Comments on: This is what democracy looks like

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:42:23 +0000

Sorry to be an Empson-quoting throwback, but he always said that the moral importance of literature is that it puts you in contact with people whose values are very different from your own. It can take a strong stomach to read certain poets and particular poems, and we each have our own lists of these. Just recently on Harriet, Major Jackson talked about Stevens in light of some very ugly remarks made at a meeting of the National Book Award committee … and Charles Bernstein has written eloquently in many places about reading Pound, which he calls “a useful, albeit sometimes distasteful, study of the unavoidable relation of poetry to politics.” He says, too, that the more important Pound’s work is seen to be, “then the more important it is to understand the disease that consumes his work, which cannot be disentangled from what is ‘good’ about it… The significance of ‘the Pound tradition’ requries that we interrogate it for what it excludes as much as what it makes possible: interrogate the assumptions of poetic lineages not just to acknowledge their effects but also to counteract their effects…” For Major, on the other hand (as he wrote recently in APR), “poets and writers… like everyone else, have the option of behaving as decent human beings, of being thoughtful and considerate, which is not a question of ‘politics’ or ‘correctness,’ or even the invisible forces that make one self-aware about one’s moral groundings or lack thereof.”

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:39:19 +0000

Thanks for the clarification, John. (I can address you by name, right? Thanks.)
Just a couple things. I reject that my “comment at the top of this thread continues to insult and belittle” anyone. The comment I was reacting to, just to jog your memory, was a highly charged broadside full of innuendo and barely veiled accusations of racism and misogyny, launched, in very aggressive manner, at those who had calmly and responsibly criticized a position put forward by that person’s spouse. I responded by saying that the innuendo and barely veiled accusations were an overreaction that should not be allowed to intimidate anyone from responding further. I used the word “emotional” to characterize the nature of the response, and I stand by that characterization as an objective description of the rhetoric employed. And I reject any accusations that to use such description constitutes racism. (Readers can check back and make their own decisions, I guess.)
What followed were yet more accusations by the same individual, this time heavily laden with very personal charges directed at my own person, bringing up a book I was involved with that had little to do with the discussion at hand, calling my association with that work a “dastardly deed,” and yet another reason no one should “trust” anything in relation to me or my work, etc.
I responded calmly that we could discuss the topic in another thread, if the person desired. I referred to her comments in this second post as “angry.” and I stand, as well, by that characterization as an objective description of the rhetoric employed. You or others can continue to insinuate what you like, but frankly, I’ve been around the poetry world for some time, John, and seen such bullying shenanigans before. They don’t impress me in the least.
So you’re really going to have to do better than this “clarification,” I’m afraid. And I would suggest that the flame stuff that fuels your post above be kept out of this forum. I’ve said *nothing* here to deserve the kind of other-agenda personal attacks sent my way, and I resent that you continue to insinuate that I have.
Kent

By: john

john — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:31:13 +0000

It seems perfectly clear.
I’ll put it in narrative form.
Mark N. called a poem of Wright’s racist and macho. The poem included an ethnic slur and a sexist stereotype.
People got really upset, saying things like “dangerous” and “misreading.”
Someone got upset about people getting upset, saying, wow, I’m glad you weren’t my teachers, because your method of reading denies my experience.
That person got insulted and belittled, by you, among other people.
Your comment at the top of this thread continues to insult and belittle the practice of reacting to “poetically framed” ethnic slurs and sexist stereotypes in a personal way.
The upshot, for me, is that according to the reading practice you’re defending, it’s OK to sling racist and sexist slurs, as long as it’s framed in a poem, but it’s not OK to react to the racist and sexist slurs without first acknowledging the aesthetic frame.
My belief is, the special demarcation between art and life that your method of reading demands is unearned and unwarranted. Art is part of life, not separate from it.
Because art is not separate from life, there is no reason to expect an aesthetic frame to soften the immediate impact of an ethnic or sexist slur. And, for a lot of readers, that immediate impact can ruin the experience of the poem. Who’s to say they are wrong?
People aren’t wrong to like Wright’s poem either.
As a postscript, I would add that most poetry reviewers focus on great lines, not whole poems. If it’s OK to focus on great lines, why is it wrong to object to ugly ones? I don’t see anybody polemicizing against — hell — most of the bloggers here, who focus their posts and reviews and essays on great lines.

By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:30:05 +0000

John,
I’m not saying this to be difficult, and I admit that the problem may just lie with me on this particular morning, with just not being able to understand something I should be able to grasp. It happens.
But I honestly cannot figure out what on earth you mean to say above. Can you clarify a bit, at least for me, since the comment is partly aimed my way?
thanks, and sorry,
Kent

By: john

john — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:44:27 +0000

A few thoughts for the discussion hopper:
Kent and others are attempting to impose a dogma.
The dogma consists of this:
1. Aesthetic objects are to be taken whole or not at all.
2. The only taboo is to share one’s personal and political response to the racial and sexual rhetoric of a poem without first relating the role that the rhetoric plays in the aesthetic whole.
When commenters have deviated from this dogma, they have been belittled and insulted, according to this dogma, and additionally according to the strangely related — though unreality-based — Marxist dogma that to complain of racial or sexual oppression is to support capitalism.
Here’s what I believe:
1. We’re all post-avant now, and aesthetic objects don’t get special status where their parts get exemption from direct response until they are related to the context of their wholes.
2. People are free to suspend their reactions to parts until they relate them to wholes if they so choose.
3. Language and rhetoric are unpredictable.

By: Brian Salchert

Brian Salchert — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:02:16 +0000

“I Am” by John Clare is one of my favorite poems
and
“I Am . . . I Said” by Neil Diamond is one of my favorite popular songs.
However,
to say that I am because I think
is not one of my favorite ideas.
JDJ reminds me of Reginald Shepherd (bless him)
with his emphasis on the artifact.
I also accept the primacy of the artifact,
for reasons that should be obvious.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:23:00 +0000

I’m happy to see Steve’s mention of Clare (and happy to see Steve!) – John Clare surely ought to come up in a discussion that includes issues of class, capitalism, and poetry. Assuming, that is, that it’s ok to bring up a poet who isn’t contemporary…

By: Jordan

Jordan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:10:01 +0000

>people like to join large arguments
Also, internet discussions prompt in reader/writers the urge to make censorious righteous responses to a single line in a discussion to the exclusion of balanced analysis of the entire post. That is, the web makes everyone a cop.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:02:04 +0000

Posts with general, controversial political, or ethical, claims tend to generate long comment threads because people like to join large arguments, and everyone who reads poetry blogs has an opinion about such large topics as Poetry and Politics, Poetry and Class Injustice, Poetry and Commodification, Poetry and Fetishization, and so on: to have arguments about these things, you don’t even have to read, or reread, any more poems.
Not everyone has an opinion about Bernadette Mayer or Michael Field or John Clare, bceause to have an opinion about those poets, you probably have to read their poems. –As I’ve just been moved to consider rereading Yakich’s, especially the titles Elizabeth Booker gives.

By: elizabeth booker

elizabeth booker — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:11:36 +0000

Fetishism? Okay. The only way to get around self-righteousness, another word perhaps for this fetishism, is via tragicomedy. Alas, only a few poets do tragicomedy well — Gudding, Yakich, Sparrow (at times), Goodman, Loden. And don’t gimme that Hoagland, Dean Young, et al stuff. I mean really tackle the big chops — for instance, Yakich’s “Spell to Bring Me Osama Bin Laden” or “A Brief History of Patriotism” or “Poem for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”