[New-Poetry] NatPoMo

[David Graham]

Just to be clear on my own take on one matter:  I wouldn't say that  
mainstream absorption of "edgy" work is best described with metaphors  
of diminishment, "watering down" and the like.  I suppose my own  
metaphor would be something more like grafting on new stock to old  
growth--i.e. an addition to available reality, not automatically a  
diminishment of anything.

Much of the revolutionary edge of Eliot, Pound, Williams, Stein,  
Moore & others was eventually absorbed into the mainstream, yes, but  
that's because it ultimately changed the mainstream, however slightly  
under eternity's aspect.  Or however balefully, according to one's  
taste.

As to models for opposing The Academy's promotional efforts, I think  
we not only have a great model, but a functional system that's been  
in place for a good while:  the worldwide web.  It's probably too  
soon to make big historical predictions, but it seems that, generally  
speaking, "edgy" work has a much higher profile these days than in  
the pre-web era.  The net has democratized things in some key ways.   
The Academy of American Poets is balanced by, among other parallel  
academies, The Electronic Poetry Center.

Even so, I don't think that deliberately transgressive academies will  
ever supplant mainstream operations like the AAP, simply because, as  
I noted before, most readers *like* mainstream stuff.  That's why  
it's mainstream.  Mainstream taste does change, of course, but slowly  
and often unpredictably.  If you're a revolutionary, probably the  
best case scenario is that you might divert the mainstream a little  
bit, over a long period of time.

I would also want to resist caricaturing mainstream poetry as merely  
"easy-listening," as Bernstein and others persistently do.  The  
common habit of arraying poetry along a spectrum from difficult/ 
challenging/innovative/honest at one end and easy/uplifting/ 
conventional/smug at the other is far too simple; and when you start  
implying that the conventional end is necessarily lesser art, that's  
just foolish.  A lot of it is, of course, but the same is true at the  
other end.

Along these lines I always think of something Carl Sagan wrote once  
about scientific innovation.  He said we must remember that they  
laughed at Edison, at Newton, at Darwin, et al.  But they also  
laughed at Bozo the Clown. . . .


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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/academics/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
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On Apr 14, 2007, at 2:44 PM, amy king wrote:

> Um, no, that's not the kind of simplistic dichotomous thinking I  
> was promoting, Jeff, but it's a convenient deduction to support  
> such a silly analogy (i.e. 'storming the bookstores to burn popular  
> books') that reduces and distracts from my original response  
> regarding addressing the more complex issue of what's at stake when  
> it comes to promoting poetry in the mainstream fashion -- Show me  
> up for a "lazy thinker" who is 'sidestepping thinking' ... that's  
> *your* innovative thinking?  That's engagingg with and addressing  
> the issue at hand?  That's extending yourself as a poet and putting  
> forth some suggestions of how poetry might rattle a bit?  Better to  
> call me a lazy thinker than to address what's at stake, personally  
> and publicly, when examining what, exactly, the Academy is  
> promoting, how they're promoting it, what gets left out, how money  
> in the po' business is actually used, the effect such use has on  
> the barometer of poetry, how the Academy might use the tradition of  
> poetry as a tool that incites, reflects unpopular sentiment, etc.  
> -- even questioning such mechanics is difficult ...
>
> As David elaborates on and I noted earlier, the mainstream has  
> wayss of absorbing poetry so that even the 'edgy' or uncomfortable  
> stuff is watered down or ultimately dismissed - so that it doesn't  
> threaten.  Eventually, some of it, when it's no longer so  
> threatening to 'public thought' (& ease) can move in.  And poets  
> seem to be okay, or at least, apathetic about this process.
>
> Do we not have any historical models to build from?  Any  
> alternatives to the Academy's poetry month that go beyond Jeff's  
> call for insulated attacks that involve donning army boots?
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