Kasper,
Sorry I missed your question.
You ask what I think of Ron's blog.
Well, I think it's a good example of literary violence -- and of someone
who is very very obedient to the illusion of literature and deeply
invested in: (a) consecration, (b) canon making, (c) pigeon-holing, (d)
distinctions, and (e) the dream of judgment.
In other words, it's a good example of fetish. Belief in literature.
Too, I guess in some ways Ron's blog is a machine of capital (not fiscal
but symbolic), whose purpose is to accrue as much cultural capital as
possible -- to in fact monopolize, or at least corner the market on, a
set of symbolic goods.
So in short it's business as usual. Even tho Ron will say he doesn't
believe in individual authors, he still basically follows the New
Critical m.o. for establishing author function by (a) authorial
celebration, (b) apodictic tone (assertion parading as demonstration),
(c) divisive rhetoric (dismissive or conciliatory), (d) obsessive
concern about what will stand "the test of time" -- and probably the
thing that most anchors Ron as a grandchild of New Criticism: (e) the
ritualistic "close reading" (pretending to focus on "form" and "craft"
as a means of carrying out an attempt to consecrate or dismiss).
Another way of putting it: Ron's blog is a giant mechanism whose purpose
is to create, if absent, and anchor, if present, belief. Belief in
distinctions -- rather than awareness of relations.
Or another way to think of it is: The enactment of orthodoxy by a former
heretic.
If Ron's blog were a religion, it would be Mormonism.
Or. The enactment of a doxological illusion common to literature: the
belief that one can locate somewhere in the field of polemics or
celebration something upon which one can never exhaust the urge to
fetishize. Olson? Creeley? Dickinson? Barbour? Ballardini?
Ron's blog is a hunt for that inexhaustible object/author.
So, that's what I think of Ron's blog. What I think of Ron himself, or
what he presents of himself on his blog and in his work, is that he's a
good Joe who's maybe a little too enamored with the illusion of "poetry"
and who maybe needs to read Bourdieu. :)
Poetry really is about human beings. It's not about poetry.
Sorry if this is a bit too much information, Kasper.
Gabe
http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/
http://rhodeislandnotebook.blogspot.com/
<<oh. I was asking Gabe what *he* thinks of Silliman's blog. if his poem
is a nightmare or absurd dream or true reflection.
KS>>
|