tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post116127334973848441..comments2024-02-23T03:28:33.435-05:00Comments on Culture Industry: Ron & the Brits iiMark Scrogginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161621027520983442006-10-23T12:30:00.000-04:002006-10-23T12:30:00.000-04:00Well, I guess I can't argue with Michael's notion ...Well, I guess I can't argue with Michael's notion of feedback, and perhaps poets do look over their shoulders at readers, critics, and even their earlier selves more than I care to admit. What I perceive as a problem, however, is the way that some poets' feelings of group affiliation can get in the way of their making connections that could benefit their work. This is especially true of young poets who, on the other hand, often develop a sense of themselves precisely through such group affiliations. Then there's the related and equally vexed matter of influence from one individual to another. There were certainly times in my work where I've done a turn a la, say Ashbery, or Susan Howe. Which is only to say, perhaps, that I've learned from my elders. In any case, matters of reception, audience and influence are unavoidable. Exclusionary practices and willful blindness--well, that's something else again.Norman Finkelsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03673105579717018812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161596527549341492006-10-23T05:42:00.000-04:002006-10-23T05:42:00.000-04:00Norman, I feel I really should shut up now but I d...Norman, I feel I really should shut up now but I don't want to ignore youre polite request. Though probably you're not going to get a poet admitting that they'd think about such reductive categories while in the throes of creation (a passage traditionally cloaked in mystery, perhaps to mimic birth-throes), I've actually no doubt that there is a feedback mechanism by which the divided audiences are something that poets are importantly influenced by. Poets are not so unworldly as not to have any awareness of receptivity!<BR/><BR/>To defend this: for example, I think of a couple of UK-based poets whose PR material I've noted recently, who I would basically regard as having SoQ visibility (Carrie Etter, Mario Petrucci) but who are making noises about an experimental second-string to their work. Whether such claims do ever reach or impress PA audiences I'm not sure, but it's evidence that sometimes poets do self-consciously think "I'm going to do a bit of P-A today" - though not in such blunt terms. And Peter Finch is a UK poet from the remote other wing who writes in a whole spectrum of kinds, some of which verge on traditional; his PA credentials so impeccable that he's quite happy to say as much!<BR/><BR/>Jessica Smith is a young P-A who has had the courage recently to describe her juvenilia as SoQ, and considering the kind of poems that students are usually exposed to at school I would think her development as a writer isn't by any means unusual. Admittedly discovering that you've changed the kind of poetry you write isn't the same thing as deciding to change it; but I believe the general tendency (especially on the PA side) is to understate the element of conscious decision; poets would rather give the impression that they're just naturally so out there that they can't help being wildly innovative. But whether jessica "decided" to write experimental poetry or not, the really significant thing is that she comprehends the shape of her own work so far in those binary terms -well of course she does! and I think you'd have to be a long way from the scene not to. That's what I mean by a feedback mechanism.Michael Peveretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17090710369630916194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161441364300916932006-10-21T10:36:00.000-04:002006-10-21T10:36:00.000-04:00Just in case anyone is looking for British poets &...Just in case anyone is looking for British poets &/or, I think relevantly, poems published in England (Sam Ward contributed a selection of such stuff to the last update of Cultural Society picks. They can be found at http://www.culturalsociety.org, click on 'picks' when you get there.zbklynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17274558436519817745noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161365552157763322006-10-20T13:32:00.000-04:002006-10-20T13:32:00.000-04:00I would like pose a simple question to the readers...I would like pose a simple question to the readers of this blog, including the admirable contributors to the present discussion: Does any poet ever really think, as he or she is writing a poem, "Now I am making a contribution to [<I>insert a particular school or tendency here</I>]"? Isn't it always after the fact of the poem that the critical assessments are made, the literary mafias take form, the can(n)ons are loaded? Mark, since you've mentioned me as a critic whose practice you approve (thank you), let me say again that I write criticism to explain to myself and others why I like a poem I like, and why others might take pleasure in it as well. A great deal follows from this, and we often find ourselves in a political or sociological morass, but however useful the historical distinctions may be, however overheated the rhetoric becomes, however the gang wars are conducted, in the end it has little to do with poets writing their poems, and readers enjoying them.Norman Finkelsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03673105579717018812noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161361592445431592006-10-20T12:26:00.000-04:002006-10-20T12:26:00.000-04:00Hi Mark, I appreciate your annotations to my sligh...Hi Mark, I appreciate your annotations to my slightly kneejerky response; I readily concede to your more nuanced commentary. However, I cling to my perception, not of two schools of poets nor two schools of scholar-critics, but of two poetry communities that remain largely distinct; in British terms you might characterize one of these communities as having never heard of(nor wishing to hear of) Bob Cobbing, the other as feeling terribly bored by the thought of reading Seamus Heaney's essays. Though poets themselves may defy categorization, it strikes me that these communities go about the business of reading poetry (and discussing what they read) in such different ways that you might almost say it occupies different niches in their cultural existences. Glancing across the boundary, as I and I suppose many other individuals occasionally do, only emphasizes the sense of moving between entirely different conceptual frameworks. That's how it seems to me, anyhow. And yes, this socioliterary perception is historically bounded and will mutate, the edges will erode. It isn't for all time. <BR/><BR/>Dammit, all I was going to say is "thanks" and I'm getting verbose again. <BR/><BR/>I've also been thinking about why I reacted so adversely to "ceremonious". It's a perception that I recognize as by no means irrelevant (tho in different ways) to Monk, Halsey, Prynne, Riley, all of whom I'd unhesitatingly place in my British top ten. But I suppose it's something that worries me. These are our best poets, but I'm convinced that this isn't an aspect of their work that I want to go along with. Of course a brilliant poet can do amazingly creative things with the rich, the ceremonious deposits of seventeenth-century spelling and forms - for example. It's just too tempting! That's why the Geraldine Monk that I really want to learn from is e.g. the streetsound montage in Manufractured Moon, not the lacework in Escafeld Hangings. <BR/><BR/>I suppose I think of Scott's antiquarian parodies, which of course I am a huge fan of; and then of Whitman's lifelong favourite poetry book, Scott's Poetical Works; and then of the staggeringly different poetry that Whitman actually wrote... Whitman's transatlantic perception that the past is, in fact, the past, is something that's still difficult to realize here, our ears are troubled with an old passion.Michael Peveretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17090710369630916194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-1161287112311058732006-10-19T15:45:00.000-04:002006-10-19T15:45:00.000-04:00I don't think you can analyze the propriety or no ...I don't think you can analyze the propriety or no of the (SoQ/P-A) theory without considering the issue of tendentiousness.<BR/><BR/>A self-proclaimed member of one of the "sides" - who claims that the opposing side has not only written bad poetry, but manages a conspiracy to control the channels of publication and prestige - sets out to brand individual poets as part of one camp or the other.<BR/><BR/>If he is accused of undue "politicizing", he claims that no, the politics of conspiracy and control are a fact -& he his simply witnessing to an empirical reality.<BR/><BR/>What I have argued for a long time is that these supposed literary categories are actually rhetorical devices, applied as part of a self-interested, polemical campaign of divide & conquer.<BR/><BR/>There is no avoiding a degree of this sort of thing, among ambitious, rivalrous practitioners of an art form.<BR/><BR/>Just don't confuse it with scholarship or literary criticism or even aesthetic appreciation, all of which are rooted in a (relatively) free, disinterested response to a new and unique aesthetic work.Henry Gouldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06763188178644726622noreply@blogger.com