[New-Poetry] Against National Poetry Month

[Bob Grumman]

David Graham, aggreeing with the Mole:

I agree.  Is the Academy of American Poets keeping Americans from loving Ron Silliman or Lyn Hejinian--readers who would eagerly embrace such poetry if only they had access?  

    The Academy is certainly instrumental in preventing newer forms of poetry from BEING SEEN.  There are only so many bookstore bookshelves, and so many literature textbooks used in compulsory formal education and so many grant dollars.  Can anyone really believe that if the Academy suddenly started pointing out poetry using techniques not standard fifty years or more ago that NO ONE would turn to the newer stuff (as they are very tentatively starting to do with language poetry by women, political correctness making up for disloyalty to the status quo) nor any poet not doing standard poetry benefit?  Aside from that, can anyone believe that NONE of the newer forms of poetry won't be popular fifty years from now?  If so, why shouldn't the Academy help people to such poetry, for the sake of the future--and for the sake of the poets making such poetry instead of for the sake of the academics now making good livings off poets like Pound, Stevens and Whitman, who never benefited financially from their poetry to any significant degree?


    Obviously not, since transgressive, "edgy" stuff is in fact *intended* not to appeal to mainstream readers.

    Nonsense.  While some language poetry and various strands of dada and contragenteel poetry and the like may be intended to not appeal to mainstreamers, much otherstream poetry hopes for the same kind of intelligent readers Whitman, Pound and Stevens now have.  

    That's its reason for being.  Charles Bernstein needs Billy Collins and the Academy just as surely as every garage band requires big-name sellouts to define itself against.  Eventually, some aspects of whatever revolution occurs will seep into the mainstream, and formerly edgy poets embraced by the mainstream will, of course, be accused by some of pandering, just as whatever institution promotes them will be accused of tokenism.  Perhaps such accusations will even be apt. 


    I note that the Academy this Poetry Month has featured Ashbery, Perloff on Stein, Seidel, Creeley, Armantrout, and--oh boy!--Claudia Rankine on Lyn Hejinian.  That probably wasn't true eight years ago, in fact, when Bernstein's essay appeared.  We may be seeing some of these folks evolving mainstreamward, or we may not. But the prevalence of Collins or Levine over Scalapino during official NatPoMonth is not some grand conspiracy; it's just the way institutional taste works.  The wheel revolves slowly.  And more people *like* Collins's work.

    Right.  As I've been pointing out for a decade or so, language poetry has become acadominant--after thirty years or so of marginality.  So, you're right, David--complaining can finally force the estabniks to look at a movement, especially if the complainers have inflitrated universities as effectively as Bernstein and Perloff.  


    You can dislike that fact, and if you're a teacher or other user of an institutional pulpit you can strive to change it, as Tad suggests, but good luck.  Historically, the mainstream tends to like, well, mainstream work.  


    I don't think Charles Bernstein would have it any other way, anyhow; if he ever were to succeed, that would be proof of failure.

    You may be right about Bernstein, but not about the great majority of visual poets I know.

    --Bob G.
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