De gustibus non est disputandum: There is no arguing when it comes to taste. Or is there? A cunning bromide in contemporary poetry is the assertion that no one can reasonably say which poetry is good and which is not. As literary history will show, there’s more than one kind of good poem, but does eclecticism necessarily preclude all measures of aesthetic quality? Denying that we know what’s “good” denies improvement, too: What do we all improve towards, if not a higher standard?
A former Times Literary Supplement (TLS) poetry editor, Ian Hamilton, knew well this quandary. In an article for the paper’s ninetieth birthday (January 17, 1992), he asked how editors with private preferences, like him, might weigh up poems for the broad-church yet choosy TLS. He described his younger self’s “changing to neutral.” Though he didn’t like some movements, nonetheless he “struggled towards a precarious fair-mindedness,” identifying poems that were strong within their fields of influence and printing them. An editor at any journal aiming at an overview must wrestle with their selfishness and read as much of what has happened and is happening in poetry—in poetries—as possible. Against the background of that reading, what is good and what is just derivative becomes more frequently apparent.
Something Hamilton does not get chance to mention is the fact that poems in the TLS, like book reviews, should please or thrill the readership—and not, or not much and without robust artistic justification, sicken or disturb it. So perhaps some tastefulness does guide this editor’s selections. And de moribus non est disputandum. There is no arguing about behavior. Or is there?
—Camille Ralphs, poetry editor, the Times Literary Supplement
Photo credit: Elaine Constantine