Monday, June 16, 2008
This is only going to get me into trouble, but…
I was thinking about the debate, to call it that, between flarf & conceptual writing, and specifically thinking that such a debate was in many respects the healthiest single phenomenon I’ve seen regarding poetry in several decades, because it meant that there were two contending (contesting) approaches to the new, and that you can actually feel the discourse getting off the dime finally of what to do after langpo and just doing it. And that feels so long overdue, frankly.¹
Then I had the thought, what if this were the 1950s? There are some interesting parallels. Flarf & conceptual writing appear literally decades after the last collective literary tendency, not unlike how the New Americans showed up 20 years after the rise of Objectivism. And there are already different voices & formations, again as in the 1950s. So the question occurred to me: if these are the new 1950s, just who are flarf & conceptualism. And then suddenly it was as clear as sunlight in spring:
Flarf is Projective Verse
Conceptual Poetry is the
Flarf, precisely by its interest in “deliberately awful” writing, is amazingly writerly. Its first notable device, Google sculpting, is not unlike way Olson et al reconceived the use of the linebreak & its relationship to speech so as to completely redefine how everyone (not just the Projectivists) would think about poetry. In this scenario, Michael Magee’s My Angie Dickinson is For Love for its generation. K. Silem Mohammad’s Dear Head Nation is what – the first Maximus? I don’t want to carry this analogy too far – Nada Gordon & Katie Degentesh don’t have to fight over who gets to be Denise Levertov (both are considerably more interesting in the long run, anyway). It would be valuable to note the differences between these formations as well – flarf is far more democratic, small d, for one. One doesn’t see Gary Sullivan pulling a “
Conceptual Poetry, like the NY School, borrows importantly on concepts from the
So where are the new Beats? Is that what slam or def jam poetics are about? I doubt it, actually, given just how completely the key early Beats were into form & literary history, but the whole valorization of the street poet, especially by the numbskulls who confuse Bukowski for a beat, has a deeply anti-intellectual strain one finds at a lot of slams.
And what would be the new SF Renaissance? One senses that the New Brutalist phenomenon really has not borne a distinct literary sensibility (one doesn’t hear anyone speaking of the New Yipes series as the foundation for a new poetics, for example, tho maybe I’m just hard of hearing). Is there a distinct aesthetic perceptible in Bay Poetics? Or are Bay Poetics as much of a fiction as was the first SF Renaissance? Maybe what that scene needs is a Jack Spicer, but is there anyone just plain grumpy enough?
It will, I think, be obvious that such an analogy as this does a lot of violence to all those named, for which I apologize, sort of. Sort of, because I don’t think my gut feel here is wrong. What we are seeing is the resurrection of some very basic tendencies active within poetry for over half a century, seeing them coalescing once again into shapely coalitions we can actually name. From my perspective, old collectivist that I am, this can only be a good thing for moving poetry forward.
¹ From my perspective the great “tragedy” of langpo is that there were no other seriously contesting approaches to poetry. Actualism, which I’ve written about before, dissipated after the death-by-alcoholism of Darrell Gray, and the NY School, gen 3, was never interested in working out its relationship to other poetics, period. Everyone else was pursuing the isolato mode of individualism, still the most popular (and futile) option.
Labels: Conceptual poetics, Flarf, New American Poetry
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Interesting post, Ron. I agree that these are the two strongest tendencies in poetics in the past thirty years. It is clear that Language writing held the experimental stage for a very long time and these two directions are the first truly 21st Century poetry movements. Both have strong practitioners and charismatic (mostly guy) leaders (Sullivan & Mohammad / Bök & Goldsmith).
While I appreciate your historic parallels, I'd propose this:
Conceptual Poetry is the new Language Poetry
Flarf is the new New York School
Conceptual poetics is much more Apollonian and based in theory; its drier and more hands off; less entertaining, while embracing difficulty. Flarf strikes me as more "insidey", more jokey, more fun, more of a good time and in this way reminds me of the New York School. It's a lighter poetics than conceptual writing. Although it's intentionally bad, it plays to the audience and wants to be loved, whereas I get the feeling that conceptual poetry is rather dismissive of its audience (Goldsmith says he doesn't want a readership). I'll bet the Flarfists would be more fun to get drunk with :) Either way, it's clear we're seeing history in the making so thanks for showing us this, Ron!
While I appreciate your historic parallels, I'd propose this:
Conceptual Poetry is the new Language Poetry
Flarf is the new New York School
Conceptual poetics is much more Apollonian and based in theory; its drier and more hands off; less entertaining, while embracing difficulty. Flarf strikes me as more "insidey", more jokey, more fun, more of a good time and in this way reminds me of the New York School. It's a lighter poetics than conceptual writing. Although it's intentionally bad, it plays to the audience and wants to be loved, whereas I get the feeling that conceptual poetry is rather dismissive of its audience (Goldsmith says he doesn't want a readership). I'll bet the Flarfists would be more fun to get drunk with :) Either way, it's clear we're seeing history in the making so thanks for showing us this, Ron!
I'm sure that there is no reason that Nada Gordon or Katie Degentesh (or Sharon Mesmer -- the funniest poet alive!) couldn't play the role of Charles Olson, right Ron?
Flarf coming out of Objectivism doesn't ring true to me. I know an objectivist-type or two that really gets pissed off when you mention flarf. Don't they (flarfists) feel/claim a decendency from Dada, afterall?
Such neat packages usually don't work, but it's a way to think about it. It would be great to see it in diagram form--your idea of who's who, what's what, etc. The definitive Silliman map.
Flarf coming out of Objectivism doesn't ring true to me. I know an objectivist-type or two that really gets pissed off when you mention flarf. Don't they (flarfists) feel/claim a decendency from Dada, afterall?
Such neat packages usually don't work, but it's a way to think about it. It would be great to see it in diagram form--your idea of who's who, what's what, etc. The definitive Silliman map.
I wasn't suggesting that flarf came out of Objectivism, but rather that there was a periodicity between the Objectivists (actually a better formulation than Objectivism, since there never really was an "ism") and the New Americans and between Langpo & both conceptual poetry & flarf.
Olson couldn't abide by Zukofsky & never took notice of Oppen, for example. But clearly LZ's impact on Duncan, on Creeley, even on Blackburn & Levertov, was important. So one shouldn't particularly expect any of these before & after formations to much love one another. They are all, after all, about recasting the world anew,
Ron
Olson couldn't abide by Zukofsky & never took notice of Oppen, for example. But clearly LZ's impact on Duncan, on Creeley, even on Blackburn & Levertov, was important. So one shouldn't particularly expect any of these before & after formations to much love one another. They are all, after all, about recasting the world anew,
Ron
Andy,
your comments may apply to conceptual writing, but they would only be used in some misbegotten parody of langpo. (not that there haven't been a few),
Ron
your comments may apply to conceptual writing, but they would only be used in some misbegotten parody of langpo. (not that there haven't been a few),
Ron
Perhaps you should stop trying to make these approaches seem less unsettling by associating them with familiar ones from the past. It seems like a waste, and sort of derogatory.
Speaking of grumpy & re retro fun, as Oppen said yrs. ago, the avant-garde "goes where the whole army is going." For him the NY School degenerated into the "stylish" and "the chic" - a silly reflection of the bourgeois culture it purported to subvert.
Your thoughts about "where are the new Beats?" are the most dead-on here, for me. There was a huge argument over at Paul Vermeersch's blog, as you probably already know, about the poetic value of "spoken word" poetry, and Slam in particular. The obvious lines were drawn. I tried to ask a few pointed questions there, most of which were ignored.
What I've never understood was how people could think Bukowski was a Beat. Granted, he hung out with them, once or twice, rose with Cassady and wrote about it, for example. But what's good about Bukowski lies in his reportage, not in his conscious art (lack thereof, mostly). The only real overlap with the Beats is the exploration of the down and out. And it always chafes me that Harold Norse, an actual Beat who explored much of the same territory, remains so neglected.
Your thoughts about periodicity are right on, I think. I'm no fan of -ism after -ism; I get tired of the labeling and manifestos, most of which are self-promotion, and always have been. The cyclic view of history, on the other hand, is I think very true and worth considering.
What I've never understood was how people could think Bukowski was a Beat. Granted, he hung out with them, once or twice, rose with Cassady and wrote about it, for example. But what's good about Bukowski lies in his reportage, not in his conscious art (lack thereof, mostly). The only real overlap with the Beats is the exploration of the down and out. And it always chafes me that Harold Norse, an actual Beat who explored much of the same territory, remains so neglected.
Your thoughts about periodicity are right on, I think. I'm no fan of -ism after -ism; I get tired of the labeling and manifestos, most of which are self-promotion, and always have been. The cyclic view of history, on the other hand, is I think very true and worth considering.
Actually, I think I'll half-jokingly nominate Cowboy Poetry as the new Beats. It probably doesn't hold water, but it might be fun to run with.
I wonders, sitting here in my lyrical suicide suit flashing words in a nearly random sequence,
albeit still sequentially--
popping art, as it were
from video sleeves and chest tv-
Why (,therefore)
manifestos (bulky deifinitions of directions--)'are' so often "read" with such dogged enthusiasm,
while over the curve of the horizon, (see the endless parade of onesies and zeroids)
(Me) is watching my dog take a shit;
the leash wrapped about my arm.
albeit still sequentially--
popping art, as it were
from video sleeves and chest tv-
Why (,therefore)
manifestos (bulky deifinitions of directions--)'are' so often "read" with such dogged enthusiasm,
while over the curve of the horizon, (see the endless parade of onesies and zeroids)
(Me) is watching my dog take a shit;
the leash wrapped about my arm.
If all they’ve done is to switch the nameplates, their work is either derivative or redundant.
Could you help me understand your taxonomy of poetics by giving your opinion of enduring aesthetic value of Fluxus (e.g. Higgins) and Dada (e.g. Hausmann), and that of Stevens and Auden? I'm trying to understand how the lasting effects of either pair (if these can be safely called pairs) relates to the anticipated legacy of practitioners like Goldsmith.
Could you help me understand your taxonomy of poetics by giving your opinion of enduring aesthetic value of Fluxus (e.g. Higgins) and Dada (e.g. Hausmann), and that of Stevens and Auden? I'm trying to understand how the lasting effects of either pair (if these can be safely called pairs) relates to the anticipated legacy of practitioners like Goldsmith.
Accepting your analogy for a moment, what does that make the language poets? The imagists? (it's not that I picture you in St Elizabeth's ...)
Perhaps the gladiator model of schools/movements could be set aside for a more comprehensive view of conceptual poetics, which includes texts that sample or collage (including Flarf poetics) and those that appropriate wholesale (KG's version of conceptual poetry) as well as those that insert original text within extant text (allowing for less object-mimesis and more subject-mimicries, ie. multiple subjectivities). Otherwise, as you say, we're in a fresh patch of the same-old same-old, when what we want might be a bit more vertiginous.
Ticklish question of continuities, if anything, there has been a diminishment of sales -- from say, Beats such as Ginsberg who sold in the hundreds of thousands to Langpo, which I doubt has sold in excess of a thousand copies of ANY of its titles.
NY School -- O'Hara's sales are what? Probably enough to make a profit for the publisher at least. But what third generation NY School? Even Second Generation has not had much of a commercial echo. Fagin and Padgett and Berrigan: did any of them ever have a book that sold enough copies to do more than buy lunch with?
O'Hara's Lunch Poems probably at least bought him a few lunches.
From Bukowski's popularism (again, hundreds of thousands of copies) to Flarf's Magee -- again, an incredible drop in the sales figures.
It's true that LangPo garnered massive critical acclaim as they were basically playing with many of the theories that were popular in academia at the time. But there has been no commercial response among the public. It was a cross-pollination that bore dead fruit, and may have even killed the American Tree of poetry (drop-off in numbers of bees since the 60s -- honeybees themselves expected to be extinct by 2035 -- and perhaps poetry will die with it, unless Collins can hold on until 2035).
Why is that? Am I wrong that no LangPo volume ever sold more than a thousand copies? I can't believe that I'm wrong. Even a thousand copies would seem to be a lot for even a Bernstein title to sell (and I think he's the most approachable of the lot).
Charles Olson's Black Mountain group probably didn't sell a lot either, (even Dorn never had a hit in the tens of thousands -- at most a few thousand of his better books), while Corso's books sold tens of thousands (HP of Death) and were translated into dozens of languages, where they did well, by the standards of poetry.
Perhaps there is a continuity here but you have to admit that the diminution in sales represents a sort of death of poetry rather than a continuity.
Populism ala Billy Collins (who can still fill a room with justfolks) may not be the litmus test of a successful poetics, but it's hard to see how poetry, esp. a collectivist poetry, can continue to call itself "of the people and for the people" when the people will have nothing to do with it.
Poetry after Langpo is doing a ghost dance at best.
You guys killed it, Ron.
NY School -- O'Hara's sales are what? Probably enough to make a profit for the publisher at least. But what third generation NY School? Even Second Generation has not had much of a commercial echo. Fagin and Padgett and Berrigan: did any of them ever have a book that sold enough copies to do more than buy lunch with?
O'Hara's Lunch Poems probably at least bought him a few lunches.
From Bukowski's popularism (again, hundreds of thousands of copies) to Flarf's Magee -- again, an incredible drop in the sales figures.
It's true that LangPo garnered massive critical acclaim as they were basically playing with many of the theories that were popular in academia at the time. But there has been no commercial response among the public. It was a cross-pollination that bore dead fruit, and may have even killed the American Tree of poetry (drop-off in numbers of bees since the 60s -- honeybees themselves expected to be extinct by 2035 -- and perhaps poetry will die with it, unless Collins can hold on until 2035).
Why is that? Am I wrong that no LangPo volume ever sold more than a thousand copies? I can't believe that I'm wrong. Even a thousand copies would seem to be a lot for even a Bernstein title to sell (and I think he's the most approachable of the lot).
Charles Olson's Black Mountain group probably didn't sell a lot either, (even Dorn never had a hit in the tens of thousands -- at most a few thousand of his better books), while Corso's books sold tens of thousands (HP of Death) and were translated into dozens of languages, where they did well, by the standards of poetry.
Perhaps there is a continuity here but you have to admit that the diminution in sales represents a sort of death of poetry rather than a continuity.
Populism ala Billy Collins (who can still fill a room with justfolks) may not be the litmus test of a successful poetics, but it's hard to see how poetry, esp. a collectivist poetry, can continue to call itself "of the people and for the people" when the people will have nothing to do with it.
Poetry after Langpo is doing a ghost dance at best.
You guys killed it, Ron.
There was plenty happening other than "langpo" back then, and plenty happening other than flarf vs. conceptual now, and plenty happening in between.
Categorizing of the kind you engage in here, and that academics tend to do routinely, devalues the work of hundreds of individuals.
Categorizing of the kind you engage in here, and that academics tend to do routinely, devalues the work of hundreds of individuals.
half the word style is
sty
and chic
if it doesn't sound like 'chick'
sure looks like it
and sheik isn't so far from the node
So the image I get
is of a sort of
Porcine Teiresian Sheik
who, while possibly
'degenerate' (see my profile image)
is still
generating, whatever 'direction'
you perseive (see sieve, perseus, etc) that generation to be following.
The difference between
Flarf and Conceptualism
is the difference between
realism and pleonasm
and their similarity.
Conceptual poetry
is like saying
'hot heat'
flarf is more like
constructing the sound
of a human sneeze
out of dog barks.
both seem equally funny
and sort of make one's head
cock on angle
and both are primarily
anglo-based poetics.
don't be disturbed by that,
or be disturbed by that,
its your 'dyme'..
anglo
might mean 'anger low'
or it might mean
"and glow"
There's a marvelous scene
in Jacques Tati's film
_Playtime_ 1967
where he enters a green light
pharmacy.
There's a big neon plus sign
on the wall.
You wouldn't know it, but
that is the calling card
of the ancient and profound
wisdom of this
kunstspyracy
and it is both
totally humorous, totally serious,
purely conceptual in a way
that encompasses at once
the materiality of thought,
and of the 'thinking' of
non-conscious materiality,
the combinatorium, or
'pluroma' or bardo,
the place of multiplying orders..
http://tinyurl.com/55tj3n
sty
and chic
if it doesn't sound like 'chick'
sure looks like it
and sheik isn't so far from the node
So the image I get
is of a sort of
Porcine Teiresian Sheik
who, while possibly
'degenerate' (see my profile image)
is still
generating, whatever 'direction'
you perseive (see sieve, perseus, etc) that generation to be following.
The difference between
Flarf and Conceptualism
is the difference between
realism and pleonasm
and their similarity.
Conceptual poetry
is like saying
'hot heat'
flarf is more like
constructing the sound
of a human sneeze
out of dog barks.
both seem equally funny
and sort of make one's head
cock on angle
and both are primarily
anglo-based poetics.
don't be disturbed by that,
or be disturbed by that,
its your 'dyme'..
anglo
might mean 'anger low'
or it might mean
"and glow"
There's a marvelous scene
in Jacques Tati's film
_Playtime_ 1967
where he enters a green light
pharmacy.
There's a big neon plus sign
on the wall.
You wouldn't know it, but
that is the calling card
of the ancient and profound
wisdom of this
kunstspyracy
and it is both
totally humorous, totally serious,
purely conceptual in a way
that encompasses at once
the materiality of thought,
and of the 'thinking' of
non-conscious materiality,
the combinatorium, or
'pluroma' or bardo,
the place of multiplying orders..
http://tinyurl.com/55tj3n
Just some thoughts-
“Flarf is Projective Verse”
The parallels between Flarf poetry and Projective Verse are justified here for me because they both give avenues of approach to poets that were not named or known before. I think Flarf poetry has a closer sensibility with Dada and Oulipo. Imagine Breton’s Flarf poem (not a far away concept) or Emily Dickenson’s projective verse masterpiece, both of which I would love to see. What Gary Sullivan and the “Flarf School” have done and done well is to incorporate modern technology into the poem (Google search) with humor and without the paranoia of what the academy might think. Modern technology always creates the post-modern aesthetic.
Again, fuck the academy, the avant-garde poets bring to that store all the fresh produce and the academy just sells it. Again, how bad do you want to be in the next Norton? Open your own fruit stand next to the super Wal-Mart.
And Rod Smith is just that, Rod Smith. And I would take him as a contemporary over Duncan, Blackburn and Edward Dorn. He has balls in a different way then the three poets mentioned (not to insinuate that they are lacking). He is right and perfect for our time.
So where are the new Beats? Where are the street poets? Ginsberg called Beck Hansen the last Beat, who’s grandfather was Al Hansen a visual collage artist of the fluxus school and also, on a side note, knew the poet Jack Collom (who is a Beat poet if I ever saw one, and in my mind a predecessor to Langpo along with Bernadette Mayer, Grand ma Grand Pa) in the service. New Beats? I would say check Naropa, but most of the students I knew there just complain about why they can’t teach there. Bypassing the work of creating anything new and going straight to teaching. And street poets like Ray Bremser, Pedro Pietre and Tuli Kupferberg are just plain rare. I would look to the Bowery Poetry Club, Gary Lawless and Bob Holman who are both doing New York poetics a service, working their asses off for poets here that either can’t get a gig at the very closed Poetry Project or poets who don’t have time to lick that many assholes.
And what would be the new SF Renaissance? The SF Renaissance is still in full bloom, it’s called McSweeney’s. And it’s mostly prose, but a hundred years from now the work they do will still be around and relevant. Poetry? If I really wanted to know and I couldn’t tell from the books that come out of SF then I would ask Laura Moriarty and Michael Rothenberg for their choices and advice, both are very knowledgeable.
“Flarf is Projective Verse”
The parallels between Flarf poetry and Projective Verse are justified here for me because they both give avenues of approach to poets that were not named or known before. I think Flarf poetry has a closer sensibility with Dada and Oulipo. Imagine Breton’s Flarf poem (not a far away concept) or Emily Dickenson’s projective verse masterpiece, both of which I would love to see. What Gary Sullivan and the “Flarf School” have done and done well is to incorporate modern technology into the poem (Google search) with humor and without the paranoia of what the academy might think. Modern technology always creates the post-modern aesthetic.
Again, fuck the academy, the avant-garde poets bring to that store all the fresh produce and the academy just sells it. Again, how bad do you want to be in the next Norton? Open your own fruit stand next to the super Wal-Mart.
And Rod Smith is just that, Rod Smith. And I would take him as a contemporary over Duncan, Blackburn and Edward Dorn. He has balls in a different way then the three poets mentioned (not to insinuate that they are lacking). He is right and perfect for our time.
So where are the new Beats? Where are the street poets? Ginsberg called Beck Hansen the last Beat, who’s grandfather was Al Hansen a visual collage artist of the fluxus school and also, on a side note, knew the poet Jack Collom (who is a Beat poet if I ever saw one, and in my mind a predecessor to Langpo along with Bernadette Mayer, Grand ma Grand Pa) in the service. New Beats? I would say check Naropa, but most of the students I knew there just complain about why they can’t teach there. Bypassing the work of creating anything new and going straight to teaching. And street poets like Ray Bremser, Pedro Pietre and Tuli Kupferberg are just plain rare. I would look to the Bowery Poetry Club, Gary Lawless and Bob Holman who are both doing New York poetics a service, working their asses off for poets here that either can’t get a gig at the very closed Poetry Project or poets who don’t have time to lick that many assholes.
And what would be the new SF Renaissance? The SF Renaissance is still in full bloom, it’s called McSweeney’s. And it’s mostly prose, but a hundred years from now the work they do will still be around and relevant. Poetry? If I really wanted to know and I couldn’t tell from the books that come out of SF then I would ask Laura Moriarty and Michael Rothenberg for their choices and advice, both are very knowledgeable.
This Hatfield-McCoy feud between the avant-garde's two most inbred clans is entertaining but at least as irrelevant as the clans themselves. Descendants of the original Hatfields and McCoys were reduced to playing for cash and a pig on an episode of "Family Feud." The descendants of Flarf and Conceptual Poetry should be so lucky....
I should add... if they are PROCEDURE-driven, we flarfists are SENSATION-driven.
That would make us, of course, the WOMEN in an essentialist taxonomy.
p.s. to my last statement of umbrage... There is simply not a gendered hierarchy in our group, no matter how much some outsiders would love to impose one.
That would make us, of course, the WOMEN in an essentialist taxonomy.
p.s. to my last statement of umbrage... There is simply not a gendered hierarchy in our group, no matter how much some outsiders would love to impose one.
The easy conflation of just doing the discourse with just doing the poetry is one of the things that unites Language Poetry, Actualism, New Romanticism, and other miscellaneous 70s variants of anti-academic academicism that grew up in the wake of the GI Bill and its infusion of tuition into the writing programs. The competing discourses were not competing for anything as abstract as the future of poetry or the nature of reality; they were competing for teaching gigs.
The poetry wars are over; the academy has won.
That an individual's practice would be futile without the validation of a cohort of fellow-travelers only makes sense in a worldview that maintains that academic prestige is a relevant goal for a living poet.
The poetry wars are over; the academy has won.
That an individual's practice would be futile without the validation of a cohort of fellow-travelers only makes sense in a worldview that maintains that academic prestige is a relevant goal for a living poet.
Maybe this list will make the distinction a little more clear (collaboratively authored by the Flarflist Collective):
Conceptual Poetics/ Flarf
Kraftwerk/ Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
Madonna/ Lucille Ball
Lord of the Rings/ Little Lord Fauntleroy
Popular Mechanics/Tiger Beat
Techno/smegma
algorithms/sleestack
Brian Eno / The Raincoats
Paul Sharrits / Jack Smith
NPR / CB
Paul Hindemith / Charles Ives (or R.D. Burman)
Warhol / Basquiat
Noam Chomsky / Jughead
Ambient techno / Ambien-induced binge-eating in front of a TV
Unprotected sex with a teenage boy hustler in a public toilet in the '80's / Laurie Partridge
Helen Vendler / "Why was Helen Keller's leg yellow? Her dog was blind too"
"Cars with the Boom" by L'Trimm / "Cars" by Gary Numan
Stanley Fish / filet-o-fish
Conceptual Poetics/ Flarf
Kraftwerk/ Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
Madonna/ Lucille Ball
Lord of the Rings/ Little Lord Fauntleroy
Popular Mechanics/Tiger Beat
Techno/smegma
algorithms/sleestack
Brian Eno / The Raincoats
Paul Sharrits / Jack Smith
NPR / CB
Paul Hindemith / Charles Ives (or R.D. Burman)
Warhol / Basquiat
Noam Chomsky / Jughead
Ambient techno / Ambien-induced binge-eating in front of a TV
Unprotected sex with a teenage boy hustler in a public toilet in the '80's / Laurie Partridge
Helen Vendler / "Why was Helen Keller's leg yellow? Her dog was blind too"
"Cars with the Boom" by L'Trimm / "Cars" by Gary Numan
Stanley Fish / filet-o-fish
maybe flarfists are the beats: deliberate provocateurs challenging stale cooked conventions with highly stylized raw awfulness; with rod smith as burroughs, ben friedlander as ginsburg, kasey mohammad as kerouac, gary sullivan as cassady, drew gardner as corso, nada gordon as diane diprima, anne boyer as joyce johnson, katie degentesh as mary fabilli, and sharon mesmer as leonore kandel.
or maybe... flarf as san francisco renaissance: an exclusive coterie challenging conventions through the cultivation of highly stylized internet-based magic and ritual; with gary sullivan as spicer, kasey mohammad as duncan, drew gardner as blaser, maria damon as madeline gleason, nada gordon as helen adam, patrick herron as brother antoninus, ben friedlander as philip lamantia, bruce andrews as kenneth rexroth, rodney koenecke as james broughton, michael magee as lew welch, stan apps as kirby doyle, tony tost as richard duerden, and kent johnson as ebbe borregaard.
or maybe... flarf "has no geographical definition": gary sullivan as philip whalen, michael magee as michael mcclure, ben friedlander as ron loewinsohn, kasey mohammad as ray bremser, drew gardner as david meltzer, rod smith as john wieners, rodney koenecke as stuart perkoff, stan apps as edward marshall, mitch highfill as gilbert sorrentino.
mmm, none of these really work either...
t.
p.s. and who are the conceptualists precisely? i'd run them through a similar exercise if i knew who all was included (besides goldsmith, bok, dworkin and maybe bergvall?...)
or maybe... flarf as san francisco renaissance: an exclusive coterie challenging conventions through the cultivation of highly stylized internet-based magic and ritual; with gary sullivan as spicer, kasey mohammad as duncan, drew gardner as blaser, maria damon as madeline gleason, nada gordon as helen adam, patrick herron as brother antoninus, ben friedlander as philip lamantia, bruce andrews as kenneth rexroth, rodney koenecke as james broughton, michael magee as lew welch, stan apps as kirby doyle, tony tost as richard duerden, and kent johnson as ebbe borregaard.
or maybe... flarf "has no geographical definition": gary sullivan as philip whalen, michael magee as michael mcclure, ben friedlander as ron loewinsohn, kasey mohammad as ray bremser, drew gardner as david meltzer, rod smith as john wieners, rodney koenecke as stuart perkoff, stan apps as edward marshall, mitch highfill as gilbert sorrentino.
mmm, none of these really work either...
t.
p.s. and who are the conceptualists precisely? i'd run them through a similar exercise if i knew who all was included (besides goldsmith, bok, dworkin and maybe bergvall?...)
If Flarf has to be Projective Verse, can I please not be Olson? Instead, can I be ... could I be, um ... how about....
Can Flarf please not be Projective Verse?
Can Flarf please not be Projective Verse?
Ron, I'd really urge to reflect on why you think an analogy like this is in any way helpful to anything at all. I was braced after you expressed doubts about posting it, but I was still stunned at the breadth and hubris of your reductions, not to mention the anti-intellectual simplicity of even wanting to graph two distinct historical periods onto one another. Usually I'm pretty forgiving about the violence some of your distillations can do to quite real, intelligible & distinct subtleties, and I usually defend them as useful as provocations, but this seems like a notch above. So Obama is Kennedy, hip hop is jazz, greenhouse gasses are the A-Bomb, Martha Stewart is Betty Crocker, and Lisa Jarnot's line breaks are Gregory Corso's stanza breaks? Are these really the kinds of fruitless (and suffocatingly ameri-centric) mappings you want us to engage in?
yrs,
Brent
yrs,
Brent
A few more:
Conceptual / Flarf
Oulipo / fake dog poo
Robert Smithson / "danger, Will Robinson"
MOMA / yo momma
Intermedia / internet porn
Joseph Beuys / Baby Huey
the Weather Underground / the Weather Underground (CP doesn't get to hog them)
photorealism / photomurals of forests and waterfalls
Conceptual / Flarf
Oulipo / fake dog poo
Robert Smithson / "danger, Will Robinson"
MOMA / yo momma
Intermedia / internet porn
Joseph Beuys / Baby Huey
the Weather Underground / the Weather Underground (CP doesn't get to hog them)
photorealism / photomurals of forests and waterfalls
Mmm, yum, more! They just keep rolling in:
John Cage / Gerardo De Leon
Alain Séchas / Uh, Baroness Von Ilsa, She-Wolf of New York
Robert Smithson, BMX
Fluxism / "Garage Saling" with people in arm or leg casts for therapy.
The Informe / All messed up and stuff (and junk).
Situationism / The TV show "Emergency"
Arte Povera / Poems about Oscar the Grouch by people on Acid
Wittgenstein / The board game called "Operation"
Joseph Beuys / Baby Gramps
Concrete / Sticky Legos
Eroticism / Alain Séchas
Chris Marker / Roger Vadim
Cremaster / Tumbleweeds
high art/Cal Arts
John Cage / Gerardo De Leon
Alain Séchas / Uh, Baroness Von Ilsa, She-Wolf of New York
Robert Smithson, BMX
Fluxism / "Garage Saling" with people in arm or leg casts for therapy.
The Informe / All messed up and stuff (and junk).
Situationism / The TV show "Emergency"
Arte Povera / Poems about Oscar the Grouch by people on Acid
Wittgenstein / The board game called "Operation"
Joseph Beuys / Baby Gramps
Concrete / Sticky Legos
Eroticism / Alain Séchas
Chris Marker / Roger Vadim
Cremaster / Tumbleweeds
high art/Cal Arts
In recent weeks I've been thinking/talking about the present Bay Area poetry scene(s). How thriving and thrilling it is here now. How it is not centered around a 'group. It is time-based and space-based in a way that unfortunately, those in other times and spaces will not/can not understand, or I guess even feel the effects of... Sorry for that. Y'all should visit more often.
The Bay Poetics anthology did all that it could do which was create/reflect a moment. This is how we live here. Our poetry and poetics are widely variant. We organize/collaborate/participate constantly. I feel like any moment it will settle down, that we'll need a slow-time. But that moment hasn't come yet. We're riding a wave. It's a good wave. It maybe hasn't even reached its peak yet. We're exhausted but we keep moving/working.
One of my recent fears has been, how will this moment be remembered/immortalized? We do not have a 'spokesMan' the way other groups/movements of the past have had. We do not have a few vocal male figures to name us something, to decide who's in and who's out of the group, to allow some to talk and others to be silenced. This is a good thing. However, the lack of this type of figure will fail to make what we do here/now visible for future generations. It's sad for me because my egoself wishes there could be some documentation of what is going on. There is some, of course. Primarily on blogs. Still, it's hard to explain. I'm surprised no one else in the BA has stepped up to this issue that was raised. I'm a fairly infrequent commenter of blogs but I couldn't let that aside go unnoted/unchallenged.
It is a dangerous thing to not allow the poetries and poetics of both individuals and of groups in this generation to speak for themselves and stand on their own. I am upset by this but also realize the futility in trying to say anything at this moment. I've given it my best here, for what it's worth.
The Bay Poetics anthology did all that it could do which was create/reflect a moment. This is how we live here. Our poetry and poetics are widely variant. We organize/collaborate/participate constantly. I feel like any moment it will settle down, that we'll need a slow-time. But that moment hasn't come yet. We're riding a wave. It's a good wave. It maybe hasn't even reached its peak yet. We're exhausted but we keep moving/working.
One of my recent fears has been, how will this moment be remembered/immortalized? We do not have a 'spokesMan' the way other groups/movements of the past have had. We do not have a few vocal male figures to name us something, to decide who's in and who's out of the group, to allow some to talk and others to be silenced. This is a good thing. However, the lack of this type of figure will fail to make what we do here/now visible for future generations. It's sad for me because my egoself wishes there could be some documentation of what is going on. There is some, of course. Primarily on blogs. Still, it's hard to explain. I'm surprised no one else in the BA has stepped up to this issue that was raised. I'm a fairly infrequent commenter of blogs but I couldn't let that aside go unnoted/unchallenged.
It is a dangerous thing to not allow the poetries and poetics of both individuals and of groups in this generation to speak for themselves and stand on their own. I am upset by this but also realize the futility in trying to say anything at this moment. I've given it my best here, for what it's worth.
I don't much give a damn whether Flarf or contemporary "Conceptual Poetry" correspond to the poetics of two generations back or not. Kind of a dull question, in my view.
I did run into this quotation in a big anthology published back in 1976 called Actors On Acting, New York: Crown Publishers, Edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. In their Introductory section on 20th Century American Drama selections, "Native Players and Innovators," they make the following point: "In 1931 Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford, all from the Theatre Guild, founded the Group Theatre. Taking their credo from Vakhtangov's definition of the theatre as 'an ideologically cemented collective,' the members of the Group worked together as a creative community. Their object was to do contemporary plays of social significance, to established a permanent acting company on the model of the Moscow Art Theatre...." It occurred to me to send this quote to Watten (perhaps even to Carla Harryman) as a reminder of the historical eventualities of collective ambition. As history showed once before, "movements" consciously directed towards an organized, cooperative effort--in this case, modelled on an imagined idealization of Communist cultural dogma--in due course dissolve into factional fragments of individual theory, actualized talent and outside influences (not all of them, or even most of them, political).
Langpo's presumption of a coherent doctrine, organized around formal experimentation, and political "consciousness," never existed. To refer to it now, in this nostalgically lazy sense, does none of the work a service. Ron realizes this, of course.
His post is a feeler.
I did run into this quotation in a big anthology published back in 1976 called Actors On Acting, New York: Crown Publishers, Edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy. In their Introductory section on 20th Century American Drama selections, "Native Players and Innovators," they make the following point: "In 1931 Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford, all from the Theatre Guild, founded the Group Theatre. Taking their credo from Vakhtangov's definition of the theatre as 'an ideologically cemented collective,' the members of the Group worked together as a creative community. Their object was to do contemporary plays of social significance, to established a permanent acting company on the model of the Moscow Art Theatre...." It occurred to me to send this quote to Watten (perhaps even to Carla Harryman) as a reminder of the historical eventualities of collective ambition. As history showed once before, "movements" consciously directed towards an organized, cooperative effort--in this case, modelled on an imagined idealization of Communist cultural dogma--in due course dissolve into factional fragments of individual theory, actualized talent and outside influences (not all of them, or even most of them, political).
Langpo's presumption of a coherent doctrine, organized around formal experimentation, and political "consciousness," never existed. To refer to it now, in this nostalgically lazy sense, does none of the work a service. Ron realizes this, of course.
His post is a feeler.
I will repeat here that I love Nada Gordon. This is redundant by now (via "Exit, pursued by a bear" blog) but it is necessary. The false hierarchies that have been applied in this discourse; the linear time line; the clean historical material is just logocentric and misleading. The semiotic turn, the linguistic turn, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E turn, the postmodern turn, the flarf gestures etc etc etc. certainly did not happen in a vacuum but I think the road to codification is much more difficult to grasp.
"Nada Gordon & Katie Degentesh don’t have to fight over who gets to be Denise Levertov (both are considerably more interesting in the long run, anyway.)"
Even as a joke, this seems kinda, um, quietist, relegating the women to the same old predictable sidelines. I won't even mention...oh, OK...race.
Are you implying the American avant garde today is a farce?
--Guillermo
Even as a joke, this seems kinda, um, quietist, relegating the women to the same old predictable sidelines. I won't even mention...oh, OK...race.
Are you implying the American avant garde today is a farce?
--Guillermo
I'll further add, that the parenthetical in Ron's statement, "Everyone else was pursuing the isolato mode of individualism, still the most popular (and futile) option" is just sad.
All my favorites work in the "isolato mode."
And that includes you Ron, whether you want to acknowledge it or not is up to you. But trust me, history will so find, regardless of your collective efforts in Grand Piano or in times past. Your genius is your own, period, end of story. Your work's glow depends not a whit on the writings of others of a similar bent.
All my favorites work in the "isolato mode."
And that includes you Ron, whether you want to acknowledge it or not is up to you. But trust me, history will so find, regardless of your collective efforts in Grand Piano or in times past. Your genius is your own, period, end of story. Your work's glow depends not a whit on the writings of others of a similar bent.
Thanks Ron, that's a pretty Flarfy post. I actually think the best analogy might be conceptual poetry as Wiley E Coyote & Flarf as the cliff.
& btw we've been lucky here in DC to have an entire bouquet of Jack Spicers. Maybe that's why we "get along."
& btw we've been lucky here in DC to have an entire bouquet of Jack Spicers. Maybe that's why we "get along."
If I had an opinion, I guess I'd say this feels like a game where pushing wood is the only move.
But CF! How perfectly goddamned delightful to be sure to hear you not much giving a damn!
But CF! How perfectly goddamned delightful to be sure to hear you not much giving a damn!
This stream is fun, not very angry at all (thanks especially for the lists, Nada!).
Ron, it doesn’t sound like you’re in much trouble. Of course, none of the Conceptualists have weighed in—which is characteristic; they know that the idea of their participation in this conversation is more interesting than the actuality of it could possibly be.
It’s important not to mistake name recognition and self-promotional skill for exclusivity, i.e. these surely aren’t the only collective fronts around. What about (thanks, Estaiti) the thriving scene in San Francisco, where stuff is being written that’s at least as good as either of the options you pick here, involving as much engagement with contemporary technical and social possibilities? And does it make any sense to generalize about “individualists?” Does that term cover writers like those in the SF communities who were “outsiders” in relation to LangPo, or just a bit too late for it, or more into narrative, or queerer, etc.? And to “outsiders” who have an intense relationship with the communities they’re close to in one way or another (like Patrick Herron’s relationship to Flarf)?
Your repeated point that the sociological aspect of art is intertwined with the aesthetic is well-taken, Ron, but in a post like this I do wonder why there’s so much more emphasis on the former. I mean, I assume that the Flarfists are more interested in their and each others’ writing than in their public status as a brand name (while the Conceptualists would require a different description). Does sociological prominence equal aesthetic interest? Are these desirable aesthetic tendencies? What does the work have to offer? What’s at stake for it?
Bad Flarf: ultimately used by the technology it uses, simply reproducing the worst language around us, the not-very-problematized-and-maybe-fragmented-but-not-too-interesting-“I” distancing and protecting itself via the most easily available modes of irony,—as boring as anything the Conceptualists can dream of.
Great Flarf : what people for some reason call “wrongness”—abrupt shifts in discourse and rhythmic character, obscenity as a range of tonal effects, a whole vocabulary of ways to mess up any smooth surface, heighten the charge of language—the kind of crackle that’s there so often in Spicer and has, for some reason, been picked up on almost nowhere else between him and people like Nada Gordon and Ben Friedlander.
Conceptual Poetry: Maybe some new ways to relate to preexisting texts, but mostly, it seems to me, a bunch of opportunities to say, “what a cool idea.”
Both seem to have their origins in gimmicks; Flarf at least usually wants to argue that its orginary gimmick (Google-sculpting) has a critical aspect, while the best writing that comes out of it composes this aspect in its engagement with its materials. Flarf still seems young. In at least some of Goldsmith’s descriptions, Conceptual writing appears itself to be a gimmick, and aspires to do nothing more than be that—it would like to interfere with nothing. Can such a tendency be anything but a “moment?” Does it want to have possibilities? Conceptual writing, in its particular brand of coldness, already seems old.
Ron, it doesn’t sound like you’re in much trouble. Of course, none of the Conceptualists have weighed in—which is characteristic; they know that the idea of their participation in this conversation is more interesting than the actuality of it could possibly be.
It’s important not to mistake name recognition and self-promotional skill for exclusivity, i.e. these surely aren’t the only collective fronts around. What about (thanks, Estaiti) the thriving scene in San Francisco, where stuff is being written that’s at least as good as either of the options you pick here, involving as much engagement with contemporary technical and social possibilities? And does it make any sense to generalize about “individualists?” Does that term cover writers like those in the SF communities who were “outsiders” in relation to LangPo, or just a bit too late for it, or more into narrative, or queerer, etc.? And to “outsiders” who have an intense relationship with the communities they’re close to in one way or another (like Patrick Herron’s relationship to Flarf)?
Your repeated point that the sociological aspect of art is intertwined with the aesthetic is well-taken, Ron, but in a post like this I do wonder why there’s so much more emphasis on the former. I mean, I assume that the Flarfists are more interested in their and each others’ writing than in their public status as a brand name (while the Conceptualists would require a different description). Does sociological prominence equal aesthetic interest? Are these desirable aesthetic tendencies? What does the work have to offer? What’s at stake for it?
Bad Flarf: ultimately used by the technology it uses, simply reproducing the worst language around us, the not-very-problematized-and-maybe-fragmented-but-not-too-interesting-“I” distancing and protecting itself via the most easily available modes of irony,—as boring as anything the Conceptualists can dream of.
Great Flarf : what people for some reason call “wrongness”—abrupt shifts in discourse and rhythmic character, obscenity as a range of tonal effects, a whole vocabulary of ways to mess up any smooth surface, heighten the charge of language—the kind of crackle that’s there so often in Spicer and has, for some reason, been picked up on almost nowhere else between him and people like Nada Gordon and Ben Friedlander.
Conceptual Poetry: Maybe some new ways to relate to preexisting texts, but mostly, it seems to me, a bunch of opportunities to say, “what a cool idea.”
Both seem to have their origins in gimmicks; Flarf at least usually wants to argue that its orginary gimmick (Google-sculpting) has a critical aspect, while the best writing that comes out of it composes this aspect in its engagement with its materials. Flarf still seems young. In at least some of Goldsmith’s descriptions, Conceptual writing appears itself to be a gimmick, and aspires to do nothing more than be that—it would like to interfere with nothing. Can such a tendency be anything but a “moment?” Does it want to have possibilities? Conceptual writing, in its particular brand of coldness, already seems old.
STILL MORE "Flarfy dyptoids" (submitted by the Collective):
Affect / WTF!
Nietzsche / Itchy Doodles from Roonco
Pilgrimage / Vans
Thomas Mann / Nina Hagen
Johnny Carson / Captain Kangaroo
Jean Baudrillard / Rakim
Michel Foucault / Mr. Clean
Roland Barthes / Rowan and Martin
Manchurian Candidate / Creature from the Black Lagoon
Communism / All Nekkid! Communal Baths (with free crazy-wig dispensers)
Russia / Marx
Catholicism / Kurt Russel in "The Thing"
William Burroughs / Minnie Pearl
Jesus / Alice the Goon
Greece / Rome
Just Say No / Just Say "Drug" is an ancient Persian word for Demon
Light / Butter
Urine / Hide and Go Seek on the International Park scene
Andy Warhol / Ringo Starr
MWA to LM!
Affect / WTF!
Nietzsche / Itchy Doodles from Roonco
Pilgrimage / Vans
Thomas Mann / Nina Hagen
Johnny Carson / Captain Kangaroo
Jean Baudrillard / Rakim
Michel Foucault / Mr. Clean
Roland Barthes / Rowan and Martin
Manchurian Candidate / Creature from the Black Lagoon
Communism / All Nekkid! Communal Baths (with free crazy-wig dispensers)
Russia / Marx
Catholicism / Kurt Russel in "The Thing"
William Burroughs / Minnie Pearl
Jesus / Alice the Goon
Greece / Rome
Just Say No / Just Say "Drug" is an ancient Persian word for Demon
Light / Butter
Urine / Hide and Go Seek on the International Park scene
Andy Warhol / Ringo Starr
MWA to LM!
A lot of the various groups trace a root in Reznikoff. Ginsberg and Corso liked him, Bernstein likes him, whatever Mairead Byrne is, she likes him, I think he's likeable to all factions. I think that Larry Fagin liked Reznikoff, too.
Maybe Reznikoff is a more powerful progenitor than he's commonly credited for.
A lot of the different factions look back to the Objectivists, and among the Objectivists, it is Reznikoff who is most widely admired and read?
Even Lutheran Surrealism sees in Reznikoff a very direct lineage to our own program.
Maybe Reznikoff is a more powerful progenitor than he's commonly credited for.
A lot of the different factions look back to the Objectivists, and among the Objectivists, it is Reznikoff who is most widely admired and read?
Even Lutheran Surrealism sees in Reznikoff a very direct lineage to our own program.
Nada's flarferly lists remind of nothing so much as the great "Art Damage Manifesto" that was published in the late lamented MONDO 2000 magazine, in the early nineties. (I hesitate to say that therefore both flarf and conceptual poetry are nothing new, because my intent is not dismissive; but then again, I don't think they're anything really new, just new labels for a new generation.) The Art Damage manifesto began:
What do you say after Po-Po-Mo? (or Art Damage: the Manifesto)
Art Damage is Camp with a Ph. D. Attitude with brains and a wink. . . .
Out of the primordial tarpits where Kim Fowley meets Dada came art school graduates with transposable names and vaulting ambitions. Some aspired to avant garde musicianship and rock godhood. Others had guerilla ontological agendas. And some were just Devo wannabes who discovered they could recycle far more than old Led Zeppelin riffs.
Art Damage was born.
Part sampling, part burlesque, Art Damage could not exist until now. It took a peculiar convergence of forces before it could even appear: the global village, market research, media sophistication, and the Borgesian Library of All Time and Space.
But there is good Art Damage and bad Art Damage—and there are people who wouldn't recognize ironic distance at two feet.
The day is past when test patterns were the only alternative to broadcast television. So plunder that library! Seize the raw materials to furnish the Playground of Ideas. Wrestle with rogue memes. Cavort with digital cut-ups. Tweak America's blue nose and tickle her self-loathing funny bone!
And don't forget to wink!
•
The manifesto also provided lists:
Good Art Damage
New Viennese School
David Cronenberg
Madonna
Perry Farrell
Absolut Vodka Ads
MTV station breaks
Nietzsche
MONDO 2000
Negativland
Bowie
•
Bad Art Damage
New Wave
Brian DePalma
Michael Jackson
Metallica
Tanqueray Gin Ads
MTV
Derrida
Spy
Kostabi
Bowie
•
Not Art Damage
New Age
Jeffrey Dahmer
Paula Abdul
Axl Rose
Jack Daniels Ads
VH1
God
The New Yorker
U2
Bowie
What do you say after Po-Po-Mo? (or Art Damage: the Manifesto)
Art Damage is Camp with a Ph. D. Attitude with brains and a wink. . . .
Out of the primordial tarpits where Kim Fowley meets Dada came art school graduates with transposable names and vaulting ambitions. Some aspired to avant garde musicianship and rock godhood. Others had guerilla ontological agendas. And some were just Devo wannabes who discovered they could recycle far more than old Led Zeppelin riffs.
Art Damage was born.
Part sampling, part burlesque, Art Damage could not exist until now. It took a peculiar convergence of forces before it could even appear: the global village, market research, media sophistication, and the Borgesian Library of All Time and Space.
But there is good Art Damage and bad Art Damage—and there are people who wouldn't recognize ironic distance at two feet.
The day is past when test patterns were the only alternative to broadcast television. So plunder that library! Seize the raw materials to furnish the Playground of Ideas. Wrestle with rogue memes. Cavort with digital cut-ups. Tweak America's blue nose and tickle her self-loathing funny bone!
And don't forget to wink!
•
The manifesto also provided lists:
Good Art Damage
New Viennese School
David Cronenberg
Madonna
Perry Farrell
Absolut Vodka Ads
MTV station breaks
Nietzsche
MONDO 2000
Negativland
Bowie
•
Bad Art Damage
New Wave
Brian DePalma
Michael Jackson
Metallica
Tanqueray Gin Ads
MTV
Derrida
Spy
Kostabi
Bowie
•
Not Art Damage
New Age
Jeffrey Dahmer
Paula Abdul
Axl Rose
Jack Daniels Ads
VH1
God
The New Yorker
U2
Bowie
Not sure I want to get involved in another one of these accursed fantasy football taxonomy conversations, but here goes:
What's with all this top-down conceptualizing? Coalitions? Reeeeaaaallly.......What you're descibing sound to me like two planks with hardly anyone standing on them yet. Plank? Plunk!
Why don't we try to build up from actual social formations and their accompanying political tendencies by describing existing groups that are currently out there? Writing is foremost a phenomenon of individuals overlapping as social sub-groupings (with their associated politics) before these are articulated movements.
There are a couple as-yet-unstated tendencies that I'd like to describe, and I will. But in the meantime I'd like to think the Queering Language anthology (over 100 writers, a selection from which was recently published as chapbooks by Faux Press) represents one of those tendencies and political groupings which is prevalent, as yet unarticulated as a poetics of the avant garde, and not included among this taxonomy you're setting up above. I could probably describe at least three other current tendencies in poetic community and sociology which need to be named and which you'd really be shooting yourself in the foot to leave out of this binary system. And all of them have equal claims to be considered as what you're calling "the new."
Ron, I'm just having a spasm here in the comment box because you're usually much subtler, much better at articulating this stuff than the hastily sketched out and reified categories above. I'd be interested to see you, and us, try to expand the demographic categories here a little beyond the plank. Does aesthetics MATTER? Or is it the politics evinced by a community formation that lends energy to poetics?
What's with all this top-down conceptualizing? Coalitions? Reeeeaaaallly.......What you're descibing sound to me like two planks with hardly anyone standing on them yet. Plank? Plunk!
Why don't we try to build up from actual social formations and their accompanying political tendencies by describing existing groups that are currently out there? Writing is foremost a phenomenon of individuals overlapping as social sub-groupings (with their associated politics) before these are articulated movements.
There are a couple as-yet-unstated tendencies that I'd like to describe, and I will. But in the meantime I'd like to think the Queering Language anthology (over 100 writers, a selection from which was recently published as chapbooks by Faux Press) represents one of those tendencies and political groupings which is prevalent, as yet unarticulated as a poetics of the avant garde, and not included among this taxonomy you're setting up above. I could probably describe at least three other current tendencies in poetic community and sociology which need to be named and which you'd really be shooting yourself in the foot to leave out of this binary system. And all of them have equal claims to be considered as what you're calling "the new."
Ron, I'm just having a spasm here in the comment box because you're usually much subtler, much better at articulating this stuff than the hastily sketched out and reified categories above. I'd be interested to see you, and us, try to expand the demographic categories here a little beyond the plank. Does aesthetics MATTER? Or is it the politics evinced by a community formation that lends energy to poetics?
Furthermore, what we perhaps most disastrously lack is a believable working definition of what might constitute "Official Verse Culture" at this point. Oh boy is it out there, but the definition is sorely out of date. Of the two planks you describe above, neither offers a convincing vision of what we're up against. One evokes a non-existent "political correctness" bogeyman, while the other evokes a adsurdly overdetermined romantic poet caricature which appears to describe what...the protagonist of I Heart Huckabees?
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