The Drama of Reading Poetry

What are the functions of the genuine literary critic? Some claim that the critic serves no purpose: He or she merely gets in the way of the reader’s enjoyment and defiles the artist’s creation. But this argument is valid only in the case of shoddy and ill-conceived forms of commentary, like those virulent variants of “critical theory” which have infected the pages of many popular and academic outlets. With the recent passing of such critics as Clive James (2019), Harold Bloom (2019), and George Steiner (2020), another, more worthy kind of criticism seems to have nearly vanished from the cultural scene. While these critics differed widely in approach and sensibility, representing academic and journalistic domains, they believed that criticism should lead to an understanding of a work’s artistically rendered meanings and to a judgment of its aesthetic integrity; in short, they believed that interpretation and evaluation, backed by deep reading and reflective living, are foundational to the critical enterprise. And these two activities, when finely executed, can only heighten our enjoyment of literature.