[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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. >>
>
>
Weeeeeell. I bristle when I hear people say this is "good", that is "bad". And I
hear it ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME. I have no time for people who pretend to make
those kind of judgements. Part of Robert Filliou's work was an attempt to show
how the judgements "good" and "bad" about art were irrelevant. He said everyone
is "Good for nothing." I guess it was his way of saying everyone is a poet. Any
comment on this?
RA
