Hi Doug and Rebecca--
I've often heard the fallacy that satire is necessarily "conservative," and
though I'm not implying that your posts were implying this (I see the
qualifiers in Doug's post ["usually, historically"]), I'd like to remind
everyone, or at least bring to our attention, that there is something
called menippean satire -- in which the object or target against which the
satire is deployed is difficult to determine but the general sense of
Disgust and Fear and Ridicule comes across in such a way that the text is
considered subversive and anarchic. So, there are, it seems, at least two
competing definitions and maybe even two competing functions of satire: to
reform something (the so-called "conservative" kind [eg, much of Swift, say
in the battle of the books]) and to just out and out subvert something (teh
anarchic kind, whose target is hard to see necessarily because it is so
broad or comprehensive or aimed at values or modes so fundamental to an age
or practice that often no "alternative" is or perhaps can be offered and
certainly no re-formation or harking back to what once was can be proposed
[eg, the work of Rabelais or Flann O'Brien or Kenneth Koch's "Fresh Air").
Satire is about, it seems to me, the fundamental reordering of values
through laughter.

Gabe

At 11:15 AM 6/1/2003 -0600, Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
>Hi Doug,
>
>I like much of what you say here. In any number of poetry collections
>that I've read in recent years, there does seem to be a satiric
>impulse at work, at least a poem or two in the volume that
>satirizes, though whether the poems are 'satires' in the
>sense that Jon meant in his original post, I don't know, because
>I felt in his question, (paraphrasing, any great satires in the
>last 50 years,)
>a kind of implied definition or expectation of what would qualify.
>
>It is certainly true as you say
>"One of the main problems is that the best satire has usually,
>  historically,  come from conservatives. But today, most who call
> themselves so are
>  already  so self-satirizing, there's little one can do against them, & a
> satire
>  from  the left does run the risk of getting into the preaching to the
> converted
>mode..." Yes, and particularly  if satire is meant to make the comfortable
>uncomfortable, then in preaching to the converted, it becomes
>more like patting oneself on the back in the presence of
>the like-minded, or perhaps the poetic equivalent of a pep
>rally. The barb is gone. For in both of these cases,
>the self irony and wit is also missing.
>
>Another characteristic of the satire might be its temporality,
>it takes aim so particularly and in the moment, that perhaps
>now it would be a rare satire that retains its sharpness for
>fifty years. Too many targets, like one of those games
>at the county fair where the tin ducks and geese wheel
>by too fast.
>
>Best,
>
>Rebecca
>
>Rebecca Seiferle
>www.thedrunkenboat.com
>-------Original Message-------
>From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: 06/01/03 08:48 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Potrzebie
>
> >
> > Jon Corelis asks about satire, & he may be right that there are
> fewexamples of it in recent poetry, but I'm not sure there are none. Are none
>of Gabe's poems in A Defence of Poetry satire? More carefully: is parody
>satire? There are, as you say, Jon, lots of examples of that.
>
>I wish I could write either, but I seem not to be able to, so all I can do
>is enjoy others' such work, when I come across it. But there would be
>attacks from both ends of the religio/politcal spectrum I'm sure, if the
>people who live there read poetry.
>
>Perhaps 'satire' has found a home elsewhere? In fiction sometimes. In some
>rather awful, but wonderful, graphic novels or comix (I think at least
>parts of Preacher, which does manage to offend just about everyone i
>think,
>would fit).
>
>As to unconscious parodies, well we've probabaly all fallen into that at
>some point or other. If we're lucky we recognize it before we try to
>publish that particular work.
>
>One of the main problems is that the best satire has usually,
>historically,
>come from conservatives. But today, most who call themselves so are
>already
>so self-satirizing, there's little one can do against them, & a satire
>from
>the left does run the risk of getting into the preaching to the converted
>mode...
>
>But given what I preceive as pretty strong poetry battles if not wars in
>the US *as well as elsewhere) recently, I'm not sure that all reviews (or
>at least readings) are just nicely positive...
>
>Hmmnnn..
>
>Doug
>
>Douglas Barbour
>Department of English
>University of Alberta
>Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
>(h) [780] 436 3320      (b) [780] 492 0521
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
>         We deserve overtime
>for dealing daily with these mistreated burdens.
>
>                         Clark Coolidge
> >

_____________________________________________________

                 "To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things
                 they misname empire; and where they make
                 a wilderness, they call it peace." -- Tacitus


Gabriel Gudding
Assistant Professor of English
Illinois State University
Normal, IL  61790
office 309.438.5284
[log in to unmask]

http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html
http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/