Comments on: Opening the Window to Get Some Fresh Air

By: Derek

Derek — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:53:35 +0000

In re: Your fave Spears remixes.
You’d better have Richard Thompson’s cover of “Oops, I Did It Again” on there…
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:49:46 +0000

Paul Hoover’s comments were informed and to the point.
My attitude toward this whole field of phenomena or state of affairs comes down, I guess, to two main points :
1) There is a mystification or obsession, prevalent in the contemporary American poetry scene, which involves the relationship between technique and absorption by or allegiance to trends and groups of poets. Technique seems to be understood as a set of fairly well-defined, impersonal, abstract procedures, which the poet can apply to the writing process – inputs, which will produce certain (predictably unpredictable) outputs. These outputs can in turn be fairly well catalogued/marked/branded, according the political or philosophical assumptions or leanings of the group to which they are supposed to pertain. In a sense, the supposed inside/outside character of both the social philosophy and aesthetic tendencies – which as both Hoover & Mlinko noted, were quite marked from the 50s to the mid-70s or so – have been standardized and codified purely as learnable technique.
This all seems very weird to me.
2) The standardization-impersonalization of technique has run parallel to the growth of postmodern, post-structuralist philosophies & ideologiea, which maintain certain paradigms and axioms and assumptions about the nature of time, history, politics, identity, subjectivity, and so forth. In fact the “post-avant” tweakings of poetic style are often justified in terms of this general climate of postmodern philosophical ideas – the ideas give the stylistic quirks a certain academic or intellectual sophisitcaiton or cachet. This facilitates the “mainstreaming” (in academia) of supposedly avant-garde poetics.
This all seems very boring to me.
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By: Paul Hoover

Paul Hoover — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 05:49:44 +0000

I’m coming a bit late to the discussion that has resulted from Reginald’s comments regarding AWP and a post-avant world of poetry, but here goes.
(1) There is no post-avant poetry culture, but there may soon be a pan-avant one. Large numbers of poets are writing under the influence of established avant-garde practice, from the Ashbery-Guest aspect of the New York School, to language and post-language poetry, Newlipo, and Flarf. A case could be made, in fact, for a pan-avant poetry culture, with the vanguard increasingly dominant. Reginald himself has edited an anthology, Postmodern Lyricisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetries (Counterpath Press, 2008) , that includes many poets who would self-identify as “postmodern” or “innovative.” Of the 23 poets included, only 5 were included in my anthology Postmodern American Poetry (W. W. Norton, 1994), but 18 have appeared in New American Writing, which I edit with Maxine Chernoff. Why only the five, Nathaniel Mackey, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Kathleen Fraser, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Marjorie Welish? Why the eighteen? And how many of those eighteen were published in NAW before 1994? Two forces are at work: (a) Many poets of an “Iowa School” history have moved from the mainstream to the innovative (b) The innovative camp has been swept into the larger general economy of the university system, where the standard of legitimation is quite different from the bohemianism and urbanity of the New American era. In answer to my question at the end of part two of this post, Kasey Mohammad and Christian Bök DO have tenured academic positions, and there is no doubt whatever of their avant standing. Fearful outcries about innovative practice largely conceren the “Will it come here?” question–the recognition that one’s mainstream work be marginalized or transformed when the innovative mainsteam is installed.
Finally, there’s no point in attacking AWP from the perspective of MLA. English Departments and MFA programs are equally part of academic professionalism.
(2) As head of AWP, D.W. Fenza should be representing the interests of all of its members and participants, not one quadrant. But AWP has had controversies of this kind before. I’m pasting in below an excerpt from my blog that relates to being inside or outside generally, but especially in the AWP context.
“For much of our lives as editors, the inside in American poetry was utterly distinct from the outside. You were “experimental” or you were not. At my first AWP meeting, in San Antonio, in the 80s, I heard Donald Justice stir up a roomful of Iowa School poets by attacking the “charlatan” Beats, “juvenile” New York School, and the “fascist” Black Mountain poets. Before he began to speak, he asked that the ballroom doors of the hotel be closed and guarded. I had known there were oppositions, but I hadn’t realized how keenly the insiders felt the threat of change. At that time, outsiders had no role in the academy, so they congregated at places like St. Mark’s Church, Beyond Baroque, The Poetry Center at SFSU, and Chicago’s Body Politic. This was true throughout the 70s, 80s, and much of the 90s. Everyone knew what it meant to cross the boundary into academic territory, which unfailingly relied on the received mainstream dominant–for example, the free verse poem of personal epiphany. Those differences have been blurred by the tremendous growth of creative writing programs, the desire for many of the so-called Iowa school poets to join the innovative camp, and the marginalization of independent boheman sites. Whether you call it the mainstreaming of the avant-garde or the vanguarding of the academy, the result is a compromise, or mutual collapse, in which the avant-garde risks losing its signal powers of opposition and originality. At the Palm Springs AWP, 2001, Maxine Chernoff and I walked around looking for someone to talk to and found only Aaron Shurin, who was equally alienated by the Carolyn Kizer / Yusef Komunyakaa program dominant. Now all of that is changed. If you want to locate the avant-garde, you can find it in the Nassau Suite at the NYC Hilton, second floor. I don’t exclude myself. I’m on two panels at the forthcoming meeting in NYC, one of which I proposed on contemporary Vietnamese poetry. The other is Newlipo: Proceduralism and Chance Poetics in the 21st Century. I’d like to be persuaded that literary professionalism is not dulling innovation’s oppositional edge, or, worse yet, subsuming marginal practices in order to make them seem its own. Are Newlipo and Flarf the unrepentant, indigestible poetics of the new? Would it matter if Christian Bök and Kasey Mohammad had tenure-track positions?
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By: Michael Gushue

Michael Gushue — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:00:10 +0000

In many ways the internet is like Gyges ring: how would you behave if you were invisible? It’s an interesting phenomenology — web rage something like road rage?
In any case, thank for the consistently thoughtful and considerate posts. I’m looking forward to you name checking Richard Thompson’s cover of Britney songs.
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By: Jennifer S. Flescher

Jennifer S. Flescher — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:02:01 +0000

I get discouraged reading the threads sometimes — seems to bring out the worst in the divisions among poets… maybe it’s just that my mom actually did sing me kumbayah with her guitar and all that — but I really appreciate this post. Thank you.
Jennifer
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By: dwayne

dwayne — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:18:01 +0000

Reginald,
And then too, I’d add the subtle (and blatant) sarcasm has on occasion been funny. Your posts have inspired the types of responses I think this forum wants, and don’t think you can get passion like that without a little venom. And, what’s wrong with being accused of being conservative? There are at least two things worse than that on online poetry forums. You could have been called a spoken word artist. Or rapper.
Anyway, good posts. And please, no kumbayah.
dwayne
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By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:16:48 +0000

With all due respect, I really don’t think the criticisms being thrown back and forth on this blog are all that bad. To me, an ad hominem attack would be something like “Oh yeah, well you’re just a big poopy-head, and so’s your mom”–you know, something truly juvenile and off-topic. If you want to see some vitriol, check out mainstream news websites, online magazines, and the Internet Movie Database. Some of the comment streams make Harriet look like…oh, I don’t know, I can’t think of an example, but something known for extreme politeness. Anyway, it could be argued that the nice thing about the internet is that we don’t have to act like civilized people. All the ugliness that we normally walk around with but never express in real life finally comes out. In a way it’s very refreshing.
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