Slate and the New York Sun are rapidly becoming my favorite online sources for literary and other art criticism, despite the odious politics of the Sun. Slate, in particular, has been on a roll with David Plotz's Blogging the Bible, the Book Club's discussion during Auden's centenary week, and the excerpts from Clive James's Cultural Amnesia. I wasn't aware James was a poet until I read Meghan O'Rourke's interview last week, and then browsing his site I discovered a poem I knew: “Windows Is Shutting Down.” Well, I am a geek.
Anyway, as impressed as I am by the commentary on poetry provided by Slate, the poetry Robert Pinskie picks for publication in Slate has usually seemed to me uninspired at best—I actually like Pinskie's own poetry, which makes it even more puzzling. Still, there are gems, like this recent poem by Andrew Hudgins, “Lightning Strike in Paradise.” I found there several other poems by Hudgins, including “Piss Christ.” Yeah, you know what it's about.
I remember Richard Wilbur (I think it was him, but I can't google it up) commenting that only Serrano's claim to have used cow's blood and his own urine made the image transgressive, that there was really no evidence the claim was true, and that it was just a piece of exhibitionism without real significance one way or the other. I had agreed with that until reading Hudgin's poem, possibly combined with the influence of an article in The American Scholar ("2 + 2 = 5") about "presence," the wine become blood—or not—and the thousands who died over that issue. I'm also rereading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, where there's a description of a 14th century fresco in Florence:
… in a scene of extraordinary verve a hunting party of princes and elegant ladies on horseback comes with sudden horror upon three open coffins containing corpses in different stages of composition, one still clothed, one half-rotted, one a skeleton. Vipers crawl over their bones. … a horse catching the stench of death stiffens in fright with outstretched neck and flaring nostrils; his rider clutches a handkerchief to his nose. The hunting dogs recoil, growling in repulsion. In their silks and fashionable hats, the party of vital handsome men and women stare appalled at what they will become.
As Hudgins writes:
We have grown used to beauty without horror
We have grow used to useless beauty.
11:10:23 PM 
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