The put-down boys are out in force today. Venting their meanness by calling others mean. I'm one of the targets, maybe the main one in this round. Be happy, fellas. Find a spleen extractor, or something.

I learned in school that some people will take a disliking to you, they will bad-mouth. It just happens. I'm not going to defend myself today. Too happy writing again, after a long drought.

Po-biz, sho-biz... I'm a show-off myself. But we have to step back sometimes, away from the ego-trips, the easy, automatic, uncritical reactions to this n' that (sentiment, bombast, fakery, cliche), if we want to grasp even the tail of the firecat.

I see what I posted last night sounds very negative & judgemental. Not about Jim, but about po-biz.

Oh po-biz, don't take it personally. What do I know.

I endorse all good-will efforts.

I am'nt the judge of nobody's Writing Career. Having enough trouble with my own.

I reserve the right to like only what I like, though.

I like Jim Behrle. I've said that before, in many places. He organized the first reading I've had in many a year. He's wrong about various things, but then, so am I. I did give a few readings before he was born (this is fact, not hyperbole), & edited some magazines before he was born (TALISMAN - & not that NJ rag), & won some awards, before he was born (all 3 they offered at Brown U. - in 1971). I have organized some readings for other people - for Keith Waldrop, & Ange Mlinko (his heroine), & the guy who edits The Poker, he's so cool, I forget his name at the moment, & various other poets. & I have been invited to read by people other than Jim, occasionally (once every decade or so). & I published various people, & edited their books, & did anthologies, & stuff.

But I don't care if Jim gets his facts wrong, I really don't. Jim hates & despises po-biz almost as much as I do. God forbid, maybe he was influenced by my sour grapes! Poor guy. The clown's laugh, the sufferer's grimace, all the same.

The trouble is, satire & mockery are so dependent on the things they mock. It's a co-dependency situation. Jim's a trawler on the bottomland of Verse World. Dante & Pound & tons of turgid theologians wrote about the problem - "words about words", "poesie der poesie", po-biz about po-biz...

after a while the laughs seem febrile & hollow, because everybody's gone home & the clown takes off his smile mask & the bass player has no girlfriend & blah blah blah...

Verse World is a very layered & phony world, even more bizarre & fishy than Hollywood - & that's saying a lot!!!! All those career minded people, striving for academic credentials & tenure & all that business. Like the people in Canterbury Tales, really. People.

Meanwhile we have no safety net in this country. We have no public speech to speak of, not from poets anyway. This is because the symbolistes & the New York Fish and the Langpo Fish and the SF Fish and the Olson Fish are too busy schooling about, semi-gleefully, in their patterns of yesteryear...

& Jim understands this!! That's why I like him. But satire will only go so far in the echo chamber of words about words, in the sub of sub-subcultures of sub-sub-librarians.

Poetry is the spark that ignites those words and your reality.

Too bad if your reality is... just more words.

I had the nerve to post a mild criticism of "flarf", and to posit a distinction between flarf and poetry, on a poetry blog. Jim Behrle, a would-be defender of flarf, took it upon himself to do so by insulting me personally, several times over.

I know I'm not supposed to take Jim Behrle's mannerisms seriously - "all in fun", etc. But I'm taking his attacks seriously, anyway. I think Jim needs to find some new routines.

When someone intentionally blurs the distinction between criticism and personal insult, it means there's some kind of agenda at work. When someone intentionally blurs the distinction between a person, on the one hand, and their creative work offered to the public, on the other, then there's an agenda in play there, too - maybe the same one.

In my view there's a necessary, a substantial distance between the person and the work of art, which has its origin in the process of making poems or art works : a process which involves some kinds of self-surrender, and work, and openness to learning and chance and many other things.

We all share this, whether we're readers or students or makers - and it should be a free activity. And I don't think the freedom of poetry is understood or advanced by people who consider poetry as some means an end.

I'm not bragging or being "holier than thou", as Jim Behrle says, when I emphasize this. My outlook is just a consequence of my own experience of the creative process. I feel a conflict between literary and extra-literary phenomena.

So, when I criticize flarf, for example, and Jim Behrle responds with personal insults - in order, in his view, I suppose, to defend his friends and fellow flarfers - then the feeling I get is that he's not so much defending flarf as defending the social self-interests of his group. Because if he disagreed with my criticisms, he could address my criticisms; however, his first impulse is to jump to the defense of his friends.

Jim Behrle himself loves to satirize the social phenomena of po-biz, in its many spheres : but he also tries to have it both ways. He's got his own social sphere to defend, while attacking others. In this he participates in the same in-group phenomena, the same utilitarian literary politicking, the same self-serving po-biz, that he likes to mock.

This is the po-biz world which, on all its levels, seems like a sideline or a distraction from the basic contract between 1) the poet and the poem, and 2) the poet and the reading public. It's the world of the middle-men and -women, of talk and gossip and jabber and amateur theatrics.

I had a nice vacation in the Shenandoah National Forest. Crossed paths with a bear. It's kind of depressing to come back to this po-biz world of ours.

Jim Behrle's good with slander & insults. He's a little Boston bully-boy.

It's mostly about ego, I guess. I'm not sure where the poetry part comes in.

I don't like bullies. I'm ashamed of the times I've engaged in it myself!

& I don't like crowd phenomena posing as poetry scenes. There are so many distractions from the real thing out there.

What a nice guy Jim Behrle is. He wakes up every morning and thinks, "who can I put down today?"

& what a nice group of friends he has, the gleeful crowd who cheer him on. It reminds me so much of the cliques in junior high. & what great people they were, too. Though most of them grew out of those cliques, eventually. Poets get a break, though - they're so charmingly childike, aren't they.

Jack actually read the review.

Agreed.

Though I still feel the "blame the mainstream" game is zero-sum all the way. A game for losers (us'ns).

Orr points toward self-effacing precision (in Bishop) as opposed to personality (as in Lowell, Berryman), and I think he means it's that quality which she has instilled, in her self-effacing way, in the good poetry of later generations. This has nothing to do with who or who doesn't get into the New Yorker (& that's one of the more boring topics in our wee world of posies & poseurs).

I'm with the Bachelardette on this one. Bloggers seem to think poetry reviewing is somewhere between baseball ranking debates and the latest assault from the class-historical superstructure.

In a black mood lately. Trying to think positively about this: maybe it's the sign of a new direction. This has happened before.

The poems written in the last month, for the most part, are well-meaning & workmanlike, but also quite stuffy, stodgy, giving the impression of forced effort. With a couple weeks' distance they feel alien & clunky.

Seems like I've lived several lives in poetry already. Sometimes the mountain seems too large & cold to move.

When I'm in this mood it's better for me not to observe the "scene" at all.

It's a good thing I can play some music. Five of us now: piano, guitar, fiddle, accordion, harmonica, jaw harp, saw (yes, saw), kazoo, jug, washboard, bass (have started playing bass, finding it fun). We're sounding very jug-zydeco-afro-pop.

Though this too is just a distraction... "nobody knows the trouble I've been."

Modest Proposal Number Eighty-Three:

The Canonical Double-Play

We are all aware, at every waking moment, and probably at most sleeping moments, of the dire literary situation in which our Nation finds itself today, what with thousands, nay, millions of poets & poetry books emerging (both "loners" & clandestine networks), without any workable & secure intelligence structure in place which can adequately apprehend & "handle" them. My rather simple idea (which came to me this morning after a single cup of coffee and an early cookie) is as follows:

1. Shut down all existing critical & literary review agencies (which have proved, time & again, utterly, utterly).

2. Funnel all new publications to Jordan Davis, who will note their appearance (when he has time) on his blog, and send them to

3. Jonathan Mayhew, who will read them, provide a "rapid-response" for each, and ship them directly to

4. John Latta, who will find an appropriate and witty 18th-century critickal Peroration for each title, and

5. walk the books over to his local library for the next book sale.


This should solve most of the literary problems facing our country, I think.

I think poetry contests are fine. I think magazines, institutions, cliques, poetry schools, etc. - they're all fine. I'm not kidding. I used to worry about this stuff too... now it seems all fine to me. Why bother, why worry, why complain... work on your own qualities, that's all that matters.

Not because I delude myself into thinking I have an opening - far from it. I do believe, though, that any poet these days can get published, one way or another.

OK, let's really be annoyed today. I'm annoyed with:

grants
contests
publishers
editors
bookstores
reviews & reviewers
literary retreats, camps, conferences, etc.
MFA programs
scenes
readings
work, jobs, etc.
cars, trucks, roads & stores
money
taxes
trends
sophisticates
backwoodsmen
praise
criticism
poets
words
*

(I still like books, though, for some reason. paintings. also pine trees, woods, lakes - in moderation)

I'm sorry, but the culture of poets seems a total bore to me. It's as if we were supposed to be a devoted fan club for some obscure chess association, and required to be up to speed on the personal lives, gossip, awards ceremonies, funeral orations, etc., and that this somehow was the substance of the way of life. . .

& ironically the professed avant or post-avant wing of that society was supposedly dedicated to a depersonalized, politically-critical, collective notion of the role of the art form, against all that decadent & mealy-mouthed artsy narcissistic solipsism of the academicized mainstream. Their "collectivity" is nothing but a farm school or adjunct sub-college or self-help support group for league careers in that same greeny grove.

Something essential is missing when you domesticize & acclimate poetry to its own (sub)-culture. What's missing is its own otherness, its capacity for criticizing, transcending, metamorphosing the social and aesthetic conditions which produced it. This is its originality, and its social function. But now a fake otherness - paralleling "rebel" social behavior in pop culture - an ersatz otherness pawns itself off as the very medium of literary exchange. Poetry subcultures are built upon modes of talking or writing in special ways, distinct side-of-the-mouth idioms, like in-house passwords.

The real challenge is to find a middle ground, a mode of address to human political, social, aesthetic and philosophical issues outside the poetry sphere. W.H. Auden was very interested in a kind of "objective" mode of address, beginning with his leftist sympathies during the 30s, and complicated later by his religious convictions (which permit a kind of general address to the human condition) and by his deep interest in the social & satirical poetry of the Restoration era.

Something is missing, folks. The real radical poet is not the denizen of an idiom-club or the successful careerist. It's the one whose "middle voice" touches a chord in the public at large : an effect of, rather than a betrayal of, originality. This is the continual challenge to the authentic literary professional, not the card-carrying clubhouse member, frittering away time with gladhanding pals & weeping crocodile tears on every occasion. Because poetry does not belong to individuals : it happens to them & changes them.

I admire the "Petersburg" notion of these things (Pushkin, Blok, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva [honorary member], Gumilev, Mandelstam, Brodsky). Pushkin started it. The human being possesses social dignity as inalienable right. The poet, as poet, possesses a particular social prestige or status as a consequence of fame for producing authentic works of art. One should defend the former with one's life, and treat the latter with professional detachment.

My sermon for today. (I know you can all think of contemporary poets, young & old, who do not fit my stereotype or deserve my diatribe.)

Ron Silliman : roundhead
Jordan Davis : cavalier
NY School : cavaliers pretending to be roundheads (O'Hara) or roundheads pretending to be cavaliers (Berrigan) or cavaliers being cavaliers (Koch)
Language Poets : roundheads pretending to be poets
John Latta : roundhead who has achieved cavalierdom
Susan Howe : cavalieresse
Fanny Howe : cavalieresse pretending to be roundheadianne
Bernadette Mayer : cavalieresse who likes the idea of being roundheadianne
Kent Johnson : roundhead deserter with cavalier background & tendencies (esp. heteronyms)
Henry Gould : cavalier with roundhead DNA (roundhead lowbrow)
SoQ : roundheads pretending to be cavalier poets
post-avant : cavaliers pretending to be roundheads (cf. Kristen Prevallet, Lisa Jarnot, Eleni Sikelianos, etc.)
John Donne ; victory through dying early
John Milton : defeat through dying late
Shakespeare : poet pretending to be liberal roundhead cavalier (successfully)

etc.

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.

I stumble along slowly through the stubble-field of po-biz, surrounded by my little band of scoffers & mockers.

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.

My long-poem work & poetry in general poses something of a challenge to the supposed keepers of the modernist/postmodern poetry flame. This is, I guess, at least one of the factors behind my longstanding margin-of-the-margins status, from the days of Buffalo List unto the day of Blog.

By having the chutzpa to shuffle the "lineage" with a new long poem, and asserting its legitimacy as such; by counterbalancing the Pound/Williams/Zukofsky/Olson stream with an emphasis on Crane/Joyce/Mandelstam (Russified by a narrative which begins with a search for a lost cat named Pushkin); by insisting on rhyme, and stanza, and narrative, and character(s), & personhood, and continuity, & "readable" (allusive) meaning (at least to a limited extent) - this stance as a whole calls into question any number of literary-historical shibboleths regarding US poetry, its sources, directions, etc.

& yet I have the funny feeling I will win this battle, because I think my poetry is more alive & complex than all their theories, mutual-aid networks & anthologies put together.

It would be pointless for me to pretend to be cognizant of & attuned to the threads in po-biz & blog chatter these days. I'm involved in a very slow process now of trying to orient my own writing & thinking in different directions. Part of that does involve looking back at the long-poem efforts which absorbed me for several years. I guess much of what I say about Forth of July here sounds about as obscure, eccentric & irrelevant as can be. But for anyone who feels like looking into it, these blog notes might offer glancing openings to it. So I'll try to continue to spend a little time each day reviewing my own efforts, for my own benefit & for possible readers too.

I think of Forth of July as working in part by analogy, a structure of thematic parallels. Thus the notion of resurrection, or retrieving a connection with the dead, translates a concept of poetry itself (as a kind of vital experience of creative awareness or imagination) into a theme or a proto-narrative. The attempt to revive or reshape the American long poem & its meanings mirrors or parallels a theory or concept of the meaning of life & history in general. You could compare the process, oddly enough, to a run for the Presidency, say Howard Dean, for example. A heroic narrative (the outsider challenger, the knight on horseback) becomes a vehicle for the articulation of a perspective on broader questions.

In Forth of July, this theme of resurrection is channeled through the Orpheus story. "Bluejay", the ghostly shaman-spirit guide [Bluejay is the Orpheus-like protagonist in Northwest Coast Native American folktales] , leads "Henry" into the world of the dead. What seems in Stubborn Grew to be an attempt to come to terms with a dying marriage, proves to be, in the central book (Grassblade Light), a different psychic process, of coming to terms with the death by suicide of "Juliet" ("Henry's" cousin, who leapt from the Golden Gate on her father's birthday).

The central "panel" of Grassblade Light, titled "Ghost Dance", welds together many of the thematic parallels, in a kind of shamanistic resurrection of dead poets & poetry (Hart Crane, John Berryman), the long poem itself, and at the center, Juliet, bringing them all into the spiritual "now" of the "living, breathing" poem.

July, the third book of the poem, in turn, reckons with the illusions & limitations of the romantic-iconic summoning of the dead found in Grassblade, & goes further into a kind of "pure poetry" of America, oddly shedding/transposing some of the personal elements, while discovering & probing still deeper motives for the effort.

Here's a section from the final panel of Grassblade, titled "Rite of Spring":

         6


  
         The garden seethes with rust.
 The king's litter (a dry canopy)
 transported around a pool.  See
 the young maiden dancing,

  
         as she must – arm lifted,
 hand waving forward
 like a figurehead
 for the delicate ship outfitted

  
         to carry her.  And the ship
 carried on a breath of wind
 this way, that – bound
 on azimuthal slope

  
         to the meridian (one
 angled M-turn
 swollen with
         dying men).

  
         Gnomon of your returning
 Magdalen – to a green gar-
 den (time has never been).
 There's no more dying then:

  
         for the slave is free – fear
 swallowed up in victory –
 your vessel a flowering fiery
 myrrh-box adrift on a tear

  
         forever.  Where the dance
 begins and ends.
 No more dying then:
 the garden seethes

  
         with –

 
                                6.4.99

["Rite of Spring", of course, an allusion to the Stravinsky ballet about an iconic dying maiden, a spring sacrifice, folds into the Russian parallels of the poem, its return to its "Russian origins" - the instigation of Mandelstam's work - as well as the "springing" origins of the narrator - since the Rite was first performed on May 29, 1913, and 5.29 is the poet's birthday, and the numerical structure of Grassblade as a whole pivots on the number 29 - 5.29 being both the date of JFK's birth ("return of the American Camelot king") & of "Black Wednesday", the fall of Byzantium, 499 years before the poet's birthday.]