Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Mark Halliday’s "Kind of Reply" is a wry, self-aware meditation on the power dynamics of poetry, language, and intellectual discourse. Framed as an interaction with a character named Plotnitsky, the poem examines the tensions between aggression and benevolence, ambition and humility, competitive literary culture and human decency. Halliday’s speaker navigates these tensions with humor and self-reflection, ultimately exposing the contradictions that underlie the poetic and academic world.

The poem opens with Plotnitsky asserting that “poetry is essentially aggressive.” His claim positions poetry as an act of dominance, a force that replaces the reader’s world with the poet’s own. The speaker tries to interject with “cheerful counterbalancing truths,” but Plotnitsky speaks over him, reveling in the idea that poetic creation is an act of destruction. “Wordsworth has no choice but to destroy Milton,” he declares, reinforcing a competitive lineage of poets where each generation must overthrow its predecessors. Halliday mocks the vehemence with which Plotnitsky embraces this perspective, particularly through the line: “Plotnitsky gets joy from saying ‘destroy.’” The academic’s theatrical enthusiasm for violence within discourse suggests that he finds excitement in intellectual struggle, turning poetry into something akin to “gunfights in the Wild West of discourse.”

Halliday’s speaker, however, is not entirely convinced by this worldview. “I feel sort of weary and abused after Plotnitsky departs smiling,” he admits. The metaphor of “brain’s been battered” suggests that the speaker experiences discourse less as an exhilarating battle and more as an exhausting ordeal. He retreats to his desk, where he finds himself writing—perhaps engaging in the very “aggression” Plotnitsky advocates. The moment is laden with irony: if poetry is indeed a kind of attack, then this poem itself might be a form of “violent reprisal” against Plotnitsky’s argument.

Yet the speaker resists framing himself as a literary combatant. “I don’t feel like a killer. I’m a nice guy to a considerable extent!” Here, Halliday’s conversational tone and self-aware humor undercut any grandiose claims about poetic aggression. The speaker insists on his “benevolence and sympathy” as genuine qualities, though he acknowledges an underlying desire for “some power.” This admission marks a shift in the poem, as the speaker begins to grapple with the competitive realities of literary success.

The poem becomes increasingly candid about ambition. The speaker concedes that he wants “power to keep my job, eat at good restaurants forever, protect my little son who has my blue eyes, and summon the admiration of excellent women.” The list is humorous but revealing—success in poetry is tied not just to artistic fulfillment but to material comfort, social security, and personal validation. This confession exposes the fundamental paradox of the speaker’s position: he wants to reject Plotnitsky’s aggressive, power-driven view of poetry, but he also recognizes that poetry operates within a system where publication, reputation, and competition matter.

The speaker then directly addresses another writer (perhaps the reader), acknowledging the harsh realities of literary publishing. For his poem to appear in Big Deal Quarterly, “some other poems, including yours maybe, will have to get bumped out of the magazine.” This blunt recognition of the zero-sum nature of poetry publishing reinforces the idea that success in literature often comes at someone else’s expense. But rather than embracing this with the same zeal as Plotnitsky, the speaker expresses uncertainty: “That’s life. That’s discourse. / But hey, I’m sorry it has to be that way. / Maybe I’m sorry. Maybe I’m ambivalent. It’s complicated!” This moment captures the poem’s central tension—the conflict between ethical self-perception and the competitive realities of literary ambition.

The closing lines soften the speaker’s cynicism with a gesture of goodwill: “Let’s get some coffee and you can tell me about yourself, your world-constitution, and I’ll be trying to listen.” This ending contrasts sharply with Plotnitsky’s aggressive mode of discourse. While the speaker may not be entirely free of ambition, he at least aspires to dialogue rather than domination. The phrase “I’ll be trying to listen” is telling—it acknowledges that genuine engagement with others is difficult and that self-interest is not easily set aside.

"Kind of Reply" ultimately satirizes the grandiose, combative rhetoric of academia while simultaneously confronting the uncomfortable truths about ambition and competition in the literary world. Halliday’s use of humor, irony, and self-reflection allows the poem to navigate these contradictions without falling into didacticism. Instead, the poem remains open-ended, acknowledging that the relationship between poetry, power, and human decency is, indeed, “complicated.”

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