In keeping with the ethos of the movement, I’ve taken my time getting to Dale Smith’s SloPo manifesto over on his Skanky Possum blog, and again (and better) over on Bookslut.
In his essay, Smith very politely proposes a poetics that would disrupt systems of thought in a more radical manner than the uber-presence of “conceptual poetry” or flarf have thus far done.
Instead of avant garde, SloPo is après tout.
Briefly (and a tad reductively) SloPo is a poetics based on the Italian slow food and slow biking movements, encouraging the use of outmoded technology like Xerox and letterpress to reach local audiences, while at the same time focusing on slow, careful crafting rather than fast, zeitgeisty 24/7 production.
SloPo could, Smith writes, “salvage ancient technes of poetics in order to create imaginative approaches to living locally.”
In the comments: Joseph Harrington brings up the possible advantages of a SloPo-ness of consumption as well as production, saying that perhaps one thoughtful book-reading per month is more than enough; Kristen Prevallet proposes taking into consideration the resources involved in poetry production, furthering some ideas put forth in “Poetry, Ecology, and the Reappropriaton of Lived Space”; And Jordan (I assume Davis) says “I enjoy the emphasis you place on slowness, even as the shadow of Ron S’s quietude passes over it.”
Kasey Mohammad thinks it over at Lime Tree, and counters that “all poetry is slow poetry,” which echoes the thoughts on this ten year old Buffalo listserv thread, as well as Friar Laurence’s advice in Romeo and Juliet, ““Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.”
After getting over my initial tittering at the idea of the blogospherical gobbling of a SloPo movement, I’ve decided to just luxuriate in the idea, pick some blackberries and lounge in the Snohomish River over the weekend while reading a little OG SloPo from Lorine Niedecker. I encourage all poets and critics to do the equivalent.
Zzzzzz.
I tried slow biking once. I kept falling off.
Travis, thanks for the shout-out here.
Another interesting aspect of slow poetry is its turn to public space as an area of engagement. One question slow poetry asks is, how do our words influence the environments we live in, and in what contexts do they disclose something previously hidden? Slow poetry is a platform to help think through critical problems of resources, communications, and public understanding through poetry–a system of thought that remains ambiguous and resistant to much of the categorically motivated assumptions of capital. And while I’m here, regarding these matters, I must plug a new book from Palm Press by Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand: “Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space.” Boykoff and Sand document a number of poetry-in-public projects and help theorize ways of understanding poetry’s relationship to public spaces. I’ll have more to say about it my September Bookslut.com column.
Thanks again,
Dale
It’s really, really interesting to see how Dale Smith’s thinking-out-loud on this SloPo stuff seems to get some Flarf people into a snit.
No one’s saying they can’t keep doing their shtick, so I’m wondering why that is?
Not that it matters a great deal…
Kent
What’s wrong with snits, Kent? You seem to have a snit against flarf… I’m wondering why that is?
Wait, there are people who don’t have snits against flarf?
actually, with that last post I think I accidentally created flarf.
I’d settle for some slow flarf as a compromise.
Beforew the manifesto, brooding on slowness:. Work in Sadness::Comments on Slowness
l. In Brazil the form of a laborer’s slowdown was called Wortk in Sadness.
2. The best violin teachers train the student to be ;patient enough to practise
slowly, “as in a cast.” By listening to each note. Practising slowly is one of the
most excruciating experiences. Poetry too has always seemed the opposite of
speed reading, though some patter is a presto.
3. If there are thousanbds of differenbt orchids, why do we categorize so quickly.
Human poetry –aren’t we as multiple as orchids and lizards? I love
a book never written: Darwin on Beauty. There’s beauty mentioned in every page
of Darwin: sexual, slow and evolving. Uncontrollable poetry.
4. John Cage thought the softest sounds were loved by the best ears. Morty
Feldman loved to have music as slow and continmuouis as the ocean, the
old hpynotist.
5. Adoilph Gottlieb told me to see if I could make my ideas in poaint
‘bigger and bigger. Under mhy breath I thought: Why not smaller and smaller.
Isn’t Hopkins sprung rhythm satisfying because it petmits a trulky variablke foot.
Why can’t we change rhythms each step of the way? I’;m probably always
misreading the Hopkins techniques, but isn’t sprung rhythm closer to the
way any bar may be packed in with any numkber of different notes? Also,
6. I always thought it strange that poets would talk of iambic and a few deviations,
when music such as a Brahms String Quartet is constantly changing tempi and
rhythm and volume.
7. When I heard certain poets reciting their poems in a kind of neutral gray on gray,
I first was surprized. No longer the golden saxapkhone of Dylam Thomas, say.
The grey was patrticulkarly good at bringing out subtle discri8minations. Then it became a dogma, as in so many “schools.” It seems to irritate a “species” to bump into another
species and discobver they are not really species after all, just small variants.
First Ashbery seemed anomalous and I was treated by almost every poet I met in l962-6 as if
I loved a dream. Now one sees that his popetry is related to….everything.
8. Maqnifestoes are particularly good if they are self=-conscious humorous and flexible. When poets–not you Dale–sound pious inflexible and dogmatic, one reaches for etraser fluid.
Havel once said he never trusted people who were utterly serious and never joked. He said that was the style of the Patrty. One joke is worth a lot of manifestpoes. Even Guy deBoird had a classic
sense of humor when he said: It is not given to any man to bring Paris twice to
its knees.”
9. Beethove4n is always or often admired for making ther slow passages seem quick and the
fast passages slow. This ius an ultimate test of polyphony.
l0. DeKooning said to Harold Rosenberg: Am I an action painter, Harold?
Then the critic says that someone once asked how slow an action painting could be…
(I thought this a wonderfuyl and true response)He said, Well, I’;vbe said that a good action painting takes up a whole life. Could you wanbt it slkower than that?
I am glad to see much of the charm of David’s emails comes across in his posts.
And for the record, I, too, petmit a trulky variablke foot.
For the record, I, too, petmit a trulky variablke foot.
Whoops, looks like I need some etraser fluid.