'An Easy Target for Literary Types'

“It’s not the lightness but the sharpness of ‘light verse’ (WHO coined that phrase?) that cuts the mustard. Why not rename the genre? Hasn’t the term become something of a putdown?”

Other names for the genre have been suggested, none quite right – comic verse, nonsense verse, “whimsical poems.” Try that last one on Martial and Swift. We’re stuck with “light verse,” though it suggests poetry’s weaker, seldom-talked-about sister. Guy Davenport made the comments above in 1983 when writing to James Laughlin, founding publisher of New Directions. Laughlin, publisher of Ezra Pound, whom no one would accuse of lightness, had asked Davenport to name his favorite light verses. Apparently, Laughlin was considering publication of a light verse anthology.  

 

Three years ago I was asked by the editor of a well-known poetry magazine to write about light verse, specifically about Light, the biannual journal founded by a retired Chicago postal worker in 1992. That arrangement didn’t work out – there’s nothing light about certain editors -- but Boris Dralyuk salvaged my efforts and published the essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books: “‘Cheering as the Summer Weather’: On the Primal Appeal of Light Verse.” The friendliness, enthusiasm and generosity of the poets I interviewed is a happy memory. Among the friendliest and most encouraging was Barbara Loots of Kansas City, Missouri, who for forty-one years wrote greeting-card sentiments for Hallmark. In the summer/fall issue of Light, Loots writes “Becoming a Real Poet: Confessions of a Hallmark Writer,” a memoir of her time as a professional poet, drawing a regular paycheck – surely the rarest of occupations. Loots told me:

 

“According to most literary publishers, this is the cesspit of poetry,” she says. “I got over it, since most writers end up writing something other than immortal poetry for a lot less financial security. I continued to write for Hallmark and pursued my literary ambitions with credible publishing success in magazines and anthologies over the years.”

 

In the memoir she writes:

 

“Greeting-card writing is an easy target for literary types. But what they call the cliché, I call the familiar. Daily I stepped into the minds of other people, trying to capture what they might want to say, or couldn’t even imagine saying, in the most delicate relationships and emotionally powerful events of their lives. It was poetry to the people who bought greeting cards. I knew the difference, and I was comfortable using the resources of language for whatever purpose I meant to serve. At the same time, I learned to handle rejection with sangfroid, because rejection was most of my experience.”

 

Not every poet lives in a garret, drinks suicidally or prospers on the dole of grants and prizes. Some hold down jobs, retire comfortably and write poems. As Loots concludes her memoir: “I decided that I was a real poet.”

 

[Find Guy Davenport’s letter in Guy Davenport and James Laughlin: Selected Letters (2007).]