I thought I was contributing something to the discussion about theoretical
systems in poetry, but amid all the general sniping it seems to have gotten
lost. I know my own portentousness is partly to blame. But I was
responding to something David B. said about the persistent presence of
"self" in poetry. My assertion was that the modernist poets of the early
20th century proposed technique as a means to autonomy (Eliot & his
"extinction of personality"), and that postmodern poets continued that
with the concept of the absent author, of language-generated poetics,
and of reader-generated meaning. These are major technical choices
which had a big influence on style.
The question I have is whether technique applied for the goal of
autonomy - that is the art-work as a kind of absolute - doesn't
unintentionally create a gulf between contemporary poetry and the
bases of craft in earlier poetries. That's why I brought up the
Russians. Some of them seem to have maintained, over the same
historical period, the different registers of a strictly personal
voice, and applied them to the whole range, from "private lyric"
to public address (ie. poems like Akhmatova's "Requiem"). Now of
course one needn't harp on the Russians. What about Yeats, or Auden,
or Aleksandr Wat, for that matter? It's just that I'm fascinated
with the sheer drama of the biographical/historical situation in
Russia: the West has a totally different set of problems with regard
to the public persona of the "poet". That drama heightens the
personal element, paradoxically: which makes it a better foil for the
practices of modern/postmodern poetries.
Now I will be labelled again as obsessional or reactionary. But the
fact is I'm curious about the way FORWARD from here for poetry, just
as much as cris cheek or anybody else is in their particular area of
interest. & I think the issue of the personality or presence of the
lyric speaker might be a way around some of the dated 20th-century
approaches to "technique".
If I'm the "naughty boy" here for trying to add something to the
discussion, so be it. There is a lot of labelling & mud-slinging
going around, a lot of turf-protection & dismissive
put-downs.
Henry
|