What is Odysseus Doing in This Poem About Cats?

Folks,

I’ve been thinking about the concept of New Criticism as of late – especially the New Critical essay T.S. Eliot wrote called Tradition and the Individual Talent. This is probably one of the most widely read pieces of literary criticism and is the basis by which many would-be New Critics approach literature. The subject at hand, though, is not New Criticism per se; the question I want to pose is “to what extent do references or allusions to other texts strengthen a poem as a whole?”

Lately, I’ve read a lot of poetry that contains references to outside literary texts. Of course, this is a poetic tradition, but how strictly should a poet follow this tradition? And, if a poet is to use allusion as a rhetorical device, how does one discern whether or not the reference or allusion is a poetically justified reference? I think these are sort of loaded questions; however, I do think they are questions that need to be raised.

I, for one, think there much of the references and allusions in contemporary poetry are weak, feeble things. The act of employing literary references into a poem is seemingly becoming a lost art. Strangely enough, and I’m certainly guilty of this, a multitude of golden rhetorical devices are often left out of poetry – even if said devices are tools in a poet’s “toolkit” – but for some reason allusion is used flippantly.

I think there needs to be a line drawn in regards to the way poets use allusions. While they certainly have the potential to add something to the poem, the act of name dropping is not an inherently justified move. If one were to write a poem about something like migration or listlessness, I would not be impressed by someone talking about Pallas. The connection between literary allusion and text needs to be more than tenuous – it needs to be relevant and it needs to add something to the piece. A name is a name – and a name alone is not a sufficient means by which a poem conveys its message/meanging/umph/etc.

So, what makes a good literary allusion? There are tons of literary allusions in William Winfield Wright’s Cosmonauts and I don’t have a problem with any of them; however, I am usually annoyed by many allusions I’ve been reading in some contemporary poetry. What makes some allusions work and what makes some allusions fail? I’m interested to see what you all think.

J