[New-Poetry] deep image syllabus

Mon Oct 1 12:16:33 EDT 2007

Interesting how debate about the deep image poem parallels the  
earlier debate about imagism itself, with various factions &  
promoters competing over whose definition would stick.  Thus, Pound  
complaining about Amy Lowell's usurpation ("Amygism," he sneered) of  
"his" movement, which he had largely borrowed from reading  
translations of & scholarship about classical Chinese poetry.  And  
soon enough he left Imagism behind for Vorticism, which of course  
never caught on as a concept, though Pound's methods certainly did.

So I suppose Deep Image's vagueness as a category has something to do  
with competing aesthetics.  Not many readers of David Antin and  
Clayton Eshleman have much to do with readers of, say, Galway Kinnell  
or Robert Bly.

I've always thought that in its more mainstream incarnation, the  
poster boy of the deep image poem was Gregory Orr.  He's altered his  
style considerably since the early work, but in his first few books  
we find many poems like this one:

A Courting Poem

The wound sought out the stone, because
it was tired of living alone and formless
like a cloud in a cave.

But the stone feared the wound,
sensing that it was not like other things
that were there and then gone.
The stone needed the wound, but still

the silence would never be the same again,
because of the hum of blood in its veins.
The long walks after the first snowfall
would be different: now there would be footprints.

Gregory Orr
---------------------

Most of what can be said against such poems has been said quite  
effectively decades ago.  Primal imagery often just seems generic,  
for one thing, and the relatively limited palette of mostly Anglo- 
Saxon nouns employed by early Orr & others (stone, vein, bone, dark,  
snow, blood, cloud) fairly quickly assumed an inadvertently comic  
simplicity.

I would imagine that even Orr himself might agree that this poem  
hasn't aged particularly well, since he no longer writes in such a  
style.  Of course, we should remember that many of the early poems of  
Pound or Williams are real stinkers.

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

Home Page:
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Poetry Library:
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==========================================

On Oct 1, 2007, at 10:15 AM, jforjames at aol.com wrote:

> found this on the web...
>
> Pierre Joris : Graduate (& 2 Undergraduate) Seminars
>
> ENG450: Special Topics: Deep Image & After (most recently: Fall '97)
> This course will focus on one of the richest and most explorative  
> movements of contemporary American poetry. If classical 20th  
> century European literary movements (such as Futurism, Surrealism,  
> etc.) have characteristically been well-defined & definable,  
> postmodern movements in the US in the second half of this century  
> have, with rare exceptions, been more diffuse & difficult to  
> pinpoint. This course will study one of these — "Deep Image" or  
> "the Caterpillar poets" as it has also been known— by examining its  
> historical roots, its poetic practice & theory and its geographical  
> & poetic dissemination, to help us situate its aims & methods, as  
> well as its practioners, in the wider context of contemporary  
> American and world poetry.
> To set the historical frame, all students should have read Jed  
> Rasula's The American Poetry Wax Museum before the course starts.  
> We will then go on to read work by the following poets: Jerome  
> Rothenberg, David Antin, Robert Kelly, Diane Wakoski, Armand  
> Schwerner, Clayton Eshleman, Diane Di Prima & Rochelle Owens.  
> (Books available in bookstore).
> • Students are expected to give in-class presentations of a chosen  
> author or problematic.
> •Evaluation will be based on these presentations as well as on two  
> projects (midterm & final) that can/should integrate critical/ 
> theoretical reading of the course and their own (relevant) creative  
> work.
> •All students need to have a VAX account & should familiarize  
> themselves with the DEC NOTES conferencing program before the  
> course starts. (This conferencing program, beyond enabling students  
> & instructor to interact outside the classroom, will also allow a  
> number of the poets studied to be electronically available to  
> respond to class discussion & student queries.)
> BOOK LIST
>
> Jed Rasula: The American Poetry Wax Museum, NCTE (NCTE stock  
> number: 01380-3050)
> Jerome Rothenberg: New Selected Poems, New Directions, 0-8112-0997-0
> Jerome Rothenberg: Pre-Faces, New Directions, 0-8112-0786-2
> David Antin: Selected Poems 1963-1973, Sun & Moon, 1-55713-058-2
> Robert Kelly: Red Actions, Selected Poems 1960-1993, Black Sparrow  
> Press, 0-87685-977-5
> Diane Wakowski: Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987, Black  
> Sparrow Press,
> Clayton Eshleman: The Name-Encanyoned River Selected Poems  
> 1960-1985, Black Sparrow Press, ISBN: 0876856520
> Clayton Eshleman: Novices; Marsilio Publishers; ISBN: 1568860366
> Rochelle Owens: New and Selected Poems 1961-1994, Junction Press.
> Diane Di Prima: Pieces of a Song : Selected Poems, City Lights,  
> ISBN: 0872862372ENG450
> Class Reader — available from InfoPro
> TABLE OF CONTENTS OF READER
> TEXTS:
> — Various "Deep Image" manifestos, responses & magazines:
> Trobar # 1
> Trobar # 2
> Trobar # 3
> Jerome Rothenberg: "The Deep Image Is The Threatened Image"
> (in: Poems From The Floating World vol. 4)
> Jerome Rothenberg & Robert Creeley: An Exchange
> (in: Kulchur 6)
> — Robert Kelly: Statement
> — Early Jerome Rothenberg poems
> — Jerome Rothenberg/David Rathman:
> "Six Pictures for the Granary"
> — Jerome Rothenberg: Vort interviews
> — Kevin Power: "An Image is an Image is an Image"
> —Eric Mottram: "Where the Real Song begins"
> — Diane Wakoski: "Jerome Rothenberg's Deep Image"
> — Diane Wakoski: "Form is an Extension of Content"
> — Armand Schwerner section
> SELECTED POEMS:
> The Lightfall
> Muck The Fuck
> The Magic Runner
> The Red Horses of the Sun
> The Violence Around us
> Constellations
> Tablets I, II, X, XV
> Interviews from VORT magazine (issue # 8)
> — David Antin: "Modernism and Postmodernism: Approaching The  
> Present in American Poetry"
> — David Antin: Vort Interview
> Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!
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