[New-Poetry] Ultra-Talk & Goldbarth

Skip Fox skip at louisiana.edu
Thu Jun 28 13:17:36 EDT 2007 

That was a funny quote. It went something like “If Robert Frost is a poet, I don’t want to be a poet. If Robert Lowell is a poet, I don’t want to be a poet. If F.T. Prince is a poet . . . I’ll consider it.” (Antin)

 

I didn’t mean to be so dismissive of Goldbarth. I have only an impression of him so it was not fair to lump him in with the slacker poets. 

The question on Ammons is a great one. I sense a reason why the experimental poets usually don’t include him in a way they easily do, for instance, John Ashbery. But I’d be hard put to articulate the reason. I know I don’t go to Ammons much but when I do I’m pleasantly surprised. In the Spring semester some grad students came to me, asking me to fill a sudden hole in a conference panel by reading scatological poetry (I guess they knew where to come), but instead of reading my own I read poems from Latin literature and Swift to the present including Ammons, the last one of which took my breath away, not because of a negative reaction to its subject matter, but because of it’s beauty.

 

I’ll return to Goldbarth and try to look up the Ammons piece.

 


-----Original Message-----
From: barry seiler <barryseiler at hotmail.com>
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:22 am
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Ultra-Talk & Goldbarth

You're right about Antin. When he does a talk poem, he picks a topic and improvises at the venue. How much preparation he does, I'm not sure. The talks are discursive, anecdotal, but always with the thread of the topic to follow. On the page, the experience is quite different. I wouldn't call him a prose poet. Perhaps a poet who works in prose? Way back he said if Robert Lowell is a poet, he doesn't want to be one. 
Barry Seiler 
 
>From: jforjames at aol.com 
>Reply-To: "NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views" ><new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu> 
>To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
>Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Ultra-Talk & Goldbarth 
>Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:13:48 -0400 
> 
>I have to agree with you that Goldbarth is not 'minimal' in anyway. He can >be a bit too maximal at times...self-indulgently so, at times. With an >everything-and-the-kitchen-sink kind of erudition displayed in certain >poems. 
> 
>Poets get placed very early on in their careers as in this camp or the >other. Once you're in one camp, it's hard for the other side to >acknowledge whatever merits in your work they might admire. 
>Is there any recent avant (post/pre/neo)Â as good as with the absurdist >hijinxs as James Tate, and yet he's most acknowledged among the mainstream? >Fortunately time often blurs the boundaries. (A couple of year ago Ron >Silliman was making a good case for an avant-gardist Marianne Moore, as I >recall.) 
> 
>Re David Antin: Antin doesn't seem to qualify for the 'ultra' or >ultratalk. He's a wide-ranging talker but he tends to flow or move a >little more purposefully with/through his material, and is. in some ways. >a prose poet, I feel. Then I'm not as familiar with work as some others >are, I'm sure. Maybe there are some poems that have the frenetic and >almost crazed, mind in hyperdrive aspect that, for me, gives the poem its >'ultra'. 
> 
>In 'ultra-talk' isn't the 'talkiness' just the starting point? 
> 
>Finnegan 
> 
> 
> 
>-----Original Message----- 
>From: David Graham <grahamd at ripon.edu> 
>Bcc: jforjames at aol.com 
>Sent: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 6:16 pm 
>Subject: [New-Poetry] Ultra-Talk & Goldbarth 
> 
> 
>Honestly, I don't recognize Goldbarth's work in descriptors like "tired," >"slacker," "defeatism," etc.--could well be I'm missing Skip's point, but >to my mind Goldbarth at his best is wonderfully energetic, inventive, >loopy, raw-boned, and densely layered.  In fact, if there's a single word >that screamingly does *not* apply to any aspect of Goldbarth, stylistic or >thematic, I'd nominate "minimal." He's the poster boy of Maximalism. >Most critiques of his work I've seen, in fact, take him to task for his >relentless sprawl, his more-more-more aesthetic (he in turn nods to such >critics by titling his recent new-and-selected collection *The Kitchen >Sink*).  
> 
> 
> 
>But apart from our different takes on specific poets, one thing that's >mighty intriguing to me is the way that this discussion has begun to blur >certain battle lines, finding possible commonalities among poets not often >considered together--e.g. Antin & Kirby, Goldbarth & O'Hara, Mayer & >Hoagland. And I like the way Williams has infiltrated the discussion, >especially his later discursive works like "The Desert Music". 
> 
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>In regard to Goldbarth, I've often wondered why his work seems so invisible >to most folks on the lang-po side of things. Despite his mainstream >credentials, he's always made a lot of moves that we think of as firmly >otherstream & postmodern in nature--his habit of anatomizing language >itself; his fractured narratives; his blurring of the prose/verse boundary >as well as the distinction between essay and poem; his process poetics; his >continual metapoetic gesturing; his use of linguistic collage; etc.  
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>Another poet who ought to be more highly regarded by the experimentalist >wing, I've always thought, is A. R. Ammons.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
>As far as I'm concerned, "ultra-talk" as a category is best kept loosely >defined, mostly useful in the way it points toward an interesting trend on >the current scene, one with some deep & interesting roots. I'm enjoying >this thread a lot. 
> 
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>-- 
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> 
>On Jun 27, 2007, at 3:34 PM, Skip Fox wrote: 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>And I would like to know what is different in Koch, O’Hara, Mayer, Antin >and Equi than in Goldbarth, who bores me? But I don’t even think of >Goldbarth  when I thought of slacker poetry, yet he has the same lilting >defeatism, a sense that the world in minimal, the exhausted feel of one who >has found nothing (maybe without looking very hard) and has nothing very >much to say in the face of it. Tired. End of century. Nerf existentialism. >“By the gate now, the moss has grown, the different mosses, / Too deep to >clear them away” Pound translates Li Po providing precisely the formula >of this state in a young woman (but she had cause! She was lonely and lost >in love). Why _do_ anything, even write, I seem to hear them ask beneath >their lines. I’d rather think that the relaxations of Lowell (via a >misreading of Williams) lead to this, since I believe the discursive force >that comes through Pound or Williams or Olson through O’Hara et al., does >not sprawl. Is that a viable difference? The shrug and self-deprecating wit >in a loosely held line compared to an energetic discovery of what there is >to know, realize, think about, feel, write and read, in a unique but >recognizably talkative line? 
> 
>Â 
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> 
>That’s my initial impression, but I’m open to persuasion. 
> 
>Â 
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