Hi Alison,
nothing was intended at anyone in particular. It's just that there has been
a tendency to use Mr Bernstein as a kicking post going around a number of
lists for years. I'm not doubting your sincerity in a preference for Lyn's
writing. But lang-po as a term is slung around rather sloppily in many, not
all instances and these characteristics re the lang-po are so difficult to
unravel without proper surgery that the generalities irk me. You know we're
talking about a large body of writings by a large number of people all of
whom have different and in some groupings widely divergent practices. Where
might we go with a detailed examination of the co-editorship of Poetics
Journal between Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten for example? Can we get
below the more obvious positions and assumptions? That's why i wanted to
know which works of CBs these reactions were being generated by. Might it
not be, for example, that the very sense of bureacratisation that you smell
in a given Bernstein poem is deliberately written so as to point at the
bankrupcy of certain modes of linguistic artifice and conventional
rhetoric; that is almost a Brechtian device of ironic alienation, intended
to generate that very reaction? I dunno, what work are we talking about? It
might indeed be your 'clever-clever pointing to its own redundancy' only
and your critique along such lines is astute, ending a poem 'ha ha' or
whatever. But i need more than that now. You cited Cage and his famous take
on boredom was, if it's boring do it for longer.
love and love
cris
ps - yes, I love Lyn's writing too. I don't feel a need to pitch these
writer's against each other in some of the ways that have been circling
lately
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