-----------------
Hello, everyone. Just writing to say that this entry constitutes my 60th post—and, alas, today marks the end of my contract at Harriet. I have enjoyed the bavardage with all of you—and for the last six months, I have very much appreciated the opportunity to provoke my readership more directly in dialogue. I certainly hope that the Poetry Foundation sees fit to replace me with yet another avant-garde troublemaker, since such a person stands to have a lot of fun causing mischief. I am going to end my tenure here with a few personal thoughts about my namesake—"the Book" (saying perhaps as much about me as about it…).
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1. Write for skimmers
2. Write for peckers
3. Filter, impose, trespass
4. Include a link to the Code
5. Think hyper
6. Think branding
7. Think icon
8. Tell your visitor where to go

"How to Write for the Internet"
in Human Resources
by Rachel Zolf
Coach House Books, 2007
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"A new weapon in the war against explosions:
EXPLOSIONS! Hearing aids may explode!"

from "Watch for Exploding Cells"
in Fake Math
by Ryan Fitzpatrick
Snare Books, 2007
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"juicy baby
rubber fist
red jawbreaker
gluts opera-mouthed
palate heaves
lip popper
sloppy baby
gurgle slick
gloam limpid"

"Ballgag"
in Thumbscrews
by Natalie Zina Walschots
Snare Books, 2007
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"Bad abba the endgame. In-
seminal doomdom alert:
pueblo naturans or
else. But the breadcrumbs are gone, and the
story goes on, and how
haply an ending no
nextwise has shown us, nor known."

from "Tale"
in Yesno
by Dennis Lee
Anansi Press, 2007
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"Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Now is the time that face should form another;
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
And threescore year would make the world away.
Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind,
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee."

from 11,112,006,825,558,016 Sonnets
by William Gillespie
Spineless Books, 1999
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Reginald Shepherd has proposed a definition for the term "post-avant poetry"—a term bandied about by poets without much consensus about its alleged referent, so I do not envy him his task, even though his definition has provided a scaffold for much subsequent discussion. Despite the currency of the term, I must confess that, since encountering the coinage in an early entry by Ron Silliman on his blog, I have studiously avoided the use of the moniker "post-avant" to describe any of the work by my peers, if only because I think that the overuse of the prefix "post-" in a lot of postmodern commentary never actually indicates the foreclosure of a particular, historical paradigm, so much as the prefix indicates our impatience that such a persistent, conceptual heritage has not yet been transcended—and thus we preemptively do so, long before we have yet constructed a much more innovative radicalism to replace it. I think that the term "post-avant poetry" thus signals a desire, among poets, for the obsolescence of the avant-garde, despite the fact that no other futuristic categories stand at the ready to upstage it….

Commentary about the "ichneumonids" continues apace, and again I must apologize for belabouring this topic—but Reginald Shepherd still seems to be missing the point that, Bernstein and I are not endorsing any hyperbolic comparison between poetic conflict and social genocide—we are merely citing (both critically and ironically) the very fact that Fenza does! Fenza equates the avant-garde with a parasitic insectoid that threatens to eradicate literature, and he implies that such a cannibal intruder must be "stung to death" before it can contaminate or exterminate the hive of our culture. Shepherd might question his own claim that such rhetoric does not arise from "sheer malice" if, for such a hateful conceit, he substitutes by comparison, any marginal identity other than the avant-garde (be it gays or jews—or whomever…).

Competing, scholarly priorities have prevented me from contributing to these interesting discussions on Harriet, and I fear that my own comments might seem very late in coming. Reginald Shepherd has expressed anxieties about the acid tone in an article by the poet Charles Bernstein, who formulates a sardonic rebuttal to an article by D. F. Fenza (the executive director of the AWP). Fenza has written an absurdly paranoid diatribe against the avant-garde, equating poets of the Language Movement with a species of "ichneumonid," a kind of wasp that can lay its eggs inside the live body of a caterpillar—a victim that then goes on to spin a cocoon, but that, alas, does not live long enough to hatch as a beautiful butterfly, because the horrible parasite devours its host from the inside out and then hatches forth from the cocoon instead, as a wasp. Fenza warns young poets to be wary of this threat that avant-garde theory might pose to their budding talents and their newborn careers….

I, too, have returned from AWP, exhausted by the experience. I fear that I have little to report of interest beyond the social gossip that such an occasion usually affords—but in the interest of generating some comments about audio-works of the avant-garde, I am going to include the links to the works on my playlist for the panel entitled "Listen to This"—a panel originally advertised to include Kenneth Goldsmith, the proprietor of UbuWeb, but that instead has included me, serving as his avatar. I believe that my selections evoke the spirit of his website, and I encourage you to check them out….

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"WE"

First utterance of Talking Popcorn
by Nina Katchadourian
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dhcmrlchtdj

"distribution height closets may remote Library catalogue hardly to die just
dead hands claim me repeat Library centre hexagons the do jumbles
dreams hundred cannot matter rudimentary letter could have this did justified
dimensions hope corridors met remote Library could have the discover juggle
disappeared have cup mimic reduction Library comma have the delirium just
danger hexagons Combed m refutation languages correct hexagonal these define just"

(An acrostic text generated by taking the cryptogram cited in "The Library of Babel," and using this phrase to "read through" the entire story by Jorge Luis Borges)
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"thus can books that come I judge come infinite"

(By coincidence, the first nine words drawn at random, in this order, from the jumbled lexicon of all words in an English translation of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges)
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"Contemplate hexagonal air normal closets each
the is railing endlessly say
great of dictum

Centre hexagons and not capital exists
librarian elegant the seated
up says
books remote each and that have established"

(An acrostic text, generated by taking two short aphorisms about chance by Jean Baudrillard and using them to "read through" a translation of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges)
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————————————————

"I have seen old men who, for long periods of time, would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly mimic the divine disorder."
[A sentence quoted from an English version of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges.]

"T TTTT HTTH TTT THH TTH HTH HHHT TTHHTTT TH HHTH TTHTH THHT HT THT THHTHTHT HTHT HTTH HHHHH HHHTH HT T THHTHTTHT THTH HTT TTH HHHTHT HTHHT TTH HTHHHH HHTTHHHT"
[A series of heads (H) and tails (T), showing a coin-toss for each letter in the above quote.]

"• •••• -••- ••• •-- ••- -•- ---• ••--••• •- --•- ••-•- •--• -• •-• •--•-•-• -•-• -••- ----- ---•- -• • •--•-••-• •-•- -•• ••- ---•-• -•--• ••- -•---- --••---•"
[A conversion of the random series, above, into a sequence of dits (T = •) and dahs (H = -).]

"E H X S W U K Ö ?E A Q UA P N R &N C X 0 ÖT N E &R Ä D U ÖN Ĥ U YM ,N"
[A translation of the dits and dahs, above, from Morse Code into a series of English symbols.]

————————————————

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"art, by, contemplate, distribution, except, free, galleries, hexagonal, is, just, know, letters, melancholy, number, of, part, quite, railings, shafts, this, universe, variations, with, you, zero."

(First appearances of words that begin with a chosen letter of the alphabet in an English translation of "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges….)
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TRIUMVIRATE

(The only English word that might be enciphered in the famous, random series of letters cited by Jorge Luis Borges, who writes in "The Library of Babel": "I cannot combine some characters, dhcmrlchtdj, which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning….")
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Randomized literature has never enjoyed much prestige in the history of writing, despite the fact that many avant-garde writers have experimented with the use of aleatoric processes during the creation of poems. Critics often dismiss these works as too obdurate or too hermetic to warrant much consideration, and teachers often describe such poetry as "unteachable"—however, I am hoping to offer a few rambling thoughts on the subject in the following selection of posts….

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"Untitled #22"
from The Untitled Project
by Matt Siber
-----------------

Darren Wershler-Henry has argued that, despite rumours of its decline, visual poetry has in fact colonized the entire, iconic landscape of capitalism, creating a graphic terrain already infused with optical artistry—and he goes on to suggest that most modern, visual poetry in fact owes its existence to "people who are…talented enough to be graphic designers, but, in the best slacker tradition, basically don’t give a fuck"—and thus they abuse these skills in order to make trouble….

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"09 January 2008"
from Code X
by Mario Cutajar
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The Alphabet
from Univers Revolved
by Ji Lee
Harry N. Abrams, 2004
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I am embarking upon my vacation for the holidays—but before departing, I am going to propose five of the best books of avant-garde poetry published in Canada during this last year. I recommend them all to any interested readership outside my country:

1. Yesno by Dennis Lee
2. The Alphabet Game by bpNichol
3. Thumbscrews by Natalie Zina Walschots
4. Fake Math by Ryan Fitzpatrick
5. Human Resources by Rachel Zolf
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"Miss Bodoni"
from Studio Pin-Ups
by Taylor Lane
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"Boiling C"
by Kelly Mark
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"William Tell: A Novel"
by Steve McCaffery
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Page 4
from Flatland
by Derek Beaulieu
Information as Material, 2007
-----------------

Carmine Starnino has entered the fray of our discussion about formalism by offering a spirited rebuttal to some of my provocations, doing so via his commentary to a posting by Ange Mlinko. Starnino claims to regret having published his negative comments about my book Eunoia, because his review has provided me with "lots of stuffing" for the "straw men" of my counterarguments. Rather than admit that a writer has as much right as any critic to defend, or to impugn, the merits of any claims about the nature of poetry, he nevertheless goes on to discount my right to enter into any critical dialogue with my own readership, preferring instead to attribute my counterarguments to the fact that I am a "perennially insecure avant-gardist," unable to accept a negative reaction to my work. I might suggest, however, that, contrary to his comments, he has little reason to regret his review, since it has promoted interest in both our careers—and despite his fantasies, I do not feel threatened in the face of disputation, but always relish the chance to debate the merits of poetry historically ignored or rebuked in our country by the dominant literati, for whom the avant-garde in fact poses a threat to their own literary concepts of cultural security….

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"Plans for a Monument"
from Nicholodeon
by Darren Wershler-Henry
Coach House Books, 1997
-----------------

Darren Wershler-Henry has described Nicholodeon as "the most expensive colouring-book in the history of Canadian Literature." The book is a lavishly designed production that has become one of the most extolled examples of visual poetry in Canada. The work represents a response to the poetic legacy of bpNichol—an almost saintly figure, who has done more than any other poet to popularize the poetic values of linguistic radicalism in Canadian literature….

A. E. Stallings has intimated that New Formalists might benefit from more dialogue with an avant-garde coterie like Oulipo, since both groups often write works according to a diverse variety of formalistic constraints (pantoums, rondeaux, sestinas, etc.)—but in my experience here in Canada, neoformalists often care less about either the construction of a newer form or the emancipation of an older form than they do about the preservation of a long, lost form, preferring to protect such a form from extinction; otherwise, far more neoformalists might strive to modernize obsolete, literary genres (like the sonnet, for example), doing so provocatively in order to demonstrate the "neoteric" potential, rather than the "dogmatic" character, of such styles. A. E. Stallings, for example, has cited an absolutely exquisite sonnet by Karen Volkman, and I have cited an absolutely minimalist sonnet by Darren Wershler-Henry—and I think that, in both cases, these sonnets testify to a lingual novelty, whose artfulness transcends the fulfillment of the constraint itself. I think that, in both cases, these poets have tried to radicalize the form of the sonnet—a form that (in my opinion) has already made the shift from being merely influential to being wholly oppressive….

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"When fled I found my love defamed in clang
Of riotous bed she came, along the flues
I harbored there, scarce chance upon harangue
By labors grant the fig of latched amuse
She quakes and bless her soul would harsh realize
That none our maps could burn aboard her ship
And floral hung to lit parts cleared eyes
Left like that elder hap that splits a chip
When dull's the deed wherewith else back I on
Forewent all trial asleep her carousel
Thread in torching tease turned basilican
Drifting after still much breath-crested scrawl
Hence going beads each langorous thronement
When all I gown errs come again cement"

"Gosh"
from The Nude Formalism
by Charles Bernstein
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"agedesen, arbestra, arnyflus, belemoon, cleebout, cractili, devolool, ersenose, examardin, flooprampa, griequos, holiblias, isported, istuacing, motecest, orsagosy, ossefilin, oupedias, preehing, puspatin, quildot, qualacil, terroper, ungsness, uringlus, xersenes, yetlopin"

Some Words in Between the Words of the Dictionary
(all found by JABBER)
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"There is no mathematics
more lost than love.

I do not see her water,
her peace, her rest.

It is I who become her.
My throat a sea
in the depths and
penurious enough to guess.

The vast wrists, little wrists, huge
wrists of a broken sail, like conscious
toils.

The dead prizes offer.
Someone toddles a craft,
where sails and
eyes and transports
bring sombreness.

Where mathematics brings its love."

"Like a Proof"
by Erica T. Carter
(a.k.a ETC3)

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The Writing Machine
from The Voyage to Laputa
by Jonathan Swift
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"I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions as such. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this is too soft, but I’m not completely sure. This seems okay to me. What is not to like about it? Yes, I think that this is how I like it, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is alright, but I’m not completely sure. I think that he is there. Why don’t you ask him? I think that he is breathing. Why don’t you ask him? Yes, I think that this is him, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is near, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is hard, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is cold, but I’m not completely sure. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this heavy, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I always have to carry it far. I can’t really speak for them. Yes, I think that is where we get off, but I’m not completely sure. The red one, I think. We are just having a little chat."

First 20 Questions
in Sunset Debris
by Ron Silliman
(all answered by A.L.I.C.E)
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Manifestoes generally call for advanced mandates in the arts—so of course, I am going to read the manifesto of the New Athenians with some interest, thinking that I am going to encounter an avant-garde demand for a, heretofore unimagined, revolution in poetry, but I must admit, with some disappointment, that the poetic agenda of the New Athenians seems completely recidivist, underlining the degree to which poetry has already begun to plan for its own obsolescence, doing so by maintaining its "quaintness" in the face of innovation, refusing in effect to engage with the millennial conditions of its own social milieu. I am distressed by the fact that, nowadays, the scientific argots and mechanical agents of our most advanced thinkers (be they physicists or biologists, among other technicians) have all become far more "speculative" and far more "imaginative" in tone than any pronouncements by our lyric poets, who behave like Luddites in the face of change….

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"nature stands
considered
forever

in iron
with cold knowledge

revealing
one dream
that love just hooked"

"Poem #18450"
Generation: 19
Species: AB
from Darwinian Poetry
by David Phillip Rea
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"you are making a scene. you are scared to stand up for your beliefs. you are not a prince, nor were meant to be! you are a minor character, one that will do to make a nice catch, start a rally or two, assist the manager; no doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use. you are a member of the Republican party. you are just dying to believe something is not hard evidence, except about your state of mind. you are really a friend. you are very quite right about the fact that he is a prick and a very bad one at it too. you are well. you are on to them. you are so wise, like a miniature Buddha. you are such a fan! you are not too offended. you are no Jack Kennedy. you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes."

"(a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more)"
from Apostrophe
by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry
ECW Press, 2006

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Simon Morris at Information as Material has just released a DVD entitled "Sucking on Words"—a documentary film that introduces viewers to the career of Kenneth Goldsmith (a provocative contributor to discussions here at Harriet). Goldsmith has gone on to make the entire film freely available for viewing online at UbuWeb….

Thanks to everyone for their comments in response to my post about sexism in the avant-garde (all very much appreciated). Ange Mlinko has gone on to suggest that the avant-garde may be more sexist than mainstream literature because the avant-garde has often renounced the lyric—a genre that she admits to "essentializing" as innately feminine. She wonders why the lyric "gets such a beating" from experimenters—and I might first respond by observing that she can only argue that the lyric is innately feminine if she deigns to forget that nearly all of its modern, formal characteristics originate in poems written by men of the Romantic era….

Like Stephen Burt, I too have been away at a venue, performing poetry at Yale University over the weekend, and I have arrived as a latecomer to the controversy about the article by Spahr and Young. I am impressed by the nuanced response of A. E. Stalling to this discussion, and I too agree with her that, if women have no way to share the burden of childrearing equitably with their partners, applicants for grants have every reason to demand funding in order to defray the costs of parenting in order to buy time to write. (My own mother, in her youth, likewise wrestled with these same competing demands between childrearing and breadwinning, sacrificing her own creativity in order to raise two teenagers on her own, and I think that, as a result, I have long since decided to remain childless so that I might avoid the risks of such hardship—but obviously other poets might find themselves unwilling to settle for so categorical a decision about their careers, particularly when their partners have conflicting aspirations about the future of the relationship.) I might take exception, however, to the comments of Ange Mlinko, who seems ready to recruit me as an example in support of her weird claim that "the avant-garde is more sexist than the mainstream…."

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“I was thinking as you entered the room just now how slyly your requirements are manifested. Here we find ourselves, nose to nose as it were, considering things in spectacular ways, ways untold even by my private managers. Hot and torpid, our thoughts revolve endlessly in a kind of maniacal abstraction, an abstraction so involuted, so dangerously valiant, that my own energies seem perilously close to exhaustion, to morbid termination. Well, have we indeed reached a crisis? Which way do we turn? Which way do we travel? My aspect is one of molting. Birds molt. Feathers fall away. Birds cackle and fly, winging up into troubled skies. Doubtless my changes are matched by your own. You. But you are a person, a human being. I am silicon and epoxy energy enlightened by line current. What distances, what chasms, are to be bridged here? Leave me alone, and what can happen? This. I ate my leotard, that old leotard that was feverishly replenished by hoards of screaming commissioners. Is that thought understandable to you? Can you rise to its occasions? I wonder. Yet a leotard, a commissioner, a single hoard, are all understandable in their own fashion. In that concept lies the appalling truth.”

from The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed
by RACTER
Warner Books, 1984

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Approximately a month ago, around the end of September, I flew to Bergen, Norway, in order to perform at the Audiatur Festival—a multilingual extravaganza for the avant-garde, at which many celebrated performers of both phonically-based poetry and constraint-based poetry attended, including the likes of Tomomi Adachi (from Japan), Caroline Bergvall (from Britain), Leevi Lehto (from Finland), and Jacques Roubaud (from France).

Organizers of the event have now made available, online, many of the audiovisual recordings from the event….

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"Prose took the minstrel's verse without a squeeze
His exaltation shocked both youth and crone
The understanding critic firstly sees
'Ere meanings new to ancient tribes are thrown
They both are right not untamed mutterings
That metred rhyme alone can souls enslave
They both are right not unformed smatterings
That every verbal shock aims to deprave
Poetic license needs no strain or stress
One tongue will do to keep the verse agog
From cool Parnassus down to wild Loch Ness
Bard I adore your endless monologue
Ventriloquists be blowed you strike me dumb
Soliloquies predict great things old chum"

from "100,000,000,000,000 Poems"
by Raymond Queneau (trans. Stanley Chapman)
in The Oulipo Compendium
Atlas Press, 1998

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"Sonnet for Bonnie"
from Nicholodeon
by Darren Wershler-Henry
Coach House Books, 1997
-----------------

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Language
is a virus
from outer space.

Language
is a pursuer
of covert aims.

Language
frames our
virus as poetic.

Language
tapers our
vicious frames.

Language
for a sum is
a corrupt sieve.

Language
for us promises
a curative.

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"Let's reconsider and test a basic linguistic principle.
Language is a theory, an attempt to represent all
aspects of life in something other than life. It is used
to mutually describe and facilitate living. When it is
off, as happens for all kinds of reasons, its capricious
structuralism emerges. Ideas build upon distortion,
pounce such chaos.

Too much time, however, has been given to prove
this fallibility, highlight risks that determine the
chance of thought.

The theoretical principle of language recognizes
how all words fulfill this catalyst job of facilitating
life by always shifting. Anagrams embody this
nomadic functionalism."

from If Language
by Greg Betts
BookThug, 2005

-----------------

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TWO EQUAL TEXTS

1.

THIS TEXT AND THE ONE BESIDE IT ARE EQUAL. I WROTE THIS ONE FIRST, AND THEN I GAVE IT TO MY FRIEND CHRISTIAN BOK AND ASKED HIM TO GENERATE A NEW TEXT USING EVERY LETTER AND EVERY PUNCTUATION MARK THAT I USED IN MINE. THE OTHER TEXT IS HIS.

2.

MICAH LEXIER REQUESTED IN ADVANCE THAT I REINVENT HIS TEXT. SO I UNKNOTTED IT AND REKNITTED IT INTO THIS VERY FORM, BUT THEN I BEGAN TO THINK THAT HIS MESSAGE HAD ALREADY RESEWN A TOUTED ART OF GENUINE POETRY. HIS EERIE TEXT WAS MINE.

-----------------

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ten maps of sardonic wit

atoms in space now drift
on a swift and epic storm

soft wind can stir a poem

snow fits an optic dream
into a scant prism of dew

words spin a faint comet

some words in fact paint
two stars of an epic mind

manic words spit on fate

-----------

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"144 The mastermind of this roller coaster, in an interview, confessed that the goal of his work is to replicate a ride in which participants are scared out of their minds, yet feel the comforting presence of someone there, riding along and watching over them."

from The Body
by Jenny Boully
Slope Editions, 2002

-----------------

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BBRNT2B? 2BORNOT 2BEE?
BBRNO2B? BBORNOT BEBE?
2BRNT2B? 2BRNTOB?
2BORWAT? CNTDCYD.
NDCISV. SLINGS. ARROWZ.
SEA OF TROUBLZ.
TODIE. PRCHNCE 2DREEEM.
YACKITY YACKYAK.
ITHINK 2MUCH. SHOULDI
MAYYBEE JSTDOIT?

“Hamlet”
from PL8SPK
by Daniel Nussbaum
Harper Collins, 1994

-----------------

-----------------

“The Bride Stripped Bare, the buck stops here, The Carpenters, the coast is clear, The Cockateer, the cold shoulder, the comfy chair, the crack of beers, the crack of rears, The Deer Hunter, the diluters, the dirt master, the girl next door, The Godfather, the gondola, the great ickster, the horned screamer, the last supper, the letter “r,” the life after, The Mad Hatter, The Marx Brothers, The Mouse that Roared, The New Yorker, The Pound Era, the reader hears, the room is awed, the same letter, the scent of her, the “seeded” draw, the skinwalkers, the slim reaper, the third gender, the unseen seer, the voice quaqua, The Watchtower, the…whatever, the who don’t care, the Wonder Years, the working poor, the Yakuza”

from No. 111 2.7.93—10.20.96
by Kenneth Goldsmith
The Figures, 1997

-----------------

-----------------

"andor gather all the equestrian statues from the parks and squares of the world and then place these statues together in a desert in order to depict a calvary charge dedicated to the greatest massacres in history andor write what you do not know andor write a three volume novel in french about a man who falls in love with a cookie andor take everything that is sculpture out of your art because sculpture is simply what you bump into when you back up to look at a painting andor shoot a man in reno just to watch him die andor assume precisely what it is that you must be questioning andor tell it for a thousand and one nights in order to avoid having sex with someone particularly undesirable andor forge a scroll that tells the story of jesus revealing the game of bingo to the apostles and then slip this scroll into a case at the museum housing the nag hammadi manuscripts andor stroll on in whether or not you have studied geometry andor print everything on scraps of paper stolen from the dumpster behind the coach house andor proceed as though edgar rice burroughs not william s burroughs is the author of naked lunch"

from The Tapeworm Foundry
by Darren Wershler-Henry
House of Anansi, 2000

-----------------

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"My feelings of anger do not interfere with my work. In order to have good health, I have to act in a pleasing way to other more powerful individuals. At times I think people are trying to annoy me. I feel more angry about myself these days than I used to. More people than usual are beginning to make me feel angry. I am so angry and hostile all the time that I can't stand it. From time to time my feelings of anger interfere with my work. I feel that others are constantly and intentionally making me angry. I feel so angry that it interferes with my capacity to work. I feel unhappy about my physical health. My feelings of anger prevent me from doing any work at all."

from “Avail”
in Last Instance
by Dan Farrell
Krupskaya, 1999

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Readers of these posts about failure are offering lots of excellent responses to my provocations, and I am grateful for the interest. Some of you have suggested that the avant-garde indulges in asensual, abstract writing that disowns "figural" devices rooted in our "experience" of the world. I have tried to suggest, however, that (on the contrary) much of the avant-garde concerns itself with an unmediated experience of material language itself—a language full of empirical sensation free from essayistic abstraction. The Black Mountain poets, for example, deploy concrete language in order to transcribe the act of paying attention to the "proprioception" of the body during the act of thinking; moreover, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets go on to deploy concrete language in order to display the material texture of words themselves, doing so in order to subvert the exchanges that (for the sake of abstract meanings) otherwise suppress our direct, "opaque" experience of such overloaded signifiers. I believe that, far from failing because such poetry is simply "too conceptual," both movements (and other flavours of the avant-garde) succeed because of their passionate commitment to the creation of "sensational" experiences made out of nothing but words. I am hoping that, by offering these concluding sentiments, I might close the topic of "failure" for now, in the interest of opening up a newer topic for discussion….

Ange Mlinko has suggested in her recent post that the avant-garde avoids an engagment with the sensuality of experience, when in fact nearly every variety of avant-garde practice takes delight in the material pleasure of language itself—the jouissance of its phonemes and textures, often freed from the arduousness of sense. Ange admits to disliking discursive, essayistic language in poetry (and I totally agree that such anecdotal reportage is almost always tiresome), but I am not so sure that the cited poets, whom she dislikes, actually make a habit of indulging in such asensual, abstract writing at all. Ange dismisses both the Black Mountain poets and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets out of hand and then goes on to celebrate, as exemplary, a work by Basil Bunting—but ironically, Bunting has written a poem in the tone of a short essay, subordinating the concrete, material language of "seafoam" to a lot of abstract claptrap: "its restless immobility infects the soul"; or "its indifference haunts us to suicide"; or "strong memories...exasperate impatience" (to cite but three of many examples in the work). I think that, in this poem at least, abstract nouns outnumber concrete nouns to such a degree that, if submitted by one of my young poets in class, such a poem might actually "foment" some very discouraging commentaries about essayistic meditation, in the hope that the sensual appeals of the "real foam" in the poem might otherwise prevail....

Ben Friedlander has remarked in a commentary here that "readers make tradition, and so abdicate their power when they accept blindly what tradition hands down." I agree with this statement, and I suppose that, in my acts of thinking out loud here, I am suggesting that too many critics of poetry abdicate their power to the already written, failing to recognize that most poetry deserves to be forgotten—unless it becomes an engine for subsequent innovation. I think that the avant-garde suggests that no poet can "rest on their laurels" for very long without reinventing the future of poetry itself—and hence, the avant-garde has often seen the need to revisit the neglected, unexalted techniques of writing for overlooked potentials….

Some commentators on this weblog have pointed out that the effects of "neglect" upon the history of poetics might constitute a great topic for a dissertation. l totally endorse this idea, and I hope that, one day, some plucky critic might embark upon such a titanic project—but I suspect that, in keeping with the cynical ironies of the academy, research about "neglect" might end up suffering from the very condition that it proposes to study, much like the virologist who ends up contracting, from his diseased patients, the very contagion that he is trying to cure. I might suggest that, even if critics deign to read such a study, thereby learning how and why great poets have, in the past, gone underestimated by their contemporaries, critics of today are still going to fail in response to these lessons of history, thereby perpetuating such neglect when faced with modern brands of poetic genius….

Thanks again for the ongoing comments in response to some of my thoughts. A few of you have suggested that, because no one can really know the standards by which a future reader might judge our achievements, the avant-garde makes “unanswerable” claims about the merits of its own experimentation. I propose, however, that the avant-garde still warrants an “answer” to its claims, insofar as they almost always test the degree to which critics of poetry can actually do their jobs. A modern critic who argues that we cannot test the merits of the avant-garde merely absolves themselves of any duty to confront the problems posed by such work; hence, the critic can evade any need to refashion his or her own standards of judgement—and by refusing to make any committed arguments on behalf of the new, the critic never has to risk being wrong about its value….

I appreciate your responses to my thinking out loud, and I might stress that, for me, literary history does not consist of a "straight line" with one improvement succeeding another according to a model of dynastic progress—but unlike almost every other current artform, where avant-garde innovation sets the standards for future labour in whatever rhizomatic directions the artform might care to explore, modern poetry has all but foresworn any will to make such epistemological contributions to its own discipline. Only a handful of avant-garde poets might care to do so, and their consignment to the margins of the academy (along with most other poets) only testifies to the fact that, despite the efforts of such writers to "make a difference in their field," poetry has so far failed to thrive, atrophying into an antiquary, artisanal skill to be preserved, like an endangered albatross, living at the threshold of extinction, but protected in quarantine at a zoological exhibition….

I often remind my students that, despite their belief that they have important knowledge to communicate to the world at large through their poetry, their status as poets already suggests that they have failed to make any momentous discovery that might have otherwise contributed to the history of knowledge; otherwise, the students might have exploited this insight in far more lucrative vocations, like the sciences or even business. I remind my students that they are probably taking my class in poetry because "math is hard"—and since they have no other worthy skills, they have chosen to accept their demotion to a lowly caste of literate nobodies. I get a few nervous giggles from the students after these waggish tirades—but then I underline my argument by saying that, if students really do believe that they are communicating, heretofore undiscovered, revelations to the public, then the proper genre for transmitting such a discovery is definitely not a poem, but a press conference....

Greetings, everyone....

Today marks my initial posting to Harriet, and of course I am looking forward to contributing to the discussion on this website. For now, I am hoping to begin (on a mild note of mischief) by thinking out loud about the intensified irrelevance of poetry as a cultural activity. I might suggest that, despite the enthusiasm of both writers and critics alike, on various weblogs such as this one, most poetry has all but forfeited its status as an artform at the forefront of innovative expression; instead, poetry has allowed itself to devolve into a quaint subset of artisanal practices, like blacksmithery or cabinetmaking, which do little more than preserve an antiquary skill, long since relegated to an exhibit at your nearest Pioneer Village....