This Is Just to Say

Comments (4)

• On March 1, 2008 at 9:16 pm Troy Camplin, Ph.D. wrote:

  There was already a post-avant garde movement, known as the derriere garde.
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• On March 1, 2008 at 9:47 pm Brian Salchert wrote:

  This night I read the post on your blog; and then–after doing an
  “elliptical poetry” search–read a related essay:
  Tony Hoagland’s
  “Fear of Narrative and the Skittery Poem of Our Moment”;
  and now I am going to find and read
  Kenneth Golsmith’s related essay.
  Some days ago I read Joshua Corey’s essay
  and Robert Archambeau’s essay.
  This chase I’m into is starting to get like a seminar in reverse.
  Had already read most of Paul Hoover’s related Norton anthology.
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• On March 4, 2008 at 11:23 am Jonathan David Jackson wrote:

  Dear world:

  • Narrow sight means narrow vision.
  • The more I think about whether my art is experimental or traditional the less I get done.
  • Traditional and experimental: these are as constitutive, shifting, and perceptual as the other great descriptive fictions of our age: race, gender, sexuality and beyond.
  • Where is your generosity as a reader, as a writer?
  • Don’t swallow stones just because they glitter; don’t eat spoiled meat even if it smells sweet.
  • Anything can be turned: the subversive becomes fashionable; the commonplace, cutting-edge.
  • What is the structural principle within the work?
  • How does (or does not) the work’s structural principle animate substance over surface effect?
  • How does—-how will-—the work endure?
  • Good work is its own recognition so why worry about who gets awards?
  • Complaints, controversies, and concepts are curious: they purport to bring us closer to the work through heightened discussion while simultaneously distancing us from the particularities of the art itself
  • If you become enraged or aggrieved when you read a work that does not conform to your ideals to the point where you label, rant, rail, and condemn, then you need to make a trip to Darfur in Sudan or to any number of inner city environments or even to a foreclosed house in the suburbs so you may rediscover your generosity and relocate what is dire in our age.
  • If a mosquito could pull a plow then I would surely hook her up.
  • I’d rather be an artisan like an unsightly plumber, pants-ill-fitted, kneeling before open pipes, then an artist who is overly concerned with the lie of greatness and the devilry of my work’s reception.
  • Favor really is deceit.
  • As soon as you feel you are entitled to something as an artist you have already missed the generous point of your practice.
  • Your work is no more important anyone else’s.
  • Greatness is the worse kind of advertising: good work demands more than a slogan, more than platitudes, more than superlatives, more than favor, more, more, more—it keeps demanding and questioning–refusing hagiography, refusing memorials, refusing labels, refusing in-groups and out-groups, refusing to be done.

  Sincerely yours,
  Jonathan David Jackson
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• On March 6, 2008 at 12:24 am Mary Meriam wrote:

  Greatness is the worse kind of advertising: good work demands more than a slogan, more than platitudes, more than superlatives, more than favor, more, more, more—it keeps demanding and questioning–refusing hagiography, refusing memorials, refusing labels, refusing in-groups and out-groups, refusing to be done.
  I kind of like this one, Jonathan David Jackson. More, more, more, how do you like it, how do you like it – (remember that song, Reginald?) [Good work] keeps demanding and questioning – yes, it does.
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