Comments on: Yoga for Losers Part 1

By: Adam Strauss

Adam Strauss — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:45:12 +0000

I’d argue that the world’s not a case of “in the face of these overarching realities the differences between us seem silly and melt away”–I don’t think the difference Eileen is addressing is silly, and I’d be rather surprised if it melts away (and if it does, hurray, as the world GS is describing could–not always, sometimes–be read as the closet). Just because there are differences does not, however, mean that common elements of existence should be overlooked, that difference should always, with no critical consciousness, be be priviliged.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:30:09 +0000

I understand the point you are making, Gary, and I agree with it. Those deep universals, the ones that unite, are the ones I think Terreson was referring to as well.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:09:23 +0000

No, I wasn’t saying you are dull. My question may have been dull, but it wasn’t meant to be indirect.

Of Pinsky you wrote: “This was not a spontaneous poet. Not even trying to look that way.” I had at the back of my mind this quote from Rich: “We see despair in the political activist who doggedly goes on and on, turning in the ashes of the same burnt-out rhetoric, the same gestures, all imagination spent.” I’m not saying, if you use “the word lesbian thirty-eight times or two hundred and fifty times or ninety-seven,” it automatically becomes a burnt-out gesture. I’m also not saying I think the world is an enlightened place as Gary finds it to be.

For the sake of this discussion, I was accepting your evaluation of Pinsky (who I have never heard read), and my question really was: How do you avoid following into the same trap? How do any of us? Political activist, political poet, non-political poet, how do we avoid the same old ashy gestures? How do we avoid becoming caricatures of ourselves? I‘m not implying you have fallen into this trap; I’m asking you how you avoid it.

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:55:14 +0000

I think when I anyone does it badly, when the response to the patter is a kind of dullness, a sense that we’re being talked down to or patronized or preached to. Different work has different audiences. I was certain Pinksky was not speaking to or for me. I think (and this was the point of my piece in many ways) there’s as many responses to what a person puts out (obviously) as there are pieces. So maybe you are in a sneaky way saying that I am as bad as Pinksy (but do you think Pinsky is bad – did you hear his performance, do you trust my account?) but are not willing to say that. Not so sly, Rachel. Actually your indirect question felt dull to me.

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:50:30 +0000

I think the idea is that we don’t replace our lost universals with new ones. We reconstruct the whole idea of what a culture is. We don’t have a handy center anymore cause centers and universals do the work of silencing. Our links for instance tell another story…

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:43:51 +0000

Of all the mysterious things you said this is the most mysterious. I will respond to your larger claims like I said in a bigger post not to you but the I think larger issue of privilege blindness. But I saw your latest post and do recognize I think you are finding a less combative ground to consider it all from and I am glad to hear that…

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:41:05 +0000

This is so good. Thanks Zach…

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:39:54 +0000

I did make a pot shot at another poet and it had happened here, earlier in my blogging life. My take is we can write publicly about someone who is “big” and rewarded because they can take it. Some of the names of the awards poets get beg it, really. I also think we can lambast younger less experienced writers if they are pontificating, making large claims as if from a acceptable position of power – we all know that soldiers are political or some other weird proposition. Or if the younger writer cites ludicrous claims by older writer as if that assures him credibility. I guess what I’m saying is the world is more interesting if we write what we want and I try not to be a bully unless I think someone else is being a fool. Is that ethics or aesthetics. I dunno.

By: Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:35:58 +0000

It’s kind of weird to get critiqued on my style. You mean if I wrote in a conventional expository format that wouldn’t be worthy of comment. What about your speak. I think your comment goes into the same difference argument that for some reason my post provoked which is that there’s something troubling about claiming a difference in your writing style or your content. Especially in your case because my difference in your head is reigning and I can tell you from my years as a poet journalist it’s an argument every time. One gets aloud to write “like that” or “this” in quirky little poetry journals and cultural mags but to try and use the vernacular you’ve arrived on in a more mainstream journal and all you get is editors trying to fix you. I’ve had some success in bucking this but you can’t tell me I am canonical. That just isn’t true.

By: Gary B. Fitzgerald

Gary B. Fitzgerald — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:11:24 +0000

Teri:

Point taken and well put. The issue Eileen brought up, of course, is basically social acceptance of differences in sexual orientation, but what I was trying to address is a deeper level of ’sameness’. What I said above (before my little snit) was that we are all the same “in everything that counts”, i.e., fear, pain, love, anger, happiness and mortality. Ultimately, we’re all on the same boat. They say there are no Atheists in foxholes. I say that death does not discriminate. This sounds so obvious and banal that we never really think about it. Think about it! In the face of these overarching realities the differences between us seem silly and melt away.

Gary