Comments on: Hives

By: mearl

mearl — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 14:08:01 +0000

Liz,
Thanks for commenting. I should have gotten back to you earlier, especially since your comments created the impetus I needed for next post (which I should be putting up today); the importance of reading, its connection with living, the solo art and its terms…and thanks for the word “mulga”. I definitely took all of this on board, and you’ll find your observations in a lot of what I have to say in my next post.
Tell us more about Australia. Years ago I wrote a piece on Jacket Magazine for Web del Sol.
I hope you’ll see this response on this now outdated thread. If you don’t I’ll bring it to your attention on the next one.
Thanks again,
Martin
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By: Iain

Iain — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:21:06 +0000

Martin,
I do not think that grammar will prevail over ephemera, in fact I actively try to promote an ephemeral view of grammar (in the sense that it’s always in flux). I also don’t agree that “the stuff of the blog” is particularly more ephemeral than any other language act. For instance, if you delete your blogs at Harriet, they are still stored in my RSS reader (which is in turn backed up on my hard drive) for me to access any time I want. In fact, in that the blogs are easier to traverse (easier to find desired information), blogs are somewhat less ephemeral than books. Sure, my books are still there, but since I’m rarely at my apartment, it’s as if I discard them for most of the day.
When you say “ephemera” in the print world, you’re talking about something that’s very wasteful. Whereas on the Internet, it’s just time/context specific material, which is the case with all language acts to a degree. I don’t think there is anything about the blog (or rather the Internet) which hinders the creation of more “lasting” content. Rather than use the word “ephemera”, I would, myself, describe the Internet as being geared toward “language-in-process”. And while there are certain problems that arise from that, I see it as largely positive. Actually, I did want to say “positive”, but I should just say exciting. I don’t have a utopianist view of the Internet, but see it as just as dangerous to have a utopianist view of print (a view of print that I see as being fairly prevalent, especially among writers).
That was, perhaps, too much attention to pay to an aside comment. Here are my thoughts on your more direct responses:
1. No, I didn’t really mean to accuse you of being a propagandist (or maybe I did at the time). Your posts tend to provoke knee-jerk responses in me, for which I apologize. Because I’m not familiar with your critical work before this blog, I tend to put some of the things you say in the context of things said on the Harriet blog in general, which is a mistake.
2. I agree that the word “academic” is over used.
3. I took the your comment about the poet needing to rethink his relationship to the audience to be directed specifically at language poetry because language poetry was the only specific example you gave. You say a lot about poetry in general, but language poetry is the only poetry that is mentioned that has specific problems. You may not have intended it this way, but the article seems to suggest that language poetry is somehow to blame for contemporary poetry’s current pathologies, or that it was itself your metaphorical urticaria indicating the bigger problem. Neither of these things, I think, could be construed as the case. I understand that you didn’t really say this, and that the pathology metaphor had more to do with the media issues. I didn’t address the comments about contemporary media, because I wanted to be more specific. People want to paint “post-avant” writing with really broad strokes, and there’s this tendency to accuse poets of “not caring about their audience”, “being too academic”, “obscuring their humanness”, or anything else that gives an excuse to not have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of excellent work being done there. You weren’t trying to do this, which is more clear to me after your latest response.
5. I don’t think “riffing obscure”, or even the word “obscure” in general, gives an accurate view of what Bernstein or any other language poet is/was doing. There’s nothing that is being obscured, nothing that’s being hidden. In fact, uses for words that we don’t often see are being revealed. Bernstein often riffs on the semiotic values of words rather than purely their ability to convey a message. Language does lots of things. Using it only to convey a message equally “obscures” its other values. Saying “obscurantist” gives this picture of something sneaky, or coercive, and doesn’t convey the deep and genuine love of words that is so present in Bernstein’s work.
6. I cringed at Shakespeare’s work (probably because people around me did) before I was ever exposed to it, of course, never afterwards. The analogy I was trying to make between Shakespeare and language poetry was merely on the topic of “difficulty”. Shakespeare is a very “difficult” writer, and yet remains one of the most read poets of all time. To me, Shakespeare is where arguments about “accessibility” and “inaccessibility” become blurred into nonsense.
Martin, thank you for your kind words, and for taking me so seriously.
-iain
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By: mearl

mearl — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:48:15 +0000

Iain,
“Earl’s attitude toward language is further revealed for what it is in the comment section as, on a number of occasions, he ignores valid criticism only to correct the verb tenses of a quick typing commenter.”
This is from a blog called PATHOLOGOS authored by “Iain”…is that your blog?
If it is, I like what you say. And the style does seem to match the style of your comments on Harriet; you’re terse, to the point.
But don’t your think that in the end grammar will prevail over ephemera, which is the stuff of the blog? And if you agree with me there, then bloggers should, and indeed, have a duty, to tip their hats in that direction once and a while, especially when there is nothing to respond to in a comment except to how badly it’s written.
Anyway, to your present comment. I think it’s best to take it, more or less point by point, since the points are interesting beyond their immediate context.
1. Do you really think that I am “trying” to misrepresent the positions I am “attacking”? That’s like accusing me of writing propaganda. I’m not Joseph Goebbels, the frustrated novelist.
2. I think the term “academic” needs redefining for the present period. It has meant a lot of different things over the years: conservatism, a perceived tarnish through association with a university, the poetry of the establishment, etc. There’s a wonderful interview at Jerome Rothenberg’s blog, Poems and Poetics. It’s at the top of the scroll – very worthwhile. He takes up the subject of academic poetry in the historical context. My notion of what constitutes academic poetry today is simply based on who at the moment is controlling the institutional life of poetry via the MFA system, and as a consequence orienting the thousands of younger poets who enter these programs in a given year. They take up certain theoretical and ideological stances that wind up influencing their personal styles. The massification of such processes, in my opinion, leads to homogeneity, staleness and predictability. I don’t think it’s a question of difficulty, in the traditional sense.
3. When I say “poetry” needs to rethink its relationship to its audience, I am speaking about poetry in general, not just “language” poetry, which, really, no one writes anymore, including Charles himself. In fact, I think there has been some confusion here. Whenever I speak about language poetry I am speaking about an already historical movement.
4. As to Ron Silliman. His book Tjanting is one of my favorite books. I think, in terms of “difficulty”, I was distinguishing between difficulty and willful obscurity. Like you, I don’t consider language poetry (when it’s poetry) either inaccessible or difficult. Lyn Hejinian’s work, as you say, is an excellent example. Her difficulty is the genuine difficulty of first-rate poetry.
5. I think that when Bernstein is more “difficult” it is when he’s riffing obscurely. Then he is not at his best. His great talent lies in satire, in my opinion.
6. I can’t imagine cringing at Shakespeare. In this case we really must be of two different planets. I don’t care about “most people reading Shakespeare.” Let them cringe and eat their cakes. And I see no workable analogy between Shakespeare and language poetry. The “understanding”, as you say, is of a completely different order. If today’s poetry reader is not sufficiently challenged, I think she should read Chaucer instead of flarf.
Thanks, Iain, for the energy and intelligence that you’ve brought to these threads…what about my discussion of contemporary media?
Martin
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By: louise waller

louise waller — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:16:42 +0000

i think martin has raised the most important issue with his comment ‘stop writing and read’ and to that comment i would expand – start living your life, stop writing for a while and start observing, read more and then read more and then write something that you would read, that you would value, that you would want to be the author of. it (poetry/writing) isn’t about mass markets, academic creds, showmanship, cadres, movements, or it sn’t just about those things.
it is usually a solo art, writing. making language happen in ways that matter to the solo art.
if other people get it, that’s a good thing, good for them. but why write? because, (if you are interested), why not.
the australian poet michael sharkey, in a poetry retreat/workshop in 2000 said he thought most (younger) poets should head out into the mulga (outback/bush/country/elsewhere) and live and write for a while before thinking about publishing anything, and o, yeah, he added they should probably read other peoples poetry for a while. it is very difficult to find poets here in australia and i’m guessing in the us/uk and europe who actually experience life, read a lot and then think about writing. most new writing seems to come straight out of ‘school’ creative writing / mfa / ma / programs. as a means to an end. the old fashioned idea of vocation may be pissed on by many, but, it is an art, and sometimes an artist is talented, interested, gifted, and enriched by training, not o yeah, maybe i’ll do the writing program and publish something. sometimes creative talent is imbued within the complex cell splitting that happens in the womb.
post avant/language/flarf/conceptual/hip-hop/lyric/new lyric – all the new forms and the old forms – usually a matter of taste. the best of the forms are not written by slavish rote followers of schools and movements. talented solo artists make it on their own terms.
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:24:08 +0000

Iain,
Fascinating stuff. I wish we had examples.
Cheerleader chants, Army marching chants, the prose of technical manuals, doggerel, all these things have rhythm, and often quite complex rhythms.
We can point out that something is ‘poetry’ or that something is ‘popular,’ or that something has complex rhythms, but we’re not really saying much at all. Such formulas are too easy to make.
This is why I am not quite ready to concede your point.
It is also doesn’t matter, to me, really, how much technology an art needs or does not need. Or whether it’s done in Radio City Music Hall, or the slums of Havana.
None of these things matter to me, really.
What matters to me is ‘the Good.’
What matters to me is: What does poetry, as we define it, do better than anything else? Not, what makes it valuable, not, what makes it unique, but what makes it valuable AND unique at the same time?
As for the issue of what makes the rhythm, the words, or the music, I think the key to poetry is that it must SEEM that the words are making the music, the music is not selecting the words, for isn’t the latter what we call (pejoratively) doggerel?
As soon as “The Raven” by Poe was parodied, the spell was broken; we realized Poe’s words were not making that rhythm, for any number of words (meanings) could be used with that rhythm.
“The Raven” has been parodied many, many times.
But I don’t believe this has ever been parodied:
“DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
This, too, has a rhythm. But it would be far more difficult to parody the first sentence of ‘The House of Usher’ than ‘The Raven.’
Anyway, I think the idea of parody may hold the secret to what we are both trying to explain.
Thomas
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By: Iain

Iain — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:58:15 +0000

Thomas,
In Hip-Hop, the lyrics drive the rhythm as often (or at least nearly as often) as the rhythm drives the words. There are many points in Lil Wayne’s new album where an irregularity in meter will be reflected by an irregularity in the song’s beat. Also, Hip-Hop albums frequently feature songs with no music or beat in the background. Either way though, much historical poetry (most really) features words driven by a beat (any metrical poetry). In fact, for the most part, in Hip-Hop, the beat doesn’t actually provide the rhythm for the words as much as it provides a frame-work for the words to happen in.
The most interesting thing about Hip-Hop to me is that it explores how language reacts to its environment. This happens on many different levels, from Black Vernacular’s response to an oppressive environment to how the words in the songs themselves form around a beat. As I said before, the beat provides a framework, but words are stuffed in, slurred, elongated, the regional accent shifted, etc. It is about conquering and overcoming the beat, subverting it, as much as “following” it. The lyrics are not merely recited later by the listener (as with pop lyrics, for the most part), but placed into a new environment, reinterpreted, and improvised upon.
Hip-Hop doesn’t need to rely on technology as much as poetry on the page. For poetry on the page, if you take away the press, the paper, the writing instruments, whatever, the poetry is gone. Whereas with Hip-Hop, as much as it uses and responds to technology, if you take the technology away, Hip-Hop remains, reacting organically to any environment it’s placed in. And this is very much what the poetry of Hip-Hop is “about”. Hip-Hop seems very capitalist in our country because that is the environment, but Hip-Hop thrives in Cuba too, and takes very different forms.
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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:06:46 +0000

Liz,
Just checked, No translator involved…all the better!
Thanks,
m
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:03:42 +0000

Iain,
You are not the first person I have heard say this: “Hip-Hop is way beyond what you hear on the radio. Hip-Hop happens all the time without any accompaniment.”
But doesn’t all the chart-topping Hip Hop/Rap have that booming bass line as its signature, as well as other sorts of musical elements? It depends on music, really, just as much as any pop music form.
Hip Hop without any accompaniment is something I’m also familiar with, but it doesn’t sell like the musical kind does.
I grant that a recognizable beat in words signals ‘poetry’ to most people, but I was trying to make a distinction between1) word-arrangement which creates its own unique rhythm v. a 2) rhythm that is first established and then words are made to fit that pre-established rhythm.
The two are often confused, but I think it’s an important distinction. Song, as well as poetry, can use both methods, but the former method above–where the words themselves create the rhythm, instead of the rhythm holding up the words–is the one I prefer.
Thomas
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By: mearl

mearl — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:58:21 +0000

Liz
I don’t even know if this is legal, but I’ll risk it. Here’s a 2008 comment you made on Quill & Quire, with a poem from Mark Yakich’s book, The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin, 2008). I take the liberty because of what you said on my thread. Can you fill us in on the poet and the translator? On the basis of this one poem, I’m extremely curious.
Martin
August 1, 2008 | 10:22 pm Elizabth Booker says:
Dear Mr Weller:
If you would like a precise and unusual take on poetry and suicide bomber, try this poem below from Mark Yakich’s new book, The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin, 2008).
Sincerely, Elizabeth Booker
For a Suicide Bomber
If you stare right between your thighs
You will find that one of the many beauties
Of poetry is that you can go from a sedentary
Lump all the way to a lean, self-righteous
Hard-on without touching nostalgia. I
Have seen people exaggerate the flower
Of poetry. For example, it can make you have
Longer, more distinguished orgasms; it can
Make you fall in love with your worst enemy;
It can placate crotch odor. I have known men
And women who deliberately crap their own
Pockets and leotards trying to suffer the same
Misery of Buddha, Dante, Dickinson, and Li Po
It�s time to put the big myth about these
Pilots to bed. By definition their crying is
A low-intensity way to burn calories and their
Tears are a low-down way to get someone
Into the sack. Even so, I have worked with
Many people who felt they were climbing
Everest as they struggled through their first
Twenty-minute crying jag. Remember,
You have thought your whole life about how
Wonderful fame would be. Let your
Hand form a loose fist around my trigger
Point. The rules for success are clear: you
Must never give candy to a dandy; and
You must learn to die, like the Moors
On a Spanish galleon, in five-minute shifts.
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By: mearl

mearl — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:57:44 +0000

Iain
And I appreciate the challenge and your attention to the substance of my post. (It’s being commented on from all different kinds of perspectives.) I’ve read your large comment a few times now and have kind of half formulated a response, but I lost the index card (for the moment) that contained those formulations. But I plan to get back to you, hopefully tonight. I’m working under deadline this week so it’s been a bit difficult to keep up.
And I don’t think it’s ever a mistake to respond to Bill. He one of our greatest poets, and I – for one – have learned a lot from him over the years.
Anyway, thanks for nudging me.
Martin
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By: Iain

Iain — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:48:54 +0000

Thomas,
I appreciate your last comment. Thank you.
It’s frustrating to me that I get thrown into the “academic” category for defending langpo, flarf, conceptual poetry, etc. (as if that were a good reason to discount me anyway). I really don’t think that the assertion that these poetries are “academic” or “inaccessible” holds up to any scrutiny (something I’m still hoping Martin will respond to). Honestly, langpo makes more “sense” to me than Billy Collins. When I try to get people into poetry here in Ypsilanti, I have much more success with Flarf or Kenny Goldsmith’s work than I do with so-called “accessible” poetries. When I’ve shown my poetry (which can be “difficult”) to academics, they’re usually lost and don’t know what to say, but when I show it to people with no literary background whatsoever, they often love it.
Again, thanks for your comment, and thanks for actually engaging with some of the things I’ve said.
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By: Iain

Iain — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:58:18 +0000

Thomas,
Not only is Hip-Hop the poetry that most engages with the contemporary, it is also the poetry that most resembles poetry’s roots. “Genre-bending”? Really?
Poetry with a pronounced beat is excluded from being “pure” poetry? What? So anything in iambics is out then?
If anything, Hip-Hop is poetry first and pop music second. All of the other things you mentioned are pop music first and poetry second (if at all).
I only mentioned Kanye and Weezy because Bill wanted to talk about the best sellers in poetry, which was certainly not anyone he was talking about. Hip-Hop is way beyond what you hear on the radio. Hip-Hop happens all the time without any “accompaniment”, and not in the same way someone might have a Beatles song caught in their head. I don’t hear Beatles lyrics being recited to wholly metrics, mixed with Dylan lyrics and improvisations and used to accost passersby on the street. This happens with Hip-Hop where I live (not frequently, but it’s certainly recurring).
Citing pop lyrics as poetry might be an example of genre-bending (as if the very existence of “genres” weren’t the result of “bending”), but not so much Hip-Hop, unless you are excluding any kind of spoken poetry from being “pure” (which would be a very strange definition of poetry).
Sure, “Hip-Hop” is also used to describe things that aren’t poetry, but it still very much “means” poetry. If poetry is used to create a vibrant participatory culture, it’s not “pure” poetry to you? It’s “genre-bending”? Oh, that more poetry could bend us!
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:41:59 +0000

Iain,
Hey, Bill’s OK. It wasn’t a “mistake” to respond to him. It takes all kinds to make an interesting debate.
Look, I’m sure, to Bill, your opinion matters a lot more because you are NOT an academic elite,
It sounds like you’re one of the Hip Hop masses, as well as TAPP. That actually makes you the most important person here.
Dude, please stick around!
Thomas
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By: Iain

Iain — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:40:36 +0000

Martin,
I hope that just because I responded to Bill Knott (a mistake, I admit) that this hasn’t excluded me from being responded to. I’m basically the only person who has seriously challenged anything you’ve said here, and I hope I won’t be ignored just because I mistook you for an “academic”.
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:34:18 +0000

This is really bizarre.
Why does Kayne West get to be poetry? Why not Britney Spears? Irving Berlin? Beck? Paul McCartney? John Grisham? Conan O’Brien? Clint Eastwood? Chris Rock?
Hip Hop relies on spoken attitude and a musical accompaniment with a very pronounced beat. Poetry is not its appeal.
To imitate something in a clumsy manner is a form of insult. Cartoonish representation which distorts what is being represented can please, but the pleasure feeds on, it does not partake of, the thing represented.
This point is crucial to understanding the current discussion.
Hip Hop could be said to cultivate anti-poetry. Any thing that violates the spirit of poetry, but is close enough to it superficially, to pass for it in the eyes of crass intellectualization, is poetry’s worst enemy.
Hip Hop is not poetry anymore than tin pan alley was, or the Beatles or Dylan was, or Paul McCartney still is. Song lyrics do share some of poetry’s attributes, and can even exceed written poetry in bringing about a certain poetic effect, but so can classical music, with no words at all. So can the drama, and so can certain emotions invoked by certain real life situations.
The poetry of words which can invoke powerful feelings and give delight without musical or obvious dramatic accompaniment is valuable for doing so, simply because it isolates a means to an end, with its means bereft of the usual baggage necessary for that same end, and is wonderful for that very reason.
Genre-blurring will always exist, but shall we allow mere blending to turn us into utterly ignorant wretches in the process?
Thomas
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By: Ein

Ein — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:47:15 +0000

Bill,
You’re trying to start a fight, whereas I was hoping to provoke, possibly, some serious responses to some of the challenges I was making. The idea that I have “cronies” is so ridiculous, I wish I really could prove to you who I am. I don’t even know a single person who reads poetry. You’re acting like you’re intimidated by me, as if I were speaking from some elite academic position. I have nothing (I’m stealing wireless as I write this). I don’t even have a GED, I’m just trying to talk about poetry. If I was aggressive earlier, it is because I am passionate about these topics. I don’t mind at all that you’re being aggressive towards me, but it would be nice if you addressed the points I’m actually making, rather than the ones you imagine I might make.
If you want to make poetry about who sells the most, don’t talk to me about Giovanni and Oliver. Talk to me about Kanye West and Lil Wayne. If you really believe that the size of the audience is indicative of “poetic prowess”, then the top print poets are complete nobodies next to any Hip-Hop artist. Tell me Bill, why aren’t people who listen to hip-hop allowed in TAPP?
-iin
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By: mearl

mearl — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:50:45 +0000

Cathy,
Thanks to you and Luther Wilcoxe, this thread started out on a really positive note. I’ve been puzzling over your question: “But if you had to state a solution in one sentence, to say how contemporary poets might rethink their relationship to audience, could you do it?”
In fact, this question ended up informing, in some way or another, all of the comments that have come in, right up to Bill’s TAPP comment this afternoon.
(He’s a great one for respecting the nutshell – historically one of the poet’s most important civic duties.)
Do I have a one-sentence response?
Sure I do.
Stop writing and start reading.
Unlike novelists, non-fiction writers, journalists and historians, poets have somehow been excused from the pressure of knowing (or even considering) their readership. This happens for two reasons. 1, because they speak only to their coreligionists; and 2, because their work is largely subsidized, or paid for via the various connivances of the prize-awarding system. For them, the notion of the marketplace (which for most professional writers is necessarily formed around a strategic awareness of audience) need not be considered. In certain respects, they have become like the scholarly class, who write for a captive audience of apprentice scholars. Most of their thought is constructed around the citation of previous thought and very little of their production ever leaves the village. This kind of cloistering is important for scholarship. It always has been. But with poetry it leads to all sorts of troubles: inbreeding, pettiness, the inability to find new forms for new realities, provinciality and high-mindedness. Poets bathe too often in their own certainties. Instead of worrying about the decline of a general readership, they should stop writing poetry and start reading it. They should become the general reader that they have systematically neglected.
Let’s keep this question on the table.
Martin
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By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:59:54 +0000

it’s interesting how some poets like “Iain” (if that’s his real name)
have this problem with poets like Nikki Giovanni and Mary Oliver
whose poetry is, in his words, “flooding” the marketplace . . .
flooding, overflowing, inundating—his metaphor for their poetic prowess is indicative, no?
It’s evident that his (and his cronies’) hatred contempt disdain
for TAPP
is less than his hatred contempt disdain for Giovanni and Oliver,
because, to him (and his kindred) the latter are traitors—
by “dumbing down” their verse, by striving to make their poems accessible and readable,
Giovanni and Oliver (I’m using them as exemplars)
are betraying, in the eyes of Iain and his sect,
the sacred art of poetry——
indeed, TAPP is less to be blamed than these quisling poets are,
because, as he implies above with his remark about “Teachers”,
TAPP has been mistaught, misinstructed, misled——
and so their refusal to buy the books of Iain’s cult
is understandable to some degree——they simply need to be re-indoctrinated, rounded up and sent to re-education camps——
Iain and his claque can never let themselves believe that TAPP
might be composed of adults
with the intelligence and taste to make their own decisions about the poetry books they buy,
no, he insists, they are silly dumbed down fools
who need to have their heads forcefed
with the Smartened Up work of “language poetry, flarf, conceptual poetry” . . .
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By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:54:39 +0000

Bill,
Your response to my comments is very strange.
You’re throwing me in with arguments that I never made just because I happen to be defending poetry that is “post-avant”. I wish I would have talked more about hip-hip earlier, because I’d say that Flarf and hip-hop are the poetries most dealing with what I called today’s “chaotic language experience”. Hip-hop has an enormously larger audience than any poet being read by “TAPP”, so I’m not sure how that fits into your bizarre accusations of me.
My comments were made as a reader of poetry, a member of the “audience”, so that means, to you, I’m talking as a member of TAPP. Can’t I do that?
The biggest problem with your formation of “TAPP” is that it doesn’t include hip-hop. Why not? If it did, Giovanni and Oliver wouldn’t be near the top at all. I wonder if you’d have a problem with that, and if so, why? If the poet with the biggest audience is the best, as you seem to suggest by mentioning TAPP, then Billy Collins can’t touch Kanye West, which is generally true which ever way you look at it.
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By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:54:32 +0000

here you are, Iain:
The market is flooded with “nice” “accessible” poetry. I think, if anything, today’s poetry reader is not being challenged enough. If anything, not enough poetry deals with the chaotic language experience of contemporary life in the way that language poetry, flarf, conceptual poetry, and many others have begun to do.
“Market” i assume indicates the poetry bestseller list featured on this site—
and that “nice accessible poetry” that’s flooding it is written by, to name as example just two prominent stars of the latest list, Nikki Giovanni and Mary Oliver—
I’m terming TAPP what you call “today’s poetry reader”:
you’re saying that Giovanni and Oliver don’t challenge TAPP,
and that Giovanni and Oliver fail to deal “with the chaotic language experience of contemporary life”
in their poems, because . . . well, because they’re “silly” to use your word for them:
they’re silly because they choose to write poems addressed to a wider audience than “language poetry, flarf, conceptual poetry” does——
The great thing about your team is that they always win this argument; you always prove your point, you can’t be refuted—and
when you shout “Give it up! I was the captain of the debating team at Mineola Prep!”
I retreat in defeat . . .
But unfortunately for you, and for your cohorts of the question,
TAPP doesn’t care!
TAPP doesn’t care that you can prove beyond any doubt of reason that they are silly morons for preferring Nikki Giovanni and Mary Oliver
to your crew of chaoticists,
and that your contempt for them
(and for poets like Giovanni/Oliver, whom you abhor because they, to use your term, “dumb down” their verse)
is the main tenet underlying your thesis——
your disdain can crush me, you can bully your cause by calling me silly and dumb, your superior condescension can leave me spinning and flailing,
but so what? Forget me——
TAPP, TAPP, TAPP: that’s your audience knocking out there, Iain,
won’t you open the door for their “access”? If you wait around for the “Teachers” to do it, hey good luck on that——
TAPP, TAPP, TAPP: they’re nailing your coffin, language poetry, flarf, conceptual poetry——
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By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:48:01 +0000

Bill,
I’m not sure where you’re going with that, but I’d say that, sure, TAPP exists. However, I cannot believe that the tastes of TAPP as an entity is in any way a reflection of the tastes of the individuals that make it up. No one likes everything that’s on the radio, and no one likes all the most watched movies, and no one likes all the books on best-sellers lists.
If TAPP is the audience that Martin has in mind when he says that poets “need to rethink their relationship to their audience”, then I even more whole-heartedly reject the idea. I think the reason the notion bothers me in general is that the context the question is in presents this Poet-as-King/Audience-as-Subjects model which I have (as a poet) rethought, and completely abandoned. The audience needs to rethink its relationship to poetry (and I say that as a reader). In fact, I prefer to think of my poetry as coming from the “audience” side more than the “poet” side. Which is not to say that I claim to represent the audience who “unfortunately don’t [to quote Martin's post], as a collective literacy, actually exist.”
Also, the entity that’s being completely left out in this silly Poet/Audience dichotomy is the Teachers, who should be everyone to some extent. If poems are too “difficult”, this is a problem for Teachers (all of us) to correct, not for the poet to rethink (read: “dumb down”) her work.
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By: Don Share

Don Share — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:43:51 +0000

Anyone read Adam Bradley’s Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop yet? Bradley (who got his Ph.D. in English from Harvard!), argues that “Rap is poetry, but its popularity relies in part on people not recognizing it as such,” and that unlike much of what we call poetry, “Rap never ignores its listeners.” And: “Thanks to the engines of global commerce, rap is now the most widely disseminated poetry in the history of the world.”
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By: Bill Knott

Bill Knott — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:37:16 +0000

i hesitate to mention TAPP
—The American Poetry Public—
: you know, TAPP: the people who buy those books on the poetry bestseller list updated regularly on this site?—
the last time i mentioned TAPP in one of these threads, the respondent sidestepped any considerations re TAPP and accused me of nominating Danielle Steel for a Nobel——
you may hate TAPP (which most of this site’s frequenters do, judging by their comments here),
or you may pretend that TAPP doesn’t exist,
or that if TAPP does exist it is intellectually indistinguishable from the readers of vampire novels,
but it seems to me that TAPP is the ghost presence in many discussions here . . .
surely the answer to the question that “Iain” above asks:
“accessible to whom?”
is: TAPP.
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By: Doodle

Doodle — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:25:36 +0000

“‘Accessibility’ needs to be dropped from the American vocabulary of aesthetic judgment if we are not to appear fools in the eyes of the world.” – Helen Vendler
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By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:04:48 +0000

Thomas,
My point was to show that words like “accessible” and “difficult” have no consistent meanings that can be usefully employed to talk about poetry. Difficult to whom? Accessible to whom? These are the important questions. Any poem is difficult to one person, and accessible to another.
Language poetry is not beyond criticism. I have many criticisms of the movement. However, “language poetry” encompasses far too diverse an amount of tenancies for one to pretend to be able to describe with reifying terms like “academic” or “difficult”. Some language poetry is difficult, some language poetry is very simple and approachable.
I’m afraid if you find all hip-hip to be “banal” then it is “inaccessible” to you. Because if you find all of it banal, you’re very much missing something.
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:34:43 +0000

Iain,
That’s a flood red herrings.
Hejinian’s poem ‘My Life’ simply mirrors life and therefore is simple and accessible.
Bernstein, too, is “simple.”
Yet then you say poetry needs to “challenge” us more.
Which is it?
I don’t expect you to be pinned down, of course, since your game is to claim Language Poetry is accessible on one front, and, on the other, just in case, oh yes, Language Poetry is not accessible, well that’s good, isn’t it, because we need to be “challenged,” after all?
Shakespeare is not accessible, and therefore Language Poetry which is not accessible is just as good, or something like that.
Then you say Hip-Hop is popular but not “accessible” to a lot of people. And this proves that democracy and accessibility have nothing to do with each other.
Beautiful. You’ve covered all your bases and proved to your satisfaction that Language Poetry is beyond criticism.
But it is a truism that Language Poetry is pathologically inaccessible.
A tape recording of a random conversation at a party could be, to many people, “accessible.” But as poetry, the tape recording is inaccessible. The tape recording does not lead to anything further. It has no art. Shakespeare, on the other hand, as any educated person knows, if somewhat inaccessible at first, will lead to something worthwhile, for it has art. It will prove accessible, as art, in the end. As coy as your being, I know you know this.
Hip hop is not inaccessible to many people. The many people who don’t like Hip Hop do not find it inaccessible. They find it all too accessible. They simply find it banal.
Finally, you say there is a lot of ‘nice’ and ‘accessible’ poetry out there. I hope you are including the Language poets, for, as you yourself pointed out, they are often ‘accessible,’ and certainly much of Language poetry is ‘nice,’ since you have not defined ‘nice’ in any way for us, really, except to say it is–accessible.
Thomas
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By: Iaiin

Iaiin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:27:22 +0000

Martn,
My apologies for thinking you were an academic.
Perhaps you don’t have an obligation to accurately represent Bernstein, but it would make a genuine discussion easier if we at least tried not to misrepresent positions we’re attacking.
I commented earlier on your post, but it wasn’t published for one reason or another. There’s one thing specifically I would like to address: your claim that language poetry is “one of the most academic poetics of all time”, and that it shuns its audience by being too difficult. My challenge is not whether or not the argument can be made on paper (it clearly can be). My challenge is whether or not this the assertion holds up in practice.
You say that poetry needs to rethink its relationship to its audience. This seems like you’re accusing language poetry of being unapproachable to the average reader, which is simply not true (I’ll get to this). As an aside, you hardly seem like the sort of person that would be arguing that poetry shouldn’t challenge its audience too much. If you think all poetry needs to be as audience-appeasing as much of Hollywood cinema then I should stop right here, but I’m pretty sure you don’t actually think that.
Just a few of the things that came to mind when reading the “most academic”, and the rethinking-the-relationship-with-the-audience comment:
-Ron Silliman, one exception to the “academic” accusation, though nonetheless prominently associated with the language school, is a good example of a poet whose work gets associated with “difficulty” merely because people repeat the saying (much like the big lie of the “liberal media”, which is not a conspiracy, just carelessness). In practice, Silliman’s work is remarkably simple. Most of his work can be easily approached by anyone after a very short explanation, which is hardly the majority of poetry that the “average” reader reads.
-Lyn Hejinian’s poem My Life is another example of a work that is quite easily approachable without rigorous academic study. Reading it produces the intended effect as long as you possess the ability to read. The poem imitates, very accurately and beautifully, the effect of recalling memories from one’s life, and is hardly out of any reader’s reach when it comes to the ability to appreciate it.
-Some of Bernstein’s work does pose more difficulty for the reader than the others I’ve mentioned. However, in practice, Bernstein’s work isn’t actually impenetrable at all. It’s often quite fun, and very rewarding to read (whether or not the reader “gets” everything).
-(and this is kind of a cliche thing to mention, but…) Shakespeare’s work is hardly easily approachable. Most people cringe when they’re first forced to read him. Rigorous academic study is mostly necessary to be able to “fully” approach his work. However, this is not how most people who love Shakespeare experience him. There’s plenty to delight in without “fully” understanding the plays. This is true of a good amount of language poetry as well (I’d say particularly Bernstein). I’m wondering how the hordes of “academic” and difficult poets you probably love fit into your comments.
-Berrett Watten is probably the poet who best fits your assertions.
-Also, Hip-hip is arguably the most successful poetry movement of the 20th century (particularly in terms of audience), while still remaining, to many many people, “inaccessible”.
-The market is flooded with “nice” “accessible” poetry. I think, if anything, today’s poetry reader is not being challenged enough. If anything, not enough poetry deals with the chaotic language experience of contemporary life in the way that language poetry, flarf, conceptual poetry, and many others have begun to do.
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By: mearl

mearl — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 10:47:32 +0000

Ian,
Thanks for the comment. Just to set things back on track, I never mention Charles Bernstein’s “motives”, nor do I question his democratic credentials. I have followed his work since first meeting him nearly thirty years ago, but have never bought into his theory of the ‘Artifice of Absorption’ and have gone public with this on many occasions. The notion that we are being coerced when read poetry has always seemed exaggerated to me and, besides, shows a lack of perspective vis-à-vis real coercion in the world today: the abuse of children, the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe to stock the brothels of Western European cities, the creation of armies of child-soldiers, and the torture of prisoners of war – the list goes on. We are not forced to read poetry and we are not coerced when we do so.
I would add that I am not responsible for “accurately” representing Charles Bernstein for those who may not have access to his work, something I find highly implausible, since his work is easily accessible, in print and on line. My job it to be opinionated, not to be a spokesperson for the people I write about.
One other thing, I am not an academic, and I have no affiliation with any academic institution.
Martin
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By: thomas brady

thomas brady — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:12:27 +0000

In defending Matt against Martin, Iain writes:
“Bernstein seeks to create a more democratic reading process than he sees as otherwise available through so-called “absorptive” techniques. He sees the absorptive as coercing the reader rather than engaging or enabling him. He actually wants to create an affect that is more truly absorptive for the reader.”
But absorptive techniques ARE democratic, because that’s how you reach large audiences, and secondly, all sorts of non-absorptive techniques which ‘engage or enable’ readers can exist within the absorptive, such as in Plato’s dramatic dialogues, Shakespeare’s play-within-a-play, Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” etc.
I was in a production of “Three Penny Opera” and I can tell you that work appealed to its audience in an ‘absorptive’ fashion. What democratic art does not?
Bernstein can “seek to create a more democratic reading process than he sees as otherwise available through so-called ‘absorptive’ techniques” all he “actually wants,” but I’ll bet you anything he will remain boring and obscure doing so.
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By: Kent Johnson

Kent Johnson — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:07:07 +0000

Martin,
What you say about academia and avant poetry, along with other things in your post, is nicely put and thought-provoking.
But Brecht has little to do with “Dadaist praxis.”
(Which is not to say that Language poetry really has much to do with Brecht!)
Kent
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