Saved vs. Damned Redux, Redux [by Jim Cummins]

Sometimes considering sheer numbers can be overwhelming; I wonder how that affects our attempts to criticize each other's work.  I was watching some show on PBS recently, where the ratio of high school graduates from China, India,and the U. S. was discussed.  I freely admit I'm not good with numbers--what astounded me was the image they created--but I'll give you a ballpark estimate.  China graduates 1.3 million high schoolers a year; India, 800,000; and the U. S. 300,000 (these figures could be off by a factor of ten, for all I know; but the ratio is approximately correct).  That's a ratio of 1.3 to .8 to .3. What blew me away was the sheer numbers--forget about quality of education--American students were up against in a competitive world economy.  In 1960, when I was twelve, the U. S. population was 160 million; now it's almost double that.  In other words, from the time our first tribal ancestors from central Asia crossed the Bering Strait land bridge and began populating the Americas, to the "invasion" of the white Europeans in the early 1600's, to John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, it took thousands and thousands of years to bring the United States' contribution to the North American population toll to 160 mil; and then it took fewer than fifty years to double that.  I wouldn't be the first to point out that a huge paradigm shift is implied in this, from a "pyramid" idea (a top-down criticism, with Shakespeare as king of the mountain) of literary valuation to ... what?  A number of smaller pyramid-based worlds?  

Seen from this perspective, I wonder if "movements" or schools of poetry, especially more recent ones, arise less from ideology than the desire to stand apart, to carve out a space for oneself (and the like-minded) in a wilderness of numbers.  If you look at two such movements in the 1980s--the "Language" school and the New Formalism group--their career paths aren't really all that different: both espoused an "absolutism" in ideology and both aspired to (and captured, for the most part) cushy tenured positions in universities.  Both were thus "postmodern" in the sense that both desired (even if they hid the desire from themselves) to be enfolded into the late-capitalistic economy of the university system. Is this a shameful thing, to want a tenured job?  I don't think so; they're not only nice things to have, but almost essential, if a poet wants good medical and dental care, a living wage, and the ability to pay for his or her own funeral.  Poets in other countries are often not so fortunate.  I do find it interesting, though, that the middle- and upper middle-class white poets who make up the vast majority of poets in the country, often aren't aware of their privilege and luck.

When I got my grad degree in 1973, there were about 40 writing programs in the country (again, these numbers: I'm relying on memory here, too, so I might be doubly off); one estimate now is that there are over 400 (and I saw an article recently that claimed over 800).  Even if some percentage of these programs do not grant writing degrees (BFA, MA w/emphasis, MFA, PhD), but only offer some "writing component," that's still quite a proliferation.  There are over 2000 books of poems "published" in this country alone every year.  (I use quotes because, although the line between being published by someone else and publishing yourself can become quite vague, I don't think the 2000 number includes self-published books.)  There's no possible way one consciousness--whether an individual or a small group, such as, let's say, the National Book Critics Circle--can do justice to such a pile in a pyramid-type approach.  And those are just the books.  

Every year hundreds of MFA students--thousands?--complete their programs and begin their job searches/career paths.  Even the most generous assessment would have to say poetry is proliferating on the horizonal level far more than on the vertical one--if we even know what the vertical one would look like anymore; or, indeed, if the vertical one is any longer to be prized.  Is poetry even "poetry" anymore--whatever that is, or was--or just speech acts meant to claim some identity-space for the individual, not unlike Wallace Stevens's famous jar in Tennessee?  More later.