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

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?

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

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.”

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

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.

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

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.

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

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