Rorty from a Poet's View

Until "Pragmatism and Romanticism," "Philosophy as a Transitional Genre," and his late essay in Poetry ("The Fire of Life"), Rorty's relationship to poetry was not what was uppermost in the minds of readers who thought of him as busy (perhaps too busy) diversifying the genres of literature. Of course Rorty knew that there was plenty of bad old Platonism to go around in poetry circles, and in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, he had made it clear that the imaginative writing he found most useful was the narrative kind that provided edifying discourses. Fiction fit the mold best because its province was the march of character over time. Poetry, by contrast, seemed fixated on the timeless, and since there was little edification to be had in such contemplations, poetry, once the queen of arts, was ordered toward the back of the line. But the distinction was not so simple. In the first place, Rorty was schooled by poets (as I remind readers in "Rorty") and was habituated to the reading of poetry to an extent that, I would guess, easily bested his peers among public intellectuals. In the second place, he would often use poetic examples in class to make a point: for example, Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" to lead into a discussion of perspectivalism or Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" to illustrate process in William James. But he also understood that turning to Heidegger was another way of preferring the imagination over rationally constrained discursive routes—that is, another means of transcending the regime of metaphysics. Thus, for example, we might find ourselves renewed to think of epochs in terms of the stanzas of a poem rather than stretches of centuries contending in sequent toil. He seemed to take delight that I had written a dialogue modeled after Cesare Pavese's Dialogues with Leuco concerning a peripatetic Black Forest encounter between Rilke and Heidegger, the former's angels becoming the common readers of the latter's newfound errancy. Now another thing that may be said in favor of a poem is that it doesn't pretend that its relationship with time is anything other than subjective, but neither in doing so does it loosen its grip on prediction and control. Putting aesthetics (back) in the driver's seat, it seems, was an idea not far from either Dewey or Nietzsche.

The coming of theory in the 1970s was thought by many poets of my generation to have a deleterious effect on art, one that worked its evil by rationalizing virtues and denigrating craft. Those who hearkened to theory's call were thought either to be Bolsheviks or poetasters, and the elevation of the critic over the poet was viewed with grave alarm. The status of poets and critics had, it would appear, changed places. I remember the feeling that poets were losing caste the first time I saw one wearing a coat-and-tie to his own reading (Michael Ryan) at about the same time that I saw critic Fredric Jameson arriving for a (well-attended) talk clad in macho leather. Over beer, Andrei Codrescu, who had connections with the San Francisco Beat scene and nodding acquaintance with its successors of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group, told me there was reason to fear the latter, as they had assimilated theory into their poetry, and the result was a barricade mentality whose worst effect was the coups d'etat of creative writing programs by theory-crazed pod people posing as professors. "You have to watch out, man," he said, "these people are serious." So having something of a background in later Wittgenstein, I began my study with Rorty in consequence of the idea that I would get behind the curtain of theory. What Rorty contributed was more than enhancements to my wish to arm my advance toward literary exposé. He both assured me that it didn't matter if poets were not up-to-date, theorized, and materialist, or for that matter, démodé, naive, and metaphysical. As if to make the matter plainer, he confessed that his favorite...