Friday, October 22, 2010
Links re: Accessibility in poetry
Getting a lot of great stuff sent my way through this Atlantic article—here's a few great links I just got sent (thanks to Kristin Esch down at The Poetry Foundation).
- Matthew Zapruder points to how it should be a critic's responsibility to 'clarify a reading experience': "What is the purpose of literary criticism? Among other things, to guide the reader past his or her resistance." (www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=186047)
- Dan Chiasson recommends an accessible poet that "you could recommend to your cousin at a barbeque and, the next day, teach in a seminar for majors" (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=178562)
- June Jordan ruminates on the 'inaccessible' canon: "Trying to understand the system responsible for every boring, inaccessible, irrelevant, derivative and pretentious poem that is glued to the marrow of required readings in American classrooms, or trying to understand the system responsible for the exclusion of every hilarious, amazing, visionary, pertinent and unforgettable poet from National Endowment of the Arts grants and from national publications, I come back to Walt Whitman." (www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=178489)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
"The Righteous Skeptic's Guide to Reading Poetry"
Part 1 of a 5 part series I'm doing for The Atlantic on contemporary poetry.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Zizek on Democracy Now
"we, the leftists, we have no right to have this arrogant view that intolerant people [anti-immigrationists in Germany; Tea Party here] are horrible...we should ask the question how we enable it"
Questioning Audience in "New American Poets": A Public Space
In his intro to some "New American Poets" in Issue 11 of A Public Space, Stephen Burt asks, "When we ask how to connect a poem to an idea about poetry in general, we are also asking about an implied author, and about her implied audience. For whom, and to whom, does each poet write?"
It's good to hear Burt contextualizing his usually-perceptive questions about speaker with regard to audience. For about forty years now, poets and critics have built bodies of work on ideas about "speaker" (whether slippery or stable). It seems to me that this focus on speaker has overshadowed more urgent rhetorical issues, and that it has also run parallel to the overshadowing of the commons in practically every other arena (from the privatization of the amount of carbon in the sky to the privatization of the human genome). It makes sense that our (poems'; poets') civic antennae would be eroded in an era like this one; it makes sense, now, that we might want to rehabilitate them.
Burt begins with the seemingly solid fact that "good poems try to be as unlike one another as possible," and "We do not want poems to be wholly like one another—we take an interest in how they diverge—for the same reasons that we do not want our friends, our acquaintances, to be too much alike" (78). But what if this quest for "being-unlike" (rather than being-differently-with/within) mirrors all too perfectly the 'consumer choice' ideology of the 90's and 2000's? Are these poems offering, in fact, very similar choices, marketed (like brands) under the banner of individualistic difference?
In light of their "imagined audience," it seems to me that the representative poems are still, somehow, VERY akin to each other. Not wanting poems to be "wholly" like one another seems a world away from saying that "good poems try to be as unlike one another as possible." And like or unlike each other in what ways?
If the even "very good" poems in this selection produce difference at the levels Burt identifies—what fundamental sameness might be going unnoticed? (Not whether the poet eats toast or oatmeal or nasi goreng for breakfast, but whether the poem, for the reader, is toast, or oatmeal, or nasi goreng?)
What would great poems do?
*
Burt is absolutely right to suggest that, if the poem "works as an individual poem, it will at once prompt, and frustrate, the best answers we can give."
But what if the poem wants to work, not as an individual poem, but as part of a kind of commons?
In other words: what are the questions?
It's good to hear Burt contextualizing his usually-perceptive questions about speaker with regard to audience. For about forty years now, poets and critics have built bodies of work on ideas about "speaker" (whether slippery or stable). It seems to me that this focus on speaker has overshadowed more urgent rhetorical issues, and that it has also run parallel to the overshadowing of the commons in practically every other arena (from the privatization of the amount of carbon in the sky to the privatization of the human genome). It makes sense that our (poems'; poets') civic antennae would be eroded in an era like this one; it makes sense, now, that we might want to rehabilitate them.
Burt begins with the seemingly solid fact that "good poems try to be as unlike one another as possible," and "We do not want poems to be wholly like one another—we take an interest in how they diverge—for the same reasons that we do not want our friends, our acquaintances, to be too much alike" (78). But what if this quest for "being-unlike" (rather than being-differently-with/within) mirrors all too perfectly the 'consumer choice' ideology of the 90's and 2000's? Are these poems offering, in fact, very similar choices, marketed (like brands) under the banner of individualistic difference?
In light of their "imagined audience," it seems to me that the representative poems are still, somehow, VERY akin to each other. Not wanting poems to be "wholly" like one another seems a world away from saying that "good poems try to be as unlike one another as possible." And like or unlike each other in what ways?
If the even "very good" poems in this selection produce difference at the levels Burt identifies—what fundamental sameness might be going unnoticed? (Not whether the poet eats toast or oatmeal or nasi goreng for breakfast, but whether the poem, for the reader, is toast, or oatmeal, or nasi goreng?)
What would great poems do?
*
Burt is absolutely right to suggest that, if the poem "works as an individual poem, it will at once prompt, and frustrate, the best answers we can give."
But what if the poem wants to work, not as an individual poem, but as part of a kind of commons?
In other words: what are the questions?
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Works in Progress Festival 2010!
If you're in or near Iowa City, or interested, keep tabs on this year's WiP Festival here.
(I'll be doing something—not sure what—Saturday at 6pm, at PS1.)
(I'll be doing something—not sure what—Saturday at 6pm, at PS1.)
Friday, October 1, 2010
Section 3: The Democratic Potential of Form
SECTION III
THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF FORM
(OR, LOVE AS THE CONCEPT THAT COLLAPSES THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE POETIC AND THE POLITICAL AND RISKS LIBERATING US ALL)
NOTE:
In this section, I will shift gears a bit in order to talk about Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri's new book Commonwealth, in which they attempt to lay some of the theoretical foundations for a transition out of capitalism.
First and foremost, Hardt & Negri get play here because I find many of their formulations for politics wonderfully (if implicitly) analogous to poetics, and would like to explore these connections. Most exciting of all, perhaps, is their insistence on rehabbing the word "love" as a political concept. In their Spinozan formulation, love = joy (the increase of our capacity to think and act) + the recognition of an external cause. I am interested: how would this apply to poetry? And how might this help us reformulate a distinction between the poetic and the political?
Where Hardt and Negri are at their most interesting is in their desire to think through the actual "training grounds"-- the new institutions-- that would make up this transition out of capitalism. They do not want to simply overthrow the system, only to have it be replaced by another version of its own logic. Rather, they want to painstakingly create the conditions for new subjectivities, ones that would actually be able to constitute a true democracy. So how might poetry be -- or become -- such a training ground?
Much of the work in this section has been excised, or is not yet written. Think of these pages as stars, in a constellation, in a cloudy sky.
THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF FORM
What are the formal structures with the most democratic potential?
To me it seems like meter, under the rule of Tradition, as it is less recognizable (if not less feelable) by a general public, is a less potentially successful physical mode than those of rhyme and repetition, parallelism....though I am open to argument on this** & think it would be interesting for someone to think it through, using multiple case studies, talking to readers from a wide range of backgrounds, etc. But to me it is at least intuitively clear that it is not meter as such but rhythm that absorbs readers, and that rhythms formed in tension with meter in the English (capital T) Tradition are more absorbing to certain kinds of readers (and, for this very reason, risk excluding certain others). The "common heritage" of meter, as an apology for its democratic potential, strikes me as either naive or irresponsible (though potentially well-meaning).
Equally naive or irresponsible is a kind of poetry of the (academic) left that ignores its context, ignores its duty toward (possible joy of!!) engaging more diverse readerships. This seems to me to be an analogy to authoritarian leftism, in which there are certain gatekeepers who "keep language safe" from violations/violence, creating a very insular network of understanding and losing a true contextual sense of what "violence" actually means. Now, this may be well-intentioned, and I simply point out that, as an inheritor of a (aesthetic) leftist current in poetry (which I believe has contributed both constructively and destructively to the possibilities of a more just or caring language network), I wish to preserve the constructive and single out and leave behind that which obstructs flow; namely, that many of us in the academy too often accept the condition of a small, insular (usually "liberal" and well-educated, and often predominantly white) readership, and that we would do well to imagine and create other kinds of texts and other forms of textual situate-ion.
So if meter-- as well as a kind of insular fetishizing (and consumption) of "difference" prevalent among the academic left-- represent insufficient forms of formal democratic tendencies, then what is our constructive formal innovation for the new century? What are the forms that will invent a new possibility for subjectivities, create subjectivities who would then be more capable of constituting democracy?
I think this is the major question for our generation to think (and do) through, by writing and by talking to one another and through the poetry communities we form. But I will suggest two possibilities, each of which I hope will contribute toward an eventual reconfiguration of our sense of form as such.
1. Collaborative work
2. Children's poetry
I think I have talked some about the former, and would like, actually, to focus here on the latter, as it may seem the more surprising, out-of-left-field (no pun intended) option of the two.
What is so potentially transformative about children's poetry? Well, for one, I think it links back up with this question of form very nicely. If you can think of one defining feature of the children's poem (or story, for that matter) it is its extreme formalism. Take a look at Shel Silverstein, or the limerick! Or the deliberate pace of a picture book.
Almost all children's work takes on forms that are at once immediately-able-to-be-apprehended and allow for "adult" fluctuations (inventiveness) from within. And they place yet another limit on themselves, in terms of vocabulary, and presumption--- if something exceeds a child's capability to conceptually process, it must be articulated in such a way to be intuitively accessible to the child on other levels. This is the wonderful dimension of good children's literature: it connects with the child and exceeds the child's understanding simultaneously. We could say this about good poems in general: they must both connect with us and exceed our understanding.
This seems to me an exciting form (and it is not a "form," such as meter or "sestina," but a category of form---- which is contextual----a contextual constraint placed on formal constraints----- the employment of specific and multiple formal constraints under immense contextual pressure).
Such a poem would be able to connect with the adult and child (and teen / college undergraduate!), and absorb and challenge their understanding simultaneously. It would draw its readers into new ways of thinking and perceiving in language, into new relationships with each other (ah, Harry Potter & Twilight! such potential!), and into new configurations of themselves, training them for a democracy of the future...
(This seems to me to be a totally respectable poetry to write, especially in times of political urgency!)
BIOPOLITICS AND/OR REFORM(AL)ISM
For H&N's clarification of Foucault's notion of biopolitics (the ability of bodies to resist from within biopower (bodies "under the influence" of—controlled and constituted by—the state/multi-national corporation)), we can analogize a poetry that resists ideological formations of language (both its own and that of the associate language network it triggers/exists within) through insisting on the power of bodies. How does this happen, in a poem? One way I think of immediately is music: rhythm in the breath and the chest; sound in the mouth
which may be one reason to remain skeptical of -- tho not reactionary to -- a poetry that foregrounds the visual at the expense of music. This "at the expense of" is huge----because there is no reason music needs to be lost, and it in no way has to be opposed to the visual.
Similarly, we would have to rethink our notions of the visual as non-bodily. Because bodies of words/text are felt visually, as well -- in the eye but also in the viscera of the reader--- as well as constituting the "bodily" dimension of language on the page (as opposed to heard--- which only happens when text passes into the auditory realm).
Poetry, then, has the potential to exist bodily in each realm. There is no reason our resistance from within form cannot be both visually bodily (when on the page) and auditorially bodily (a potential inscripted into the page, as well, but also channeled during readings and performance).
But I do think it is important to ask: of these realms, which is more neglected today? Which is privileged? And does poetry has an obligation to its own neglected realms? (And to resist privilege---
The other way I see biopolitics being relevant is through H&N's reformulation of identity politics as a politics of singularity. The end goal, here, is not to reaffirm but abolish identity as a category. At the same time, H&N are also careful to recognize that identity remains an important mobilizing tool for oppressed groups. A poetry that is biopolitical, then, would have to steer through and out of identity rather than around it. [If H&N urge us, eventually, to become "monsters"--singularities without identity--- poems seem like a pretty great ground for monster-testing!]
But more important, in a biopolitical respect, than any zany formulations I come up with here is the simple statement that poetry is not apart from, but participates in and can help change, structures of power that subordinate some bodies to others on the basis of the racism, classism, sexism, etc.
To participate in this change through poetry is not an oppressive constraint on language (as some poets might fear), but rather a fertile, joyful one!
TOWARD AN ALTERNATE CONCEPTION OF "FORM"
"We have frequently printed the word Democracy....It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history remains to be enacted."
(Whitman, Democratic Vistas)
When I say “the democratic potential of form,” I am also pointing to the democratic potential for form itself as a concept. What if "form" were liberated from its purely textual formulation, and extended to mean the shape language takes (and the shape language makes) within larger bodies of discourse (itself) and subjectivities (person-bodies). A poem, as such, would be any imaginative (loving) intervention/reconfiguration within this social-linguistic body.
Deleuze: " If you believe in the world you precipitate events, however inconspicuous, that elude control, you engender new space-times, however small their surface or volume.... Our ability to resist control, or our submission to it, has to be assessed at the level of our every move."
What if Whitman's famous quote became inverted-----and we had to write democracy before it could, in fact, become?
"Democracy... remains to be enacted, because it has yet to be written."
Adorno: "Language itself speaks only when it speaks not as something alien to the subject but as the subject's own voice"
Perhaps we are still waiting to speak
BIOFORMALISM
Thinking form without context (what I'll call "unsituated form") preserves the opposition between the poetic/aesthetic and the social/political. What I am suggesting is not a subordination of poetic activity to the political (or vice versa), but rather a reconfiguration of our notion of "form" so as to situate poems within language-social matrices, and think their imaginative interventions (insurrections?) from within this as the exact degree to which they are "poetic"---or rather, the degree to which they love. Love, here, in the Spinozian sense-- as joy (the increase in our ability to think and act), externally oriented-- supplants "the poetic" and "the political" as the category of primary interest.
This, I hope, deepens Adorno's conception of poetry as counter-ideology, in that it recognizes how "counter-ideology" has become a recognizable mode of poetry today, and thus risks being absorbed right back into ideology. Poetry should resist its current familiar self, and not be "counter-ideological" but, borrowing again from Hardt & Negri, alter-ideological. That is, it should not simply unmask the ideological but find ways to actually reinvent it---i.e. create language-sites which have a pull that is even more absorptive than ideology , in which diverse subjectivities can actually become-different (rather than simply have their position of knowing dissent confirmed).
This is, probably, the hardest thing ever.
And that's why as poets we need to be bodies of love---or, in other words (to come full circle), healthy.
Love is imagination moving structures. For that to happen-- for poems, bodily, to empower us (as singularities and as "institutions" in H&N's sense)--- the new poem will have to recognize---wake up to---more and more, its situated dimension----how, and who, it engages as readers. The good news is that this does not mean losing any of the intelligence and nuance we have invested in traditional conceptions of form. It will be, rather, an increase in intelligence--- an emotional intelligence, newly rising. This emotional intelligence begins in our lives, in our everyday practices with one another, and, most of all, in our bodies. We also create it through the bodies of our texts. This is an immense responsibility--but an immense joy, too! Because, even if we fail to remember it, poetic practice is in proximity to love.
Remember?
This is the most trivial essay you have ever read.
"...it was just impossible at that time to imagine that anything would come out of it. And that was wrong, a lot came out of it--not out of what I did, but out of what lots and lots of people were doing all over the country. A lot came out of it. So looking back, I think my evaluation of the 'hope" was much too pessimistic..." (Chomsky, 181)
o people people that I know
I sniff your footprints in the snow
sometimes you're buried like a rag
or carried like consumer tag
I'm part of that, I'm like a dad!
of world of world the falling snow
but purer still, the infidel
who loves and loves to overthrow
the tiny dogs within my heart
who teach and ruff! and make small art
you've got a helluva a leash, mister
to bind and bound, and take part
If you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master. But even so, tell me, how will you go on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Eh?
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF FORM
(OR, LOVE AS THE CONCEPT THAT COLLAPSES THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE POETIC AND THE POLITICAL AND RISKS LIBERATING US ALL)
NOTE:
In this section, I will shift gears a bit in order to talk about Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri's new book Commonwealth, in which they attempt to lay some of the theoretical foundations for a transition out of capitalism.
First and foremost, Hardt & Negri get play here because I find many of their formulations for politics wonderfully (if implicitly) analogous to poetics, and would like to explore these connections. Most exciting of all, perhaps, is their insistence on rehabbing the word "love" as a political concept. In their Spinozan formulation, love = joy (the increase of our capacity to think and act) + the recognition of an external cause. I am interested: how would this apply to poetry? And how might this help us reformulate a distinction between the poetic and the political?
Where Hardt and Negri are at their most interesting is in their desire to think through the actual "training grounds"-- the new institutions-- that would make up this transition out of capitalism. They do not want to simply overthrow the system, only to have it be replaced by another version of its own logic. Rather, they want to painstakingly create the conditions for new subjectivities, ones that would actually be able to constitute a true democracy. So how might poetry be -- or become -- such a training ground?
Much of the work in this section has been excised, or is not yet written. Think of these pages as stars, in a constellation, in a cloudy sky.
THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF FORM
What are the formal structures with the most democratic potential?
To me it seems like meter, under the rule of Tradition, as it is less recognizable (if not less feelable) by a general public, is a less potentially successful physical mode than those of rhyme and repetition, parallelism....though I am open to argument on this** & think it would be interesting for someone to think it through, using multiple case studies, talking to readers from a wide range of backgrounds, etc. But to me it is at least intuitively clear that it is not meter as such but rhythm that absorbs readers, and that rhythms formed in tension with meter in the English (capital T) Tradition are more absorbing to certain kinds of readers (and, for this very reason, risk excluding certain others). The "common heritage" of meter, as an apology for its democratic potential, strikes me as either naive or irresponsible (though potentially well-meaning).
Equally naive or irresponsible is a kind of poetry of the (academic) left that ignores its context, ignores its duty toward (possible joy of!!) engaging more diverse readerships. This seems to me to be an analogy to authoritarian leftism, in which there are certain gatekeepers who "keep language safe" from violations/violence, creating a very insular network of understanding and losing a true contextual sense of what "violence" actually means. Now, this may be well-intentioned, and I simply point out that, as an inheritor of a (aesthetic) leftist current in poetry (which I believe has contributed both constructively and destructively to the possibilities of a more just or caring language network), I wish to preserve the constructive and single out and leave behind that which obstructs flow; namely, that many of us in the academy too often accept the condition of a small, insular (usually "liberal" and well-educated, and often predominantly white) readership, and that we would do well to imagine and create other kinds of texts and other forms of textual situate-ion.
So if meter-- as well as a kind of insular fetishizing (and consumption) of "difference" prevalent among the academic left-- represent insufficient forms of formal democratic tendencies, then what is our constructive formal innovation for the new century? What are the forms that will invent a new possibility for subjectivities, create subjectivities who would then be more capable of constituting democracy?
I think this is the major question for our generation to think (and do) through, by writing and by talking to one another and through the poetry communities we form. But I will suggest two possibilities, each of which I hope will contribute toward an eventual reconfiguration of our sense of form as such.
1. Collaborative work
2. Children's poetry
I think I have talked some about the former, and would like, actually, to focus here on the latter, as it may seem the more surprising, out-of-left-field (no pun intended) option of the two.
What is so potentially transformative about children's poetry? Well, for one, I think it links back up with this question of form very nicely. If you can think of one defining feature of the children's poem (or story, for that matter) it is its extreme formalism. Take a look at Shel Silverstein, or the limerick! Or the deliberate pace of a picture book.
Almost all children's work takes on forms that are at once immediately-able-to-be-apprehended and allow for "adult" fluctuations (inventiveness) from within. And they place yet another limit on themselves, in terms of vocabulary, and presumption--- if something exceeds a child's capability to conceptually process, it must be articulated in such a way to be intuitively accessible to the child on other levels. This is the wonderful dimension of good children's literature: it connects with the child and exceeds the child's understanding simultaneously. We could say this about good poems in general: they must both connect with us and exceed our understanding.
This seems to me an exciting form (and it is not a "form," such as meter or "sestina," but a category of form---- which is contextual----a contextual constraint placed on formal constraints----- the employment of specific and multiple formal constraints under immense contextual pressure).
Such a poem would be able to connect with the adult and child (and teen / college undergraduate!), and absorb and challenge their understanding simultaneously. It would draw its readers into new ways of thinking and perceiving in language, into new relationships with each other (ah, Harry Potter & Twilight! such potential!), and into new configurations of themselves, training them for a democracy of the future...
(This seems to me to be a totally respectable poetry to write, especially in times of political urgency!)
BIOPOLITICS AND/OR REFORM(AL)ISM
For H&N's clarification of Foucault's notion of biopolitics (the ability of bodies to resist from within biopower (bodies "under the influence" of—controlled and constituted by—the state/multi-national corporation)), we can analogize a poetry that resists ideological formations of language (both its own and that of the associate language network it triggers/exists within) through insisting on the power of bodies. How does this happen, in a poem? One way I think of immediately is music: rhythm in the breath and the chest; sound in the mouth
which may be one reason to remain skeptical of -- tho not reactionary to -- a poetry that foregrounds the visual at the expense of music. This "at the expense of" is huge----because there is no reason music needs to be lost, and it in no way has to be opposed to the visual.
Similarly, we would have to rethink our notions of the visual as non-bodily. Because bodies of words/text are felt visually, as well -- in the eye but also in the viscera of the reader--- as well as constituting the "bodily" dimension of language on the page (as opposed to heard--- which only happens when text passes into the auditory realm).
Poetry, then, has the potential to exist bodily in each realm. There is no reason our resistance from within form cannot be both visually bodily (when on the page) and auditorially bodily (a potential inscripted into the page, as well, but also channeled during readings and performance).
But I do think it is important to ask: of these realms, which is more neglected today? Which is privileged? And does poetry has an obligation to its own neglected realms? (And to resist privilege---
The other way I see biopolitics being relevant is through H&N's reformulation of identity politics as a politics of singularity. The end goal, here, is not to reaffirm but abolish identity as a category. At the same time, H&N are also careful to recognize that identity remains an important mobilizing tool for oppressed groups. A poetry that is biopolitical, then, would have to steer through and out of identity rather than around it. [If H&N urge us, eventually, to become "monsters"--singularities without identity--- poems seem like a pretty great ground for monster-testing!]
But more important, in a biopolitical respect, than any zany formulations I come up with here is the simple statement that poetry is not apart from, but participates in and can help change, structures of power that subordinate some bodies to others on the basis of the racism, classism, sexism, etc.
To participate in this change through poetry is not an oppressive constraint on language (as some poets might fear), but rather a fertile, joyful one!
TOWARD AN ALTERNATE CONCEPTION OF "FORM"
"We have frequently printed the word Democracy....It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history remains to be enacted."
(Whitman, Democratic Vistas)
When I say “the democratic potential of form,” I am also pointing to the democratic potential for form itself as a concept. What if "form" were liberated from its purely textual formulation, and extended to mean the shape language takes (and the shape language makes) within larger bodies of discourse (itself) and subjectivities (person-bodies). A poem, as such, would be any imaginative (loving) intervention/reconfiguration within this social-linguistic body.
Deleuze: " If you believe in the world you precipitate events, however inconspicuous, that elude control, you engender new space-times, however small their surface or volume.... Our ability to resist control, or our submission to it, has to be assessed at the level of our every move."
What if Whitman's famous quote became inverted-----and we had to write democracy before it could, in fact, become?
"Democracy... remains to be enacted, because it has yet to be written."
Adorno: "Language itself speaks only when it speaks not as something alien to the subject but as the subject's own voice"
Perhaps we are still waiting to speak
BIOFORMALISM
Thinking form without context (what I'll call "unsituated form") preserves the opposition between the poetic/aesthetic and the social/political. What I am suggesting is not a subordination of poetic activity to the political (or vice versa), but rather a reconfiguration of our notion of "form" so as to situate poems within language-social matrices, and think their imaginative interventions (insurrections?) from within this as the exact degree to which they are "poetic"---or rather, the degree to which they love. Love, here, in the Spinozian sense-- as joy (the increase in our ability to think and act), externally oriented-- supplants "the poetic" and "the political" as the category of primary interest.
This, I hope, deepens Adorno's conception of poetry as counter-ideology, in that it recognizes how "counter-ideology" has become a recognizable mode of poetry today, and thus risks being absorbed right back into ideology. Poetry should resist its current familiar self, and not be "counter-ideological" but, borrowing again from Hardt & Negri, alter-ideological. That is, it should not simply unmask the ideological but find ways to actually reinvent it---i.e. create language-sites which have a pull that is even more absorptive than ideology , in which diverse subjectivities can actually become-different (rather than simply have their position of knowing dissent confirmed).
This is, probably, the hardest thing ever.
And that's why as poets we need to be bodies of love---or, in other words (to come full circle), healthy.
Love is imagination moving structures. For that to happen-- for poems, bodily, to empower us (as singularities and as "institutions" in H&N's sense)--- the new poem will have to recognize---wake up to---more and more, its situated dimension----how, and who, it engages as readers. The good news is that this does not mean losing any of the intelligence and nuance we have invested in traditional conceptions of form. It will be, rather, an increase in intelligence--- an emotional intelligence, newly rising. This emotional intelligence begins in our lives, in our everyday practices with one another, and, most of all, in our bodies. We also create it through the bodies of our texts. This is an immense responsibility--but an immense joy, too! Because, even if we fail to remember it, poetic practice is in proximity to love.
Remember?
This is the most trivial essay you have ever read.
"...it was just impossible at that time to imagine that anything would come out of it. And that was wrong, a lot came out of it--not out of what I did, but out of what lots and lots of people were doing all over the country. A lot came out of it. So looking back, I think my evaluation of the 'hope" was much too pessimistic..." (Chomsky, 181)
o people people that I know
I sniff your footprints in the snow
sometimes you're buried like a rag
or carried like consumer tag
I'm part of that, I'm like a dad!
of world of world the falling snow
but purer still, the infidel
who loves and loves to overthrow
the tiny dogs within my heart
who teach and ruff! and make small art
you've got a helluva a leash, mister
to bind and bound, and take part
If you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master. But even so, tell me, how will you go on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Eh?
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Interlude
INTERLUDE
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE REALM OF NOT UNDERSTANDING; OR, JOY
A joyful poetry is able to do all things. It can get almost anybody to read it, cause it's got that much (& that kind) of energy.
It doesn't have to be shallow. In fact, it can't be. Joy is deep --- it comes from there. (A kind of duende.)
Joy motivates people to read. When it goes somewhere terrifying, it can take you. You trust it.
(No one trusts the person who is shouting as if the world is ending, even (& especially) when it is.)
So you shout as if it is just beginning. You make it begin. (Where do you get this kind of energy? How does it happen?)
Like when you're in a room and someone's being negative and wouldn't it be so much more interesting (and difficult) to imagine a way out.
(Esp. cause all the absurd stuff is there.)
I find this emotional intelligence rare & the true brilliance of any time. I see it often in poems, but sometimes I see other kinds of "intelligence" that seem to me pretty dumb.
We don't bend down enough.
What a poet who can see everything clearly & still keep afloat & moving quick, without sacrificing depth!
For the language and for the approaching language and for those approaching the approaching language | and for the place in which it is read
and for the places, esp., in which it won't be
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE REALM OF NOT UNDERSTANDING; OR, JOY
A joyful poetry is able to do all things. It can get almost anybody to read it, cause it's got that much (& that kind) of energy.
It doesn't have to be shallow. In fact, it can't be. Joy is deep --- it comes from there. (A kind of duende.)
Joy motivates people to read. When it goes somewhere terrifying, it can take you. You trust it.
(No one trusts the person who is shouting as if the world is ending, even (& especially) when it is.)
So you shout as if it is just beginning. You make it begin. (Where do you get this kind of energy? How does it happen?)
Like when you're in a room and someone's being negative and wouldn't it be so much more interesting (and difficult) to imagine a way out.
(Esp. cause all the absurd stuff is there.)
I find this emotional intelligence rare & the true brilliance of any time. I see it often in poems, but sometimes I see other kinds of "intelligence" that seem to me pretty dumb.
We don't bend down enough.
What a poet who can see everything clearly & still keep afloat & moving quick, without sacrificing depth!
For the language and for the approaching language and for those approaching the approaching language | and for the place in which it is read
and for the places, esp., in which it won't be
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Section 2: Engage! (Poetry and Power)
SECTION II
ENGAGE!
(POETRY AND POWER)
"I mean, I do something basically less important-- it is, in fact....it's extremely important for people with power not to let anybody understand this, to make them think there are big leaders around who somehow get things going, and then what everybody else has to do is follow them. That's one of the ways of demeaning people, and degrading them, and making them passive. I don't know how to overcome this exactly, but it's really something people ought to work on." (Chomsky, 321-322)
one of the principal | big big | tasks of a poet today, as I see it | is to not demean people
now | there are many ways of not demeaning | of "activating" | and I think one way that the contemporary poetry community succeeds very well is on a purely textual level | i.e. there are many really interesting texts that are just fundamentally concerned with activating language | keeping it from closing down. This is a huge kind of activity
but then the question becomes | how can we more often (& deeply) pair this with a willingness to engage with (be engaging to!) different readerships | i.e. what if this kind of language-activation was more broadly and multiply situated | now | this is a problem of community as much as it is one of text | but as writers & readers & people | in the poetry community | we can approach the problem from all angles
and I think people are (rightly) afraid of writing something absorbing precisely because it would risk making its readers passive | and here's a sort of big paradox we run into | which is how can something be absorbing | i.e. completely grab the reader | and also make them active
I think it's an easy opposition to re-enforce | which is exactly what's happened | i.e. I'll either write dense complicated language that forces its reader to be active | or I'll give in and write something "entertaining" or (worse) "reductive" | but there are ways of becoming absorbed in the process of disruption (c.f. Bernstein, Artifice of Absorption). Now that's exactly what we're looking for
but I think we're in a different time now, and more is actually possible. Because I think poets are pretty absorbed in a particular rhetorical form of absorption in disruption right now, and there is quite a large counter-mainstream that I think has its foundations in exactly that procedure--- quite a few sub camps and styles, as well as all sorts of stuff that doesn't fit at all -- but what's missing, I think, is a really compelling call to write in a way that's more widely (and multiply) legibly complex ---- to ---- carefully, joyously, interestingly --- expand and rethink poetry audience & place within the community ---- and that requires a different kind of focus on these terms "absorption" & "disruption"
we might call this "disrupting (self)absorption in disruption by being absorbingly disruptive"
!!
or just -- engaging
"Now, you can ride the crest of the wave and try to use it to get power, which is the standard thing, or you can ride the crest of the wave because you're helping people that way, which is another thing. But the point is, it's the wave that matters" (324, Chomsky)
there are all kinds of possibilities that poetry simply all-the-time has its blinders on to
and it moves sluggishly (who can see that quickly????)
through what-it-is, to what else it could be...
all of us have to contend with that from within our own body of work
lest we become cliches of ourselves
it sounds easy
but it's of course immensely difficult (as you know!)
because as we try to carve out these spaces within language that DO feel new and true
we grasp what is new and true about them
and de-activate it (by immediately trying to replicate our success)
this is just completely how power works
and so poetic language provides a crucial analog for political work
in terms of how to keep power from consolidating
& what the specific obstacles are to that
which is the point
they're always specific
they're rotational
even now they get away
(take back over)
okay?
"that is just completely how power works"
so at the moment of the poem giving up power
(Spicer)
it gets it back but as the power of a wave rather than the rider
"Or take a look at the intellectual left, the people who ought to be involved in the kinds of things we're doing here. If you look at the academic left, say, it's mired in intricate, unintelligible discourse of some crazed post-modernist variety, which nobody can understand, including the people involved in it--but it's really good for careers and that sort of thing. That again pulls a ton of energy into activities which have the great value that they are guaranteed not to affect anything in the world, so therefore they're very useful for the institutions to support and to tolerate and to encourage people to get involved with." (Chomsky, 328)
making something strange
& legible
legibly strange
rather than elaborately cloaked and "interesting"
"your interesting friend isn't interesting"
complex thinking and feeling in simple strange language
:
language strange and complex and simple
easily apprehensible / felt
difficultly thought
unknown
"Incidentally, I should say that my own political writing is often denounced from both the left and the right for being non-theoretical--and that's completely correct. But it's exactly as theoretical as anyone else's, I just don't call it "theoretical," I call it "trivial"--which is in fact what it is. I mean, it's not that some of these people whose stuff is considered "deep theory" and so on don't have some interesting things to say. Often they have very interesting things to say. But it's nothing you couldn't say at the level of a high school student, or that a high school student couldn't figure out if they had the time and support and a little bit of training.
I think people should be extremely skeptical when intellectual life constructs structures which aren't transparent--because the fact of the matter is that in most areas of life, we just don't understand anything very much." (Chomsky, 229)
Be very skeptical of my poetry.
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
ENGAGE!
(POETRY AND POWER)
"I mean, I do something basically less important-- it is, in fact....it's extremely important for people with power not to let anybody understand this, to make them think there are big leaders around who somehow get things going, and then what everybody else has to do is follow them. That's one of the ways of demeaning people, and degrading them, and making them passive. I don't know how to overcome this exactly, but it's really something people ought to work on." (Chomsky, 321-322)
one of the principal | big big | tasks of a poet today, as I see it | is to not demean people
now | there are many ways of not demeaning | of "activating" | and I think one way that the contemporary poetry community succeeds very well is on a purely textual level | i.e. there are many really interesting texts that are just fundamentally concerned with activating language | keeping it from closing down. This is a huge kind of activity
but then the question becomes | how can we more often (& deeply) pair this with a willingness to engage with (be engaging to!) different readerships | i.e. what if this kind of language-activation was more broadly and multiply situated | now | this is a problem of community as much as it is one of text | but as writers & readers & people | in the poetry community | we can approach the problem from all angles
and I think people are (rightly) afraid of writing something absorbing precisely because it would risk making its readers passive | and here's a sort of big paradox we run into | which is how can something be absorbing | i.e. completely grab the reader | and also make them active
I think it's an easy opposition to re-enforce | which is exactly what's happened | i.e. I'll either write dense complicated language that forces its reader to be active | or I'll give in and write something "entertaining" or (worse) "reductive" | but there are ways of becoming absorbed in the process of disruption (c.f. Bernstein, Artifice of Absorption). Now that's exactly what we're looking for
but I think we're in a different time now, and more is actually possible. Because I think poets are pretty absorbed in a particular rhetorical form of absorption in disruption right now, and there is quite a large counter-mainstream that I think has its foundations in exactly that procedure--- quite a few sub camps and styles, as well as all sorts of stuff that doesn't fit at all -- but what's missing, I think, is a really compelling call to write in a way that's more widely (and multiply) legibly complex ---- to ---- carefully, joyously, interestingly --- expand and rethink poetry audience & place within the community ---- and that requires a different kind of focus on these terms "absorption" & "disruption"
we might call this "disrupting (self)absorption in disruption by being absorbingly disruptive"
!!
or just -- engaging
"Now, you can ride the crest of the wave and try to use it to get power, which is the standard thing, or you can ride the crest of the wave because you're helping people that way, which is another thing. But the point is, it's the wave that matters" (324, Chomsky)
there are all kinds of possibilities that poetry simply all-the-time has its blinders on to
and it moves sluggishly (who can see that quickly????)
through what-it-is, to what else it could be...
all of us have to contend with that from within our own body of work
lest we become cliches of ourselves
it sounds easy
but it's of course immensely difficult (as you know!)
because as we try to carve out these spaces within language that DO feel new and true
we grasp what is new and true about them
and de-activate it (by immediately trying to replicate our success)
this is just completely how power works
and so poetic language provides a crucial analog for political work
in terms of how to keep power from consolidating
& what the specific obstacles are to that
which is the point
they're always specific
they're rotational
even now they get away
(take back over)
okay?
"that is just completely how power works"
so at the moment of the poem giving up power
(Spicer)
it gets it back but as the power of a wave rather than the rider
"Or take a look at the intellectual left, the people who ought to be involved in the kinds of things we're doing here. If you look at the academic left, say, it's mired in intricate, unintelligible discourse of some crazed post-modernist variety, which nobody can understand, including the people involved in it--but it's really good for careers and that sort of thing. That again pulls a ton of energy into activities which have the great value that they are guaranteed not to affect anything in the world, so therefore they're very useful for the institutions to support and to tolerate and to encourage people to get involved with." (Chomsky, 328)
making something strange
& legible
legibly strange
rather than elaborately cloaked and "interesting"
"your interesting friend isn't interesting"
complex thinking and feeling in simple strange language
:
language strange and complex and simple
easily apprehensible / felt
difficultly thought
unknown
"Incidentally, I should say that my own political writing is often denounced from both the left and the right for being non-theoretical--and that's completely correct. But it's exactly as theoretical as anyone else's, I just don't call it "theoretical," I call it "trivial"--which is in fact what it is. I mean, it's not that some of these people whose stuff is considered "deep theory" and so on don't have some interesting things to say. Often they have very interesting things to say. But it's nothing you couldn't say at the level of a high school student, or that a high school student couldn't figure out if they had the time and support and a little bit of training.
I think people should be extremely skeptical when intellectual life constructs structures which aren't transparent--because the fact of the matter is that in most areas of life, we just don't understand anything very much." (Chomsky, 229)
Be very skeptical of my poetry.
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Section 1: Health (A Lecture)
Sekiso Osho asked, "How can you proceed on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole?" Another eminent teacher of old said, "You, who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole, although you have entered the Way you are not yet genuine. Proceed on from the top of the pole, and you will show your whole body in the ten directions."
"Consider yourself addressing an audience with considerable knowledge of poetry, both practice and theory, both contemporary and historical."
(University of Iowa MFA Exam prompt, 2009)
"Its social substance is precisely what is spontaneous in it, what does not simply follow from the existing conditions at the time..."
(Theodor Adorno, On Lyric Poetry and Society)
"They will be buried by laughter."
(Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth)
I will be addressing an audience with considerable knowledge.
As a member of this audience, I know that we can often have a difficult time seeing the unknown.
(And if the unknown is, in this case, an audience without considerable knowledge?)
SECTION I
HEALTH
a lecture
1
You see there are a few things we need to talk about | but what I am going to start with here | is local poetry | because as of now local poetry is looked down on | when I think | it should be the opposite
how does poetry work | in today’s institutions you may ask | one publishes a book of poetry or two and that qualifies you | for certain occupations in which you are encouraged to write more poetry | all of this poetry | is available more or less widely | and your name can be increasingly known | and this helps you be a “successful poet” | now
if you are an “unsuccessful poet” | or just a person | you write but maybe | only those immediately around you | say in your community | hear it | you are not successful | maybe | because you are speaking to non-poets | other people around you | local concerns | things in your town | I don’t know | but you do not write for national contests etc.
what might we value | about this devalued brand
how might it | be important
because it can’t be important just by virtue of being "lesser" | (in quality) | (whose) | but rather | where is the good work that goes unwritten | that is yet to be written | might this be an important kind of work | how might it be important
for one it might resist certain habits of address | or non-address | "rhetorical aphasia" | of the so-called mainstream | or streams | that is | it might address itself differently | which could be useful | if we consider address | a useful issue | I for one | am sometimes bored with the concerns | of the poetry community | not that they aren’t | interesting | but that, sometimes | they don’t have enough limits to make them exciting | sustainably | in terms | of health
what is health | this is a good question | this is the second thing I want to talk about | what is health | and what does it mean | for poets | right now I think for many people it means | being unhealthy | which I think makes for “good poems” | but maybe | unhealthy poems | what do we want | a poem to do
a local healthy poetry | would not assume it is more important | than you | its appeal would be generous | first and foremost | this would be cool | and interesting
how does one be generous | in a poem | what do you have to give | why do we want that | from a poem | for a poem
perhaps we are thinking of the poem’s health here
2
this leads us somewhere interesting | that is | it leads us | out of the poem | or should i say | further in | the poem | is also led out of itself | why | is it healthy for the poem to be led out of itself | and what does being let out of itself | mean
for one | it would mean changing | this talk would have to maybe at a certain point | stop looking as it now does | and sounding as it now does | and it would have to change in terms of its sound and tone i guess | and this would hold some readers’ interest | but maybe not others' | i.e. people who like poems | may like this game of change | people who get frustrated with poems | may not | but it could also change in such a way as to grab both | now | the question remains | or actually grows stronger | how does the poem change | in a way that is healthy | the second point
is related to this | “being let out of itself“ | i.e. into the world | i.e. | how does a poem do that
this may be a question | of where the poem comes from | or how it is situated
this is an old question, too, I think | but let’s ask it | differently
what can a poem do | today | in our world
what is it doing
right now i believe | as one who writes poems | it exists as a kind of checkpoint it is a living checkpoint | in language | through which some pass | and gain power | some of this power | is social | though it happens in language | it is very powerful this power
some of the power | is negative | that is | it undoes the power of language | and invests it in something else | it deposes language | now | the fact of this | is very cool | but something that also passes | back into the first kind of power almost instantly | woooooooo
what to do about that | is i think | the question i am asking
and i think it really has to do with audience | with address | with where this is headed | this is something i think that certain bodies of philosophy and poetry have dealt with | pretty insufficiently | or rather | new forms have not yet found their way into power | also | because it’s a tough thing | i.e. how would that look to have true negative power in power | i think this is also | a question people have been asking | trying to do | only to fail and have it slip straight back | there are many | many people i like reading | people who are directly invested in this idea and maybe pay less attention
to their situate-ion
generally | still | i do think the dream | for me | maybe for you i don’t know | i am suggesting this | is that i could write a kind of poetry | that my high school students could be equally (tho differently) moved by | enjoy | feel empowered by
perhaps the negative power | the real negative power | negative power that can take power | whatever | let’s just have some of the non-poets | non power holders involved | speaking | reading | included | and there are many who are invested in this too | only | they're not here | i.e. this is a power organism | designed to infiltrate | itself | you see | who would reasonably | be interested in this | except those seeking power | ok | so here we are | there is this other idea
that power is not “bad” | that good folks need to take it | i think there is much truth to this | i distrust it | but i also trust it in a certain way | the problem is of course “good” | i think | children are good
are we to write for children?
3
a healthy poem | does not care how good it sounds
but loves | when it sounds good
similarly | i teach better | when i forget the dumb stuff | i just did | but remember | if i just sounded good | my students like that | a poem likes
when it is healthy | it likes to move | poems like exercise | they like being vulnerable | they like being said | some people
are afraid to say their poems | as if the poem will get angry at them | as if they could say it “wrong” | this is | of course | what you always do | i.e. fuck up | you are always fucking up | your poems | but then you are there and can bend everything back and then something has just happened
I was telling someone the other night that I like high school students | because they have developed their bullshit detector for other people | quite well | but they have not yet | fully developed it for themselves | so as an instructor | one can point out their bullshit quite easily | the occasions often present themselves | and the students like that | because you are doing their favorite thing | their new favorite thing | you can even turn bullshit calling | on yourself | which is quite impressive to them | that everyone is full of shit | even their teacher | so doing something wrong | is always instructive
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
Monday, September 27, 2010
New Series of Posts
About a year ago, as a 2nd-year student in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop MFA program, I was required to write a 10-15 page essay articulating my "poetics."
I think that this might be a good forum in which to post my response. If it were today, I might formulate some things differently (or more specifically), but the early sketching out of the problematic/desires I find myself writing into is there (I'll try to update/footnote/extend some things in the comments section). The whole exercise is maybe interestingly symptomatic, too, of what it means to write and exist ambivalently (/amorously) within the particular institution of the Iowa Writers' Workshop; I imagine that this is both usefully representative and divergent from the experience of students in other MFA programs, poets writing in the contemporary US, and others' within the Iowa program itself—so I'd welcome all those other perspectives into the fold. That said, my approach was to try to imagine ways out of the ideology of contemporary American poetry, as I experienced it. What was deemed impossible, within its borders? Wasn't that, in some respect, exactly what we wanted to be trying to do?
The essay comes in three sections, with an appendix (and an intermission!), but there are natural breaks—I'll try to post it so you can have a sense for the pacing.
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
I think that this might be a good forum in which to post my response. If it were today, I might formulate some things differently (or more specifically), but the early sketching out of the problematic/desires I find myself writing into is there (I'll try to update/footnote/extend some things in the comments section). The whole exercise is maybe interestingly symptomatic, too, of what it means to write and exist ambivalently (/amorously) within the particular institution of the Iowa Writers' Workshop; I imagine that this is both usefully representative and divergent from the experience of students in other MFA programs, poets writing in the contemporary US, and others' within the Iowa program itself—so I'd welcome all those other perspectives into the fold. That said, my approach was to try to imagine ways out of the ideology of contemporary American poetry, as I experienced it. What was deemed impossible, within its borders? Wasn't that, in some respect, exactly what we wanted to be trying to do?
The essay comes in three sections, with an appendix (and an intermission!), but there are natural breaks—I'll try to post it so you can have a sense for the pacing.
[INTRO] [SECTION I] [SECTION II] [INTERLUDE] [SECTION III]
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Direct Action in the Climate Movement
A Call for Direct Action in the Climate Movement from Bill McKibben of 350.org, Becky Tarbotton of the Rainforest Action Network, and Phil Radford of Greenpeace USA
+ Lady Gaga performing out against Don't Ask Don't Tell.
=
Lady Gaga Direct Action for the Climate Movement (supported by large, dispersed networks of coordinated local action)?
What could she/we do?
+ Lady Gaga performing out against Don't Ask Don't Tell.
=
Lady Gaga Direct Action for the Climate Movement (supported by large, dispersed networks of coordinated local action)?
What could she/we do?
Monday, September 20, 2010
What's the state of American poetry?
Clayton Eshelman, Annie Finch, Ron Silliman, and Danielle Pafunda weigh in in the first installment of a multi-installment feature on Huffington Post.
And some stuff about The Cloud Corporation, which just came through Iowa City, here.
And some stuff about The Cloud Corporation, which just came through Iowa City, here.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Rule The Air
Because the ground doesn't give up its yards without a fight.
That is, until you rewrite the playbook,
change how you see the game, and realize
that when you rule the air, anything is possible.
Rule The Air.
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