Comments on: Poetry and identity

By: Don Share

Don Share — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:40:22 +0000

Re Henry’s point about invention and renovation, it’s amusing to see that Coleridge noticed in his notebooks two hundred years ago (!) that “Modern poetry [is] characterized by the Poets’ anxiety to be always striking.”
(Emphasis STC’s.)
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By: john

john — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:06:15 +0000

Henry, you’re right, the A-word has a lot of art-historical baggage; FWIW, I wasn’t trying to advocate for a return to Wilde-ishness as a poetic, but Paterianism as a critical beacon — the primacy of individual experience of an aesthetic event. “Individualism”? Would have that stout American echo, but the baggage would again be too freighty — over the weight limit.
Your schema of American poetic history intrigues. O’Hara’s poem existing “at last between two persons instead of two pages” would be in that trad.
Thnx.
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:19:25 +0000

John,
“Aestheticism” probably carries too much polemical & lit-historical baggage. “Art for art’s sake” as a program tried to draw the magic circle around aesthetic experience – but the magic should be left to the art itself. The magic only happens, in any case, when the border between art & life is porous, ambiguous, etc.
I would think that criticism, also, has to reflect the same balancing act. Edmund Wilson in “Axel’s Castle” has a lot to say about all this. You can’t put art in a special box when the very terms of experience and its reflection are being resolved in a new way in the work itself.
However, I do think U.S. poetry could use a focus on some kind of General Criticism, some general principles which put the logic of aesthetic and critical response on a stronger, mutual footing. It seems to me that the “logic” which presently divides the so-called poetic schools and tendencies is only a kind of pretend-logic, tendentious and polemical.
Is it true that one of the distinctive characteristics of U.S. poetry & poetics USED TO BE, anyway, a suspicion of theory, in fact a suspicion of the whole classical-academic tradiiton inherited from Europe? Doesn’t American literature display a striking UNEASINESS about writing per se? The poet stuck in a jam between native wilderness (and Native languages), and Puritan strictures on art, and overbearing Mother Country (England)? Isn’t the subsequent keynote of American poetry this very colonial awkwardness, uneasiness, a DISLIKE for scribbling & inaction?
The Moderns & their late-20th cent. heirs would like us to believe that the key characteristic of American literature is invention and renovation; hence the high value accorded “experiment”, avant-garde, etc. But the deeper character of US poetry is rooted in this wilderness unease and alienation, this native awkwardness.
Look again at Emerson, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, Frost, Eliot, Pound, Steven Crane, Hart Crane……….. central to all of them is the whole issue of imitation, of how the US poet grows into or relates to the inheritance of the past, and thus grows as an artist – this is, I repeat, not the business of some simplified 20th-cent. “progress in the arts”. It’s a deeply anachronistic situation on many levels.
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By: john

john — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:01:22 +0000

Henry, is the word you’re looking for aestheticism? (A dirty word to many people but not to me. Walter Pater rules.)
Kent, I wrote a quasi-poetic quasi-dialog in quasi-prose satirizing Ron Silliman (and Adorno) a few months ago. Warning: it’s over 3700 words long, and it mixes satire with sincerity, a mixture that a lot of people hate. I happen to think it’s entertaining and insightful:
http://utopianturtletop.blogspot.com/2008/02/beer-bongs-with-adorno-is-stand-up.html
YMMV, as the recent ‘net parlance has it.
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:39:41 +0000

It’s the right day, & this seems the right thread to note that I wrote a poem on a dog biscuit & yr dog refused to look at it.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1bmcs_galaxie-500-4th-of-july_music
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:05:17 +0000

Sometimes we behave as if we lived in a tiny community, when instead we live on a planet, in a universe. It reminds me of La Bruyère’s famous description of the tiny little town ca. 1687, after which he remarks:
“There is something which has never been seen yet, and which, to all appearances, never will be, and that is a little town which isn’t divided into cliques, where the families are united, and the cousins trust each other; where a marriage doesn’t start a civil war, and where quarrels about precedence don’t arise every time that a service, a ceremony, a procession or a funeral are held; where gossip and lying and malice have been outlawed,” etc.
But I don’t mean this to sound dour, dispirited, or disengaged. It’s just an introjection… Carry on!
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:16:10 +0000

p.s. I guess “neo-classicism” and “new classicism”: are pretty much the same thing…. what’s a better term? Perennialism? Permanent poetry? Recapitulationism? Antidisestablishmentarianism? ??
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By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:50:28 +0000

I don’t think poetry-writing per se is a privileged occupation. Some poets can make a profession out of it, and others may view that as expression of privilege or some other form of social elitism. But poetry-writing per se is a kind of work as well as play. There’s nothing inherently privileged about creative activity. Seems rather puritanical to think so.
The US poetry scene does seem to have its share of confusion… but perhaps that’s in the eye of (this) beholder. Perhaps the problem is not so much with the poetry scene(s) as with the climate & methods of critical and aesthetic judgement.
My own feeling today, & I hope to write something more substantial about this, is that the US focus on groups and schools – and also the mode of vision we have inherited from the 20th century, which analyzes art in minute and pedantic detail solely in terms of progressive changes in technique and style, developed in turn to keep up with rapid transformations of history in general – that these two standard approaches to critical judgement are missing something essential.
Reginald Shepherd has picked apart some of these problems, by carefully reviewing some of the history. But I think maybe we need to have a fundamental change in the way we exercise aesthetic judgement and critique. There are a couple of basic categories which the critic or commentator applies : classification and evaluation. And for the most part, contemporary reviewers seem to apply a method we might call “non-judgemental classification”. It’s enough to outline for the reader what school or tradition the contemporary poet represents, and then enthuse over what seem to be the clever high points of the technique applied within that specific genre or style.
I think we need to get back to evaluation of quality per se, rather than generic/historical classification. When you start to consider aesthetic quality, the first characteristic which jumps to the fore is the poetry’s distinctiveness, its originality, its uniqueness. The “new” here is not a function of clever application of supposedly new techniques; it’s the synthesis of original and previously-unseen aesthetic wholes. It’s the successful poetic expression of new problems and new subject-matter. This phenomenon always requires that the individual poet outgrow, SURPASS the tradition or school from which he or she proceeds. And in fact I think the most effective means of achieving such a level of style is by outgrowing one’s parochial beginnings, into the broader, global tradition of poetry, going back to ancient times. & IF THIS IS THE CASE – this fact has serious implications for notions of “progressive” changes in aesthetic styles; because it means that in order for a poet to reach a certain level of quality, he or she has to grasp & apply techniques and modes of address which HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED.
Thus there is a paradigmatically ANACHRONISTIC aspect to aesthetic quality. & I would say that a critical approach that forcuses on the evaluation of individual quality, rather than genetic classification, would be a possible element of a future climate of rfeception for poetry in the US – something I wouldn’t want to call either neo-classical or neo-formalist, because these imply a far too narrow set of styles – but maybe “new classicism”. (cf. Osip Mandelstam, again, for his similar notion of a sort of “classicism of the future”.)
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:54:26 +0000

UN,
I meant satire in poetic mode: epigrams, mock odes, and so forth.
Behrle’s comics are lots of fun, though. Some of his funniest have been about me!
Kent
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By: unreliable narrator

unreliable narrator — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:50:42 +0000

As far as poets poking fun at, heaping scorn upon, and roasting one another (duck-style, on a spit over the open blaze): well, we’ll always have Jim Behrle.
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By: Lucia

Lucia — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:00:16 +0000

“It perpetuates many of the same kinds of hierarchies, exclusions, sectarianisms, and obsequiousness that I think many poets would like to see at least partially dismantled in the larger society”
I’m thinking that the blog-world breaks down heirarchies–anyone can post–although there is the dichotomy of the “official” bloggers and the rest.
But from my baptism by fire (my entry into blogging) it seems that once you remove the heirarchy, we descend lord-of-the-flies-wise. Reminds me of a movie I saw in college of ducks subjected to crowded conditions (internet space is unlimited, yet the viability of posts is indeed limited by time, which in turn makes me think of how I never understood how time could be the fourth dimension, or what Hawking calls “the one way arrow of time.” But perhaps we have built a model for demonstating it!)
back to the ducks (a normally docile species): they began attacking each other and showing gender-related abberant behaviors, like raping a female to death. No doubt this all has to do with resource allocation (think of the resource allocation of the blog).
Then the professor made a joke he couldn’t make these days (because institutions have decided they must “protect” women.)
That’s the report from the ducks.
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By: Jilly

Jilly — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:14:41 +0000

I got the screen where it said your comment will be approved or whatever by the blog owner.
No biggie.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:38:58 +0000

Jilly, I can’t believe your questions was deleted – are you sure about that???
Anyway, let’s ask again: what’s the point of books like Best New Poets?
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:15:50 +0000

I agree with Alan Gilbert’s points. I make very similar ones, actually, in a conversation with the poet John Bradley, published recently in Plantarchy, a conversation focusing on satire and the paucity of it in our current climes– I mean that august tradition of satire that targets poetry and poets…
Poets poking fun at and heaping scorn upon other poets would be one mode of the institutional critique Gilbert is talking about here, I think. But it’s so verboten to do this today.
Didn’t used to be that way, of course. And too bad, since poets roasting one another a bit more openly would be a healthy thing, lots of fun, and likely get us more readers. I wonder why things are so different now, from the good old days?
Well, actually, I think I do have some notion as to why…
Kent
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By: Jilly

Jilly — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:10:06 +0000

…why poetry doesn’t risk more, why it doesn’t dissent from itself more—its institutional forms, its modes of establishing community, its inherited schools and traditions.
I’ve wondered the same thing, particularly with the MFA — > contest — > book — > job/award superhighway.
I asked a genuine question on this blog once, as simple as “what is the ‘point’ of books like Best New Poets” & it was deleted, LOL.
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By: Chris L

Chris L — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:24:04 +0000

One person’s perpetuation of “the same kinds of hierarchies, exclusions, sectarianisms, and obsequiousness” is often another person’s writing the kinds of poetry she likes to read. Why is creative expression, itself inextricably bound to the unknowable of persona aesthetics, posited as some kind of zero sum game? Much less then extrapolated into and then interpreted as some kind of coherent political statement?
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By: Michael Robbins

Michael Robbins — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:47:59 +0000

I promised myself I wouldn’t re-enter this fray, but time future, you know. I think this is an importantly clarifying post, & helpfully delineates some discrete problems. Consent certainly seems to be the operational desideratum for contemporary poetry — note how many commenters found it simply baffling to consider that Eliot & Pound could have produced innovative poetry while holding what it is deemed unnecessary to bother arguing are ridiculously backward political values. Leftism, it’s useful to note again, developed as opposition to liberalism — at least partly because the twin fetishes of consent & tolerance are counterproductive to a tradition intent on the forcible redistribution of property. Indeed, one gets shouted down on this very forum if one’s blood pressure spikes a bit when confronting opposing views — but if the views are robust, no plea for temperance should be required. Adorno wrote of “the common consent of the positive”: “a gravitational force that pulls all downwards.” Political efficacy, in private life as in the arts or in the public sphere, depends upon the refusal to model your behavior on “the industrial bottleneck” — as Zizek says, the refusal to “get blackmailed into accepting the struggles of upper-middle-class victimization as the horizon of our political engagement.” Ideas matter, or they don’t. If they do, consent should be actively discouraged from the starting gate.
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