Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Heading to Chicago tomorrow (sorry, David, just missed you) for a house-hunting trip. If I'm lucky, I'll experience the dubious joys of blogging from my boyhood home.
Airplane/trip reading always a dilemma. I often find I can't read poetry on planes--brain too deadened and wanting to stay that way--so I usually lug a novel. I picked up Don DeLillo's new book--perfect airplane length at 200 generously spaced pp.--and the Penguin edition of Borges's Collected Fictions.
When I go to Chicago all I want to do is eat. Mmmm, pizza.
Airplane/trip reading always a dilemma. I often find I can't read poetry on planes--brain too deadened and wanting to stay that way--so I usually lug a novel. I picked up Don DeLillo's new book--perfect airplane length at 200 generously spaced pp.--and the Penguin edition of Borges's Collected Fictions.
When I go to Chicago all I want to do is eat. Mmmm, pizza.
Monday, June 16, 2003
Turned a corner in Moe's and saw the new Robert Lowell Collected Poems staring at me, dust jacket like a box from Tiffany's or a slightly ill chocolate mint. Good. I needed something else to balance Merrill.
How long has Lowell been dead? Why is this book just coming out now? Why would you die and leave your literary legacy in the hands of Frank Bidart?
How long has Lowell been dead? Why is this book just coming out now? Why would you die and leave your literary legacy in the hands of Frank Bidart?
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Kasey's reorganized his links again--in reverse alphabetical order. Hurrah! The last shall be first.
Kent Johnson kindly sent me an updated link for Dear Jacques Lacan: An Analysis in Correspondence, "a series of 'psychoanalytic' exchanges between three so-called 'Jacques': the late, famed Jacques Lacan; his almost equally-famous disciple Jacques-Alain Miller; and a clinical patient Jacques Debrot, a fairly obscure and obviously brilliant American poet and doctoral student at Harvard University."
I only knew Jacques Debrot as a grad student and teacher (a good one), so I was surprised at the strong reactions my mention of him produced: delight (I think) from Kasey, horror (I think) from David. I remember towards the end of our tutorial Jacques rather reluctantly admitted that he was a poet and pointed me to some of his comics in Ribot, which at the time I found even more puzzling than I was finding Tender Buttons.
A quick Google turns up Jacques's 2000 book Confusion Comix, a poem in cwhobb?, some stuff from the East Village Poetry Web, and this.
A quick Google turns up Jacques's 2000 book Confusion Comix, a poem in cwhobb?, some stuff from the East Village Poetry Web, and this.
Scourge of Silliman Chris Lott writes:
I've always been a believer in the part of poetry that demands study and thinking. This is one of the aspects of poetry, regardless of school, that I find so appealing. There is a scholarly part to it that must be wedded to the spontaneity that is the bread and butter of a poet. I hate to trot out the old "emotions recollected in tranquility" saw, but isn't that just what is being referred to? If anything, post-avant poetry, like abstract modern art, has seemed like a channel into which even more pretenders flock because there is an appearance that no study or discipline is needed. Just do it and you are an artist. And whatever one makes must be art.
While I understand the aspect that Tim presents a little earlier about the academic game seeming rigged, I'm baffled by the notion that intellectual labor, reading and thinking, are somehow more the province of one school or another. Isn't this simply the province of that percentage in each who are writing the best?
I don't mean to set up an opposition between learned and naive poetries, or to say that one form of poetry doesn't need to be "studied" as much as another. It was more about where different modes of poetry seemed to be positioned vis-a-vis academia at the time I was an undergrad.
Big gasp: I wasn't an English major, not really at least. So I was actually a lot less well read in contemporary poetry than some of my poet peers. My major was Social Studies, a weird social theory/cultural studies major, and I first got interested in Language poetry in part because of its self-proclaimed connections to political theory. The "nerd" factor seemed to arise from the fact that my reading of Marx or Weber seemed as relevant as reading Bishop or Lowell; context seemed as important as text.
So: theory as defense mechanism for a young, insecure writer, maybe.
And just as you say no group has a monopoly on study, I don't think any group has a monopoly on posers, either. The idea of avant-garde poetry as a haven for "pretenders" smacks a bit too much to me of the "My 5-year-old could do that" reaction to abstract art. I don't see it that way. I don't see hordes of poets flocking to elliptical or fragmentary styles just because it's easier to get away with something there.
Finally, "writing the best"--that seems to be the fundamental category avant-garde writing's trying to question. What constitutes "the best"? What institutions and structures do such allegedly universal prinicples conceal? What can we learn from writing or art that by all conventional standards seems to be "bad"?
I've always been a believer in the part of poetry that demands study and thinking. This is one of the aspects of poetry, regardless of school, that I find so appealing. There is a scholarly part to it that must be wedded to the spontaneity that is the bread and butter of a poet. I hate to trot out the old "emotions recollected in tranquility" saw, but isn't that just what is being referred to? If anything, post-avant poetry, like abstract modern art, has seemed like a channel into which even more pretenders flock because there is an appearance that no study or discipline is needed. Just do it and you are an artist. And whatever one makes must be art.
While I understand the aspect that Tim presents a little earlier about the academic game seeming rigged, I'm baffled by the notion that intellectual labor, reading and thinking, are somehow more the province of one school or another. Isn't this simply the province of that percentage in each who are writing the best?
I don't mean to set up an opposition between learned and naive poetries, or to say that one form of poetry doesn't need to be "studied" as much as another. It was more about where different modes of poetry seemed to be positioned vis-a-vis academia at the time I was an undergrad.
Big gasp: I wasn't an English major, not really at least. So I was actually a lot less well read in contemporary poetry than some of my poet peers. My major was Social Studies, a weird social theory/cultural studies major, and I first got interested in Language poetry in part because of its self-proclaimed connections to political theory. The "nerd" factor seemed to arise from the fact that my reading of Marx or Weber seemed as relevant as reading Bishop or Lowell; context seemed as important as text.
So: theory as defense mechanism for a young, insecure writer, maybe.
And just as you say no group has a monopoly on study, I don't think any group has a monopoly on posers, either. The idea of avant-garde poetry as a haven for "pretenders" smacks a bit too much to me of the "My 5-year-old could do that" reaction to abstract art. I don't see it that way. I don't see hordes of poets flocking to elliptical or fragmentary styles just because it's easier to get away with something there.
Finally, "writing the best"--that seems to be the fundamental category avant-garde writing's trying to question. What constitutes "the best"? What institutions and structures do such allegedly universal prinicples conceal? What can we learn from writing or art that by all conventional standards seems to be "bad"?
Friday, June 13, 2003
I love you guys. Empathic beams (with a whiff of sex) from Josh, Kasey with a rousing defense of Shelley. I can actually vividly remember the quaver that began to develop in my voice as I read the poem to that group, which seemed glorious halfway through, something like pure joy in the sound--but then it started to seem so damn long, especially after I looked up and saw the expressions on everyone's faces. It was a bit like the first 100-meter sprint I did when I was on the track team in high school. We'd been running indoors and I was actually pretty good at the 50-yard dash but had never run the 100 before. The gun went off and I felt good, like that flying feeling you're supposed to get, and I didn't see anybody on either side of me. Then about halfway through my legs started feeling very strange, like I was trying to move them through molasses, and then suddenly I was seeing everyone's backs. There's a picture of me in the race at that point and you can see me at the center with everyone else disappearing off the right side of the frame. The coach assigned me to hurdles the next day.
Thursday, June 12, 2003
David: I didn't mean to suggest that the "avant-world" is workshop-free--it's obviously developed its own set of institutions--or free of the mysticisms of "I get it." But in my own college experience, at least, the workshop and the avant-garde were opposed: workshop was all Bishop and Lowell and "Strike to the terrible crystals," and I read Stein and Olson and Bernstein and Hejinian with a grad student in a tutorial. Was that work off-putting, even repellent at first? Sure. I threw Tender Buttons against my dorm room wall more than once. But the grad student I was reading with, Jacques Debrot (also a poet--where are you these days, Jacques?) was remarkably patient with me and convinced me that there was something interesting going on there, something really worth talking and thinking and arguing about.
Reading avant-garde writing made me feel I might have something to say about or even contribute to poetry. I felt I'd hit a glass ceiling in the workshop and Vendler world, one that seemed dominated by power and ambition and whose winners were dictated in advance. Maybe this is just to say that I was lousy at writing workshop lyric; if I look at what I was writing in college it was obviously trying to ape what my classmates were doing. I remember one workshop during my freshman year where at the end of the class we were each supposed to read something we liked. A lot of what I'd read in high school was Romantic poetry, so I picked Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The other students all got these funny looks on their faces, as if I'd put on a particularly embarrassing outfit, and even the instructor pronounced it "indulgent." The person who read after me--the son, I later discovered, of a famous English professor--read Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" and they loved it--it was a perfect riposte to my poor taste. I didn't even know who O'Hara was. Bishop, Plath, and Lowell were all people I had to discover in college. I couldn't talk about myself with that weird combination of ego and modesty that seemed required; I was either too much there or not there at all.
Also, honestly, the nerdy quality of avant-garde writing had its appeal; it seemed that it might have something to do with studying and thinking, which I felt comfortable with, and not just be based purely on my own taste or genius, which I had severe doubts about. It's probably why I ended up in grad school.
I'm realizing increasingly that it was very different for a lot of people, that some people were being assigned Stein and Language poetry in their workshops, and that for them this has become the Establishment itself, more needful of resistance than the old Official Verse Culture (e.g. Jordan's remark a while back that in his world Helen Vendler is not a critic).
David points out that he said "artwork," not "network." I wonder how much difference there is. We don't read poetry in a vacuum; we learn about it in classrooms and anthologies, in talking with friends, going to readings, browsing in bookstores of libraries. I guess I don't believe there is some way in which an artwork, all by itself, can restrict--or expand--social and political possibilities; ultimately, somebody's got to do something with it. Where I've ended up means that I find avant-garde works more able to allow me to do something more, to go on.
Reading avant-garde writing made me feel I might have something to say about or even contribute to poetry. I felt I'd hit a glass ceiling in the workshop and Vendler world, one that seemed dominated by power and ambition and whose winners were dictated in advance. Maybe this is just to say that I was lousy at writing workshop lyric; if I look at what I was writing in college it was obviously trying to ape what my classmates were doing. I remember one workshop during my freshman year where at the end of the class we were each supposed to read something we liked. A lot of what I'd read in high school was Romantic poetry, so I picked Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The other students all got these funny looks on their faces, as if I'd put on a particularly embarrassing outfit, and even the instructor pronounced it "indulgent." The person who read after me--the son, I later discovered, of a famous English professor--read Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" and they loved it--it was a perfect riposte to my poor taste. I didn't even know who O'Hara was. Bishop, Plath, and Lowell were all people I had to discover in college. I couldn't talk about myself with that weird combination of ego and modesty that seemed required; I was either too much there or not there at all.
Also, honestly, the nerdy quality of avant-garde writing had its appeal; it seemed that it might have something to do with studying and thinking, which I felt comfortable with, and not just be based purely on my own taste or genius, which I had severe doubts about. It's probably why I ended up in grad school.
I'm realizing increasingly that it was very different for a lot of people, that some people were being assigned Stein and Language poetry in their workshops, and that for them this has become the Establishment itself, more needful of resistance than the old Official Verse Culture (e.g. Jordan's remark a while back that in his world Helen Vendler is not a critic).
David points out that he said "artwork," not "network." I wonder how much difference there is. We don't read poetry in a vacuum; we learn about it in classrooms and anthologies, in talking with friends, going to readings, browsing in bookstores of libraries. I guess I don't believe there is some way in which an artwork, all by itself, can restrict--or expand--social and political possibilities; ultimately, somebody's got to do something with it. Where I've ended up means that I find avant-garde works more able to allow me to do something more, to go on.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Here's something to marinate on: By attemping to model artistic production on social struggle, the avant-garde ends up producing artworks that restrict possiblities of social exploration and connection.
Oops! A fine pickle.
(Pickles, waffles, donuts, muffins: I guess I'm hungry.)
I imagine you could make a perfectly plausible argument, in the abstract, for what David's saying. But my own experience has been just the opposite. I remember dutifully taking workshops in college, laboring to create perfectly honed metaphors and conceits, then scratching my head when my teacher would pick up someone else's poem and simply say: "I get it." In that world poetry was a mystical gift, given to some and not others. It's like believing in fate: even if it's true, it doesn't give you much help with living.
Discovering avant-garde writing was a liberation from this narrow idea of poetry. Did the avant-garde have its own hierarchies, its own pretensions? Sure. But the sense that poetic practice could be something open to discussion and debate gave me a way back into poetry, one that wasn't simply based on the work of individual and isolated souls, but that recognized the role of groups and communities in making a context for reading and writing.
Stir & stew.
Oops! A fine pickle.
(Pickles, waffles, donuts, muffins: I guess I'm hungry.)
I imagine you could make a perfectly plausible argument, in the abstract, for what David's saying. But my own experience has been just the opposite. I remember dutifully taking workshops in college, laboring to create perfectly honed metaphors and conceits, then scratching my head when my teacher would pick up someone else's poem and simply say: "I get it." In that world poetry was a mystical gift, given to some and not others. It's like believing in fate: even if it's true, it doesn't give you much help with living.
Discovering avant-garde writing was a liberation from this narrow idea of poetry. Did the avant-garde have its own hierarchies, its own pretensions? Sure. But the sense that poetic practice could be something open to discussion and debate gave me a way back into poetry, one that wasn't simply based on the work of individual and isolated souls, but that recognized the role of groups and communities in making a context for reading and writing.
Stir & stew.
Shopping Alone
The copy’s good enough to eat, a private
Swoon behind no-look glass.
We’re acting out a commercial in which
Refills line up like iron, the detox
Boundary between value and use.
The colored glass nob. The pulverized
Rock-face journal. The shampoo
Bent back over its own lather.
If those salespeople are in the way
When the fizzy bath bomb goes off, we can’t
Be held accountable for our own desires,
Blooming in the dark-stained pan.
The label works in its absence
Of generosity, ultra-smooth-clean
Donuts and muffins filling the empty space.
What it doesn’t give you is a walk to somewhere
That’s all afternoon long, the pavement flushed
From embarrassment or exertion.
Better to be left alone. I wanted
To get on the wrong train, carefully
Picking past the sad-dog eyes
Lined up along the platform like
So many shoes emptied of their wares.
The copy’s good enough to eat, a private
Swoon behind no-look glass.
We’re acting out a commercial in which
Refills line up like iron, the detox
Boundary between value and use.
The colored glass nob. The pulverized
Rock-face journal. The shampoo
Bent back over its own lather.
If those salespeople are in the way
When the fizzy bath bomb goes off, we can’t
Be held accountable for our own desires,
Blooming in the dark-stained pan.
The label works in its absence
Of generosity, ultra-smooth-clean
Donuts and muffins filling the empty space.
What it doesn’t give you is a walk to somewhere
That’s all afternoon long, the pavement flushed
From embarrassment or exertion.
Better to be left alone. I wanted
To get on the wrong train, carefully
Picking past the sad-dog eyes
Lined up along the platform like
So many shoes emptied of their wares.
My audblog's now up at (okay, I'm just going to say it) The JISM. I decided not to edit out my stumbling over the word "saddle." You try saying "saddle-stapled" ten times fast.
Chris Murray and I have officially kicked off the "Recall Billy Collins" campaign. Watch for attack ads portraying revolving-door prize committees and Billy's controversial positions in support of boredom.
We're also taking nominations for replacements. My money's on Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least it'll keep him out of the governor's mansion.
We're also taking nominations for replacements. My money's on Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least it'll keep him out of the governor's mansion.
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!
Catherine jumps into the "social poet" debate by quoting Richard Hugo's distinction between poets who are "Krebs" ("In Hemingway's story, the protagonist, Krebs, by birth and circumstance is an insider. As a result of his experiences in a war and his own sensitivity, he feels alienated and outside") and "Snopes" ("In Faulkner's story, the protagonist, Snopes, a little boy, by birth and circumstance is an outsider who wants desperately to be in"). Here's Hugo's list:
Krebs: William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Richard Wilbur, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Allen Ginsberg.
Snopes: T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, William Stafford, Louise Bogan, James Wright, Galway Kinnell, A.R. Ammons.
Does this strike anyone else as precisely backward? Even if we accept Hugo's claim that he's judging "Not from birth and circumstance, but by virtue of how they feel about themselves and their relation with the world, as revealed in their poems," it's hard for me not to see Lowell, for example, as perfectly exemplifying the insider-turned-outsider dynamic as precisely in his poetic as he does in his life. It's just as hard for me to see even the early poetry of Williams or Pound as "insider" or as taking alienation from some "inside" as a primary theme.
I realize that part of my negative reaction is an effect Hugo carefully calculates, by neatly inverting the usual understanding of avant-garde and mainstream poetry. His Krebses are poets who would usually be called modernist or avant-garde, yet they are depicted as (alienated) "insiders"; while his Snopeses are what we might now think of as more "mainstream" writers, but with a maverick or independent sensibility that marks them, for Hugo, as fundamentally (despairing) "oustiders."
Really this seems to be less an analysis of style or biography than an instinct about personality: Krebses are confident and relatively secure in their position of dissent, whereas Snopeses are self-doubting and insecure in their positions, unable to identify with any particular group--which, paradoxically, makes them perfectly suited for canonization.
Krebs: William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Richard Wilbur, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, Allen Ginsberg.
Snopes: T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, William Stafford, Louise Bogan, James Wright, Galway Kinnell, A.R. Ammons.
Does this strike anyone else as precisely backward? Even if we accept Hugo's claim that he's judging "Not from birth and circumstance, but by virtue of how they feel about themselves and their relation with the world, as revealed in their poems," it's hard for me not to see Lowell, for example, as perfectly exemplifying the insider-turned-outsider dynamic as precisely in his poetic as he does in his life. It's just as hard for me to see even the early poetry of Williams or Pound as "insider" or as taking alienation from some "inside" as a primary theme.
I realize that part of my negative reaction is an effect Hugo carefully calculates, by neatly inverting the usual understanding of avant-garde and mainstream poetry. His Krebses are poets who would usually be called modernist or avant-garde, yet they are depicted as (alienated) "insiders"; while his Snopeses are what we might now think of as more "mainstream" writers, but with a maverick or independent sensibility that marks them, for Hugo, as fundamentally (despairing) "oustiders."
Really this seems to be less an analysis of style or biography than an instinct about personality: Krebses are confident and relatively secure in their position of dissent, whereas Snopeses are self-doubting and insecure in their positions, unable to identify with any particular group--which, paradoxically, makes them perfectly suited for canonization.
Of course, I'm being unfair to Josh. A Stanford workshop would make anyone frustrated with the clumsiness and inadequacy of words.
I do wonder exactly what a poet is supposed to do with his or her inevitable frustration with the clumsiness and inadequacy of words.
Words are all we got. The only question is what you're going to do with them.
My problem is that words are overadequate. They say more than I could want or need them to. Poetry's better than thought.
Charles Bernstein says somewhere that while both Derrida and Wittgenstein see language as the limit of our world, you can either despair (Derrida) or delight (Wittgenstein) in this fact. Not fair to either D or W, but a neat statement of the dilemma.
Words are all we got. The only question is what you're going to do with them.
My problem is that words are overadequate. They say more than I could want or need them to. Poetry's better than thought.
Charles Bernstein says somewhere that while both Derrida and Wittgenstein see language as the limit of our world, you can either despair (Derrida) or delight (Wittgenstein) in this fact. Not fair to either D or W, but a neat statement of the dilemma.
Graduate schools turn out far more “product” than the market can bear.
That's good. My stylist said: "You have to put some product in your hair to give it direction."
That's good. My stylist said: "You have to put some product in your hair to give it direction."
In Lush yesterday with Stephanie and Cassie: I wanted to eat everything. The soaps were almond cookies with a little nut in the exact center. The lotions were arranged in small dishes like gelato, or possibly tuna salad. No time to bother with forming a fetish. Just swallow whole.
I am finding myself in the position of telling you something about myself that Stephanie has already told you. This is not unlike the experience of reading Stephanie's poetry.
I am finding myself in the position of telling you something about myself that Stephanie has already told you. This is not unlike the experience of reading Stephanie's poetry.
Monday, June 09, 2003
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Just back from a fabulous poetry swap at Del's place. Blog heaven: Stephanie, Cassie, and Catherine all there, along with Jennifer and Del. (We'll get them all blogging someday.)
We were all on time today (a departure from the usual range of half-hour early to two hours late), which was perhaps a sign that everybody had their A-games: some great poems, everyone trying to do something new. (Though I've noticed the habit of tenatively handing around our poems saying, "This is kind of different then what I usually do," then having the poem sound pretty much the same as our others.) Stephanie brought "Mercury Retrograde," her ode to miscommuncation, Del offered a brilliant/disturbing riff on eyes and twitches and fathers and soft pillows, Jennifer a set of images that juxtaposed schools and churches and hot henhouses, Catherine an allusive and self-conscious poem on the dangers of self-conscious allusiveness. I tried to provide a touch of clarity.
Bread of all kinds.
We were all on time today (a departure from the usual range of half-hour early to two hours late), which was perhaps a sign that everybody had their A-games: some great poems, everyone trying to do something new. (Though I've noticed the habit of tenatively handing around our poems saying, "This is kind of different then what I usually do," then having the poem sound pretty much the same as our others.) Stephanie brought "Mercury Retrograde," her ode to miscommuncation, Del offered a brilliant/disturbing riff on eyes and twitches and fathers and soft pillows, Jennifer a set of images that juxtaposed schools and churches and hot henhouses, Catherine an allusive and self-conscious poem on the dangers of self-conscious allusiveness. I tried to provide a touch of clarity.
Bread of all kinds.
It's a relative category, but we have not been taught that. Hence my reason for raising the question in the first place. I considered it a "social" gesture on my part.
It certainly was, David--especially since you managed to pack up, move across the country, and still pick up the thread. Thanks.
It certainly was, David--especially since you managed to pack up, move across the country, and still pick up the thread. Thanks.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
Henry Gould's thrown his hat into the ring on the social poet thing. (Whew. I thought no one was listening.)
I agree that there's much more to the 20th c. (and to modernism) than anti-mass culture jeremiads. But I also think that "synthesizing" elite and mass culture is not the same thing as erasing the boundaries between them, or writing as if for an undifferentiated audience.
Again, I think that "social" is a confusing term here, perhaps not the right one to talk about the kind of poetic traits we're talking about. How does it overlap with two other terms: "political"--and just plain "good"?
My understanding of what someone like Andrews is trying to do, I would call "political" rather than "social." "Political" in poetry implies to me a critique, an opposition, a definite position against or outside some discourse that's seen as repressive (or inside one that's seen as liberating).
I'm sympathetic to David's skepticism about sweeping claims for the liberating power of Language poetry; but I don't think (unless David is referring to writings of Andrews's that I don't know, which is quite possible) that Andrews and other Language writers would go so far as to say that the text is completely collaborative or renders writer and reader "democratically" equal. Writing like Andrews's might be seen as empowering the reader by allowing her or him to play a more active role in constructing a text's meaning; but particularly in the case of Andrews's often aggressive rhetoric (yes, the voices are really mean), this is less an invitation than a compulsion. The reader is forced, due to the poem's resistant/"offensive" surface, to recognize his or her role in making meaning, one which is always present but rarely acknowledged. As Ron Silliman puts it somewhere (I can't recall where at the moment), the reader is given certain freedoms but he, as the writer, still gets to "determine, unilaterally" what the terms of that freedom will be. Language writing shows us how chained we are as much as (if not more than) it shows us how we're free.
David says, rightly, that Andrews's writing "becomes 'social' by its language"--as does any writing. Andrews simply seeks to call our attention to this tautology. I agree that readings arguing Language writing is without content (advanced sometimes by the poets themselves) are misguided, but I would not equate "content" in some narrow sense with the social.
I wouldn't agree that a project like Andrews's requires one to be "totally pessimistic" about communication. Against transparency, in a narrow sense, perhaps. But also utterly optimistic in its attempt to find new ways, outside of what it understands as a given system ("electro-convulsive opinions") to make poetic connections. (The "optimism" of Bernstein's "strategy of tactics.")
So maybe everybody's a social poet? This would seem to be one implication of Henry's argument ("poetry-making is inherently social") and even of David's (if language is what's social then any writer is a social writer). Which makes the category less than useful.
I can't help but feel (although David's denied this) that calling someone a social poet is a marker of value, that really this is a way of grappling with whether we feel Andrews is a successful, effective, good poet or not. To answer this I think we'd need to ask not whether Andrews is social but how, and whether his way of engaging with "the social" seems more or less effective, responsible, compelling than John Ashbery's, Jack Spicer's, June Jordan's, or anybody else's.
I agree that there's much more to the 20th c. (and to modernism) than anti-mass culture jeremiads. But I also think that "synthesizing" elite and mass culture is not the same thing as erasing the boundaries between them, or writing as if for an undifferentiated audience.
Again, I think that "social" is a confusing term here, perhaps not the right one to talk about the kind of poetic traits we're talking about. How does it overlap with two other terms: "political"--and just plain "good"?
My understanding of what someone like Andrews is trying to do, I would call "political" rather than "social." "Political" in poetry implies to me a critique, an opposition, a definite position against or outside some discourse that's seen as repressive (or inside one that's seen as liberating).
I'm sympathetic to David's skepticism about sweeping claims for the liberating power of Language poetry; but I don't think (unless David is referring to writings of Andrews's that I don't know, which is quite possible) that Andrews and other Language writers would go so far as to say that the text is completely collaborative or renders writer and reader "democratically" equal. Writing like Andrews's might be seen as empowering the reader by allowing her or him to play a more active role in constructing a text's meaning; but particularly in the case of Andrews's often aggressive rhetoric (yes, the voices are really mean), this is less an invitation than a compulsion. The reader is forced, due to the poem's resistant/"offensive" surface, to recognize his or her role in making meaning, one which is always present but rarely acknowledged. As Ron Silliman puts it somewhere (I can't recall where at the moment), the reader is given certain freedoms but he, as the writer, still gets to "determine, unilaterally" what the terms of that freedom will be. Language writing shows us how chained we are as much as (if not more than) it shows us how we're free.
David says, rightly, that Andrews's writing "becomes 'social' by its language"--as does any writing. Andrews simply seeks to call our attention to this tautology. I agree that readings arguing Language writing is without content (advanced sometimes by the poets themselves) are misguided, but I would not equate "content" in some narrow sense with the social.
I wouldn't agree that a project like Andrews's requires one to be "totally pessimistic" about communication. Against transparency, in a narrow sense, perhaps. But also utterly optimistic in its attempt to find new ways, outside of what it understands as a given system ("electro-convulsive opinions") to make poetic connections. (The "optimism" of Bernstein's "strategy of tactics.")
So maybe everybody's a social poet? This would seem to be one implication of Henry's argument ("poetry-making is inherently social") and even of David's (if language is what's social then any writer is a social writer). Which makes the category less than useful.
I can't help but feel (although David's denied this) that calling someone a social poet is a marker of value, that really this is a way of grappling with whether we feel Andrews is a successful, effective, good poet or not. To answer this I think we'd need to ask not whether Andrews is social but how, and whether his way of engaging with "the social" seems more or less effective, responsible, compelling than John Ashbery's, Jack Spicer's, June Jordan's, or anybody else's.
Friday, June 06, 2003
Until this week, David and I lived in contiguous states. As of August, we will again live in contiguous states.
These states, of course, are those of inspiration & madness.
These states, of course, are those of inspiration & madness.
POPULAR MECHANICS: the perfect Father's Day gift.
I'm in there next to Stephanie, which is dreamy. If we had gone to elementary school together I probably would have sat right behind her and dunked her pigtails into the inkwell.
I'm in there next to Stephanie, which is dreamy. If we had gone to elementary school together I probably would have sat right behind her and dunked her pigtails into the inkwell.
Somebody finally noticed that I update my archives! Use those permalinks.
Thanks, Laurable--stay awhile.
Thanks, Laurable--stay awhile.
Thursday, June 05, 2003
I guess the HiH honeymoon's over.
If a social poet is "One who makes an art that transcends or destroys the division between populism and elitism," then I'm even more convinced that there is no such thing as a social poet, at least in the 20th century. (Spicer: "No one listens to poetry.") Poetry at least since modernism seems predicated on a struggle with its own marginalization in the culture; in modernism, this emerges as a critique of mass culture and an attempt to reorder that culture through poetic forms, while in postmodernism poetry's "elitism" has really been superseded by its irrelevance, so that it's perhaps better thought of as a coterie or subcultural practice.
Even Yeats--the only 20th-c poet I can think of who might fit David's definition of social--relies not so much on abolishing populism vs. elitism but on tacking between the two of them, employing them both as modes, but with each always maintaing an awareness of the other.
Maybe I'm just grouchy. I'm still glad David's back.
If a social poet is "One who makes an art that transcends or destroys the division between populism and elitism," then I'm even more convinced that there is no such thing as a social poet, at least in the 20th century. (Spicer: "No one listens to poetry.") Poetry at least since modernism seems predicated on a struggle with its own marginalization in the culture; in modernism, this emerges as a critique of mass culture and an attempt to reorder that culture through poetic forms, while in postmodernism poetry's "elitism" has really been superseded by its irrelevance, so that it's perhaps better thought of as a coterie or subcultural practice.
Even Yeats--the only 20th-c poet I can think of who might fit David's definition of social--relies not so much on abolishing populism vs. elitism but on tacking between the two of them, employing them both as modes, but with each always maintaing an awareness of the other.
Maybe I'm just grouchy. I'm still glad David's back.
Whatever You Want Is What You Want:
21 Responses for Jim Behrle
1. Critic & Poet = Lisa & Bart.
2. The Matrix is the matrix.
3. Rip every page out of every book you read and deface it beyond recognition.
4. John Ashbery and a stripper walk into a bar. The stripper says, "Isn’t it delightful that we’re not shaped by the past?" John Ashbery doesn’t answer, having been knocked unconscious by the sound of the past coming thunderously.
5. "Make it new" is something some old guy wrote on a bathtub, As
6. Opposed to washing himself in it.
7. You’re disappointing yourself.
8. I was trying to talk to my mom but she was too busy telling me how I needed a parachute to escape from my apartment and that they were on sale at Wal-Mart for $12.99.
9. I’m a firefighter disguised as an arsonist. You
10. Are the fire.
11. I think much better in the avant than in the post.
12. Spiral binding is oppressive. Saddle-stapling is oppressive. Glossy paper is oppressive. Post-It Notes are oppressive.
13. Maybe both.
14. If I met you in a dark alley I’d be the one with empty pockets.
15. Whatever you want is what you want and you are to want it.
16. Your story is a silent treatment.
17. Selling lies is a full-time job. Poets only work part time.
18. The 20th century sucked. The 21st is avant-suck.
19. I was teaching one day and one of my students raised his hand and asked, "Did you polish your shoes?"
20. Everyone who now has power will lose it to other people who will then have power.
21. Books are the matrix.
21 Responses for Jim Behrle
1. Critic & Poet = Lisa & Bart.
2. The Matrix is the matrix.
3. Rip every page out of every book you read and deface it beyond recognition.
4. John Ashbery and a stripper walk into a bar. The stripper says, "Isn’t it delightful that we’re not shaped by the past?" John Ashbery doesn’t answer, having been knocked unconscious by the sound of the past coming thunderously.
5. "Make it new" is something some old guy wrote on a bathtub, As
6. Opposed to washing himself in it.
7. You’re disappointing yourself.
8. I was trying to talk to my mom but she was too busy telling me how I needed a parachute to escape from my apartment and that they were on sale at Wal-Mart for $12.99.
9. I’m a firefighter disguised as an arsonist. You
10. Are the fire.
11. I think much better in the avant than in the post.
12. Spiral binding is oppressive. Saddle-stapling is oppressive. Glossy paper is oppressive. Post-It Notes are oppressive.
13. Maybe both.
14. If I met you in a dark alley I’d be the one with empty pockets.
15. Whatever you want is what you want and you are to want it.
16. Your story is a silent treatment.
17. Selling lies is a full-time job. Poets only work part time.
18. The 20th century sucked. The 21st is avant-suck.
19. I was teaching one day and one of my students raised his hand and asked, "Did you polish your shoes?"
20. Everyone who now has power will lose it to other people who will then have power.
21. Books are the matrix.
Slow blog day--I think Long Nose P.B. took a lot out of Stephanie & Kasey.
Humanities Center end-of-year picnic. I got an award for "Coolest Shoes."
Then spent two hours at the emergency room with a friend who pulled/tore something in her calf playing frisbee at the picnic. She kept telling the nurses that she was injured trying to catch a frisbee "from a Macedonian," insisting that this was crucial medical information.
Emergency rooms are weird places, although not weird in the way they are on TV. It was mostly huddled family groups, each a little knot of anxiety but surrounded by a matrix of bureaucratic calm, eveything in slow motion. There was a boy crawling around on the floor with a dump truck and wearing a shirt that seemed to have big bloodstains on the shoulders, though he looked unhurt.
Humanities Center end-of-year picnic. I got an award for "Coolest Shoes."
Then spent two hours at the emergency room with a friend who pulled/tore something in her calf playing frisbee at the picnic. She kept telling the nurses that she was injured trying to catch a frisbee "from a Macedonian," insisting that this was crucial medical information.
Emergency rooms are weird places, although not weird in the way they are on TV. It was mostly huddled family groups, each a little knot of anxiety but surrounded by a matrix of bureaucratic calm, eveything in slow motion. There was a boy crawling around on the floor with a dump truck and wearing a shirt that seemed to have big bloodstains on the shoulders, though he looked unhurt.
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Long Nose Pinocchio Bitch
No long-john sense of humor
is gonna long for this room.
Are water balloons good or evil? That’s what
Italian tai chi is asking you, boy,
in your sleeping bag with your Pulitzer Prize
attached at the grunt and push, stepped-
up nose like the biggest icicle you never
saw in the mirror, no matter how hard you rubbed.
The bitch rooster’s on TV until
the pink gorilla sprouts headfirst from
his pink rabbit jacket painted pricks and
the man’s face in its pirate mask
sees Pinocchio with his broken cucumber.
"Whoa," he says, but the earplugs keep
the lies pulled through and gagging.
That eyebrow’s definitely made of pine.
Freckles are sprayed all over and swept away.
That sad throat, that long perk
is a deep black e-mail nursing her
in Pinocchio’s actress hands.
Ringlets: extremely shallow.
A stale patriotism spirals up
long-distance to the conscious nose,
clawing like it missed what she’s made of.
Sally’s stomach was long and tall,
like a sharp soldier made of e-mail
or a blogging silver spear.
Close up [close-up]: a national valentine.
The thing about a hairstyle is it can catch on fire,
say Inspector Gepetto and General Melanie,
working hard at the zoo
for an iced coffee and Shelley’s alias.
That long-haired inseam’s my Barney dog,
reading horny lollypops with its nose like Winnie,
a starchild prostitute, a Scorpius pumpkin pie:
my arch-enemy Jimmy, my Pinocchio face.
[Stephanie's] [Kasey's]
No long-john sense of humor
is gonna long for this room.
Are water balloons good or evil? That’s what
Italian tai chi is asking you, boy,
in your sleeping bag with your Pulitzer Prize
attached at the grunt and push, stepped-
up nose like the biggest icicle you never
saw in the mirror, no matter how hard you rubbed.
The bitch rooster’s on TV until
the pink gorilla sprouts headfirst from
his pink rabbit jacket painted pricks and
the man’s face in its pirate mask
sees Pinocchio with his broken cucumber.
"Whoa," he says, but the earplugs keep
the lies pulled through and gagging.
That eyebrow’s definitely made of pine.
Freckles are sprayed all over and swept away.
That sad throat, that long perk
is a deep black e-mail nursing her
in Pinocchio’s actress hands.
Ringlets: extremely shallow.
A stale patriotism spirals up
long-distance to the conscious nose,
clawing like it missed what she’s made of.
Sally’s stomach was long and tall,
like a sharp soldier made of e-mail
or a blogging silver spear.
Close up [close-up]: a national valentine.
The thing about a hairstyle is it can catch on fire,
say Inspector Gepetto and General Melanie,
working hard at the zoo
for an iced coffee and Shelley’s alias.
That long-haired inseam’s my Barney dog,
reading horny lollypops with its nose like Winnie,
a starchild prostitute, a Scorpius pumpkin pie:
my arch-enemy Jimmy, my Pinocchio face.
[Stephanie's] [Kasey's]
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
I couldn't resist this one, either:
In Midwinter, an Odd Thing Can Happen Halfway Through a McDonald Sandwich
Luis Cabalquinto
I am eating a sandwich at McDonald’s.
It is in a large empty patio, white space.
It is midwinter, and cold.
A sparrow flies in suddenly—
Hops about under the tables.
I throw a crumb which lands at his feet.
He sees the piece of bread, takes it.
He looks at me, blinks, and flies away.
The rest of my sandwich tastes like birdshit.
In Midwinter, an Odd Thing Can Happen Halfway Through a McDonald Sandwich
Luis Cabalquinto
I am eating a sandwich at McDonald’s.
It is in a large empty patio, white space.
It is midwinter, and cold.
A sparrow flies in suddenly—
Hops about under the tables.
I throw a crumb which lands at his feet.
He sees the piece of bread, takes it.
He looks at me, blinks, and flies away.
The rest of my sandwich tastes like birdshit.
More from the Winter 1983 issue of Bridge:
The Pulse
Arthur Sze
A woman in a psychiatric ward
is hysterical; she has to get a letter
to God by tomorrow or
the world will end. Which root
of a chamisa grows and grows?
Which dies? An analysis of
the visual cortex of the brain
cofines your world-view even as you
try to enlarge it? I walk
down an arroyo lined with old tires
and broken glass, feel a pulse,
a rhythm in silence, a slow
blooming of leaves. I know
it is unlikely, but feel I could
find the bones of a whale
as easily as a tire iron.
I shut my eyes, green water flowing
in the acequia never returns.
The Pulse
Arthur Sze
A woman in a psychiatric ward
is hysterical; she has to get a letter
to God by tomorrow or
the world will end. Which root
of a chamisa grows and grows?
Which dies? An analysis of
the visual cortex of the brain
cofines your world-view even as you
try to enlarge it? I walk
down an arroyo lined with old tires
and broken glass, feel a pulse,
a rhythm in silence, a slow
blooming of leaves. I know
it is unlikely, but feel I could
find the bones of a whale
as easily as a tire iron.
I shut my eyes, green water flowing
in the acequia never returns.
The creepiest thing in this week's New Yorker isn't the article on Gertrude Stein that has Michael Magee all in a huff. It's the moment in the article on movie remake maven Roy Lee in which he's described has having been "self-conscious about his appearance" as a child ("another boy, in high school, would tug down the folds of his eyes and chant, 'I dropped a bomb on you!'")--as if being Asian American were like having an embarrassing elementary-school haircut.
Monday, June 02, 2003
California Tim now also comes with a dog.
Her name is Terra and we just picked her up from the Peninsula Humane Society. She's a 3-year-old yellow Lab. She was just spayed this morning so she's mostly been lying down between bouts of wandering around listlessly.
I've never had a pet in my house. My family did have a Rottweiler puppy during the year we lived in Taiwan but it was pretty much an outdoor dog and when it was inside we were terrified of it, probably because the dog we had in our house back home was a porcelain Dalmatian (think Wheel of Fortune). It's strange having an animal--another living thing--inside the house all the time, being semi-alone but never quite.
She's doing everything she can to allay my fears, though, by being about the sweetest creature imaginable (albeit with one of the saddest faces I've ever seen).
She is phenomenal at catching tennis balls.
Her name is Terra and we just picked her up from the Peninsula Humane Society. She's a 3-year-old yellow Lab. She was just spayed this morning so she's mostly been lying down between bouts of wandering around listlessly.
I've never had a pet in my house. My family did have a Rottweiler puppy during the year we lived in Taiwan but it was pretty much an outdoor dog and when it was inside we were terrified of it, probably because the dog we had in our house back home was a porcelain Dalmatian (think Wheel of Fortune). It's strange having an animal--another living thing--inside the house all the time, being semi-alone but never quite.
She's doing everything she can to allay my fears, though, by being about the sweetest creature imaginable (albeit with one of the saddest faces I've ever seen).
She is phenomenal at catching tennis balls.
From the Winter 1983 literary issue of Bridge:
Two Voices for Li Shang-yin
John Yau
First Voice
Tonight, I would rather stay up than dream,
For I can no longer bear to meet you
In the only room we share.
And yet, I do not want to share
Myself with anyone but you,
Who left me imprisoned in a dream.
Second Voice
Your perfume still floats through the house.
If only you had been a ghost and kept your name.
If only you had been like the leaves
And drifted quickly past my house.
To the children I am an old and foolish man,
I talk to the shadows gliding through my house.
Two Voices for Li Shang-yin
John Yau
First Voice
Tonight, I would rather stay up than dream,
For I can no longer bear to meet you
In the only room we share.
And yet, I do not want to share
Myself with anyone but you,
Who left me imprisoned in a dream.
Second Voice
Your perfume still floats through the house.
If only you had been a ghost and kept your name.
If only you had been like the leaves
And drifted quickly past my house.
To the children I am an old and foolish man,
I talk to the shadows gliding through my house.
Josh, I say stick with the title. It's mathy with a cryptic air. Descriptive. Whirls and nectarines are so 1913.
Stanzas Beginning with Some Lines of Rumsfeld
People study things all the time that don't lead to things
and it is not pursuing
us down the back-
alley procedure—an
elevated
state of why
and it is not developing
horns, tumors, or other
old-growth failings
in the results drawn
from a scoured trailer
it is not building
white cities in the
civilized silt, ran-
sacked and hard
against blistered skin
it is not manufacturing
the closed-up case
of sugar water, its
fizzy lust
for the tongue
and it’s not deploying
freedom across a
flooding plain, one
stop-dike finger,
one scrabbling hand
and it is not using
what it knows of us
for pleasure—only
caring what
can be made of it
People study things all the time that don't lead to things
and it is not pursuing
us down the back-
alley procedure—an
elevated
state of why
and it is not developing
horns, tumors, or other
old-growth failings
in the results drawn
from a scoured trailer
it is not building
white cities in the
civilized silt, ran-
sacked and hard
against blistered skin
it is not manufacturing
the closed-up case
of sugar water, its
fizzy lust
for the tongue
and it’s not deploying
freedom across a
flooding plain, one
stop-dike finger,
one scrabbling hand
and it is not using
what it knows of us
for pleasure—only
caring what
can be made of it
Jim, you are an interesting newcomer. (#21.)
It also appears that Kasey and I deserve some of the credit.
It also appears that Kasey and I deserve some of the credit.
Sunday, June 01, 2003
I'd have to come in several models. Boston Tim would have to have the Tealuxe thermos (cream Earl Grey) strapped to his belt because he'd have a Pinocchio's spinach slice in one hand and Tommy's garlic bread in the other.
California Tim would have a cell phone and rollerblades and a backpack shaped like a beetle.
Both come standard with nondescript composition book filled with nonsensical verse.
California Tim would have a cell phone and rollerblades and a backpack shaped like a beetle.
Both come standard with nondescript composition book filled with nonsensical verse.
Another problem. We were recently actually looking for an action figure that might vaguely resemble me (long story) and it turns out there's really only one.
I was hoping my action figure would have something a little more glamorous, like a lightsaber. Like those old Luke Skywalker ones where the lightsaber was actually implanted in Luke's arm and you moved a little tab up this groove on the underside of his arm and the piece of orange plastic would gradually emerge from his outstreched hand.
Hmm.
Actually if I had an accessory it would probably be a sad duck.
Hmm.
Actually if I had an accessory it would probably be a sad duck.
Friday, May 30, 2003
John Erhardt and I have been having an (uh-oh) "interesting" exchange on Ammons, after his posting of an Ammons poem and my "huh?" response. John's put up an informative and longer post on Ammons, apparently previously Bloggobbled.
Stephanie says some of Kasey's categories were arranged "alphabetically, which seemed properly democratic." Stephanie--I would have thought that as somebody else who has a "Y" last name you'd recognize the alphabet for the repressive apparatus that it is!
I shouldn't pick on her. My links are alphabetical too. But by title.
I hope the cat comes back.
I shouldn't pick on her. My links are alphabetical too. But by title.
I hope the cat comes back.
Wow. Jordan reads me on the subway. On his Handspring.
if I didn't download 'em I'd never get any work done.
Clever solution. I just don't get any work done.
if I didn't download 'em I'd never get any work done.
Clever solution. I just don't get any work done.
While I am by no means a Robert Pinsky fan, I have to admire his willingness to do ugly things to get his point across.
I guess I am still a little confused over what David means by a "social poet."
Initially I thought he meant a quality of writing: a poetry which creates (as he put it) "a social language that desires all to speak, hear and be heard." You could argue that O'Hara has this quality in the way he lets "everything" into the poem, no matter how ephemeral or casual; but the question is whether "all" means "other people," whether other voice that are not O'Hara's are heard and welcomed in the work or whether we still hear O'Hara behind it all. You could also argue (in doctrinaire langpo style) that Andrews has this quality because he directly engages the reader, forcing attention onto the way the reader (not just the writer) is implicated in the language that makes up the poem, that his "Hey you" style forces you to respond in some way.
But the "social" also seems to overlap with a biographical quality (shades of psychological criticism!): the "social" (networking, scenester, movement) poet vs. the loner, the homeless maverick. I guess neither O'Hara nor Andrews would be "asocial" on these grounds, which is why I imagine Adorno wouldn't have been too fond of either of them.
And then vs. the political (i.e. the critical?)--in David's sense it seems you could be social without being political, inclusive of the social world without necessarily being critical of it and seeking change.
If I'm being cynical I might even say that there is no poet who is truly social in David's terms, even if we endorse a bardic notion in which a poet speaks for a community--for even in this model, the poet is speaking on behalf of others rather than allowing or encouraging others to speak.
Whitman is perhaps the most inclusive of modern poets. But when we read Whitman, do we really hear the voices of all those persons he evokes? Or do we simply hear the ever more expansive and all-absorbing voice and ego of Whitman?
Initially I thought he meant a quality of writing: a poetry which creates (as he put it) "a social language that desires all to speak, hear and be heard." You could argue that O'Hara has this quality in the way he lets "everything" into the poem, no matter how ephemeral or casual; but the question is whether "all" means "other people," whether other voice that are not O'Hara's are heard and welcomed in the work or whether we still hear O'Hara behind it all. You could also argue (in doctrinaire langpo style) that Andrews has this quality because he directly engages the reader, forcing attention onto the way the reader (not just the writer) is implicated in the language that makes up the poem, that his "Hey you" style forces you to respond in some way.
But the "social" also seems to overlap with a biographical quality (shades of psychological criticism!): the "social" (networking, scenester, movement) poet vs. the loner, the homeless maverick. I guess neither O'Hara nor Andrews would be "asocial" on these grounds, which is why I imagine Adorno wouldn't have been too fond of either of them.
And then vs. the political (i.e. the critical?)--in David's sense it seems you could be social without being political, inclusive of the social world without necessarily being critical of it and seeking change.
If I'm being cynical I might even say that there is no poet who is truly social in David's terms, even if we endorse a bardic notion in which a poet speaks for a community--for even in this model, the poet is speaking on behalf of others rather than allowing or encouraging others to speak.
Whitman is perhaps the most inclusive of modern poets. But when we read Whitman, do we really hear the voices of all those persons he evokes? Or do we simply hear the ever more expansive and all-absorbing voice and ego of Whitman?
I stacked the deck a little in the O'Hara/Andrews cage match, I think. O'Hara seems inward, concerned with his own "sordid identifications"; while Andrews is (aggressively) outward, portraying "You as the human labor saving device," a product of all the economic and political discourses that plug up the poem's arteries.
But both are a kind of slide show of social roles that "I" or "you" might be pressed into. If O'Hara has a gleeful freedom, there's also the "constant anxiety over looks," the sense of the self as a dissipating mist and as a ($2,000,000) commodity. And if in Andrews "you" are helplessly interpellated (by "money gobble gobble money") there's a chance of finding a crack in the delirious excess, the reframing and jumping from one language to another, knowing that "the situation has a situation." Which optimism? and which grace?
But both are a kind of slide show of social roles that "I" or "you" might be pressed into. If O'Hara has a gleeful freedom, there's also the "constant anxiety over looks," the sense of the self as a dissipating mist and as a ($2,000,000) commodity. And if in Andrews "you" are helplessly interpellated (by "money gobble gobble money") there's a chance of finding a crack in the delirious excess, the reframing and jumping from one language to another, knowing that "the situation has a situation." Which optimism? and which grace?
"Thinking in poetry," for me, was greatly nourished by "thinking in postcards." If sitting down to write each day--and needing to produce something before a 5 p.m. postmark deadline--was daunting in the abstract, the actually small size of the blank space I had to fill was comforting, a perfect example of constraint producing freedom. Each postcard on its own was "minor," enough if it captured a stray thought or scrap of conversation--Cassie sent me at least one single-line postcard, but I always felt compelled to fill the whole space, a leftover reflex I guess from the grade-school short answer test.
The form also blunted my usual instinct for closure. I'd run out of space before I could come up with some dramatic flourish, which is almost always for the best.
And for some reason I wrote a bunch of things that rhymed.
Hotel in Afternoon Sunshine
Cars nose in rows
to the floodgates: those
varied finishes
permit no blemishes.
Why a hotel should rhyme
is beyond me: a crime
against my usual
distaste for the audible
The form also blunted my usual instinct for closure. I'd run out of space before I could come up with some dramatic flourish, which is almost always for the best.
And for some reason I wrote a bunch of things that rhymed.
Hotel in Afternoon Sunshine
Cars nose in rows
to the floodgates: those
varied finishes
permit no blemishes.
Why a hotel should rhyme
is beyond me: a crime
against my usual
distaste for the audible
I'd like to be "contagiously smart & supple & capacious" (& seductive) when discussing poetry.
Too late, Stephanie--you already are.
Stephanie comes about as close to that blogtopia as anybody I can think of--how "our lives & poetry cross each other's boundaries," exactly.
I'll admit that in that region I've been tentative. My poetry seemed to get better when I stopped talking about myself.
And contaigous--it was reading Stephanie's blog that started me down this lonely road. Reading her makes me want to move to the Bay Area. And I already live here.
And yes, cheers to Steve for getting down & dirty in the bloggy muck with the rest of us.
Too late, Stephanie--you already are.
Stephanie comes about as close to that blogtopia as anybody I can think of--how "our lives & poetry cross each other's boundaries," exactly.
I'll admit that in that region I've been tentative. My poetry seemed to get better when I stopped talking about myself.
And contaigous--it was reading Stephanie's blog that started me down this lonely road. Reading her makes me want to move to the Bay Area. And I already live here.
And yes, cheers to Steve for getting down & dirty in the bloggy muck with the rest of us.
Thursday, May 29, 2003
HiH has returned to the question of a "social" poet and whether Frank O'Hara and/or Bruce Andrews might be one.
David had originally asked:
Who is the more 'social' poet -- Frank O'Hara or Bruce Andrews? It would seem that optimism or something resembling grace would be an axiom of a truly social poetry. As I define it are there then any social language poets?
Perhaps then the role of the poet is not to create a discourse in which only the initiate can participate but a social language that desires all to speak, hear and be heard.
To which I responded:
iI guess I think of O'Hara as less a social than a sociable poet, someone who's always talking to everybody and reporting on talking to everybody, friendly and open in that way--but the question is whether that sociability is just being reported on at a remove or whether the reader is really invited into it, included in it.
You make the call. Two examples, chosen at semi-random.
O'Hara, from "In Memory of My Feelings" (chosen in part because David cited "grace" as one of the qualities of a social poet):
Beards growing, and the constant anxiety
over looks. I'll shave before she wakes up. Sam Goldwyn
spent $2,000,000 on Anna Sten, but Grushenka left America.
One of me is standing in the waves, an ocean bather,
or I am naked with a plate of devils at my hip.
Grace
to be born and live as variously as possible. The conception
of the masque barely suggests the sordid identifications.
I am a Hittite in love with a horse. I don't know what blood's
in me I feel like an African prince I am a girl walking downstairs
in a red pleated dress I am a champion taking a fall
I am a jockey with a sprained ass-hole I am the light mist
in which a face appears
Andrews, from "Mistaken Identity":
The situation has a situation
Electro-convulsive opinions eat us
Pig brink dollarization, the marriage of money gobble gobble money
Profit margin american cream dream cultures of vultures
A social predicament, the losers are self-preoccupied
Jellyfish FBI -- are you a vending machine?
Who fights the free? -- at least the exploited ones have a future
Dayglo ethics, corporate global chucksteak
Lose the flag, nightstick imitation value goosing me
Estados Unidos, suck o loaded pistol
Scale model blonde -- zoloft, paxil, luvox, celexa
Need money? -- it's easy, it's simple
Dot-commie foreskin arrevederci
Hot mark-up johnny on the spectacle
You as the human labor saving device
Culture, please -- all very non-missionary
Massive doses of dog tranquilizer -- to stop being reeducated
Hostesss of the ecosystem
David had originally asked:
Who is the more 'social' poet -- Frank O'Hara or Bruce Andrews? It would seem that optimism or something resembling grace would be an axiom of a truly social poetry. As I define it are there then any social language poets?
Perhaps then the role of the poet is not to create a discourse in which only the initiate can participate but a social language that desires all to speak, hear and be heard.
To which I responded:
iI guess I think of O'Hara as less a social than a sociable poet, someone who's always talking to everybody and reporting on talking to everybody, friendly and open in that way--but the question is whether that sociability is just being reported on at a remove or whether the reader is really invited into it, included in it.
You make the call. Two examples, chosen at semi-random.
O'Hara, from "In Memory of My Feelings" (chosen in part because David cited "grace" as one of the qualities of a social poet):
Beards growing, and the constant anxiety
over looks. I'll shave before she wakes up. Sam Goldwyn
spent $2,000,000 on Anna Sten, but Grushenka left America.
One of me is standing in the waves, an ocean bather,
or I am naked with a plate of devils at my hip.
Grace
to be born and live as variously as possible. The conception
of the masque barely suggests the sordid identifications.
I am a Hittite in love with a horse. I don't know what blood's
in me I feel like an African prince I am a girl walking downstairs
in a red pleated dress I am a champion taking a fall
I am a jockey with a sprained ass-hole I am the light mist
in which a face appears
Andrews, from "Mistaken Identity":
The situation has a situation
Electro-convulsive opinions eat us
Pig brink dollarization, the marriage of money gobble gobble money
Profit margin american cream dream cultures of vultures
A social predicament, the losers are self-preoccupied
Jellyfish FBI -- are you a vending machine?
Who fights the free? -- at least the exploited ones have a future
Dayglo ethics, corporate global chucksteak
Lose the flag, nightstick imitation value goosing me
Estados Unidos, suck o loaded pistol
Scale model blonde -- zoloft, paxil, luvox, celexa
Need money? -- it's easy, it's simple
Dot-commie foreskin arrevederci
Hot mark-up johnny on the spectacle
You as the human labor saving device
Culture, please -- all very non-missionary
Massive doses of dog tranquilizer -- to stop being reeducated
Hostesss of the ecosystem
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
"The captain from Star Trek (he was Royal Shakespeare first, I just found out) in X-Men-Two, with a helmet on his head, in that giant brain machine, concentrating hard enough to find every single mutant on earth, who appeared to him as red whisps of light."
"A diary, then, warped by the knowledge that others are reading it."
"A meditation tool, or, less pretentiously, a technique for paying attention."
"The way something I say may or may not be picked up for discussion--and in unpredictable ways."
"It amuses me and some others, it helps me work things through and it sharpens my typing skills. "
"I'm predicting more beating of brains all around."
"I have trouble saying the word 'blog'."
"The existentialist revolution, touring the sand of the inflamed puritans, quit copulating with fountains."
"Any binary with 'party' as one of the terms is an okay binary with me."
"A diary, then, warped by the knowledge that others are reading it."
"A meditation tool, or, less pretentiously, a technique for paying attention."
"The way something I say may or may not be picked up for discussion--and in unpredictable ways."
"It amuses me and some others, it helps me work things through and it sharpens my typing skills. "
"I'm predicting more beating of brains all around."
"I have trouble saying the word 'blog'."
"The existentialist revolution, touring the sand of the inflamed puritans, quit copulating with fountains."
"Any binary with 'party' as one of the terms is an okay binary with me."
Finally getting around to responding to Steve Evans's "widening the frame" around the whole Gustave "I Don't Blog" Flaubert thing.
I think it's fair to say that critique—not pick-a-fight polemic, but fair-minded and well-argued critique—is not the form's strong suit so far.
Sigh. I guess I've been on about this since day one, when I suggested that Ron Silliman tugged the blog back toward a print-culture model of critique, but that this seemed to represent the far end of a continuum that also incorporated much more casual, diaristic, and ephemeral forms. Steve's posting of a short essay (rather than, say, a daybook entry alone) in response to some of this blog conversation is along the Silliman model, and has some of the same virtues: it gives us all a fixed point against which to respond, focuses a conversation, as opposed to the trying-to-hit-a-moving-target quality of a series of blog exchanges. It also makes it more likely that I'll respond directly to Steve rather than trying to track all the various threads. (Constraints of the medium: it's not incidental that Steve's remarks live at a stable address that isn't going to change, whereas this post will almost immediately be pushed down the page, bloggered permalink and all.)
I'm suspicious, though, about the binary: "fair-minded and well-argued critique" vs. "party," excess and indulgence. Critical rigor can be a fetish of its own, more a style than a value, and one that's constituitive of the medium of print (where I live too). It seems odd to expect a blog to be a book review, or Addison and Steele online. Some of us do write reviews, and essays; I suppose I could write my dissertation in installments on my blog, but I doubt anyone would or could read it in that form. (Perhaps not in any other, either, but that's another story.) Indeed, it's a bit chilling to me that in a group of bloggers and readers ostensibly committed to poetry that any form of prose that does not conform to an expository paradigm risks being labeled as not "serious," not useful to reading and understanding.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to spoil the party. I don't want to claim that blogs have to be regarded as serious or critical or well argued. I simply don't want those terms to be the only markers of value in discourse. They don't capture what seems most interesting to me in blogging. I don't think we have to embrace some vision of blogtopia (and Steve's account of that still has a whiff of the blogger as anti-intellectual that worries me, as if we had to be tricked into thinking), of blogging as a radical alternative to academic discourse, to say that blogging has a use.
Could we have more talk about poetry? Sure--and not just on blogs either. When I posted on Nick Flynn a while back I got more email than I had in a while--that kind of capsule review has a use, gives us a text as a touchstone for discussion and (dis)agreement. I'm glad Ron Silliman is posting that sort of work every day. I'm also glad others aren't.
Finally: Flaubert's collected correspondence comprises four volumes coming to nearly 2000 pages. He still seemed to have enough gas left in the tank for a few novels.
I think it's fair to say that critique—not pick-a-fight polemic, but fair-minded and well-argued critique—is not the form's strong suit so far.
Sigh. I guess I've been on about this since day one, when I suggested that Ron Silliman tugged the blog back toward a print-culture model of critique, but that this seemed to represent the far end of a continuum that also incorporated much more casual, diaristic, and ephemeral forms. Steve's posting of a short essay (rather than, say, a daybook entry alone) in response to some of this blog conversation is along the Silliman model, and has some of the same virtues: it gives us all a fixed point against which to respond, focuses a conversation, as opposed to the trying-to-hit-a-moving-target quality of a series of blog exchanges. It also makes it more likely that I'll respond directly to Steve rather than trying to track all the various threads. (Constraints of the medium: it's not incidental that Steve's remarks live at a stable address that isn't going to change, whereas this post will almost immediately be pushed down the page, bloggered permalink and all.)
I'm suspicious, though, about the binary: "fair-minded and well-argued critique" vs. "party," excess and indulgence. Critical rigor can be a fetish of its own, more a style than a value, and one that's constituitive of the medium of print (where I live too). It seems odd to expect a blog to be a book review, or Addison and Steele online. Some of us do write reviews, and essays; I suppose I could write my dissertation in installments on my blog, but I doubt anyone would or could read it in that form. (Perhaps not in any other, either, but that's another story.) Indeed, it's a bit chilling to me that in a group of bloggers and readers ostensibly committed to poetry that any form of prose that does not conform to an expository paradigm risks being labeled as not "serious," not useful to reading and understanding.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to spoil the party. I don't want to claim that blogs have to be regarded as serious or critical or well argued. I simply don't want those terms to be the only markers of value in discourse. They don't capture what seems most interesting to me in blogging. I don't think we have to embrace some vision of blogtopia (and Steve's account of that still has a whiff of the blogger as anti-intellectual that worries me, as if we had to be tricked into thinking), of blogging as a radical alternative to academic discourse, to say that blogging has a use.
Could we have more talk about poetry? Sure--and not just on blogs either. When I posted on Nick Flynn a while back I got more email than I had in a while--that kind of capsule review has a use, gives us a text as a touchstone for discussion and (dis)agreement. I'm glad Ron Silliman is posting that sort of work every day. I'm also glad others aren't.
Finally: Flaubert's collected correspondence comprises four volumes coming to nearly 2000 pages. He still seemed to have enough gas left in the tank for a few novels.
I won one round with Nick but too tired for another round tonight. It's that July surge in the NL Central followed by the August meltdown.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
At another point I went out and got some postcards with entries from those "Worst-Case Scenario" handbooks on them. They were thick and rigid, like a coaster, with rounded edges and a yellow border. This led to poems with titles like "How to Survive an Avalanche" and "How to Break Down a Door." Instruct & delight.
I wrote my first postcard poem to Cassie on New Year's Day in my parents' living room in Chicago, having returned that afternoon from New York, where I'd sort of been able to see the festivities in Times Square from my hotel room; if I squeezed behind the desk, pressed my nose against the glass, and looked between my building and the next one I could see a lot of cold people standing motionless and shoulder-to-shoulder in what the police had called, not even bothering to euphemize, "holding pens." Avril Lavigne was allegedly playing on a rooftop somewhere, but it mostly sounded like somebody too close to the microphone at a school assembly.
I'd found an old shoebox in a closet full of postcards from places I didn't remember ever having been, including the exterior of a nondescript hotel in Japan, the back of a catamaran, and Disneyland. One of these last had a lot of bizarre machinery on the front and the caption "Welcome to Tomorrowland," which seemed appropriate, and off I went.
The best thing about the project was the ritual of writing every day, and of making a physical object that I would then walk over to the campus post office and put in an actual mailbox to send to an actual person who would actually read it and who would then write something in return. My favorite poems were poems in which Cassie and I responded to each other, riffing off each other's lines, though with a weird time delay because of the inordinate amount of time it takes a piece of mail to get from Palo Alto to Fremont (via Oakland, mind you).
I'd found an old shoebox in a closet full of postcards from places I didn't remember ever having been, including the exterior of a nondescript hotel in Japan, the back of a catamaran, and Disneyland. One of these last had a lot of bizarre machinery on the front and the caption "Welcome to Tomorrowland," which seemed appropriate, and off I went.
The best thing about the project was the ritual of writing every day, and of making a physical object that I would then walk over to the campus post office and put in an actual mailbox to send to an actual person who would actually read it and who would then write something in return. My favorite poems were poems in which Cassie and I responded to each other, riffing off each other's lines, though with a weird time delay because of the inordinate amount of time it takes a piece of mail to get from Palo Alto to Fremont (via Oakland, mind you).
my ship does not need
a helmsman.
only a woman
who strokes my
brow
and laughs
at the moon
when it is full.
It may be that the political power of this poem is in its pathos—its moving picture of a life lost to history, which might spur a reader into compassion and action. But there can be no question that its emotional effect derives directly from its explict turn away from politics, from the "helmsmen" of the public world, whether they be statesmen or community organizers. If this, for writers like Hongo, is Asian American poetry coming into its maturity, it does so by separating the public and private and severing poetry’s explicit links to politics.
Whew.
a helmsman.
only a woman
who strokes my
brow
and laughs
at the moon
when it is full.
It may be that the political power of this poem is in its pathos—its moving picture of a life lost to history, which might spur a reader into compassion and action. But there can be no question that its emotional effect derives directly from its explict turn away from politics, from the "helmsmen" of the public world, whether they be statesmen or community organizers. If this, for writers like Hongo, is Asian American poetry coming into its maturity, it does so by separating the public and private and severing poetry’s explicit links to politics.
Whew.
Settling in for an evening of
Chin here articulates his now-famous argument that Chinese American culture and sensibility is entirely distinct, utterly different from either Chinese or white American culture, and grounded in the historical experience of Chinese in America. But his rage is as much aesthetic as ideological: his major complaint is simply that Bridge is full of bad writing.
and suchlike thoughts.
Chin here articulates his now-famous argument that Chinese American culture and sensibility is entirely distinct, utterly different from either Chinese or white American culture, and grounded in the historical experience of Chinese in America. But his rage is as much aesthetic as ideological: his major complaint is simply that Bridge is full of bad writing.
and suchlike thoughts.
Monday, May 26, 2003
Joseph Duemer has posted an interesting link to an article about how blog discussions develop, complete with diagrams.
I'm sympathetic to Duemer's desire to have some kind of blog-hand that would pull together and sort all the threads of a discussion--being a big sorter and sum-upper myself--but admit that I sort of like the decentralized model of blogging, in part because I like the pace it sets to a discussion--you have to go out and seek out others' responses and then compose your own without them all landing in your inbox. If the model of "progress" in discussion is, say, the Poetics list--ugh.
I'm sympathetic to Duemer's desire to have some kind of blog-hand that would pull together and sort all the threads of a discussion--being a big sorter and sum-upper myself--but admit that I sort of like the decentralized model of blogging, in part because I like the pace it sets to a discussion--you have to go out and seek out others' responses and then compose your own without them all landing in your inbox. If the model of "progress" in discussion is, say, the Poetics list--ugh.
I edged Nick by about 20 minutes in the late-night posting game on Saturday night, if you don't factor in the time difference, but he gave me a real pasting last night: my last post was at 7:01 pm, his at 3:48 am. But I've got that presentation tomorrow, so I may give him a run for his money tonight.
I know I'm just staving off the inevitable defeat. But hey, I'm a Cubs fan.
I know I'm just staving off the inevitable defeat. But hey, I'm a Cubs fan.
Josh says he is going to an "Ammons-themed" dinner tomorrow night! I love it. Everyone will have to wear buttons that say "I Am Ezra" and the garbage can will be wrapped in a big loop of adding-machine tape. Not to mention the masks.
John Erhardt wrote me with his defense of Ammons, which Jonathan Mayhew's interested in as well:
I can only provide you with a subjective defense of why I like Ammons:
1. His enjambed lines aren't simply governed by a pause
2. He introduced (or helped to introduce) the vocabulary of science to poetry
3. He was never part of a community, a complete outsider
4. He wrote really short poems and really long poems -- some sense of range
5. His adding machine tape poems are no more or less arbitrary than the Bernadette Mayer experiments
6. While I'm not a member of the Pacific Northwest Fly-Fishing Aesthetic, I do like being outdoors, and am still moved by poets who aren't afraid to write about what William Matthews described as "I went to the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious."
7. He had little to no formal training in poetry, and so discoveries were his own
8. He wasn't really dragging a century of poetic baggage along with him
As for whether he's dull or not (or a great poet, for that matter), well, I don't know. There are plenty of poets who I think are dullards that nobody else does. I think a lot of the arguments that indict Ammons for being dull have to be used to indict other poets as well, such as Levertov or some Schuyler. Blackburn, too, or Dorn or Oppenheimer.
I'm curious, though, what you mean by "metrical," if you mean it in the traditional sense of the word. Ammons ISN'T metrical in the "poetic foot" sense -- so you're right. His lines are breath-based, more like how Creeley or Olson weren't basing their metrics on the foot, but something else. As for self-deflating metaphysics, you might be right though, again, I don't think that's enough to dismiss him outright, or even to knock him back a couple of pegs -- even Jorie Graham's "dream" of a unified field theory is self-deflating, in a way, since it's not really real. Yet.
I guess what I meant by "metrical" included the breath-based line, something more like what Williams called a "feel for the measure." This has always been a problem for me: how do you judge a poet's skill in using a breath-based line? You can't know how long or precise that person's breath is, right? A breath line only seems convincing to me (and it's not as if I don't love Olson, Creeley, Ginsberg, Levertov et al) if it develops its own integrity, its own self-sustaining rhythm, but ultimately that's something that has to happen in the ear of the listener, and so is much more subjective, I suppose. Bottom line is I feel it in Creeley, but not so much in Ammons. But I frequently don't feel it in Levertov either.
It's quite possible I'm speaking from ignorance, not being familiar with the bulk of Ammons's work. I guess I just keep going into bookstores and picking up "Garbage" and reading a page or two and then putting it back down. What strikes me as strange is, as you've pointed out, Ammons has a lot of things in common with poets I do like, and even looks and sounds like some of them. Maybe this goes back to the metaphysics thing: the abstractions, the reaching for a quasi-religious high seriousness--it often seems to me as if it might be better served by a long discursive line rather than a short compressed one, which strikes me as working better with the radically reduced and concrete vocabulary you might find in Williams, Creeley, Levertov. The mode of thinking in a short line seems different than the mode of thinking in a long one.
I can only provide you with a subjective defense of why I like Ammons:
1. His enjambed lines aren't simply governed by a pause
2. He introduced (or helped to introduce) the vocabulary of science to poetry
3. He was never part of a community, a complete outsider
4. He wrote really short poems and really long poems -- some sense of range
5. His adding machine tape poems are no more or less arbitrary than the Bernadette Mayer experiments
6. While I'm not a member of the Pacific Northwest Fly-Fishing Aesthetic, I do like being outdoors, and am still moved by poets who aren't afraid to write about what William Matthews described as "I went to the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious."
7. He had little to no formal training in poetry, and so discoveries were his own
8. He wasn't really dragging a century of poetic baggage along with him
As for whether he's dull or not (or a great poet, for that matter), well, I don't know. There are plenty of poets who I think are dullards that nobody else does. I think a lot of the arguments that indict Ammons for being dull have to be used to indict other poets as well, such as Levertov or some Schuyler. Blackburn, too, or Dorn or Oppenheimer.
I'm curious, though, what you mean by "metrical," if you mean it in the traditional sense of the word. Ammons ISN'T metrical in the "poetic foot" sense -- so you're right. His lines are breath-based, more like how Creeley or Olson weren't basing their metrics on the foot, but something else. As for self-deflating metaphysics, you might be right though, again, I don't think that's enough to dismiss him outright, or even to knock him back a couple of pegs -- even Jorie Graham's "dream" of a unified field theory is self-deflating, in a way, since it's not really real. Yet.
I guess what I meant by "metrical" included the breath-based line, something more like what Williams called a "feel for the measure." This has always been a problem for me: how do you judge a poet's skill in using a breath-based line? You can't know how long or precise that person's breath is, right? A breath line only seems convincing to me (and it's not as if I don't love Olson, Creeley, Ginsberg, Levertov et al) if it develops its own integrity, its own self-sustaining rhythm, but ultimately that's something that has to happen in the ear of the listener, and so is much more subjective, I suppose. Bottom line is I feel it in Creeley, but not so much in Ammons. But I frequently don't feel it in Levertov either.
It's quite possible I'm speaking from ignorance, not being familiar with the bulk of Ammons's work. I guess I just keep going into bookstores and picking up "Garbage" and reading a page or two and then putting it back down. What strikes me as strange is, as you've pointed out, Ammons has a lot of things in common with poets I do like, and even looks and sounds like some of them. Maybe this goes back to the metaphysics thing: the abstractions, the reaching for a quasi-religious high seriousness--it often seems to me as if it might be better served by a long discursive line rather than a short compressed one, which strikes me as working better with the radically reduced and concrete vocabulary you might find in Williams, Creeley, Levertov. The mode of thinking in a short line seems different than the mode of thinking in a long one.
Sunday, May 25, 2003
The New York Times has blog fever--there's an article today on photo blogs, which is not quite as dumb as the one last week--the author seems to have actually spent a little time looking at a few.
Question for The Skeptic (and anyone else who would care to chime in): What is the deal with Ammons? I've never really been able to figure out why he's been awarded the status of great poet; his work's always struck me as kind of dull--short lines but without a real metrical charge, a kind of self-deflating metaphysics. But I'd be interested to hear a strong defense of him.
Looking for some academic discourse to spice up your Tuesday evening?
The Asian Americas Workshop at the Stanford Humanities Center cordially invites you to the following presentation and discussion:
"Asian American Poetry in the 1970s"
Timothy Yu
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English
Tuesday, May 27, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall (bldg 460)
Poetry played a surprisingly central role in Asian American activism in the 1970s, appearing widely in early Asian American publications and anthologies. But in contrast to the Asian American poetry now represented in mainstream collections and surveys, the work of the 1970s is a politically urgent writing that employs a wide range of styles, from Beat to haiku to spoken word. This talk draws on early Asian American magazines and anthologies from Stanford's Emory Lee Collection to show how Asian American poets negotiated politics and poetic form in this post-New Left period, including writers such as Lawson Fusao Inada, Janice Mirikitani, and Frank Chin.
I'll tell you more about what I'm talking about as soon as I know, which we all hope is sooner rather than later.
The Asian Americas Workshop at the Stanford Humanities Center cordially invites you to the following presentation and discussion:
"Asian American Poetry in the 1970s"
Timothy Yu
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English
Tuesday, May 27, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall (bldg 460)
Poetry played a surprisingly central role in Asian American activism in the 1970s, appearing widely in early Asian American publications and anthologies. But in contrast to the Asian American poetry now represented in mainstream collections and surveys, the work of the 1970s is a politically urgent writing that employs a wide range of styles, from Beat to haiku to spoken word. This talk draws on early Asian American magazines and anthologies from Stanford's Emory Lee Collection to show how Asian American poets negotiated politics and poetic form in this post-New Left period, including writers such as Lawson Fusao Inada, Janice Mirikitani, and Frank Chin.
I'll tell you more about what I'm talking about as soon as I know, which we all hope is sooner rather than later.
I'm finally on a crush list! It's not Jim's. But I'll take it.
Let's see if I can be up blogging later than Nick tonight. He has that East Coast time zone advantage though.
Let's see if I can be up blogging later than Nick tonight. He has that East Coast time zone advantage though.
Cassie has seen The Matrix! Waiting to see if poetry as we know it has been changed forever.
Slavoj Zizek:
"When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film--namely, to an idiot. A man in his late twenties at my right was so immersed in the film that he all the time disturbed other spectators with loud exclamations, like 'My God, wow, so there is no reality!'"
Slavoj Zizek:
"When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film--namely, to an idiot. A man in his late twenties at my right was so immersed in the film that he all the time disturbed other spectators with loud exclamations, like 'My God, wow, so there is no reality!'"
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Steve Evans has posted a longer excerpt of the Flaubertian proto-blog critique, as well as a thoughtful response to Kasey's calling him out.
Poetry Espresso, discussion group and poetry publisher extraordinaire, has a new website up, complete with a Cassie Lewis home page, which will, for better or worse, prevent this picture from being Cassie's main presence in cyberspace.
Friday, May 23, 2003
I guess I was being too sensitive. But I think I will now refer to it as "TBFKAJMB." Or just: "The Blog."
My friend Alex von Krogh (hi Alex) is probably one of the few non-poetry folks who even knows of the existence of this blog. I think we started talking about it when we were having lunch one day and Alex said he was starting to write restaurant reviews for Citysearch, which prompted me to reveal my own web presence.
He likes my font.
Alex has recent reviews up of Jackson Fillmore and Victor's Pizzeria: "try the rigatoni Bolognese or the steaming lasagna, oozing with cheese."
He likes my font.
Alex has recent reviews up of Jackson Fillmore and Victor's Pizzeria: "try the rigatoni Bolognese or the steaming lasagna, oozing with cheese."
The quote:
"Gustave Flaubert, proleptic critic of blog culture: "In fact, there is nothing more pernicious than being able to say everything and having a convenient outlet. You become very indulgent with yourself; and your friends are the same with you, in order that you may be so with them" (Letter to Louise Colet, 31 March 1853)."
Ouch. But of course there's irony too: it is a letter to a friend, after all.
I suppose this would only be a problem if you saw your blog as a place where you really did "say everything." I don't see that in most of the blogs I read; some are more diaristic than others, but for the most part they seem to be one aspect of a mind, one face (of many) turned towards the world, one mode of writing among others. My blog doesn't "say everything" any more than a given poem or paper I might write would.
The William Gibson quote I cited yesterday makes explicit what I think the Flaubert quote suggests: doing too much "informal" writing makes you lazy, slack, saps energy from the real task of serious writing. What seems wrong with this is that it assumes a closed economy of writing: you have a certain amount of writing energy to expend, and if you spend it blogging you will have none left for poetry, novels, whatever. I think the economy of writing is open: that writing breeds more writing.
Perhaps it's different for Gibson, a novelist who actually sells books, than for a poet, whose network of circulation is necessarily much smaller, more informal, more local. Maybe the sci-fi "fanzine" scene itself is a better analogy: a small but impassioned group with shared texts and interests, producing material that's constantly in dialogue.
And what's "safe," really, about an informal relationship with your readers? I think such relationships are much more risky than, say, simply writing a poem and sending it off to some magazine whose editor you don't know and whose readership you'll never meet. When you know your audience, there's that risk that they'll talk back, get angry, call you on something stupid that you said: what you say matters.
"Gustave Flaubert, proleptic critic of blog culture: "In fact, there is nothing more pernicious than being able to say everything and having a convenient outlet. You become very indulgent with yourself; and your friends are the same with you, in order that you may be so with them" (Letter to Louise Colet, 31 March 1853)."
Ouch. But of course there's irony too: it is a letter to a friend, after all.
I suppose this would only be a problem if you saw your blog as a place where you really did "say everything." I don't see that in most of the blogs I read; some are more diaristic than others, but for the most part they seem to be one aspect of a mind, one face (of many) turned towards the world, one mode of writing among others. My blog doesn't "say everything" any more than a given poem or paper I might write would.
The William Gibson quote I cited yesterday makes explicit what I think the Flaubert quote suggests: doing too much "informal" writing makes you lazy, slack, saps energy from the real task of serious writing. What seems wrong with this is that it assumes a closed economy of writing: you have a certain amount of writing energy to expend, and if you spend it blogging you will have none left for poetry, novels, whatever. I think the economy of writing is open: that writing breeds more writing.
Perhaps it's different for Gibson, a novelist who actually sells books, than for a poet, whose network of circulation is necessarily much smaller, more informal, more local. Maybe the sci-fi "fanzine" scene itself is a better analogy: a small but impassioned group with shared texts and interests, producing material that's constantly in dialogue.
And what's "safe," really, about an informal relationship with your readers? I think such relationships are much more risky than, say, simply writing a poem and sending it off to some magazine whose editor you don't know and whose readership you'll never meet. When you know your audience, there's that risk that they'll talk back, get angry, call you on something stupid that you said: what you say matters.
Stephanie with some good remarks on Steve Evans's Flaubertian critique of blogging: too tired to respond in full now, but it puts me somewhat in mind of something I came across on William Gibson's blog from a few weeks back on blogging. Still not sure how I feel about this one, but:
"One of the reasons, I'm convinced, that I've been able to produce even the few novels I have is that, almost from the start, I largely swore off less formal avenues of literary expression. The culture of SF, particularly, seemed to me to be studded with truly scary examples of talented writers who had chosen to sublimate their energies in SF's native (and relatively ancient) fanzine scene, the geniuses of which (and there arguably were a few) eventually (and perhaps inevitably?) evolved their own equivalents of blogging.
It's the "conversational" aspect, I think, that keeps this kind of writing from really getting off the ground. You see the initial lift into heightened language, into intent, but when the wings begin to wobble (as they invariably will) there's always the option of safe and instantaneous descent back into a fundamentally informal relationship with the reader. There's no risk involved. Unless, if you're accustomed to playing for higher stakes, it's the risk of some edge being taken off your game."
"One of the reasons, I'm convinced, that I've been able to produce even the few novels I have is that, almost from the start, I largely swore off less formal avenues of literary expression. The culture of SF, particularly, seemed to me to be studded with truly scary examples of talented writers who had chosen to sublimate their energies in SF's native (and relatively ancient) fanzine scene, the geniuses of which (and there arguably were a few) eventually (and perhaps inevitably?) evolved their own equivalents of blogging.
It's the "conversational" aspect, I think, that keeps this kind of writing from really getting off the ground. You see the initial lift into heightened language, into intent, but when the wings begin to wobble (as they invariably will) there's always the option of safe and instantaneous descent back into a fundamentally informal relationship with the reader. There's no risk involved. Unless, if you're accustomed to playing for higher stakes, it's the risk of some edge being taken off your game."
Thursday, May 22, 2003
How do I get into the school of louditude? They've probably got affirmative action for us quiet Asians.
Aargh! I have been called "too obvious" by a man who named his blog after himself! It's like the pot calling the kettle Ron Silliman.
Cassie! Kasey! Cassie! Kasey!
You are invited to
Friday Night Readings
at David & Diane's apartment
695 35th Ave. #204
San Francisco
415.221.4272
enjoy your favorite poets in a cozy environment with refreshments and friends... bring some beer, wine, or a snack
coming up:
Friday, May 30, 7.30pm ˆ Owen Hill and Alex Blasdel
Owen Hill is the author of six books of poetry and the „poet detective‰ mystery novel The Chandler Apartments, chosen by the Chicago Tribune as one of the best mysteries of 2002; Alex Blasdel attended Deep Springs and will leave this fall to study ancient Greek at Oxford.
Friday, June 13, 7.30pm ˆ K. Silem Mohammad and Cassie Lewis
K. Silem Mohammad is the author of Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003) and hovercraft (Kenning, 2000). Kasey has poems, essays, and reviews in recent or forthcoming issues of 88, Antennae, Aufgabe, Combo, The Hat, Kiosk, New American Writing, Poetry Project Newsletter, The San Jose Manual of Style, Syllogism, and VeRT. He lives and teaches in Santa Cruz. His blog can be found at http://limetree.blogspot.com. Cassie Lewis is originally from Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in the Bay Area since 2000. Her most recent chapbook is Winter District (Potes & Poets). She runs an e-mail discussion group, Poetry Espresso, and publishes the Postcard Poem series. http://www.topica.com/lists/PoetryEspresso
Directions:
Public trans: From downtown San Francisco, take the 38 Geary or the 31 Balboa, and get off at 35th Ave. Driving: drive to 35th and Balboa, park; my building is the big one on the northwest corner of the street. Ring the buzzer for apartment 204. NOTE: the phone will be turned off after 8pm, so don‚t be late!!!
You are invited to
Friday Night Readings
at David & Diane's apartment
695 35th Ave. #204
San Francisco
415.221.4272
enjoy your favorite poets in a cozy environment with refreshments and friends... bring some beer, wine, or a snack
coming up:
Friday, May 30, 7.30pm ˆ Owen Hill and Alex Blasdel
Owen Hill is the author of six books of poetry and the „poet detective‰ mystery novel The Chandler Apartments, chosen by the Chicago Tribune as one of the best mysteries of 2002; Alex Blasdel attended Deep Springs and will leave this fall to study ancient Greek at Oxford.
Friday, June 13, 7.30pm ˆ K. Silem Mohammad and Cassie Lewis
K. Silem Mohammad is the author of Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003) and hovercraft (Kenning, 2000). Kasey has poems, essays, and reviews in recent or forthcoming issues of 88, Antennae, Aufgabe, Combo, The Hat, Kiosk, New American Writing, Poetry Project Newsletter, The San Jose Manual of Style, Syllogism, and VeRT. He lives and teaches in Santa Cruz. His blog can be found at http://limetree.blogspot.com. Cassie Lewis is originally from Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in the Bay Area since 2000. Her most recent chapbook is Winter District (Potes & Poets). She runs an e-mail discussion group, Poetry Espresso, and publishes the Postcard Poem series. http://www.topica.com/lists/PoetryEspresso
Directions:
Public trans: From downtown San Francisco, take the 38 Geary or the 31 Balboa, and get off at 35th Ave. Driving: drive to 35th and Balboa, park; my building is the big one on the northwest corner of the street. Ring the buzzer for apartment 204. NOTE: the phone will be turned off after 8pm, so don‚t be late!!!
Happy birthday, SHAMPOO!
The THIRD ANNIVERSARY ISSUE of SHAMPOO -- Issue 17 -- is now available for your follicular pleasure at:
www.ShampooPoetry.com
where you'll find lovely new poems by Kirby Wright, Maw Shein Win, Dylan Willoughby, Nick Whittock, Eileen Tabios and David Hess, Alex Stolis, Juliana Spahr, Philippe Soupault (translated by Tom Hibbard), Shafer and Melissa, Phoebe Sayornis, Suzy Saul, Barbara Jane Reyes, Sarah E. Rehmer, Mark Peters, Chad Parenteau, Chris Murray, Sheila E. Murphy, Murray Moulding, Joseph Victor Milford, Seth McMillan, Bryan Martin and Louis T. Gordy, Cassie Lewis, Susan Landers, Mark Lamoureux, Julie Kizershot, Kevin Killian, W.B. Keckler, Jill Jones, Susan Gevirtz, Kira Frederick, Michael Farrell, Nava Fader, Denise Duhamel, Laurie Duggan, William Corbett, Megan Burns, Anselm Berrigan, Bill Berkson, and Carl Annarummo.
As if that weren't enough, there are also awesome postcard poems by Tim Yu, Stephanie Young, Matthew Wascovich, Nick Piombino, Cassie Lewis, Peter Davis, Jennifer Dannenberg, and Jim Behrle, PLUS a nice play by Gary Sullivan, a nice essay by Michael Farrell, and peachy SHAMPOOart by Erin Kim.
Thank you so much for using SHAMPOO!
Apply twice (or so). Rinse well,
Del Ray Cross, Editor
SHAMPOO
clean hair / good poetry
www.ShampooPoetry.com
The THIRD ANNIVERSARY ISSUE of SHAMPOO -- Issue 17 -- is now available for your follicular pleasure at:
www.ShampooPoetry.com
where you'll find lovely new poems by Kirby Wright, Maw Shein Win, Dylan Willoughby, Nick Whittock, Eileen Tabios and David Hess, Alex Stolis, Juliana Spahr, Philippe Soupault (translated by Tom Hibbard), Shafer and Melissa, Phoebe Sayornis, Suzy Saul, Barbara Jane Reyes, Sarah E. Rehmer, Mark Peters, Chad Parenteau, Chris Murray, Sheila E. Murphy, Murray Moulding, Joseph Victor Milford, Seth McMillan, Bryan Martin and Louis T. Gordy, Cassie Lewis, Susan Landers, Mark Lamoureux, Julie Kizershot, Kevin Killian, W.B. Keckler, Jill Jones, Susan Gevirtz, Kira Frederick, Michael Farrell, Nava Fader, Denise Duhamel, Laurie Duggan, William Corbett, Megan Burns, Anselm Berrigan, Bill Berkson, and Carl Annarummo.
As if that weren't enough, there are also awesome postcard poems by Tim Yu, Stephanie Young, Matthew Wascovich, Nick Piombino, Cassie Lewis, Peter Davis, Jennifer Dannenberg, and Jim Behrle, PLUS a nice play by Gary Sullivan, a nice essay by Michael Farrell, and peachy SHAMPOOart by Erin Kim.
Thank you so much for using SHAMPOO!
Apply twice (or so). Rinse well,
Del Ray Cross, Editor
SHAMPOO
clean hair / good poetry
www.ShampooPoetry.com
Did anybody catch the article in the Sunday Times on blogging? I just came across it. It's pretty fluffy--mostly about the perils of talking about your relationships on your blog and having your family and friends reading it.
But the kicker: there is a sidebar proclaiming the emergence of, I kid you not, "the New York School of blogging," a veritable "literary clique" led by "Gawker," coiner of such terms as "zeta-jonesing" and "zellweggering." Gag me.
But the kicker: there is a sidebar proclaiming the emergence of, I kid you not, "the New York School of blogging," a veritable "literary clique" led by "Gawker," coiner of such terms as "zeta-jonesing" and "zellweggering." Gag me.
This just in. I imagine that half of you will laugh heartily at the other half of you that will now scramble to put together an abstract.
Call for Papers
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs
ABSTRACTS DUE JUNE 30, 2003
Ed. by the University of Minnesota Blog Collective
Smiljana Antonijevic, Laura Gurak, Laurie Johnson, Jim Oliver, Clancy Ratliff, Jessica Reyman, Sathya Yesuraja
The editors invite submissions for a new online edited collection exploring discursive, visual, and other communicative features of weblogs. We are interested in submissions that analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and the weblog community. Although we are open to a wide range of scholarly approaches, our primary interest is in essays that comment upon specific features of the weblog and that treat the weblog as always a part of a larger community network.
Categories around which essays may cohere include:
--Social and Psychological Perspectives
--Visual Features, including Interface Design and Navigation
--Rhetorical and Linguistic Features of Weblog Discourse
--Pedagogical Implications
--Intellectual Property
--Race, Class, and Gender
--Intercultural Communication
Because blogs, like the Internet, have a global reach, we encourage an international scope as well.
Along with this being the first scholarly collection of its type focused on weblog as rhetorical artifact, we are also taking an innovative approach to publishing and intellectual property. Weblogs represent the power of regular people to use the Internet for publishing. The ethos of blogging is collaborative and values the sharing of ideas; bloggers are not dependent on publishers to get their words out. In the same manner, the editors of this collection will publish the collection online. We will use a peer-review process to ensure scholarly quality. But like a weblog, the collection will be available to all, although authors will retain their own copyrights. We intend to obtain a version of a Creative Commons license.
The members of the collective welcome the opportunity to discuss the scope of the collection or directions for essays with prospective authors. We may be contacted at collection@intotheblogosphere.org.
Abstracts of approximately 250 words should clearly identify the disciplinary focus as well as the specific case or artifact to be studied. Send abstracts via email by midnight, June 30, 2003. Our editorial collective will review the abstracts and make an initial selection. We will respond by early August. Full submissions of approximately 3,000 words will be due in November; these essays will be peer-reviewed.
Call for Papers
Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs
ABSTRACTS DUE JUNE 30, 2003
Ed. by the University of Minnesota Blog Collective
Smiljana Antonijevic, Laura Gurak, Laurie Johnson, Jim Oliver, Clancy Ratliff, Jessica Reyman, Sathya Yesuraja
The editors invite submissions for a new online edited collection exploring discursive, visual, and other communicative features of weblogs. We are interested in submissions that analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and the weblog community. Although we are open to a wide range of scholarly approaches, our primary interest is in essays that comment upon specific features of the weblog and that treat the weblog as always a part of a larger community network.
Categories around which essays may cohere include:
--Social and Psychological Perspectives
--Visual Features, including Interface Design and Navigation
--Rhetorical and Linguistic Features of Weblog Discourse
--Pedagogical Implications
--Intellectual Property
--Race, Class, and Gender
--Intercultural Communication
Because blogs, like the Internet, have a global reach, we encourage an international scope as well.
Along with this being the first scholarly collection of its type focused on weblog as rhetorical artifact, we are also taking an innovative approach to publishing and intellectual property. Weblogs represent the power of regular people to use the Internet for publishing. The ethos of blogging is collaborative and values the sharing of ideas; bloggers are not dependent on publishers to get their words out. In the same manner, the editors of this collection will publish the collection online. We will use a peer-review process to ensure scholarly quality. But like a weblog, the collection will be available to all, although authors will retain their own copyrights. We intend to obtain a version of a Creative Commons license.
The members of the collective welcome the opportunity to discuss the scope of the collection or directions for essays with prospective authors. We may be contacted at collection@intotheblogosphere.org.
Abstracts of approximately 250 words should clearly identify the disciplinary focus as well as the specific case or artifact to be studied. Send abstracts via email by midnight, June 30, 2003. Our editorial collective will review the abstracts and make an initial selection. We will respond by early August. Full submissions of approximately 3,000 words will be due in November; these essays will be peer-reviewed.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
and it is not pursuing
and it is not developing
it is not building
it is not manufacturing
and it's not deploying
and it is not using
and it is not developing
it is not building
it is not manufacturing
and it's not deploying
and it is not using
The kinds of things sleep-deprived grad students talk about: Last night I was asking a friend whether the title of the TV show "Judging Amy" was a pun or not. Our instinct was to say no. But we decided, like good grad students, to consult ye old OED:
"The use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect..."
which proved our point, we thought: "judge" is simply being used as part of two different parts of speech here, not to have different meanings. But the definition finishes:
"a play on words"
which I guess could be anything, so oh well. What would you call something like that then?
Also totally puzzled by the explosion of similar TV/movie titles, like "Crossing Jordan," "Serving Sara," etc. (I can't decide if "Being John Malkovich" counts.) Robin suggested that it was a kind of academic trickle-down effect, since academic books have been having that construction for at least a decade now. (On my bookcase right now, I can see "Mapping the Ethical Turn," "Opposing Poetries," and "Breaking Silence.") In that case, we can probably blame Woody Allen.
"The use of a word in such a way as to suggest two or more meanings or different associations, or the use of two or more words of the same or nearly the same sound with different meanings, so as to produce a humorous effect..."
which proved our point, we thought: "judge" is simply being used as part of two different parts of speech here, not to have different meanings. But the definition finishes:
"a play on words"
which I guess could be anything, so oh well. What would you call something like that then?
Also totally puzzled by the explosion of similar TV/movie titles, like "Crossing Jordan," "Serving Sara," etc. (I can't decide if "Being John Malkovich" counts.) Robin suggested that it was a kind of academic trickle-down effect, since academic books have been having that construction for at least a decade now. (On my bookcase right now, I can see "Mapping the Ethical Turn," "Opposing Poetries," and "Breaking Silence.") In that case, we can probably blame Woody Allen.
Kasey thinks Jonathan Mayhew's Blog needs a non-eponymous name.
How about: "Mayhem!"
I guess that's sort of a compromise.
How about: "Mayhem!"
I guess that's sort of a compromise.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Clarity's shatterproof, haywire-thin,
Sop-strapped in a phony spring. Her
Blacksheep sigh's behind dark glass
For now, a hard edge moving through
My words like an eyeless root.
The benevolent secretaries of the space-age whim
Transcribe by committee, reluctant and free.
In the next installment she's the novice, held
Together by papier-mache. We descend
By degrees into the real, a lens through which
To return the favor of the sunlight's glint
Off the waveless lake. I know this taste
Is caught in a closing iris, a shorthaired
Element in the snowglobe view: but how
To tell beam from breaking, skin pulling clean
From the web of nerves beneath?
Along the geosexual axis
She's moving to a proven beat, a renal
Projection in real time,
No flounce or figure in the wishing.
Music swells in its sac, through which
Light can be distinguished from darkness and
Shapes make themselves heard as they ripen out.
Sop-strapped in a phony spring. Her
Blacksheep sigh's behind dark glass
For now, a hard edge moving through
My words like an eyeless root.
The benevolent secretaries of the space-age whim
Transcribe by committee, reluctant and free.
In the next installment she's the novice, held
Together by papier-mache. We descend
By degrees into the real, a lens through which
To return the favor of the sunlight's glint
Off the waveless lake. I know this taste
Is caught in a closing iris, a shorthaired
Element in the snowglobe view: but how
To tell beam from breaking, skin pulling clean
From the web of nerves beneath?
Along the geosexual axis
She's moving to a proven beat, a renal
Projection in real time,
No flounce or figure in the wishing.
Music swells in its sac, through which
Light can be distinguished from darkness and
Shapes make themselves heard as they ripen out.
For the first time this year it was actually hot here. The air had returned to its air-conditioned smell but was just the slightest bit visible, like smoke from a distant barbeque. The number of bicycles on campus seems to have instantly tripled, so that you have to dodge them even when you're standing still.
Monday, May 19, 2003
Sorry, Jim--I'm guessing that if you want to get into category BA you'll probably have to move. Don't worry, though--you can have my spot when I leave town.
Sunday, May 18, 2003
I hate Sven Birkerts.
He's got a review in the NY Times today of Margaret Atwood's new book that represents everything that makes me ill in mainstream/academic reviewing. He writes:
"Science fiction will never be Literature with a capital 'L,' and this is because it inevitably proceeds from premise rather than character...Some will ask, of course, whether there still is such a thing as 'Literature with a capital "L."' I proceed on the faith that there is. Are there exceptions to my categorical pronouncement? Probably, but I don't think enough of them to overturn it."
Never mind that Birkerts' claim is entirely tautological: SF can't be Literature because Literature is precisely that which is unmarked and pure, lacking genre, which masks the fact that Birkerts simply assumes that Literature is restricted to that which descends from the 19th-century realist novel. What gets me is what I'd call the elegiac smugness of it all, the sense that
1. the critic is totally confident that he is the last guardian of "Literature," and
2. the critic is equally confident that we live in a fallen era where "Literature" is no longer possible.
Birkerts is kind of a younger, hipper Harold Bloom, a literary doomsday prophet whose primary interest in the contemporary scene is to tell us how much better it was in the good old days. He presents his reactionary stance as somehow edgy at the same time that he's utterly dismissive of anyone who would challenge his authority as a literary arbiter.
What's so saddening about criticism like this is that it can only be entirely dead to anything new; it can never see contemporary writing as a place of excitement and discovery, but only as a realm of shortcoming and failure. Perhaps Birkerts' kind of criticism is comforting to crotchety old men who want to bemoan how the world has fallen since their day. It can only be poisonous to anyone who is still alive.
He's got a review in the NY Times today of Margaret Atwood's new book that represents everything that makes me ill in mainstream/academic reviewing. He writes:
"Science fiction will never be Literature with a capital 'L,' and this is because it inevitably proceeds from premise rather than character...Some will ask, of course, whether there still is such a thing as 'Literature with a capital "L."' I proceed on the faith that there is. Are there exceptions to my categorical pronouncement? Probably, but I don't think enough of them to overturn it."
Never mind that Birkerts' claim is entirely tautological: SF can't be Literature because Literature is precisely that which is unmarked and pure, lacking genre, which masks the fact that Birkerts simply assumes that Literature is restricted to that which descends from the 19th-century realist novel. What gets me is what I'd call the elegiac smugness of it all, the sense that
1. the critic is totally confident that he is the last guardian of "Literature," and
2. the critic is equally confident that we live in a fallen era where "Literature" is no longer possible.
Birkerts is kind of a younger, hipper Harold Bloom, a literary doomsday prophet whose primary interest in the contemporary scene is to tell us how much better it was in the good old days. He presents his reactionary stance as somehow edgy at the same time that he's utterly dismissive of anyone who would challenge his authority as a literary arbiter.
What's so saddening about criticism like this is that it can only be entirely dead to anything new; it can never see contemporary writing as a place of excitement and discovery, but only as a realm of shortcoming and failure. Perhaps Birkerts' kind of criticism is comforting to crotchety old men who want to bemoan how the world has fallen since their day. It can only be poisonous to anyone who is still alive.
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