Please, Henry, I'm not a language poet. I was I thought making the point
that one doesn't adopt the manner of x or y without producing pastiche. It
would at any rate be difficult to describe the style of Langpo such that it
would cover, say, Perelman and Armantrout, as it would be difficult to
describe the style of Black Mountain and its near associates so as to cover
Olson and also Duncan and Wieners. Or for that matter Bishop and Lowell in
their camp. The identification happens at a deeper level.
I'm comfortable with calling all of these "practices," like different types
of Buddhism or monastic Christianity. They certainly involve deeply
committed stances towards the world and the word. Very different from
"yesterday I wrote a postmodernist poem. Gee, maybe I'll write a sonnet
today," in which style is no more essential than a change of clothes or a
style of basketweaving.
But we've been over this a few times as a list, and you and I have pursued
each other over this ground on a couple of other lists as well. I suspect
we know our positions pretty well. It's I think the question about what one
considers a poem and poetry to be.
Mark
At 06:12 PM 8/2/2001 EDT, Henry wrote:
>Someone could write an essay about Jorie Graham as the anti-type of
>Emily Dickinson. An anti-type must have some affinity with the type:
>JG & ED were/are children of privilege. But for JG it's the privilege
>of a New Rome whereas for ED it was the privilege of a province of a
>new Greece.
>
>Romans absorb/co-opt the barbarians; hence the Iowa Program's kenosis/
>feelers extended toward Language Poetry (if it's not a style, what is it,
>Mark? A religion? A sect of Objectivism? Stylized populism - ie.
>another anti-type, Lorine Niedecker?)
>
>Graham reads like bombast to me. But it's better bombast than anyone
>else has produced in the Creative Writing Programs industry - for that
>she deserves the accolades of Helen Vendler, a critic of the Old School.
>(Where have you gone, Blackmur Dimaggio...)
>
>Henry
>
|