Tim said,

>Is there a way out? Of course - by being real, by understanding what is
>going
>on both within the LP poem and without, and the difference between the two
>-
>yea, especially that. Stop getting confused.

Tim, a very eloquent post, with intriguing leads into productive areas. But
the within/without distinction you make in your conclusion quoted above is
(apologies for the word) problematic. I'm not sure, for example, that
critics like Eliot Weinberger or Fredric Jameson, who have argued, in their
different ways, that the textual "within" of LP is a cultural affect of an
epistemic "without" are "confused"-- at least not in the sense you outline
in your post: These are critics who certainly "feel", in rather
sophisticated ways, the postmodern "distance between word and world", and
they have analyzed that distance in elegant ways. The quasi-Stevensian
epistemology that you rightly peg as the axel on which LP praxis has spun
(and on which it now spins at lower and lower rpm's so as to observe the de
facto road rules of the without it is increasingly within-- see Keith Tuma's
wonderful last post on MLA and read it allegorically) is, for critics like
Weinberger and Jameson, merely the drive shaft of an ideological conflation
(or confusion, you could say) wherein forms of late-capitalist/postmodern
ideology are stylistically sublimated into purportedly oppositional "text".
(Silliman, by the way, has recently stated that LP, family tree-wise, has
more to do with structuralism than post-structuralism, so he would likely
agree in general principle with your binary "within/without" trope).

Not that I completely agree with critics like Weinberger, Jameson, and
others (because I think the current crisis of "avant-garde" poetics can't be
bundled into a neatly historicized sociological explanation), but I do think
it's worth saying that there have been critiques of Langpo poetries that are
not merely "naive", and there are some younger American poets, also, who
have undertaken to think about the matter with a certain degree of
seriousness and often insight-- though from very different starting points,
of course, from the critics above.

But that innovative poetry in the U.S. is in a building zeitgeist of
institutionalized impasse is pretty clear. It might be a bit of a stretch,
but interesting to compare the situation, perhaps, to the period of 1945-55,
when a formerly innovative and rigorous criticism rapidly devolved into
sterile and stultifying dogma. And I'd argue that there will be no way out
of the bequeathed LP dilemma sensed by leading younger experimental
poet-critics in U.S. like Evans, Wallace, Jarnot, du Charme, Stroffolino,
Debrot, etc, *until* something very central and unacknowledged to the
problem is engaged. That something, I've said numerous times and in various
venues, is the category of Author, supposedly deconstructed by Langpo
theory, but as elemental in practice to LP and Post-LP as copulation to a
graduate student-- and as impolite, in cultivated company, to talk about in
honest detail. Until it begins to broach qualitatively new conceptual
territory, poetic experiment, however interesting, talented, and endearing
it may be, will be relegated to the realm of surface and style and fated to
suffer the same inertia and ennui as its parent (and the parents of its
parent). It will remain confused, and to the comfortable contentment of many
of its practitioners, of course.

A few months ago over at Subsubpoetics there was an extended discussion
around the issues of avant-garde, academia, and authorship. Steve Ellis of
Oasis Press (does anyone in Britain know of this amazing poet's work, btw?)
is going to be publishing much of it in a novella-length pamphlet entitled
"Academic", for which cris cheek has written a typically incisive afterword.
Much of "Academic" connects directly to aspects of the current discussion,
and I'll let the list know when it comes out, in case anyone would be
interested in getting a copy.

Now back to playing Mrs. Doubtfire for my family. An extremely confusing
role for someone so traditionally gendered as I.

Kent

>



>From: [log in to unmask]
>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re; The poetics of envy
>Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 11:10:05 EST
>
>Gabriel Goulding on the mla fallout thread;
> >Hejinian and others have remarked
> >again and again Langpo and similar poetries are not mere styles, but
> >represent in toto and at their best an aesthetico-political project.
> >
> >What Evans is in part decrying is the appropriation of that project at
>the
> >level of style only.
>
>Ron Silliman:
> >I'm not so startled that some folks continue to be so intensely offended
>by
> >a poetics that is not so very different from their own as I am saddened
>that
> >they waste their time thus. It would be far more interesting and fun, for
> >them as well as us, if they would just promote whatever it is that they
> >like.
>
>Jacques Debrot:
> >The LPs are the object of continued attack, because their poetry
> >*matters*--some people care enough about it to go to the trouble of
>hating
> >it. & the LPs by the way were really extraordinary for they way they
> >attempted to get their work out into the world & create new audiences.
>My
> >own reservations have much more to do w/ the aftermath of LP--w/ the
>state of
> >poetry *now*.
>
>The history of over 50% of what we might call 'alternative literature' runs
>parallel with the imperative to change the world. In its theory and
>polemic,
>LP, particularly in some varieties, continues that history. Therefore when
>it
>appears to be not partaking of that imperative then this might be seen as
>an
>issue. The problems that arise for LP as regards the relationship between
>life and art, change and reaction etc, are nothing new, every movement from
>Dada to Fluxus and beyond has had to live the contradictions then ride them
>out or mutate. The particulars surrounding LP and related poetries however
>make them more prone to these contradictions.
>
>One contradiction resides in genesis. LP is not all of one, it has more
>than
>one source, and a percentage of those sources do not fit into the
>imperative
>of changing the world, at least, not in the sense that we normally use that
>phrase. The intellectual left shares LP with the intellectual politically
>neutral and there are even a few strands which go the other way,
>particularly
>in 'related poetries'. Why do people forget this and treat LP as though it
>was their conscience, expecting something from it that isn't there, not in
>pure form anyhow? How about a bit of realism?
>
>Another contradiction resides in its locus. LP has from the beginning been
>largely written and promoted by individuals attached in some way to the
>academic world. This fact has always been used against it by its enemies,
>enemies usually in academia themselves, but the academic world is as much a
>vehicle for a change as it is for reaction so I see this as initially
>cancelling out and not a problem but because of the
>personality/power/publication matrix that has gradually built up around LP
>over the years - how could it not built up? - its locus in academia becomes
>problematic. This situation is made worse by LP's success as its styles and
>influence have spread through non-academic based poetry circles which pick
>up
>on the sharp end of this contradiction.
>
>Another contradiction concerned with locus: American culture, high as well
>as
>low, depends upon American wealth to sustain it. Poetry is not a big
>spender
>but nevertheless it shares the atmosphere. An anti-capitalist poetry in the
>pay, however indirectly, of capitalism, is a rather blatant contradiction.
>The fact that every other 'alternative poetry' is/was in the same position
>-
>and again, how couldn't they be? - is conveniently forgotten. The
>relationship between a literary renaissance - which is very much how I view
>American postmodernist poetry - and economic prosperity with its
>quasi-imperial sense of health/wealth, is pretty clear. I think it is great
>that some brilliant poetry has emerged from this and not just some badly
>acted and badly scripted films. The mistake is often made too of confining
>the influence of wealth to the academic based, but back in the 50's the
>whole
>Beat thing, still used by cheap polemicists as some counter pole to LP,
>depended on wealth via welfare and friends with spare rooms. Today's
>equivalent would be the same.
>
>A third contradiction is really only a contradiction on the surface, but it
>is also the most complex, so I can only touch on it. LP, and all
>linguistically innovative poetries in general, are mainly concerned with
>text. Forget why for the moment - including the 'why' of how this text
>relates to changing the world - and forget too what is meant by 'text'.
>What
>concerns me here is the focus, the light shining permanently on 'text', and
>the mechanics of that, and the sociological implications. These will be
>concerned in an overriding way with what we call literature. Obvious?
>Maybe,
>but what is not quite so obvious is the distance between word and world
>that
>is the result of this. I would call it an artificially created distance,
>but
>it is nonetheless real for that. It is part of the beauty of the best of
>this
>kind of poetry, part of its tension and its nagging strangeness. I have
>said
>elsewhere that what LP does is much the same as what poetry has always
>done,
>but in order to do it properly in the modern world LP has had to make some
>rearrangements with our relationship with language - it has had to play
>some
>serious games to even get to first post. The problems caused by this are
>terrific. As LP is concerned with 'text' this means that its immediate and
>apparent area of activity is confined to 'literature', not touching the
>world. This is not a contradiction to the LP poet who understands, because
>he/she lives the relationship between word and world, but a seeming one to
>many a reader who does not feel the distance between world and word in the
>same way as the writer does. Such a reader, or critic, therefore expects
>something else. Because of this, because LP lives in the distance between
>word and world, it is >only< to be found in 'literature, as opposed to
>being
>found outside of literature, in radical politics for example, so it
>therefore
>lives the life of a 'literature' in every respect, with its pros and cons.
>
>I think that this is something which is not understood by many who are
>engaged with LP and related poetries, particularly those in the associated
>industry as opposed to those engaged with the writing activity itself,
>though
>I may be wrong. I think that the condition I explain above plays a trick on
>some of them so that when they talk about radical this and radical that
>what
>they are really talking about is not radical at all because it is safe and
>cosy within a context, whether this be the context of poetry or academia or
>whatever. It appears that the context of 'literature', or the context of
>'academia', with all that is expected of that, takes precedence over the
>context of radical political change. And of course such a situation will be
>aided and abetted at every opportunity by those with no interest in radical
>political change.
>
>Is there a way out? Of course - by being real, by understanding what is
>going
>on both within the LP poem and without, and the difference between the two
>-
>yea, especially that. Stop getting confused.
>
>Tim A.

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