"One of the curious
"advantages," to call it that, that the langpos had
was that the experience
of the Vietnam period was something shared by an
enormous number of people.
As disparate as the writing in, say, In the American
Tree may be, it would
have been far more diffuse without that common
experience. And it is
precisely the absence of such that younger poets today
have to come up
against."


I think we agree here. The post-Langpo 'generation' is
far more 'declassed', diffuse. Fewer organic links to
other parts of society, to institutions of political
struggle (as I noted, things may be changing). In NZ,
many of the poets who talk most about the Language
Poets pursue a right-wing politics, or else valourise
a disastrous apathy. They have literally locked
themselves in their offices (to think about differance
in peace and quiet, I guess) while their students have
been beaten about the head by police batons 100 metres
away. Because of this they (not necessarily Silliman
and Bernstein et al) face what one might politely call
a credibility deficit amongst younger poets and
theorists.


"Personally, I'd rather not have a major imperialist
war with millions dying.
The ones we already have are bad enough."

The implication is that it was the Vietnam war was the
chief factor that led to the rise in what we might as
well cause class struggle between, roughly, 68-74. I
do not think this is a credible view - strikes me as
idealist in flavour (not to mention idealistic). The
anti-war movement, I would argue, was as much a
symptom as a cause of the 68-74 struggles.
Not every Imperialist war invites mass resistance.
Where was the mass mobilisation against the Korean
War? What about the Gulf War, which attracted far
smaller mobilisations than Nam? What about the British
imperialist adventure in Northern Ireland, which saw
far bigger mobilisations against it in the rest of the
UK in 68-74 than in the 80s or the 90s? Why did the
68-74 mobilisations touch areas of the world
unaffected or relatively unaffected by Nam?
Anyway, those are just some thoughts. I was just a
twinkling in my parents' eyes most of that time...

Cya
Scott





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Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 10:34:09 PDT
Subject: sub-neo-Symbolist fudge
From: "Ron Silliman" <[log in to unmask]>
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Between "sub-neo-Symbolist sludge" and "apocalyptic
wallpaper," a lot of
good work is being written, though it's politics tends
to be different (as
distinct from "not there") because the people are
different. Even Ashbery
(whom I still read) has a politics, even if it is very
much pre-Stonewall.

Not only are the people different, so is the context.
One of the curious
"advantages," to call it that, that the langpos had
was that the experience
of the Vietnam period was something shared by an
enormous number of people.
As disparate as the writing in, say, In the American
Tree may be, it would
have been far more diffuse without that common
experience. And it is
precisely the absence of such that younger poets today
have to come up
against.

Personally, I'd rather not have a major imperialist
war with millions dying.
The ones we already have are bad enough.

One of the interesting things about time is how it
alters works of art.
Looking at the painters of the 1960s, especially the
ones who followed the
apocalyptic wallpaper set, I notice how sharply
political the works of Andy
Warhol seem even now, compared with the droll design
noodling of a
Rauschenbrg. Jack Spicer's poetry seems to get more
contemporary every year,
while even the best works of Levertov and Dorn strike
me as being as frozen
in time as Grateful Dead records or Fillmore posters.
(In Denise's case,
maybe Nat King Cole and Studebakers.) Very few of the
'50s painters really
_evolved_ all that much after their work initially
matured -- the most
compelling exception being DeKooning.

Besides, I thought sub-neo-Symbolist sludge was a new
ice cream flavor from
Ben & Jerry's.

Ron


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=====
"Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon?  And how
could I try to doubt it?  First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have
been there would strike me as idle.  Nothing would follow from it, nothing be
explained by it.  It would not tie in with anything in my life...  Philosophical
problems occur when language goes on holiday.  We must not separate ideas from life,
we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must investigate the
application of words in individual language-games"      - Ludwig Wittgenstein

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