"Scott seems to know much more about the politics of
NZ
writers with an interest in L= poetry than I do. I
just haven't met all
these right-wingers; we must move in different
circles."
I'd remind Wystan of the open letter that I published
a few months back in the in-house journal of NZ
L=influenced poetry, A Brief Description of the Whole
World', in which I made explicit criticsms of the
political orientations and behaviour of a number of
L=influenced poets at Auckland university, including
Wystan. The editor of A Brief... replied to my letter,
and has since engaged in a friendly running argument
with me and others of my persuasion over the issue,
but no response has been forthcoming from Wystan.
There are many excuses available to Wystan for this
fact, many of them undoubtedly worthy, but ignorance
is not one of them.
I must emphasise that my criticisms of Wystan and
others over this issue are not intended as aggressive
personal attacks, but rather as food for thought.
Will reply properly when I have time.
Cheers
Scott
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Subject: Re: Quick reply to Ron Silliman
From: "Wystan Curnow" <[log in to unmask]>
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Scott, Ron and all,
Scott seems to know much more about the
politics of NZ
writers with an interest in L= poetry than I do. I
just haven't met all
these right-wingers; we must move in different
circles. I know more
about my own politics than he does though.
But we are talking history here. My own
education in politics
was certainly dominated by the Vietnam war. One of the
first lessons
though was that the 'institutions of political
struggle' on which i had
come to rely in New Zealand, didn't really exist in
the US. The
student movement was a movement, we engaged in
protests, ,strikes,
sit-ins, marches, boycotts, got beaten, arrested etc;
we had no
INSTITUTIONS and we didn't STRUGGLE in that Marxist
sense.
Mostly the leaders were people who had good skills as
activists,
mostly they were politically 'unlettered', and
ideologically innocent.
They were middle-class, which to me meant they were
affluent.
Another is that it was a 'period'--the times change.
You change. I
have I think I have led several political lives, and
there are more in
store; my attitude to all of them keeps changing.
The newspaper last week carried a story
about a 40th
anniversary celebration of the founding of the Princes
Street Branch of
the Labour Party, once the most effective leftwing
'ginger group'
branch in the institution. The current Labour Prime
Minister was a
member of it, the current Speaker of the House was one
of the
founders along with myself and a few others. They
didn't invite me.
Pissed me off.
Wystan
>
>
> "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]>
> To: [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
=====
"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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