Showing posts with label House Organ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House Organ. Show all posts
9.20.2007
House Organ #60, edited by Kenneth Warren, arrived today. I feel lucky to be getting this in my mailbox. The funny thing is how this little folded-over xerox-style magazine, full of quiet poets you've never heard of, mostly, is the best thing going in hopped-up, expensive America. Tom Epstein put me on to it, several years ago.
9.22.2004
Let's gab some more about long poems, OK Hen? OK.
Both Warren & Dale Smith, in that issue of House Organ, point toward the messianic/utopian. Smith, in asserting a bond between the poet's line & the actual (natural/cultural) locus poeticus or environment. Warren, more specifically, seems to judge the "messianic" as a sort of aggressive ethos-formation or ideology, formed in conscious or unconscious conflict with deeper psychosocial forces (patriarchy, anti-semitism, anti-Catholicism). (I think Warren displays sort of a Catholic-Jungian syncretism, in which apocalypse, messianism, utopianism are "outer" phenomena, which fall short of a more complete & substantial inner integration or paradisal state. But I'm sort of guessing here, having given his essays only a cursory & intermittent reading.)
The long poem, with its collective & holistic ambitions, applies itself especially to utopian aims.
Seems to me that in order to approach such aims, any such work would have to have:
1. some kind of cosmological worldview, social-scientific philosophy, or religious base.
2. some kind of holistic or encyclopedic representation of social life.
(Northrop Frye & others have written a lot about such generic requirements.)
How do the American examples stack up in this regard? More in a minute.
Both Warren & Dale Smith, in that issue of House Organ, point toward the messianic/utopian. Smith, in asserting a bond between the poet's line & the actual (natural/cultural) locus poeticus or environment. Warren, more specifically, seems to judge the "messianic" as a sort of aggressive ethos-formation or ideology, formed in conscious or unconscious conflict with deeper psychosocial forces (patriarchy, anti-semitism, anti-Catholicism). (I think Warren displays sort of a Catholic-Jungian syncretism, in which apocalypse, messianism, utopianism are "outer" phenomena, which fall short of a more complete & substantial inner integration or paradisal state. But I'm sort of guessing here, having given his essays only a cursory & intermittent reading.)
The long poem, with its collective & holistic ambitions, applies itself especially to utopian aims.
Seems to me that in order to approach such aims, any such work would have to have:
1. some kind of cosmological worldview, social-scientific philosophy, or religious base.
2. some kind of holistic or encyclopedic representation of social life.
(Northrop Frye & others have written a lot about such generic requirements.)
How do the American examples stack up in this regard? More in a minute.
The latest issue of House Organ arrived yesterday, including another chapter in editor Kenneth Warren's ongoing Olson research, "The Emperor's New Code", and a little defense of the vitality of "the line" (& rebuttal of Ron Silliman) by Dale Smith. Also some nice late-summer poems.
Warren's effort is unusual. He has a mercurial, intuitive capacity for interpretation, which is a perfect lens for Olson's psychological-historical-occult mentality; he brings a vast store of Jungian-astrological-mythological-sociological knowledge to bear, combined with a critical sense (which is not about "promoting" Olson, but opening up both the dark & light aspects of his epic ambition). This issue's chapter is a fascinating look at the Olson/Ferrini constellation, in which the "ferrous"-iron Ferrini stands for "Red Knight"/Mediterranean/Jewish/feminine qualities, which Aryan/masculinist/German-idealist Olson must challenge. (Here's a Warren review of Ferrini, drawn from another House Organ issue, which gives a sense of what he's getting at.)
p.s. Kent Johnson appended a good comment to this post, please click the box below(even if it shows "0 comments!").
Warren's effort is unusual. He has a mercurial, intuitive capacity for interpretation, which is a perfect lens for Olson's psychological-historical-occult mentality; he brings a vast store of Jungian-astrological-mythological-sociological knowledge to bear, combined with a critical sense (which is not about "promoting" Olson, but opening up both the dark & light aspects of his epic ambition). This issue's chapter is a fascinating look at the Olson/Ferrini constellation, in which the "ferrous"-iron Ferrini stands for "Red Knight"/Mediterranean/Jewish/feminine qualities, which Aryan/masculinist/German-idealist Olson must challenge. (Here's a Warren review of Ferrini, drawn from another House Organ issue, which gives a sense of what he's getting at.)
p.s. Kent Johnson appended a good comment to this post, please click the box below(even if it shows "0 comments!").
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