"...Alot of younger writers followed suit and started using the actual word "language" too much in their poems or, like Silliman, used the word "syntax" too much..."
Though, where it is stated that "[Contemporary Poetry] closes it them [sic] off from general audiences and starts talking to itself (talking to itself in an institution… contemporary poetry is mentally handicapped)", I'm suspicious of this as a flippant pejorative. Why is being analogous to non-normative psychological function necessarily bad? I would argue that part of the function of poetry is to explore/investigate/interrogate alternative epistemologies/ontologies/modes of perception/production (I'm thinking here of Alice Notley, Ron Johnson, Lara Glenum...), and the Schizo-positive thought experiment of Deleuze and Guattari provides a good opening for this (whether or not it succeeds or fails - and is the failure of an experiment such a bad thing anyway?).
In the discussion of "schools", "cliques" etc, I see another thing that, through discussions with Jared Wells (generally involving a large quantity of beer), I have come to believe is flawed - the idea that, when writing poetry, appealing to a small audience is essentially elitist (though this, in the post in question, is implied rather than stated - it may not be there, but there is a general feeling that this is true in the wider poetic community - Kenneth Goldsmith implies simmilar things about populism and accessibility here, paragraphs 10 & 11). To expect everybody to like your work is preposterous (even if you are Billy Colllins or Seamus Heaney), and I feel that writing, for instance, aeleotory works drawing from obscure 17th Century arcana is no different in principle from writing, say fan fiction based on a b-grade 80s sci-fi series, or playing Goth-Rock. If I just get on with it, and some people like, and maybe publish or buy my work, then that's great.
Just a couple of thoughts.
SONGS OF MIRABAI ~
5 hours ago
7 comments:
I agree. Just because an audience for something is small doesn't automatically mean it's elitist. There are probably never going to be poets in the 21st century who will be as famous as the famous poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, though perhaps that's a bit of a pessimistic thing to say.
I tend to think that a lot of the most interesting things in different art forms happen in the margins and that a small audience who are really interested in something would be preferable to a large and indifferent one.
I think the thing with innovative poetry (and it may be similar with avant-garde music) is that it still smells like "high art", without the exposure that innovation gets in the visual arts (see the Kenny Goldsmith thing in Jacket linked to in the post).
And, as a result of the post-confessionist poets of the 60s and 70s (and the romantics, and the fact that most people can read shakespere and "get it"), coupled witht the fact that language's primary purpose is communication, people think that, if they don't understand the poem in a convetional way, they've been 'shut out' of something.
The education system's obsession with close reading, strangling poetry to try and wrestle meaning out of it, has a lot to answer for as well.
Ross -
Absolutely: for my part, if I see ‘word’ and ‘world’ page-proximate, I tend to become criminally splenetic.
You are quite correct; furthermore, the size of contemporary poetry’s readership is so small as to render considerations of its generality or the boon of capturing a maximal readership thereof utterly redundant. If not an elite, which would be giving us too much credit, we are certainly marginal and esoteric, neither of which is (necessarily) meant pejoratively. I must add that in the course of watching ‘Rock versus Walken’ with my daughter last night, a snippet of Dylan Thomas was recited during the climatic show down, a context that confirms my suspicions re at least the first and third protagonists, both of whom are analogous to non-normative psychological function, and, in my view at least, necessarily bad.
Ross, you must be well aware that most people who don’t take the time to take in what you’re about and in what you are invested haven’t read any of the texts to which your own bear a family resemblance. They, if anyone, are being elitist, being tacitly kowtow to the commonsense cod-liberal pragmatics which passes for default normative position in this time and place. Suffice to say, critiquing commonsense hardly requires much intellectual firepower, though it seems it still has to be done.
As for the rest, I’m not sure which education system is obsessed with close reading and strangling and wrestling etc. Nothing of the sort goes on in New Zealand secondary schools, and the close-reading to which I suspect you are referring (NC) was never concerned with fixity of meaning…
Finally (almost), if I’m in conversation with some Sensitive who ‘gets’ a fluffer like Keats, I’m ethically obligated to respond accordingly – Old Testament style. I find it sad that My Life, hardly wilfully difficult in any sense, in all editions/revisions, has sold (probably much) less than 14,000 copies (reprinted for the sixth time in 1996, it had sold at that point something over 8,000 copies); Howe’s Emily has suffered much the same fate, or more likely worse. Though cut from a different cloth, Geoffrey Hill struggles to find an American publisher. Lamentable.
Re our last exchange, here are some words of wisdom from Samuel Beckett’s first volume of letters, SB being as scatty as they came:
“T. Eliot is toilet spelt backwards.”
Good luck for Friday.
Robert.
Ross: –
Absolutely: for my part, if I see ‘word’ and ‘world’ page-proximate, I tend to become criminally splenetic.
You are quite correct, though one could go further, since the size of contemporary poetry’s readership is so small as to render considerations of its generality or the boon of capturing a maximal readership thereof utterly redundant. If not an elite, which would be giving us too much credit, we are certainly marginal and to varying degrees esoteric, neither of which is (necessarily) meant pejoratively. Readers and writers have a wide range of intelligence, literacy, access to reference, and tolerance – end of story. I must add that in the course of watching ‘Rock versus Walken’ with my daughter last night, a snippet of Dylan Thomas was recited during the climatic show down, a context that confirms my suspicions with regards to at least the first and third protagonists, both of whom are analogous to non-normative psychological function, and, in my view at least, necessarily bad.
Ross, you must be well aware that most people who don’t take the time to take in what you’re about and in what you are invested haven’t read any of the texts they ought to have read. They, if anyone, are being elitist, being tacitly kowtow to the commonsense cod-liberal pragmatics which passes for default normative position in this time and place. Critiquing commonsense hardly requires much intellectual firepower, though it does remain necessary.
As for the rest, I’m not sure which education system is obsessed with close reading and strangling and wrestling etc. Nothing of the sort goes on in New Zealand secondary schools, and the close-reading to which I suspect you are referring (NC) was never concerned with fixity of meaning…
Finally (almost), if I’m in conversation with some Sensitive who ‘gets’ a fluffer like Keats, I’m ethically obligated to respond accordingly – Old Testament style. I find it sad that My Life, hardly wilfully difficult in any sense, in all editions/revisions, has sold (probably much) less than 14,000 copies (reprinted for the sixth time in 1996, it had sold at that point something over 8,000 copies); Howe’s Emily has suffered much the same fate, or more likely probably worse. Though cut from a different cloth, Geoffrey Hill struggles to find an American publisher. Lamentable.
Re our last exchange, here are some words of wisdom from Samuel Beckett’s first volume of letters, SB being as scatty as they came:
“T. Eliot is toilet spelt backwards.”
Good luck for Friday.
Robert.
Robert -
Thanks for the comment.
Re: "As for the rest, I’m not sure which education system is obsessed with close reading and strangling and wrestling etc. Nothing of the sort goes on in New Zealand secondary schools, and the close-reading to which I suspect you are referring (NC) was never concerned with fixity of meaning…", my experience at High School was somewhat different, and was concerned with "wrestling meaning" - it's not so much NC that I'm talking about, but some kind of bastard child.
I'm thinking in particular of being taught JKB's "Ballad of Calvary Street", which was very much like this, and several Witi Ihimaera stories - the teacher in question was very much "this is what this means, because of this", and any dissent was met with resistance.
So I'm speaking from personal experience, and jealous of anyone whose schooling was better.
Oh, and re: My life, your figures are spot on as far as my knowledge goes. But Christian Bök's Eunoia has sold massive numbers of copies; it's the best-selling book of Canadian poetry ever (beating out Leonard Cohen and Margret Atwood).
I'm not familiar with Geoffrey Hill, says I once again revealing my general ignorance. Steven Oliver seems to have the same trouble both here and abroad, in spite of the fact that he's, in my opinion, one of our country's best poets.
On Howe's Dickinson, it's understandable, as critical texts tend to sell in quite low numbers.
You know how much I love Beckett, and such wordplay is worthy of Bök as well - managing anagrams involving Mandelbrot while talking about crystalography (in the book of the same name).
My experience of being taught poetry in High School was fairly uninspiring on the whole (I attended High School in NZ).
Close readings were the prominant way poems were presented to us, with the exception of one teacher who encouraged a reading of the poetry of Keats in aesthetic terms, funnily enough.
I don't recall studying anything remotely avant garde, let alone poetry from many countries other than New Zealand, Australia and England.
Thankfully studying poetry at Uni was far better, though I can see that the academic context of a lot of contemporary poetry might make some people think of it as being elitist.
Perhaps avant garde music is more widely accepted beacause people don't expect communication to be one of it's purposes.
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