[New-Poetry] Challenge

[Anny Ballardini]

I agree with many people in these discussions, as usual. What I would like to say, and might probably help Grumman here, is that by following Derrida we are still within a language, we are still all here. As David says, after Stein or Pound, Olson or Zukofsky, or Johnson, there have been a lot of repetitions, and sometimes they were not better than those who preceded us. And I fully support David's and James' way of seeing poetry in this moment. I sometimes find that a poem written 100-2-3-400 or 1000 or more years ago has a refined quality much higher than the ones we are reading now. I want to go back to Parmenides, for example. I want to find the time to go back there. 
But Derrida went beyond with his of Grammatology. He needed a new language and a new writing, a new reading, a detachment from the signifier and the signified the way they have been structured until now. This is the greatest challenge those who call themselves poets or philosophers have to take upon themselves, I think. 

  From: David Graham 

  Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2007 8:42 PM



  I don't see why "challenging" can't be both intellectually difficult as well as disturbing.  And probably two or three other things also.


  One of the unexamined assumptions that often circulates when formally innovative work is put up against conventionally formed work is that *of course* the experimental stuff is more "challenging."  (A short jump from there to "better," too often.)  But challenge depends on a number of things, I'd say; and surely now that we're 100 years, more or less, into the Age of Stein & Pound, there's little need to keep applauding the boldness of poets who jettison narrative, traditional syntax, and so forth.  That's traditional by now, also.



  Frost, to pick one of my usual examples, is teeming with intellectually slippery material while not being challenging in the sense of doing away with conventional forms.  A line like "the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows" is endlessly challenging, I'd say.  


  But it's very difficult to talk about difficulty, isn't it?  In any case, you don't have to go far to recognize that accessibility of surface in itself is no barrier to poetic quality--just open any Norton Anthology.  Or better yet, put on some blues.




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  On Apr 15, 2007, at 4:26 PM, Bob Grumman wrote:
    You might be on to something there. I've often thought that only the privileged and
    leisure class can afford to like disturbing art. In a way the so-called edgy poets
    are preaching to the choir of the educated and privileged peers and not to the segments
    of society they claim they want to reach. It's akin to the anti-WalMart phenom...which
    is spurred by those with the means to spurn cheap housewares and jeans.  
    Finnegan

    That's an interesting thought, James, but I was taking "challenging" as intellectually difficult, not as disturbing.

    --Bob
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  ========================================
  David Graham
  grahamd at ripon.edu
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