Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Resisting... urge... to be overly truculent...
There were a couple especially egregious statements in Ron Silliman's recent reviews of a couple mainstream anthologies. I'm not going to respond to most of the posts because it's obviously a case of a carefully considered piece that's ultimately built on a bad premise and boils things down to a false dichotomy and can't allow any poetry outside a definition that's much too narrow. The same sort of thing we expect from Dana Gioia/Ted Kooser/pick-your-own-boogeyman-from-the-opposite-"side". But a couple statements stand out to me, one because I massively question its factual basis (not something I would usually say of Ron, who's quite precise) and the other because it comes across as so blissfully un-self-aware.
Here they are:
First, post-avant poets make up a substantial portion of all poets now writing – my guess would be half....
All poets now writing? My guess would be that guess is way the hell off. Setting aside that "post avant" is a lousy label, almost as bad as Ron's other favorite one (which I'll get to next), there's just no way unless you throw in an awful lot of people like me who are aware of the movement and even adopt some of its techniques but that clearly don't fit the profile in the main, and people who are very much in the mainstream of publishing even if their work is odd, and such. The number is closer to the 10% representation Ron mentions from Poetry Daily than to 50%. There's just no way to square this guess with the reality of avant garde art of any sort, and with the common saw about how much more of the publication space, etc. goes to mainstream poets.
I feel pretty safe in suggesting that both Ochester and Boller-Selby would probably reject the School of Quietude label outright.
Wow, really? You think they'd reject a deliberately insulting epithet that's also so vague as to be essentially useless in any sort of reasonable discussion? I feel safe in suggesting that I will never use the phrase "School of Quietude" while attempting to be taken seriously, any more than I would call cutting-edge poetry "gibberish" as a legitimate critical viewpoint. Come on, people, the poetry world is a bigger and better place than that. There are repugnant losers in the mainstream and in the avant, just as there are lovely poets in both. There is no monolithic one-kind-of-mainstream-poetry any more than experimentalists are doing a single thing. There's no need to piss on something just because it doesn't do what you do. If someone insults you or your work, though, feel free to piss away.
Here they are:
First, post-avant poets make up a substantial portion of all poets now writing – my guess would be half....
All poets now writing? My guess would be that guess is way the hell off. Setting aside that "post avant" is a lousy label, almost as bad as Ron's other favorite one (which I'll get to next), there's just no way unless you throw in an awful lot of people like me who are aware of the movement and even adopt some of its techniques but that clearly don't fit the profile in the main, and people who are very much in the mainstream of publishing even if their work is odd, and such. The number is closer to the 10% representation Ron mentions from Poetry Daily than to 50%. There's just no way to square this guess with the reality of avant garde art of any sort, and with the common saw about how much more of the publication space, etc. goes to mainstream poets.
I feel pretty safe in suggesting that both Ochester and Boller-Selby would probably reject the School of Quietude label outright.
Wow, really? You think they'd reject a deliberately insulting epithet that's also so vague as to be essentially useless in any sort of reasonable discussion? I feel safe in suggesting that I will never use the phrase "School of Quietude" while attempting to be taken seriously, any more than I would call cutting-edge poetry "gibberish" as a legitimate critical viewpoint. Come on, people, the poetry world is a bigger and better place than that. There are repugnant losers in the mainstream and in the avant, just as there are lovely poets in both. There is no monolithic one-kind-of-mainstream-poetry any more than experimentalists are doing a single thing. There's no need to piss on something just because it doesn't do what you do. If someone insults you or your work, though, feel free to piss away.
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This is one of those "don't get me started" topics -- but want to say that I appreciate your comments here.
Unless one is going to use criteria so broad as to have little practical meaning (e.g. "At least half of all poets writing today use words in their poems sometimes"), it's hard for me to think of any statement about writing style, aesthetic preferences, theoretical approach, and the like, that would apply to anywhere near half of all poets writing.
Even if we were to limit ourselves only to poets of the United States, or poets writing in English, or poets in the more highly industrialized parts of the world, the statement doesn't hold up. If we take the phrase literally -- "all poets now writing" -- we're then talking about half of the poets in the entire world, and the argument breaks down altogether.
I frankly don't think Mr. Silliman seriously believes his own statement; I assume he said it as an intentional act of dismissiveness.
It's struck me for a long time that, even to the limited degree that the terms "post-avant" and "school of quietude" might refer to anything that actually exists in the real world, poets who might be identified as either or both seem to fit into the academic world (teaching, publishing, attending conferences, etc.) with little difficulty.
In this respect, -- again, if we accept the terms "post-avant" and "school of quietude" for a moment, for the sake of discussion -- the similarities between the two ostensibly incompatible camps are much more significant than the differences between them.
Thanks for posting this.
Unless one is going to use criteria so broad as to have little practical meaning (e.g. "At least half of all poets writing today use words in their poems sometimes"), it's hard for me to think of any statement about writing style, aesthetic preferences, theoretical approach, and the like, that would apply to anywhere near half of all poets writing.
Even if we were to limit ourselves only to poets of the United States, or poets writing in English, or poets in the more highly industrialized parts of the world, the statement doesn't hold up. If we take the phrase literally -- "all poets now writing" -- we're then talking about half of the poets in the entire world, and the argument breaks down altogether.
I frankly don't think Mr. Silliman seriously believes his own statement; I assume he said it as an intentional act of dismissiveness.
It's struck me for a long time that, even to the limited degree that the terms "post-avant" and "school of quietude" might refer to anything that actually exists in the real world, poets who might be identified as either or both seem to fit into the academic world (teaching, publishing, attending conferences, etc.) with little difficulty.
In this respect, -- again, if we accept the terms "post-avant" and "school of quietude" for a moment, for the sake of discussion -- the similarities between the two ostensibly incompatible camps are much more significant than the differences between them.
Thanks for posting this.
I'm in the School of Quietude:
"So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, griping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks." (Hermann Melville, "Moby Dick," chapter 29)
I'd rather be that than "before-after," which makes me dizzy.
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"So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to its place, for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, griping at the iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considerating touch of humanity was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony step, that their dreams would have been of the crunching teeth of sharks." (Hermann Melville, "Moby Dick," chapter 29)
I'd rather be that than "before-after," which makes me dizzy.
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