Comments on: t=e=m=p=e=r=a=m=e=n=t

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:05:25 +0000

Maybe what we recognize as originality – the characteristic & inimitable sound of a particular artist – has something to do with the artist’s compositional problem of synthesizing 1) subject-matter, 2) artistic means, and 3) personality or temperament.
I can imagine the special tone a certain musician gets out of an instrument might be as much an attempt to ESCAPE from temperament as an expression of it.
The attempt is probably futile; it’s the struggle itself which adds resonance to that tone.
A work of art is partly the end result of “composing” these (3 & more) intractable elements. Maybe that’s why artists often impress us as “intractable”. See the sign? (ARTIST AT WORK)
When an artist “personalizes” a subject with such intractable responses – well, it’s how they humanize the world for us.

By: Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:54:15 +0000

Someone who can’t take his or her own side in an argument; that works pretty well as the definition of a poet…

By: Ange

Ange — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:53:02 +0000

Hi Gary & Nada – I linked to Gary’s blog so readers themselves can see the discussion. The debate at its inception was what interested me — the question of whether the lone artist is a “cliche;” the question of to what extent, say, Stein was an outsider or an insider ….
The emphasis on group formation does get a bit oppressive. And the emphasis on group formation is a legacy of left Modernism. I apologize if by inference I was accusing Gary of being a Marxist! I’m describing a general tendency, especially as received from Language poetry but also from other strains filtered through the Poetry Project.
Thanks Kate & Rachel. Kate, as to what a poet should do: be herself, I hope! I certainly wouldn’t will an Emily Dickinson model on a feisty poet any more than I’d will a Brechtian model on a contemplative….

By: Rachel Loden

Rachel Loden — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:30:47 +0000

Ange,
This is a delicious post. Thank you. I love your word intractability. Cranks are intractable; buttery sycophants are not. Of course, crankiness is not enough. But what’s more likely to be the engine of art: mutual ingratiation, or the stubbornness to resist it?
Rachel Loden

By: Katie Hartsock

Katie Hartsock — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:10:33 +0000

Thanks, Ange, for some big questions in such short space! If being eccentric means a poet is not socially engaged enough, but if being too socially engaged means that a poet numbs individual insights that could be the soul of her work, then what’s a poet to do? It is a problem parallel to the question of pride (not that this has anything to do with poets, of course)—one could be confident to the point of arrogance, or one could be proud of the fact that one is definitely not arrogant but sees oneself as a citizen among many. But, an almost bigger problem is, what if someone becomes conceited about how NOT proud they are?
This is I think a problem that can plague artists; to want so much to align themselves with the common immediacies of the world, but to do it distinctly. A Whitmanian paradox, right? Because for all his lush lists of characters and locals, his praise of crowds and folks and busy streets and bridges, he still writes after a catalogue of people he meets (in some of my favorite lines) “These come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself. Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am.”

By: Gary Sullivan

Gary Sullivan — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:40:15 +0000

Hi Ange,
I miss you, too.
You may not have seen the post to my blog from last night, but you’ll see if you read it that I’m not dismissing the idea of individuality or temperament at all. I certainly don’t believe that the individual is merely a social construction.
The “divide,” as Jack called it, between temperament and group production was really my only problem with his original argument. I don’t believe that they are mutually exclusive, and I felt his argument suggested that they were.
Here’s an excerpt from my post last night:
“This is not to merely plug Stein in to the ‘cubist’ slot–no argument from me that artists, even those associated with movements, are individuals–but to question whether her carafe is the product of a singleton or someone, as I’d argue, as much involved in group process as, in Stein’s own words, ‘writ[ing] for myself.’”
Keep the fun coming,
Gary

By: Nada

Nada — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:11:02 +0000

I don’t get how in the discussion with Jack, Gary dismissed temperament (when he was really arguing with the term,”folk artist”) or how you could put forth the bizarre assertion that Gary is some kind of hardline neo-Maoist avant-gardist who denies individual distinction or differences, or in ANY way privileges “reason” over “temperament.” That seems to me a profoundly inaccurate take on the debate (as well as on the character — dare I say TEMPERAMENT — of the man as we know him) — hardly, if I may say, “disinterested.”
“Imbued with their own intractability” — whatever. It isn’t intractability that makes people interesting; it’s sensibility. And if you haven’t got that you can’t write interesting poetry either as an individual or a member of a group (which we all, duh, simultaneously are).