Sympathies w/ you, Chris, in the endeavour to find a name for what you do.
A name you can live with. My taste runs against 'experimental,' because of
the 'lets try it, if it doesnt work out it wont matter, it'll never leave
the lab'connotation, whereas when i write, i take it as a commitment from
the first word, I prefer 'exploratory,' because if you go to explore
unknown terrain, there is the commitment to go there, prepared for godknows
what but making a degree of commitment just to arrive at a starting-point.
On the other hand, 'exploratory' echoes 'surgery' and i find that
unappealing. Whereas 'Headed out for Hounslow, ended up in Staines' is
unwieldy....
Appreciated yr remarks re Utah Phillips. That's a lovely figure for what
one does, the clear tributaries that feed into the polluted maindrain...
How fortunate you are, to be in e-touch with him. I listen to his radio
show once a week over KPFA radio in Berkeley, but which he tapes in Nevada
City, in the Sierra Foothills. As to
>Phillips, at any rate, is totally clear-eyed in his rejection of mainstream
>artists' blithe acquiescences, and yet oddly he has yet to embrace
>L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.
Perhaps his preference in poetry is a kind of Socialist Realism, I often
encounter this in dedicated Union persons, who tend to regard any
abstraction as a betrayal of the working class. It was this very conflict
that caused George Oppen, who joined the Communist Party in the mid-1930s
and worked helping organize a Garment Workers Union in NYC, to give up his
poetry, since he was--damn these labels!--rather an abstract impressionist
than a painter of tractors and forearms, couldnt oblige with the latter, so
simply quit writing for 25 years. But Utah tells the funniest jokes, often
funny due to a workingclass p-o-v to which they owe their edge.
A conflict like this exists in Vancouver and within/around the Kootenay
School of Writing (which, be it noted, and I cite Andrew Klobukar's Intro
to a recent anthology is not in the Kootenays and isn't a school...he is
echoing Voltaire [i think] : The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, roman
or an empire.) The organization owes its origin to large extent to hands-on
socialists and yet has become perhaps the most populous and dedicated
carrier of L=A=N poetic developments in Canada.
Anyway, and back to Phillips, there's little of the twelve-tone system in
his 'working-stiff' songs. Yet he is decidedly not Mainstream Music....
Utopia will have to bide a wee.
David
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