Comments on: AWP, Communazis, and Me

By: Matt Burriesci

Matt Burriesci — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:48:08 +0000

A rousing discussion! I encourage everyone to submit a proposal for AWP’s 2009 conference in Chicago! (Especially Mr. Bernstein!) The panel proposal process is an open one––open to members and non-members alike–– and AWP encourages all sorts of different viewpoints to be represented. The deadline is May 1. You can submit a proposal online at http://www.awpwriter.org. Guidelines to help you craft a proposal are available there as well.
On a personal note, because I’ve worked at AWP for 10 years, and because I’ve witnessed the expansion of the conference to become one of the largest annual literary events in North America, I’m sorry to hear that some feel we’re exclusivist, or wielding some sort of aesthetic hammer. We really do feel that creating a large public space for literature once a year isn’t such a bad thing. Other artistic disciplines (dance, theater, music) have a much more sophisticated and well-financed national infrastructure, which they use to showcase their work to the public. I can name at least a dozen regional theaters off the top of my head with budgets several times the size of AWP’s. We just feel that literature shouldn’t occupy an ever-shrinking space in the public arena. If we were capable of orchestrating a conspiracy to ensure that outcome, I assure you, we would!
We welcome your ideas, and we look forward to seeing your proposals!
Matt Burriesci
Associate Director
AWP
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By: Will Smith

Will Smith — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:38:43 +0000

Fenza recently was quoted as saying at the AWP meeting that creative writers would need to teach more reading — because non-creative ordinary English professors went out of their way to “humiliate literature” in their classes. (Chronicle of Higher Education 15 February)
Can you imagine the President of the MLA saying something similar–that “creative writers,” for instance, were lazy, whiny colleagues with an average grade in their comically named “workshops” of A-? I think not. So why is he so rude and paranoid?
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By: Curtis Faville

Curtis Faville — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:37:05 +0000

Mr. Shepherd:
I should report to you, as a former frequent participant on Silliman’s comment box, that Ron does indeed censor posts, even by those whom you might characterize as his confederates. He has censored several of mine, for reasons that would cut both ways from your political direction. I mention this to provide perspective on the issue of using “approval” of comment streams to control debate. I would assume that you think I’m one of Ron’s “attack dogs” who stray over to your blog to make mischief. The fact is that I seldom agree wholeheartedly with Ron’s assertions, and frequently tried to distance myself from him on the spectrum of sentiment. Though I have many quibbles with Ron about the “Quietude” debate, nearly everything he imputes to reactionary establishment poetics rings true to me. I don’t see it as having an historical basis all the way back to Poe, but what he complains of was true in 1950, and continues to be true, with some augmentation, today. Agreeing with that proposition doesn’t make me radical, or avant-, or left, or post-Modernist, or one of Silliman’s toadies, or anything.
I strenuously object to being censored for political reasons, something Silliman has done with increasing frequency lately. Recently he deleted posts of mine aimed at Jeff Clark, and Barack Obama. There was nothing in the least offensive, scatological or rude in either of them. Judging from the tenor of comments he has allowed over the course of the last year, I could only conclude that they violated his parameters of political taste. He even went so far as to say that he could not allow certain posts because they would make “enemies” for him, a speculation which I found absurd–and which suggests that he conceives of his blog as having a coordinated effect through the control of responses. Censorship of this kind strikes me as inappropriate in the internet blog-world. There are no “rules” that govern such editing, but I have come to feel that if one seeks to present a controversial, or iconoclastic site, one should not use censorship to control the ranges of response or difference of opinion in reaction, which is like getting to moderate your own debate. Anyone guilty of excluding posts simply because they present an opposing point of view is intellectually dishonest, period. It’s theatre, not real argument. If you have also engaged in this practice, shame on you too.
Curtis Faville
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By: Ian Keenan

Ian Keenan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:28:28 +0000

John, Bly attacked the tradition of Pound, Williams, and Eliot in the 1960s in a manner that had a strong impact on the SoQ thereafter, pitting the great poets in translation against them in an unfortunate manner, taking ideas from the Surrealists while saying they ‘had no heart.’
Reginald, Predictably your quest to disparage Ron’s honesty has not been held back by an inability to find any dishonest statements but you cite a few examples, such as your implication that he willfully misreported the Muriel Rukeyser non-error. I publicly agreed with you about Ron’s quips about ‘Rafael Campo the anti-Pound’ being a provocative exaggeration of the views stated, but like your retort to the Bernstein piece this is a component of what seems to be your crusade against humor. Ron honestly noted the Washington Times praised Cole, perhaps suggesting that a poet that more forcefully challenged their views wouldn’t get such a citation, but not stating in any way that Cole shared that paper’s views. The ‘personal attack’ you refer to was my response to your charge of Ron’s dishonesty, in which I noted how the avant-garde poets you demonstratively stated admiration for were almost all affiliated in some way with your graduate programs.
What interests me most though, is your statement in response to Ron’s commentary on American Poetry Now, where here you say “Silliman is obviously too intelligent not to know what a cabal is. Applying such a deliberately sinister term to writers not in his club or whom, as writers or as people, he just doesn’t like, is just a slur, like his constant use of the tiresome phrase “School of Quietude,” which I have never seen in print, but only online.”
Interesting because when you listed the Nine Critical Works That Helped Shaped My Thinking About Poetry, you mentioned Silliman’s The New Sentence and Bernstein’s Content’s Dream, which are very specific about the charges you claim to find tiresome, dishonest, and never to have seen in print.
The New Sentence (1987) says: “The marginality of this oppositional tradition has both been attested to, and reinforced, by the studied silence accorded it by the apparatuses of a seemingly large literary “center”: the universities, journals, publishers, libraries, writers and readers of the hegemonic culture. For good reasons, those who participate in the legitimating mechanisms of the dominant literature have seldom perceived themselves as bearing an explicit relationship to any social or historical movement….. This perspective is further buttressed by the dominant literary community’s sense of its own completeness. Through systematic token representation, it can include and contain all types of differences.”(171-2)
Content’s Dream (1986): “Let me be specific about what I mean by “official verse culture”- I am referring to the poetry publishing and reviewing practices of.. .all the major trade publishers, the poetry series of almost all the major university presses. Add to this the ideologically motivated selection of the vast majority of poets teaching in university writing and literature programs and of poets taught in such programs as well as the interlocking accreditation of these selections through prizes and awards judged by these same individuals. Finally, there are the self-appointed keepers of the gate who actively put forward biased, narrowly focussed and frequently shrill and contentious accounts of American poetry, while claiming, like all disinformation propaganda, to be giving historical and non-partisan views.”
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:51:12 +0000

sorry, I dashed that last note off too quickly,—
I apologize for my accusation that Mr. Shepherd didn’t
read my original post . . .
he’s right about the “elitist and difficult” part. that sums
up some or perhaps most of what I said in my lengthy
post. . .
the British critic I quoted specified Schnackenberg—
I didn’t . . . I didn’t mention her at all, though I see
in hindsight that my general agreement with his thesis
might look like it indicates that I also endorsed his
opinion of her . . . I should have expressed
my doubts on that particular point re Schnackenberg,
but I was addressing his overall theory—
and in fact the single poet most in question there,
pro and con, was Geoffrey Hill . . .
in any case, if anyone wants to see what I actually
wrote, they can google
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:14:16 +0000

whoa . . .
if Shepherd had bothered to read my post firsthand instead of Silliman’s
canted version of it, he would have seen that I myself didn’t call
Schnackenberg fascist . . .
that quote came from a British critic . . .
it’s too boring to rehash, but if anyone is interested in reading what
I did say in that extensive piece from last year, just google
my blog / Schnackenberg / Geoffrey Hill
to find it . . .
I don’t know if Shepherd “monitors” the comments on his
blog, but Silliman does;
the comments on my blog are not screened or censored.
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By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:37:07 +0000

Dear John,
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree that intellectual incoherence is not the same as intellectual dishonesty, though I don’t think there’s a difference between between intellectual bad faith and intellectual dishonesty. To be in bad faith is by definition to be dishonest, as when one makes a promise in bad faith.
The charge of intellectual dishonesty is indeed serious, and I can back it up. I would also point out that “intellectual dishonesty” refers to someone’s way of thinking, not to them as a person. It is a criticism, but not a personal attack. As I have written, there are those (not you) who cannot distinguish disagreement or criticism from personal attack, either for others or in their own behavior.
An example: Silliman discussed some time ago on his blog the anthology American Poetry Now. (Full disclosure: this anthology was published by my publisher, edited by my editor, and includes my work. These facts, however, are not relevant to my critique of Silliman’s discussion.) He complains that the book presents no principles of inclusion or exclusion, but the second paragraph of the first page of the book’s introduction explains the criteria by which work was chosen for the anthology. Silliman claims that the book doesn’t include the work of Muriel Rukeyser as listed on the back cover. However, it does, in the place indicated in the table of contents (which is not the same order that the back cover presents). This indicates to me that Silliman didn’t even bother to open the book before writing his discussion. He complains that Odysseas Elytis is not included in the book, but obviously, as a Greek poet, there would be no place for Elytis in a book called American Poetry Now.
Silliman goes on to call the writers included in the book a “cabal.” He asks, even if they don’t know each other, aren’t in contact with one another, and don’t support one another, “How is this not a cabal?” My Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines a cabal as “the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government),” which would refer to the activities of a group, not to the group itself. But if it were to refer to a group, a group of persons can’t not be secretly united in a plot (what plot is Silliman imagining, anyway?) if they don’t know one another and don’t support one another. In other words, the way it’s not a cabal is that it’s not a cabal.
Silliman is obviously too intelligent not to know what a cabal is. Applying such a deliberately sinister term to writers not in his club or whom, as writers or as people, he just doesn’t like, is just a slur, like his constant use of the tiresome phrase “School of Quietude,” which I have never seen in print, but only online.
In one of his blog posts, Silliman refers to Rafael Campo, twice, as “the Anti-Pound,” in reference to a piece in The Washington Post which merely and in passing contrasted Campo’s more personal, familial approach to history with Pound’s grander, large-scale approach. There was no comparative evaluation of the merits of either approach, nor any attempt to set Campo against Pound.
In another link, Silliman smears gay poet Henri Cole with the fact that he was positively reviewed by a political conservative, as if he were responsible for who reviews him, or as if there were some obvious and direct connection between poetry and politics. According to Silliman, Cole and his work are right-wing because a right-wing person likes his work.
The post that actually started me on my own blog (my first post was originally meant to be a comment on Silliman’s blog) agrees with Bill Knott’s characterization of poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s aesthetics as “fascist.” Besides the fact that I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, and I despise this kind of pseudo-politicization of literature with every fiber of my being, Silliman conveniently ignores the fact that, in the blog post he refers to, Knott calls both conservative and avant-garde poetry “fascist,” because both are difficult and elitist.
For a more personal example, Silliman wrote about me not long after I started my own blog that “I think Shepherd’s doing exactly what he ought to be doing–he’s defining his poetics and defending them. That makes total sense to me. Do I agree with him? Probably not. But I don’t think he needs to write my poems any more than I think I need to write his. Each of us, I trust, will write the poetry we need.” He concluded by saying that “Shepherd would appear to be one of the poets who has gotten over that [idea that other poetic traditions don't exist in the United States], which is great.” I was very pleased that Silliman seemed to understand that my criticism of him was not an attack.
A little while later, in a personal correspondence, Silliman affirmed that just because we disagreed there need not be any antagonism between us. He also told me that he was pleased to see some poems of mine in the then-current issue of Conjunctions. Then he wrote a post on that issue, which he had clearly barely read (he admitted as much in the post). In the course of his constant categorizing, he attached a label to every contributor to the issue. I was labeled as a “School of Quietude” poet (the issue’s only one), and furthermore dismissed as not a good example of the type. Given what he had written earlier to me, and what he had written on his blog (which would make me specifically not “School of Quietude,” if such a thing existed), I took this as a piqued response to some of my criticisms on his web log.
These are some of the grounds on which I can say that Ron Silliman is intellectually and, yes, personally dishonest. I have not previously discussed the more personal incident, but apparently it is necessary to do so.
As for Ian Keenan, he is best ignored, but I will simply say that he is being disingenuous, as he engaged in an intensely personal attack on my character in the comments section of Silliman’s blog last year, which for some reason he chooses not to mention here. But I have no desire to have an interchange of any kind with him.
Take good care,
Reginald
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By: john

john — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:16:47 +0000

I agree that charges of dishonesty are serious and should be backed up.
It never occurred to me that Silliman might be dishonest, but his anti-SoQ polemic is intellectually incoherent. Robert Bly SoQ? Like or dislike Bly, his poetry and translations taken as a whole cannot be characterized as Quiet, or Quietist, or Quietudinarian, or Quietsesquipedalian. Intellectual incoherence might be hard to distinguish from intellectual bad faith and intellectual dishonesty, but they aren’t identical.
I got to this post from Ron’s blog, a little squib-link inaccurately stating, “Misreading Bernstein.” It’s touching to see Ron standing up for his pal, but he’s wrong.
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By: Ian Keenan

Ian Keenan — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:02:49 +0000

Reginald, I posted the comment that you deleted from your blog on the Silliman’s Blog thread of June 5, 2007, so that people can decide for themselves whether it contains a personal attack against you, as you’ve had a tendency to mischaracterize statements after censoring them as you’re doing here. It contains a factual statement about public policy and two quotes of yours that I reprinted without commentary.
One was the one where you first accused of Ron Silliman of “intellectual and personal dishonesty” which you’ve done again here. You pretend to be concerned about personal attacks, but you are nonetheless using the Poetry Foundation web site to repeat the “intellectual dishonesty” charge against Ron. Best wishes, Ian
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By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:56:20 +0000

Dear Kent,
It’s true that Silliman does allow criticism of him to appear in his comments section. It’s also true that he rarely responds, except to occasionally express his sense of being aggrieved or victimized. But he doesn’t need to respond, since he has a whole phalanx of rabid attack dogs ready and more than eager to assault in the most vicious and personal way (knowing, of course, nothing about the person) anyone who dares deviate from the party line. You have commented on his blog (including on comments I have made), so I know that you know what I’m referring to. That, and his arbitrariness and intellectual dishonesty, is the reason I no longer read Silliman’s blog–the atmosphere is just too poisonous, and I have no desire to subject myself to unnecessary ugliness. And if Silliman is mentioned unfavorably on another blog (say, mine), his attack dogs will migrate there to try and make a kill. Though I have no problem with reasoned disagreement, even when vehement, I also have no problem deleting personal attacks, which I have received on more than one occasion.
all best,
Reginald
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:05:57 +0000

Bill Knott said:
>I reiterate: the web-bases controlled by LangPostAvants do not allow or encourage dissent and
disagreement…
Bill,
Though there are a few poetry blogs that welcome unfettered debate, what you say about the control of dissent in the “post-avant” blogosphere and listserv arena is true–most theatrically, perhaps, in the Flarfosphere area, where any kind of sustained critique or pointed parody most often results in some manner of collective smear campaign of the dissenting voice, conducted both before and after the uncomfortable presence is banished from the blog or list in question. Sometimes, in the case of blogs, this involves the disappearance of the person’s previous comments there, too, along with comments by those who were unwise enough to defend the offender–a convenient erasing, in that way, of any record of the critique. This, in fact, happened to me and others early last year at a moderately prominent poetry blog, something I write about here, with some amused resignation:
http://www.blazevox.org/072-kj.htm
As far as poetry listservs are concerned, the most notorious example of thought-surveillance is the Poetics List, owned by, as chance would choose, that parodist of “Official Verse Culture,” Charles Bernstein. The history of censorship and exclusion there began quite spectacularly in 1998 (which I also have written about here http://www.flashpointmag.com/skanky0.htm ), and continues–albeit at more modest levels afforded by a now-evolved self-policing culture at Poetics–under the guise of “moderation,” with ongoing, vindictive proscriptions of individuals (even though all posts have been screened before approval for years!) and selective but telling rejections of polemically minded posts that are deemed inappropriate for the subscribers (including, recently, posts by the excellent poet and blogger John Latta, pointing to my above article on the Poetics List meltdown of ’98!).
However, Bill, it’s not really accurate, I think, to say that Ron Silliman doesn’t allow strong challenges to his views. Actually, and whatever other criticisms one may have of Silliman, something that he certainly deserves good credit for–and which sets him leagues apart (aside from his age) from the clique-ridden realms of the younger post-avant crowd–is that he doesn’t seem to be at all gun-shy of criticism, or even satire. True, he seems to almost always ignore it when it’s given, and that’s another form of control, but at least he offers his blog as a space for direct challenge. So far as I can see, anyway.
But the genearal problem you describe is in avant blogoland is perfectly and disturbingly real.
Kent
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By: john

john — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:47:24 +0000

Dear Bill Knott,
I am sorry to stand corrected on the rest, but Silliman does allow refutation. More than one commenter here has criticized Silliman plenty in comments on his blog.
Since you have recommended your blog to me, allow me to reciprocate. At my blog is a link to my band’s web site. You will find my last name there, since you seem to care. You may be interested to know that you are only the third or fourth person to have shown evidence of caring, the first having been Ron Silliman. The other time(s) happened in comment sections of poetry blogs too. Which makes sense, poetry since Ovid having, among other activities, staged a competition to etch one’s name permanently in the sands of time.
Best wishes with that sands of time thing.
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By: Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:07:43 +0000

R.
Thank you for your nice letter.
Of course, excluding PWD is an oversight, but one that needs to be examined.
Perhaps, one day, I’ll find a note in my inbox from Harriet asking me to blog about poetry and disability. If not me, there’s plenty of good poets to chose from.
Take very good care.
Jennifer
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:35:55 +0000

in response to “John”——
there’s no cheektongue in my words above——
(if you read through my blog, you’ll see I’m
only saying here what I’ve said
extensively there)
I reiterate:
the web-bases controlled by LangPostAvants
do not allow or encourage dissent and
disagreement,
(the example you give, Silliman’s blog,
screens (ie, censors) all comments
before they’re published: when’s the last
time you read a serious refutation there?)
so why should any Mainstream Poetry site
let Them have a free say?
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:47:41 +0000

Ben Friedlander, you rascal. My characterization of the animus and nature of Charles Bernstein’s AWP parody as “aggressive and position-taking” (i.e., of a piece with the animus and nature of the AWP officer’s tirade) is *obviously* obvious, and meant a bit to frame, ironically, the irony of your attempt to draw such “principled distinctions” between the competing angry polemicists: How you seem blind, that is, in the passage I quoted, to the deeper institutional relation, even identity, of the mutually parodied parties: prominent representatives of dueling Official Verses–one “mainstream,” the other “avant-garde”– poignantly locked in angry struggle for dominant position within the “educational institution.”
[insert frowny face here]
Kent
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By: john

john — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:11:57 +0000

Dear Mr. Share,
I, too, like Bill Knott’s poetry, and while I can’t boast a familiarity with his typical positions (I see him comment on Silliman’s blog), I read Knott’s comment as tongue-in-cheek.
For one thing, as Knott knows, Silliman is happy to entertain the comments of SoQ defenders in the comments of his blog. For another, Knott’s vocabulary here seems satirical — “personnel,” “webcabal.” Thirdly, it’s hard to imagine anybody (not even Fenza) seriously suggesting that Charles Bernstein shouldn’t be allowed to defend himself in comments here. (Indeed, Fenza should be pleased that Bernstein’s defense digs his hole deeper. Fenza and Bernstein seem to deserve each other, which we would not have known so well if Bernstein had not presented his absurd defense; Kent Johnson’s last comment strikes the right note, as does Gregg’s.)
I could be wrong.
Ain’t language tricky?
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By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:50:13 +0000

Dear Jennifer,
I think that you may have misunderstand my reply to your comment. I am in complete agreement with you regarding the hypocrisy of those who participate in and benefit from AWP or any other organ of “official verse culture” and simultaneously complain about how corrupt or compromised it is.
And though it is not something about which I’d thought before, you’re also quite right that the voices of the disabled tend to be absent from many discussions about “diversity.” I don’t know whether this is a question of people being actively excluded (though I tend to doubt it at this point in history) or of disabled people, for whatever reason, not speaking up as you did.
Take good care, and thanks for reading and commenting.
all best,
Reginald
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By: Gregg

Gregg — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:04:00 +0000

I have read Reginald’s piece here–it is pretty clear that he objects to Charles Berstein’s implicit comparison of AWP to group think found in Orwellian critique, Stalinism, and Nazism. He feels that this goes too far. Because someone makes a parody, it does not absolve them from responsibility for their parody. The same critique, by the way, has been leveled against Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy.” Was it really that bad, some Plath readers wonder, while others say yes, and most probably do not think about it.
The justness of an analogy is quite the subject for writers, especially critics. These days when I read pre-20th century poetry, I increasingly notice how much justness and thought is being put into metaphors and analogies. To me this is the difference between wisdom and the information superhighway.
People can grumble about the AWP and Language Poetry. As I heard presidential candidate Mike Huckabee this morning on NPR, what America needs more is weapons of mass education returning arts and music to the schools. The real problem in America today is the indoctrination of a go-along, get-along culture that is accepting a society of scarcity (including health care scarcity), and total indifference to their fellow citizens. Meanwhile the government is run by professional cleptocrats who stole the 2000 election-and this is well documented; have instituted torture; domestic spying; imprisonment without trials; blanket secrecy from the press, public, and congress; a war with changing rationales; and privatizing government functions through awarding contracts to political supporters; all funded by massive deficit spending.
From my point of view, to be inarticulate in the face of this is to let abandon speaking truth to power. These things also affect academia, because this is the context within which people teach. For instance, I am sure every year students read Emerson, Whitman, or M.L.K. in a literature or history class and wonder if they are meant to take these voices seriously. That is the power of the book.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:10:01 +0000

Hi, Bill.
Just to clarify things, Harriet and the Poetry Foundation website are not run by Poetry magazine, though that doesn’t answer your critique. The magazine is (obviously) edited, and therefore any eclecticism in its pages is not, presumably, reckless; the blog, being a blog, isn’t edited, hence the laissez and the faire. Is this not as it should be?
One of the things that the magazine folks and the Harriet folks do have in common, though, is admiration for your work and for your own blog.
Yours as ever and respectfully,
Don
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By: bill knott

bill knott — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:31:11 +0000

I don’t see why Po(Chi)Mag even permits any PostAvant
School-of-Noisiness personnel to use this site in the first
place . . .
they have tons of their own venues to spread their genius on . . .
they don’t allow SOQs onto their webcabals, they don’t give
Mainstream poets free space to propagandize—
so why do you furnish a forum for them?
what the heck do you at Po(Chi)Mag represent, anyway:
what’s your position—
where’s your Editorial spine?
I can’t believe John Barr and Christian Wiman are in
favor of this reckless laissez faire eclecticism . . . it negates
everything they stand for.
Your magazine (and website) can try to be all things to all
parties and nothing to none, if that’s what you want.
But I don’t see why.
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By: Ben Friedlander

Ben Friedlander — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:17:39 +0000

Kent:
Parodies *are* aggressive, and they’re also a way of taking a position; and Bernstein has an authority as a writer–based on his work, validated by his job–that gives his parody a little extra substance. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s skewed to condemn the parody and forgive the original for something the two hold in common. Hell, it’s skewed even to call it something the two hold in common–but if that can’t be seen after all the previous comments, I don’t think another explanation will help.
Now, if someone wanted to say: “The rhetoric of the original was unfortunate, and that lets the parody score some easy hits–but I still agree with what the original was trying to say,” well, that at least would have some logic on its side. Of course, it would still be wrong…
(insert ideogram of smiley face here)
Tschüss!
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:39:20 +0000

Ben Friedlander said, criticizing Reginald Shepherd’s “skewed thinking”:
“Comparing two texts that employ more or less the same rhetoric–one the official pronouncement of an officer of an educational institution, the other a self-identified satire disseminated by an individual–you find the instigating text justified in some measure and the parodic reaction irresponsible.”
These things do get overdetermined, don’t they?
I, for one, understood Bernstein’s piece as an aggressive, position-taking parody, a kind of “pronouncement,” as Ben has it, by an “individual” who is very much a well-placed “officer of an educational institution” (an Ivy League one, at that!), angrily targeting the pronouncements of another “individual,” also an “officer of an educational institution.”
The main satirical effect produced by the coupling is ideogrammatic, so to speak: something secreted by the excited combination of the anxious pronouncements of the two official officers. And by the poignant, post-coital protestations of the poorly appreciated post-avant parodist…
Something unintentional, but no less enjoyable for that.
Kent
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By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:29:34 +0000

A moment of gratitude that these conversations even take place.
One example:
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh
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By: Ben Friedlander

Ben Friedlander — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:18:18 +0000

“Fenza’s position does not just emerge out of thin air or sheer malice.”
“I was particularly upset by what I saw as the intellectual irresponsibility of [Bernstein's] using the strong even if only implicit Nazi/Stalinist rhetoric and imagery.”
Dear Reginald:
Although I generally enjoy reading your notes for their thoughtfulness, I find your thinking here quite skewed. Comparing two texts that employ more or less the same rhetoric–one the official pronouncement of an officer of an educational institution, the other a self-identified satire disseminated by an individual–you find the instigating text justified in some measure and the parodic reaction irresponsible. Granting that Bernstein exaggerates Frenza’s rhetoric (which is what parodies do, of course), the unpleasant implications are already there in the original.
Moral of the story:
Free speech doesn’t give you the right to shout “Soup Nazi!” in a crowded restaurant–but you can still whisper it at high table.
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By: john

john — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:24:18 +0000

Bernstein’s defense that he didn’t actually say “Hitler,” “Stalin,” “Nazi,” “Communist,” or “McCarthy” is anti-poetic and anti-literary. It practically condemns itself as a tone deaf poetics.
Reginald was saying that alluding to Nazism and Stalinism in Bernstein’s critique of Fenza was excessive. Bernstein’s defense is . . . what? That Fenza really is Nazi-esque or Stalinesque, or that, by not saying the words “Nazi” or “Stalin,” Bernstein wasn’t accusing him of such?
I’m sorry, but either choice is pathetic. As is Bernstein’s plea that we not judge him by the persona he speaks through.
It’s almost as if Bernstein wanted to exemplify the point of Fenza’s critique of the theoretical de-naturing literature. OK, fine, sure, there’s nothing “natural” about reading, but producing a text and expecting it to be read in a method and a mode that contradicts the practice of the common reader — viz, “ignore allusions,” and, “speaking through a persona exonerates the writer from the consequences of Godwin’s law” — and then calling people Orwellian for not reading by the unstated, uncommon rules . . . ai yai yai.
Fenza’s rhetoric of parasitism is obnoxious, but it’s a traditional complaint against critics, and, by extension, theorists. “Assassin of my orchards!” It is true that Hitler and Mao called their enemies parasites too, but Frank O’Hara wasn’t calling for the extermination of the reviewers, and neither have any of the other grumpy artists vilifying theorists and critics.
I can’t imagine a critique of Fenza that would verify his obnoxious views more thoroughly than Bernstein’s did.
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By: Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:24:47 +0000

Afterthought: For proof, one doesn’t have to look much further than the Poetry Foundation Blogs which (unless I’m wrong) have voices of gays, African-Americans, mothers, women, Hispanics, and avant-gardists — but no “disabled voice” to be found. — I could be wrong.
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By: Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:33:27 +0000

Hi Reginald,
I was at AWP today, it was fun. I want to be sure I make myself clear because I’m confused how your comment relates to mine.
I have NO bones to pick with AWP or academia. I am slightly annoyed by people (as described on my blog) who DO pick bones with workshop poetry — and then get a booth at AWP. This strikes me as inconsistant.
I don’t consider myself marginalized or ensconsed. I’m a comp teacher (one that clearly can’t spell). What I have said many time is that people with disabilities are marginalized. In poetry, in jobs, in life, more than any other minority. I think it would be hard to disagree with that.
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By: Arthur Durkee

Arthur Durkee — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:14:06 +0000

Strikes me that this debate runs headlong into the so-called intentional fallacy, in which one tries to deduce what the author intended in their text (poem or otherwise). The flip side, of course, is when the author rises up to interpret, explain, or defend their text against misrepresentation or mischance.
Both sides of this have real problems, in my opinion.
The truth is: Once you put your text out into the world, you no longer “own” it, and it can become subject to others’ varying interpretations whether or not you want it to. We can try to “control” what we mean, but even then there are limits to what can actually be achieved. Forcing an interpretation is probably just as bad as being a doormat and allowing anyone to interpret it any way they want to. You can have an intention, but you have to live with the fact that your intentions are not always subject to your control, after it’s out of your hands.
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By: Curtis Faville

Curtis Faville — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:30:58 +0000

As a fan of parodies, I must insist here that great parody exists within a kind of limbo, against which all cries of foul must be resisted. Parody may–as a form of criticism, or entertainment–be comprised in unequal measures of both contempt and admiration. Critics of parody may justly estimate the value of a parody by measuring its success as inspired ventriloquism, or as implied repudiation.
The first requirement of successful parody is that it impress us with its (comic) verisimilitude. Secondarily, we should be entertained or disturbed by the shrewdness of its deconstruction of the model–both in style, and content. Beerbohm’s parodies accomplish precisely these goals.
To give a specific example, E.B. White’s parody of Hemingway, “Across the Street and Into the Grill” not only mocks the tone and method of Hemingway’s style–as exhibited in his novel Across the River and Into the Trees–but it lays bear the unconsciously comic presumptions upon which that style is based. Nevertheless, we cannot take the Author of parody to task for somehow being “unfaithful” to the politics or philosophical assumptions of his model. Swift or Orwell may make scathing indictments of despised power, for which they take full responsibility in the open marketplace of ideas, but parodists are under no such obligation. They can be fully incorrect, irresponsible, disrespectful, and glib, without violating any of the ground rules of their form.
Your attack upon Bernstein’s supposed exaggerations assumes that the parodist has a duty of accuracy and fidelity to accepted standards of decency and fair play. But these are the very “rules” which parody must necessarily “violate” to succeed.
Bernstein appropriately takes you to task for assuming that the “Author” of the parody holds positions which the parody itself presents as a specimen of its type.
Your criticism is, as Bernstein claims, truly Orwellian.
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By: Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:12:18 +0000

Dear Jennifer and Kent,
Thanks for your very smart and incisive insights. When I went to the AWP conference last year (I am about to get on a plane to go again), almost everyone I knew, met, or talked to there was an avant-gardener of one variety or another. But many people have trouble recognizing that the landscape has changed, and that a lot of things that used to be weeds are now treasured flowers. I have noticed that these days there are a lot of very comfortably ensconced people, older and younger, complaining about how marginalized and excluded they are. It reminds me of what my friend and former teacher, the wonderful poet Michael Anania, once said to me: if you continue nursing a sense of grievance once you’ve become successful, then you just become an a**hole.
Take good care. Maybe I’ll see some of you at AWP.
peace and poetry,
Reginald
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