[New-Poetry] Never Mind The Pollocks

[Bob Grumman]

Roger Day wrote:
> The admiration for Pollock expressed in this forum is shared by me.
> However, I have .. questions. Art practice is about control: control
> of media, the reader/viewer, experience ... yet Pollock pushes those
> boundaries. Oh, he has a modicum control in that each painting is a
> selection of colours and he places them - approximately and this is
> the rub - where he wants but if Art practice is continuum of control
> to un-control, then his methods swing to the latter unlike, say,
> Rothko whose methods veer towards absolute control. Who are Pollocks
> heirs? Not many, I think. Damien Hirst for one, possibly. Any others?
>   
Not Hirst, as far as I can tell--but I'm not a fan of Hirst, so don't 
know many of his paintings.  Sam Francis was Pollock's greatest (close) 
heir, I would say.  I like his paintings, some of them, better than 
Pollock's--but they aren't as important since derivative--or, more 
derivative than Pollock's were.  Deciding who else was an heir is 
difficult since, to me, everyone following him in non-representational 
painting was an heir of his to an extent.  But there are lots of 
painters effectively doing what he did my subscriptions to ARTnews and 
Art in America tell me.  And, ahem, I'm very much an heir of his in my 
mathemaku.

Your questions about control/freedom for control (I would call it rather 
than "lack of control) are good ones.  No time for them right 
now--except to note that I've called John M. Bennett the Pollock of 
American poetry in that in many of his solitextual (solely textual) 
poems, he in effect sprays words, many of them highly visceral, 
primitive, subliterate, on a page and succeeds, for me, in capturing the 
sub-cerebral essence of the human psychology better than any other poet 
I know--and, yes, I do think that a huge value to capture.

Many visual poets are children of Pollock in their graphic effects, 
besides me.  Jim Leftwich, for instance.  I find it interesting that you 
seem not to consider the visual influence of Pollock on poets.

--Bob G.
> My tutor hated Pollock to the extent that Pollock disappeared off his
> teaching map.
>
> How does this translate into poetry? If poetic practice is about
> control, whose poetical methods resemble Pollocks? Whose poetry is the
> parallel of Pollocks paintings?
>
> Roger
>