- moved The Garden of the Forking Ideologies over to the essays...

The adventures of the much-excluded Kent Johnson run like a crimson, I say a crimson, thread through the historie of the American poetry submerchant marine. The various conceptual and administrative corrals managed for the docile herd of avant-garde outcasts gets periodically needled and pinched by said KJ, in between his translation journeys to more netherly nether-lands. I think he does it for his own amusement, despite the tone of high dudgeon radiated amplified in all directions, by himself, me, & otters. They're still talkin' about Buffalo '99.

"How to be a poet", though, seems to elude most American poets. We remain the unheard-of herd. Or the too-much-heard-of herd. The herd of college coffeeshop chit-chat lizards.

They've taught computers to play chess, but this is a harder game by far. Duende-baby tends to mess up the channels.

Josh stands up for weak poems against all comers.

As a perpetrator/survivor of the bruising listserve wars (Buffalo, Buffalo!) I can agree that online "critique" could get very warped. It probably shares the nervous testo-frenzy of internet behavior in general.

I also think that "micro" criticism could easily get very glib & superficial. Sometimes it takes many many readings (& side-research) to appreciate a poem.

Nevertheless, I think Josh is over-reacting. For one thing, it seems to me that Jeff Bahr is exaggerating the method in order to show how it works. But more importantly, I think this kind of analysis - hopefully offered in a sympathetic & generous manner - is very useful & necessary, if it comes from someone who knows what they're talking about.

How much bad writing gets high marks from supposed mentors - for certain strategic reasons, reasons which benefit the mentor, rather than the poet? (ie. trotting through a large percentage of mediocre & bad poems actually pays the bills for MFA teachers. & you don't want to make the students feel too bad; you don't want them to lose hope for their future niche in the industry, or even drop out of the program...)

But I don't want to turn this into a slam of CW teachers, not at all. As I say - if they know what they're doing, they're actually doing a service to literature.

"Poetry should be written fairly well." - Wm. Shakespeare

For some time - in fact ever since 1996 or so, when I joined (in all my wide-eyed, snotnosed innocence) the "Buffalo Poetics" discussion list - Mr. Ron Silliman's writings on poetry have provided a foil for my own burblings in that vein. In my present circumstances (beleaguered, solitary poet day-jobber), such remains the case.

So today, I note the obsessive RS focus on the oscillating movements & scintillating impressions of literary schools & groups. The first chapter of Clarence Brown's study, Mandelstam, offers an antidote to this kind of lateral-horizontal attention. Schools & literary polemics make up only the preliminaries & practice steps of a vocation in poetry. Its fulfillment involves a much more individuated, laborious growth.

This is not an argument for super-individualism. Rather, it is a different notion of tradition. American poetic journalism & polemics has a flatland, one-dimensional quality to it : as if it's all a matter of rival groups and theories jostling for supremacy, with a few pathetic loners out there, squeaking their eccentric solos. I find this attitude faintly bullying & obtuse. You have to be part of a group, a movement, or you're... you're weak.

There's another way of thinking about tradition. It's a perspective obscured by the partisan dualities proffered by the groups. It's Tradition with a capital T : the tradition of great poetry. When you read the great old poetry, starting with Homer & the Bible perhaps, you begin to train your ears to the fine intensity & power of the same that followed - which appears in many times & places, and among our near-contemporaries (& perhaps even some of our contemporaries). You begin to recognize the conscious apprenticeship of the great masters of poetry, when they begin to achieve the level of synthesis & expressive power which equals or surpasses their models. I heard it in Yeats just the other day. I hear it in Marvell, in John Donne. (You can find, of course, your own examples.)

The literary-artistic turmoil of the day is just one element among many of the basic building materials which the great poet must shape & refine.

"Those were times of fracas & uproar," spake Sir Henry, adjusting the corset of his rusted cuirasse.  He leaned against his plastene shield, marked with the scarlet Cross of St. Andrewe and 3 yellow puffballs, insignia of the Fellowship of the Golden Fleas. 

He spake at length, then, in his gruff knightly-hangover voice, of his glory days in battle against Poesie de Langage, and other reprobates and infidels.  "Twas at the dusk of the last millennium, during the reign of King Bill, in the Ville de Buffaloe" quoth he; "many were the scuffles and duels, then; oft'times single-handed, 'gainst all comers, belike.  Methought then, and methinketh now yet, that one signal cardinal sin bore down, with plumbous bars, that dur Langpo :  twas their feigned or attempted extinction of Personality.  For personality, my young lads & damsels, may be likened unto this checker'd insignia, inscribed upon my battered, trusty old shield.  Tis emblematic of one's very Soul:  like that fransiscan brother's - his name escapeth me - Walt, was it? - his grassy handkerchief, designedly drop't by his own winsome Lord.  Or as that other brother - Nicholas, of Cusa fame - quoth:  "All things Giulianize in you, Guliano" - every word of every poem, no less so."

This is what I was arguing with the Buffalo crowd about, for a few years there, in the late 90s.

Not "tradition" vs. "experiment", or "rhyme & meter" vs. "new sentence" : but about unity vs. deflection.

Arguments over blogs at the Buffalo Poetics List? Huh.

I think I won an argument with a turnip last night.

Dynamic symmetry, images of infinity based on self-reflexive designs : the whole which includes a part which contains the whole which includes a part which contains. . .

one recognizes this is the "paint myself into a corner" problem writ large (& small).

Over the years of my steady-erratic badmouth attack on the binary design of oppositionalism (starting with the Buffalo Poetics List around 1997) I have experienced in my flesh the scapegoat patter-pattern of ritualized literary malice. I have painted myself into the shady corner of infinite giggle-bytes.

& I want to thank Kent Johnson for once again guarding the marches of freedom over there in Ron's comment box. I am completely bemused by the way this question of exclusion keeps coming back to haunt me from Buffalo. The world is as small as the buffalos in it.

This just in : cowpoke Kent Johnson , ol' pal of legendary Jack Spandrift, applies once more for re-entry to Buffalo Poetics List. Application denied.

History : in every American's 3rd left rib there is a tiny crystal Buffalo named Tony. Don't try to pet him : he's ornery, he's contrary.

My old checkers moves from Buffalo Poetics listwars.

Not the New, but the Now.

The Now is not emerging from the School of Carpitude.

Next I'll take on the NY School gen. 300.

Have the vision & ambition to be midstream.

This is one way to approach it.

Topic for discussion :
is this the choice - either find a way to turn poetry into a game - or be eaten alive by it ?

Deep game needs - the need to isolate the space so you can live in the larger world too; the desire NOT to be Poet 24/7. How this scrapes against or interacts with poetry club culture.

The problem for free thought created by club culture, the culture of poetry as S*E*N*S*A*T*I*O*N*A*L.

I was a poet in high school. I was a writer in junior high. I didn't need or want acceptance - I wanted publication.

There will be calls to action now, and people will be encouraged to get in line or shut up. Like a weak mirror of Bush policy.

I learned to play devil's advocate on the Buffalo Poetics List. Now it's no longer a game, but I'm still playing.

Ron's measured & sensible rationale (but see Joe's) against war:
the parallels - Vietnam, Nazi Germany;
the warnings - roiling Middle East, Fortress America;
the dismissals - UN resolutions, evidence of terrorist collaboration;
the evaluation - "spreading democracy" through US invasion is foolhardy. . .

the Bush admin. viewpoint:
we are already at war (viz. 9/11);
the goal is to isolate & defang global terrorism;
the strategy is to confront states that sponsor terrorism, to liberate Iraq & thereby isolate Iran, Syria & al Qaeda.

contra Ron, this MIGHT actually work. But too bad it's a war strategy rather than a peace strategy (if the Prez were Jimmy Carter we would be defanging al Qaeda by making peace between Israel & Palestinians).

Here is a post by Anselm Berrigan, sent to the Buffalo Poetics List. In putting this on my blog, I in no way mean to suggest that Anselm Berrigan agrees with MY position on Iraq (which I haven't completely figured out yet). Only that I found his post interesting.


Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 17:10:17 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group
From: Anslem Berrigan
Subject: Re: war
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"


Is it not important to point out that we are already at war? I believe we are
meant to take the War on Terrorism as literal fact, since the government
does, and certainly the soldiers in Afghanistan have no choice but to do so.
Invading Iraq would be an expansion of the current war, though it requires,
ostensibly, a new resolution from the UN. The protests against invading Iraq
are often publicly spoken of without the context of the War on Terrorism
being applied, and anyone who is willing to protest this expansion is, for
the most part, well aware that war is already upon us. In this vein, the
movement to oppose invading Iraq is not merely crying "war bad, peace good",
but attempting to exert public will (consciousness) upon the way the ongoing
war is being framed. The President believes his cause to be a moral one, and
the opposition to invading Iraq largely believes that pre-emptive invasion an
extremely immoral action. Of course, anyone might disagree with this,
particularly those who do not wish to see any of this described in moral
terms. But that's the tag and collar Bush has on the situation, and what he's
crushing his opposition with.