Monday, July 31, 2006

Responding to Johannes Göransson

Johannes Göransson -- poet, translator, and co-editor of Action Books -- offered a response to my post on the "New Academicism." I replied. Here's the exchange. If you haven't done so, you should check out the post just below this one before reading further. First Johannes:

"I think you're partially right, but it would help to bring some more specificity to your argument. Otherwise it sounds too much like the reactionary foetry jokers who are opposed to anything other than BishopLowell.

For example, what does it really mean to not get out much? These people travel quite a bit, so I assume something about pristineness, isolation etc. How is this manifested in their poetry? What's wrong with writing about the 14th century? Is it not, the way one writes about the 14 century?

What's the difference between the contemporary love of 'the silence of the white space' and the groundbreaking visual-poetic work of Mallarme and, later Appolinaire (totally different form of experimentation, but also using the visuality of the page)?

Along the same line, what's wrong with their obscurity? What's the purpose of their obscurity?

I don't think Susan Howe belongs in the same crowd as Revell. I don't think Revell is really at all influenced by Stein or Duchamp. He seems to be working on some kind of religious, watered-down objectivism.

My problem with a lot of these folks is that they propose a blatant kind of retro-Keatsian subjectivity and in the process make poetry function in a reactionary way as the keeping of pure language, pure experience (almost always classist, exclusionary, hierarchical) and the way it smothers conflict. This seems to be the core of 'academic' poetry. Whether Revell or the New Critics.

At its core I think avant-garde poetry from the 10s and 20s (Duchamp, Stein, Dada etc) is joyful, populist, anti-hierarchical and (most of all) activating (ie it is poetry that invites the reader to participate in the art, rather than asks the reader to passively admire)."

My reply:

"it sounds too much like the reactionary foetry jokers who are opposed to anything other than BishopLowell."

Is that what they like? I can't help it if we share a certain aversion to some poets. As they say, even a stuck clock is right twice a day. But I doubt the Foetry crowd would praise Duchamp/Stein for instance, so I think you're a little off here.

"For example, what does it really mean to not get out much? These people travel quite a bit, so I assume something about pristineness, isolation, etc. How is this manifested in their poetry?"

One can be pristine and isolated even when on vacation in Paris. My objection is with a lack of engagement with the violence and boredom and kitsch and excrement outside the window. Even though these poets travel during their academic breaks, they never really leave their writing desks. It is manifested in their poetry by meta-musings, navel-gazing, art about art, and art of comfort and privilege.

"What's wrong with writing about the 14th century?"

It's boring. There are more pressing concerns.

"What's the difference between the contemporary love of 'the silence of the white space' and the groundbreaking visual-poetic work of Mallarme and, later Appolinaire (totally different form of experimentation, but also using the visuality of the page)?"

You already know the answer to this question, I'm sure. First of all, it's derivative and hasn't advanced much on the influences you cite. Second, Mallarme was motivated by more than aestheticism: "figuring forth the void," while a lofty goal, is more interesting than spoon-feeding audiences big dollops of faux-reverberant "silence."

"Along the same line, what's wrong with their obscurity? What's the purpose of their obscurity?"

Obscurity is the ugly step-sister of ambiguity. It's purpose is to radiate an inpenetrable sense of the authority. Stein, for example, is never obscure, but she is often ambiguous.

"I don't think Susan Howe belongs in the same crowd as Revell."

Susan Howe is a generous intellect. Her critical writings are far less odious than Revell's. But her own poetry epitomizes what I'm talking about perfectly. She is certainly a part of the new academicism -- she's the darling of the smart establishment. As a person, she's wonderful, but that's not what I'm talking about.

"I don't think Revell is really at all influenced by Stein or Duchamp. He seems to be working on some kind of religious, watered-down objectivism."

Agreed. Though he himself claims to be a big reader of Stein.

"My problem with a lot of these folks is that they propose a blatant kind of retro-Keatsian subjectivity ..."

I think most of these poets would be better off if they were LESS fearful of their own subjectivity and negative capability.

" ... and in the process make poetry function in a reactionary way as the keeping of pure language, pure experience (almost always classist, exclusionary, hierarchical) and the way it smothers conflict."

We agree on the effect but not the cause.

"This seems to be the core of 'academic' poetry. Whether Revell or the New Critics."

Sure, maybe not THE core, but part of the core, yes...

"I think avant-garde poetry from the 10s and 20s (Duchamp, Stein, Dada etc) is joyful, populist, anti-hierarchical and (most of all) activating (ie it is poetry that invites the reader to participate in the art, rather than asks the reader to passively admire)."

I mostly agree, although Stein, for all her dazzling destructions, remained hierarchical in many ways. Of course, the current academic avant-garde often supposes an interactive approach too, but audiences must be charmed before they're going to want to dance.

---

Your thoughts, oh gentle readers of Poetry Snark?

Sunday, July 30, 2006

The New Academicism

(re-posted from May, 2005 at the request of a friend)

The old academicism was about old white guys defending the values of New Criticism and old formalism. We're talking poets like Howard Moss, Richard Howard, Anthony Hecht, W.D. Snodgrass, etc. These poets were academic more for how they wrote than what they wrote about. Their poems emitted the stench of bourgeois comfort. They didn’t seem to get out of the house much, and when they did, they usually walked around in their backyards and had epiphanies while studying their birdfeeders. Sometimes they wrote poems about how righteous they were for not fucking their undergrads. They were poets proud of their anapests. Many of them were foundational in setting up institutions like journal Poetry and the Academy of American Poets, crony machines that continue to this day to pass around the bucks to the same handful of aesthetic clones. They were opposed by the Beats and, more wittily, the early New York School. The academics, in turn, groused at these poets, who, influenced by poor readings of Whitman, Blake, and Henry Miller (Beats) or avant-garde continental European poetry (N.Y.S.), were--so the old academics thought--kneeling before the incorrect totem pole. This generation of academic poets did at least have one virtue: they knew they were essentially academic. They were often narrow, lame, and dull, but they were not hypocrites.

The new academicism is about tenured, middle-aged, neo-bohemians. They don’t do drugs or break laws, but they think of themselves as outside the mainstream: smart rebels whose idea of resistance to middle class values is reading Deleuze and turning over in their minds the idea that they are “nomads.” We’re talking poets like Donald Revell, Cole Swenson, Mary Jo Bang, and Susan Howe. These poets are academic more for what they write about than how they write. Like their predecessors, their poems tend to reflect very comfortable lives, and they too don’t seem to get out of the house much, however when they do, it’s not for a meditative stroll in the garden, but for a meditative stroll at M.O.M.A. They are poets proud of their “experimentalism,” however unlike really experimental artists like Gertrude Stein and Marcel Duchamp, their poems are derivative (often of Gertrude Stein and Marcel Duchamp). They too are associated with various crony machines (Swenson, for example, is permanent faculty at Iowa). They are big on “ecphrasis,” “white space,” and obscurity—marveling in poetry about topics like 14th century clerics, early American captivity narratives, and minimalist painters. Sense of humor is not their strong suit. These academic poets do not regard themselves as academic—anything but! They are rebels! (Theoretically speaking of course.) They do however have one virtue over the previous generation of academic poets: they tend to be somewhat snappier dressers.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Dana Gioia's D.C. Tryst: A Photo Essay



In January of 2003, Dana Gioia was made chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts...












He took what many regarded as an unorthodox attitude toward his job...





"Fuck this literature shit, got me?"




Everything was going fine, but then the rumour got out that Dana liked older women... much older women.







So Lynn "Dick Did Not" Cheney invited him to D.C. for some fun and games. Gioia was surprised when Lynn fondled him right behind her nearly comatose Uncle Larry. The aroused Gioia responded with an impish grin.






But their affair didn't last. The wives of vice-presidents can't very well leave their husbands while in office, can they? A heartbroken Gioia later mailed Lynn this sketch done by a street artist on their first tryst in Paris. She keeps it stashed beneath her undies in a bedroom drawer to this day.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

"Long Gone"--A Tribute to Syd Barrett (1946-2006)

Syd Barrett died last Friday, though it wasn't announced until today. Why am I posting about a rock icon on Poetry Snark? Because Syd Barrett was the true mad poet-genius of the 60s, and I have to say something. His music has meant too much to me to remain silent. If you care about Syd Barrett, please read on.

Syd Barrett was born in 1946 in Cambridge, the son of a famous pathologist who encouraged young Roger's musical inclinations. He acquired the nickname "Syd" at age 15 and kept it until his retirement as a recluse, when he reverted back to Roger to avoid publicity. Barrett's Pink Floyd was a different and far more interesting thing than Roger Waters's. The original Floyd was conceptual and truly experimental, sometimes edging into Duchamp-like challenges to what the art form was and could be. In one infamous session, for example, he brought in a new song called "Have You Got It, Yet?" and asked the band to learn it. Here's what happened (from Wikipedia) :

"The song seemed simple enough when he first presented it to his bandmates, but it soon became impossibly difficult to learn: as they were practicing it, Barrett kept changing the arrangement. He would then play it again, with the arbitrary changes, and sing "Have you got it yet?" After more than an hour of trying to "get it," they realized they never would."

Syd was also a stunningly original guitar player, though few today would know it, because according to those who heard it, his best performances were live (luckily, we hear hints on the albums). According to many, his sonic experiments exceeded even Hendrix's in pure strangeness, as Barrett explored the possibilities of dissonance, distortion, feedback, and the echo machine against the backdrop of light shows that set the standard for psychedelia in their day.

Syd Barrett's passing is currently being memorialized by countless repetitions of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" on classic rock FM stations across the country, but it is in Barrett's own music--not Pink Floyd's--that we find the most fitting tribute to this great artist. Of course, Barrett did found Pink Floyd and wrote most of the songs on their first album, 1967's Piper at the Gates of Dawn (along with a song on Saucerful of Secrets). Some of these tunes are classics such as the terrific, funny, and ultimately pretty scary song, "Bike." But his greatest achievements were the songs on his two independent releases, Barrett and The Madcap Laughs.

Barrett created these two masterpieces shortly after his first major mental breakdown and subsequent departure from Floyd in 1968. People who are familiar only with Floyd's grandiose post-Meddle era work will be shocked to hear Syd's own music--it's the opposite of the over-produced often pretentious late Floyd. These songs--lyrical, raw, sparsely arranged, and incredibly vulnerable sounding--are immediately recognizable as genius, and have influenced musicians and bands as diverse as David Bowie, Blur, Peter Townsend, This Mortal Coil, Phish, R.E.M., and the Flaming Lips. The songs were recorded in scattershot sessions from '68 to '71, and Barrett--whether through intent or mental illness--never played a song the same way twice. Each version was a completely new experience for him, and this spontaneity surely helps account for the tunes' immediacy and freshness.

His lyrics are among my favorites by any artist ever. Alternately tragic and playful, heavy and childish, Barrett wrote songs of intense nuance and allusiveness. What appears to be a generally happy number like "Wined and Dined" reveals depths of profound sadness and futility upon repeated listening. Some songs, like "Birdy Hop" and "Effervescing Elephant" are pure whimsy, while others, like "Late Night," are heartbreaking in their immediate simplicity:

Inside me I feel
alone and unreal,
and the way you kiss will always be
a very special thing to me...

Although it's never fair to force song lyrics to stand on their own without accompaniment, Barrett's are among the few that hold poetic interest irrespective of melody or sound. I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise, since Barrett was a serious reader, and once even set to music a poem by James Joyce ("Golden Hair").

From "Baby Lemonade":

You're nice to me like ice
in the clock they sent through a washing machine.

Or from the astonishing song, "Dark Globe":

Please lift the hand.
I'm only a person.
With Eskimo chain,
I tattooed my brain all the way...

Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?

I could go on. Or you can go read all of his lyrics at this site.

Like many artists so ahead of their times, Barrett suffered from mental illness. Although never professionally diagnosed (Barrett shunned psychiatrists), it has been speculated that he suffered from schizophrenia and/or Asperger Syndrome (a form of autism). Others have speculated that the sudden death of his father when Syd was eleven left indelible scars. Many have assumed his excessive use of LSD caused his insanity, but most who knew him agree that the problems with Syd went deeper. David Gilmour said in a 2006 interview: "In my opinion, his breakdown would have happened anyway. It was a deep-rooted thing. But I'll say the psychedelic experience might well have acted as a catalyst."

It's unclear at the time of this writing what caused Barrett's death. I've read that it was due to his diabetes and also that it was cancer-related. Since Barrett has been a complete recluse for over 30 years, living with his mother and spending his time gardening and painting, many have believed he died long ago. A mystery until the end, there is no one who influenced recent music so much about whom we know so little.

Although he has been mythologized by countless fans, there was nothing glamorous about his retreat. It was not a "statement" or a plea for help. According to his own statements, Barrett was someone who couldn't cope with the world as it is and felt incapable of communication with other individuals--someone who both enjoyed and was tortured by his necessary solitude. His madness may have led to some of his artistic triumphs, but it also robbed us of his talent far too soon. He left this world in 2006, but he left his fans in 1971, taking his mystery and genius first to his bedroom--and now to his grave.

(The photograph is of Barrett in 2002.)