The Boston Review [1986]

Ellen Spirer: What do you think the future looks like for literary criticism in America?
Harold Bloom: Oh, I have no idea. Who am I to prophesize? I do suspect very strongly that at
this time American poetry is in better condition than the American criticism of poetry, and
that in my own generation, John Ashbery, James Merrill, A.R. Ammons, those three at the
very least, and probably also some others, increasingly do look like the strong successors to,
say, Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop in previous generations. But I cannot find much
of great interest to me in the criticism of contemporary American poetry. There is a lot of
critical journalism going on, but I look in vain for, say, a first-class study of John Ashbery. I
think theres a great deal of confusion about criticism these days. As I keep saying, its
obsessed with method and that is bound to be misleading. And again as I keep insisting, there
is no method except yourselfno matter who you are. And indeed that which is called
Deconstruction is curiously enough a highly idiosyncratic self, that of my friend Jacques
Derrida. But it is no more that that, and where it is applied by others it produces some very
frustrating results.
Spirer: You have said that Ammons and Ashbery as well as Robert Penn Warren are
probable candidates for survival. Just now you mentioned James Merrill.
Bloom: Yes, of course. Mr. Warren is of a previous generation. Hes about to have an 80th
birthday. Right there near you on the table are the proofs of the new edition of his selected
poems which will be published for his 80th birthday.
Spirer: And what makes these poets more eternal, more likely to survive, than others?