Re: [New-Poetry] An Era of Détente for Creative-Wri ting Programs

[Mark Weiss]

I for one resist talking on a list about any poems presented on a 
list, even if I love them, because then the absence of comment on 
other poems would be noted. Why would I want to risk hurting the 
feelings of anyone, especially people I like?

What venue did you have in mind for the exchange you're talking 
about? Leave aside that I'm not sure which poetry you find opaque.

I was talking to a new-minted MFA at U of Arizona. Turns out she'd 
never heard of Jack Spicer. Not that she didn't understand his work, 
but that she'd never heard of him. Or Armand Schwerner. Or John 
Wieners. I don't shock easily, but that shocked me. Similarly, in my 
world Lorine Niedecker has been read attentively and been a major 
influence since at least 1969 I think it was, when Jargon Society 
published a collected poems. It's only in the past maybe 5 years that 
the other side of the divide's caught on. Apparently Olson remains 
opaque to many, despite annotated editions. All it takes to read him 
is to start at the beginning of Maximus, with or without notes, and 
read to the end, aloud. Not all in one sitting. Hard for me to 
imagine anyone not being intrigued by the time they've reached the 
middle of the first book. She'd also never read Williams' Spring and 
All or Oppens' Of Being Numerous.

Back to the beginning of that last paragraph. I think I would 
recognize the names of most of the poets taught at Arizona, and have 
almost certainly read at least a poem or two by each. Am I that much 
more curious than other folks, or does that curriculum get more circulation?

Mark

At 02:18 PM 7/3/2009, you wrote:
>It was probably unfair of me to characterize you as having only
>contempt for the the "knownstream" (though I'm pretty sure a fair
>number of those who call themselves post-avant have nothing but
>contempt). And when you do share that you appreciate poems of the
>knownstream you don't lace that appreciation with backhanded insults.
>
>Anyway, you write:
>
> > But, I admit to having one problem as a poet with
> > Wilshberians.  I simply can't understand poets who
> > are satisfied to do no more than imitate the
> > received poetry of their time
>
>But when it comes to post-avant poetry (or whatever, I'm going to use
>that term as a shorthand, as much as I dislike it), I simply can't
>understand it. Period. And I've tried pretty hard to do so and to be
>open-minded while doing it. I mean, really-- don't the vast majority
>of people who are interested in poetry *want* to find poems they can
>love and that resonate with them? I know I do.
>
>But there simply aren't many people on the inside of new poetry (the
>field, not the list) who talk about poems... they'd rather argue
>poetics. And most of the time the argumentation consists of demeaning
>and belittling the poetry those new to the post-avant are most likely
>to be familiar with. I'm sorry, but whatever the MFA club might be,
>it's nothing compared to the exclusiveness and hostility of the
>post-avant crowd. And then they wonder why more people don't read them
>and remain "stuck" in the knownstream?
>
>I know we disagree about the zero-sumness of appreciation and whether
>anything new is happening in the knownstream, but don't you see this?
>Some of the post avant crowd have been friendly-- Josh Corey comes to
>mind-- but it remains nearly impossible to find any of them talking
>about poems. And I know much can't be taught... but that doesn't mean
>nothing can be shared. And if people like me don't have any of the
>vocabulary to being understanding what's going on, where do we get it?
>I've had many years of people sharing with me what they see mainstream
>poems doing; I find almost nothing from the post avant crowd providing
>any equivalent.
>
>c
>
>On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Bob Grumman<bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> > Chris Lott wrote:
> >
> > Well, it's rare that a bad label makes me wish for more labels rather
> > than none at all...
> >
> > The difference, I think, is that (as far as I can tell) you get-- or
> > wholly believe you get, which is the same thing for this purpose--
> > Wilshberia/quietist/etc poetry and believe it to be largely inferior,
> > a retread of a poetry long since worn out.
> >
> >
> > As I've said more than once, I truly admire what I call knownstream poetry.
> > Basho is big in the book I'm sending you, for instance.  Keats, Stevens,
> > Yeats are big in my Of Manywhere-at-Once book.  I admire 
> Wilshberian poetry,
> > which is a part but not the whole of knownstream poetry, at its best and
> > even when it is only good.  What I don't admire are those who ignore
> > anything that isn't out of Wilshberia, especially those who claim to be
> > terribly eclectic.  rather than make it
> > new.  I consider this a failing on my part.  Yes, taking a 
> received form and
> > using it better than anyone else ever has, is as worthwhile as inventing a
> > wholly new, effective form.  So my brain tells me.  But I am handicapped by
> > a temperament that forces me to prefer the latter, so it's hard for me to
> > listen to my brain.  That people imitating, sometimes not well, make out so
> > much better in the BigWorld than I do is something else that makes it hard
> > for me fully to escape my bias.
> >
> > --Bob
> >
> >
> > Whereas I, for the most part, *don't* feel I get new poetry.
> >
> > It has to be easier to ignore something when you have rejected it than
> > when you simply find it closed off to you *and* lorded over you at the
> > very same time.
> >
> > And, while I'm mentioning that, I should have recognized you in
> > something I bloggety-blogged recently lamenting the lack of teachers
> > of new poetry, in the sense of those being willing to share specific
> > examples and what they think of them, how they approach them and (to
> > the extent possible) how the poem means to them. You are one of the
> > few I've found who do this.
> >
> > Most are too caught up in arguing about poetics and poetry to pay
> > attention to poems.
> >
> > c
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 5:56 AM, Bob 
> Grumman<bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Chris Lott wrote:
> >
> > Well, except the whole post-avant/quietist thing, which I shouldn't
> > follow because it literally pushes me to suicidal thoughts.
> >
> > c
> >
> > That's bad, Chris--it should push you to homicidal thoughts, not suicidal
> > thoughts.  I ignore it.  Except to get annoyed that "School of Quietude,"
> > which is a name with no useful definition, gets all the publicity and
> > discussion.  My superior terms, whether you like them or not, get almost no
> > discussion, except from visual poets who don't like my requirement that
> > something called a "visual poem" have words in it to qualify as a poem--and
> > who (insanely) believe that by making that requirement, I'm trying to stop
> > people from making artworks with text but no words.
> >
> >
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