Comments on: Writing and Failure (Part 2)

By: Anyuta

Anyuta — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:51:19 +0000

Everybody has their own strenghs and are all unique in their special way. I have no authority on the subject of poetry or writing but I could not help myself being INSPIRED by Van Walton’s message in ff. article.
WE ALL FALL DOWN
( BY VAN WALTON )
“The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life”, Proverbs11:30 (NLT)
While walking through my neighborhood following a strong summer storm, I noticed a “dent” in the landscape. Upon closer investigation I realize that one large tree had succumbed to winds of the storm. Down it went, taking several other trees down with it.
Pondering nature’s lesson, I thought about the winds that blow through our lives. I thought about how the strong stand tall and the weak fall. I flashed back to times when I’ve experienced the storms of life. I looked at that big tree and thought, “It wasn’t enough that you fell. You took others down with you.” Unfortunately, the choices we make don’t just affect us. From our decisions flow consequences that not only destroy our lives but also those in our realm of influence.
When I taught high school, I had many opportunities to listen and comment. My students bragged about their off campus, weekend activities. They thought they were having fun. Most often they were. But as in the case of most kids, their fun spilled over into unreasonable practices. When I questioned the wisdom of their choices, they inevitably replied. “Oh it’s just me. It’s not like it’s going to affect anyone else!”
WRONG!
I stole money from my mother to treat my classmates at the concession stand. When the teacher thanked my mom for her generosity, she was shocked. She had not given me money for class treats! Not only did I “fall” in the eyes of my teacher, I took my mother’s esteem as a parent down.
My son played a prank while all his friends watched. When confronted, no one confessed. They all suffered the consequences together.
A cell phone rang during a team meeting. All players lost phone privileges
A group of boys decided to spend the night at a friend’s apartment. They drank alcohol late into the night. The next morning while driving home, sirens and flashing lights pulled up behind the speeding car. The still intoxicated driver was handcuffed and taken to jail. His abandoned passengers, meanwhile, were taken down too with no way home. This is not the end of the story. One of the boys’ mothers listened to her phone messages and incredulously heard a police officer on the other end taking about the incident. With a broken heart she broke the news to her husband. Two more fell.
Thankfully, no one had died. But I remember other times kids made decisions that resulted in death.
A bonfire on a summer night can be loads of fun. Add alcohol and it becomes dangerous. Throw in a jeep, a quick run to the store and the result is deadly. That is exactly what happened a few blocks from my house. A decision not only killed a budding young adult, but it also took down the driver by terminating his career in the Air Force. It took down a mother who lost her son. It took down a group of kids who lost their reputations and credibility. It took down a community that became polarized. It took down relationships when trust was lost. It took down individuals’ character, as cynicism and doubt crept in.
Winds blow. Storms gather. A tree sways. Roots rip. Down it goes. It never falls without damaging the landscape around it. On the other hand, a strong tree that stands upright is a blessing to the entire community.
Dear Father, You know how many times I have fallen, taking others down with me. Thank You for this illustration. Remind me when I make decisions that I will not experience the consequences alone. I do not want others to suffer because of the choices I have made. Thank You for Your faithfulness, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

By: Emily Warn

Emily Warn — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:06:46 +0000

Ben, Thanks for pointing out my mistake: according to Poetry's historical index, Niedecker didn't appear in the magazine until 1933. And, I agree that someone should write about neglect's profound effect. Niedecker's poems, afterall, didn't appear in the magazine again until 1963. Emily

By: Ange

Ange — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:01:53 +0000

Hi Nada – I’ll be more than happy to elaborate in a new post in the not-too-distant future. I like to think that by experience I mean sensation, yes. But I’d like to post more substantially on the subject than a comment box allows. More soon. – A

By: Nada

Nada — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:39:45 +0000

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. I suppose I’m not sure what you mean by “experience,” exactly. Can it mean experience of vocables, moods, other writing? Or does it mean going to war, changing diapers, and so forth? Can “experience” possibly be “sensation”? Does experience of things like tastes, temperatures, textiles, and the like count as experience?
Also, if fierce writing is related to experience, does that make the writing somehow representative of that experience, or is the writing itself the experience?
Confoozed…

By: Ange

Ange — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:26:53 +0000

Brent, I see what you’re saying, and I’d love to get drawn in, but I want to read Ashton & her interlocutors first. Can we take a raincheck on this debate? I presume I’ll see the CR in my mailbox soon….

By: Ben Friedlander

Ben Friedlander — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:22:05 +0000

Emily:
Not to question your larger point—that Niedecker suffered intense isolation and neglect, of a sort that makes Zukofsky’s situation (for he too suffered those things) seem like Stein’s in Paris—but what you write is a little misleading, since Niedecker first wrote to Zukofsky after reading that issue of Poetry.
What this thread shows, I think, is that someone, really, should write a book on poetry and neglect; it’s a far more profound (and potentially saddening) subject than polemics over which poets deserve attention would lead one to think.
As anyone who has ever fallen in love with a minor poet already knows!

By: Brent Cunningham

Brent Cunningham — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:49:40 +0000

Hi Ange,
Yes, lax phrasing on my part at the very least. You’re saying that female experimentalist work gets read, presented, framed, maybe even unconciously experienced, as different and less rigorous than male experimentalism even though there’s no evidence that such lack of rigour exists anywhere in the work/s. Is that closer? Something like that is initially persuasive to me, but at the same time I’d be interested if you have some places where you see this manifesting? To me the absence of women on Christian’s list doesn’t seem like the most pointed demonstration of what you’re saying, even if it’s arguably an effect. It might be worthwhile to try to locate a work by a woman that formally, philosophically, aesthetically & in every other way can be agreed to be the equal to a similar work by a man, and point to ways it’s being talked about differently in reviews, on blogs, in marketing copy, etc. But then–and this is what I was gesturing towards–such a scientific testing of your hypothesis would still be left grappling with the dilemma of essence I think Ashton is concerned with. It’s often presented & reduced this way: either there is something about being a woman that is shared in a given culture among women of similar race and class, and which is different from being male in that culture/class/race, or there isn’t. If there is, people can always explain the different way a poetic work is being talked about as just a way of noticing that difference, and it’s hard to determine when someone is just noticing such difference versus when they’re out and out being sexist. On the other hand, if there there isn’t that commonality among women of similar experiences it makes the patriarchy look, uh, kind of relative and not as dehabilitating as it really, to my mind, is and can be. A lot of the energy of these discussions is, to me, driven by desire to find a way through this apparent contradiction. In other words: how to see gender inequality & male power as a fully real force while at the same time not restricting individual women, or their experiences, to being mere or constant ciphers for that force.
yrs,
Brent

By: Ange

Ange — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:50:53 +0000

Brent, I have a subscription, so I’ll definitely read it. I want to emphasize, though, that the idea of female experimentalism being soft or weak is not *my* characterization, but, I believe, ambient. I don’t accept the terms myself. The fiercest experimental writing, from women and men, is always related to experience in some way.

By: BRENT CUNNINGHAM

BRENT CUNNINGHAM — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:16:18 +0000

Seeing this comment thread veer toward the topic of the avant-garde and gender, I wanted to direct folks to a piece in the new Chicago Review. Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young have an engaging essay there which involves a lot of counting of the number of women in recent anthologies, recent prizewinners, publication in innovative and university presses, etc. One of their points is that despite a lot of “feminist interventions” since the 1980s, experimental poetry (or whatever you choose to call it) is still far from having achieved gender parity. The piece responds to one of the premises (but not the main thesis) of a recent essay by Jennifer Ashton, a scholar at the U of Illinois at Chicago, who asserts rather casually that such parity has more or less been reached. In both essays this “numbers game” reflects on what are really, to most everyone I think, the more interesting aesthetic and philosophical debates. The idea Ange is suggesting here–that there is a female experimentalism that is different or somehow softer than male experimentalism–would be interesting to consider in the light of these essays. While recognizing that Ashton’s argument is careful & complicated, to temp people to look at it I’ll go ahead and reduce it by saying it revolves around the philosophcial problem of gender “essentialism” and its relation to innovative form. While Ashton doesn’t spend much time on the concepts of essence or essentialism (or innovative form for that matter), she does boldly suggest that a number of avant gardists women writers (Rachel Blau DuPlessis & Kathleen Fraser most prominently) have, according to Ashton, claimed to hold “anti-essentialist” positions while being in fact embroiled in essentialist logic from the moment they connect innovative form to their or anyone’s social & political experiences as women. Anyways that’s what I took away from it, others might read it different, but I certainly found both essays worth the time.

By: Catherine Daly

Catherine Daly — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:54:26 +0000

1) in the case of paradigm shifts, such as that between victorian poetry and modernist poetry, that between modernist poetry and postmodernist poetry, or postmodern poetry and lanugage poetry, or confessional poetry and language poetry, etc.; or those between newtonian physics and relativity, or at the dawn of modern algebra / the french revolution, it is customary to note that ideas and practices seem so new that those who have been wholly devoted to the previous ideas are unable to accept the revolutionary ideas, and must die out before the new ideas can reach wide, “official” acceptance
2) I find this reinscription of Cal Bedient’s “soft avant garde” and especially the use of adjectives herein objectionable. I don’t think anyone would argue that Lyn Heijinian’s or Leslie Scalapino’s or _____’s writing is “softer” or “weaker” than that of any other writer.