I got lost where this discussion was happening, so am sending this to
both lists.
I read the interview, which is actually quite interesting, and it
prompted some musing. I'm kind of fascinated that one of his models is
Brecht - whom you would think would be at an opposite axis in
practice, if not in theory - and another is the ostranie of the
Russian formalists. And that he places the reader in the centre of his
practice, with the desire to change the reader's consciousness, to
make the reader more aware of the social structure which frame him/her
(something that's been occupying me, although in very different ways),
and an embrace of an oppositional poetics that means chucking out the
old to make space for the new, &c (which he also eschews in another
breath, when he claims that LANGUAGE poetry wasn't oppositional). Yes,
all stuff that's been heard before, but interesting all the same,
because of the doubt that seems to be behind some of his answers, and
which in fact emanates from where he places of the reader. Unless, of
course, I'm misreading him...
There's an oddly a gendered argument here, with the lyric/personal
identified as "her" and the poetry he describes appealing to "the man"
inside. As an aside, that assumes of course that lyric is inevitably
about "personal experience", perhaps mainly feminine experience, and
identity politics, and concerns an unproblematic I. Yet there's an
awful lot of new lyric - often written by women - which splinters the
lyric I completely, and is totally concerned with the mediating
effects of language. Anne Carson being one example. You could go way
back too and look at Mayakovsky, who wrote nothing but the I. A
revolution of a million Mayakosvkys, as someone - maybe Trotsky -
said. Ie, an I that is not confessional, that explodes the "personal",
not the "workshop poem" as he defines it, and not anti-intellectual.
And certainly concerned with making readers aware of the social
structures which frame and shape them.
Just teasing here at something which seems not to be there. A shadow
under the water?
xA
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Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
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