Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Something Kenny Goldsmith wrote in the current issue of Poetry has been nagging at me:
Start making sense. Disjunction is dead. The fragment, which ruled poetry for the past one hundred years, has left the building. Subjectivity, emotion, the body, and desire, as expressed in whole units of plain English with normative syntax, has returned. But not in ways you would imagine. This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve . . . yet no one means a word of it. Come to think of it, no one’s really written a word of it. It’s been grabbed, cut, pasted, processed, machined, honed, flattened, repurposed, regurgitated, and reframed from the great mass of free-floating language out there just begging to be turned into poetry. Why atomize, shatter, and splay language into nonsensical shards when you can hoard, store, mold, squeeze, shovel, soil, scrub, package, and cram the stuff into towers of words and castles of language with a stroke of the keyboard? And what fun to wreck it: knock it down, hit delete, and start all over again. There’s a sense of gluttony, of joy, and of fun. Like kids at a touch table, we’re delighted to feel language again, to roll in it, to get our hands dirty. With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more? Instead, let’s just process what exists. Language as matter; language as material. How much did you say that paragraph weighed?
This is the first paragraph of Kenny G’s introduction to the current issue of Poetry’s collection of flarf & conceptual writing, a follow-up to Geof Huth’s portfolio of vispo last November, primary evidence that Poetry – the magazine, that is – is gradually catching up with Poetry the website in showing off American poetics in all its glorious diversity, something that the magazine hasn’t even aspired toward since the untimely death of Henry Rago some 40 years ago. I’m happy to see all these kinds of writing suddenly appear in its pages after decades of relegating all modes of the post-avant to the status on the disappeared. So my basic response to the current issue of the magazine is pure joy.
Or would be if I didn’t have this nagging feeling. In a word, I think Kenny is right about one thing here: no one means a word of it. Or at least he doesn’t. Kenneth Goldsmith has been the king of disjunction. He means his poetry to represent a rupture with whatever has come before. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he’s well versed in the marketing principles that underscore the contemporary art world, and is convinced it would seem that they will work as well in the capital-starved demi-monde of verse as the galleries of Chelsea or 57th Street. If anything, Goldsmith is more 57th Street than Chelsea (let alone Brooklyn). So it’s worth watching the sleight of hand whenever he asks you to identify which shell contains the prize (in this case, The New).
The ringer – or at least the first one – in that paragraph is the second sentence, Goldsmith’s topic sentence, his attempt to shout a la Robert Grenier “I HATE SPEECH.” Is there any poet anywhere who has depended more, or benefitted more, from disjunction than Kenny G? Consider his masterwork Day, published in 2003 by The Figures. A transcription – a scanning, really – of The New York Times of September 1, 2000, Goldsmith makes it new precisely by his erasure of print’s little borders, so that story jams against story or ends even mid-sentence as with this example from page 13:
All this week, Mr. Bush has criti-
Continued on Page A22
PRESIDENT VETOES EFFORT TO REPEAL TAXES ON ESTATES
A part of what Goldsmith is doing here recognizes that readers have dealt with the abrupt changes of the new sentence for decades. One whole rationale for USA Today is that it only lets one or two articles in each edition “jump” to another page. Most newspapers, like the Times, routinely disrupt the reading experience to force the poor reader to shift from A1 (from which the example above was taken) to A22, coming across in the process all of the day’s ads that occur in the front section of the paper. The whole point of the Times & its peers in the rapidly dying world of print is to get you to turn the page. But even in 1982, when USA Today first appeared, the disjunction of the jump was being attacked from within the field of journalism itself.¹ To have noticed this in 2003 is not quite as earth-shattering as Goldsmith’s overheated prose makes it sound.
Furthermore, what is Goldsmith suggesting is so all-fired new? The use of found language being folded, spindled & mutilated in a variety of fashions, many of which look precisely like older poetic forms. How does this differ from Jackson Mac Low’s use of insurance texts in Stanzas for Iris Lezak, or Kathy Acker’s appropriation of the work of Harold Robbins or in re Van Geldern in the 1970s? Is Goldsmith arguing that the primary difference between K. Silem Mohammad & Bruce Andrews is that Andrews is sincere?
I don’t think so. But I don’t think he’s arguing against disjunction either. Rather, he’s pointing out ways in which disjunction is occuring at different levels than, say, just the sentence-by-sentence nature one finds in some language poetry. Its reach has expanded. Still, it’s hard to see precisely what the difference is between a flarfy text that is so bad it’s good (or vice versa) and the more writerly work of, say, Tony Lopez, whose Darwin, just out from Acts of Language, just might be the most beautiful book of poems ever written. Both make extensive use of language as material, a concept I dare say that is as old as The Cantos.
So disjunction is not dead. If anything, it’s more active – being used in more ways to more ends – than ever. And exhibit A is none other than Kenneth Goldsmith himself.
¹ It’s worth noting that Goldsmith’s claim to transforming the Times rests almost entirely on his run-together presentation of one page after the next. So you get to read sizeable chunks of stories before you get to the “Continued on…” He could have, as easily, truly run the pages together, line by line, so that a single line might take you through four or five stories, depending on the number of columns. But Goldsmith isn’t reproducing the New York Times so much as he is the experience of the Times & the truth is that any reader follows the text in chunks.
It’s also worth noting that USA Today is one of the major reasons why today’s dailies feel permitted to drop some home editions each week as they confront the fiscal limits of their death-spiral. Publishing just five days a week, USA Today has grown into the second-most-widely distributed English language paper in the world, after the Times of India.
Labels: disjunction, Kenneth Goldsmith, Schools of poetry
comments:
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Daze and Knights.
Islam is incorrigible,
but dirigibles
in the shape of Tughras
seems possible
to breeders
of exquisite images.
That your imagination
is modest
is forgivable, but
ultimately, predictable
for you were born
in a world of
little imagi-nations.
Notions speak louder
than Nixon, and lotions
lure the foot
to mouth of the
revery.
Get off the pot
while the turd
is still,
and golden.
Get off the polar
while the tour de force
is still your forte',
allah pianissima.
Khep(h)era:
Tezcatlipoca tempted Cipactli the Earth Monster to the surface of the great waters by using his foot as bait.
Syntaxis.
Teach it.
Or be remembered not as
"romantic criminal ants"
but as assholes,
too stupid to dance
as a sun
under the sun.
Islam is incorrigible,
but dirigibles
in the shape of Tughras
seems possible
to breeders
of exquisite images.
That your imagination
is modest
is forgivable, but
ultimately, predictable
for you were born
in a world of
little imagi-nations.
Notions speak louder
than Nixon, and lotions
lure the foot
to mouth of the
revery.
Get off the pot
while the turd
is still,
and golden.
Get off the polar
while the tour de force
is still your forte',
allah pianissima.
Khep(h)era:
Tezcatlipoca tempted Cipactli the Earth Monster to the surface of the great waters by using his foot as bait.
Syntaxis.
Teach it.
Or be remembered not as
"romantic criminal ants"
but as assholes,
too stupid to dance
as a sun
under the sun.
shoot, son. What I wanted was for you to link to my cute poem about my wife...
then I read your post. This is over my head, so I'll not bother to link my new blog. I understood the opening paragraph, but then you talk about not being form 57th street. Whelp, I'm not from NY at
all, so I don't think I have much to contribute.
then I read your post. This is over my head, so I'll not bother to link my new blog. I understood the opening paragraph, but then you talk about not being form 57th street. Whelp, I'm not from NY at
all, so I don't think I have much to contribute.
enjoyed the quick survey & points well made.
i am somewhat sympathetic to Kenny G.'s operations, altho i suspect perhaps the works are aimed more squarely toward the critic as opposed to the reader.
i'm glad to see a contiuation of the classical conceptualism from the 60's, i hold it to be one of the most engaging strains of American art practice in recent history. An aspect slightly lacking in some of the unboring boring modes of contemporary conceptualism, like taking the seriousness of Art & Language as totem opposed to the playful interactionism of someone like Yoko Ono et. al.
As for newspaper based works, Dieter Roth was grazing that terrain in 1970 w/ his compilations of actual Icelandic newspapers bound in book form, & later continuing that operation w/ The Daily Mirror. Perhaps i'd even go so far as to say that Dieter Roth produced a kind of holy grail in conceptual poetry as early as 1954-57 with his Kinderbuch.
i suppose there are many many precursors for conceptual poetry & altho i may find certain pieces a bit too dry, i try to remember that Kenny G. speaks only for himself, but he's become a hatful mascot. Conceptual Poetry in the finely wrought hands of Christian Bök is a different ballgame altogether it seems, at least his work is unabashedly creative & exploratory...i dunno, scratch everything i've just said, i'm not qualified to make value judgements & i still don't know why i'm drawn into these aesthetic debates about the merits or demerits of procedural activities performed under a banner of any single flying flag currently competing for statehood or sainthood.
i have come around to Flarf tho, there's a certain nowtime going on which places it directly in the midst of post-info usa circulating thru myriad screens of swarming language, often tossed offhand & disposable as it goes inna commybox or a youtube stream et. al. & amongst all this junk comes rainbow unicorns saving the humble grace of all those lost little letters, or my rockers got cat-tails for morphological meow because now i'm really rambling.
young american poets circa 2009, many folks still believe poetry is extinct.
O, who shall rest within such stacks as university libraries gilded to the brim with heavy cottage-industry criticism?
i am somewhat sympathetic to Kenny G.'s operations, altho i suspect perhaps the works are aimed more squarely toward the critic as opposed to the reader.
i'm glad to see a contiuation of the classical conceptualism from the 60's, i hold it to be one of the most engaging strains of American art practice in recent history. An aspect slightly lacking in some of the unboring boring modes of contemporary conceptualism, like taking the seriousness of Art & Language as totem opposed to the playful interactionism of someone like Yoko Ono et. al.
As for newspaper based works, Dieter Roth was grazing that terrain in 1970 w/ his compilations of actual Icelandic newspapers bound in book form, & later continuing that operation w/ The Daily Mirror. Perhaps i'd even go so far as to say that Dieter Roth produced a kind of holy grail in conceptual poetry as early as 1954-57 with his Kinderbuch.
i suppose there are many many precursors for conceptual poetry & altho i may find certain pieces a bit too dry, i try to remember that Kenny G. speaks only for himself, but he's become a hatful mascot. Conceptual Poetry in the finely wrought hands of Christian Bök is a different ballgame altogether it seems, at least his work is unabashedly creative & exploratory...i dunno, scratch everything i've just said, i'm not qualified to make value judgements & i still don't know why i'm drawn into these aesthetic debates about the merits or demerits of procedural activities performed under a banner of any single flying flag currently competing for statehood or sainthood.
i have come around to Flarf tho, there's a certain nowtime going on which places it directly in the midst of post-info usa circulating thru myriad screens of swarming language, often tossed offhand & disposable as it goes inna commybox or a youtube stream et. al. & amongst all this junk comes rainbow unicorns saving the humble grace of all those lost little letters, or my rockers got cat-tails for morphological meow because now i'm really rambling.
young american poets circa 2009, many folks still believe poetry is extinct.
O, who shall rest within such stacks as university libraries gilded to the brim with heavy cottage-industry criticism?
My take on your Goldsmith quotation is that he's advocating a complete departure from constricted versions of linguistic form, any "final" concision, in favor of playing with language, playing in language, sensuously, without limit, without rules. Rolling on the waterbed, glorying in the slosh.
But his use of the New York Times is just one tiny idea! One application of the kinds and purposes of verbal play. In Zukofsky you get dozens and dozens of different kinds of playfulness. Do practitioners of appropriation like Goldsmith believe that through literary abnegation they've achieved some new plane of aesthetic freedom? I'd like to see the proof of it.
Show me one example of what Goldsmith's "castles of language" has produced. Where's his "A"? Where's his "Alphabet"? Where's this wonderful metaphorical silly-putty that he implies is now possible ("like kids at a touch table, we’re delighted to feel language again, to roll in it, to get our hands dirty. With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more?"). But "language as material" is just one, not very inspired, idea. It's really no different than putting quotation marks around anything; if all poetry is "found language" then all writing is a form of plagarism. Obviously, this isn't true.
Mr. Goldsmith could put a set of quotation marks above his ears, the way kids did Mickey Mouse hats in the 1950's. What a novel idea.
But his use of the New York Times is just one tiny idea! One application of the kinds and purposes of verbal play. In Zukofsky you get dozens and dozens of different kinds of playfulness. Do practitioners of appropriation like Goldsmith believe that through literary abnegation they've achieved some new plane of aesthetic freedom? I'd like to see the proof of it.
Show me one example of what Goldsmith's "castles of language" has produced. Where's his "A"? Where's his "Alphabet"? Where's this wonderful metaphorical silly-putty that he implies is now possible ("like kids at a touch table, we’re delighted to feel language again, to roll in it, to get our hands dirty. With so much available language, does anyone really need to write more?"). But "language as material" is just one, not very inspired, idea. It's really no different than putting quotation marks around anything; if all poetry is "found language" then all writing is a form of plagarism. Obviously, this isn't true.
Mr. Goldsmith could put a set of quotation marks above his ears, the way kids did Mickey Mouse hats in the 1950's. What a novel idea.
Dear Troll-roid:
Flarf will self-destruct in three half-lives (roughly three in dog-years).
"gilded to the brim" -- is this the prestigious coveted critic's cup?
Flarf will self-destruct in three half-lives (roughly three in dog-years).
"gilded to the brim" -- is this the prestigious coveted critic's cup?
"This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve . . . yet no one means a word of it." I believe there's a sincerity **behind** the sincerity no one means a word of. Even tho people might not want to accept the word "sincerity", might want another word. Nevertheless, Nada Gordin, say, doesn't juxtapose Hitler and Unicorns for no reason (I say this without having met her, of course, so Ms G, apologies in advance for "using" you to make a point you may disagree with). Kenny G doesn't type out the whole NYT for no reason. Conceptual art, flarf, whatever, is the way it is because it has to be that way. Because it has to.
word verigifaction is **unger**, somewhere between hunger and anger, which ;-) makes my case.
word verigifaction is **unger**, somewhere between hunger and anger, which ;-) makes my case.
I have just read something a book that I actually bought! and it is
apropos/germain to this:
Notes on Conceptualism
what a "crock"
well, now to CNN
so's eye shant miss a single moment of all of this "memorialize" -ation of all of this ( oh hell...
..I lost my thot... as if it is/was an allegorical/concrete/historical n a r a t i ve that mattered!
apropos/germain to this:
Notes on Conceptualism
what a "crock"
well, now to CNN
so's eye shant miss a single moment of all of this "memorialize" -ation of all of this ( oh hell...
..I lost my thot... as if it is/was an allegorical/concrete/historical n a r a t i ve that mattered!
Ron,
I made several of the same points in talking about the article too (though from my perspective, which generally does not jive with yours).
Maybe the article itself was a long flarf prose poem?
I made several of the same points in talking about the article too (though from my perspective, which generally does not jive with yours).
Maybe the article itself was a long flarf prose poem?
i'm glad to see a contiuation of the classical conceptualism from the 60's, i hold it to be one of the most engaging strains of American art practice in recent history.
agreed, but i think it's problematic how it's merely a continuation and not an improvement or a growing-up from the 60s Conceptualist Spirit. flarf and conceptual writing as defined by goldsmith still has nothing really terribly new to say about language or literature or the arts or our collective reading habits or whatever else goldsmith/flarf/conceptual writing is trying to usurp. it's all reiterations and repronouncements of things we already know.
i suppose it can be argued that these things bear repeating because we haven't really "advanced" yet from these concerns, but it can also be argued that maybe we need to sing brand new tunes to effort to make actual changes, that maybe things aren't changing "for the better" because the old avant-garde ways don't work too well anymore?
agreed, but i think it's problematic how it's merely a continuation and not an improvement or a growing-up from the 60s Conceptualist Spirit. flarf and conceptual writing as defined by goldsmith still has nothing really terribly new to say about language or literature or the arts or our collective reading habits or whatever else goldsmith/flarf/conceptual writing is trying to usurp. it's all reiterations and repronouncements of things we already know.
i suppose it can be argued that these things bear repeating because we haven't really "advanced" yet from these concerns, but it can also be argued that maybe we need to sing brand new tunes to effort to make actual changes, that maybe things aren't changing "for the better" because the old avant-garde ways don't work too well anymore?
There are some good comments about Kenny G.'s post over at the Poetry site, including one by Kenny himself.
More interesting to me than Kenny's over-stated observations is his new work or project. It's called The Day, and a couple small parts of it are linked to over at Poetry. It's a do-over, in a sense, or a follow-up to Day. The basic concept of the new work is the same as the similarly but not identically titled first work: copy/scan then print in a book a particular day's issue of the NY Times. The source issue for The Day is the paper from September 11, 2001, before the hijack-bomb-planes violence and death etc.
Also: the most interesting and exciting thing to me in Ron's post above are the following three clauses, which end a sentence near the end of the next to last paragraph:
" . . .Tony Lopez, whose Darwin, just out from Acts of Language, just might be the most beautiful book of poems ever written."
I ordered it up. Even given the "might" I gotta check it out, just based on Ron's enthusiasm, plus based on how much I liked False Memory.
More interesting to me than Kenny's over-stated observations is his new work or project. It's called The Day, and a couple small parts of it are linked to over at Poetry. It's a do-over, in a sense, or a follow-up to Day. The basic concept of the new work is the same as the similarly but not identically titled first work: copy/scan then print in a book a particular day's issue of the NY Times. The source issue for The Day is the paper from September 11, 2001, before the hijack-bomb-planes violence and death etc.
Also: the most interesting and exciting thing to me in Ron's post above are the following three clauses, which end a sentence near the end of the next to last paragraph:
" . . .Tony Lopez, whose Darwin, just out from Acts of Language, just might be the most beautiful book of poems ever written."
I ordered it up. Even given the "might" I gotta check it out, just based on Ron's enthusiasm, plus based on how much I liked False Memory.
re: goldsmith's "sincerity"
at first i equated it as "heartfelt emotional affect," ie self-expression, when in context with goldsmith's more out there propositions, ie DAY, it really seems more like "sincerity" (as he does say that "this new poetry wears ITS sincerity...")is equal to "i am a construct of words compiled mechanically from other people's constructs of words, also compiled mechanically, etc etc ad infinitum" which is, again, nothing too new, but there it is.
maybe IT IS one long flarf prose poem?
at first i equated it as "heartfelt emotional affect," ie self-expression, when in context with goldsmith's more out there propositions, ie DAY, it really seems more like "sincerity" (as he does say that "this new poetry wears ITS sincerity...")is equal to "i am a construct of words compiled mechanically from other people's constructs of words, also compiled mechanically, etc etc ad infinitum" which is, again, nothing too new, but there it is.
maybe IT IS one long flarf prose poem?
Ron,
Disjunction is very different from displacement, which is what many of these works are doing: wholesale lifting, which for the most part is, in fact, a strategy that still remains anomalous to even the most adventurous of writing. You mention my Day and selected a "disjunctive" bit, but what you fail to mention is the pages upon pages of displaced and reframed language, all in normative syntax without any disjunction whatsover; it's simply been cut and pasted.
And you fail to mention the impact of technology which creates a completely new linguistic environment and pace in which these displacements occur, making them completely different from Mac Low or Andrews or Zukofsky, etc.
Kenny Goldsmith
Disjunction is very different from displacement, which is what many of these works are doing: wholesale lifting, which for the most part is, in fact, a strategy that still remains anomalous to even the most adventurous of writing. You mention my Day and selected a "disjunctive" bit, but what you fail to mention is the pages upon pages of displaced and reframed language, all in normative syntax without any disjunction whatsover; it's simply been cut and pasted.
And you fail to mention the impact of technology which creates a completely new linguistic environment and pace in which these displacements occur, making them completely different from Mac Low or Andrews or Zukofsky, etc.
Kenny Goldsmith
Acker patchwrote, not approporiated. There was a great deal of "creativity" in her approach, contrary to Harold Robbins' fear.
And in terms of materiality, the web environment has made an entirely new game of materiality, way upped the ante.
As I've said before on the Poetry Foundation, with the rise of the web, writing has met its photography. By that I mean, writing has encountered a situation similar to what happened to painting upon the invention of photography, a technology so much better at doing what the art form had been trying to do, that in order to survive, the field had to alter its course radically. If photography was striving for sharp focus, painting was forced to go soft, hence Impressionism. Faced with an unprecedented amount of digital available text, writing needs to redefine itself in order to adapt to the new environment of textual abundance.
When we look at our text-based world today, we see the perfect environment in which writing can thrive. Similarly, if we look at what happened when painting met photography, we'll find that it was the perfect analog to analog correspondence, for nowhere lurking beneath the surface of either painting, photography or film was a speck of language. Instead, it was indexical -- image to image -- thus setting the stage for an imagistic revolution. Today, digital media has set the stage for a literary revolution. In 1974, Peter Büger was still able to make the claim that "[B]ecause the advent of photography makes possible the precise mechanical reproduction of reality, the mimetic function of the fine arts withers. But the limits of this explanatory model become clear when one calls to mind that it cannot be transferred to literature. For in literature, there is no technical innovation that could have produced an effect comparable to that of photography in the fine arts." Now there is.
Kenny Goldsmith
And in terms of materiality, the web environment has made an entirely new game of materiality, way upped the ante.
As I've said before on the Poetry Foundation, with the rise of the web, writing has met its photography. By that I mean, writing has encountered a situation similar to what happened to painting upon the invention of photography, a technology so much better at doing what the art form had been trying to do, that in order to survive, the field had to alter its course radically. If photography was striving for sharp focus, painting was forced to go soft, hence Impressionism. Faced with an unprecedented amount of digital available text, writing needs to redefine itself in order to adapt to the new environment of textual abundance.
When we look at our text-based world today, we see the perfect environment in which writing can thrive. Similarly, if we look at what happened when painting met photography, we'll find that it was the perfect analog to analog correspondence, for nowhere lurking beneath the surface of either painting, photography or film was a speck of language. Instead, it was indexical -- image to image -- thus setting the stage for an imagistic revolution. Today, digital media has set the stage for a literary revolution. In 1974, Peter Büger was still able to make the claim that "[B]ecause the advent of photography makes possible the precise mechanical reproduction of reality, the mimetic function of the fine arts withers. But the limits of this explanatory model become clear when one calls to mind that it cannot be transferred to literature. For in literature, there is no technical innovation that could have produced an effect comparable to that of photography in the fine arts." Now there is.
Kenny Goldsmith
Finally, Ron, if you're looking for the "new," you're looking in the wrong places. Not once in my introduction do I promote this work as "all-fired new," in fact, I don't even use the word "new" at all. That's your invention and agenda.
But if it all sounds familiar, it is. Conceptual writing obstinately makes no claims on originality. On the contrary, it employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as its ethos.
Kenny Goldsmith
But if it all sounds familiar, it is. Conceptual writing obstinately makes no claims on originality. On the contrary, it employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as its ethos.
Kenny Goldsmith
Kenny makes some good points in his three comments above, but what in heck is he reading when he asserts, in the final of his three comments, that in his essay,
"I don't even use the word "new" at all."
????
The word "new" is used three times in the essay, each time clearly suggesting that conceptual/flarf is the the brand spankin' new cat's meow:
"This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve..."
"Our immersive digital environment demands new responses from writers. What does it mean to be a poet in the Internet age? These two movements, Flarf and Conceptual Writing, each formed over the past five years, are direct investigations to that end."
"This new writing is not bound exclusively between pages of a book; it continually morphs from printed page to web page . . ."
"I don't even use the word "new" at all."
????
The word "new" is used three times in the essay, each time clearly suggesting that conceptual/flarf is the the brand spankin' new cat's meow:
"This new poetry wears its sincerity on its sleeve..."
"Our immersive digital environment demands new responses from writers. What does it mean to be a poet in the Internet age? These two movements, Flarf and Conceptual Writing, each formed over the past five years, are direct investigations to that end."
"This new writing is not bound exclusively between pages of a book; it continually morphs from printed page to web page . . ."
I wonder, if conceptual writing is really ego-effacing. I mean is there now conscious thought behind the choice of what to steal, appropriate, etc. It's not as if there's no agenda here: "boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness". Maybe it's not egoist in the sense that there is one conscious "I" behind conceptualism. But isn't the self-reflexive effacing of an ego itself an egotistical act? No matter how extreme you make the methodology or processes, those methodologies and processes are inventions are choices. The NY Times rather than the LA Times. Weather as opposed to traffic reports. One vowel as opposed to one consonant. Crystallography as opposed to alchemy or geology or topography. There was an analysis, a calculation which occurred from which these processes derive.
And I'm saying this as someone who is a great admirer of conceptualism and has dabbled in it (less fruitfully and inventively than Mr. Goldsmith, certainly). Perhaps what Mr. Goldsmith means is that the processes themselves are designed to efface the egoistic tendency behind those series of choices or a particular agenda. Maybe I'm just misreading what he means by "ego effacing" tactics (this phrase also makes me wonder if Ron is totally incorrect in hearkening to Mac Low here...perhaps its not due to Mr. Goldsmith's adherence to religion, but it still strikes me as the same goal as Mac Low's early writing at least) or "uncreativity". Maybe there is an acknowledgement of the ego or consciousness behind the aesthetic choices which inform conceptualist processes and I'm not picking up on it.
Nonetheless, just my two cents. Fascinating article Ron and great responses Mr. Goldsmith.
And I'm saying this as someone who is a great admirer of conceptualism and has dabbled in it (less fruitfully and inventively than Mr. Goldsmith, certainly). Perhaps what Mr. Goldsmith means is that the processes themselves are designed to efface the egoistic tendency behind those series of choices or a particular agenda. Maybe I'm just misreading what he means by "ego effacing" tactics (this phrase also makes me wonder if Ron is totally incorrect in hearkening to Mac Low here...perhaps its not due to Mr. Goldsmith's adherence to religion, but it still strikes me as the same goal as Mac Low's early writing at least) or "uncreativity". Maybe there is an acknowledgement of the ego or consciousness behind the aesthetic choices which inform conceptualist processes and I'm not picking up on it.
Nonetheless, just my two cents. Fascinating article Ron and great responses Mr. Goldsmith.
Thank you Steven. I was referring to the lack of the word "new" in Ron's excerpt of my introduction, which is what he specifically was discussing here.
i think kenneth's responses here make a great point (i.e. disjunction vs. displacement). reminds me of a hal foster snippet i read about the very same thing. the idea of disjunction goes beyond individual pieces and to silliman's, as i misread it, dialectical (polemicist) approach to poetry as a whole (us vs. them). but disjunction vs. dispacement, as i understand it, is really just two ways of seeing the same thing. for me displacement is more appropriate because of my general views on what of harmony/dissonance as the same (if you follow). ron silliman, as i (mis)interpret his post, is speaking from an idea that disjunction isn't harmonic, that dissonance isn't a harmony, the misnomer of atonality for pan-tonality or that it only "seems" disjunct because it is displaced or because it is displaced it is supposed to be a dissonance rather than a (radical) reharmonization.
but, my concern with kenneth's ideas is this: while i appreciate his enthusiasm for integrating mediums via comparative aesthetics, i myself have a nagging feeling that perhaps language has its own exceptionalism as a medium and that many of the visual arts (and musical or otherwise) do not cross over in the same way-- perhaps because there is more constraints, less plasticity? i'm not sure of this, nor am i making a statement, but it is a feeling i get which is why a movement like concrete poetry, though still very alive, is often regarded as a fad. will flarf have any staying power?
**
also, kenny, it might be interesting to note other ways art can react to it such as estes or close did to the photo???
in "natural" music the synthesizer didn't kill it, nor did recording,and the most commercial/garbage-making music tends to come from those hyper-manipulated sounds (aside from the few early pioneers). my point is that mediums have their own nuances and to use movements in the visual arts as a correct-all to other mediums might not be as viable as one might think.
and then there's the question of what discerns the specifically "literary" (and don't think powder-wigs and old professors- i mean the "art of reading" itself, not just thinking about a concept or an "art book"). does this mean, as been debated for a loooong while, that "literature" is dead? i take it many here would say "yes."
keep in mind, these aren't my opinions, just general ideas i'm not committed to.
but, my concern with kenneth's ideas is this: while i appreciate his enthusiasm for integrating mediums via comparative aesthetics, i myself have a nagging feeling that perhaps language has its own exceptionalism as a medium and that many of the visual arts (and musical or otherwise) do not cross over in the same way-- perhaps because there is more constraints, less plasticity? i'm not sure of this, nor am i making a statement, but it is a feeling i get which is why a movement like concrete poetry, though still very alive, is often regarded as a fad. will flarf have any staying power?
**
also, kenny, it might be interesting to note other ways art can react to it such as estes or close did to the photo???
in "natural" music the synthesizer didn't kill it, nor did recording,and the most commercial/garbage-making music tends to come from those hyper-manipulated sounds (aside from the few early pioneers). my point is that mediums have their own nuances and to use movements in the visual arts as a correct-all to other mediums might not be as viable as one might think.
and then there's the question of what discerns the specifically "literary" (and don't think powder-wigs and old professors- i mean the "art of reading" itself, not just thinking about a concept or an "art book"). does this mean, as been debated for a loooong while, that "literature" is dead? i take it many here would say "yes."
keep in mind, these aren't my opinions, just general ideas i'm not committed to.
Steven,
My reading of Goldsmith's casual "new" was not "THE NEW!!!" in the Ron's (Pound-like) sense and that Kenneth was writing to an audience to whom the writing was "new" rather than to aficionados or poetry-geeks like, ahem, us.
I think you are mixing meanings of "new." For Ron it is a grand aesthetic perhaps, or a whole "THE NEW Sentence." For Kenneth, it is just a word he used to describe timeliness and not a Grand Statement of "Newness" in the Pound/modernist/neo-avant sense of it.
Is that off?
My reading of Goldsmith's casual "new" was not "THE NEW!!!" in the Ron's (Pound-like) sense and that Kenneth was writing to an audience to whom the writing was "new" rather than to aficionados or poetry-geeks like, ahem, us.
I think you are mixing meanings of "new." For Ron it is a grand aesthetic perhaps, or a whole "THE NEW Sentence." For Kenneth, it is just a word he used to describe timeliness and not a Grand Statement of "Newness" in the Pound/modernist/neo-avant sense of it.
Is that off?
.
Poetry has only two functions: to educate or to entertain. If a poem doesn’t do one or, hopefully both, then it has no function.
Then it is no more than graffiti with a name.
Poetry has only two functions: to educate or to entertain. If a poem doesn’t do one or, hopefully both, then it has no function.
Then it is no more than graffiti with a name.
Gary,
Of course, there is nothing that keeps graffiti from being educational or entertaining.
But even with that, I disagree with your two functions / no function.
Of course, there is nothing that keeps graffiti from being educational or entertaining.
But even with that, I disagree with your two functions / no function.
Kenny's analogy above, regarding painting at the onset of the photographic medium, though it sounds convincing, doesn't really make much sense as I think about it. It does make a tidy picture of advancement of the visual arts at that time, for those who would have considered an important aim of pictorial arts to be that which gives the most realistic mimetic representation, thus being completely outmoded once there was photography. But if we take that model of artistic advancement, swerving away from a mode (mimetic or otherwise) seen as technically similar to what a new technology can do instantly -- then how is this a "perfect analog to analog correspondence"? If there is a present-day analog somewhere in this scenario then conceptual writing, more an attempt at appropriating through new technology than otherwise, isn't the fulfillment of it.
Michael
Michael
Here's a third: To seduce.
(Ever been in love, Gary?)
Here's a fourth: To attack.
A fifth: To satirize.
A sixth: To conduct an experiment.
Seventh: To explore.
Eighth: To incite, or call to arms.
Ninth: To inspire or convey religious feeling.
Tenth: As accompaniment to labor.
Eleventh: As epiphanic expressions of thrall (i.e., trips, etc.)
Your distinctions are too categorically generalized. You could say that we learn from everything we do, which is a commonplace. You could also say that anything could be "entertaining" to the right person, under the right conditions.
Perhaps a better place to begin is with the kinds of generic forms of poetry. Those tend to delineate the purposes and uses better than speaking in the abstract about poetry.
(Ever been in love, Gary?)
Here's a fourth: To attack.
A fifth: To satirize.
A sixth: To conduct an experiment.
Seventh: To explore.
Eighth: To incite, or call to arms.
Ninth: To inspire or convey religious feeling.
Tenth: As accompaniment to labor.
Eleventh: As epiphanic expressions of thrall (i.e., trips, etc.)
Your distinctions are too categorically generalized. You could say that we learn from everything we do, which is a commonplace. You could also say that anything could be "entertaining" to the right person, under the right conditions.
Perhaps a better place to begin is with the kinds of generic forms of poetry. Those tend to delineate the purposes and uses better than speaking in the abstract about poetry.
Quoting from (and riposting to) Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant-Garde to suggest its obsolescence, Kenny Goldsmith wrote:
"'For in literature, there is no technical innovation that could have produced an effect comparable to that of photography in the fine arts.' Now there is."
***
So I called my friend Richard Prince on the phone and read him Goldsmith's passage above, and he paused and laughed this kind of blank, haughty laugh, and said:
"Dang! If only Burger were still around to write the sequel, and show how Conceptual Poetry and Flarf are breakthrough, authentic, autonomous poetic-critical formations, and not, as the confused or envious wrongly perceive, yet more accretion of carefully calculated Neo-avant-garde "institution of Art" phenomena!"
"But all those modifiers, Richard... Surely you're being ironic and self-mocking!" I said.
"No," he said. "I'm absolutely freaking serious."
"'For in literature, there is no technical innovation that could have produced an effect comparable to that of photography in the fine arts.' Now there is."
***
So I called my friend Richard Prince on the phone and read him Goldsmith's passage above, and he paused and laughed this kind of blank, haughty laugh, and said:
"Dang! If only Burger were still around to write the sequel, and show how Conceptual Poetry and Flarf are breakthrough, authentic, autonomous poetic-critical formations, and not, as the confused or envious wrongly perceive, yet more accretion of carefully calculated Neo-avant-garde "institution of Art" phenomena!"
"But all those modifiers, Richard... Surely you're being ironic and self-mocking!" I said.
"No," he said. "I'm absolutely freaking serious."
Goldsmith's repeated appeal to Benjamin as authoritative support for his own claims about the "necessary" relation of art to technology never gets played out beyond the assertion (in various forms) that art must respond to the most advanced technological situation. I don't see an actual argument for the notion that appropriation is the legitimate contemporary approach. Nor is there an acknowledgment of Benjamin's explicit framing of his "Work of Art" essay as a contribution to an antifascist, politicized aesthetics. Benjamin didn't argue for art's adaptation to current conditions--in fact, "adaptation" is an idea of which he was highly suspicious, for ethical and aesthetic reasons.
Where's the line between a mimetic relationship to contemporary culture (say, in its consumer-capitalist, fast-moving U.S. online form) and one that merely reproduces that culture, adding more junk, replacing the modernist fragment with the immediately disposable whole?
People have spent far too much time on the negative/critical aspects of "LangPo," and too little on what it's actually made (and continues to make) possible. Here, on the other hand, I find the critical aspect--aesthetic or political, and particuarly the self-critique, the critique of one's own available methods and materials--missing or vague, replaced with a set of evocative values (boredom, irony, what have you).
--Andy
Where's the line between a mimetic relationship to contemporary culture (say, in its consumer-capitalist, fast-moving U.S. online form) and one that merely reproduces that culture, adding more junk, replacing the modernist fragment with the immediately disposable whole?
People have spent far too much time on the negative/critical aspects of "LangPo," and too little on what it's actually made (and continues to make) possible. Here, on the other hand, I find the critical aspect--aesthetic or political, and particuarly the self-critique, the critique of one's own available methods and materials--missing or vague, replaced with a set of evocative values (boredom, irony, what have you).
--Andy
Hi, Curtis.
I believe there is a difference between function and application. The function of a hammer is to drive a nail but it makes a pretty good nutcracker, too. When I say 'educate' in this context I mean 'to convey information'. Most of your proposed poetic functions do exactly that. For example, a poem intended to seduce delivers a great deal of information: 'I'm smart enough to write a poem' (I will be a good provider), 'I took the time and effort to write this poem' (I care about you), 'I desire you' (Be my partner. I will love and protect you). This is all in addition, of course, to what the words in the poem actually say.
Attack? What is an attack? Well, you try to condemn and destroy your enemy, right? You must, then, be saying something bad about your target in your poem in order to either hurt them or to convince others to support your attack. You are conveying information.
To satirize...same as attack, I'd say, just milder.
Conduct an experiment? Explore? What will be the result of these efforts? Hopefully a poem that will eventually be read and...educate or entertain. Otherwise, why bother?
To incite or call to arms (see 'attack', above). Same difference, just more aggressive. Now you don't want people to just share your animosity but to actually assist you in violence against the chosen enemy. Some kind of derogatory facts must be transmitted in order to convince them to do this.
If inspiring or conveying religious feeling isn't delivering information, I don't know what is.
You got me on accompaniment to labor. Maybe you mean spirituals, sea chanteys or other work songs. I, for one, have never worked to a poem.
Eleven is my favorite. If one decided to relay an epiphany or experience of ecstasy in a poem I would think the intent would be to either share this experience for the listener's entertainment (mutual experience of joy) or to guide them on how to have this experience themselves (education).
I say again: Poetry, nay, words themselves, have only two functions: to educate (convey information) or to entertain. If a poem doesn’t do one or, hopefully, both, then it has no function.
Gary
I believe there is a difference between function and application. The function of a hammer is to drive a nail but it makes a pretty good nutcracker, too. When I say 'educate' in this context I mean 'to convey information'. Most of your proposed poetic functions do exactly that. For example, a poem intended to seduce delivers a great deal of information: 'I'm smart enough to write a poem' (I will be a good provider), 'I took the time and effort to write this poem' (I care about you), 'I desire you' (Be my partner. I will love and protect you). This is all in addition, of course, to what the words in the poem actually say.
Attack? What is an attack? Well, you try to condemn and destroy your enemy, right? You must, then, be saying something bad about your target in your poem in order to either hurt them or to convince others to support your attack. You are conveying information.
To satirize...same as attack, I'd say, just milder.
Conduct an experiment? Explore? What will be the result of these efforts? Hopefully a poem that will eventually be read and...educate or entertain. Otherwise, why bother?
To incite or call to arms (see 'attack', above). Same difference, just more aggressive. Now you don't want people to just share your animosity but to actually assist you in violence against the chosen enemy. Some kind of derogatory facts must be transmitted in order to convince them to do this.
If inspiring or conveying religious feeling isn't delivering information, I don't know what is.
You got me on accompaniment to labor. Maybe you mean spirituals, sea chanteys or other work songs. I, for one, have never worked to a poem.
Eleven is my favorite. If one decided to relay an epiphany or experience of ecstasy in a poem I would think the intent would be to either share this experience for the listener's entertainment (mutual experience of joy) or to guide them on how to have this experience themselves (education).
I say again: Poetry, nay, words themselves, have only two functions: to educate (convey information) or to entertain. If a poem doesn’t do one or, hopefully, both, then it has no function.
Gary
The point of my original comment, though, Curtis (possibly overlooked in all this) pertains to the topic at hand, i.e. flarf and Con-po.
Gray,
OK, then, I'm convinced. But flarf has tons of information and is also entertaining, as is graffiti.
I just think of all the new things I'm learning about unicorns, for example.
OK, then, I'm convinced. But flarf has tons of information and is also entertaining, as is graffiti.
I just think of all the new things I'm learning about unicorns, for example.
Gary,
But can you go back and comfortably refer to your cases of "conveying information" using the term "education?" I think that would expand the latter term far beyond any of its usual uses. No-one's stopping you from doing that, but there's always the danger that an umbrella category, broadened through reinterpretation to include more or less everything, will become meaningless. I personally prefer Curtis' finer distinctions, which--though you can argue they fall under your two terms--I don't think you'd argue are the same as one another.
Andy
But can you go back and comfortably refer to your cases of "conveying information" using the term "education?" I think that would expand the latter term far beyond any of its usual uses. No-one's stopping you from doing that, but there's always the danger that an umbrella category, broadened through reinterpretation to include more or less everything, will become meaningless. I personally prefer Curtis' finer distinctions, which--though you can argue they fall under your two terms--I don't think you'd argue are the same as one another.
Andy
It's a bold but not entirely unprecedented claim that poetry can be made to serve any of the functions of language. And feasible likewise to reduce those functions, whether conjunctive or not, to the purposes that govern, say, a 30-second infomercial. But only, I think, with two caveats: (1) that the information so conveyed is "peculiarly void" (to borrow J. L. Austin's phrase) -- that is, as some have remarked, not grounded in any knowledge and indifferent to truth or falsehood; and (2) that the entertainment, or pleasure, so evoked is intermittently painful: pity and terror, odi et amo, no loss no gain, as others have noted. Several millenia of aporias follow. It's unclear to me how much clarity "no one means a word of it" brings to this extended debate. That impasse too might be thought, so to speak, to promote a comparable dyad of functions; no doubt, some of us do find it discernibly pleasurable or sensibly informative to be left in a quandary. In any case such recur, and repetition, one recalls, is intrinsic to the medium: "used in more ways to more ends," or "fewer ways to fewer ends," and so on.
Word verification: oonclusn
Word verification: oonclusn
I'm curious what happens to flarf now that it has been brought under the wing of "conceptual" poetry. Goldsmith (who I respect) doesn't exactly represent the aesthetic that brought flarf to the attention of the poetry world, especially concerning disjunction and fragmentation.
What would a Kasey Mohammad have to say about Kenny's primer, I wonder?
That said, I'm not a Kent or a Dale. I think flarf is as good a response as anything to the state of public discourse in the English speaking world. What I'm worried about is what happens now that it has to recontextualize itself within another movement.
For those who watched the youtube videos of flarf vs. conceptual poetry, am I the only one who noticed how the new flarf material did seem to align itself more than usual with Kenny's ideas of appropriation (i.e. less fragmentation)? Even Kasey's anagrams fall well within the Bok-Goldsmith spectrum, though it would be a more boring world without them.
As for Poetry Magazine, I thought the "Google Myself" poem also fell into this sinkhole along with a couple others, though Stan Apps' critiques of many of the poems in said issue (Official Verse Culture vs. Flarf/Conceptual Writing) are rather convincing about what is at stake overall.
What would a Kasey Mohammad have to say about Kenny's primer, I wonder?
That said, I'm not a Kent or a Dale. I think flarf is as good a response as anything to the state of public discourse in the English speaking world. What I'm worried about is what happens now that it has to recontextualize itself within another movement.
For those who watched the youtube videos of flarf vs. conceptual poetry, am I the only one who noticed how the new flarf material did seem to align itself more than usual with Kenny's ideas of appropriation (i.e. less fragmentation)? Even Kasey's anagrams fall well within the Bok-Goldsmith spectrum, though it would be a more boring world without them.
As for Poetry Magazine, I thought the "Google Myself" poem also fell into this sinkhole along with a couple others, though Stan Apps' critiques of many of the poems in said issue (Official Verse Culture vs. Flarf/Conceptual Writing) are rather convincing about what is at stake overall.
ChadAHardy --- Yes, those were some of my questions, too, when I read Goldsmith's intro., though I haven't seen those You Tube videos.
We all know how Flarf came to be, but I would love to hear how the pairing of Flarf & Conceptual happened, in social & real time & place terms, i.e. who talked to who, when & where, etc. Whose idea it was to form the first combined event....let's see, what was it again--- a Bularian bar mud-wrestling competition or something?
We all know how Flarf came to be, but I would love to hear how the pairing of Flarf & Conceptual happened, in social & real time & place terms, i.e. who talked to who, when & where, etc. Whose idea it was to form the first combined event....let's see, what was it again--- a Bularian bar mud-wrestling competition or something?
I find Kenny’s statements in his recent Dale Smith interview puzzling. In it Kenny was, as usual, supportive of the idea that anything should go in poetry, yet admitted that UbuWeb is not a democracy and that he decides “what goes there”, and that:
“99% of what is submitted is not accepted. But that’s why it’s so good. The bar is set very high according to Ubu’s standards, which are quite rigorous.”
Yet, I wonder what criteria are brought into play when deciding what is the best of “anything should go”, or arbitrarily collaged texts etc. I suppose, there isn’t one, and that it is all personal taste.
Until Kenny deals with this inconsistency, I can’t take anything he says seriously.
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“99% of what is submitted is not accepted. But that’s why it’s so good. The bar is set very high according to Ubu’s standards, which are quite rigorous.”
Yet, I wonder what criteria are brought into play when deciding what is the best of “anything should go”, or arbitrarily collaged texts etc. I suppose, there isn’t one, and that it is all personal taste.
Until Kenny deals with this inconsistency, I can’t take anything he says seriously.
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