there was a great, great passage in the RS Crane book (Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry), which I came across a couple weeks ago, in relation to Jonathan's notes a while back on fitness(decorum). I'll try to locate it.

I sense that Jonathan, on decorum, fitness, is onto something that could be productive.

The concept presupposes that a literary text occupies a place in a larger field, a context. That it is necessarily both an echo, to some extent, and a mode of address or indication toward something else.

Maybe most shifts in style depend on a new sense of decorum. That is, if there's a fitness in relation to experience or reality, then, as our general sense of reality changes, the old styles or old forms of decorum will no longer ring true. (Maybe some forms of decorum never change, though - built as they are on our direct responses to certain basic kinds of experiences. Laughter in comedy is just a special application of humor in general.)

Complex artworks are structured around complex forms of decorum. I remember reading an essay about Melville's Confidence-Man, which argued that the thing is a fantastic meditation/spoof on the generic expectations of literary forms.

Complex critical projects are probably built around systematic and layered senses of decorum.

Jonathan in the vein of decorum. Interesting.

Decorum, in one way, seems like a kind of reality principle. Style to fit the subject : but how do we know what fits unless we know something about the subject? (Reminds me what Frost said once: something like - only amateurs try to tell us something we don't know in poems; the pros stay with what everybody knows.) (I've probably mangled that into oblivion. Ne'er so well-express'd & all that.)

But then there's the decorum of style itself, & styles. Fashions quickly build their own boilerplate template collections. This is decorum in the one-way mirror, I guess.

more later?

by the way, dear Emperor Jonathan, I don't think one should reduce Berryman's "Mr. Bones" interlocutor in the Dream Songs to "music hall schtick". I know some poets & readers take offense at that particular black-talk imitation, but I think the offense is misplaced. Berryman's alter ego is not a subaltern, but a function of his conscience. Clearly, no one should accept the notion that African-American identity is limited to white Americans' imaginary constructs or fantasies about same. But it is mistaken (and uncharitable) to discount those constructs as merely - inevitably - empty, worthless or malign. They can be ironic, critical representations of cultural landscapes & relations, at certain points in history.

This is obviously a "vexed issue", a controversy, within the general heat of cultural politics, and I don't claim to have the final answer.

I think it could be argued that Stubborn Grew takes the representation - the "schtick", if you will - of submerged (oppressed) conscience, and makes it pivotal to the plot. Some intrepid scholar might want to dig into the sources of this - such as (even more than Berryman) Melville's "counter-Bible of the cosmic castaway", Moby-Dick (cf. Olivia Sachs' weird, hard-to-find Melville study, Game of Creation).

THE EXPOSITION OF MARION THE LIBRARIAN (copyrighted. any abuse, misuse, refuse, or booze in relation to the following will be prosecuted to the full extent of the public stocks in the public square of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.)

A schtick is not a poetics.

This brief declarative sentence appeared, without further explanation, on the Bemsha Swing blog of poet, scholar, translator, jazz drummer, & inhabitant of Kansas, Jonathan Mayhew, yesterday.

This gnomic admonition cries out for interpretation and analysis. As author of the phd. dissertation "Genesis and Pratfall : the Poetics of Schtick in the Infernal Landscapes of Milton's Paradise Lost" (Harvard Univ., 1986), and presently municipal Librarian of River City, Iowa, I feel appropriately situated for such an endeavor.

We have learned, since the advent of historical-material-nosediggin methodologies, to approach text in context. Paradise Lost was not composed in a vacuum: it was orated verbally by one John Milton, specific middle-class London person, to his three specific daughters, Hepzibah, Pepzibah & Zepzibah, on a specific day, in a specific week, in a specific room, of a specific house, in a specific England - about none of which specifics, unfortunately, we have any specific information. Fortunately, however, we know much more about the schtick-poetics contextual nexus in question.

We understand that the issue taken up at Bemsha Swing has nothing to do with the poetics of schtick (the techniques, methodologies, and philosophies of composition of the specific types of tomfoolery, trickery, "routines" and impersonations, folded under the umbrella (the trick umbrella) of "schtick". Rather, Governor Mayhew is voicing a limit-rubric, a critique, a boundary-value, with respect to the philosophy of poetic composition. General Mayhew is asserting that schtick as we know it is an insufficient basis for a true praxis-oriented poetics.

There. We feel better now.

Now I would like to turn to a brief remark made by Lieutenant Mayhew in the Comment Box of a post yesterday at HG Poetics. Here Officer Mayhew states: "Take away Chaplin's pliant cane and hat, and he'd still be Chaplin." This little offhand remark actually drills toward the nub of the ambiguities swirling around schtick-poetics. Just as Chaplin does not exist, in any actual Chaplin mode we know of, without the totality of his performative acts - in fact, without his acts, Chaplin probably goes by a given name different from "Chaplin"! - just as Chaplin-&-his-schtick present a symbiosis of Person-In-Action or an apotheosis-disappearance of Person-Into-Creative-Act : so the Poet, and The-Poet-as-we-Knoet, is indivisible from the performative acts by which he-she embodies creative vocation.

Thus a poetics of Impersonation, of Echo & Mimicry, is none other than the biological imperative, encapsulated in the dance of the Bower-Bird of Tango-Nika, or the chortlings of the Chortle-Bird of Irkutzk; and the boingy schtick of Chaplin is no different from the squiggly phallic-Hermetic Stick of the Lame Oedip-Orpho-Burpic Shaman of the wilds of Northern Cressida, in Thessaly, O Child of Dionysos!!!

Now as Kernel Bramhall pointed out, a poet's (as opposed to a critic's, or a boll weevil's) poetics follows, rather than precedes, the work itself. A poetics is an armature, an adjunct, a trace, an emulsion, an extra walnut. As such, a poetics can indeed fold itself recursively (see my study, Nonlinear Dynamic Systems and Time Travels with Loch Nessie in the Poetry of Robbie Burns) back into the poetry itself, and in so doing, that is, in folding back into itself, folding, as I say, fold upon fold, so to speak, back, itself into, poetry, poetry can, fold, folding, folded, make creative use of poetics; but this granular-recursive aspect should not be understood in any other than a quarky way, that is, as a part, not a whole, of the performative array or implosion known as poetic crystallization. (For more information, fold here and throw yourself into River City! If you've got the moxie to step outside of Grand Fenwick for once in your lazy lives, laddies!)

Here's Jonathan on the aforementioned latin bit. (& he becomes reader # 8 of Stubborn Grew, the book that changed history (at least until the Johnson-Silliman Pact of 2004, outlined by that Walden guy) - thanks - & congratulations!).

I would never think of Robert Creeley in relation to that notion. Ars et celare artem makes me think, not so much of plainness & simplicity, as of a kind of crafty guile, combined with all sorts of indirections, including perhaps a surface moderation or transparency. But Jonathan's concept may be more accurate.

This gets me to Jordan's aside on "depth". I'll have to think a little more deeply about this. Somewhere in the book Hamlet's Mill, mentioned here a while back, there is something about archaic astronomy-astrology as the search for. . . man, now I can't think of the word! It's not consistency. . . it's not continuity. . . but it's like that. . . it's like a philosophical term for steady duration, a pattern which remains the same. . .

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it seems to me that hermeneutics or interpretation of art works often involves searching for the deep motive, the wellspring which connects all the dots, the answer to why an artist or writer chose this particular obscure symbol or image or emphasis.

The presence of such a motivating plot or plan is one signature of depth. You could also talk about an artwork's "emotional depth", but such is usually brought, paradoxically, to the surface (the crisis, the denouement). Depth of purpose, on the other hand, often remains hidden & disguised - and the reason for this is because there is the deepest emotional commitment to the deep-ocean argument which actually triggered the work in the first place.

Jonathan's comments on translation & Milosz are interesting. But to say you have a unique aversion to translation's effects seems a little like special pleading. Obviously the reader has to make allowances. But a diet consisting solely of poetry in the original would exclude a lot of readers, for one thing, and impoverish poetry in general on the other. Poetry thrives on translation and mongrelization.

Jonathan's aversion (should this be a name for a symptom?) is connected also with what seems to me to be a rather narrow focus on surface elements of style. Some of the awkwardnesses of Milosz might even be seen as virtues, if the telos or overall motive of his poems is viewed from a different angle (say, in Poundian jargon, through the lens of logopeia rather than solely through melopeia).

He's probably right, though, that much of the clumsiness is due to the translating.

Responding to Jonathan's riposte of today:

There's no getting away from criticism.  They criticize "the mainstream"; I criticize them for it.  It may be that Steve Evans' lists are positive - I agree they certainly show a helpful initiative & healthy interest on his part.  But my beef was directed at quote from Evans' comments over at the Hotel (yesterday).  There Evans was quoted lining up the usual ideological game-formations  (the mainstream is fortified by big bucks, etc.).

I also agree that Ron Silliman puts great effort into his response to little-known & marginalized poetries.  That's nice & impressive, I can only respect that.  But he often frames his diatribes and polemics around a "we are better than them" scaffolding.  See for ex. his post yesterday mocking "self-similarity" in mainstream poetry publishing, vs. the wonderfulness of the usual names (Zukofsky, Olson, etc.).

Today I processed 25 books from SPD that crossed my desk, for the great poetry collection over here.  All brand new, from publishers large & small across US & Canada.  They will go on the shelves.  In the long run there is little difference between a famous poet & an unknown poet : they all end up on the shelves.  & the challenge for every poet, as I was strongly reminded once again when I glanced through these 25 volumes, is to create something sustained, original, interesting, memorable. 

In such a context (I mean my context, in a library, in a library, in a library... which collects thousands & thousands of books of poetry), it seems so clear to me that the us v. them po-biz maneuvering is really a form of intellectual simplification for po-pol-biz purposes, rather than genuine criticism.

I'm not cranky, Jonathan; just slightly depressed.   I do indeed respect those who put more interest & energy into noting/reviewing/etc. individual books & poets than I do myself.  Yet I'm entitled to my beeferoni.  A line in the Jessica Stern book struck me:  "Sociologists argue that the first requirement for mobilizing a group that feels oppressed is the identification of a common enemy. 'Without the identification of an adversary, or another social actor in conflict with the group for control of certain resources or values, discontent and protest will not engender a movement,' sociologist Alberto Melucci argues."

How much are unhappy frustrated under-published under-rewarded poets being manipulated and rewarded by "literary organizers"?  How do these organizers profit from creating these us/them worldviews & literary "movements"?  They become "leaders", for one thing. . .

But this literary organizing, I argue, is deleterious to genuine criticism & reception.

 

Jonathan offered a fine reading of Frost sonnet yesterday (5/18) ("Never Again Would the Birds' Song Be the Same").

Just got an email from Elena Shvarts : singing bird-clock arrived safely in St. Petersburg.

Have been reading a lot of Sophocles lately (some of Julia's poems remind me of the translations).

Robert Fagles' versions are great, I think. I've read his translations of Oedipus Rex, Antigone & Oedipus at Colonus. I'm hoping he also translated Philoctetes, which is my favorite of the seven extant.

Electra seems like one of the weirdest plays ever written.

These plays are 2500 years old.

(Sophocles lived to 90 yrs. Philoctetes his 2nd-to-last play (before O. at Colonus). Athens already defeated by Sparta, & Sophocles had already died, when O. at C. was first performed.)

I like this definition over at JM's: "A tautology is a tautology." This is almost a poem.

A tautology is a tautology:
when is a tot not a tot?
A tot is a tot.
Yes, quite.
Tut-tut.

Jonathan, with some interesting comments on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. (He's always thinking up productive & well-defined poetry self-edification projects.)

I would interpret the poem slightly differently, I think (it's complicated!). Yes, narcissism is not self-love per se; it's merely one symptom of it, one form it takes. But the speaker is not "lying", because he's not accusing himself of narcissism : he's accusing himself of overweening self-love. This excess is none other than original sin, which fills "every part"and is "grounded" in his inward heart. When he sees his aging image in the glass, he's reminded of his mortality & human frailty, and recognizes that he's been projecting his inescapably excessive self-love - in narcissistic fashion - on his admired young friend. The glimpse of his aging image in the mirror is not a narcissistic moment, but a moment of truth.

Why is overweening self-love "original sin", inescapable? Well, it's grounded in our "god-like" subjectivity and self-consciousness. I love this sentence from Nicolaus Cusanus : "Omnia enim universalia, generalia atque specialia in te Iuliano iulianizant." [All universals, generalities, and specifics julianize in you, Giuliano.]

We are each a little creative world, a microcosm : a situation which has both its glories & its dangers, which is why we love to - and must - keep looking into (& through) various kinds of "glasses".

Jonathan may have a valid argument here. Sometimes I don't have the energy or focus to deal with this stuff.

Yet it seems to me that it may be a good thing that non-mainstream poetry remains non-mainstream; that it's not aimed at a general audience anyway; that the mainstream often has insightful & appropriate things to say about non-mainstream writing (ie. the review of E. Pound's new Library of America anthology in yesterday's NYTRB), which would not be said if naturally "marginal" work were forced into the mainstream; that most non-mainstream writing - even the "high quality" sophisticated stuff - does not deserve a mainstream audience (because it's tailored to a coterie elite); that comparing non-mainstream poetry to poetry which has achieved mainstream or canonical status - whether good or bad - is like comparing apples and oranges; that the attacks on a "cabal" of SoQ literary mavens ignores the fact that literary establishments naturally reflect achieved mainstream examples of mainstream taste - that is, this is not a conspiracy but an effect of publishing per se; that multitudinous avenues of exploration are open to any reader willing to venture beyond the mainstream; that non-mainstream writing often does enter the mainstream, through the efforts of its promoters, but that no realignment of the "system" will (or should) make this an automatic process; & so on.

I myself am not satisfied with elite or coterie audiences for my own or others' poetry. What I believe in, is the fortitude of those who do take up the advocacy & promotion of writers & works of talent, which eventually can lead works worthy of a mainstream audience, to same. That this does not happen automatically or with perfect justice does not mean the system should be replaced by a team or categorical approach to literary prestige, some kind of anti-SoQ counter-establishment. I don't think Ron Silliman or anyone else is in a position to set standards for taste on such a universal basis. This would only mirror the current establishment in a much more corroded form.

Kindness of Jonathan, after all that.

Sadly, I predict he'll be disappointed. . .

I admire his generosity.

Jonathan back-forward pedals. I respect him too; but I must say that while caution rules the day, I can't afford caution anymore.

But who cares about that? It's irrelevant, anyway, what my opinion of my work is (nevertheless, I have a right to my opinion). It's not a matter of what I say about my own work : it comes back, always & everywhere, to the quality & depth of a work itself. I've made a big gamble on it, & I stand by my bet. You can call it bragging if you want, you can be skeptical based on what I say about it. . . but I insist that such judgements aren't worth much. Anyway, there's too much literary parlor gaming & gossip based on social pecking orders rather than straight literary awareness. I'm using the bulk of this blog, not for bragging, but for trying to open up what I've done for possibly interested readers.

Typical dismissive comment from Jonathan Mayhew. I'm very used to this sort of thing.

Forth of July is much closer to the long poems of either the "Pound" wing or the "Crane" wing than to Derek Walcott or most other contemporary-traditionalist narrative poems. But pigeonholes make thinking so quick n' easy...

Jonathan generously attempts a refutation of Houlihan's actual arguments. & I accept his position, but only to a degree. There is a difference between the original & Houlihan's parody of it : underlying the disjointed phrases ("breath/of a nipple" [???]) is some kind of rhetorical question, if not statement. My translation of the poem : "Does the process of excavating a 'logocentric grid' (the axle) of reality - which is the inverse mirror of stating axioms - muzzle the 'ventriloquist' breath of the (feminine?) body itself?"

So on a "tree" level, Jonathan has a point. But I think he misses the forest. The forest level of Houlihan's argument is that the poetic obfuscation of this kind of style actively discourages its interpretation. I will take a wild guess & speculate that this poet is a young ephebe currently enthralled with Celan. She's taken a fairly unoriginal postmodern idea (anti-logocentrism) and plumped & feathered it in portentous Celanophane, leading to such wonders of metaphor as "breath of a nipple", etc., its "revolving /throat". Faced with this mannered (wrapped) & imitative baloney, Houlihan's parody is justified, & her critique of both obfuscation and wheedling accessibility is very valuable.

Jonathan Mayhew writes:

But we are all vehement! Henry Gould and Jean Hooligan as much as Jonathan Mayhem. It's called passion! If elegance could be measured it wouldn't be elegant any longer. If poetry were written in "normal" language it wouldn't be poetry at all. All this reminds me of some books my Grandpa had by Robert Hillyer, a guy who used to write a column for the Saturday Review or Saturday Evening Post. He would quote a poem by Cummings or Williams or Auden and sneer at it. Modern poetry was crap. Half the time he was right, but that just shows bad poetry will always be more plentiful than good. The poetry he advocated was worse than crap. That's why the badness of Houlihan's own poetry matters in this debate.

But JM, I'm not against vehemence per se; only struck by it in this context. Houlihan's biting comments seem to stir not engagement but defensive vituperation. & no, the fact that Hillyer advocated crap poems does not justify quoting Houlihan's poems to deny her critical acumen. Houlihan does not present her poems as alternative models within her essays. The one poem (that I found, anyway) which she offered as exemplary, by Franz Wright, was pretty good, though I thought the final line spoiled it (snow like "millions of bees" : seems facile, a kind of well-worn flourish).

I agree that her criticism is satirical & negative, and does not really offer a "way forward" in terms of a new or exemplary poetics. But I find her closet-cleaning a breath of fresh air.

Jonathan weighs in on Joan Houlihan. I'm somewhat bemused by the vehemence of this & other negative takes. Again I see an unwillingness to address her main arguments (obscurity & bad writing among the "progressive", lazy resting-on-laurels among the established, et al.), along with a willingness to belittle her own poetry (which really is not a point against her essays), & to question, very tweedily, her "credentials".

All this vehemence makes me ask: is criticism actually possible with regard to contemporary poetry? Contemporary culture is most adept at creating complete autonomous worlds (poetry movements, football seasons, ghettos, SUV ads, music videos, computer games. . .). These pastimes are so pervasive and all-consuming that, in comparison, perhaps, a general notion of "good writing" seems inconceivably boring. "Progressive" poetry creates its own terms for production & consumption, which have a lot to do with an aura of performance & "liminality" & immediate experience, and little to do with "normal" or even traditionally or measurably elegant syntax or vocabulary.