In a message dated 04/23/2000 12:52:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Well, I think Language poetry, and other poetries that weighted linguistic
experimentation heavier than expression, were driven by several things in
their
historical moment.
1. Lowell et al, all those confessional guys and gals, the suicide crew,
Berryman, Plath, had just cut a swath and dropped into it. There was
something
deathly about reading one's own entrails and young poets perhaps didn't want
to
repeat that particular experiment.
There was also Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan to counter Lowell and the
suicide queens. Ted was my first poetry instructor, so maybe that has
something to do with my views. Ted took banality to wonderful heights.
<< 2. The banality of self-expression that derives from the fact that we all
wanna
express the same stuff can be crazy-making for writers and readers alike. Go
to
any poetry slam.
I have to disagree with you there. I've heard some amazing poets at the
Nuyorican Poets Cafe poetry slams (one of the places that made slams famous)
. . . even been in a few myself. Amazing feats of language and rhythm and
memorization (which always adds to the experience of hearing spoken word). Do
we all want to express the same stuff? If that were true, then why do I come
away from so many art "experiences" (including readings) feeling like an
alien on this planet? Of course, bad poets we always have with us, but that's
no reason to give up on poetry.
<<<3. The centrality of the individual to artmaking was an artifact of the
romantic
modernist myth, a myth that had been both politically manipulated and
narratively
manipulated to produce an ideologically obscene picture of the Artiste (see
50s
movies about The Artist, and for their aftermath see current portrayals of
Artists in comic strips, cartoons, ads, genre fiction, etc etc all
universally
hateful)
This is a very tricky "subject". Individuals ARE central to artmaking. Even
in collective art-making. How could it be otherwise? Ok, the enlightenment
notion of the individual begat drunken boats full artists writhing through
their seasons in hell. And, of course, we must remember all this is taking
place in Western culture. Other cultures having actual community slots for
artists to fill, not celebrity pedastals. (Although from the time of ancient
Greeks, poets of the Western mode had personalism in mind a lot through the
ages--it didn't just happen with the Enlightenment).
<<<4. The linguistic turn in both philosophy and anthropology (that is, the
advent
of Saussurean ideas in almost any field involving human production of ideas
or
artifacts) meant that there was a kind of surreptitious hunt for the ghost
in the
machine of language--Who was language, you might say. So the use of language
in
ways designed to beguile out of its functioning its spirit, its laws, its own
"personality" seemed imperative, more important than any single voice.
I think that was and is most certainly a necessary hunt to undertake, and it
revealed a lot to us about how we are constructed and how we construct
ourselves and the world. But I also think that some surrendered the passion
and blood of being human and alive to a chilling blueprint bestowed on us by
a system of our own paranoid creation.
I also think it's extremely important for humans to take responsibility for
what's being created and destroyed, and that means inhabiting a persona and
taking responsibility and making commitments. Now that we understand how
meaning is created (which was the whole point of the hunt for the ghost in
the machine ride to me), we need to create meaning consciously. We are the
only species that can do this. Why do we shrink from it?
I am so bored with all the artists who use so much form and technology and
have nothing to say, no passion, no blood. I may not agree with you, but
damn, at least engage me.
<<So there were reasons. But maybe it is possible now to return to individual
voices without immediately being laden down with the baggage aforementioned.
Maybe. But still, the tyranny of narrative tends to pull any specificity out
into
the sea of story, and in a culture like this one, where that sea is pretty
much
turning into the Sea of Received Virtual Information, Bouvard and Pecuchet
hosting 60 Minutes, ya gotta hold on hard to the huckleberries to keep your
_own_
breath in your body.
Definitely, it's possible. But that doesn't mean everybody does it. There
will always be bad poetry (and bad art) around. I've written some of it
myself. That's not the fault of an ideology or of a genre. Personally, I'm
interested in the personas that have been through the linguistic unraveling,
dark nights of the soul, all sorts of undoings and investigations into the
art of self, and who construct personas out of the ashes of the subject that
was slaughtered in the 20th century. The great thing is, we don't have to
stick to one persona. We can have several, try things out . . . be flowing,
and ready to discard what is no longer workable and approach new modes of
being as we discover them. I'm not talking about acting or being phony. I
feel if we can't do this, we didn't learn much from the 20th Century art show.
<<Ok, I like both kinds of poetry. >>
Me too. And more . . .
BP
