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?
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Manureism (or, some manure): A Response
I wrote this directly after I returned from AWP, in response to (and following the form of) Vanessa Place's piece at the Flarf v. Conceptualism panel. I do not know what Manureism is, but sometimes I think I see it places.
flarf is a cake fart.
conceptualism is shit.
what is manure?
TOWARD A COMMUNITY GARDEN
(through, not against, conceptualisms)
1. Conceptualism asks what is poetry.
1. Manureism asks where is poetry.
2. Conceptualism is allegorical. It is about things other than poetry itself.
2. http://gardennotesforrelocalisation.blogspot.com/
3. Conceptualism courts jest, but is not the king's dog.
3. Manure is a wolf dressed up in jester clothing. It cares for sheep.
4. Conceptualism is composed.
4. Manure is composted.
5. Conceptualism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
5. Manureism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
6. Conceptualism is sexy. The penis is a dildo.
6. Manureism = cross-pollination.
7. Conceptualism loves poetry enough to put it out of its misery.
7. Manure is your neighbor (who might annoy you, but, is still there).
8. Conceptualism wants.
8. Manureism eats.
9. Legit.
9. Trying things out.
10. Conceptualism has no answers, but is, instead, interrogative. Through the deployment of multiple strategies that serve to destabilize text (extant or made) via reframed reiterations and multiple sites of rhetorical deployment, conceptualism is neo-Kantian, epistemologically concerned with the ongoing sobject and the instantiation of radical evil, in other words, the affirmative will to evil that manifests the fact of will itself. In other words, the instantiation of that which is consciously contra-textual in the sense of all that has made text make contextual sense, the rendering immaterial of every materiality of poetry. The contra-text being the new con-text, con-, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the sense of being a cunt. Conceptualism is, as the term indicates, primarily a cortical engagement.
10. "Manureism seems like it would have to involve a certain degree of experimentation, like: will this straw insulate or smother this chard? But within a frame, right? Its desire is to nourish, explicitly. If it fails, or if it poisons, which is likely, or if it trips the sensitive intaker out, those are unexpected consequences of a fairly composed experiment. But conceptualism is of course wide open. Wait--is it? Does not having answers indicate openness?"
(Primarily a physical engagement.)
11. Conceptualism is Lacan in a mirror, the discourse of the slave.
11. Manureism is shit on a stick.
12. Conceptualism is Lacanian in the sense of desire by way of the Law by way of the petit objet a. As such. La donne
12. Manureism doesn't need you to have read Lacan. Probably.
13. Flarf plays Cuzin while playing it off, it speaks to people in people-voice okay, it’s the first to suggest titty beer bong hits and butterscotch Jell-O shots, it wants to stay up late and bitch bitch bitch, it might bleed out but nothing’s permanently stained, it surfs like point break without leaving a wake, it goes Louey-Louey and blows O.C. pretty, it would like you to like it, really?, it wants to be kinda Dada but it’s not that fucking desperate, wants to play it black but mostly lays trick pussy.
13. Conceptualism repeats the above.
14. In this sense, conceptualism is a fart.
14. Manure is poop.
15. Ron Silliman does not like conceptualism.
15. Dale Smith likes manure.
16. The best conceptualism is failure.
16. The best manure is neither virtuostic nor failure, though it may be both.
17. Poetry looks like conceptualism.
17. Poetry smells.
Q&A
18. Conceptualism and flarf evade the question of world (/community) peace and global (/local) justice (as ill-formed as it can be). Their stance is too often flatly ironic (sarcasm); a disguised form of earnestness (look at me mom, I get it).
18. Manureism does not evade the question, but engages with it at the level of artifice (linguistic, social, political). Manureism is deep irony: not what else does this mean (pointing to context), but what else might this do? (activating context)
Manureism cannot pass around conceptualism, and may have to go through it.
The two may also work alongside one another, performing different work.
In this sense manureism represents a possibility for love, in poetry.
April 22nd, 2010
*note: Many of the individual writers and work under the terms "flarf" and "conceptualism" might also be "shitty."
Many might be if they were situated differently.
How to sort out waste from waste; the plastic bottle from the apple core (from the banana peel)?
flarf is a cake fart.
conceptualism is shit.
what is manure?
TOWARD A COMMUNITY GARDEN
(through, not against, conceptualisms)
1. Conceptualism asks what is poetry.
1. Manureism asks where is poetry.
2. Conceptualism is allegorical. It is about things other than poetry itself.
2. http://gardennotesforrelocalisation.blogspot.com/
3. Conceptualism courts jest, but is not the king's dog.
3. Manure is a wolf dressed up in jester clothing. It cares for sheep.
4. Conceptualism is composed.
4. Manure is composted.
5. Conceptualism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
5. Manureism employs a variety of techniques that compromise and complicate the question of excess text, of unreadability, of extra-textual narrativity, of the need for and love of categories and the acategorical, of the false and adored divide between praxis and other praxis, addition and subtraction, theory and things with two types of teeth.
6. Conceptualism is sexy. The penis is a dildo.
6. Manureism = cross-pollination.
7. Conceptualism loves poetry enough to put it out of its misery.
7. Manure is your neighbor (who might annoy you, but, is still there).
8. Conceptualism wants.
8. Manureism eats.
9. Legit.
9. Trying things out.
10. Conceptualism has no answers, but is, instead, interrogative. Through the deployment of multiple strategies that serve to destabilize text (extant or made) via reframed reiterations and multiple sites of rhetorical deployment, conceptualism is neo-Kantian, epistemologically concerned with the ongoing sobject and the instantiation of radical evil, in other words, the affirmative will to evil that manifests the fact of will itself. In other words, the instantiation of that which is consciously contra-textual in the sense of all that has made text make contextual sense, the rendering immaterial of every materiality of poetry. The contra-text being the new con-text, con-, as I have pointed out elsewhere, in the sense of being a cunt. Conceptualism is, as the term indicates, primarily a cortical engagement.
10. "Manureism seems like it would have to involve a certain degree of experimentation, like: will this straw insulate or smother this chard? But within a frame, right? Its desire is to nourish, explicitly. If it fails, or if it poisons, which is likely, or if it trips the sensitive intaker out, those are unexpected consequences of a fairly composed experiment. But conceptualism is of course wide open. Wait--is it? Does not having answers indicate openness?"
(Primarily a physical engagement.)
11. Conceptualism is Lacan in a mirror, the discourse of the slave.
11. Manureism is shit on a stick.
12. Conceptualism is Lacanian in the sense of desire by way of the Law by way of the petit objet a. As such. La donne
12. Manureism doesn't need you to have read Lacan. Probably.
13. Flarf plays Cuzin while playing it off, it speaks to people in people-voice okay, it’s the first to suggest titty beer bong hits and butterscotch Jell-O shots, it wants to stay up late and bitch bitch bitch, it might bleed out but nothing’s permanently stained, it surfs like point break without leaving a wake, it goes Louey-Louey and blows O.C. pretty, it would like you to like it, really?, it wants to be kinda Dada but it’s not that fucking desperate, wants to play it black but mostly lays trick pussy.
13. Conceptualism repeats the above.
14. In this sense, conceptualism is a fart.
14. Manure is poop.
15. Ron Silliman does not like conceptualism.
15. Dale Smith likes manure.
16. The best conceptualism is failure.
16. The best manure is neither virtuostic nor failure, though it may be both.
17. Poetry looks like conceptualism.
17. Poetry smells.
Q&A
18. Conceptualism and flarf evade the question of world (/community) peace and global (/local) justice (as ill-formed as it can be). Their stance is too often flatly ironic (sarcasm); a disguised form of earnestness (look at me mom, I get it).
18. Manureism does not evade the question, but engages with it at the level of artifice (linguistic, social, political). Manureism is deep irony: not what else does this mean (pointing to context), but what else might this do? (activating context)
Manureism cannot pass around conceptualism, and may have to go through it.
The two may also work alongside one another, performing different work.
In this sense manureism represents a possibility for love, in poetry.
April 22nd, 2010
*note: Many of the individual writers and work under the terms "flarf" and "conceptualism" might also be "shitty."
Many might be if they were situated differently.
How to sort out waste from waste; the plastic bottle from the apple core (from the banana peel)?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sound Projects
I've gone and created a YouTube channel for a couple sound projects I created back in college.
The first, Anger, is Robert Creeley reading the poem of the same name + instrumental sections from The Downward Spiral.
The first, Anger, is Robert Creeley reading the poem of the same name + instrumental sections from The Downward Spiral.
The second, It (for 66 Voices), is a layering of 66 different people reading overlapping sections of Inger Christensen's book-length poem It. The piece breaks down as follows:
Section I: a 66 line stanza read by 66 voices
Section II: two 33 line stanzas read by 33 voices each
Section III: three 22 line stanzas read by 22 voices each
Section IV: six 11 line stanzas read by 11 voices each
Section V: eleven 6 lines stanzas read by 6 voices each
Section VI: twenty-two 3 line stanzas read by 3 voices each
Section VII: thirty-three couplets read by 2 voices each
Section VIII: sixty-six single lines read by a single voice each
It turned out to be a pretty amazing project.
You can also find It posted on Pinko's Copies.
Section I: a 66 line stanza read by 66 voices
Section II: two 33 line stanzas read by 33 voices each
Section III: three 22 line stanzas read by 22 voices each
Section IV: six 11 line stanzas read by 11 voices each
Section V: eleven 6 lines stanzas read by 6 voices each
Section VI: twenty-two 3 line stanzas read by 3 voices each
Section VII: thirty-three couplets read by 2 voices each
Section VIII: sixty-six single lines read by a single voice each
It turned out to be a pretty amazing project.
You can also find It posted on Pinko's Copies.
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