Archive for the ‘Literary History’ Category
Entry 1005 — A New Poetry Anew
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
I just found out yesterday about a discussion going on at Wikipedia about the entry on me (here). It was pretty short. Someone not divulging his name wondered if I was notable enough for an entry, noting that “the great majority of the works are vanity/self publications (Runaway Spoon Press is this person’s own press) and tel-let was a photocopied zine that grew out of a mailing list. Other publishers are non-notable as well.” Two of the three people responsible for the entry (as far as I know) defended me. No more has yet been heard from the one against my entry.
Although I continue to believe an encyclopedia devoted to peer-rejected unnotables would be of more cultural value, and much more interesting, than encyclopedias like Wikipedia, which are concerned almost only with peer-accepted notables, and when once asked for data to be used in an entry on me Jesse Glass wanted to create, discouraged the enterprise, now that one is up, I got self-defensive enough to want to get its incomplete list of my credits, such as they are, updated, so spent an hour earlier today finding and revising the list I have. This I sent to my friend Knitwitted in hopes she can get some of it inserted into my entry.
While involved in my chore, I came across the following, which I thought interesting enough to post here:
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This is probably the first (and so far only) bona fide academic aid for Grumman Scholars!
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Entry 1002 — Background Text
Saturday, February 2nd, 2013
I can use this. But what I’d like more would be something with a narrative, mainly about what I would take as your quest for spiritual enlightenment and artistic fulfillment. Actually, what I would like are links to EVERYTHING WRITTEN ABOUT YOU plus the time and unlaziness to write a bio of you myself. That’s not possible but a few paragraphs that would allow . . . Well, if I were to make a bio of the kind I want about myself, it would go something like:“My central life-journey began in earnest when I was 19, and a friend showed me EE’s falling leaf. After a four-year interruption in the air force and factory work for about a year before and after that, I self-published my little book, poemns, which contained visual haiku like (2 or 3 specimens shown). At the same time I had gotten creatively/crazily interested in the psychology of creativity and aesthetic appreciation which led to blah blah blah.”.But if preparing a bio of me for my Scientific American blog I would only very briefly mention my theories of psychology because they really haven’t much to do with my art; but your spiritual theories, which I consider the equivalent of those, are central to your art, so are meaningful..Also, I’m thinking about using this entry to compare your outlook with mine—I hope in a totally neutral way, in a way calculated to demonstrate the different slants creativity with math and words can take. I don’t know yet if this will go anywhere—and will definitely publish what I come up with only if you tell me it’s all right with you. If I do write it, I will expect a lot of feedback from you, particularly about my descriptions of where you’re coming from..I may be in the megalomania zone again, but right now I think our—let me call it a polyphonic interaction sometimes dissonant, sometimes concordant (wish I knew a better word for that)—is as important world-question as there is, and I think you and I could help clear a path toward the final synthesis of the two I believe possible.
A mention of a few fellow poets important to you would be a good way for me to boost them, however slightly, by naming them. Karl, for sure, but also Loris and Will Inman. (I seem recently to have fallen into an old man’s desire to commemorate people in danger of undeserved fading–the way I am–in spite of my simultaneous optimism that we’ll all be read about a century from now!)
Sometimes I do what I do,
and other times I do as I don’t
and that, you see,
is the central point;
and that, you see,
is the central point.
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Entry 803 — Insulting BigName Critics
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012
After Finnegan, sitemaster of New-Poetry, let New-Poetry members know that we could find essays by various critics commenting on the current state of American Poetry at the VQR Symposium yesterday, I visited the site, read some, skimmed some, then posted the following at New-Poetry:
Thanks much for this, Finnegan. All these critics and Perloff (whom I count as part of the VQR Symposium group although she withdrew from it because she has remained an important part of it, anyway) is the only one who mentions visual and performance poetry, and all she does is mention them. The most visible two poetries of the Otherstream. But that’s enough to keep me from judging her thoughts on the contem-porary poetry scene the worst in this collection. The others are too closely worthless to pick out one for worst effort.
I will admit one thing not too hard to admit: a few of these estabniks seem somewhat familiar with what they deem a new sort of poetry—conceptual poetry—a kind of poetry, if it’s poetry (and Perloff questions whether at least some texts called conceptual poetry are poems) with which I was unfamiliar. But I’ve always said in my lists of new and newish poetry that I was sure I’d missed some, and know I’ve fallen behind badly in keeping up with various kinds of cyber poetry, never felt comfortable with my take on sound poetry, and only now believe I’m coming to terms with language poetry (although I arrogantly also feel I’ve known more about it for twenty years than just about anybody writing it, or writing poetry called language poetry, including especially Ron Silliman).
From the few examples of conceptual poetry I’ve seen, I have what I think is Perloff’s view, that it’s too similar to dada to be new, and—as I said—possibly prose (of a kind I’ve named “conceprature” to go with similar taxonomical terms I’ve used for “poetry” that’s really prose, “evocature” for prose poems, and “advocature” for lineated propaganda texts. I also use “informrature” for lineated texts like names and addresses on envelopes that are clearly not poems). Having said all that, I do believe that conceptual poets-or-prosists (note: “prosists” is an ad hoc term; I want something better, preferably already in use) are cutting edge even though working in a variety of literature that’s been around a long time—because (1) they are still finding significantly new things to do in it (new to me, anyway) the same way I believe a few visual poets are still finding significantly new things to do in visual poetry, which—in its modern phase—has now been around a century, give or take a decade or two, its start being still controversial; and (2) only a very few visible critics know about them, and only one, Perloff, has so far written meaningfully about them.
I should be kinder to Perloff than I have been for the past 25 years, and will be from now on, I’m pretty sure. But nothing is harder for someone fighting against the status quo not to blow up at than another fighting against it differently (usually much less differently than its seems to both at the time).
Below is perhaps the best example of anti-Otherstream gatekeeping in the tripe Finnegan linked to, a passage from Willard Spiegelman’s hilariously-titled essay, “Has Poetry Changed? The View From the Editor’s Desk.” Its title is funny because it contains not one word about how American poetry has changed over the past 30 years or so. (Note, by the way, another change in my boilerplate: “30,” not “50” years as I so long contended. I finally realized that Ashbery and his followers were, when breaking into prominence, using techniques not in wide use at the time–although far from revolutionary.)
“Some years ago Helen Vendler said she was giving up reviewing or generally writing about new books of poetry by younger poets. She had not lost her acumen, her interest or her powers of perception; rather, she said that she lacked the right cultural frame of reference to be an appropriate audience, let alone a judge. She knew about gardens and nightingales, Grecian urns and Christian theology, but not about hip-hop or comic books, and these provide the material, or at least the glue, for many of today’s poems. Poetic subjects, voices, diction, and tone change. And forms, like subjects, change as well. She wanted to leave the critical field open to younger people like her colleague Stephen Burt, a polymath who knows the ancients and the moderns, the classics and the contemporary. He listens to indie bands and reads graphic novels. He flourishes amid the hipsters as well as the sonneteers.” Etc.
Why is this especially stupid, in my view? The idea that the main thing a critic needs to be familiar with to write about poetry is subject matter. Oh, and “voices, diction and tone.” Oops, “forms,” too. No mention of what Vendler has been drastically ignorant of since she was first writing about Ashbery: technique. Perhaps I’m wrong to consider it the most important component of poetry, but it most certainly is as important as “voices, diction and tone.”
Then there is her leaving the field open to people like Stephen Burt. A Harvard professor! And no more knowledgeable than Vendler about what’s going on in poetry now. Here’s one thing Wikipoo calls him recognized as a critic for, his definition of what I call jump-cut poetry (but long ago referred to it a few times as “elliptical”): “Elliptical poets try to manifest a person—who speaks the poem and reflects the poet—while using all the verbal gizmos developed over the last few decades to undermine the coherence of speaking selves.” I like his “all the verbal gizmos.” Does he mention even some of those invented way before his time by Cummings. I don’t know his criticism well enough to be sure the answer is no, but I’d be willing to bet ten bucks it is.
I’d be interested to know why what I’ve written here contributes less to the discussion in VQR of the current state of American Poetry than the essays in it. Anyone interested in telling me? Or even in telling me why I’m not worth telling? I’ve issued challenges like this before. No one’s yet answered one. At least one that doesn’t significantly misrepresent me, and escalate into ad hominem arguments and plain insults.
Note: I’m pretty sure that 15 or 20 years ago, one of the two times I was stupid enough to apply for a Guggenheim grant, Willard Spiegelman got one in the field I’d applied for one in. I can’t remember how he described his winning project except that it was lame, even for a mainstreamer. (Richard Kostelanetz, a former winner of a Guggenheim, had recommended me to the Guggenheimers, who then invited me to submit an application, so it wasn’t all my fault.)
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Entry 563 — The Contents of Poetry Anthologies
Monday, November 14th, 2011
While doing my usual bit about how narrow in taste the most recent anthology of twentieth-century poetry was, I got to thinking, once again, just who it is that controls what goes in, what stays out, of the poetry anthologies that become our college English departments’ texts, and dictate/reflect what poetry is taught there, discussed in the most visible publications by the only widely influential critics, and accepted by the huge majority of poetry-accepting publications, including all of the commercially viable ones–and, worst of all–given money by the imbeciles running organizations like the Poetry Foundation. In particular, I wondered what the source of the country’s current consensus as to what our best poetry is. I know just about nothing about this. The only thing I’m sure of is that what I consider our current best poetry has been marginalized for forty years or more–with the exception of language poetry, which finally broke through into the mainstream ten years or so ago.
Perhaps as many as fifty years ago I read an article showing how all the poetry prizes seemed to be going to the same people. The theory expressed was that Harvard, basically, was in control, and The New Yorker was its main representative. My impression is that the poetry of Williams, its power greatly amplified by the popularity of the rebellious beats, finally broke through the hegemony of the time–circa 1960. Visual poetry, even then a major kind of poetry was ignored. But so was the very much less threatening (one would think) haiku, although the beats revered it, albeit, seldom with much understanding of it. Iowa School Poetry, really just a slight variation on the dominant poetry of the first half of the twentieth-century, came to represent, and still represents, the mainest of the mainstream poetry.
Somewhere along the line Helen Vendler started championing Ashbery. Gradually Frank O’Hara and the New York School became acknowledged as significant. By the eighties, with a second-rate but influential Stanford voice in Marjorie Perloff, the language school started becoming noticed. Some of those calling themselves that, or being called that by the ignorant, became confused with the now prominent members of the jump-cut school Ashbery had merged with from the New York School. They kept their name, and are now certified. That many of their members were academics at prestigious universities (there are a few professors among the better visual poets but none at an Ivy League school or the like that I know of) greatly helped them to their high estate, I’m certain.
Who besides Harvard and New York City periodicals, later joined by the Iowa University English Department, and still later by SUNY, Buffalo, contributed to the present status quo? Well, there have been the victim groups for many years who called for recognition of their members based on numbers rather than talent. So now most periodicals make sure to keep the percentage of female poets whose work is included close to fifty percent, for example.
I can’t think right now of any other influence on the Establishment. The hope of people like me is that the intelligent lay public will find their way around the middle men between certified poetry and better, or at least interestingly different, poetry due to the Internet. This is not happening to much of an extent now; the Internet is too confused. And no one yet seems willing to help me list all the schools of current American Poetry (oh, the horror of labeling!), to facilitate discovery of the uncertified, and at least demonstrate the degree to which the academy and its braindead media mouthpieces, has constricted the width of the poetry continuum visible to the public. Nor do I know of any book on the topic of this essay, available or planned. I’d love to get the opinion of someone more knowledgeable than I, much more a victim of literary history than a student of it, am. And, sure, someone more likely than a marginalized creative artist like me to be objective about it.
Diary Entry 3 P.M. Sunday 13 November 2011 I don’t know how long I’ll be able to make daily entries but am hoping to accomplish enough to deserve a log of what happens.
Today has turned out well, after all–apparently due to the hour or so of sleep I took shortly after making yesterday’s blog entry. I felt a little better but still blah-ish. I didn’t feel up to writing the essay on the value for a mathematical poet of multiplication that should have been my exhibition project for the day, so (here’s another lesson if how to be properly methodical), I reduced the project to something I thought even I could handle: simply outlining the essay on paper. It went surprisingly smoothly. I ended with what may be a complete essay needing only a tweak or two, and conversion to an illustrated computer file which I should be able to do tomorrow–or even tonight if the Giants win. They’re my football team and they’ll be on tv in an hour. If they lose, I’ll be too depressed to do much. Or maybe not.
I went right from the exhibition paper back to my Shakespeare book–the socioplex. I did some good work on it, although all of it was editing–except for a few paragraphs solving the problem I’d gone to bed with, the unconfusion of my theory of the Urceptual Self, Other and Composite. I hope. A little later I wrote what’s in this entry as well as at least one good comment to an Internet discussion of the Shakespeare authorship question. I think such comments may help me get better known, and maybe even snare me an influential friend. I may do a little more work on the socioplex. I’ve printed out the ten pages I had when finished with my stint earlier.
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Entry 496 — Poetry Breakthrough No. 5
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
In my little list of breakthroughs in anglophoonic poetry, I forgot a major one, the invention of genuine language poetry, by which I mean poetry in which concerns with grammar or spelling a of central aesthetic importance. Jump-cut poetry is (I tentatively feel) a minor change in standard free verse, surrealism just a change in subject matter.
Entry 495 — Yesterday Continued
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
First an update on my health: yesterday I saw my hip surgeon and he okayed me to go all out physically. In other words, all I need is a week in Triple A and I can come back to bat clean-up in the Bigs. I do feel fairly okay. Not much sprint in my legs yet, but the doctor said the fast twitch muscles often take the longest of the muscles to return to normal.
Okay, here’s the text I posted yesterday:
the luminescence of the ice skate
lying where poetry in English
made its first major ascent
I got useful feedback on this from Jerry McGuire, David Weinstock, Dave Birkumshaw and Patrick McManus, the latter two from Poetryetc. where I also posted my request. Last line will now be something like “widened in a major way for the first time.” I may replace “luminescence” tosomething not possibly conflicting as an image with the shine of ice. Can’t think what yet.
Now for what I was up to. I’d been thinking about what I was doing and not doing in my poetry. This led somehow to consideration (again) of the major breakthroughs in anglophonic poetry. I decided Wordsworth was the main one responsible for what I deem the first such breakthrough. Exactly what it was took me a while to decide. Conclusion: a adding the use of formal verse to deal with personal themes to what poets had been doing, using formal verse to deal with to a culture’s themes. Possibly also a shift from received themes to received theme and ad hoc themes.
My text had to do with Wordsworth’s use of his boyhood ice-skating in The Prelude as central to his addition to poetry in English. I went on advance two other widenings of poetry in English: the free verse revolution and the coming of pluraesthetic poetry, or the use of free verse to deal with themes, and the use of averbal elements to deal with themes. I think this a neat little summary that would make my reputation if I used it as the basis of a book, and had any academic standing. Oh, well, some academic fifty years from now will go places with it, perhaps even giving me some credit for it.
I’m not making big claims for it, incidentally, I doubt that it’s very original. I’ll bet I’ve expressed it more clearly than anyone before me, though.
Entry 442 — Contemporary Poetry
Sunday, May 15th, 2011
Poetry Between 1960 and 2010
Wilshberia, the continuum of contemporary poetry composed
between around 1960 and the present certified by the poetry
establishment (i.e., universities, grants-bestowing organizations,
visible critics, venues like the New Yorker and the American
Poetry Review) begins with formal poetry like much of Richard
Wilbur’s work. Descent into a different lesser formality of neo-
psalmic poetry based on Whitman that Ginsberg was the most
well-known recent author of, next comes free verse that is
nonetheless highly bound to implicit rules, Iowa Plaintext Poetry;
slightly further from traditional poetry the nearprose of Williams
and his many followers who seem to try to write poetry as close to
prose as possible. To this point, the poetry is convergent,
attempting to cohere around a unifying principle. It edges away
from that more and more as we continue over the continuum,
starting with surrealist poetry, which diverges from the world as we
know it into perceptual disruption. A bit more divergent is the
jump-cut poetry of the New York School, represented at its most
divergent by John Ashbery’s most divergent poems and the jump-
cut poetry of the so-called “language poets,’ which is not, for me,
truly language poetry because grammatical concerns are not to
much of an extent the basis of it
The Establishment’s view of the relationship of all other poetry
being composed during this time to the poetry of Wilshberia has
been neatly voiced by Professor David Graham. Professor Graham
likens it to the equivalent of the relationship to genuine baseball of
“two guys in Havre, Montana who like to kick a deer skull back &
forth and call it ‘baseball.’ Sure, there’s no bat, ball, gloves,
diamond, fans, pitcher, or catcher– but they do call it baseball, and
wonder why the mainstream media consistently fails to mention
their game.” Odd how there are always professors unable to learn
from history how bad deriding innovative enterprises almost
always makes you look bad. On the other hand, if their opposition
is as effective as the gatekeepers limiting the visibility of
contemporary poetry between around 1960 and 2000 to Wilshberia
has been, they won’t be around to see that opposition break down.
Unfortunately, the innovators whose work they opposed won’t be,
either.
Not that all the poets whose work makes up “the Underwilsh,” as I
call the uncertified work from the middle of the last century until
now, are innovative. In fact, very few are. But the most important
poetries of the Underwilsh were innovative at some point during
the reign of Wilshberian poetry. Probably only animated visual
poetry, cyber poetry, mathematical poetry and cryptographic poetry
are seriously that now. It would seem that recognition of
innovative art takes a generation
The poetry of the Underwilsh at its left end has always been
conventional. It begins with what is unquestionable the most
popular poetry in America, doggerel–which, for me, it poetry
intentionally employing no poetic device but rhyme; next come
classical American haiku–the 5/7/5 kind, other varieties of haiku
being scattered throughout most other kinds of poetry–followed by
light verse (both known to academia but looked down on); next
comes contragenteel poetry, which is basically the nearprose of
Williams and his followers except using coarser language (and
concerning less polite subjects, although subject matter is not what
I look at to place poetries into this scheme of mine); performance
poetry, hypertextual poetry; genuine language poetry;
cryptographic poetry; cyber poetry; mathematical poetry; visual
poetry (both static and animated visual poetry) and sound poetry,
with the latter two fading into what is called asemic poetry, which
is either visimagery (visual art) or music employing text or
supposed by its creator to suggest textuality and thus not by my
standards kinds of poetry, but considered such by others, so proper
to mention here.
Almost all the poetries in the Underwilsh will eventually be
certified by the academy and the rest of the poetry establishment.
The only interesting questions left will be what kind of effective
poetry will then be ignored, and whether or not the newest poets to
be certified will treat what comes after their kind of poetry as
unsympathetically as theirs was treated.