Reading Richard Rohmer

The Penistic Advantage

Okay, Brian and Stan.

If neither of you certified insanists, bolstered by non-existent credentials other than an invitation by some descript editor to vulture down

upon those who dare to artistically create,

want to talk about this awful poetry, then it’s gotta be me.

I’ll go first.  Because we’ve got less than two months left, and we seem to be hung up on Poems by Arthur Henry Ward Jr. 

Yes, it’s a shameful piece of work, and the polite thing would be to just move on.  But a deal’s a deal, and Reading Richard Rohmer means blogging them all.  We knew the risks when we stared, and I, for one, haven’t forgotten what inspired us in the first place:

the venom of green

jealousy that which shekels motivates the artistic

eunuchs dedicated to the death of the talented.

Who is Arthur Henry Ward Jr.?

Let’s say you didn’t know “AHW Jr.” was a pseudonym for a paperback writer, a political hack, and the most decorated military man in Canada.  What would you think?  If I sent you a link to these things, and your only clue was: “This person is sort of famous, but not for poetry.”

I know my first guess:

School shooter.

Arthur Henry Ward is seriously pissed off.  Poem #1: Critics.  Poem #2: Smokers.  Poem #8: Women.  Poem #10: Politicians.  He’s also had it up to here with phonies, television, nuclear war and trade unions.  He even gives us a poem (“Patience”) about losing his.  Arthur Henry Ward is a fuming virgin crank.

And he writes like a twelve-year-old.

What’s the difference between a poem and an angry diary entry?  A poem has arbitrary line breaks.  Also, in a poem, whenever you get to something you know two other words for, use all three.

That way people know you won’t be silenced, censored, cowed.

But, thanks to Brian, we know that Arthur Henry Ward (the name even sounds like a spree killer) is really Richard Rohmer.  The then 56-year-old best-selling author of How to Write a Best Seller.

So it’s illuminating to encounter his – no better word for them -- “issues” in verse.

Critics

First of all, Richard Rohmer doesn’t like taking shit from critics.  They’re just jealous, they don’t know anything, and they’re only in it for the money, cash, dollars.  So, in “Critic” these “certified insanists” are blinded by “green-eyed greed” and usually (but not always) not

thinking at all except

about his money and the next review

Brian, you run with insanists: Does literary criticism pay better than I think? Was I wrong to go into oil exploration and contract law?  Critics love the long green.  And that’s why they oughta be locked up… in the bathroom? (I think I’m reading that right.) And

prohibited from stirring either his body or his

witches brew of non-splendid, money-grubbing prose

Critics get theirs again in the poem “Private Person” – shekels-motivated artistic eunuchs, I think you know who you are – and in “Visionary”:

selective editorial synthesis masquerading as valid, shining

truth, cruel, cutting to the bone

Presumably, these are the guys getting between the author and the dream we all dream of.  (No, not "boy vs. girl in the World Series of Love.")

distant beacons of unreachable desires wealth,

recognition, promotion, conquest, emulation,

appointment, honor, employment, independence

You know, like what Richard Rohmer... uh... I mean Arthur Ward deserves.

It’s hard to say who is allowed to comment on Richard Rohmer’s work.  But if you can’t say something nice you should obviously keep it to yourself.

Politics

Months ago, when we were reading Triad, Stanley noticed that Rohmer presents the novel’s big idea -- America, Russia and China should run to the world – as a good thing, without any supporting evidence.  Arthur Henry Ward’s on board, though, in “Visionary,” dreaming of 

…the coming together of the

political leaders of all the nations of the world

to surrender their sovereignty in whole or in

part to a weaponless Universal Government

That sounds kind of “big government” to me, but I’ve lived in America for a long time.  And it’s hard to reconcile with Ward’s other poems, where he complains about

socialism swamped

nations dedicated to redistributing wealth

and

the bloating

blinding-spending public employee masses

and the government Canada already has…

spending far beyond the financial resources

it collects

and

the stench… of trade unions

What do you think now, Stan?  How can Rohmer and Ward hate government and pine for more government?  Would taxes have gone down if the United States had merged with the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China in 1985?  Would trade unions have had more power or less?  Is it possible that Rohmer/Ward hasn’t thought this all through?

Sex

In How to Write a Best Seller, Richard Rohmer advises his students to use sex scenes sparingly.  The reader probably expects at least one, but yeech.  Don’t do any more than you have to.  In his own work, Rohmer tends to keep it down to about one three-line incident per blockbuster, and it’s probably just as well, judging by Arthur Henry Ward.

Because, thanks to Poems, I now know the phrases “penistic advantage,” “countless predecessor copulators,” “the intended inserter,” and “whether willingly or unwillingly… open mindedly but close leggedly.”  Wish I didn’t.