Nothing New under the Sun

Here is an article written by Kenny Goldsmith praising Richard Prince who has made a facsimile copy of The Catcher in the Rye, inserting his own name in place of J. D. Salinger’s.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/richard-princes-latest-act-of-appropriation-the-catcher-in-the-rye/

Goldsmith writes:

“A few months ago, a friend pulled off her bookshelf a new appropriation work by Richard Prince, one so radical and so daring, that I almost couldn’t believe it was by the same artist. The premise of the book was achingly simple: a reproduction of the first edition of The Catcher In The Rye, identical in every way except the author’s name was swapped from J. D. Salinger to Richard Prince. The production value of the book was astonishingly high, a perfect facsimile of the original, right down to the thick, creamy paper stock and classic typeface.”

It is peculiar how Goldsmith forgets to mention his own book Day (another work of “unoriginality”) being similarly appropriated (though in a far more ironic and conceptual manner) by Kent Johnson, a few years ago, who, I think, might have been the first person to do this sort of thing with a published book.

It appears nothing is original in conceptual art anymore, even when it’s trying to be unoriginal.

Third Response to Ann Bogle

Ann Bogle has made a further false accusation about me in the comments thread of one of her recent blog posts regarding me. Here is a link to the blog post:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/american-candid.html

The comments stream is at the very end of this long blog post. The same comments stream can also be found in another part of her blog, here:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21023072&postID=8315023444307361429

She says (referring to the emails between her and myself that I posted in my first blog response to her initial accusation about me):

“Jeffrey Side posted emails he didn't write”.

If I didn’t write them, who did? Maybe she mistyped “he” for “I”, and the sentence should read:

“Jeffrey Side posted emails I didn't write”.

It so, then why did Ann, in the Otherstream Facebook group thread where I also posted the same emails in response to her accusing me there of having called her friend Bobbi Lurie “psychotic”, say:

“Bobbi knows about this correspondence that Jeff quotes here accurately”.

This comment can be found here:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/american-candid.html

It can also be found in the original Otherstream Facebook group thread, which will remain in that group as evidence, should Ann try to manipulate the reproduction of that thread she has posted on her blog. It is sad that Ann has had to recourse to a blatant lie about me.

She also goes on to say, somewhat incoherently, in the comments stream of her blog:

“Marc Vincenz and Jeffrey Side have censored using their positions as administrators of web groups. I don't have Bobbi's permission [I have her permission as of 4:29 p.m. today] to post the comment she wrote to me above that explains much that Jeffrey Side forgot to explain in his purple campaign.

Anny Ballardini instantly assumes that I did what Jeffrey Side alleges in the flame threads he started at Otherstream and at Argotist. He deleted half the proof of it, and I deleted my own comments from one thread that he said intruded, yet he claimed that he deleted my comments.”

Why she has decided to involve my friends Marc Vincenz and Anny Ballardini in this situation is unclear. Marc is not an administrator of any Facebook group that I am aware of, and if she is alluding to the Otherstream Facebook group, then she is mistaken, as he is not the administrator of that group, which is administered very fairly by my good friend Jake Berry. I administer The Argotist Online Facebook group, and make no apology for it.

I don’t know what Ann is referring to, in the second paragraph of the above quote from her, when she says that:

“[Jeffrey Side] deleted half the proof of it, and I deleted my own comments from one thread that he said intruded, yet he claimed that he deleted my comments.”

Perhaps she is referring to the thread in The Argotist Online Facebook group that she "highjacked" by using it to post links to her Fictionaut posts in, despite the thread being started by someone who was merely alerting the group to an essay he had just had published, and which had no bearing on Ann’s Fictionaut posts at all. I warned Ann not to do this, but she ignored me, and so I deleted that thread, and one other that she did the same thing in.

Ann then, in the comments stream of her blog, quotes from an email Bobbi Lurie recently sent her, which says:

“We should write story titled JEFF SIDE's BRAIN--the title of this email sounds appropriate--but why should we give jeff side any credence? who the hell is he? he is a nutso brit--i've met so many when i lived in england--they believe in false "remedies" more so even than americans...”

I won’t point out the irony of Bobbi calling me a “nutso brit”, even though I didn’t call her “psychotic”.

Ann then says in the comments stream:

“Bobbi, I fully understand what you're saying; it is a big issue with all of us, and women especially because men define women as nuts who have their own viewpoints.”

I, for one, would never define women as nuts, and most of the men I know who write poetry would not, either, so I don’t know why Ann is saying this.

Ann then quotes, again, from a recent email to her from Bobbi, who says:

“yes. ok. true enough. no shame in needing to be on morphine for pain from cancer (perhaps Jeff Side disagrees?). the fact that he won't answer me as to why he thinks i am psychotic. you can mention that i have been fighting so many things.”

Why Bobbi thinks I should disagree about her being on morphine for cancer is not clear. I have never suggested to anyone that they should stop taking morphine for pain relief. I wonder if Bobbi has read my blog posts, so far, regarding this whole situation. Had she done so, she would know that I never said she was “psychotic”. I urge her to read them.

Ann goes on to quote Bobbi as saying:

“if he freaked out over me having cancer...that sickens me. yes. "the morphine poems" you can post this as well--it's the cover for the book and if he wants to call it psychotic it was actually my rebellion against persona poems due to "poetess" woman who lied about having cancer, not only in her "persona" poems but in her bio, in her promotion of her book, in her recommending her book to cancer patients when she did not even research the disease she claimed to have. i begged her to write a statement about her "true" life. her answer "but if i told the truth: no one would believe me." she also placed her fake cancer poems in an anthology which specifically requested poems ONLY from cancer patients and their families. she also posted her fake cancer poems on a site meant ONLY for cancer patients and that place was specifically meant for cancer patients to express their ANGER about having cancer.”

I am not in the least “freaked out” about Bobbi having cancer. If my sending her a few links, in 2008, about alternative treatments has caused her so much anger towards me, I sincerely apologise for it.

Ann goes on to quote Bobbi as saying:

“so "the morphine poems" was based on these rules which i set down for myself (while on morphine, while in severe pain--and i dare Jeff Side to call such an endeavor while dealing with unbelievable pain and fear "psychotic"--i wonder if HE could have survived such an ordeal and i DARE him to answer me about this--he having the nerve to call me a name which condemns someone so utterly--he hasn't the courage even to answer my email to him requesting (in the most polite language) "why" he calls me such a diagnosis when he is not a medical professional or any other such thing”

Again, Bobbi can’t have read my blog posts, and Ann can’t have alerted her to them, otherwise this paragraph, by Bobbi, would not have been written. I should, also, mention that I didn’t receive an email from Bobbi regarding this. I don’t doubt she sent it; I just didn’t receive it. I have changed email addresses several times since I was last in correspondence with her.

Ann then comments:

“Side says he's defending his character as someone who wrote that her emails were increasingly psychotic not that she was and he dragged her name through the press to make his minor point.”

Ann can’t seem to understand that it is she and not me who has dragged Bobbi into this. Ann first brought up Bobbi’s name in the Otherstream Facebook group thread, accusing me of calling Bobbi “psychotic”, and then she contacted Bobbi and invited Bobbi to join in this “debate” online.

I really can’t understand Ann’s anger towards me, which seems out of all proportion to my having merely removed her from The Argotist Online Facebook group.

Second Response to Ann Bogle

Here is Ann Bogle’s response to my blog post of Saturday 11 August 2012:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/jeffrey-side-and-american-candid.html

In that blog post I explain that I didn’t call Bobbi Lurie “psychotic”, as Ann had previously said I had done in an email to Ann, but had, rather, referred to Bobbi’s emails to me as becoming "more and more psychotic and confusing", principally at the point at which Bobbi accused me in one email of trying to make her cancer worse. I think anyone accused of this would take such an accusation as not being consistent with reality, hence my use of the word “psychotic” in relation to this. The word “psychotic” means, by the way, in case Ann doesn’t know the definition of it, “being out of touch with reality”, and as Bobbi’s accusation that I was trying to make her cancer worse falls very much into this area, I felt justified in using that word. I did not say, I stress, that Bobbi, herself, was psychotic, but that what she was saying was.

Ann says in her response to my blog post that Bobbi has told her that Bobbi might seek legal advice regarding my use of the word “psychotic”. Ann says of Bobbi: "She says the word "psychotic" is incriminating even in defense against it. She emailed she could find a lawyer”. If one can’t refer to the word “psychotic” to defend oneself from the accusation that they had called someone it, then that would be very strange. I’m only going, though, by what Ann says Bobbi has said regarding this. I don’t know if Bobbi said it or not.

Ann also says in her response to my blog post that my blog post accuses Ann of incompetence and malicious gossip. I don’t think I do accuse her of the former but certainly of the latter, as the latter was, as is plain from my blog post, motivated by her anger at my removing her from The Argotist Online Facebook group. The malicious gossip in question, being her accusation that I called Bobbi “psychotic”, which she first mentioned in the Otherstream Facebook group and then in a post she made at Fictionaut, which has now been removed by a Fictionaut administrator as it was defamatory.

Ann then says in her response to my blog post:

"Side sent Bobbi quack remedies for cancer, she told me, and that when she lived in London, she met many Brits who believed in false hope remedies such as those Side proposed to her."

This is referring to the period when Bobbi and I were in communication with each other. I sent Bobbi various links to alternative cancer therapies. I wouldn’t characterise them as “quack” therapies, though, as most were being delivered by reputable hospitals and clinics.

Ann then says in her response to my blog post:

“In a message dated 8/12/2012 11:49:19 P.M. Central Daylight Time, bobbilurie@.com writes:

YES, JEFF SIDE'S BRAIN: DRINKING WATER WHILE STANDING ON YOUR HEAD AND SPEAKING IN HUNGARIAN IS NOT A CURE FOR CANCER, JEFF SIDE'S BRAIN...YOU'LL JUST MAKE MY CANCER WORSE...” [Block capitals not mine]

I have no idea if Bobbi did actually write this or not. If she did, then I would like to take the opportunity to say that I have not advised her to drink water while standing on her head and speaking Hungarian, which, of course, she knows full well is not true.

Response to Ann Bogle

Ann Bogle, someone who I thought was a friend (or at the very least, a friendly acquaintance), has been spreading malicious gossip about me online, saying that I called her friend Bobbi Lurie “psychotic”. Here’s the link to it on her blog:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/american-candid.html

You will need to scroll down the page to find her reference to Bobbi Lurie, so I’ll quote it: 

"You had represented (though I might have wanted an editor in you besides) my e-chapbooks, so, for that career-related investment I had made with you, I failed to defend Bobbi Lurie more fully (by disassociating from you? retracting my e-books?) when you described her as psychotic in an email."

As can be seen, this is mostly incoherent, but her comment relating to Bobbi is quite clear. What Ann hasn’t done is to explain the context whereby I came to use that word in relation to Bobbi. Here is that context.

In late 2011, Ann, asked me to publish an ebook of Bobbi’s poetry. I told her that I would rather not do so, as Bobbi and I had, a few years previously, been in an email communication with each other that had started off amicably but for some reason on Bobbi’s part became what I can only describe as increasingly eccentric, incoherent and somewhat belligerent towards me, for no reason I was aware of. The culmination of this was an accusation she made towards me, saying that I was trying to make her cancer worse. Because of this, and because, by that time, I was so exasperated by the frequency and confusing nature of her emails, I called a halt to our communications.

When Ann asked me to publish Bobbi, I mentioned this state of affairs to her, saying that I would rather not have anything to do with Bobbi because of it. However, after Ann had explained to me that Bobbi had been going through a difficult period, I was moved to reconsider my refusal and agreed to publish her after all, but on condition that Ann, or her then literary associate, Marc Vincenz, be an email intermediary between Bobbi and myself, as I couldn’t cope with the thought of having to communicate with her again, to which Ann agreed. As things turned out, though, I heard no more from Ann about this, and assumed that Ann or Bobbi had changed their minds regarding publication. I later found out from Ann that the reason Bobbi had decided not to publish with me, after all, was because Ann had told her that I had said she was “psychotic” in one of my emails to Ann.

The following is the full email correspondence that Ann and I had regarding the publication of Bobbi’s ebook. As can be seen, Ann has taken the word “psychotic” very much out of its original context:

21 November 2011

Jeff,

I just got a note from my friend and one of my favorite writers, Bobbi Lurie. She's learned her first poetry collection has gone out of print, and she asked if I know anything about ebooks. What I know is that you publish them - amazing ones. Could I suggest that she contact you?

Best,

Ann

1 December 2011

Ann,

I've had dealings with Bobbi Lurie in the past, and to be frank it wasn't all that pleasant. Her email exchanges with me became more and more psychotic and confusing, and her tone and language were so belligerent towards me (at one point accusing me of trying to make her cancer worse - whatever that meant) that it would be a pain to have to deal with her again. Sorry for my negativity, and I appreciate your trying to help her out.

Best,

Jeff

1 December 2011

Jeff,

Thanks for letting me know of the experience you've had with Bobbi, as sad as it makes me to hear it. Marc Vincenz suggested he might be able to reissue her first book via Mad Hatters', but I haven't mentioned it to her yet, not wanting to get her hopes up and disappoint her in case Carol Novack withdraws funding from the press. Carol has cancer, too. I have had to make my way carefully with Bobbi myself, as I know her life circumstances have not been easy, and she becomes suddenly distrustful. The internet, especially, though she is a good writer there, sometimes even better than good, at times deluges her with confusion.

I'm sure there will be a place for her first book as an ebook.

Thanks for writing.

Best,

Ann

3 December 2011

Ann,

The only way I could consider doing an ebook for her is if you or Marc act as intermediaries for me. I'm very sorry Carol has cancer also.

I've attached an email I send to people who have cancer, advising them how to treat it using apricot kernels. Perhaps you could forward it to Carol and Bobbi.

Best,

Jeff

9 December 2011

Jeff,

Thanks. I'll pass on your file to Bobbi and Carol. Carol cannot read due to her brain cancer, but her assistant and friend, Douglas, can read it for her.

Bobbi is on the road for cancer treatment, but I heard from her, and she'd like to bring out the first book as an ebook with Argotist. I talked to Marc Vincenz, and he said that he and I can handle the details with her. Sound good? Let me know if there's anything we need to do first and when. Thanks so much, Jeff.

  

Best,

Ann

Ann initially accused me of calling Bobbi “psychotic” in the Otherstream Facebook group, after I had removed her from The Argotist Online Facebook group for ignoring my requests not to post things there that were not related to poetry. Here is how I announced to the other group members that I had removed her from it:

“I’ve had to remove Ann Bogle from the Argotist FB group, as she was relentless in her determination to carry on starting threads that were not poetry related, and also “hijacking” other threads by posting comments not related to the threads’ topic matter. I explained to her that the Argotist group was solely for discussion of poetry but she ignored me, and continued unrelentingly. I, therefore, had no choice but to remove her from the group.”

I assume Ann was so outraged at this, that she felt the need to vent her anger in the Otherstream Facebook group, and in doing so try to damage my character by representing falsely the Bobbi Lurie situation, as explained above.

For Ann to have done this is quite disturbing. She must have known the potential damage it could have caused to my character. It is especially disquieting considering the reason for it was fairly trivial: merely my removing her from a Facebook group.

Here is the Otherstream Facebook group exchange I had with Ann where she says I called Bobbi “psychotic”. As can be seen her posts are extremely incoherent and rambling, whether this is intentional on her part, I don’t know:

Ann Bogle:

You had represented (though I might have wanted an editor in you besides) my e-chapbooks, so, for that career-related investment I had made with you, I failed to defend Bobbi Lurie more fully (by disassociating from you? retracting my e-books?) when you described her as psychotic in an email. The links to my e-books are probably still working. Rachel Lisi designed the cover of one of them, and Daniel Harris gave ten illustrations. All I wanted to say, and you are avoiding the subject rather stupidly, is, and I said it in more than one place and way, your poetics collection of essay, responses, etc. and fight with Seth Abramson about it, did not name names in a way that might have been useful in considering or applying your arguments. Your cry that it went by not celebrated caused me to plunge in as a reader preparing to review your email correspondence, Other Voices, with Jake Berry. Jake, in turn, took a dip, a little swim, in my prosetics, and responded kindly. I am in your coral as a writer, and you are revoking my digressive strategies. It seems strange you represented my collections as e-books unless you were aligning yourself in another silent debate in poetry.

Jeffrey Side:

Ann, I was unaware that the links to your ebooks were not working. I will correct that. If I had intended to remove the actual ebooks I would not have left them as listed on the site. If that is what all your silliness is about, then you should have told me the links were inactive instead of causing trouble here. I assumed you were more mature than this.

Regarding my saying Bobbi Lurie was psychotic. I said her emails to me had become psychotic and confusing to me, much like your posts here have been.

Ann Bogle:

Define "psychotic" then. You are wildly evasive. Who knew you were wild? I wrote "distrustful" and you are not? I wrote "confusion" and you are not confused. Bobbi knows about this correspondence that Jeff quotes here accurately (it is plain that Jeff and I do not have day jobs), painstakingly, and ... okay, Princess Di ...

Shortly after this exchange, Marc Vincenz told me that Ann had now left the Otherstream Facebook group. I wish her no ill will, and hope she can resolve some of the issues she has with me.

The Academisation of Avant-Garde Poetry

Jake Berry’s essay, 'Poetry Wide Open: The Otherstream (Fragments In Motion)' deals with the issue of certain types of avant-garde poetry as not yet having found favour within the Academy, or with poetry publishers of academically “sanctioned” avant-garde poetry. The damaging aspects of this exclusion, and the concept of an “approved” versus an “unapproved” avant-garde poetry, are also examined in the essay. And these things could well be described as “the academisation of avant-garde poetry”.

Academic poetic output is operating to a healthy extent in the US, where university creative writing departments are flourishing. The University of Pennsylvania has its Kelly Writers House programme, its PennSound website and its Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, all sympathetic to academic avant-garde poetry. The University of Pennsylvania also edits Jacket2, an influential online poetics website, which was formerly called Jacket, and which was edited by the independent John Tranter before he passed it over to the university. And similar things are happening in the UK, with various institutions such as the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck University, and the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at the University of Edge Hill, both promoting academic avant-garde poetry.

Consequently, one could say that the term "avant-garde" has now, essentially, been appropriated by the Academy, and, as such, has become associated with the sort of poetic writing practices that could be fairly said to represent “establishment” poetry, to the extent that the historical resonances of the term “avant-garde” have become meaningless. In contrast, Bob Grumman’s term, “otherstream”, which Berry uses in his essay to describe poetry that is marginalised by the Academy, can be seen as a more apt replacement for the term “avant-garde”, which has now become obsolete as an appropriate description for poetry that isn’t anecdotal, descriptive or prose-like.

This Argotist Online feature presents Berry’s essay, the responses to it from poets and academics it was first shown to, and an interview with Berry where he addresses some of the criticisms voiced in these responses. Many poets and academics (including those most famously associated with Language Poetry) were approached for their responses but declined. Other poets and academics that had initially agreed to respond ultimately declined. I mention this not as criticism but merely to explain the absence of people who one would normally expect to have responded and taken part in such a discussion.

The feature can be found here:

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20220609131938/https://www.argotistonline.co.uk/The%20Academisation%20of%20Avant-Garde%20Poetry.htm

Rachel Lisi RIP

A dear friend of mine, Rachel Lisi, has passed away. I am deeply shocked and saddened. She was a great visual artist, with her photography and graphics, and also wrote poetry. She was also one of the cover illustrators for Argotist Ebooks. She was working on her third cover for Argotist Ebooks but was unable to continue due to her illness. 

I’d known her since 2003, and over the years, she had been a true and loyal friend to me. She was always friendly and upbeat, never complaining about anything. 

Her website of artwork, photography and poems can be found here:

http://www.kundavega.com/

From her introduction to her site:

'My name is Rachel Lisi. This small corner of cyber space allows me to share different things with you. For some time I have been following the crafts of photography and poetry finding many hills and valleys along the way. I am still trying to find the right path, but surrendering to the guidance of the day and night and every turn of my imagination. As always, I continue to evolve and learn within this circle of creating.'

I have asked her family if it is ok if I do an ebook of her poems and artwork as a tribute.

Here is a photomontage tribute to her on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xbL4R0CS34

Thank you Rachel for your friendship and generosity of spirit. I will miss you greatly.

Another Day for Kent Johnson

A new book by Kent Johnson is now available. It's called Day and is published by Blazevox. It has had some good reviews, including the following by Juliana Spahr:

'If the 836-pp. Day established Kenny Goldsmith as without a doubt the leading conceptual poet of his time, the 836-pp. Day by Kent Johnson may well be remembered for nudging the politics of Conceptual Poetry out of blithely affirmative, institutional framings, and into truly negational critical spaces'.

Commendation indeed, if Spahr had actually said it, but it is a fabrication by Johnson, in keeping with the parodic tone he sets for the book, for indeed, Johnson’s Day is an exact reproduction of Kenny Goldsmith’s “work” of the same name. I’ve put “work” in quotes because Goldsmith would readily agree that the work in question was not “created” by him in any authorial sense. He describes his working procedure for the book as follows:

‘I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity. On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day's NEW YORK TIMES word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page’.

http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html

His term for this procedure is “uncreative writing”, which is,

‘a constraint-based process; uncreativity as a creative practice. By typing page upon page, making no distinction between article, editorial and advertisement, disregarding all typographic and graphical treatments, Goldsmith levels the daily newspaper. DAY is a monument to the ephemeral, comprised of yesterday's news, a fleeting moment concretized, captured, then reframed into the discourse of literature’.

http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html

However, this arduous undertaking of retyping the whole newspaper is not all it appears to be, for he later contradicts himself by saying:

'But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I've subverted this equation by OCR'ing [scanning] as much of the newspaper as I can'.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/uncreativity.html

Johnson’s appropriation of the “work”, therefore, can be seen as a logical extension of Goldsmith’s procedural stratagems, and perfectly within the ethical scope that Goldsmith has allowed for himself (and presumably others) in the publishing arena. Indeed, if Johnson, or anyone else, for that matter, had not done this, it could be argued, convincingly, that Goldsmith had proclaimed his aesthetic in vain.

However, such a compliment that Johnson has paid to Goldsmith’s aesthetic could be seen as something of a poisoned chalice, in that it has painted Goldsmith into a corner. For if he were to sue Johnson, he would be seen as something of a hypocrite, and thereby lose some artistic credibility. But if he doesn’t sue Johnson, he will leave his other “works” open to the same fate as has been visited on Day in this instance.

Of course, Goldsmith could have avoided such a dilemma by simply publishing the book anonymously, but that is, perhaps, too much a council of perfection that not even his aesthetic could countenance.

Incidentally, it could be said that Johnson’s appropriation of Goldsmith’s “work” is, perhaps, the more innovative and audacious act in comparison to Goldsmith’s “original” gesture, which, I think most will recognise, was based on an already established artistic precedent.

Day by Kent Johnson is priced at $30, plus shipping and handling. ($300 for each of ten numbered copies signed by the “Author”, no charge for shipping and handling.) All copies come with specially designed, affixed stickers (on cover, back cover, title page, spine, etc.) to impart authorship, copyright, blurbs, and co-production. It can be purchased at Blazevox:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-kj4.htm

Is Stephen Burt’s “New Thing” all that New?

I have just seen an article by Stephen Burt called ‘The New Thing: The object lessons of recent American poetry’ in the Boston Review in which he says:

‘For much of the past decade, the most imitated new American poets were slippery, digressive, polyvocalic, creators of overlapping, colorful fragments. Their poems were avowedly personal, although they never retold the poets’ life stories (they did not tell stories at all); the poets used, or at least mentioned, difficult ideas, especially from continental philosophy, although they never laid out philosophical arguments (they did not lay out arguments at all). Nor did they describe concrete objects at length. Full of illogic, of associative leaps, their poems resembled dreams, performances, speeches, or pieces of music, and they were, in M.H. Abrams’s famous formulation, less mirror than lamp: the poets sought to project their own experiences, in sparkling bursts of voluble utterance. Their models, among older authors, were Emily Dickinson, John Berryman, John Ashbery, perhaps Frank O’Hara; some had studied (or studied with) Jorie Graham, and many had picked up devices from the Language writers of the West Coast. These poets were what I, eleven years ago, called “elliptical,” what other (sometimes hostile) observers called “New Lyric,” or “post-avant,” or “Third Way.” Their emblematic first book was Mark Levine’s Debt (1993), their emblematic magazine probably Fence (founded 1998); their bad poems were bad surrealism, random-seeming improvisations, or comic turns hoping only to hold an audience’

He then sees a move away from this sort of poetry to that typified by (among others) Devin Johnston, Jon Woodward and Alice James. He describes this as follows:

‘The poets of the New Thing observe scenes and people (not only, but also, themselves) with a self-subordinating concision, so much so that the term “minimalism” comes up in discussions of their work, though the false analogies to earlier movements can make the term misleading. The poets of the New Thing eschew sarcasm and tread lightly with ironies, and when they seem hard to pin down, it is because they leave space for interpretations to fit. Woodward’s Rain, with its five-word lines and five-line elegiac stanzas, makes a good example:

the slick
of rainwater converts each thing’s
outside to an image of
inside the only object without
a soul is the sun

So says one stanza; six pages on, another reads:

the tar they use to
fill the cracks shines orange
from the orange streetlights but
is blacker than the asphalt
which doesn’t shine

We may have to reread to see, amid these scenes, the grief (for Woodward’s dead friend Patrick) that guides the whole book.’

My apologies for being obtuse but how does this sort of poetry exemplify anything new? Granted, in contrast to the poetry that Burt sees as non-descriptive and elliptical it is different. Nevertheless, it is not historically new in the development of poetic writing since High Modernism. On the contrary, it seems merely to represent a style of poetic writing that has always been active in mainstream poetry, namely that which has always relied on an empiricist aesthetic in describing phenomena. Indeed, Burt seems to acknowledge this:

‘This turn among poets to reference, to concrete, real things, has parallels, if not contributory causes, in literary academia. By 2001 there were books, articles, and anthologies devoted to “thing theory,” showing how literary works depend on the structures and histories of the “solid objects” (Douglas Mao’s term) that they might depict.’

Therefore, it is curious that Burt sees this as novel. He adds:

‘Reference, brevity, self-restraint, attention outside the self, material objects as models, Williams and his heirs as predecessors, classical lyric and epigram as precedents: all these, together, constitute the New Thing.’

This statement could have been made at any point in history about mainstream empiricist poetry.

By the way, some of what I say in my article ‘Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers’ in Jacket magazine, may inform any discussion this blog entry fosters.

The Dissembling Poet: Seamus Heaney and the Avant-garde

I came across an interesting interview with Seamus Heaney (a recent recipient of the David Cohen prize for literature, being awarded £40,000) by Dennis O'Driscoll (‘Beyond All This Fiddle’ ) where Heaney says about the avant-garde:

‘It’s an old-fashioned term by now. In literature, nobody can cause bother any more. John Ashbery was a kind of avant-garde poet certainly and now he’s become a mainstream voice. The work of the “Language Poets” and of the alternative poetries in Britain—associated with people in Cambridge University like J. H. Prynne—is not the charlatan work some perceive it to be; however, these poets form a kind of cult that shuns general engagement, regarding it as a vulgarity and a decadence. There’s a phrase I heard as a criticism of W. H. Auden and I like the sound of it: somebody said that he didn’t have the rooted normality of the major talent. I’m not sure the criticism applies to Auden, but the gist of it is generally worth considering. Even in T. S. Eliot, the big, normal world comes flowing around you. Robert Lowell went head-on at the times—there was no more literary poet around, but at the same time he was like a great cement mixer: he just shovelled the world in and it delivered. Now that’s what I yearn for—the cement mixer rather than the chopstick.’

Several things about this statement need to be addressed, so I will go through it step-by-step to do so. When Heaney says that the term “avant-garde” is old-fashioned, what does this really say regarding the term’s significance in relation to his own poetic ideals? Indeed, many critics have accused Heaney’s poetic, itself, as being distinctly old fashioned, a sort of neo-Georgian retrogressive “poetic” utterance. It is as if Heaney recognises the accuracy of this criticism, and in an effort to deflect its force feels the need to reflect it back at his detractors. That he is sensitive on this point is suggested by his saying (as if an afterthought) that ‘in literature, nobody can cause bother any more’. This is a curious thing for a man of letters to say in the absence of a defensive posture. What does he mean by “bother”, anyway? Is he referring to poetic innovation as being troublesome, or simply referring to personal “bother” caused by negative views of his poetry by observant critics? Whatever the case, to say that the term “avant-garde” is old-fashioned is beside the point, as Heaney, practised in casuistry and dissembling, knows all too well.

His citing of Ashbery as a belated mainstream voice also makes little sense outside of Ashbery being published in the UK by Carcanet. Certainly, he can’t be referring to Ashbery’s poetic which has yet to receive unreserved approbation by mainstream criticism, at least in Britain. Regardless of the truth of the matter, even if Ashbery was now part of the mainstream this does not demonstrate the emasculation of avant-garde concerns, which is the stated thrust of Heaney’s argument. Interestingly, if Ashbery is a mainstream voice this would imply that he and Heaney are both writing poetry. To re-position Ashbery within the boundaries of mainstream verse, all Heaney seems to be doing is to flatter his own poetic practice by association.

When he says of the alternative poetries in Britain that it ‘is not the charlatan work some perceive it to be’, who are the “some” he is referring to? No doubt, the main body of the mainstream, but I think, also, Heaney himself. His acknowledgment of Prynne, here, seems to be little more than an attempt to distance himself momentarily from the “some” he alludes to. If it were not this, then his saying that, ‘these poets form a kind of cult that shuns general engagement, regarding it as a vulgarity and a decadence’ recoups the generosity he grants Prynne. It seems not to have occurred to Heaney that any “cult” status these poets have acquired was, perhaps, the consequence of being marginalised by the mainstream. It is certainly not true that they shun “general engagement”, if he suggests by that term an aspiration for their work to be read and for it to communicate with a significant readership. In this respect, there is very little dissimilarity between mainstream and avant-garde poets.

Heaney’s appropriation of the criticism he sees as inappropriate regarding Auden (‘that he didn’t have the rooted normality of the major talent’) and conferring it upon the avant-garde, implies that major talent can only be an outpouring of an unadventurous character. If the history of art tells us anything, it is that this is categorically not the case. That Heaney uses Eliot, of all poets, to argue his point is another instance of his use of misdirection and redefinition, similar instances of which can be seen littered throughout his The Redress of Poetry. Whilst it is certainly true that Eliot was a conservative figure in both temperament and ideology, and that his later work was not as effervescent as that of his major period, Heaney’s suggestion that Eliot’s poetry evinces the ‘normal world’ is only accurate regarding content, the treatment of phenomena in Eliot, however, is seldom “normal” and usually problematical.

An expanded version of this blog has been commissioned by Jacket magazine and can be found here:

http://jacketmagazine.com/37/heaney-side.shtml

Responses to it, both positive and negative, can be found on the right of the page.