Comments on: Conceptual Poetics: Caroline Bergvall http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/06/conceptual-poetics-caroline-bergvall/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:26:09 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Charles Alexander http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/06/conceptual-poetics-caroline-bergvall/#comment-3709 Charles Alexander Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:40:22 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=862#comment-3709 Please, Joseph Hutchinson, enlighten us as to what "the responsibilities of the genuine artist" might be. And should I humbly let you decide which artists are genuine and which are not? Why? You sound quite smug in what you discount and discredit, which makes me think you're less open than the conceptual poets and artists I heard speak at this symposium. That is, you seem to discount the work without looking carefully at it, because you don't like the language that characterizes it. That's just too easy. Engage, man, that's our responsibility and your responsibility (I hope); and such engagement comes in lots of forms and manners, and coated in a lot of different sorts of language. Please, Joseph Hutchinson, enlighten us as to what “the responsibilities of the genuine artist” might be. And should I humbly let you decide which artists are genuine and which are not? Why? You sound quite smug in what you discount and discredit, which makes me think you’re less open than the conceptual poets and artists I heard speak at this symposium. That is, you seem to discount the work without looking carefully at it, because you don’t like the language that characterizes it. That’s just too easy. Engage, man, that’s our responsibility and your responsibility (I hope); and such engagement comes in lots of forms and manners, and coated in a lot of different sorts of language.

]]> By: Joseph Hutchison http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/06/conceptual-poetics-caroline-bergvall/#comment-3708 Joseph Hutchison Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:53:42 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=862#comment-3708 "[Conceptual writers or poets] have a stake in broader cultural practice, one in which verbal and non verbal inscriptive methods coexist and are coextensive." This kind of latinate foo-for-all is an attempt to put lipstick on an intellectual pig. (Or, to degenderize and coextend the contextualization of my metaphor, it seeks to slap an Armani suit on an conceptual swine.) The jargon-rich, self-congratulatory overestimation of their ideology is just one of the qualities that make con-writers so laughable. They offer process without content — and assert the value of this approach by denying the necessity of content. Con-writers bring to mind the Bush aide who, as journalist Ron Suskind reported, told him that he (Suskind) was "in what we call the reality-based community"... <blockquote> which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I [Suskind] nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."</blockquote><p>However these con-writers vote in the real world, assuming they bother to vote, they represent the dead-end crypto-fascist neo-conservative mindset that has wreaked havoc everywhere since the election of Ronald Reagan. They are free, of course, to refuse the responsibilities of the genuine artist, but it would be a great blessing if they did not continue to pretend that they have a stake in anything beyond their own immense narcissism.</p> “[Conceptual writers or poets] have a stake in broader cultural practice, one in which verbal and non verbal inscriptive methods coexist and are coextensive.”
This kind of latinate foo-for-all is an attempt to put lipstick on an intellectual pig. (Or, to degenderize and coextend the contextualization of my metaphor, it seeks to slap an Armani suit on an conceptual swine.) The jargon-rich, self-congratulatory overestimation of their ideology is just one of the qualities that make con-writers so laughable. They offer process without content — and assert the value of this approach by denying the necessity of content.
Con-writers bring to mind the Bush aide who, as journalist Ron Suskind reported, told him that he (Suskind) was “in what we call the reality-based community”…

which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I [Suskind] nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

However these con-writers vote in the real world, assuming they bother to vote, they represent the dead-end crypto-fascist neo-conservative mindset that has wreaked havoc everywhere since the election of Ronald Reagan. They are free, of course, to refuse the responsibilities of the genuine artist, but it would be a great blessing if they did not continue to pretend that they have a stake in anything beyond their own immense narcissism.

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