New Zealand. Those of us who are involved with poetry in any way are all
splashing about in the elitist pot together.
The subjectivity at the end of the world
The last comment made by Ms Stafford denies that ‘subjectivity’ is an
interesting issue. What I have attempted to show here is that it is primarily the
poets’ ‘subjectivity’ that has been on trial throughout her review. The list of
insults given in my first paragraph says it as well as anything I can end with.
They are nearly all solely applicable to people, rather than to texts. If poetry
needs anything at all from critics these days, it is close reading, clear and