tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post4708301732334733885..comments2024-02-23T03:28:33.435-05:00Comments on Culture Industry: On the edge...Mark Scrogginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-67334440986727997752008-12-04T07:20:00.000-05:002008-12-04T07:20:00.000-05:00Maybe it's still too early, Mark? My hunch is tha...Maybe it's still too early, Mark? My hunch is that Stein and Hughes wouldn't have shown up in force 20 years ago; a big Stein wave (Steinwayve?) broke over us both in graduate school, but I wonder how many dissertations there were on her poetry at the time. Ditto Hughes. <BR/><BR/>Or, perhaps, it's a function of the bad job market? Who wants to take the chance of being seen as a "(Riding) Jackson scholar" competing for slots against scholars of poets that the personnel committee is sure to have heard of, the students (more or less) sure to study? If I had Ph.D. students--which, thank heaven, I don't--I'd certainly advise them against doing a Loy or Jackson dissertation.<BR/><BR/>Or maybe (just maybe) it's something about the work? The hype based on extra-literary factors, and once that initial excitement wanes, there's just not enough there there?<BR/><BR/>...trying to force out a banana joke, but having some difficulty--E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-83124401350912431612008-12-03T14:19:00.000-05:002008-12-03T14:19:00.000-05:00Thanks for the eagle-eye proofreading, Steven! I t...Thanks for the eagle-eye proofreading, Steven! I think that RS's charter membership in the Lang crowd is pretty much a matter of historical record. What I think isn't accurate is the notion that all of them abjured the personal voice. (And this is true of most "movements," after all -- more a matter of Wittgensteinian "family resemblance" than of universally shared principles -- unless there's an André Breton enforcer in charge.) I hear the personal all thru Rae Armantrout and Leslie Scalapino, as well as Bob Perelman (at times).<BR/><BR/>I think at times what gets called the "personal" ends up being shorthand for the first-person, well-crafted, closural "workshop" poem of the 1970s and 1980s, which all of them did in fact reject.<BR/><BR/>Eric--"not with the fire in me now!" -- you made J. laugh long & hard with that one. Who needs this Krapp?<BR/><BR/>Interesting, tho -- looking at the apps, I see writing on Stein, on Hughes, on Pound, Eliot -- what's really missing, however, is very much hard spadework on the great "rediscovered" modernists who were supposed to be the next big thing a decade or two ago -- Loy, (Riding) Jackson, etc.Mark Scrogginshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01431113440875342809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-88487897233692173782008-12-03T13:55:00.000-05:002008-12-03T13:55:00.000-05:00I mean"great" as in accurate and concise.And I won...I mean"great" as in accurate and concise.<BR/><BR/>And I wonder if what you say about <I>Ketjak</I> -- essentilly, that by the end you either love it, or not -- applies to Silliman's work as a whole?<BR/><BR/>I can't get enough of it (his poetry), really. <BR/><BR/>I am just a reader, and maybe with your more professional background you can help with something. I am trying to work through how the heck he's lumped in with the LANGUAGE poets, who allegedly abjured "the self" or the personal voice. I just finished the 1,500 page read-through of Silliman that you describe, much of which I'd read before as well, and those pages are saturated with the personal!Steven Famahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13733977161680651117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-2499539072401577562008-12-03T13:45:00.000-05:002008-12-03T13:45:00.000-05:00"elegantly processed quotidienity"Maybe it should ..."elegantly processed quotidienity"<BR/><BR/>Maybe it should be "quotidianity" but however it goes that's a great three-word description of the Silliman's poetry.Steven Famahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13733977161680651117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-14532877184075015822008-12-02T20:38:00.000-05:002008-12-02T20:38:00.000-05:00Mark, the amount of reading you do continues to am...Mark, the amount of reading you do continues to amaze me. I finished grading today--one student complaint by the time I got home from the office, over a B+, no less!--and need to switch gears to the four essays lined up for me this "winter break." Tomorrow's R's birthday, though, so I think the work will actually begin on Thursday. <BR/><BR/>Re: poetry (as 'the big loser'), I wonder whether that might connect with the pervasive historicism you describe. Not that you CAN'T read poetry that way (cf. Ma Rainey's "Institutions of Modernism"), but it's harder on a grad student timetable, perhaps. <BR/><BR/>If memory serves, I read "How it Is" in high school. Not going back to it--not with the fire in me now!E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11295909.post-40772239617112862202008-12-02T13:02:00.000-05:002008-12-02T13:02:00.000-05:00merrill a "decent" poet comes fro money (Merrill...merrill a "decent" poet comes fro money (Merrill-Lynch out of Manhattan...<BR/><BR/>lots of infor regarding him on the net... just "string" the (net) articles together and after Merrill's Collected Poems, 2001<BR/><BR/>who needs another bio?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com