Johannes Göransson: Fasion, poetics, narrative and the politicality of aestheticism

Fantastic piece, as always. Johannes is fast becoming one of my favorite critics/theorists - in the "hip" and "inauthentic" world of the blogosphere. To poetry what Mark Fisher, Dominic Fox and Ben Woodward are to music. Excerpts:

"But I'm more interested - as everyone who reads this blog knows by now - in the use of fashion in this rhetoric, to suggest that there's a superficiality in poetry. This came out - as readers of this blog also knows - when Mark Halliday freaked out over Josh Clover's "lettrist jacket." Halliday was upset that Clover's poetry was not engaged in the real/genuine. Grieving one's father's death I think was Halliday's example. Or maybe that was my own wishful thinking because that's too perfect: "fashion" is the death of the father in some way, the end of patriarchy comes from multiplication, exchangeability, shallowness, flimsiness. That is a funny reading of Halliday. I'm pleased as pancakes."

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"It seems Aesteticism is threatening. And this should explain why people are wrong when they assume aesteticism is apolitical. Or those who equate it with mere formalism."



Enough of that - read it.