Ange Mlinko

Experience, Figuration, the Avant-Garde, My Grouse

Nada Gordon wrote in this comment box:

Ange writes that,”the fiercest experimental writing… has always been related to experience in some way.” Ange, could you expand on that? It seems to me like a huge statement and I’m not convinced it’s true.

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09.25.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Christian Bök

Writing and Failure (Part 6)

Ben Friedlander has remarked in a commentary here that “readers make tradition, and so abdicate their power when they accept blindly what tradition hands down.” I agree with this statement, and I suppose that, in my acts of thinking out loud here, I am suggesting that too many critics of poetry abdicate their power to the already written, failing to recognize that most poetry deserves to be forgotten—unless it becomes an engine for subsequent innovation. I think that the avant-garde suggests that no poet can “rest on their laurels” for very long without reinventing the future of poetry itself—and hence, the avant-garde has often seen the need to revisit the neglected, unexalted techniques of writing for overlooked potentials….

09.23.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Christian Bök

Writing and Failure (Part 5)

Some commentators on this weblog have pointed out that the effects of “neglect” upon the history of poetics might constitute a great topic for a dissertation. l totally endorse this idea, and I hope that, one day, some plucky critic might embark upon such a titanic project—but I suspect that, in keeping with the cynical ironies of the academy, research about “neglect” might end up suffering from the very condition that it proposes to study, much like the virologist who ends up contracting, from his diseased patients, the very contagion that he is trying to cure. I might suggest that, even if critics deign to read such a study, thereby learning how and why great poets have, in the past, gone underestimated by their contemporaries, critics of today are still going to fail in response to these lessons of history, thereby perpetuating such neglect when faced with modern brands of poetic genius….

09.22.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Christian Bök

Writing and Failure (Part 4)

Thanks again for the ongoing comments in response to some of my thoughts. A few of you have suggested that, because no one can really know the standards by which a future reader might judge our achievements, the avant-garde makes “unanswerable” claims about the merits of its own experimentation. I propose, however, that the avant-garde still warrants an “answer” to its claims, insofar as they almost always test the degree to which critics of poetry can actually do their jobs. A modern critic who argues that we cannot test the merits of the avant-garde merely absolves themselves of any duty to confront the problems posed by such work; hence, the critic can evade any need to refashion his or her own standards of judgement—and by refusing to make any committed arguments on behalf of the new, the critic never has to risk being wrong about its value….

09.21.07 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)