Ask anyone who works at an animal shelter, and you would confirm this fact: The more dramatic an animal's story, the sooner it gets adopted. What goes first? The dog with one eye, the cat with three legs, the Great Dane starved to a trembling 80 pounds.

Somehow, I think this may be a characteristic of poetry, too. We want poems to have a certain quirky provenance. Descriptions such as "he died young" or "she committed suicide" enhance a poet's cachet. Is the most appealing part of Smart's poem the fact it was written by someone in a madhouse?

My own thought is that due to the poet's ample cleverness and the universal appeal of cats, the poem can stand on its own four legs, but I'd be interested to hear other readers' opinions.

The poem can stand on it's own, I think, because the poem is intriguing and sometimes brilliant in the way it presents us with a wildly swerving syntax, and that the poem is coherent through out. Often enough poetry written by mental patients tends towards disconnection , and display a lack of emphasis in subject matter; rather than build toward a point, a mood, or an effect, patients will try to talk about everything streaming through their minds. Matters of past, present , future are not applicable in many of these poems. Smart keeps his focus , though, and as grand and exaggerated as the poem becomes with each succeeding line, the poet seems in control of his material.

IT -

"the mad poet faktr..."

Some good points you have raised. I think there is a voyeur-participator complex to this proposition that is, on the one hand, perfectly suitable for self in the general mix of all other selves, but which on the other hand edges with a range from some pure pathology in the brain itself to those fog-prone stuffs we call thoughts, from which we narciss, play games, exercise the more coniving or brutish aspects that resides variously and varying within our Ergo von Ergo.

A lot could be made of the Smarty-cat (Ergo von Ergo - see whata mean!?) poem. Ted raised some sustantial good points in the matter; one could, as I did in my initial 'critique', scewer with feathers to stir-up the (grimly) comic to this or any other poem at all. "Pure humor" wears a Hyde beneath whatever skin it exposes. Given the nature of poetry, these conditions can go exponential in a variety of ways, some particular to all, some perculiar to an interested few. But this is what makes poetry's seance work. Thank God, the gods, the gawds, and all the Sheesh-O'Mighty-Damns mixed in muddle's mettle eh?

Am out of computer time. Best to you and yours.

Carpe Verve.

Doug

The poet as madman and semi-seer is such a stock, often heroic, character in our world we can hardly imagine a time without one. Here is Smart: smart; purely himself; exposed; lovingly self-mocking; hatter-mad. We've seen such creatures since. Was such a creature seen before?

falcon, you're right, the poet as madman / seer is almost a cliche, certainly by the time of Byron and all would-be Byronic heros (and non-heroes).

There aren't many before the Romantic 19th century (in the Anglo-American tradition) but don't forget that Tom o' Bedlam song Pinsky offered some months ago as well as ecstatic non-Anglo-American poets like Rumi.

I do think Christopher Smart is unique. I had never heard of him before reading about him a few years ago in Edward Hirsch's book How to Read a Poem and was blown away by "Jeoffry the Cat." So I was near ecstatic myself when Pinsky decided to feature him this week.

The mad-man (or woman, think of Plath!) thing is intriguing, but in Smarts' case the long remove from our own time seems to cancel out the leverage of his madness. I found the pizza-box hat and hairdo stolen from Donna Reed, more interesting than his neurological history!