Monday, April 25, 2005
Nothing, literally nothing, angers me more than overt intellectual dishonesty. When Jacques Derrida misrepresented Roman Jakobson’s work in Of Grammatology, conflating it with a crude version of Saussure, simply so that Derrida could then “knock off” everything else Jacobson stood for, it told me that Derrida was interested much more in power than in the integrity or value of his argument. One need only read the excised passages from Jakobson’s source texts to realize that Derrida was doing a cut-&-paste hatchet job. From that moment forward, every word I ever read of Derrida’s was colored with distrust. Read but verify became the order of the day.
Imagine if you will, then, my reaction at seeing in the introduction to a relatively new poetry anthology entitled 180 More, edited by Billy Collins, former poet laureate, the following claim:
Here is how an inaccessible poem begins:
Streamline to instantaneous
voucher in / voucher out
system.
Collins is defending his preference for allegedly accessible poetry, ostensibly mediating a dispute between Dana Gioia & Auggie Kleinzhaler. These lines are, as he notes, from Rae Armantrout’s “Up to Speed,” the title poem of her most recent book & the very first piece one finds upon opening The Best American Poetry 2002, edited by Robert Creeley. But this is just the first stanza from a poem written in five sections. Let’s pull our editorial camera back just a little to bring the entire first segment into view:
Streamline to instantaneous
voucher in/voucher out
system.
The plot winnows.
The Sphinx
wants me to guess.
Does a road
run its whole length
at once?
Does a creature
curve to meet
itself?
Whirlette!
Even in the fourth line, the “difficulty” of the first triad is contextualized. The third stanza presents the situation again, this time angled into a more overtly humorous tone. The fourth stanza presents it rather in the manner of a Zen koan. So does the fifth, calling up the image of a dog perpetually chasing its tale. Which is precisely what is named (or characterized, take your pick) in the final one-word strophe.
What is the subject of this “inaccessible” passage? Accessibility!
Or – because Armantrout is a far more subtle poet than this – it’s about the push-pull between the intractability of meaning (what I might call opacity tho a philosopher might prefer immanence) & a consumer’s desire to have it all, right now! You can bet Armantrout’s making fun of that impulse! And setting up the first stanza in procedural terms, a discourse of process rather than image, is precisely the distancing effect needed to act out this dynamic, the reader trying to identify just which system has been streamlined into an “instantaneous voucher in / voucher out.” The stanza is the process that it’s talking about. It would be hard to be more literal than this. Inaccessible? One can only wonder, dumb struck, at the literacy level at which this becomes inaccessible.
Here is what Collins has to say on the preceding page about the subject of accessibility:
I would suggest, “accessible” would mean “easy to enter,” like a building. An accessible poem has a clear entrance, a front door through which the reader may pass into the body of the poem whose overall “accessibility” – i.e., availability of meaning – remains to be seen and may vary widely. This more restricted use of the word would remove it from the stone-throwing argument between the camp of Clarity and the camp of Difficulty and require those combatants to come up with more specific and illuminating terms. After all, we may not be able to concur on the aesthetic worth of an architectural structure, but we can all agree that the building in either open or locked.
To pick as his example of inaccessibility a poem that – in perfectly literal terms – makes fun of his own position means what? That Billy Collins can’t read? Or that he can’t tolerate disagreement? I’ll wager that he imagines himself to be a part of the “camp of Clarity” in spite of his own self-obtuseness here.
Which bring me to Collins’ own, government sponsored website, Poetry 180, to which the anthology with this mind-boggling exercise in self-canceling logic is related. The premise is simple enough, to offer one poem for each day of the school year, targeted at high school students. Yet, far from being above the fray of the two camps envisaged by that paragraph above, a look at the actually existing poems included on the site shows Collins to be an exceptionally militant master of ceremonies. Consider the current table of contents. Of the 180 poems, composed by 139 writers, there are exactly two by contributors to the New American Poetry, one by Edward Field, one by the late Paul Blackburn. There is one poem by Richard Brautigan & another by Ron Padgett. That is the entire representation of the post-avant tradition, clear, opaque or polka-dotted, unless one wants to toss in my one-time student, the late Eskimo poet Mary Tallmountain, whose poetry, nonetheless, is perfectly consistent with the
· Mary Oliver 5
· Eamon Grennan 4
· Robert Bly 3
· Dana Gioia 3
· Mark Halliday 3
· Mac
· Jane Kenyon 3
· Ronald Koertge 3
· Steve Kowit 3
· Ted Kooser 3
· William Matthews 3
· Linda Pastan 3
· Miller Williams 3
· David Berman 2
· Laurel Blossom 2
· Martha Collins 2
· Doug Dorph 2
· David Ignatow 2
· Julie Lechevsky 2
· Phillis Levin 2
· Thomas Lux 2
· James Reiss 2
· Kay Ryan 2
· Charles Webb 2
· Robert Wrigley 2
Even as a representation of the
Overall, Collins’ choices are not necessarily bad – he tends to pick the better poems out of his particular tradition – but it hardly is representative of American poetry. (The balance is only slightly better in the new anthology itself, with two Padgett poems, two by Kenneth Koch, and one each from Tom Clark, Tony Towle & Charles Bernstein.) And Collins' justification for the hard-line stance is, as his own “evidence” demonstrates, frankly nonsense. That’s okay, too, as far as I’m concerned. What gets me is the tone that suggests that he is above this historic argument when in fact he is a fundamentalist on a jihad. Is Billy Collins above the stone-throwing he allegedly deplores? Hardly.
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Hey maybe it is because I was born in Iowa and have a more midwestern accent but Collins' point does seem quite clear. I think a lot of readers still feel about Language poetry and the way it has gone something the way that the little child felt about the emperor's new clothes.
One of the things that is so strange about your blog is that it is so clearly written. Straightforward. I think this is why it has such a big audience.
Armantrout's poem is an interesting puzzle but I too found it difficult to enter even after your intriguing explanations.
Funny that Creeley should put it at the front of the anthology, or is that just because she comes first in the alphabet.
It does become clear that you at least believe in representation.
Lyotard argues against representation as the model of the postmodern. I thought you would go more along those lines.
Collins' classical surrealism -- Horatian surrealism -- is an interesting blend but I think it is more for him a received idea coming out of his reading than a polemical stance. From what I've read I don't think he has read outside of this tradition.
-- Kirby Olson
One of the things that is so strange about your blog is that it is so clearly written. Straightforward. I think this is why it has such a big audience.
Armantrout's poem is an interesting puzzle but I too found it difficult to enter even after your intriguing explanations.
Funny that Creeley should put it at the front of the anthology, or is that just because she comes first in the alphabet.
It does become clear that you at least believe in representation.
Lyotard argues against representation as the model of the postmodern. I thought you would go more along those lines.
Collins' classical surrealism -- Horatian surrealism -- is an interesting blend but I think it is more for him a received idea coming out of his reading than a polemical stance. From what I've read I don't think he has read outside of this tradition.
-- Kirby Olson
# posted by 
: April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Ron, I don't know how "obvious" that Armantrout poem really is. If it *is* about reading, then each stanza is saying something very different.
For a plot to "winnow" would suggest some analytical process, a separation of wheat from chaff, a reduction to the essentials -- minimalism or Chekhovian formalism, who knows? Stanza three perhaps refers to "difficult" poetry itself, with its high school level mythological reference and high school student notion of poetry as a riddle and guessing-game. I think of melodramas like *The Waste Land*, with its goth-kid bleakness, its I'll-show-you-fear-in-a-handful-of-dust vague Vincent Price effects.
The fourth stanza perhaps returns to the notion of plot, to the problem of narrative structure: is narrative a road taken all "at once" or a process that "curves" as one proceeds? The fifth stanza could then refer again to modernist difficulty, the snake eating its own tail, the *Finnegan's Wake*/Joseph Campbell mythos. "Whirlette" gets us back to the winnow -- a turning (a gyre?) that separates elements.
So the poem could also be a parody of *difficult* modernist literature as well, with the first stanza going back to experimental techniques based on Kerouac or Ginsberg's "first thought/best thought," in-out idea of poetry.
I don't want to defend Billy Collins, but I also do't think "poems about poetry" belong in high school education. Nothing could be further from the lived experience of teenagers than old folks writing about writing. As Robert Scholes argues in *The Crafty Reader*, it's such formalism that has killed poetry for young people. Why *should* a 16 year old care about poetry if it is only self-referential -- or worse, if it only refers to local bickering between schools of poets?
Which brings me to my real point: Scholes offers sound advice for teaching poetry -- focus on the human drama at the heart of the poem before moving into formal terms and analysis. How would you suggest getting to such a "heart" in experimental poetry? I've taught Nate Mackey, Edmond Jabes, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein, and Harryette Mullen, and I succeed when the students *can* identify some sort of dramatic situation in the poem and I fail when the poem seems to be "only" about "language" itself.
What would be your pedagogy for introducing lang-po to young students with little or no background in the arts?
(Of course, I should distinguish betweeen various types of difficulty here. The Wallace Stevens-Ashbery type, where the poem's pleasures are beyond immediate sense. The Olson-Pound type, in which the poem's pleasures are bound up in the archive and obscure reference. The Stein type, the Eliot type, etc.)
For a plot to "winnow" would suggest some analytical process, a separation of wheat from chaff, a reduction to the essentials -- minimalism or Chekhovian formalism, who knows? Stanza three perhaps refers to "difficult" poetry itself, with its high school level mythological reference and high school student notion of poetry as a riddle and guessing-game. I think of melodramas like *The Waste Land*, with its goth-kid bleakness, its I'll-show-you-fear-in-a-handful-of-dust vague Vincent Price effects.
The fourth stanza perhaps returns to the notion of plot, to the problem of narrative structure: is narrative a road taken all "at once" or a process that "curves" as one proceeds? The fifth stanza could then refer again to modernist difficulty, the snake eating its own tail, the *Finnegan's Wake*/Joseph Campbell mythos. "Whirlette" gets us back to the winnow -- a turning (a gyre?) that separates elements.
So the poem could also be a parody of *difficult* modernist literature as well, with the first stanza going back to experimental techniques based on Kerouac or Ginsberg's "first thought/best thought," in-out idea of poetry.
I don't want to defend Billy Collins, but I also do't think "poems about poetry" belong in high school education. Nothing could be further from the lived experience of teenagers than old folks writing about writing. As Robert Scholes argues in *The Crafty Reader*, it's such formalism that has killed poetry for young people. Why *should* a 16 year old care about poetry if it is only self-referential -- or worse, if it only refers to local bickering between schools of poets?
Which brings me to my real point: Scholes offers sound advice for teaching poetry -- focus on the human drama at the heart of the poem before moving into formal terms and analysis. How would you suggest getting to such a "heart" in experimental poetry? I've taught Nate Mackey, Edmond Jabes, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein, and Harryette Mullen, and I succeed when the students *can* identify some sort of dramatic situation in the poem and I fail when the poem seems to be "only" about "language" itself.
What would be your pedagogy for introducing lang-po to young students with little or no background in the arts?
(Of course, I should distinguish betweeen various types of difficulty here. The Wallace Stevens-Ashbery type, where the poem's pleasures are beyond immediate sense. The Olson-Pound type, in which the poem's pleasures are bound up in the archive and obscure reference. The Stein type, the Eliot type, etc.)
Since I know Armantrout's poetry well, I can see both the poem, and Rae's place in the poetry environment, clearly.
But that's not a privilege accorded the general or uninitiated reader. When editing anthologies for young readers, as for the general public, you have to prevision your audience.
But I disagree with Dr. Elasmo that school students can only relate to poems that are "about" something. I think the students respond to the same things that adults do--interesting language, and powerful expression. I don't even think it's necessary to know completely what a poem is "about" at all. I responded to Cummings, Stevens, Moore, Eliot, Lowell, etc., long before I could adequately explain to myself, much less to anyone else, what was going on.
Collins is a joke. I can't take seriously anything someone like that would say about poetry.
The Armantrout poem is typical in many respects of her work: It is deeply suspicious, not only of language, but of all the ways that voices (and their mossy excrescences that attach to words) can both deliberately manipulate and unconsciously misuse words. One could call her work a strategy of the criticism of language--popular language, or the language of advertising, or of propaganda--in which differing levels of speech are enjambed, to show how each undercuts the other. In the end, she has triumphed over the seduction of representation and the temptation to use description or opinion in naive ways. Her work strikes me as essentially satiric, in the tradition of Pope, or the Metaphysicals--and, like all satire, it seeks to debunk, to reveal, to uncover, to poke fun at, and to defeat cheapness and dishonesty--even when--a further irony--those weaknesses and shortcomings are found in one's self. That's a pretty high calling, and certainly a more demanding job than holding the class door open for the kids as they're returning from recess.
--Curtis Faville
But that's not a privilege accorded the general or uninitiated reader. When editing anthologies for young readers, as for the general public, you have to prevision your audience.
But I disagree with Dr. Elasmo that school students can only relate to poems that are "about" something. I think the students respond to the same things that adults do--interesting language, and powerful expression. I don't even think it's necessary to know completely what a poem is "about" at all. I responded to Cummings, Stevens, Moore, Eliot, Lowell, etc., long before I could adequately explain to myself, much less to anyone else, what was going on.
Collins is a joke. I can't take seriously anything someone like that would say about poetry.
The Armantrout poem is typical in many respects of her work: It is deeply suspicious, not only of language, but of all the ways that voices (and their mossy excrescences that attach to words) can both deliberately manipulate and unconsciously misuse words. One could call her work a strategy of the criticism of language--popular language, or the language of advertising, or of propaganda--in which differing levels of speech are enjambed, to show how each undercuts the other. In the end, she has triumphed over the seduction of representation and the temptation to use description or opinion in naive ways. Her work strikes me as essentially satiric, in the tradition of Pope, or the Metaphysicals--and, like all satire, it seeks to debunk, to reveal, to uncover, to poke fun at, and to defeat cheapness and dishonesty--even when--a further irony--those weaknesses and shortcomings are found in one's self. That's a pretty high calling, and certainly a more demanding job than holding the class door open for the kids as they're returning from recess.
--Curtis Faville
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Interesting point about intellectual dishonesty. That's a little stronger than I'd have stated it, but I do agree that the Armantrout poem reads differently in whole than in part. And the timing of your reading of 180 More is terrific, coming as it does after Mr. Collins recent defense of e. e. cummings at Slate.
I'd also love to hear how you would teach, and whose poetry you would read to 3rd-6th graders. To Junior High students? High school students (the target of Collins' "180" books)?
How do you keep students minds open not only to poetry (difficult enough in itself), but to diversity in poetry? Challenge? To build on the comment above, I think there's a sensoral (sensual?) connection is a big help - I loved Wallace Stevens for his sounds long before I started to get what he was saying. But how to you get students to experiment on the page in a way that leads to innovative poems?
I'd also love to hear how you would teach, and whose poetry you would read to 3rd-6th graders. To Junior High students? High school students (the target of Collins' "180" books)?
How do you keep students minds open not only to poetry (difficult enough in itself), but to diversity in poetry? Challenge? To build on the comment above, I think there's a sensoral (sensual?) connection is a big help - I loved Wallace Stevens for his sounds long before I started to get what he was saying. But how to you get students to experiment on the page in a way that leads to innovative poems?
What kills teaching poetry to kids is to peddle them dull stuff? Whitman and Dickinson bored me to no end as a teenager. It wasn't until I read Cummings that sparks started to fly. The play of words, experimental typography, the jokes. Including interesting, challenging work that fires the imagination is essential for kids. I've been playing Paul Dutton's cd "Oralizations" http://www.actuellecd.com/cat.e/am_130.html for my kids (5 & 10). They've started working on their own sound poetry now.
Steve Nomansland, minneapolis, mn usa
Steve Nomansland, minneapolis, mn usa
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Thanks, Ron, for that reading of my poem. I don't think I'd try to teach "Up to Speed" to high school kids myself - though I have written a few poems that might be high school friendly.
("The plot winnows"," by the way, is a pretty direct response to the common phrase "The plot thickens." )
Rae Armantrout
("The plot winnows"," by the way, is a pretty direct response to the common phrase "The plot thickens." )
Rae Armantrout
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
I taught Herrick's "The Argument of his Book" to 2nd graders. That's "poetry about poetry." Billy Collins' approach to poetry for high schoolers is profoundly evil. Give them Armantrout, by all means. Not necessarily this poem, but one in which there is a Williamsian immediacey of perception.
if i had edited it, i wouldn't have put in any poems by padgett, koch, clark, towle, bernstein, or any other anti-SoQs for that matter. . .
(they (you) don't put collins et al in their (your) anthols, so why should he put any of them (you) in his?)
you're constantly advocating an us-versus-them antithesis, a purism of polarities. . . given that position, shouldn't you be scolding Collins for the "intellectual dishonesty" of having included even a few non-SoQs? You wouldn't include a single SoQ in your anthology: shouldn't he be as rigorously antipodian as you?. . .
he put 3 of my little poems in "180 More". . .
i'm grateful to him for that, but i wish he had kept out the riffraff. . .
——bill knott
(they (you) don't put collins et al in their (your) anthols, so why should he put any of them (you) in his?)
you're constantly advocating an us-versus-them antithesis, a purism of polarities. . . given that position, shouldn't you be scolding Collins for the "intellectual dishonesty" of having included even a few non-SoQs? You wouldn't include a single SoQ in your anthology: shouldn't he be as rigorously antipodian as you?. . .
he put 3 of my little poems in "180 More". . .
i'm grateful to him for that, but i wish he had kept out the riffraff. . .
——bill knott
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Ron, what are your thoughts in terms of the intended audience of 180 More? It's my understanding that Collins intends this anthology to be used to widen poetry's reach among high school students. While I've no doubt Armantrout's poetry can play very successfully in the high school classroom, it seems to me that Collins is probably looking for poetry that sincerely debunks the American education tradition of What Poetry Is (dead white guys, in part).
I don't agree with Collins's architectural metaphor for the poem. While we can certainly agree on whether or not a building is locked or unlocked, those who have been given the keys are always welcome to enter—and those keys are education, race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. My straight brother once walked into a restaurant and, 30 minutes later, realized it was a gay bar. That realization would have taken me 10 seconds. Our keys are all different and all useful.
I don't agree with Collins's architectural metaphor for the poem. While we can certainly agree on whether or not a building is locked or unlocked, those who have been given the keys are always welcome to enter—and those keys are education, race, gender, sexuality, class, etc. My straight brother once walked into a restaurant and, 30 minutes later, realized it was a gay bar. That realization would have taken me 10 seconds. Our keys are all different and all useful.
It would be neat if Rae Armantrout just explained the entire poem and what she meant in each line. Having once seen that logic, I think it would be easier to read the rest of her poems. I haven't heard of her outside of this blog. I wouldn't have guessed upon what now seems like a fairly easy reference to "the plot thickens" turns into "the plot winnows." Did anybody else get that reference?
"(they (you) don't put collins et al in their (your) anthols, so why should he put any of them (you) in his?)"
Pathetic.
I guess Kenneth Koch is "riffraff" for Bill Knott.
But wouldn't that make Billy Collins "riffraff lite"? Isn't Bill Knott's surrealism simply a washed out, washed up version of a past "avant-garde"?
Lyn Hejinian did include quite a bit of School of quietude in her BAP anthology. The difference is that WE know who Bill Knott and Billy Collins are, and YOU don't know who Rae Armantrout is. There's an asymmetry.
Pathetic.
I guess Kenneth Koch is "riffraff" for Bill Knott.
But wouldn't that make Billy Collins "riffraff lite"? Isn't Bill Knott's surrealism simply a washed out, washed up version of a past "avant-garde"?
Lyn Hejinian did include quite a bit of School of quietude in her BAP anthology. The difference is that WE know who Bill Knott and Billy Collins are, and YOU don't know who Rae Armantrout is. There's an asymmetry.
I try to pay as little attention to Billy Collins as possible. So far that has been a good guide to follow; when I do hear of him and his "Trouble With Poetry," [haha!] the ludicrous nature of both his work and his statements simply bully me over with laughter. What a goon.
But I have to take a little bit of contention with the dismissal of Eamon Grennan to the realm of Irish Variant in a more vast anglophilia is the SoQ. I would no more ask you to enjoy his work or the aesthetics he presents than I would force feed you my interest in Instrumental Mock Metal, but I dislike the trend of grouping poets by nationality. I'd agree that our countries of origin influence us as poets in ways that are unfathomable, but that is no means by which to pigeonhole any kind of artist. It's a nasty habit we have, to take foreign emmigres and isolate them as alien if we don't like their work, or adopt them as American if we find them valuable. Nabokov would be an example.
Honestly, my interest in what is American can only be described as purely academic and rarely of use other than to inspire the occasional, "huh," or "boo."
And looking at the oppressive weight of American pop culture on the whole of the British Isles, I always find it a little ironic when we end up discussing how badly our artists aspire a limey pedigree.
-jeremy hawkins
But I have to take a little bit of contention with the dismissal of Eamon Grennan to the realm of Irish Variant in a more vast anglophilia is the SoQ. I would no more ask you to enjoy his work or the aesthetics he presents than I would force feed you my interest in Instrumental Mock Metal, but I dislike the trend of grouping poets by nationality. I'd agree that our countries of origin influence us as poets in ways that are unfathomable, but that is no means by which to pigeonhole any kind of artist. It's a nasty habit we have, to take foreign emmigres and isolate them as alien if we don't like their work, or adopt them as American if we find them valuable. Nabokov would be an example.
Honestly, my interest in what is American can only be described as purely academic and rarely of use other than to inspire the occasional, "huh," or "boo."
And looking at the oppressive weight of American pop culture on the whole of the British Isles, I always find it a little ironic when we end up discussing how badly our artists aspire a limey pedigree.
-jeremy hawkins
people don't like uncertainty, because uncertainty is associated with punishment.
billy collins is a scaredy cat versifier in fearful times. there's
more where he came from. keep up the
good fight ron silliman !
" these are squalid times, they always were. it's a poet's job to draw the line. "-- basil bunting
best, mickey o'connor
billy collins is a scaredy cat versifier in fearful times. there's
more where he came from. keep up the
good fight ron silliman !
" these are squalid times, they always were. it's a poet's job to draw the line. "-- basil bunting
best, mickey o'connor
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Ted Kooser is kind of the Benedict XVI to Collins's John Paul II act. Check out this statement by our current poet laureate:
"A lot of this resistance to poetry is to be blamed on poets. Some go out of their way to make their poems difficult if not downright discouraging, because difficult poems are what they think they’re expected to write to advance their careers. They know it’s the professional interpreters of poetry—book reviewers, professional literary critics—who most often establish a poet’s reputation, and that those interpreters are attracted to poems that offer opportunities to show off their skills at interpretation. A poet who writes poetry that doesn’t require explanation, who writes clear and accessible poems, is of little use to critics building their own careers as interpreters. But a clear and accessible poem can be of use to an everyday reader."
There's such a pyrotechnics of contradictory, mean, ill-informed statements here that one hardly knows where to begin.
Alan DeNiro
http://ptarmigan.blogspot.com
"A lot of this resistance to poetry is to be blamed on poets. Some go out of their way to make their poems difficult if not downright discouraging, because difficult poems are what they think they’re expected to write to advance their careers. They know it’s the professional interpreters of poetry—book reviewers, professional literary critics—who most often establish a poet’s reputation, and that those interpreters are attracted to poems that offer opportunities to show off their skills at interpretation. A poet who writes poetry that doesn’t require explanation, who writes clear and accessible poems, is of little use to critics building their own careers as interpreters. But a clear and accessible poem can be of use to an everyday reader."
There's such a pyrotechnics of contradictory, mean, ill-informed statements here that one hardly knows where to begin.
Alan DeNiro
http://ptarmigan.blogspot.com
The idea that [insert rigidly experimental aesthete's name here] will never write a poem that could be considered more SoQ than experimental is preposterous.
What [insert rigidly experimental aesthete's name here] would do with a quiet poem most likely is either to dismiss it, or conform it according to a style by which he/she chooses to express/identify at that point in time, some escalation of his/her sensibility.
The problem with this is that it is the same type of overarching constraint that defines SoQ--a type of voice. And a denial of voice according to the poem's needs.
If non-S0Q is *not* an aesthetic but something more akin to an individual inhabiting their Pollock-zone, then don't we have to allow for a multitude of expressions from within that world creating place, accounting for maturity, knowledge, etc.?
So really what is being discussed here is an area that I think should be of great interest to younger poets, who, having not yet arrived at their own poetry instead feel urged to find a "side" and learn and acquire its language, buy its members' books, attend their readings, defend its warhorses' positions on blogs, etc.
It's educational and comforting to take a side, perhaps, but the poetry that comes from that approach I think is bound to be a derivative--limited by a predisposition of form and language.
The language of the poem as it arrives could sometimes be brought forth with a direct recording and other times be rendered meticulously. It has to be both and many ways. Otherwise--if the poems never vary from a very recognizable form/style--we're talking about that most nasty of transgressions--voice.
--MH
What [insert rigidly experimental aesthete's name here] would do with a quiet poem most likely is either to dismiss it, or conform it according to a style by which he/she chooses to express/identify at that point in time, some escalation of his/her sensibility.
The problem with this is that it is the same type of overarching constraint that defines SoQ--a type of voice. And a denial of voice according to the poem's needs.
If non-S0Q is *not* an aesthetic but something more akin to an individual inhabiting their Pollock-zone, then don't we have to allow for a multitude of expressions from within that world creating place, accounting for maturity, knowledge, etc.?
So really what is being discussed here is an area that I think should be of great interest to younger poets, who, having not yet arrived at their own poetry instead feel urged to find a "side" and learn and acquire its language, buy its members' books, attend their readings, defend its warhorses' positions on blogs, etc.
It's educational and comforting to take a side, perhaps, but the poetry that comes from that approach I think is bound to be a derivative--limited by a predisposition of form and language.
The language of the poem as it arrives could sometimes be brought forth with a direct recording and other times be rendered meticulously. It has to be both and many ways. Otherwise--if the poems never vary from a very recognizable form/style--we're talking about that most nasty of transgressions--voice.
--MH
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
First, the man's name is Jakobson, Roman Jakobson, not "Jacobson."
Second, Kooser's an idiot pure and simple. Obviously the man is unaware of the long history "difficult" poetry that is not "clear and accessible," from Pindar forward through such poets as Donne, Herbert, Shakespeare, Milton, Crashaw, Keats, Coleridge, Shelley, Landor, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Mallarme, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Hopkins, Verlaine, and on up through such predecessors and peers of the Quietudists as Valery, Yeats, Robinson, Eliot, Pound, H.D., Moore, Stevens, cummings, W.C. Williams, etc. Not all concepts, ideas, sensations, emotions, psychological and physical experiences, forms or modes of expression, and so on, are "clear and accessible," though we often strain to make them so, but the Kooser-Collinses of the world don't get this. But who cares? No one remembers or returns to these poets after a few years, so let them claim their glory while they can.
Second, Kooser's an idiot pure and simple. Obviously the man is unaware of the long history "difficult" poetry that is not "clear and accessible," from Pindar forward through such poets as Donne, Herbert, Shakespeare, Milton, Crashaw, Keats, Coleridge, Shelley, Landor, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Mallarme, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Hopkins, Verlaine, and on up through such predecessors and peers of the Quietudists as Valery, Yeats, Robinson, Eliot, Pound, H.D., Moore, Stevens, cummings, W.C. Williams, etc. Not all concepts, ideas, sensations, emotions, psychological and physical experiences, forms or modes of expression, and so on, are "clear and accessible," though we often strain to make them so, but the Kooser-Collinses of the world don't get this. But who cares? No one remembers or returns to these poets after a few years, so let them claim their glory while they can.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
For anon citing Kooser's idiocy: It's Cummings--C, not c. If you're gonna call somebody idiot it's always best to do so in a way that doesn't lump yourself into the putdown.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Rae Armantrout's poem doesn't strike me as that difficult. In fact, each little stanza is fairly clear, and poses questions about indeterminacy in the face of language's, and specifically, a given linguistic expression's attempts, to impose or determine meaning.
Streamline to instantaneous
voucher in/voucher out
system.
(This triad or tercet instantiates a kind of bureaucratic language that appears to describe an equilibrium that is at odds with what poetic language actually does and also how we experience the world.)
The plot winnows.
(Ironic too, in invoking plot, which describes a particular space or terrain, a trajectory, as well as the the poem as a particular linguistic frame, which winnows from the broader experience and use of language to create its own possible meanings/readings, yet indeterminacy still results.)
The Sphinx
wants me to guess.
(Is this hard to understand? It's a analogy stating what the poem is asking us to do--what all poems at some level ask--to interpret--we have to make sense of the poem and the world.)
Does a road
run its whole length
at once?
(A metaphor (and also a metonym)--do we always understand all experience, or even a linguistic statement, all at once? Sometimes don't we have to reflect? )
Does a creature
curve to meet
itself?
(A reference to the ourobouros, I think, but also a rhetorical question asking about self-referentiality, which is a criticism of this kind of poetry. This curving in on itself produces indeterminacy.)
Whirlette!
(I love this exclamation, which refers to a kid's game, doesn't it? But also it explodes the bureacratese of the opening tercet.)
I wonder what might happen if Armantrout had played with enjambment a bit more to increase the possibilities of meaning.
Like:
The Sphinx wants me
to guess.
Does a road run
its whole
length at once?
Does a creature curve
to meet it-
self?
Whirl-
ette!
Also, this poem scans as blank verse, with fairly regular iambs. You can scan all five stanzas easily, which I think many of the stupid quietist critics miss. The music of the slant rhymes and assonance are also clear. Armantrout has a surer sense of poetic tradition than many of their clumsy, boring poems.
Streamline to instantaneous
voucher in/voucher out
system.
(This triad or tercet instantiates a kind of bureaucratic language that appears to describe an equilibrium that is at odds with what poetic language actually does and also how we experience the world.)
The plot winnows.
(Ironic too, in invoking plot, which describes a particular space or terrain, a trajectory, as well as the the poem as a particular linguistic frame, which winnows from the broader experience and use of language to create its own possible meanings/readings, yet indeterminacy still results.)
The Sphinx
wants me to guess.
(Is this hard to understand? It's a analogy stating what the poem is asking us to do--what all poems at some level ask--to interpret--we have to make sense of the poem and the world.)
Does a road
run its whole length
at once?
(A metaphor (and also a metonym)--do we always understand all experience, or even a linguistic statement, all at once? Sometimes don't we have to reflect? )
Does a creature
curve to meet
itself?
(A reference to the ourobouros, I think, but also a rhetorical question asking about self-referentiality, which is a criticism of this kind of poetry. This curving in on itself produces indeterminacy.)
Whirlette!
(I love this exclamation, which refers to a kid's game, doesn't it? But also it explodes the bureacratese of the opening tercet.)
I wonder what might happen if Armantrout had played with enjambment a bit more to increase the possibilities of meaning.
Like:
The Sphinx wants me
to guess.
Does a road run
its whole
length at once?
Does a creature curve
to meet it-
self?
Whirl-
ette!
Also, this poem scans as blank verse, with fairly regular iambs. You can scan all five stanzas easily, which I think many of the stupid quietist critics miss. The music of the slant rhymes and assonance are also clear. Armantrout has a surer sense of poetic tradition than many of their clumsy, boring poems.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
anon, "e.e. cummings" signed and wrote his name this way, not with capitals. You might want to check out any of the volumes he published during his lifetime. Or maybe in poet-laureatizing or defending his American benedictness you don't know this.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
I read your latest entry with great interest, Ron Silliman, since I tried (and failed) to engage you in a discussion of such matters a couple of years ago when my essay "Post-Post Dementia" created a lynch mob mentality among the avant-garde bloggers. Since you present yourself as a spokesman for Language and post-language/"experimental" poetry and you are clearly knowledgeable in the area, I thought you might want to share some of your thoughts on what such poems mean to you. You declined an invitation to talk with me in the pages of Fulcrum (Chris Stroffolino accepted) and also an invitation to participate in a round-table discussion I hosted on the matter (http://bostoncomment.com/debate.html) so I welcome now your comments, finally, on how to read a specific poem, even if they are not addressed directly to me. I have enjoyed the humor in some of Armantrout's poetry and I like it here, but I frankly cannot see anything in what you've said about this poem that would increase my understanding or enjoyment of it. So let me ask you some questions about your statements below. Perhaps your answers will bring me closer to being able to understand/care more about this poem and, by extension, others you have invested with so much of your time and passion.
"Even in the fourth line, the “difficulty” of the first triad is contextualized."
What do you mean by this--that the fourth line puts the first three in context? If so, what is the context? An accounting system? And how does the pun on the plot thickens ("The plot winnows") put the reference to an accounting system into context exactly?
"The third stanza presents the situation again, this time angled into a more overtly humorous tone."
So, you are saying "The plot winnows" is another way of saying whatever the first stanza says (something about an accounting system)? How so? It is a humorous line, yes, albeit a throwaway, a little pun. You seem to think it's more. Tell why, please.
"The fourth stanza presents it rather in the manner of a Zen koan."
Still don't know what "it" is, Ron Silliman. Can you tell me?
"So does the fifth, calling up the image of a dog perpetually chasing its tale."
So the fifth stanza does it too...presents "it" in the manner of a Zen koan? And what is "it"?
"Which is precisely what is named (or characterized, take your pick) in the final one-word strophe."
I pick "named" I guess. What are we talking about though? The one-word strophe is "whirlette!" And this characterizes (or "names") the action of chasing one's tail, yes?
"What is the subject of this “inaccessible” passage? Accessibility!"
Surprise!! Why do these poems always end up being "about" themselves, i.e. why is an inaccesible poem about being inaccessible? Is a boring poem "about" the state of boredom? Is an amatuerish poem "about" someone's beginnning efforts at writing? Isn't that a little too convenient?
"Or – because Armantrout is a far more subtle poet than this – it’s about the push-pull between the intractability of meaning (what I might call opacity tho a philosopher might prefer immanence) & a consumer’s desire to have it all, right now!"
That's pretty subtle alright, one might say to the point of invisibility. Is it so subtle that only Ron Silliman can see it? I wonder if that's because it's only in Ron Silliman's mind and not anywhere in the poem. But let's make up names for it ("immanence" is good, though I'm no philosopher) so it sounds like something the reader SHOULD understand (and would if only they got more education in the matter).
"You can bet Armantrout’s making fun of that impulse!"
Sure, she's making fun. The laugh's on us. Ok, why not ask her-she's on this thread. Rae Armantrout are you "making fun of that [consumerist] impulse?" Does Ron Silliman have it right?
"And setting up the first stanza in procedural terms, a discourse of process rather than image, is precisely the distancing effect needed to act out this dynamic, the reader trying to identify just which system has been streamlined into an “instantaneous voucher in / voucher out.” "
Sure..precisely that. Are you making fun of something here, or does it just seem that way?
"The stanza is the process that it’s talking about."
Ok. So the poem is about itself. And the stanza is about a stanza (or being a stanza). And I gather the words are about words. I had a feeling it would come to this.
"It would be hard to be more literal than this."
It would? Ok, well I don't want to tax you any further. Let's just sum up by saying the poem is about itself (but you can only grasp that in its context, which is unknown) and it is so subtle that only when we turn to words like "immanance" or "opacity" can we start to get with it. We think the poem is "inaccessible" but the joke's on us, because it's ABOUT inaccessibilty. Hah! Good one.
"Inaccessible? One can only wonder, dumb struck, at the literacy level at which this becomes inaccessible."
Right! What idiot couldn't understand this? It's just amazing how some people want to care about a poem, want to have some kind of experience from reading it other than boredom or bafflement. One can only wonder!
Ok, I'm ready for your next one, Ron Silliman. Can we analyze it together?
Joan Houlihan
"Even in the fourth line, the “difficulty” of the first triad is contextualized."
What do you mean by this--that the fourth line puts the first three in context? If so, what is the context? An accounting system? And how does the pun on the plot thickens ("The plot winnows") put the reference to an accounting system into context exactly?
"The third stanza presents the situation again, this time angled into a more overtly humorous tone."
So, you are saying "The plot winnows" is another way of saying whatever the first stanza says (something about an accounting system)? How so? It is a humorous line, yes, albeit a throwaway, a little pun. You seem to think it's more. Tell why, please.
"The fourth stanza presents it rather in the manner of a Zen koan."
Still don't know what "it" is, Ron Silliman. Can you tell me?
"So does the fifth, calling up the image of a dog perpetually chasing its tale."
So the fifth stanza does it too...presents "it" in the manner of a Zen koan? And what is "it"?
"Which is precisely what is named (or characterized, take your pick) in the final one-word strophe."
I pick "named" I guess. What are we talking about though? The one-word strophe is "whirlette!" And this characterizes (or "names") the action of chasing one's tail, yes?
"What is the subject of this “inaccessible” passage? Accessibility!"
Surprise!! Why do these poems always end up being "about" themselves, i.e. why is an inaccesible poem about being inaccessible? Is a boring poem "about" the state of boredom? Is an amatuerish poem "about" someone's beginnning efforts at writing? Isn't that a little too convenient?
"Or – because Armantrout is a far more subtle poet than this – it’s about the push-pull between the intractability of meaning (what I might call opacity tho a philosopher might prefer immanence) & a consumer’s desire to have it all, right now!"
That's pretty subtle alright, one might say to the point of invisibility. Is it so subtle that only Ron Silliman can see it? I wonder if that's because it's only in Ron Silliman's mind and not anywhere in the poem. But let's make up names for it ("immanence" is good, though I'm no philosopher) so it sounds like something the reader SHOULD understand (and would if only they got more education in the matter).
"You can bet Armantrout’s making fun of that impulse!"
Sure, she's making fun. The laugh's on us. Ok, why not ask her-she's on this thread. Rae Armantrout are you "making fun of that [consumerist] impulse?" Does Ron Silliman have it right?
"And setting up the first stanza in procedural terms, a discourse of process rather than image, is precisely the distancing effect needed to act out this dynamic, the reader trying to identify just which system has been streamlined into an “instantaneous voucher in / voucher out.” "
Sure..precisely that. Are you making fun of something here, or does it just seem that way?
"The stanza is the process that it’s talking about."
Ok. So the poem is about itself. And the stanza is about a stanza (or being a stanza). And I gather the words are about words. I had a feeling it would come to this.
"It would be hard to be more literal than this."
It would? Ok, well I don't want to tax you any further. Let's just sum up by saying the poem is about itself (but you can only grasp that in its context, which is unknown) and it is so subtle that only when we turn to words like "immanance" or "opacity" can we start to get with it. We think the poem is "inaccessible" but the joke's on us, because it's ABOUT inaccessibilty. Hah! Good one.
"Inaccessible? One can only wonder, dumb struck, at the literacy level at which this becomes inaccessible."
Right! What idiot couldn't understand this? It's just amazing how some people want to care about a poem, want to have some kind of experience from reading it other than boredom or bafflement. One can only wonder!
Ok, I'm ready for your next one, Ron Silliman. Can we analyze it together?
Joan Houlihan
Actually e.e. cummings, also known as "Mr Lowercase Highbrow," liked to use lowercase letters for his poems and his name when he was alive, so writing his name in them isn't in error.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
I wonder if people know that what Ron posted isn't the whole poem either. That's the first of three parts. But the first part should work on its own. That's fair enough.
I know I shouldn't let myself get drawn into what the poem's about. I venture into this very ambivalently. Let me just say:
Time
The way time is sped up in "consumer" society.
The way time speeds up as we age.
(Here it helps to remember the answer to the Sphinx's riddle)
Time's apparent (illusory?) linearity.
All this has implications for writing, of course...
Those are some things I'm interested in.
RA
I know I shouldn't let myself get drawn into what the poem's about. I venture into this very ambivalently. Let me just say:
Time
The way time is sped up in "consumer" society.
The way time speeds up as we age.
(Here it helps to remember the answer to the Sphinx's riddle)
Time's apparent (illusory?) linearity.
All this has implications for writing, of course...
Those are some things I'm interested in.
RA
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Re. Cummings
Here's a picture of his signature from a letter. http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/sig1.gif
And of a title page from 1940 when he was very alive and paid close attention to such matters, thus certainly approving this usage.
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/50Poems.jpg
Here's a picture of his signature from a letter. http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/sig1.gif
And of a title page from 1940 when he was very alive and paid close attention to such matters, thus certainly approving this usage.
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/50Poems.jpg
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Oh dear. I was wrong and so was Ron. I just checked the book and Up to Speed is in four sections - not 3 or 5 (as Ron said.) I guess memory doesn't serve.
RA
RA
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
About Cummings--it is true that he used, or allowed the use of, the lower-case spelling in many publications, and also true that he used the upper case when signing his name and in other contexts.. It is a common misconception to say that he insisted on the lower-case "e e cummings," but it is pedantic to insist on this correction in a "gotcha" mode. Writing "cummings" is not wrong like writing "Ashberry," which I still see often in blogs.
I guess we could conclude that the only correct reference is "E E C's," since that is how his sigature appears.
I don't think that it is a cop-out to say Armantrout's poem can be about accessibility. Look at the beginning of another poem from the same book:
Transaparency's the joke
a text tells an audience
with which it may
or may not
co-exist.
Surely this poem is "about' the relationship of poem to its receptors?
I guess we could conclude that the only correct reference is "E E C's," since that is how his sigature appears.
I don't think that it is a cop-out to say Armantrout's poem can be about accessibility. Look at the beginning of another poem from the same book:
Transaparency's the joke
a text tells an audience
with which it may
or may not
co-exist.
Surely this poem is "about' the relationship of poem to its receptors?
To RA:
Thanks for setting us straight on how out of context this really is. I will read the entire poem and urge others to do the same before making any more comments on it. I like the super-compressed lines and wry tone and your own comments (about time) are helpful. But I still would like to know if you are "making fun of a consumer’s desire to have it all, right now!"
Just curious.
Joan Houlihan
Thanks for setting us straight on how out of context this really is. I will read the entire poem and urge others to do the same before making any more comments on it. I like the super-compressed lines and wry tone and your own comments (about time) are helpful. But I still would like to know if you are "making fun of a consumer’s desire to have it all, right now!"
Just curious.
Joan Houlihan
Ron,
Do you really think that, in making his assertion via Armantrout's poem, Collins was being dishonest? To rephrase: might it be better to simply say that Collins was being a bit lazy?
When Collins (and others like him) use the word 'inaccessible', they often mean something more akin to 'opaque'; it is here where simple preference can be mistaken for a serious aesthetic and/or poetics. If I'm reading you correctly, isn't this what you're taking issue with?
In other words: Collins has every right to say, 'The opening of this poem is unclear' -- which it is, because it's supposed to be -- and even to say, 'This poem is TOO unclear', which is true if you value wide readership above other things (and wide readership can be a very good thing). But Collins's argument becomes troubling when he employs the word 'inaccessible', because such a word implies a universal and absolute 'problem' -- and this is simply not true.
Am I reading you right?
Do you really think that, in making his assertion via Armantrout's poem, Collins was being dishonest? To rephrase: might it be better to simply say that Collins was being a bit lazy?
When Collins (and others like him) use the word 'inaccessible', they often mean something more akin to 'opaque'; it is here where simple preference can be mistaken for a serious aesthetic and/or poetics. If I'm reading you correctly, isn't this what you're taking issue with?
In other words: Collins has every right to say, 'The opening of this poem is unclear' -- which it is, because it's supposed to be -- and even to say, 'This poem is TOO unclear', which is true if you value wide readership above other things (and wide readership can be a very good thing). But Collins's argument becomes troubling when he employs the word 'inaccessible', because such a word implies a universal and absolute 'problem' -- and this is simply not true.
Am I reading you right?
The issue of capitalizing or not capitalizing Cummings's name is a side issue from one of the anonymous poster's e-mails, but here's a snippet from a Norman Friedman article on the topic.
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps2.html
"We will concede that in some of his letters to the Watsons, who were his patrons and friends, he signed his name in lowercase, but that seems to be called for by the personal and intimate relationship he had with them—not to say dependent and childlike, as he counted on them for help and support.
"But we will not concede that he intended his name to be in lowercase either for his public or his publications, and we now can bring forth additional evidence as support. We mentioned previously that his customary written signature used the usual caps, letters to the Watsons to the contrary notwithstanding, and we showed samples. We now have even more explicit proof.
"As we may have mentioned, due to the kindness of D. Jon Grossman's son, Jerome, we have the complete file of Jon's correspondence with Cummings. On making a preliminary tour through these letters, we found Jon preparing a French edition of his translations of Cummings' poetry, and on 27 February 1951 he wrote to the poet: 'are you E.E.Cummings, ee cummings, or what?(so far as the title page is concerned)wd u like title page all in lowercase?'
"The poet replied on 1 March 1951: 'E.E.Cummings, unless your printer prefers E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy svp[.]'
"That seems definitive to us: may it not be tricksy!"
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps2.html
"We will concede that in some of his letters to the Watsons, who were his patrons and friends, he signed his name in lowercase, but that seems to be called for by the personal and intimate relationship he had with them—not to say dependent and childlike, as he counted on them for help and support.
"But we will not concede that he intended his name to be in lowercase either for his public or his publications, and we now can bring forth additional evidence as support. We mentioned previously that his customary written signature used the usual caps, letters to the Watsons to the contrary notwithstanding, and we showed samples. We now have even more explicit proof.
"As we may have mentioned, due to the kindness of D. Jon Grossman's son, Jerome, we have the complete file of Jon's correspondence with Cummings. On making a preliminary tour through these letters, we found Jon preparing a French edition of his translations of Cummings' poetry, and on 27 February 1951 he wrote to the poet: 'are you E.E.Cummings, ee cummings, or what?(so far as the title page is concerned)wd u like title page all in lowercase?'
"The poet replied on 1 March 1951: 'E.E.Cummings, unless your printer prefers E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy svp[.]'
"That seems definitive to us: may it not be tricksy!"
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Joan:
I don't think you really mean to be so literal in your analytic approach to poetry.
That seems a convenient pretext for putting down Armantrout's work--or any poet's work for that matter--
Since everyone's talking about Cummings, let's use him for example. Certainly you wouldn't insist that most, or even much, of the poetry we appreciate must be "about" something, would you? Take EEC's "MEMORABILIA" from Is 5 [New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926]: The lyric to The Battle Hymn Of The Republic is superimposed against a satiric description of Venice ostensibly conducted by a tour-guide for the benefit of some American lady tourists ("dollarbringing virgins"). The poem's interest is NOT "ABOUT" Venice, or American tourists, or Italian Renaissance Art, or alienated patriotism, or any of those things--it's simply, and purely, and joyously, about the play of language.
In my Master's Thesis at Iowa in the early 1970's fully 2/3's of the text was devoted to the assertion that nearly all good poetry in fact is self-defining, i.e., it "states" its purpose as a self-defining and self-consuming artifact. This "self-consciousness" is what often separates high mimesis from ordinary scribble. One could say that all good poetry is "about" nothing but itself--its own justification, its own ritual, its own occasion, and its own pleasure. If we cede pragmatic purpose as an analytic requirement for literature, we ennoble propaganda and advertising and religious homily to a higher plane than Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Everyone "knows" what's going to happen in a Shakespeare play. We know all the characters, we know what the emotional interactions are and will be, but we still watch and listen in rapt attention, because we are in thrall to the language and the unfolding of the enactment of intellect in verbal terms.
Any dull or quotidian poem can be "about" something and be completely unmemorable.
The critical wraiths we weave around poetry, drama, and art are not the art itself. Rae's poem exists exclusive of Ron's analysis of it. Either you respond to it or you don't. It seems an enormous futility to "prove" that you don't respond to it.
We used to argue in Breslin's WCW class just what "it" referred to in his poems. It seems that "it" is the "meaning" of the poem, a referent never more specific than the complexity we nominate.
It is really confusing, at times.
--CF
I don't think you really mean to be so literal in your analytic approach to poetry.
That seems a convenient pretext for putting down Armantrout's work--or any poet's work for that matter--
Since everyone's talking about Cummings, let's use him for example. Certainly you wouldn't insist that most, or even much, of the poetry we appreciate must be "about" something, would you? Take EEC's "MEMORABILIA" from Is 5 [New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926]: The lyric to The Battle Hymn Of The Republic is superimposed against a satiric description of Venice ostensibly conducted by a tour-guide for the benefit of some American lady tourists ("dollarbringing virgins"). The poem's interest is NOT "ABOUT" Venice, or American tourists, or Italian Renaissance Art, or alienated patriotism, or any of those things--it's simply, and purely, and joyously, about the play of language.
In my Master's Thesis at Iowa in the early 1970's fully 2/3's of the text was devoted to the assertion that nearly all good poetry in fact is self-defining, i.e., it "states" its purpose as a self-defining and self-consuming artifact. This "self-consciousness" is what often separates high mimesis from ordinary scribble. One could say that all good poetry is "about" nothing but itself--its own justification, its own ritual, its own occasion, and its own pleasure. If we cede pragmatic purpose as an analytic requirement for literature, we ennoble propaganda and advertising and religious homily to a higher plane than Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Everyone "knows" what's going to happen in a Shakespeare play. We know all the characters, we know what the emotional interactions are and will be, but we still watch and listen in rapt attention, because we are in thrall to the language and the unfolding of the enactment of intellect in verbal terms.
Any dull or quotidian poem can be "about" something and be completely unmemorable.
The critical wraiths we weave around poetry, drama, and art are not the art itself. Rae's poem exists exclusive of Ron's analysis of it. Either you respond to it or you don't. It seems an enormous futility to "prove" that you don't respond to it.
We used to argue in Breslin's WCW class just what "it" referred to in his poems. It seems that "it" is the "meaning" of the poem, a referent never more specific than the complexity we nominate.
It is really confusing, at times.
--CF
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Wow. I feel like a frog in the land of the giants in this thread, but there are a few things I'd really like to hear more about and I figured it can't hurt to ask.
1. Since Collins selected, ostensibly, poetry for teaching purposes (not "dumb stuff"), what alternative poems or seleciton criteria would you apply? Is setting (individual versus classroom, for example) important?
2. Regarding Rae Armantrout's reluctant discussion of her own poem: Is it important that we get what poems "right"? I've always considered it a success when one of my poems is taken to mean something completely different to a reader than it does to me - I've let them enjoy and inhabit my words in a way that serves them better than me just telling them my story. Am I way off here?
3. Finally, there's a great comment above about the reasonableness of saying "this opening is TOO unclear". I've read the sentiment elsewhere that you have to care before you're willing to work. Might we say then, that anthologized or excerpted poems (ie: removed from their context) have to meet (or can reasonably be held to) different criteria, depending on the purpose for which they have been taken? This might make Mr. Collins' statement an incorrect generalization but a strong implication of his purpose (which links me back to point 1 above)
Fascinating discussion, and I appreciate being able to read and participate.
1. Since Collins selected, ostensibly, poetry for teaching purposes (not "dumb stuff"), what alternative poems or seleciton criteria would you apply? Is setting (individual versus classroom, for example) important?
2. Regarding Rae Armantrout's reluctant discussion of her own poem: Is it important that we get what poems "right"? I've always considered it a success when one of my poems is taken to mean something completely different to a reader than it does to me - I've let them enjoy and inhabit my words in a way that serves them better than me just telling them my story. Am I way off here?
3. Finally, there's a great comment above about the reasonableness of saying "this opening is TOO unclear". I've read the sentiment elsewhere that you have to care before you're willing to work. Might we say then, that anthologized or excerpted poems (ie: removed from their context) have to meet (or can reasonably be held to) different criteria, depending on the purpose for which they have been taken? This might make Mr. Collins' statement an incorrect generalization but a strong implication of his purpose (which links me back to point 1 above)
Fascinating discussion, and I appreciate being able to read and participate.
CF:
It is "really confusing, at times," yes, but I think you would be less confused if you read the poem without the lens of your Iowa thesis (probably a good thesis, and probably proved its own self-defined points well, but not very helpful to any apprhension/enjoyment of individual poems written by individual poets). The meta-discussion of a poem's self-defining quality, the idea that all poems are in effect about writing, or about the poem, or about language, or about inaccessibility, is just not very interesting vis a vis any particular poem. In fact, I would make your own argument against such a reductionism, the idea that the poem has to be "about" something (in your case, "about the play of language"). Surely, you can see that such an argument puts all poems into the same bin, reduces individuality and specificity, makes all poems simply artifacts of language. This is simply mind-numbing, a stripping away of individual voice and style in the service of..what? A theory? The enobling of theory is certainly as dangerous as the "enobling of propaganda" you cite (as the other end of the scale, a poem as a form of persuasion, which, by the way, it certainly is, if it's any good).
I'm forced into the position you describe as "literalist" for one reason, and that is to counteract the shoddy and disrespectful way some poets, and critics, promote as the only way to engage with a poem, a lens of post-modernist literary theory, and the resulting deluge of absolute drek that is being allowed/encouraged to flourish in the absence of genuine critical thinking.
I do not need a "pretext" to "put down" a poet's work, nor am I particularly interested in doing that. I'm a teacher, after all. My energies are mainly directed toward encourgement, not discouragement, but they are also directed toward honesty--something necessary in the arts, don't you think?
Most importantly, I do not agree with your relativistic stand, that we cannot hope to articulate how/why we respond to a poem, so it's "futile" to try. You must try if you have any love of the art at all.
JH
It is "really confusing, at times," yes, but I think you would be less confused if you read the poem without the lens of your Iowa thesis (probably a good thesis, and probably proved its own self-defined points well, but not very helpful to any apprhension/enjoyment of individual poems written by individual poets). The meta-discussion of a poem's self-defining quality, the idea that all poems are in effect about writing, or about the poem, or about language, or about inaccessibility, is just not very interesting vis a vis any particular poem. In fact, I would make your own argument against such a reductionism, the idea that the poem has to be "about" something (in your case, "about the play of language"). Surely, you can see that such an argument puts all poems into the same bin, reduces individuality and specificity, makes all poems simply artifacts of language. This is simply mind-numbing, a stripping away of individual voice and style in the service of..what? A theory? The enobling of theory is certainly as dangerous as the "enobling of propaganda" you cite (as the other end of the scale, a poem as a form of persuasion, which, by the way, it certainly is, if it's any good).
I'm forced into the position you describe as "literalist" for one reason, and that is to counteract the shoddy and disrespectful way some poets, and critics, promote as the only way to engage with a poem, a lens of post-modernist literary theory, and the resulting deluge of absolute drek that is being allowed/encouraged to flourish in the absence of genuine critical thinking.
I do not need a "pretext" to "put down" a poet's work, nor am I particularly interested in doing that. I'm a teacher, after all. My energies are mainly directed toward encourgement, not discouragement, but they are also directed toward honesty--something necessary in the arts, don't you think?
Most importantly, I do not agree with your relativistic stand, that we cannot hope to articulate how/why we respond to a poem, so it's "futile" to try. You must try if you have any love of the art at all.
JH
CF,
If a poem is 'about the play of language', then that poem is about something, isn't it?
A poem must be about something; it cannot be otherwise. The medium of our art forces meaning upon us, and upon our readers. Take Ashberry's 'Your Name Here', for example: the entire collection is a break from objective intent (hence the title), but Ashberry self-consciously recognizes this as an objective choice and intent. The collection, then, is "about" not being about anything -- and so, it is still about something.
If you choose to ignore the meanings of words, and to instead produce beautiful sounds or absurd non-sense (which can be beautiful, too) or whatever, you're still breaking from objectivity -- which is objective, as a result. This is paradoxical, but it is nonetheless.
The problem with your argument, CF, is that to cede the objective and the absolute is to privilege neither Shakespeare nor Sound-Bite; it is, in fact, to privilege NOTHING.
This is the realm of Heidegger -- the rejection of the objective, the exaltation of the subjective -- and it is a dangerous place to be.
If a poem is 'about the play of language', then that poem is about something, isn't it?
A poem must be about something; it cannot be otherwise. The medium of our art forces meaning upon us, and upon our readers. Take Ashberry's 'Your Name Here', for example: the entire collection is a break from objective intent (hence the title), but Ashberry self-consciously recognizes this as an objective choice and intent. The collection, then, is "about" not being about anything -- and so, it is still about something.
If you choose to ignore the meanings of words, and to instead produce beautiful sounds or absurd non-sense (which can be beautiful, too) or whatever, you're still breaking from objectivity -- which is objective, as a result. This is paradoxical, but it is nonetheless.
The problem with your argument, CF, is that to cede the objective and the absolute is to privilege neither Shakespeare nor Sound-Bite; it is, in fact, to privilege NOTHING.
This is the realm of Heidegger -- the rejection of the objective, the exaltation of the subjective -- and it is a dangerous place to be.
Yeah, but there seem to be a lot more Houlihans and Collinses than Sillimans, at least from where I stand.
With the exception of Ron, I don't know many "post-avants" who spend a lot of time complaning about "SoQ" or whatever. Well, there's Bob Grumman, but he hates everyone.
I am an apologist for neither side, but Houlihan's disdain for poetry she either doesn't like or understand is pretty strident and off-putting. Sometimes after reading a "Boston Comment," I want to love everything she hates, though the feeling usually passes. At least Ron tries to tell us why he likes and dislikes what he does. Joan simply says, "This doesn't make sense," or "The emperor wears no clothes!" I seldom agree with either Ron or Joan, but Silliman is easier to stomach, as he actually engages with poetry he likes and dislikes. Houlihan mostly dismisses what she doesn't like. It's not a very rewarding experience for me.
That said, Joan's is a voice that may be necessary--it never hurts to stir the pot and promote visceral, negative responses. It gets the rest of us off our butts and thinking about poetry.
With the exception of Ron, I don't know many "post-avants" who spend a lot of time complaning about "SoQ" or whatever. Well, there's Bob Grumman, but he hates everyone.
I am an apologist for neither side, but Houlihan's disdain for poetry she either doesn't like or understand is pretty strident and off-putting. Sometimes after reading a "Boston Comment," I want to love everything she hates, though the feeling usually passes. At least Ron tries to tell us why he likes and dislikes what he does. Joan simply says, "This doesn't make sense," or "The emperor wears no clothes!" I seldom agree with either Ron or Joan, but Silliman is easier to stomach, as he actually engages with poetry he likes and dislikes. Houlihan mostly dismisses what she doesn't like. It's not a very rewarding experience for me.
That said, Joan's is a voice that may be necessary--it never hurts to stir the pot and promote visceral, negative responses. It gets the rest of us off our butts and thinking about poetry.
Tony,
Have you really read my essays? They are often pages long, which means they say more than the two quotes you (falsely) attribute to me. You are summarizing, I guess, using your capsule summary as a way to dismiss me. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time analyzing some lines from a poem in Slope magazine by someone named Christina Mengert in one of my later essays (and was, by the way, criticized for taking it "out of context" just as Silliman has done here, and as all critics do routinely). In fact, I doubt that you have read more than one or two of my essays, since you lump me with Collins (please see "If Only We Couldn't Understand Them").
JH
Have you really read my essays? They are often pages long, which means they say more than the two quotes you (falsely) attribute to me. You are summarizing, I guess, using your capsule summary as a way to dismiss me. In fact, I spent quite a bit of time analyzing some lines from a poem in Slope magazine by someone named Christina Mengert in one of my later essays (and was, by the way, criticized for taking it "out of context" just as Silliman has done here, and as all critics do routinely). In fact, I doubt that you have read more than one or two of my essays, since you lump me with Collins (please see "If Only We Couldn't Understand Them").
JH
Joan,
Sorry for the hasty post. I've actually read every one of your Boston Comment essays.
I don't have them in front of me, so I apologize for being inaccurate. I am not dismissing you. I said that we need a Houlihan. I did assert that you seem to dismiss anything you don't care for as being bad poetry. Ron does the same thing but, I think, a bit less recklessly.
That's all.
Tony
Sorry for the hasty post. I've actually read every one of your Boston Comment essays.
I don't have them in front of me, so I apologize for being inaccurate. I am not dismissing you. I said that we need a Houlihan. I did assert that you seem to dismiss anything you don't care for as being bad poetry. Ron does the same thing but, I think, a bit less recklessly.
That's all.
Tony
This is a fascinating discussion. Such a swirl of voices and counter-voices, sublimity, incoherent blabber, articulation, drivel, and "'ideology invading the field of meaning'",and so on.
I need to check this blog more often and read the comments section (this blog looks different from the last time I checked in). I'm impressed.
I'm a junior in college, majoring in English, and this is better than the 2 classes I'm taking this semester.
Thanks
I need to check this blog more often and read the comments section (this blog looks different from the last time I checked in). I'm impressed.
I'm a junior in college, majoring in English, and this is better than the 2 classes I'm taking this semester.
Thanks
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
"to be a critic by profession & to proclaim that one understands nothing about x or y is to elevate one's blindness or dumbness to a universal rule of perception, & to reject from the world x & y"
-Barthes
-Barthes
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
JH & AJ:
I don't think we're as far apart as you might believe.
First, I am not an advocate of the notion that "all poems are in effect about writing, or about the poem, or about language, or about inaccessibility"--not by any means. I do think that the subject matter of many poems, and many of the best poems, is NOT the point; that is to say, they provide a presumptive pretext (there's that word again--sorry) for the writing act.
Marianne Moore called herself a "literalist of the imagination" who wrote about "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" which is a very concrete way of describing what poems "do." I really think, for instance, that Wallace Stevens is no more literal than Clark Coolidge; Coleridge is no more concrete than John Ashbery.
I see no point in "defending" poetry against "vagueness" of language, or bemoaning the breakdown in signification. We've known for at least 100 years that what Freud called the Unconscious is a real spring in the mind, which the Surrealists exploited, and which may account for much of the imaginative water that irrigates the conscious (writing) mind. It is not "rational" or ordered, and words themselves feed back into the "stuff" of raw experience, and acquire qualities and values that are neither sensible nor syntactic.
A poetry of "adamant" good sense is one kind, but not the only kind. Moore write such poetry, and I find it scintillating and luscious. When I read Ashbery, I am in other territory ("these decibels are a kind of flagellation..."), where your adamant good sense gets lost in conceptually diverse paradigms.
Writers write. Jarrell wrote about soldiers and housewives and bats. Borges wrote about an imaginary library which had become the architecture of his mind. Plath wrote about the daydreams of a desperate, suicidal housewife. It is NOT important what subject we choose/use/discover/exploit/imagine. What matters is HOW we use it, and what we MAKE of it.
If you find highly abstract verse--or philosophical disquisition--"mind-numbing" you may be simple-minded, impatient of complexity, unwilling to relinquish your control over the flow of experience. One could, of course, build castles out of the "failure" of a supposed moral sense to discipline vagrant, irresponsible practice, but it's a losing battle.
The cat's out of the bag. Try Wittgenstein. He'll show you what you're missing.
I don't think we're as far apart as you might believe.
First, I am not an advocate of the notion that "all poems are in effect about writing, or about the poem, or about language, or about inaccessibility"--not by any means. I do think that the subject matter of many poems, and many of the best poems, is NOT the point; that is to say, they provide a presumptive pretext (there's that word again--sorry) for the writing act.
Marianne Moore called herself a "literalist of the imagination" who wrote about "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" which is a very concrete way of describing what poems "do." I really think, for instance, that Wallace Stevens is no more literal than Clark Coolidge; Coleridge is no more concrete than John Ashbery.
I see no point in "defending" poetry against "vagueness" of language, or bemoaning the breakdown in signification. We've known for at least 100 years that what Freud called the Unconscious is a real spring in the mind, which the Surrealists exploited, and which may account for much of the imaginative water that irrigates the conscious (writing) mind. It is not "rational" or ordered, and words themselves feed back into the "stuff" of raw experience, and acquire qualities and values that are neither sensible nor syntactic.
A poetry of "adamant" good sense is one kind, but not the only kind. Moore write such poetry, and I find it scintillating and luscious. When I read Ashbery, I am in other territory ("these decibels are a kind of flagellation..."), where your adamant good sense gets lost in conceptually diverse paradigms.
Writers write. Jarrell wrote about soldiers and housewives and bats. Borges wrote about an imaginary library which had become the architecture of his mind. Plath wrote about the daydreams of a desperate, suicidal housewife. It is NOT important what subject we choose/use/discover/exploit/imagine. What matters is HOW we use it, and what we MAKE of it.
If you find highly abstract verse--or philosophical disquisition--"mind-numbing" you may be simple-minded, impatient of complexity, unwilling to relinquish your control over the flow of experience. One could, of course, build castles out of the "failure" of a supposed moral sense to discipline vagrant, irresponsible practice, but it's a losing battle.
The cat's out of the bag. Try Wittgenstein. He'll show you what you're missing.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Here's a little snippet from a interview I did with Rae Armantrout which appeared in _A Wild Salience: The Writing of Rae Armantrout_ (Burning Press, 1999):
"TB:I've heard it said that your poetry is suggestive but not open. Could you try to address some of the issues involved with direction/indirection in your work?
RA:I'm interested in opacity, in the ways the world is opaque. I'm also interested in deception, in how we deceive each other and how we deceive ourselves. I've tried intuitively, almost from the start, to somehow re-enact that in my poems. When we become conscious, we construct a world from the world already mysteriously arranged for us. We decide what is significant, salient, but foreground and background can shift. Things are overdetermined. My poems try to mime that overdetermination."
--Tom Beckett
"TB:I've heard it said that your poetry is suggestive but not open. Could you try to address some of the issues involved with direction/indirection in your work?
RA:I'm interested in opacity, in the ways the world is opaque. I'm also interested in deception, in how we deceive each other and how we deceive ourselves. I've tried intuitively, almost from the start, to somehow re-enact that in my poems. When we become conscious, we construct a world from the world already mysteriously arranged for us. We decide what is significant, salient, but foreground and background can shift. Things are overdetermined. My poems try to mime that overdetermination."
--Tom Beckett
At some point all art becomes conceptual, its medium a function of the institutional contexts in which it manifests, the novelty or newness of an individual work less dependent on the mean, median or mode of its production than on the quality and degree of its deviation from the canon that precedes it and from which it derives its principal references. The value of the conceptual component of a work of art is based less on novelties of logic than on the qualities of its ideas, qualities which may not be expressible in a formal language. It is at this point that criticism, more than an act of interpretation, becomes an art form in and of itself, an intellectual performance of the artifact, the artifact in turn a randomly accessed point from which the critical argument can be taken in any direction.
Easy is as expectation lazily wants. Hard takes effort. At the heart of education in, by or through the arts, is a process of gaining access to the new and unfamiliar.
Go, Ron!
Go, Ron!
I'm with JH in part on the inaccessibility of RS's reading here. But I want to know -- what is this obsession with torturing a poem into paraphrase, as if that is going to get us to understand it better. The way I see it, the kind of poem Billy Collins likes is quite similar (with some kind of mega-anti-zoom lens that makes every poem a tiny dot) to Rae's -- except that it has a little paraphraseable preface that gives an "opening" into the work.
Perhaps Collins (& JH?) might prefer something that goes like this:
Here I am, sitting on my porch
looking out over the campus
the internet has begun to
streamline to instantaneous.
In the supermarket, I see a sign:
voucher in/voucher out
system.
I want to say, as I sip my dining hall coffee
and think about how I've read Henry James that
The plot
of my life
winnows.
I once read a book on Oedipus and it reminds me that
The Sphinx
wants me to guess.
Driving home in my old volvo, I wonder
Does a road
run its whole length
at once?
Swerving to avoid a deer, I ask myself
Does a creature
curve to meet
itself?
Ah, the sight of co-eds in tight T's:
Whirlette!
Perhaps Collins (& JH?) might prefer something that goes like this:
Here I am, sitting on my porch
looking out over the campus
the internet has begun to
streamline to instantaneous.
In the supermarket, I see a sign:
voucher in/voucher out
system.
I want to say, as I sip my dining hall coffee
and think about how I've read Henry James that
The plot
of my life
winnows.
I once read a book on Oedipus and it reminds me that
The Sphinx
wants me to guess.
Driving home in my old volvo, I wonder
Does a road
run its whole length
at once?
Swerving to avoid a deer, I ask myself
Does a creature
curve to meet
itself?
Ah, the sight of co-eds in tight T's:
Whirlette!
Dear Anonymous,
I never asserted that we were 'apart', nor did I suggest a degree of apartness. I do not, in fact, know you. :)
In all seriousness, the best definition of poetry that I've ever come across is Octavio Paz's: "To live is also to think, and sometimes to cross that border beyond which feeling and thinking become one: poetry." (This is from the preface to 'The Double Flame'.)
But if this is true, then the question is this: which do you privilege? Meaning or Beauty? Sound or Sense? Thought or Feeling? Only the truly great poems offer a balance of sorts between these two aspects, and no one can ever expect to write a great poem (though one can hope). Writers do not simply write; there are decisions involved, conscious or otherwise.
It is absurd to suggest that poetry is not about feeling and emotion; poems are not equations. But it is equally absurd to suggest that "Coleridge is no more concrete than John Ashbery". It is a suggestion that, I suspect, Ashbery himself would disagree with.
I never asserted that we were 'apart', nor did I suggest a degree of apartness. I do not, in fact, know you. :)
In all seriousness, the best definition of poetry that I've ever come across is Octavio Paz's: "To live is also to think, and sometimes to cross that border beyond which feeling and thinking become one: poetry." (This is from the preface to 'The Double Flame'.)
But if this is true, then the question is this: which do you privilege? Meaning or Beauty? Sound or Sense? Thought or Feeling? Only the truly great poems offer a balance of sorts between these two aspects, and no one can ever expect to write a great poem (though one can hope). Writers do not simply write; there are decisions involved, conscious or otherwise.
It is absurd to suggest that poetry is not about feeling and emotion; poems are not equations. But it is equally absurd to suggest that "Coleridge is no more concrete than John Ashbery". It is a suggestion that, I suspect, Ashbery himself would disagree with.
Dear Simon:
Or, as Robert Bly put it, many years ago
_______________
In a Train
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula Montana utterly happy.
_______________
Billy Collins believes you have to condescend to your audience, since it's incapable of comprehending the subtleties of disengenuous poets too shrewd and designing to be direct.
Those rascals. Send them to Guantanamo!
More poems about milking cows. More poems about eating cereal! More poems about cleaning gutters.
Poems should be like New Yorker cartoons--instantaneously contextual, sly but humorous, good-natured and direct, with a familiar style and recognizable SUBJECT MATTER!!!!!!!
--CF
P.S. Don't get me wrong. I love that Bly poem.
Or, as Robert Bly put it, many years ago
_______________
In a Train
There has been a light snow.
Dark car tracks move in out of the darkness.
I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.
I have awakened at Missoula Montana utterly happy.
_______________
Billy Collins believes you have to condescend to your audience, since it's incapable of comprehending the subtleties of disengenuous poets too shrewd and designing to be direct.
Those rascals. Send them to Guantanamo!
More poems about milking cows. More poems about eating cereal! More poems about cleaning gutters.
Poems should be like New Yorker cartoons--instantaneously contextual, sly but humorous, good-natured and direct, with a familiar style and recognizable SUBJECT MATTER!!!!!!!
--CF
P.S. Don't get me wrong. I love that Bly poem.
# posted by : April 25, 2005
: April 25, 2005
Ron (all), if you get the chance, please see my recent post on "accessibility"--in which I question, among other things, whether Collins/Kooser should consider Williams's "Red Wheelbarrow" accessible...and other things about the (imho, mostly misguided & beside the point) push for "more accessible" poetry:
http://poesygalore.blogspot.com/2005/04/notes-on-accessibility-part-one.html
thanks,
em
http://poesygalore.blogspot.com/2005/04/notes-on-accessibility-part-one.html
thanks,
em
James, Re: "Do you look at the moon and say, "You'll have to explain yourself before I can enjoy you"?
No, I don't, but the moon isn't trying to say something. I must ask you in turn: do you look at a poem and enjoy the shapes of words without caring that they might siginfy something?
Tony: Ok, thanks for the response.
No, I don't, but the moon isn't trying to say something. I must ask you in turn: do you look at a poem and enjoy the shapes of words without caring that they might siginfy something?
Tony: Ok, thanks for the response.
Thanks, James. You remind me of someone who pretends to have made a joke when it gets exposed as a ridiculous idea.
This is hilarious. I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of the British House of Commons right now.
If anyone needs me, I'll be shooting kittens out of a cannon.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/kittycannon.html
(Now, some of you may be wondering if I meant that 'literally'... oh, nevermind.)
If anyone needs me, I'll be shooting kittens out of a cannon.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/kittycannon.html
(Now, some of you may be wondering if I meant that 'literally'... oh, nevermind.)
I always thought that, in the context of the Modernist revolution in English-langauge poetry, being "difficult", even formidably inaccessible, with respect to the same-old-same-old that came before, was a badge of honor, if not an austere responsibility. If Rae Armantrout's poetry requires hermeneutical moves to render its meaning clearly comprehensible, however immanent that meaning is revealed to be on further examination, it strikes me as a poetry less accessible than one that would require correspondingly less hermeneutical effort.
And I just don't see the problem with this. Why do we cling to the notion that avant-garde poetry, or avant-garde art in any medium, for that matter, has had, or should have, any relevance for the masses, even the withered masses of poetry readers? Speaking of intellectual honesty, it's worth revisiting Mallarmé on this point, since he hardly hides his revulsion for the crowd, for the populace at large, from his art, which does not suffer at the hands of his anti-democratic obsessions.
Our American (or Leftist) distaste for elitism frustrates our aesthetic judgement. Billy Collins might be a better politician than Rae Armantrout (and that's debateable), but he's nowhere near as interesting a poet. Amazing that, after the many convulsions in American poetry since 1960, and even before, that the simple dichotomy between skill and popularity continues to cause us all kinds of anguish.
And I just don't see the problem with this. Why do we cling to the notion that avant-garde poetry, or avant-garde art in any medium, for that matter, has had, or should have, any relevance for the masses, even the withered masses of poetry readers? Speaking of intellectual honesty, it's worth revisiting Mallarmé on this point, since he hardly hides his revulsion for the crowd, for the populace at large, from his art, which does not suffer at the hands of his anti-democratic obsessions.
Our American (or Leftist) distaste for elitism frustrates our aesthetic judgement. Billy Collins might be a better politician than Rae Armantrout (and that's debateable), but he's nowhere near as interesting a poet. Amazing that, after the many convulsions in American poetry since 1960, and even before, that the simple dichotomy between skill and popularity continues to cause us all kinds of anguish.
John Fraser, "In Defense of Language; If It Needs It":
And we hunger for certainty—ultimately, the kind of certainty in which a mass of disparate phenomena come together in a small compass and can be controlled, like the dwindled, hold-it-in-your-hand, blue and white globe of space photographs.
As Camus says, "The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity."[11]
We feel that each "process word" we use as we write—"understand," "know," "communicate," etc.–should have a clear meaning, a real referent, an absolute antithesis.
We want language to condense into super-meaningful words—"real," "beautiful," "natural," "objective," "progressive," and so on—that we can use definitively when we praise or condemn something.
We desire words which, like those paper flowers in shells that opened up magically in our youth when put into a glass of water, are infinitely expandable into a whole true system of relationships out there.
Borges knew all about that sort of thing. So did Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Lord Chandos when he spoke of his earlier aspiration to decipher fables as "the hieroglyphs of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom."[12]
And we hunger for certainty—ultimately, the kind of certainty in which a mass of disparate phenomena come together in a small compass and can be controlled, like the dwindled, hold-it-in-your-hand, blue and white globe of space photographs.
As Camus says, "The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity."[11]
We feel that each "process word" we use as we write—"understand," "know," "communicate," etc.–should have a clear meaning, a real referent, an absolute antithesis.
We want language to condense into super-meaningful words—"real," "beautiful," "natural," "objective," "progressive," and so on—that we can use definitively when we praise or condemn something.
We desire words which, like those paper flowers in shells that opened up magically in our youth when put into a glass of water, are infinitely expandable into a whole true system of relationships out there.
Borges knew all about that sort of thing. So did Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Lord Chandos when he spoke of his earlier aspiration to decipher fables as "the hieroglyphs of a secret, inexhaustible wisdom."[12]
# posted by : April 26, 2005
: April 26, 2005
I have just posted a brief review of H. Thrush, which may have some bearing on discussion of Rae's work here.
From Robert Duncan's essay, "Man's Fulfillment In Order and Strife:"
"Every corner of poetry finds itself, defines itself, in strife with other orders. A new order is a contention in the heart of existing orders...The very life of our art is our keeping at work contending forces and convictions."
Exactly what is going on here, and it's great. Though I wonder if these types of discussions will be more generative than merely reinforcing the two camps. I feel like this binary division between two approaches to poetry too closely resembles that of our larger political arena. Where is the third poetry party? The fourth? The "all approaches are valid/best of both worlds camp" doesn't suffice as that position seems to want to squelch fertile discussion and private disgust. Perhaps a few more lines could be drawn, perhaps a few more poets could stand to be critical of contemporaries writing in their larger tradition who are writing poorly. It's a bit sad that Ron has to go after a dunce like Billy Collins [the Jerry Bruckenheimer of the poetry world?] to provoke this many intelligent responses.
Jim
"Every corner of poetry finds itself, defines itself, in strife with other orders. A new order is a contention in the heart of existing orders...The very life of our art is our keeping at work contending forces and convictions."
Exactly what is going on here, and it's great. Though I wonder if these types of discussions will be more generative than merely reinforcing the two camps. I feel like this binary division between two approaches to poetry too closely resembles that of our larger political arena. Where is the third poetry party? The fourth? The "all approaches are valid/best of both worlds camp" doesn't suffice as that position seems to want to squelch fertile discussion and private disgust. Perhaps a few more lines could be drawn, perhaps a few more poets could stand to be critical of contemporaries writing in their larger tradition who are writing poorly. It's a bit sad that Ron has to go after a dunce like Billy Collins [the Jerry Bruckenheimer of the poetry world?] to provoke this many intelligent responses.
Jim
# posted by : April 26, 2005
: April 26, 2005
Over here in rainy England, we have our own Billy Collins - she's called Daisy Goodwin. An ex-producer on mid-morning self-help, house-decorating TV shows, Goodwin has decided to bring out a series of poetry anthologies that, like her TV programmes, attempt to turn poetry into wallpaper. Glossy pages, illustrated Betjeman and Arnold, etc, etc.
I can't stand the idea that poetry should be brought to the attention of kids in a simplified manner. The reason I read poetry, write poetry and, ultimately, revel in poetry, goes back to those teenage days when I discovered Cummings, W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Harry Matthews, Ted Berrigan. And hey, guess what, I found a quicker route to Tom Raworth that way than, I suppose, I would have had Daisy Goodwin discarded her TV career any sooner.
What is it that makes people truly believe that poetry should be simplified to bring it to the mainstream?
I can't stand the idea that poetry should be brought to the attention of kids in a simplified manner. The reason I read poetry, write poetry and, ultimately, revel in poetry, goes back to those teenage days when I discovered Cummings, W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Harry Matthews, Ted Berrigan. And hey, guess what, I found a quicker route to Tom Raworth that way than, I suppose, I would have had Daisy Goodwin discarded her TV career any sooner.
What is it that makes people truly believe that poetry should be simplified to bring it to the mainstream?
Simon's translation of the Armantrout poem into a Collins poem was quite brilliant and effective.
The rhetorical leading maneuvers that Collins practises in his poetry -- are they truly less rigorous or difficult than Armantrout's difficulties? How can this be measured? Do we know how much time it takes Armantrout vs. Collins to write a poem? Does this matter? Maybe someone not too bright might take longer than someone brighter. I find it difficult to understand this criterion of difficulty without some reference point. What is difficulty in the reading/writing of a poem?
If the writing is difficult to read perhaps it's because the writer had an easier time throwing it together.
Collins' rhetorical figure of the opening to the house goes back into classical oratory. Cicero was using the figure of the house in his writings.
"But just as with entrance courts and entrances that are added to houses and temples, the prologue that is put before a case must be proportionate to the subject matter" (211).
And the figure of a house was often used as a mnemonic device when books were far more expensive to produce.
"One began by choosing a familiar place with a continuous series of fixed localities, e.g., a street with houses, porticoes, etc.; or a house, with corners and niches in the successive rooms" (from the intro, 37).
Cicero on the Ideal Orator, Oxford UP, with an introductino by James May.
It can take a lot of time to arrange one's thoughts so that it is like taking a tour of a house with one clear thought smoothly transitioning into the next.
If the Armantrout was spoken nobody would have any idea what she had said. Collins on the other hand can read his poems to great audiences and everybody can appreciate what he's saying.
Collins uses many rhetorical strategies and his figure of the house reveals his classical orientation.
The comparatively hermetic nature of Armantrout's poem makes it very hard to see the structure, or to memorize it. But maybe that's part of her strategy, too. I liked the discussion and just wish that Armantrout would gloss the whole poem for us.
The rhetorical leading maneuvers that Collins practises in his poetry -- are they truly less rigorous or difficult than Armantrout's difficulties? How can this be measured? Do we know how much time it takes Armantrout vs. Collins to write a poem? Does this matter? Maybe someone not too bright might take longer than someone brighter. I find it difficult to understand this criterion of difficulty without some reference point. What is difficulty in the reading/writing of a poem?
If the writing is difficult to read perhaps it's because the writer had an easier time throwing it together.
Collins' rhetorical figure of the opening to the house goes back into classical oratory. Cicero was using the figure of the house in his writings.
"But just as with entrance courts and entrances that are added to houses and temples, the prologue that is put before a case must be proportionate to the subject matter" (211).
And the figure of a house was often used as a mnemonic device when books were far more expensive to produce.
"One began by choosing a familiar place with a continuous series of fixed localities, e.g., a street with houses, porticoes, etc.; or a house, with corners and niches in the successive rooms" (from the intro, 37).
Cicero on the Ideal Orator, Oxford UP, with an introductino by James May.
It can take a lot of time to arrange one's thoughts so that it is like taking a tour of a house with one clear thought smoothly transitioning into the next.
If the Armantrout was spoken nobody would have any idea what she had said. Collins on the other hand can read his poems to great audiences and everybody can appreciate what he's saying.
Collins uses many rhetorical strategies and his figure of the house reveals his classical orientation.
The comparatively hermetic nature of Armantrout's poem makes it very hard to see the structure, or to memorize it. But maybe that's part of her strategy, too. I liked the discussion and just wish that Armantrout would gloss the whole poem for us.
When I read Collins' comments about what he means by "accessibility", I can't help but to think of the scene in A League of Their Own in which Dotty Hinson (Geena Davis) says to Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), "[Baseball] got too hard." Dugan responds, "Of course it is hard. If it wasn't hard, anyone could do it. It's the hard that makes it great."
Unfortunately, it seems to me that poetry will always suffer a healthy dose of populist mediocrity and canned profundity. Consider the popular poetry of the early 1900s like that of The Spoon River Anthology while the names we most often remember & praise worked against the American grain. Donald Hall is fond of noting that writers in every moment in literary history lament sad conditions of their time, every era is the worst.
"Accessibility" is a red herring. That flagship of SoQ, Poetry, has a poem in by Collins that is about as good as dish soap in the eye. If being as plain & boring as a grocery store clerk's routinized banter is good poetry, then getting a pencil in the ear is good sex.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that poetry will always suffer a healthy dose of populist mediocrity and canned profundity. Consider the popular poetry of the early 1900s like that of The Spoon River Anthology while the names we most often remember & praise worked against the American grain. Donald Hall is fond of noting that writers in every moment in literary history lament sad conditions of their time, every era is the worst.
"Accessibility" is a red herring. That flagship of SoQ, Poetry, has a poem in by Collins that is about as good as dish soap in the eye. If being as plain & boring as a grocery store clerk's routinized banter is good poetry, then getting a pencil in the ear is good sex.
Trochee,
Have you read The Spoon River Anthology lately? I reread it a few months ago. It's a brilliant book. Its surface features may be relatively humble but it plays around a lot with value systems in a very interesting manner.
Have you read The Spoon River Anthology lately? I reread it a few months ago. It's a brilliant book. Its surface features may be relatively humble but it plays around a lot with value systems in a very interesting manner.
Tony,
You're right. Be careful who you put down. Spoon River has some neat things in it.
It's easier to use Eddie Guest, or maybe Robert Service.
Open any general anthology published before 1910, and marvel at the mediocrity. Pound wasn't whistling up the chimney when he said poetry was in a horrible state circa 1918. They were cranking out doilies!
If you want to sample sludge, read any of the new age/muslim propaganda books that clog up Borders and Barnes & Noble these days. Blech!!
--Curtis Faville
You're right. Be careful who you put down. Spoon River has some neat things in it.
It's easier to use Eddie Guest, or maybe Robert Service.
Open any general anthology published before 1910, and marvel at the mediocrity. Pound wasn't whistling up the chimney when he said poetry was in a horrible state circa 1918. They were cranking out doilies!
If you want to sample sludge, read any of the new age/muslim propaganda books that clog up Borders and Barnes & Noble these days. Blech!!
--Curtis Faville
# posted by : April 26, 2005
: April 26, 2005
TT, SRA is good for what it is and I am willing to agree that it does humbly play up value systems in an interesting manner. It is the pinnacle and one of the exceptions of such approaches. Alas, it is still a filthy trench in the great push for lasting literature.
This does not change the fact that, with some exception, the myth of the poetry audience dictates far too much of the conversation. For sludge, I just look around regardless of religious affiliation or poetic school. Everywhere I look, America.
This does not change the fact that, with some exception, the myth of the poetry audience dictates far too much of the conversation. For sludge, I just look around regardless of religious affiliation or poetic school. Everywhere I look, America.
To Kirby Olson (very late reply)
I'm not familiar much with Rae Armantrout's work (being English and far away from where she's likely to be published), but I can't say that a line like "the plot winnows" was so opaque that I couldn't get the obvious reference to "the plot thickens."
It made me smile, in fact. I enjoy a good pun.
I'm not familiar much with Rae Armantrout's work (being English and far away from where she's likely to be published), but I can't say that a line like "the plot winnows" was so opaque that I couldn't get the obvious reference to "the plot thickens."
It made me smile, in fact. I enjoy a good pun.
# posted by : April 27, 2005
: April 27, 2005
Steven, I liked it too but I admit that I missed it on first reading. After she had glossed it I did enjoy it. I imagine I would enjoy the rest of the poem too (available on the link that RS provides although I think there are some typos). Sometimes with a new poet (she's new to me at least) you have to see how the writer organizes their logic, and then you can start to groove a little. I appreciate very much her willingness to show us some of her intentions in the poem. I find language poetry quite daunting in that it doesn't even attempt to be an objective art that anyone can understand -- in the way that anybody looking at Notre Dame in Paris can "get it," well, maybe not a pygmy flown out of the Congo by helicopter. Every symbol has to be glossed perhaps.
Did you get the reference even without the gloss? Perhaps if I had worked at it longer I might have gotten it. I still don't understand how the line fits into the whole poem.
Is the poem an argument of some kind for something? An exploration of a certain theme? A sequence of loop effects?
-- Kirby
Did you get the reference even without the gloss? Perhaps if I had worked at it longer I might have gotten it. I still don't understand how the line fits into the whole poem.
Is the poem an argument of some kind for something? An exploration of a certain theme? A sequence of loop effects?
-- Kirby
# posted by : April 27, 2005
: April 27, 2005
Simon, belatedly: love your poem.
And more generally, it's great to listen in on this roundtable of opinions. Thanks.
And more generally, it's great to listen in on this roundtable of opinions. Thanks.
Yes, I did, Kirby. I didn't get the rest of the poem immediately; and I agree with the rest of what you say. But that phrase: what else could it be refering to?
# posted by : April 28, 2005
: April 28, 2005
Steven,
I think I was so depressed or intimidated by my inability to get the gist of the poem that I sort of gave up even on individual lines. It was like an impenetrable cliff face and I couldnt figure where to get the slightest hand hold at first to begin the climb.
Now it doesnt seem so impossible.
++ KO
I think I was so depressed or intimidated by my inability to get the gist of the poem that I sort of gave up even on individual lines. It was like an impenetrable cliff face and I couldnt figure where to get the slightest hand hold at first to begin the climb.
Now it doesnt seem so impossible.
++ KO
# posted by : April 28, 2005
: April 28, 2005
I think the seventy-fourth (!) post might prove to be the most useful of this entire discussion.
Mightn't the problem be that (too) many readers come to a poem like Armantrout's and immediately feel intimidated? I know that was my experience of it; it seemed an immeasurably daunting thing upon first reading. But, like 'KO', I feel more capable of understanding, and thus enjoying, the poem now that a discussion has built up around it.
If nothing else, this discussion has quelled a few fears -- and thus, brought this good and useful poem a broader audience. And that is an equally good and useful thing.
Mightn't the problem be that (too) many readers come to a poem like Armantrout's and immediately feel intimidated? I know that was my experience of it; it seemed an immeasurably daunting thing upon first reading. But, like 'KO', I feel more capable of understanding, and thus enjoying, the poem now that a discussion has built up around it.
If nothing else, this discussion has quelled a few fears -- and thus, brought this good and useful poem a broader audience. And that is an equally good and useful thing.
this discussion reminds me of something i often discuss with friends. this is discussion i always take from an interview of Jorie Graham in which she talks about how students will come to her saying they can't "get" Ashbery and then they tell her that they only read the most recent volumes. She says, Well, of course, you don't get it. Start from the beginning. She goes on to say that reading a poet is like learning a new language and by starting at the earliest work, one may be able to immerse themselves in it and hopefully see the progression and get to understand the work as a whole. of course, this might not happen but it can.
so often i find that folks are off into that stereotypically American desire for immediate gratification. but the problem with poetry is that it demands attention. sometimes that attention is more than a couple readings in an afternoon. sometimes you may not know something to get at a point and that is no reason to feel intimidated or frustrated. there is only so much one can know and i take this as a challenge and an invitation instead of throwing my hands up in the air. for me this is part of the joy of reading. there is too little humour about reading & poetry these days, at least in forums like this one.
so often i find that folks are off into that stereotypically American desire for immediate gratification. but the problem with poetry is that it demands attention. sometimes that attention is more than a couple readings in an afternoon. sometimes you may not know something to get at a point and that is no reason to feel intimidated or frustrated. there is only so much one can know and i take this as a challenge and an invitation instead of throwing my hands up in the air. for me this is part of the joy of reading. there is too little humour about reading & poetry these days, at least in forums like this one.
There is the problem of time in reading poets. I agree you have to read a poet's entire oeuvre to really get them but how many poets can you do that for?
Maybe ten?
Most philosophers only know one other philosopher's work very well. Most poets probably know only about three or four other poets' work terribly well -- that is to say from A to Z.
It's very hard to do this. This poet would take me at least five years to read through. AND THEN OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO READ THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN TO REALLY SEE WHAT"S GOING ON!
Maybe ten?
Most philosophers only know one other philosopher's work very well. Most poets probably know only about three or four other poets' work terribly well -- that is to say from A to Z.
It's very hard to do this. This poet would take me at least five years to read through. AND THEN OF COURSE YOU HAVE TO READ THEM AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN TO REALLY SEE WHAT"S GOING ON!
Oh, and critics. I'd say that most critics know only one poet well, and that they usually only know one side of the poet at that. For example if you work on Milton you work primarily on Milton and generally make an ass of yourself when you attempt to do something else, etc. This means a life dedicated to one writer. It's much easier with contemporaries as you don't have to work at recovering the historical context, but still I doubt if more than ten people, for instance, honestly have any idea what John Ashbery is really doing. If that.
There are only about three for Corso. Even Ginsberg gave up on trying to understand him in the famous foreword to Gasoline. "What's he saying? Who cares?" The received idea is that Corso is writing nonsense and entertainment.
He isn't, and Collins isn't either.
It's probably even harder to read someone who seems to be accessible. There are worlds within worlds in almost any poet, just as there are in almost any person. I think it's a shame that so many are willing to write off Billy Collins. There is a sense in which he's simple, but only if you are giving him a glancing reading. He has huge issues of every kind going on. Probably no one will ever read him because of his presentation of himself as a lightweight. It requires a lot of strength to try to get at those issues, and I have only had an inkling of them. His rescue of the aesthetic, in and of itself, in an age in which political intransigeance is mistaken for genius, is heroic in its implications and reveals an impressive command of the issues. He hides this command extremely well.
There are only about three for Corso. Even Ginsberg gave up on trying to understand him in the famous foreword to Gasoline. "What's he saying? Who cares?" The received idea is that Corso is writing nonsense and entertainment.
He isn't, and Collins isn't either.
It's probably even harder to read someone who seems to be accessible. There are worlds within worlds in almost any poet, just as there are in almost any person. I think it's a shame that so many are willing to write off Billy Collins. There is a sense in which he's simple, but only if you are giving him a glancing reading. He has huge issues of every kind going on. Probably no one will ever read him because of his presentation of himself as a lightweight. It requires a lot of strength to try to get at those issues, and I have only had an inkling of them. His rescue of the aesthetic, in and of itself, in an age in which political intransigeance is mistaken for genius, is heroic in its implications and reveals an impressive command of the issues. He hides this command extremely well.
So behind the facile, boneheaded metaphors and an apparent inability to interpret work outside his own tradition, lies a genius and a hero? I don't "buy" it. If he "hides this command extremely well" where's the evidence? Where's the clarity in that? If we can't dismiss a poet who frequently uses throwaway language like " I want them to waterski/
across the surface of a poem/
waving at the author's name on the shore," is any poetry worthy of being dismissed?
across the surface of a poem/
waving at the author's name on the shore," is any poetry worthy of being dismissed?
# posted by : April 29, 2005
: April 29, 2005
Collins seems to me to fulfill a lineage that opened with Tate and Lux at least in the 70s. The attempt to combine a humorous and somewhat populist slapstick routine with poetry -- against this has been a much more hermetic poetry -- Spicer, Olson, to name some of the top brands --.
One has to ask where does the language come from in any given poem? Where do the images come from?
In the most hermetic examples -- such as Spicer's -- they come from outer space via Martian radio via an automatic writing that also references the dead -- the ouija board metaphors that Spicer uses at points describe this.
Collins' language comes from the cross-talk routines of early comic films -- he's more interested in creating an imagery that's fun than he is getting down automatic language.
There was -- even early on -- an immense interest within surrealism on animated film and on silent comedy. Soupault loved Chaplin and wrote a book on him. Dali loved various silent film stars. Surrealists whose names haven't made it across the Atlantic liked Warner Brothers Cartoons of the 50s such as Droopy and Foghorn Bighorn.
I realize that Olson and others have spoken rather harshly against "entertainment" of any kind getting into poetry, but I have appreciated this trend. You can see it in Koch, and in Ashbery. They, too, reference cartoons and slapstick routines, as do Orlovsky and Ginsberg and Corso.
Where Collins seems to have gotten the goat of many is that he is not countercultural at all or much. His work is coin of the realm because it doesn't try to change the currency. It goes with it. I find it interesting for that very reason. I also find all the animosity that he creates quite interesting.
I still don't feel I've gotten to the bottom of it. That's partially why I'm defending him. I'd like to get to the bottom of this hostility. There's something quite rich when a community devoted to tolerance decides to be intolerant. Finally, some kind of standard is being created. And if Collins is the scapegoat that clarifies standards I want to see exactly what he is being charged with.
To some extent I secretly fear that his real crime is to be popular and thus he has attracted envy. Envy is the most common sin of the poetry monad. I sometimes think poets can stand anything in another poet except that they become popular and well-known.
One has to ask where does the language come from in any given poem? Where do the images come from?
In the most hermetic examples -- such as Spicer's -- they come from outer space via Martian radio via an automatic writing that also references the dead -- the ouija board metaphors that Spicer uses at points describe this.
Collins' language comes from the cross-talk routines of early comic films -- he's more interested in creating an imagery that's fun than he is getting down automatic language.
There was -- even early on -- an immense interest within surrealism on animated film and on silent comedy. Soupault loved Chaplin and wrote a book on him. Dali loved various silent film stars. Surrealists whose names haven't made it across the Atlantic liked Warner Brothers Cartoons of the 50s such as Droopy and Foghorn Bighorn.
I realize that Olson and others have spoken rather harshly against "entertainment" of any kind getting into poetry, but I have appreciated this trend. You can see it in Koch, and in Ashbery. They, too, reference cartoons and slapstick routines, as do Orlovsky and Ginsberg and Corso.
Where Collins seems to have gotten the goat of many is that he is not countercultural at all or much. His work is coin of the realm because it doesn't try to change the currency. It goes with it. I find it interesting for that very reason. I also find all the animosity that he creates quite interesting.
I still don't feel I've gotten to the bottom of it. That's partially why I'm defending him. I'd like to get to the bottom of this hostility. There's something quite rich when a community devoted to tolerance decides to be intolerant. Finally, some kind of standard is being created. And if Collins is the scapegoat that clarifies standards I want to see exactly what he is being charged with.
To some extent I secretly fear that his real crime is to be popular and thus he has attracted envy. Envy is the most common sin of the poetry monad. I sometimes think poets can stand anything in another poet except that they become popular and well-known.
Kirby, I think you're moving toward something very interesting with these last posts.
But remember: the 'Leftist' poetry community is not actually interested in tolerance, per se, but rather in the primacy of a wider and more ethical inclusion. The same can be, and has been, said about Multiculturalism.
If anyone is interested, Carey McWilliams wrote a beautiful essay about this topic for an edited volume entitled, 'Multiculturalism and American Democracy'. The essay, "Democratic Multiculturalism", is perhaps the best ever written on the subject. Here's a link to the book:
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/melmul.html
But remember: the 'Leftist' poetry community is not actually interested in tolerance, per se, but rather in the primacy of a wider and more ethical inclusion. The same can be, and has been, said about Multiculturalism.
If anyone is interested, Carey McWilliams wrote a beautiful essay about this topic for an edited volume entitled, 'Multiculturalism and American Democracy'. The essay, "Democratic Multiculturalism", is perhaps the best ever written on the subject. Here's a link to the book:
http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/melmul.html
Billy Collins also belongs to the long tradition of poets who use nouns. Just check out these three lines from the esteemable "picnic, lightning", perhaps one of the greatest examples of verse since Longfellow:
"It is possible to be struck by a/
meteor or a single-engine plane while/ reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians"
Not only can we discern the highly efficient, rhetorical use of slapstick, surreal imagery (straight from Breton to you in the tiny dark ship of your voliminous pajamas), that the title of the poem is jacked from Nabokov, i count at least four nouns and a compound adjective! Holy freaking dang, I'm MOVED. Everything is all right with the world! I feel like going to Target and buying a designer lampshade to celebrate my suburban mediocrity!
"It is possible to be struck by a/
meteor or a single-engine plane while/ reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians"
Not only can we discern the highly efficient, rhetorical use of slapstick, surreal imagery (straight from Breton to you in the tiny dark ship of your voliminous pajamas), that the title of the poem is jacked from Nabokov, i count at least four nouns and a compound adjective! Holy freaking dang, I'm MOVED. Everything is all right with the world! I feel like going to Target and buying a designer lampshade to celebrate my suburban mediocrity!
# posted by : April 29, 2005
: April 29, 2005
Yawn? I'd take Dangerous relativism over 'fun' imagery any day. I'm sailing alone around the room with my pants off right now. So like a few other poets, Billy Collins likes cartoons. Awesome. Frank O'Hara likes coke but Ted Berrigan likes Pepsi--obviously this is symbolic of their intense rivalry over who was to be the flagship poet of American consumerism. Yes, and all of us are secretly jealous of the laureateship and 5 inches of shelf space a books-a-million.
# posted by : April 29, 2005
: April 29, 2005
1.) "Dangerous relativism" is either redundant or an oxymoron.
2.) Nothing is safer than hyperbolic sarcasm. Not even Collins.
Too, Collins was brave enough to be boring, humble and funny when no one else was. The current trends and stylistic preferences in American poetry have followed Collins -- not the other way around.
Written sarcasm is the mask of the timid.
So: be humble, be dangerous, be naked, but please, be honest. At least then I might care what you think.
2.) Nothing is safer than hyperbolic sarcasm. Not even Collins.
Too, Collins was brave enough to be boring, humble and funny when no one else was. The current trends and stylistic preferences in American poetry have followed Collins -- not the other way around.
Written sarcasm is the mask of the timid.
So: be humble, be dangerous, be naked, but please, be honest. At least then I might care what you think.
Apparently brave and humble and rabidly anti-intellectual earns one plenty of fame and notoriety in the U.S. Our president appears congenial, friendly, "one of the good guys." Should one want to emulate such an attitude?
Trends and stylistic preferences, in this culture, in most of the arts, seem to be marks of laziness and an acute aversion to explore depths of knowledge and experience that might take one away from comfort and external gentility. It is far more "dangerous" to risk one's body, one's social status, one's well-being, one's sanity for their ideas and poetic practice than to risk the ire of those who have no cultural status, no public security, no government handouts, little money. If you could, you might want to ask Blake, Coleridge, Rimbaud, Artaud, Lautreamont,Pound, Dorn, Pessoa, Spicer, O'Hara, Berrigan, H.D., Lorca, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, etc. what "danger" is, what risk and intractable honesty involves. Becoming a well-padded public darling isn't so risky, unless you're John Lennon or Jodi Foster.
And historically, significant literary fame in one's own time is generally a sign of glaring mediocrity.
Trends and stylistic preferences, in this culture, in most of the arts, seem to be marks of laziness and an acute aversion to explore depths of knowledge and experience that might take one away from comfort and external gentility. It is far more "dangerous" to risk one's body, one's social status, one's well-being, one's sanity for their ideas and poetic practice than to risk the ire of those who have no cultural status, no public security, no government handouts, little money. If you could, you might want to ask Blake, Coleridge, Rimbaud, Artaud, Lautreamont,Pound, Dorn, Pessoa, Spicer, O'Hara, Berrigan, H.D., Lorca, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, etc. what "danger" is, what risk and intractable honesty involves. Becoming a well-padded public darling isn't so risky, unless you're John Lennon or Jodi Foster.
And historically, significant literary fame in one's own time is generally a sign of glaring mediocrity.
# posted by : April 30, 2005
: April 30, 2005
And, apologetically, to beat an already abused topic even further, the 'danger' Billy Collins might have undertaken by playing friendly is akin to the 'risk' a multimillionaire takes when purchasing a few shares of devalued stock--the potential for real, tangible loss is nil.
Matthew
Matthew
# posted by : April 30, 2005
: April 30, 2005
Matthew,
To be honest, I don't know where to begin responding to these remarks. Since I don't want to clog up this space, feel free to drop by my blog and post a comment with your e-mail address. Hopefully, we'll talk some more.
To be honest, I don't know where to begin responding to these remarks. Since I don't want to clog up this space, feel free to drop by my blog and post a comment with your e-mail address. Hopefully, we'll talk some more.
It strikes me as extremely ironic to celebrate risking ones body under the mask of anonymity (2 steps removed).
Perhaps language as the sole interest of a poem -- drawing attention to one's language as opposed to the world -- is a dead end of sorts. Ron Silliman has already said that LANGUAGE as a movement has come to an end.
Perhaps a turn to the world -- engagement with the public -- with plot, character, setting and other elements of poetry as outlined in Aristotle -- would be a refreshing change. I think this is why many are willing to read Collins. It's hard to tell whether his choice of a flatter diction that doesn't draw attention to itself is a strategy or just some sort of default choice in lieu of others. I don't understand why he's been so summarily rejected unless it's on the basis of his popularity.
Poets have had a tendency to court failure in the 20th century or ever since Rimbaud perhaps. Perhaps it's time to rejoin the human race.
I'll look up the suggested essay and join you on your blog in the next day or two.
-- Kirby Olson
Perhaps language as the sole interest of a poem -- drawing attention to one's language as opposed to the world -- is a dead end of sorts. Ron Silliman has already said that LANGUAGE as a movement has come to an end.
Perhaps a turn to the world -- engagement with the public -- with plot, character, setting and other elements of poetry as outlined in Aristotle -- would be a refreshing change. I think this is why many are willing to read Collins. It's hard to tell whether his choice of a flatter diction that doesn't draw attention to itself is a strategy or just some sort of default choice in lieu of others. I don't understand why he's been so summarily rejected unless it's on the basis of his popularity.
Poets have had a tendency to court failure in the 20th century or ever since Rimbaud perhaps. Perhaps it's time to rejoin the human race.
I'll look up the suggested essay and join you on your blog in the next day or two.
-- Kirby Olson
# posted by : April 30, 2005
: April 30, 2005
Perhaps the difference is that most poets, even many members of the "SOQ" I've been in contact with, don't consider our society at large worth joining or celebrating. Great poets and thinkers, long before Rimbaud, have occupied liminal places in society, explored the limits of human experience and thought, the limits of language, the limits of form--Collins or Gioia is very clearly *not* doing that. He's not advancing or challenging anything, merely providing a number of banal, comfortable distractions. Perhaps the foregrounding only the materiality of language is something of a dead-end, there are certainly plenty of other options besides so-called "accessibility" and boneheaded anti-intellectualism! If Collins' slovenly, ersatz-friendly anecdotes and second person addresses are the future of poetry, I'll call my writing something else. So many poets are writing better than Collins and co. that they're really not worth my time. Apparently no one's going to convince you of that, as you seem to have radically different notions of what constitutes 'good' literature.
Anonymous Matthew
Anonymous Matthew
# posted by : April 30, 2005
: April 30, 2005
i find especially fascinating how much time & effort is wasted discussing Collins & Co. in high school, there was a reason why different cliques did not mix with each other. when they did, fights or awkward silences broke out. unless one of you have learned how to convince a rock to be a butterfly, i don't seem many hearts & minds changing on the matter, at least not by way of snippets and sniping.
Collins being popular and highly praised in his lifetime is not a sign of mediocrity as that would then be applicable to Ashbery or Graham. Spicer, Gilbert and other such "hermetic" poets are hardly automatic writing and while that provocative description sounds good, let us keep ourselves reasonable, if possible. so, Collins is good at the banal. fine. let him be. don't like him, fine, don't like him. time will tell if he is worth the trouble. better to let him be the populist guy who gets attention now and let it die with the folks whose memory is as long as the book is closed and the television on.
i will say that i don't really think it is envy or jealousy that raises so much ire toward Collins however. most poets seem pretty set on never being popular and don't care either way. what seem to be more at stake is a sense of art and integrity. and that gets spirits riled the same way politics, religion and sports do, well, at least for lit geeks like most of us. and so it goes. the merry-go-round round n round it goes.
Collins being popular and highly praised in his lifetime is not a sign of mediocrity as that would then be applicable to Ashbery or Graham. Spicer, Gilbert and other such "hermetic" poets are hardly automatic writing and while that provocative description sounds good, let us keep ourselves reasonable, if possible. so, Collins is good at the banal. fine. let him be. don't like him, fine, don't like him. time will tell if he is worth the trouble. better to let him be the populist guy who gets attention now and let it die with the folks whose memory is as long as the book is closed and the television on.
i will say that i don't really think it is envy or jealousy that raises so much ire toward Collins however. most poets seem pretty set on never being popular and don't care either way. what seem to be more at stake is a sense of art and integrity. and that gets spirits riled the same way politics, religion and sports do, well, at least for lit geeks like most of us. and so it goes. the merry-go-round round n round it goes.
Isee Billy Collins as being sort of like the actor Billy Crystal. Crystal is a good actor. He's fun to watch in a film like When Harry Met Sally. But he's no Artaud.
But then Artaud couldn't do what Billy Crystal does.
I'm happy that both the excessive nuts like Artaud exist and the more minor nuts like Billy Crystal exist.
Is it an identity issue in high school?
Is this some kind of identity issue?
I'm pretty glad that there are actors like Billy Crystal that you can pretty much count on doing films that have nothing tremendously disturbing in them. We can Analyze This or Analyze That all day, but basically I think he's pretty good at what he does. You can watch the film and then turn it off.
It doesn't make him a bad actor.
Are we asserting our own identity when we say we will only read difficult poets whose lives were immensely bizarre and who were incapable of clothing themselves? Those poets are quite interesting -- Crane, Spicer, Corso, Rimbaud, S. Plath, etc.
It's fun to see what people who take life on a lighter plane are doing too.
But then Artaud couldn't do what Billy Crystal does.
I'm happy that both the excessive nuts like Artaud exist and the more minor nuts like Billy Crystal exist.
Is it an identity issue in high school?
Is this some kind of identity issue?
I'm pretty glad that there are actors like Billy Crystal that you can pretty much count on doing films that have nothing tremendously disturbing in them. We can Analyze This or Analyze That all day, but basically I think he's pretty good at what he does. You can watch the film and then turn it off.
It doesn't make him a bad actor.
Are we asserting our own identity when we say we will only read difficult poets whose lives were immensely bizarre and who were incapable of clothing themselves? Those poets are quite interesting -- Crane, Spicer, Corso, Rimbaud, S. Plath, etc.
It's fun to see what people who take life on a lighter plane are doing too.
99. But I won't do the hundred. Let's see if we have the fortitude to NOT hit 100. You know, out of a spirit of neighborliness to Billy Collins.
It is a far, far, better thing I do...
Blogger 101.
Take the course and don't go to the lectures....
--CF
Blogger 101.
Take the course and don't go to the lectures....
--CF
# posted by : May 04, 2005
: May 04, 2005
Piling on Collins. A whole rugby scrum, no, an army. I suppose that his crime is writing ABOUT something outside of poetry. Crush him. He is comprehensible.
-- KO
-- KO
# posted by : May 04, 2005
: May 04, 2005
I was wandering among entries here, curious if Ron or anyone had said anything about Cummings I could use in a paper I'm preparing on his influence--which I consider widespread and not all that weak on even the language poets, though not, it doesn't seem to me, on Ron's work. In my wandering, I came on the following crap from stasguard Tony (Robinson?): "With the exception of Ron, I don't know many "post-avants" who spend a lot of time complaning about "SoQ" or whatever. Well, there's Bob Grumman, but he hates everyone."
I strongly suspect that this Tony doesn't know many "post-avants." (I consider myself a "burstnorm poet/critic," myself, AND member of the school of quietude, but not anything as silly as "post-avant.") Many of the many poets I know who are doing work that uses poetic devices not in wide use fifty years or more ago are as caustic about Collins-level mainstream poetry as I SOMETIMES am, and some oppose far more of it than I do. I'm on record as LIKING some of Collins's poems, in fact. My only real gripe is with commentators on poetry who act as though Wilshberia--the span of poetry from Wilbur to Ashbery that so many staguards boast of appreciating--were the full range of contemporary poetry instead of, perhaps, thirty percent of it. In any case, I hate no one. I do hate stupidity like Tony's. I appreciate the mention, though.
--Bob Grumman
I strongly suspect that this Tony doesn't know many "post-avants." (I consider myself a "burstnorm poet/critic," myself, AND member of the school of quietude, but not anything as silly as "post-avant.") Many of the many poets I know who are doing work that uses poetic devices not in wide use fifty years or more ago are as caustic about Collins-level mainstream poetry as I SOMETIMES am, and some oppose far more of it than I do. I'm on record as LIKING some of Collins's poems, in fact. My only real gripe is with commentators on poetry who act as though Wilshberia--the span of poetry from Wilbur to Ashbery that so many staguards boast of appreciating--were the full range of contemporary poetry instead of, perhaps, thirty percent of it. In any case, I hate no one. I do hate stupidity like Tony's. I appreciate the mention, though.
--Bob Grumman
For the record, and because it would appear no one reads comments that are posted to blog entries older than a week or two so no one will ever know, I found the Armantrout poem opaque when I first read it--AND after reading what Ron said about it. When I happened on it the other day, it made perfect sense to me. I guess Ron's comments sank in, and/or the poem sank in, or something. BUT, I'm still not sure how effective a poem it is. It's clearly not accessible in the way a Collins or Gioia poem would be, but as at least one other person commenting said, so what?
--Bob Grumman
--Bob Grumman
Lord Google lead me to this long-dead discussion, but I still wanted to leave a couple of words of impeccable wisdom (wisdom so air-tight and perfect that you can not 'peck' at it...). Opaque, 'difficult' poetry is all well and good if that poetry contains something within it worth finding. If, after expending ones precious brain juices on deciphering a poem, all that the poem has to say is a derisive comment on the language of advertising or an expression of its own inaccessibility, then it's simply frustrating and not quite worth the effort. If, instead, the complication, complexity, and difficulty of the poem is used as a means of creating an intense emotional experience or expressing a substantial, revelatory idea... Well, then, that opaqueness served a valid purpose, beyond merely commenting upon its own opacity.
Poetry about itself really is fruitless (and, these days, overdone). Even if the SoQ (I love typing that. It's so sci-fi and oppressive sounding...Beware the SoQ...DUN DUn Dunnn...Like we're talking about the Borg or something) is quietly dogmatic, obvious, and bland, at least it's usually doing something more than recursively talking about itself.
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Poetry about itself really is fruitless (and, these days, overdone). Even if the SoQ (I love typing that. It's so sci-fi and oppressive sounding...Beware the SoQ...DUN DUn Dunnn...Like we're talking about the Borg or something) is quietly dogmatic, obvious, and bland, at least it's usually doing something more than recursively talking about itself.
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