Workshop! What Is it Good For?

Yes, but what does it mean?

I rather like creative writing workshops. They afford us a glimpse of audience. They give us the opportunity to try some things out in a semi-public setting. But one thing they are not is authoritative or indicative of what’s necessarily going to happen next for any of the writers in them.

In creative writing workshop, because we are all on a journey (as writers), all we can say to each other is what we see at one station, one moment on the journey. We can’t see the arc, the whole trip and where it’s heading. Even if we see several things from a writer, we’re still seeing things from a limited time. Maybe two stations, then. All we have is the opportunity to see what we think are the strongest methods of forward momentum, and these things that might be playing against the momentum. But that is only a guess. Our reactions can only be piecemeal and ad hoc.

It’s a difficult, convoluted balance (non-fiction / fiction / poetry) between enacting and asserting, which is my slightly complicated version of “showing” and “telling.” In many ways all of a written work of art is “telling,” as it’s created out of words, but words have differing tones and textures, some more presentational (chair) and some more abstracted (angry). “Presentational and abstracted” is another, yet another, version of showing and telling.

Show & Tell. We always end up back there for some reason. We’ve been doing it since when, kindergarten? And here we still are. And they’re interrelated. It’s NOT show, don’t tell, it’s Show & Tell. Showing by itself is nothing but tables and chairs. Telling by itself is nothing but assertion.

Along with that, though, our moments together are further complicated by the rushingness of a day, and the air of surety that statements tend to create in workshop (as in: drop the second paragraph / stanza), when, more truthfully, we are all equally journeying toward something that necessarily recedes for each of us—as art is not a destination but a process. All destinations are temporary, and none of them are final.

It’s important to have something we’re writing about. Something that we have to choose. Some subject outside of oneself. And to bring it, as content, up front. What I mean is the occasion of the work of art. Some call it scene. Some call it context. For some people it seems to always equal story or narrative, but it’s not that. It’s the need of a reader to find some center in the work. Even fragments circle a center. An absent center is still a center. Sometimes it’s a conceptual center. An idea the essay / poem / story circles. Sometimes it is images that are drawn from the same site (living room, courtroom, park, train, etc). Sometimes it’s a formal question or a question of form.

But if we say that a part of an essay / poem / story isn’t working, or that it has “missed an opportunity,” we can’t know for sure if it really has—it’s only what we think we’re seeing, what we’re allowed, or are able to see through our participation with the work—which is—what is this work’s contract with the reader, with the world—what is in the balance? In play? At stake? The answer to that question (those questions) is the start.

Psst: Hocquard, Dickman, Eels, Neil Young, and more!

Half a smile then, as there's no book to hold up and wave. Alas.

So, a few little things for Saturday:


1. Cole Swensen's La Presse has just published Jean-Jacques Poucel’s translation of Emmanuel Hocquard’s Conditions of Light. This is a moment to celebrate.

2. The Academy of American Poets has awarded Michael Dickman the James Laughlin Award. I don’t know if this is a moment to celebrate or not, as this is the first I’ve heard of this book. I can’t find anything about it coming out. My guess is that it’ll come out next spring. What’s interesting about this, is that the announcement calls the James Laughlin Award one that “gives $5,000 to the most outstanding second book by an American poet in the previous year.” That “in the previous year” bit should be clarified, because it makes one think that it’s for a book that’s already out, and it’s not. Well, it could be. The rules state that books under consideration have to be accepted for publication in the previous year, and by “previous year” they mean, in this case, April 09 to March 2010. Anyway, it made for a fun moment for the conspiracy theorist in us all, didn’t it? The award committee was composed of Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Major Jackson, and Michael Ryan. And there you have it.

3. Sufjan Stevens has a new EP out (All Delighted People) and there’s also a track circulating (“I Walked”) from his upcoming album (The Age of Adz). Celebrate if you want. I’m neutral on this one.

4. Eels have their third album out in a little over a year. This one is called Tomorrow Morning, and it’s excellent. I’m celebrating. It sounds a bit more like “classic” Eels than the last couple albums did. And it’s certainly the closest to hopeful they (really it’s just a he, called E) have ever sounded, while retaining all the cleverness and dark wit we’ve come to expect and love.

5. Neil Young. What can I say? I admire Neil Young even as I’m very critical of most of his recent albums. And it looks like I’m going to be critical of his new one (it comes out Sept 28) even as I celebrate his restlessness and creative energy. It’s a sonic endeavor, according to reports. He recorded it solo on acoustic guitar on some songs and solo electric guitar on others (and maybe solo organ on others?) and it was produced by Daniel Lanois. Apparently there are all sorts of sound loops and vocal and guitar effects circling through the songs. “Solo” doesn’t mean minimal. It sounds fascinating, but from tour bootlegs I’ve heard, where he premiered several of the songs from it (It’s going to be called Le Noise [get it? Lanois / Le Noise?]), much of the lyrics were along the lines of the sorts of false nostalgia and platitudes about “unconditional love” that have dragged much of his recent music down. There’s no such thing as “unconditional love,” by the way. All love has conditions. Anyway, my hope is that the sound is so amazing I can glaze over the lyric cringe moments.

6. AWP is in DC this coming February and Rae Armantrout will be reading. Cause to celebrate! And she’ll have a new book (Money Shot: another cause to celebrate!) making its premiere there. I can’t wait. AWP has put the full list of presenters and panels online. In case you haven't seen it, you can find it here:

http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2011acceptedevents.php

7. New books from Timothy Donnelly (The Cloud Corporation: it’s excellent, but I’ve only read three or so pages in) and Gustaf Sobin (the MASSIVE and excellent Collected Poems, which I’ve gotten about halfway through) are sitting beside my computer right now, waiting for me to get back to them. It reminds me that for some reason all the new books I have to read are all from boys. As is all the music I’m interested in right now, apparently. I'm looking forward to the next wave.

We'll never know what's in there. And if or not this man is singing to it. It must be the future.

ANACOLUTHON Friday

In honor of a week of pre-semester meetings and the third (second? fourth?) round of budget cuts looming next year, I give you the only reaction I can: the word of the day.

ANACOLUTHON

Definition (from About.com)

An incoherent statement (a type of dysfluency also known as a syntactic blend) or a deliberate rhetorical effect (a figure of speech) created by an abrupt change in a sentence to a second construction inconsistent with the first. Plural: anacolutha.

Etymology:

From the Greek, “inconsistent”


I enjoy the use of ANACOLUTHON for poetic effect. You find it now and then in Martha Ronk’s work, but also here and there in Michael Palmer’s and Norma Cole’s (as well as in the work of others). In fact, Norma Cole used it as a title of a poem. So here you go:


Norma Cole
ANACOLUTHON

Ecce supervacuus . . . —OVID, Tristia

Or you see all of it after all as an accumulation of tone, running, climbing, sliding, the say was burning, we are our day, the ruined fact.

There had been sand in the bed but we made no explanation. We return to the beginning of the organization of the field shaking bits of dried leaf and pine needles out of the blanket.

Picture it one way, then listen closely, there are no apples here, something that reads together shall invade the separate parts of the mind.

We discovered it, why not dance on it? We discovered its sightlessness, the streets clogged with concerns, with a kind of proliferation like mange clogging the intersections and creating a labyrinth blotting out all light, careful reader.

After all, the first images were a name and a house without a frame, and the woman had four eyes, it’s part of the unities, an invention that changes

As we sing memory, memory, over and over, again as before, these piles of cypress burnt not for content but rather a question of spelling.

+   +   + 

Thank you for your time. Live long etc etc.

We All Survive For A While And Then We Don't

Yes, but will any of us survive the coming zombie apocalypse?

So I’m sure you’ve heard about Anis Shivani’s Huffington Post pieces on over-rated writers and journals that might survive the Internet. If you haven’t, a quick google can get you to them. Lists such as these are a gamble, because they can be initially exciting, but then start to wear thin as the idea keeps playing out, and one has to decide why these lists are continuing to be created.

Still, a lot of people got excited by the list of over-rated writers. Which caused me to go to my bookshelf to see if I could make a list. I decided not to make a list of over-rated poets, as I got myself all twisted up with questions such as “over-rated by whom?” and “what does it mean to be ‘rated’ as a poet anyway?” So I looked for books I’ve thought were excellent by people who are older than I am (or more deceased than I am) who I don’t see talked about much, or as much as I would think, looking at the work.

Here are some under-rated poets (a very partial list) then, and, again, by under-rated, I simply mean I don’t see them talked about as often as I feel they could be:

William Bronk
Norma Cole
Wayne Dodd
Claire Bateman
Kenneth Fearing
Laura Jensen
Bin Ramke
Martha Ronk
Gustaf Sobin
Rosmarie Waldrop

Sorry, the canon is full.

Speaking of surviving: then there’s Shivani’s list of 17 literary journals that “might” survive the Internet. The list thing seems to be working for Huffington Post readers, I guess. But I find something kind of easy about making them, and rather disingenuous about the whole thing. Shivani and I had a brief and pleasant email exchange a couple months ago, and he said at that time he wanted to get people talking. Lists, apparently, are the way.

This list of the 17 that might survive is similar to his other lists. It seems rather arbitrary and with a hint of ulterior motives. And, oddly enough, the easiest two literary journals to choose as potential survivors, Poetry Magazine and American Poetry Review, are not on the list (the claim I guess, would be that they are poetry journals, not literary journals, but even so, to narrow the list as he has does not give a very clear picture or the whole). (And also, they’re not university-based. So why is this university base so interesting to Shivani?)

Not to mention the aesthetic bias. Yes, these 17 literary journals might well “survive” (by which I believe he means “will still exist in print editions”), but they’re also, by and large, what Ron Silliman refers to as “Quietist.” What about jubilat? Or Denver Quarterly? Or Colorado Review? (Or, more recently, journals such as Copper Nickel, that are just starting up) Is it really that he sees a better funding structure (or university involvement) for his 17 or something? How can one tell such things from the outside anyway? Who would’ve thought TriQuarterly was about to go zip before it happened?  We all know that a long history of support at a university does not mean there will be support in the future. Or the other way around.

And what about more experimental, independant, journals like VOLT and Conduit and ForkLift Ohio? These are all very well respected small journals that will last as long as the editors have the energy . . .

It's all a matter of perspective.

So anyway, I don’t have a list. I prefer to think of it as Stephanie G’Schwind does, in a recent interview conducted by Shivani:

+ + +

From Huffington Post:

Shivani: What are the prospects for the long-term viability of the most prestigious literary journals, among which is Colorado Review?

G’Schwind: I think more and more of us will likely migrate from print to online. And while I, like many literary journal editors, love print, I'm not overly concerned about that move. I'll make it if I have to. Fortunately, technology is allowing us to do wonderful and interesting things that mean it doesn't have to be one or the other; a journal can be online and still offer die-hard print lovers the option to subscribe in the traditional way: a paper copy sent through the mail.

Shivani: TriQuarterly, one of the most prestigious literary journals, recently went online--abruptly, taking the literary community by surprise. How do you feel about this?

G’Schwind: It's not the decision to have TriQuarterly go online that was disturbing (the online version recently had a "soft" launch, and it looks quite impressive); it was that the two editors, Susan Hahn and Ian Morris, were not retained. I feel their longtime dedication, expertise, and vision, which inarguably contributed to the success and fine reputation of TriQuarterly, were rather unceremoniously discarded.

+ + +

[Disclosure: I’m partial to Colorado Review, as I’m friendly with several of the editors, including Stephanie G’Schwind and Matthew Cooperman]  The above snippet of conversation reminds me that to “not” survive the Internet isn’t the same as “not” surviving. A journal could go online and stay that way, or perhaps it could go online and become hybrid (as Stephanie suggests), or it could even go back to print at some point.

To not survive the Internet means, really, to be obliterated by it, and I don’t’ see that happening to any literary journals. What I mean is that literary journals are going to be obliterated by economic forces and the priorities of administration officials. And some of those priorities could be funding journals to a higher level, if the journal is tied to some program or initiative that is important to the university.

So, really, what the Huffington Post list of 17 journals is doing is giving some advertizing to some journals, which I’m very sure is welcome by those journals right now. (Which is another reason to read his list with a grain of salt.) But it says nothing about the future.

The future is apples!

Peter Gabriel - The (Recording) Composition Process

Leaf me alone!

Peter Gabriel is going to be performing and speaking on the Guitar Center Sessions tonight (Aug 21) at 9:00 E/P, if you have DIRECTTV, which I don’t. So I’m not going to be watching it. But I did go to the website where they have a video and a free mp3 download of Gabriel on piano performing “Here Comes the Flood.”


I like interviews with musicians and songwriters (and visual artists) because they often get talking about the creative process in ways that writers usually don’t. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe they’re just more forthcoming? Or maybe they’re less intellectual about it?

Whatever it is, there’s a short interview with Gabriel at the website where he gets talking about the recording process, and when I was reading it I instantly thought of the composition process for poetry (of course I did). I like Gabriel’s two camp model (below), as, of course, it’s always a complicated interplay . . . and people are always decamping and switching camps. But I like it nonetheless, as a way to think of oneself or others, to understand how you or others work ("Are you an A or a Zed?" what a nice AWP pick-up line!). And so how do you feel about diversions when you’re in the process of composing a poem? Are they a distraction? Or a gift from Spicer’s Martian Radio?

http://gc.guitarcenter.com/interview/peter-gabriel/

Guitar Center: Some of your songs are densely layered. Do you have all of those pieces in mind before you record or do they reveal themselves as the process unfolds? Do you prefer to record tracks live with a group of musicians or individually on a track-by-track basis?

Peter Gabriel: I think there are two forms of creative energy. One is "energy A," which is an analytical energy where you layer things up track by track, then zoom in and work on little details. The other is "energy Zed," which is a Zen-like performance energy that is spontaneous and improvised and produces a different animal. Both are useful and important. The smart process involves harvesting performances then analyzing them and layering them up. Initially you might just look at rhythm, then maybe you look at melody, then harmony, then timbre. Each time you put down a layer of performance you slow it down and analyze it. Musicians need to be aware of how they work. Sometimes you just need to flip it and do it the other way and see what happens. Working backwards is an exploratory process. I love diversions and I keep on following them, which makes the process a lot longer.

Matthew Zapruder - Come on All You Ghosts

Matthew Zapruder’s Come on All You Ghosts is an achievement, an achievement for where Zapruder's work has gotten, but also an achievement of a way poetry can mean. Different ways of writing are different ways of seeing, and this book is a powerful enactment of one (or several) of those ways of seeing. “I don’t understand but I understand,” as he writes in the poem “Aglow” (below), which is him thinking about Paul Celan, but it’s also a way to understand that aspect of contemporary poetry often called “skittery” or “hybrid” or “Post-Avant,” that includes Zapruder, and so many other poets I like to read. This is a formidable book.

Here, to illustrate a bit of what I’m talking about (though the book is cumulative—it’s very good at the poem by poem level, but it’s different again, and even more powerful, as a book):


Aglow


Hello everyone, hello you. Here we are under this sky.
Where were you Tuesday? I was at the El Rancho Motel
in Gallup. Someone in one of the nameless rooms
was dying, slowly the ambulance came, just another step
towards the end. An older couple asked me
to capture them with a camera, gladly I rose and did
and then back to my chair. I thought of Paul Celan,
one of those poets everything happened to
strangely as it happens to everyone. In German
he wrote he rose three pain inches above the floor,
I don’t understand but I understand. Did writing
in German make him a little part of whoever
set in motion the chain of people talking who pushed
his parents under the blue grasses of the Ukraine?
No. My name is Ukrainian and Ukrainians killed everyone
but six people with my name. Do you understand
me now? It hurts to be part of the chain and feel rusty
and also a tiny squeak now part of what makes
everything go. People talk a lot, the more they do
the less I remember in one of my rooms someone
is always dying. It doesn’t spoil my time is what
spoils my time. No one can know what they’ve missed,
least of all my father who was building a beautiful boat
from a catalogue and might still be. Sometimes I feel him
pushing a little bit on my lower back with a palm
made of ghost orchids and literal wind. Today
I’m holding onto holding onto what Neko Case called
that teenage feeling. She means one thing, I mean another,
I mean to say that just like when I was thirteen
it has been a hidden pleasure but mostly an awful pain
talking to you with a voice that pretends to be shy
and actually is, always in search of the question
that might make you ask me one in return.


When I talk of his achievement, I’m thinking of his ability to embrace content (the dead father, the beloved, friends [some by name and some not], San Francisco), but also his ability to mix tones and levels of diction:

“I hate the phrase ‘inner life’,” he writes plainly, but in another poem he’s writing:

Go we must in search of searching
not very helpfully said the little red any
attached to the golden chain attached to
my wrist. He was no bigger than a
molecule, the chain was a quantum chain.

It’s a fascinating combination that accrues, as we can never be sure, as readers, just where this book is going to be next.

Reufle - Sobin - Donnelly - Zapruder - Armantrout - Freelance Whales

Bookshelf



There are a lot of new books just out, or coming out, this fall.

I’m still reading and enjoying Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems. I’m just about done with it. My finishing it has been complicated by the recent arrival of Gustaf Sobin’s Collected Poems, which I’ve been waiting for ever since I first heard that Talisman would be putting it out, which was a couple years ago. The Ruefle and the Sobin are book excellent books, but they shouldn’t be read together. They just simply don’t mix well.

When I finally wade my way through that dust up, I also have Timothy Donnelly’s The Cloud Corporation and Michael Earl Craig’s Thin Kimono to read, and I’ve gotten word that Matthew Zapruder’s Come on All You Ghosts is on its way. I read section one recently and it looks like he's set himself a great task with this book. I'm really looking forward to it, though I'm having to get over the envy of his ability to name drop Neil Young (on the first page, no less!). I've been trying to do that for years and I just can't do it. I'll keep at it and keep you posted. 

I’ve also just heard that Rae Armantrout’s new book, Money Shot, will be out in early 2011 in time for AWP where she’ll be reading. That’s a big reason to go to AWP right there.


Soundtrack


New Find! I recently stumbled across the band Freelance Whales who sound at times eerily like The Postal Service, or perhaps the younger siblings of Ben Gibbard, full of the slowly waning innocence that one can carry with oneself into the "no longer quite so innocent" years. I’m quite taken with them (“Ghosting” below is one of my favorite cuts from the album, stick with it. The change at 3:10 is worth the wait.)



Freelance Whales
Ghosting

And to prove that they’re just as charming in person:



Freelance Whales at At the Tiny SXSW
Ghosting

And if even that doesn’t sell you, here they are in their native habitat:



Freelance Whales on the Bedford L Subway Platform
Generator – First Floor

Christopher Knowles - Philip Glass

I heard Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach years ago (because David Byrne mentioned it in an interview or somewhere), and never found out that a lot of it was based on text from Christopher Knowles. Coming across some of Knowles’s Typings today, courtesy of G.C. Waldrep (who emailed them to me), has taken me back. So here are several sections of the piece along with some poems from Christopher Knowles (not related to the Einstein).



HOW COULD I SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO YOU


If you know this thing in true. It would be very strange. If you know. If it to know.
On the suit for your kingdom for real ghost throat, if you know, if it is it.
If you say Hi.
If I know that in since we off to the heat to hot too hot to keep us warm.
How could I send my message and your message to you in this how is done for this.
How could I send my of this.
How could I send your messag.



Philip Glass
Einstein On the Beach: Knee Play 1


THE MORNING HAS BEEN BROKEN


The morning has been broken life for on for real.
If it was deeper life for fun. It was to heavy in like that to be so good on the hills.
If it was a scale in like standing up, it was clever off to the ground in this calls for help.
If I am late for excuses to be. It could be a reason.
On to the dry skin.
The morning has been broken life for on for real.
If it was deeper life for fun. It was to heavy in like that be so good on the hills/
If it was a scale in like standing up, it was clever off to the ground in this calls for help.
If I am late for excuses to be. It could be a reason.
On to the dry skin.
The morning has been broken life for on for real.



Philip Glass
Einstein on the Beach: Knee Play 2


YOU KNOW THAT


You know that.
It was a cow who has milk to drink into the crane.
It was a frame picture, in since when you see like that.
The thing is the choice of those things happens then.
In televisions ver into that.
You know that.
It was a cow who has milk to drink into the crane.
It was a frame picture, in since when you see like that.
The thing is the choice of those things happens then.
In televisions ver into that.



Philip Glass
Einstein on the Beach: Knee Play 3 (Jukebox Version )


RADIOS FOR FUN


In the town in which radios in this to know. Be sure to do this.
In the red van of all of those stuff,
masks of those could it self. In viting the whole friends.
On to the table.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
In the town in which radios in this to know. Be sure to do this.
In the red van of all of those stuff,
masks of those could it self. In viting the whole friends.
On to the table.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.
Radios for fun to roast in those plates.,, radios for fun to listen with bo th radios,,...



Philip Glass
Einstein On the Beach: Knee Play 5


PHILADELPHIA FREEDOM


I used to be a boat rower in times in dreams at least to be freaky. Be on your on.
So turn off your taperecorder off and go to sleep. So that why we call so.
Like bad mad sad but you shold be glad to be proud of you.
So this won't wreck and destroy your things to be.
So if your actress no behave to be so.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom. But when you're with my Daddy never is.
I used to be a boat rower in times in dreams at least to be freaky. Be on your on.
So turn off your taperecorder off and go to sleep. So that why we call so.
Like bad mad sad but you shold be glad to be proud of you.
So this won't wreck and destroy your things to be.
So if your actress no behave to be so.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom. But when you're with my Daddy never is.
I used to be a boat rower in times in dreams at least to be freaky. Be on your on.
So turn off your taperecorder off and go to sleep. So that why we call so.
Like bad mad sad but you shold be glad to be proud of you.
So this won't wreck and destroy your things to be.
So if your actress no behave to be so.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom. But when you're with my Daddy never is.
I used to be a boat rower in times in dreams at least to be freaky. Be on your on.
So turn off your taperecorder off and go to sleep. So that why we call so.
Like bad mad sad but you shold be glad to be proud of you.
So this won't wreck and destroy your things to be.
So if your actress no behave to be so.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom. But when you're with my Daddy never is.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom. But when you're with my Daddy never is.
To be announcing the Philadelphia Freedom.

Bill Murray on How to Make Art

The August issue of GQ has an interview with Bill Murray, who is entertaining and fascinating, as usual. The following bit stood out for me, though. It’s about comedy timing, but really it’s about how artistic creation happens, or at least that’s how I read it (though it’s difficult to remember the moment precisely, as I was cheering so loud). It’s a wonderful way to describe artistic composition:


I have developed a kind of different style over the years. I hate trying to re-create a tone or pitch. Saying, “I want to make it sound like I made it sound the last time”? That’s insane, because the last time doesn’t exist. It’s only this time. And everything is going to be different this time. There’s only now. And I don’t think a director, as often as not, knows what is going to play funny anyway. As often as not, the right one is the one that they’re surprised by, so I don’t think that they have the right tone in their head. And I think that good actors always—or if you’re being good, anyway—you’re making it better than the script. That’s your fucking job. It’s like, Okay, the script says this? Well, watch this. Let’s just roar a little bit. Let’s see how high we can go.

But you asked how to get the comic pitch. Well, obviously a lot of it is rhythm. And as often as not, it’s the surprising rhythm. In life and in movies, you can usually guess what someone is going to say—you can actually hear it—before they say it. But if you undercut that just a little, it can make you fall off your chair. It’s small and simple like that. You’re always trying to get your distractions out of the way and be as calm as you can be [breathes in and out slowly], and emotion will just drive the machine. It will go through the machine without being interrupted, and it comes out in a rhythm that’s naturally funny. And that funny rhythm is either humorous or touching. It can be either one. But it’s always a surprise. I really don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.

Man Cursing the Sea — Miroslav Holub

After I posted the poem from Holub’s Vanishing Lung Syndrome the other day, several people commented on the facebook note (my blog imports into facebook) with various interesting things related to Holub. Christopher Salerno suggested the following poem, which I found through a google search (so if there are any errors, please let me know). David Walker tells me that Sagittal Section is out of print, but that this poem, and much of the rest of the book, was reprinted in his selected poems, Intensive Care:

http://www.oberlin.edu/ocpress/Books/Holub_Intensive.htm


Man Cursing the Sea
—Miroslav Holub. (Trans. Stuart Friebert and Dana Habova.)
from Sagittal Section. 1980


Someone
just climbed to the top of the cliffs
and began to curse the sea.

Dumb water, stupid pregnant water,
slow, slimy copy of the sky,
you peddler between sun and moon,
pettifogging pawnbroker of shells,
soluble, loud-mouthed bull,
fertilizing the rocks with your blood,
suicidal sword
dashed to bits on the headland,
hydra, hydrolyzing the night,
breathing salty clouds of silence,
spreading jelly wings
in vain, in vain,
gorgon, devouring its own body,

water, you absurd flat skull of water—

And so he cursed the sea for a spell,
it licked his footprints in the sand
like a wounded dog.

And then he came down
and patted
the tiny immense stormy mirror of the sea.

There you go, water, he said,
and went his way.

The Future Is Being Written. Are You Part of it?

Where do you get off?

A sort of satire:


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=239468

And now, an explosion of a small moment:

The point of the attack is against a minority of the poetry being written today, on behalf of the mainstream. Writing about Kay Ryan’s complete poems (published in 2035, you see), the author, Jason Guriel uses his position twenty-five years in the future to look back on the early poetry of the century (now) to let us know that the disjunctions (etc) associated with the “Ashberians (or the Sillimen or the Dean Youngians . . .)” that typify the period will give way to an age of poems that look and sound a lot like Ryan’s. Kay Ryan, the piece argues, is going to be the voice of the next 25 years.

The tone of the piece aside, he might be right that the poem of the future will look something like Kay Ryan’s poetry (which, if so, I believe will have a lot less to do with Kay Ryan than it will to Rae Armantrout), but I must, once again, stress that the typical poem of right now looks nothing like the poetry of Ashbery-Silliman-Young. All one needs to do is to pick up the three or four largest circulation literary journals, or, better, check out Poetry Daily and Verse Daily for a week and note the modes and methods of the poems there. The poetry typified by Ashbery-Silliman-Young (or, as a female counter [because it fascinates me how writers continually talk about male examples while ignoring equally powerful and appropriate female examples], I propose Armantrout-Hejinian-Ruefle) looks to have little in common until you place it next to the poetry of Kay Ryan, Billy Collins, and, more typical of what is being written by most poets today: Robert Pinsky or Kim Addonizio.

Two things come to my mind when I see this division put forward (and it seems to be put forward a lot, and always by people arguing on behalf of the mainstream, what was once called "Official Verse Culture" and then, more famously, as a sort of prod "School of Quietude").

One, critics don’t have a way to talk about the real mainstream of American poetry without acting like it’s not the mainstream, and as if Ashbery (et al) were the mainstream. In acting as if the mainstream were not the mainstream, in placing it in opposition to this Ashbery/ Silliman/ Young (Armantrout/ Hejinian/ Ruefle!) trio (or sextet!), critics can position it against a large enemy and thereby pitch it as a heroic quest. The way Kay Ryan’s story is being pitched as a version of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (she came from nowhere to the Laureateship!) perhaps, or “The Emperor Has No Clothes” (Her AWP piece is full of insight no one else would dare utter aloud!), when in actuality Kay Ryan’s reputation was built mostly through the strong endorsement of Poetry Magazine, the most visible (to the culture at large) poetry publication in the country, and her laureateship was a political appointment, in the hands of very few. Hers has been less a grass-roots rise than it has a rise through a few powerful advocates.

Two, it could be that the world of Ash-Sil-You / Arm-Hej-Rue is currently a minority position, but a minority position that is growing, or that has, as Tony Hoagland suggests, seeped into the fabric of the time. If this is true (which I’m not certain of, looking at the majority of poems written today), then it does explain the weight of the arguments against it. Poets such as Hoagland see it as something that’s OK in a small measure (he endorses Dean Young and others), but he also sees it as a dangerous “skitteriness” that has no real emotional depth. The barbarians are at the gates, perhaps. Or the writing is on the wall.

I think there’s something to this when I read things such as the recent reviews in The New Yorker of the most recent books by Rae Armantrout and Ann Carson, and a little less recently, but noteworthy nonetheless, the reviews of Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy. All three books are from poets associated with the Ash-Sil-You “side” (which, again, is absurd as a “side,” as, for one, I don’t think Ron Silliman much cares for or feels much affinity with The New York School, represented by Ashbery, and I’m quite certain he doesn’t care much for Dean Young’s work) that have overt, readily apparent, emotional qualities. Such could also be said for Ashbery’s breakthrough (in the mainstream sense, as many experimental poets turn rather to The Tennis Court Oath) book, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. (This could be taken as a wonderful opportunity for a “note to self” for poets in the “experimental” “community.” [!]) Hah!

So all this is to say that if I were to guess (knowing that Guriel’s piece is some sort of satire, even as it, to me at least, makes more points against Ryan as it does against what seems to be its true targets [AWP? Experimental poets? Critics who think Ryan is slight?]), the poetry of the future (twenty five years isn’t enough time, by the way, as many poets writing today will still be writing then—so I suggest we look 50 to 75 years off) will be unrecognizable, or at least as much like any tendencies that are swirling today as, say, William Carlos Williams is like Kay Ryan.

In the future the world will appear three dimensional.

Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook - is now available

A reminder for poets (as writers, as teachers, and as students):

Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook
Edited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

University Of Iowa Press
Paperback, 321 pages
isbn1587299046 (isbn13: 9781587299049)

http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2010-fall/poets-teaching.htm

Very brief essays (two or so pages from each) by: Kazim Ali, Rae Armantrout, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Dan Beachy-Quick, Bruce Beasley, Claire Becker, Jaswinder Bolina, Jenny Boully, Joel Brouwer, ...more Essays by: Kazim Ali, Rae Armantrout, Hadara Bar-Nadav, Dan Beachy-Quick, Bruce Beasley, Claire Becker, Jaswinder Bolina, Jenny Boully, Joel Brouwer, Lily Brown, Laynie Browne, Stephen Burt, Julie Carr, Joshua Clover, Matthew Cooperman, Oliver de la Paz, Linh Dinh, Ben Doller, Sandra Doller, Julie Doxsee, Lisa Fishman, Graham Foust, John Gallaher, Forrest Gander, C. S. Giscombe, Peter Gizzi, Lara Glenum, Kenneth Goldsmith, Johannes Göransson, Noah Eli Gordon, Arielle Greenberg, Richard Greenfield, Sarah Gridley, Anthony Hawley, Terrance Hayes, Eric Hayot, Brian Henry, Brenda Hillman, Jen Hofer, Paul Hoover, Christine Hume, Brenda Iijima, Lisa Jarnot, Kent Johnson, Bhanu Kapil, Karla Kelsey, Aaron Kunin, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Dorothea Lasky, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Ada Limón, Timothy Liu, Sabrina Orah Mark, Dawn Lundy Martin, Kristi Maxwell, Joyelle McSweeney, Christina Mengert, Albert Mobilio, K. Silem Mohammad, Fred Moten, Jennifer Moxley, Laura Mullen, Sawako Nakayasu, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Hoa Nguyen, Jena Osman, D. A. Powell, Kristin Prevallet, Bin Ramke, Jed Rasula, Srikanth Reddy, Barbara Jane Reyes, Boyer Rickel, Elizabeth Robinson, Martha Ronk, Emily Rosko, Prageeta Sharma, Evie Shockley, Eleni Sikelianos, Richard Siken, Ron Silliman, Tracy K. Smith, Juliana Spahr, Sasha Steensen, Peter Streckfus, Cole Swensen, Michael Theune, Tony Trigilio, Spring Ulmer, Karen Volkman, Catherine Wagner, G. C. Waldrep, Mark Wallace, Tyrone Williams, Mark Yakich, Jake Adam York, Stephanie Young, Timothy Yu, Matthew Zapruder, Andrew Zawacki, and Rachel Zucker

Here’s the descriptive content from the website:

“Here is an astonishingly generous gathering of poetic energies and imaginations aimed toward turning more and more classrooms into scenes of transformative engagement with the prime instrument of our humanity, language. The essential work of exploratory play with words is presented in heartening variety in its necessary wildness, surprising pleasures, gravitas, illumination. This book is a catalogue of invention: visionary, pragmatic, surprising, fun—useful because it’s inspiring and vice versa. The poets’ essays are themselves an affirmation of the vital presence of poetry in our culture, proof and promise, Q.E.D.”—Joan Retallack, coeditor, Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary, and author, The Poethical Wager

In response to a lack of source works for wide-ranging approaches to teaching poetry, award-winning poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson has gathered ninety-nine micro-essays for poets, critics, and scholars who teach and for students who wish to learn about the many ways poets think about how a poem comes alive from within—and beyond—a classroom. Not narrowly concerned with how to read poetry or how to write poetry, by virtue of their central concern with teaching poetry, the essays in this fresh and innovative volume address both reading and writing and give teachers and students useful tools for the classroom and beyond.

Divided into four sections—“Reflections / Poetics,” “Exercises / Praxis,” “New Approaches to Poetry Courses and Methodology,” and “Talks / Directives”—Poets on Teaching provides practical, intelligent advice. “Reflections / Poetics” encompasses the most expansive approaches to teaching poetry, where poets reflect variously on what teachers can cultivate in their classrooms. “Exercises / Praxis” consists of hands-on approaches to reading and, especially, writing poems. “New Approaches to Poetry Courses and Methodology” features essays on rethinking specific courses, offering new ideas for course design and pedagogy. “Talks / Directives” contains a series of more informal and conversational discussions geared toward becoming a stronger reader, writer, teacher, and student of poetry.

Poets on Teaching encompasses the most expansive approaches to teaching poetry, where poets reflect variously on what teachers can bring to and cultivate in their classrooms. As Sarah Gridley writes, "The best class will be weirded out—punctured—made eccentric—by the creeping, crawling, flashing, or thundering in of something that is not in the classroom." Exciting and vibrant, this book will be required reading for new and experienced teachers alike.

Last but not least, I’ve included a few quotes from essays here in an earlier post:

http://jjgallaher.blogspot.com/2010/07/poets-on-teaching-sourcebook.html

And who knows, maybe they'll name a road after you . . .

The Comment Stream Is a Terrible Place to Be

This is not Hell, it's Pergatory.

So it looks like the award for the longest comment stream in literature goes to Anis Shivani at the Huffington Post for his list of the most over-rated contemporary writers. I don’t read much fiction, but the few poets he included are the usual suspects (Mary Oliver, John Ashbery, Jorie Graham, Louise Gluck, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds) on such lists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/the-15-most-overrated-con_b_672974.html#s123717

I’ll not rise to their defense (I’ve written about my feelings toward Ashbery’s poetry [it’s excellent] so many times on this blog, that I really have little more to say, other than to wave and smile at such attacks), but I will say this: In the case of Ashbery, certainly, but for some of the others as well, comments such as “ever-rated” miss the point. One could make the argument (with which I would disagree, but I could understand where it’s coming from) that Ashbery’s current work is not at par with some of his earlier work, as Shivani says. But you know, even if that were true, it would be like saying The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney are over-rated. One’s rating is for one’s career, not just the last book. Current work that is not at par with earlier work does not diminish the rating and achievement of the earlier work. Wordsworth’s many years of undistinguished verse does not keep us from talking about Lyrical Ballads as a watershed moment.

It’s the kind of piece tailor-written for a comment stream, and it has achieved its goal. Well over a thousand comments now. What is accomplished by any of it? The post itself has a lot of the qualities we associate with comments from a comment stream: short attacks with a snarky generalization. Is stirring things up in this way at all useful?

Speaking of the potential uses of a comment stream for posterity, here’s a comment from Dan Chiasson from the comment stream of a reposting of the Huffington Post piece I came across on Don Share's facebook page (What's the MLA citation for that?):

“A worse piece of criticism could not be imagined. Jr. high newspaper-level prose, FOX news-level insights. Political Correctness is the enemy of literature? Is this a Dartmouth Review piece from 1988? May all of these writers and all of their friends read and remember it, the next time Anis Shivani comes a-knockin’.”

It's shot through with holes!

As I said above, I think this was something of the goal of the piece, to stir up a comment stream. And what is the reason one might want a thousand comments in a comment stream anyway? We’re not supposed to actually read it, are we? I sure didn’t (well, a glance). What is gained or lost by keeping it going, by commenting there? Or, by having a comment stream at all? I left the Huffington Post comment stream quickly, feeling pretty depressed about the whole thing.

In closely related news, Ron Silliman recently turned off his comment stream (as well as hiding [or deleting] all comments from previous posts), as many have noted. What was gained or lost by such an action? Is it going to mean, as some suggest, that his blog will no longer be as popular? Well, if so, it seems that Huffington Post is quite ready to step in.

As for Silliman, the controversy over his decision to turn off his comment stream continues, less about the lack of future comments, than about the comments from the past that are now gone, comments that were of value to some people (apparently some have noted them in dissertations and books). A couple links on this from his blog:

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2010/08/poet-jessica-smith-moderates.html

http://pathologos.blogspot.com/2010/08/sillimans-backlog-of-comments-lost.html

And then a blog post that he didn’t link to, but one which should also be considered:

http://isola-di-rifiuti.blogspot.com/2010/08/whats-up-with-silliman-mystery-builds.html

So, amid the mess of comments on the most popular blogs (a really big mess), are there nuggets that should remain in the public record? Useful things? Yes, Ron Silliman could, if he wanted to, make visible the comment stream of old posts, but the question is, should he? Is there something to be gained by doing so? Is there something, by extension, about the Huffington Post comment stream, perhaps, that in the future should be archived as well?

It’s an interesting question. I had a class at Ohio University about 13 or so years ago, where the professor spent a lot of time talking about how the sifting through of Victorian era London garbage yielded a treasure trove of interesting things to researchers, things that were helpful in thinking about the literature and life of the time.

I’m sure I don’t want to be the one who has to read through the Huffington Post comment stream or the Ron Silliman comment stream, but if someone else wants to, and can find something useful there, why not? First of all, the comments have to be there . . .

Your seat is waiting for you.

Midwest Chapbook Series Award

G.C. Waldrep has chosen the chapbook, BLOOM, by Rob Schlegel (Iowa City, IA), as the winner of this year’s Midwest Chapbook Series Award. It will be published either late this year, or early next year, in time for AWP.  

It was an amazing year of great work, and Waldrep chose three runners-up:

Penumbra, by Serena Chopra (Denver, CO)

Elegy for the End of a Month, by Adam Clay (Kalamazoo, MI)

The Wolf Centos, by Simone Muench (Chicago, IL)

And honorable mention:

A Marathon of Deletions, by Michael Robins (Chicago, IL)

We really wish we had the capability to publish all five of these excellent and very different chapbooks.

Mary Ruefle - Selected Poems

Even my cat likes it!

I’ve been spending my reading time this summer mostly going back to books that have been around awhile. Reacquainting myself with my bookshelf. I’ve said this before, and I’ve heard others say it as well, that in our rush to the new, the past, especially the recent past, gets passed too quickly. So I spent time with The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, and, of course, as I put up on the blog, Absences, by James Tate, and Houseboat Days, by John Ashbery. (Which reveals the sorts of things I go back to.)

And then comes Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems in the mail. I’m about halfway through it, and I’m having a great time. This is a must-have book. And a strong argument for Ruefle’s position at the forefront of contemporary poetry. In her poems, she's able to hover right at the very edge of the personal and the universal ("I was born in a hospital.  I stank.") that is such a precarious place to hover, as the dangers of banality and generalities float out there on both sides constantly.  She navigates the encounter with deftness and surety.

Here’s a poem of introduction, first published in Apparition Hill, which she wrote (or completed, as they say in the bibliography) in 1989, but which wasn’t published until 2002.


The Pedant’s Discourse


Ladies, life is no dream; Gentlemen,
it’s a brief folly: you wouldn’t know
death’s flashcard if you saw it.
First the factories close, then the mills,
then all the sooty towns shrivel up
and fall off from the navel.
And how should I know, just because my gramma
died in one? I was four hundred miles away,
shopping. I bought a pair of black breasts
with elastic straps that slip over the shoulder.
I’m always afraid I might die at any moment.
That night I heard a man in a movie say
I have no memories and presumably he meant it.
But surely it was an act. I remember my gramma’s
housedress was covered with roses. And she
remembered it too. How many times she turned
to her lap and saw the machines: the deep folds
of red shirts endlessly unfolding while they dried.
Whose flashcard is that? So, ladies and gentlemen,
the truth distorts the truth and we are in it up
to our eyebrows. I stand here before you tonight,
old and wise: cured of vain dreams, debauched,
wayward, and haggard. The mind’s a killjoy, if
I may say so myself, and the sun’s a star,
the red dwarf of which will finally consume us.

Best Indie Albums of 2010 (As of August fifth)

Best Indie Albums of 2010

So far, now that my list of new albums I’ve listened to has gotten a little large, I’ve gone from ranking them individually to putting them into three alphabetical categories.


The Albums I Have On My Continual Revolving Playlist:


Beach House – Teen Dream
The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night
Broken Bells – Broken Bells
Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
Clem Snide – The Meat of Life
Cowboy Junkies – Renmin Park
Damien Jurado – Saint Bartlett
Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame
Eels – End Times
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Laura Veirs – July Flame
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
The National – High Violet
Phosphorescent – Here’s to Taking it Easy
Wolf Parade – Expo 86


The Albums that Have Something Going for Them but Which Don’t Knock My Socks Off


Angus & Julia Stone – Down the Way
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
The Bird and the Bee – Interpreting the Maters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall & John Oates
The Flaming Lips – The Dark Side of the Moon
Jay Bennett – Kicking at the Perfumed Air
Josh Ritter – So Runs the World Away
Mates of State – Crushes (The Covers Mixtape)
Mimicking Birds – Mimicking Birds
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Where the Messengers Meet
The New Pornographers – Together
Portugal. The Man. – American Ghetto
The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor


Also Ran:


Adam Green – Minor Love
Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo
Autolux – Transit Transit
Beach Fossils – Beach Fossils
Best Coast – Crazy for You
Bill Callahan – Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
Blitzen Trapper – Destroyer of the Void
The Books – This Way Out
Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
Everest – On Approach
Foals – Total Life Forever
The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
Goldfrapp – Head First
Jesca Hoop – Hunting My Dress
Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
The Living Sisters – Love to Live
Local Natives – Gorilla Manor
Menomena – Mines
MGMT – Congratulations
Miniature Tigers – FORTRESS
Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More
Of Montreal – False Priest
Owen Pallett – Heartland
Plants and Animals – La La Land
The Radio Dept. – Clinging to a Scheme
Rogue Wave – Permalight
Sarah Jaffe – Suburban Nature
She & Him – Volume Two
Shout Out Louds – Work
Sleigh Bells – Treat
Spoon – Transference
Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Vol 1, Love Songs
Wavves – King of the Beach

(Indie?) Albums of 2010 So Far

These are the albums of 2010 that I’ve noticed so far. Some I really don’t care for, and some I like very much. I’ll talk about that later, but for now I’m wondering what I might have missed. (And a few of them I’ve only heard a couple songs from, so I’m not sure about.) Suggestions?



Adam Green – Minor Love
Angus & Julia Stone – Down the Way
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo
Autolux – Transit Transit

Band of Horses – Infinite Arms
Beach Fossils – Beach Fossils
Beach House – Teen Dream
Best Coast – Crazy for You
Bill Callahan – Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
The Bird and the Bee – Interpreting the Maters Volume 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall & John Oates
Blitzen Trapper – Destroyer of the Void
The Books – This Way Out
Broken Bells – Broken Bells
Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record

Clem Snide – The Meat of Life
Cowboy Junkies – Renmin Park

Damien Jurado – Saint Bartlett
Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions
Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame

Eels – End Times
Everest – On Approach

The Flaming Lips – The Dark Side of the Moon
Foals – Total Life Forever

The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang
Goldfrapp – Head First
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

Jay Bennett – Kicking at the Perfumed Air
Jesca Hoop – Hunting My Dress
Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
Josh Ritter – So Runs the World Away

Laura Veirs – July Flame
LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening
The Living Sisters – Love to Live
Local Natives – Gorilla Manor

Mates of State – Crushes (The Covers Mixtape)
Menomena – Mines
MGMT – Congratulations
Mimicking Birds – Mimicking Birds
Miniature Tigers – FORTRESS
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Where the Messengers Meet
Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More

The National – High Violet
The New Pornographers – Together

Of Montreal – False Priest
Owen Pallett – Heartland

Phosphorescent – Here's to Taking it Easy
Plants and Animals – La La Land
Portugal. The Man. – American Ghetto

The Radio Dept. – Clinging to a Scheme
Rogue Wave – Permalight

Sarah Jaffe – Suburban Nature
She & Him – Volume Two
Shout Out Louds – Work
Sleigh Bells – Treat
Spoon – Transference
Suzanne Vega – Close-Up Vol 1, Love Songs

The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt
Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

Wavves – King of the Beach
Wolf Parade – Expo 86


And on the horizon:


Eels – Tomorrow Morning (August 24)
The Low Anthem (Late fall?)
Neil Young (October?)
Radiohead (Late fall?)

All Is Not Well in the Comment Stream (The Second and Final Part)

A love letter to the world?

One last thing and then I’m moving on. I’m currently rereading The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, and having a good time. I should be posting a poem or two from it. I will tomorrow. But I want to clarify an aspect of my post from yesterday. In the post, I mentioned that:

“We often set up a situation when we post where the response is going to be hostile or abusive.”

And then I went on to talk about hyperbole. I forgot to mention something that is more common than hyperbole, so I want to clarify.

I believe civility starts at home, in the post itself. If a post on a blog, or in the comment stream, by the author of that blog, resorts to name-calling, then the response stands a good chance of going, as they say, nuclear.

One of the criticisms of Silliman’s blog, is that occasionally he would use analogies that were out of line, which inflamed discussion, and while I’m not going to go searching his blog for examples, I did find several examples from blogs this week of posts that contain elements of the sort that inflames discourse:

Jessica Smith: “Let’s keep in mind, however, that most of Silliman’s usual suspects are simply (and possibly clinically) narcissistic sociopaths and that there’s no real point in engaging with them or acknowledging their (usually insipid and underinformed) claims.”

First off, I want to make it clear that my sympathies are with Smith, but when I came across that sentence in her post, I saw how, rather than helping things, this was going to fan the flames. What is gained by such things?

In the same way, Jennifer L. Knox, with whom I’m also sympathetic, writes, about Comment Field Bullies: “trashing the joint like rednecks at a state park: Carving their names into trees, kicking empty beer bottles in the lake, tossing Aquanet cans in the camp fire, and hollering loud enough to scare the animals away. They’re exactly the kind of Yahoos I want to avoid . . .”

These sorts of name-calling and class (and mental health) comments set the stage for Comment Field Bullies. We do this unintentionally. It’s part of our culture to talk this way, to be witty and have a snappy comeback.

Lynn Behrendt writes, in her lament about how Silliman’s comment stream went: “And I wish that all the intelligent, kind, well-read poets who care more about poetics than their own dicks, agendas & axes to grind had spoken up more, too.”

Why does she feel the need to add “dicks” to an otherwise gender neutral and reasonable sentence? What are the assumptions here? “(possibly clinically) narcissistic sociopaths” . . . “trashing the joint like rednecks at a state park” . . . who [to paraphrase] care more about their own dicks than poetics.

I want to be clear that my sympathies are with Silliman, Smith, Knox, and Behrendt, and not with those they are criticizing. I just want to draw attention to the fact that the problem isn’t simply one of the comment stream being out of hand. Our whole level of discourse is out of hand in the same way that political discourse is out of hand these days. If you think there’s something, as the Pathologos blog asks: “are poets too stupid and immature to handle civilized dialogue? i still hope not, but that is what this seems to suggest,” then check out the posts and comment streams of newspaper articles and editorials.

Varooooom!

All Is Not Well In the Comment Stream

Did you hear who said what to whom?

If you haven’t read these two posts, please do:

Jessica Smith:

http://looktouch.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/the-silenced-generation/

Ron Silliman:

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-1965-when-i-first-saw-allen-ginsberg.html

Is this the small or large matter?

Pop-up!

One does not have to travel far to come across radically over-the-line comments on most any poetry blog that allows comments. Most of these comments do nothing but churn away at arguments or opinions that have, usually, little to do with the topic of the post. Such comments can be personal and harmful. One thing they usually are is hyper-aggressive.

So now Ron Silliman has turned off his comment stream, and I first heard about it on facebook. Maybe that means something. (At least I didn’t hear about it on Twitter, I guess.)

Are we seeing the end of a phase in blogging? Or would that be reading too much into Silliman’s decision? One of the reasons cited for his decision is how hurt Jessica Smith felt by the comment stream on his blog a few years ago when he was praising a book of hers. So it has a human element. And turning to her post:

How do age and gender play into the difficulties of the comment stream? Well, it is said (as Silliman and Smith both note) that most of the offensive comments in comment streams are from males, though at least some of that is a guess as people can use all sorts of anonymous-ish names online. But I thing it’s a pretty safe guess. Age? The assumption is that most of the bad things said online are from older (over 30? over 40?) (white?) (males?) people.

It doesn’t please me. It gets me all in the “why can’t we all just get along” mode . . . but, you know, we mostly don’t get along. Art, like politics, religion, and well, pretty much everything else, is not just predicated on disagreement, but also on power and bitterness. The comment stream, especially the anonymous comment stream, is a powerfully attractive force for people who really feel the need to vent.

So, with comment streams getting turned off, does commenting move over to facebook now, where the anonymous is gone, and one is only among “friends”? There is something to be said for that, I guess.

But the comment stream (what a pastoral concept!) is supposed to be a place where good things happen. For example, the other day I posted what I consider to be “the poem of our age,” aware that it was, well, a bit large of a statement. I was prepared for the worst. And what happened? Kazim Ali came on to remind me of a Jorie Graham poem I haven’t read in something like fifteen years. So then I had something to go do. A movement from one poem to the next. That’s when the comment stream is at its best and why I really don’t like the idea of turning it off.

Passion is number one, right?

We often set up a situation when we post, where the response is going to be hostile or abusive. One of those ways is by being way over the line in our assertions, right? Calling some book better than all the other books, or saying that a book or a poet is more artistically ambitious or some such tends to get people to react with hostility to what we’re saying. That seems natural, for if we say this book is better than all the other books of the last ten years, then everyone who has written a book in the last ten years is going to be, well, implicated. Same thing happens when we go all ballistic on a book or person. The defenders rise with mace and claw. But if one isn't going over the top in one's assertions, then one won't get attention for what one is saying. To say something on the Internet, the rule of the thumbs has it, one must say it BIG. We don't have time for just anything, you know.

But what if we really do think that some book is “the most amazing thing” or “the worst piece of trash”? Well, then here we are, back at squares squabbling in the comment stream. Silliman, in discussing his decision to turn off the comment stream on his blog, quoted from Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” And so I’ll quote from a Dylan song as well, not one of my absolute Dylan favorites, but a good song nonetheless:


I’m listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound.
Someone’s always yelling “turn it down”


A difference of degree, how, as we’ve moved into Internetville and then out into the suburbs of Twitterland, our comments have become more snide, cynical. It’s like there’s a race to see who can make the most outlandish claims, and who can make the most snarky comeback. When I was young, they blamed television for the lack of civility and decorum, all those family sit-coms with the sarcastic kids and clueless, ineffectual parents, the current apotheosis of which is The Wizards of Waverly Place.

I’m not going to say that we were more civil when I was young. That would be reductive of me. We weren’t. And since most of the worst offenders are people who fit generally my profile (white heterosexual [does sexual orientation have anything to do with it?] males over 40) who grew up roughly as I did, it would be absurd to look back to a simpler time. But what is different is the way technology seems to encourage a sort of bombing raid approach to disagreement. It’s just too easy. So someone writes a post with a claim that’s inflated, as enthusiasm tends to have us do. And then someone bristles at the hyperbole and responds with a version of “you’re a wanker.” And then what? Someone else comes on with a version of “you’re a hob-knocker.”

A fitting end?

La la la.

Addendum: I like to do fairly random google image searches to add to a post. So now I know that the above condom applicator has won some sort of "most beautiful" award. It's good to know there is someone out there keeping track of such things, you know?

James Tate – Absences

It’s fun going back. We (I) get so caught up in what’s happening next, that the recent past often evaporates. So, looking back to the early 70s, here are a couple poems from James Tate’s third book, Absences.


Wait for Me


A dream of life a dream of birth
a dream of moving
from one world into another

All night dismantling the synapses
unplugging the veins and arteries . . .

Hello I am a cake of soap
dissolving in a warm bath

A train with no windows and no doors
a lover with no eyes for his mask
—inside is the speed of life

Who can doubt the worth of it
each letter written is obsolete
before it finds its friend

Our life is shorter now
full of chaotic numbers
which never complete a day

It will be the same
as it has always been
and you are right to pack

Your heart in ice
if you believe this.



Forest


A man is lost in a harpsichord of light.
On all fours he watches a mushroom grow.

Now it is the sixth night.
He is drinking at a stream,
his face is dun in the moonlight.

Through the still, fanned fronds
he sees an upright man approaching.
He tries to stand but the man
walks over him.

Morning: a greenfinch
and a long-tailed tit.

Night: through the silent fronds
a man on all fours stares
at a man on all fours.

Now it is the first night.