"Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such"
About this Quote
Gatekeeping rarely sounds so polite. Davison’s line performs the soft-shoe version of an insult: a compliment to the poems, a gentle pat on the head for The Atlantic, and a quiet demotion of its readers. The phrasing “every so often” is key. It’s not a manifesto; it’s the weary cadence of someone who’s been in the room long enough to know how often publication decisions get dressed up as audience service.
The operative dodge is “too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.” That “as such” is a little stage aside, a wink that acknowledges how slippery the category is. He isn’t saying the poems are obscure for obscurity’s sake. He’s pointing to a particular kind of writing: poems that are self-aware, formally preoccupied, maybe even meta - the kind that asks you to notice the frame while you’re looking at the picture. In a general-interest magazine, that can read as insider baseball, not because readers are dumb, but because the publication’s unspoken contract rewards immediacy: narrative, argument, social legibility.
As an actor, Davison’s sensibility makes sense: he’s attuned to audience, pacing, and the difference between a piece that lands in a room and one that demands specialized attention. The subtext is a critique of cultural middlebrow-ism without the sneer. The magazine becomes shorthand for a broader ecosystem that wants poetry to behave - to be moving, topical, “accessible” - while the poems he’s defending insist on being about their own making. That’s not elitism so much as a note about what gets filtered out when art has to sell itself as content.
The operative dodge is “too involved with the nature of poetry, as such.” That “as such” is a little stage aside, a wink that acknowledges how slippery the category is. He isn’t saying the poems are obscure for obscurity’s sake. He’s pointing to a particular kind of writing: poems that are self-aware, formally preoccupied, maybe even meta - the kind that asks you to notice the frame while you’re looking at the picture. In a general-interest magazine, that can read as insider baseball, not because readers are dumb, but because the publication’s unspoken contract rewards immediacy: narrative, argument, social legibility.
As an actor, Davison’s sensibility makes sense: he’s attuned to audience, pacing, and the difference between a piece that lands in a room and one that demands specialized attention. The subtext is a critique of cultural middlebrow-ism without the sneer. The magazine becomes shorthand for a broader ecosystem that wants poetry to behave - to be moving, topical, “accessible” - while the poems he’s defending insist on being about their own making. That’s not elitism so much as a note about what gets filtered out when art has to sell itself as content.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|
More Quotes by Peter
Add to List
