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BRITISH-IRISH-POETS  April 2012

BRITISH-IRISH-POETS April 2012

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Subject:

Re: Beef

From:

"[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

British & Irish poets <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:43:03 +0100

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Well, yes, we'll have to disagree.

Actually I think the post that you linked to is one of Silliman's best pieces, but then I have to admit that I share his feelings about the Simic article that provoked it. It is a feeling of fury, certainly. A fury that could not be justified merely by Simic expressing different preferences; that's not the issue; it's about Simic's gatekeeperism, the concerted and tacit attempt to control literary history by misrepresenting, minimizing or erasing the existence of other views.

As for the coined phrases, which I know some people find infuriating, I see those as a key instance of Silliman's marketing talents being put to good use. Some people might see them as pre-empting debate (in effect, doing a Simic). But I believe they've been really good for opening up discussion of US poetry.

"School of Quietude" gained wide currency, and I think it prompted a lot of reflection, because of the paradox of the co-habitation of striking rightness with obvious wrongness (e.g. many SoQ writers are very loud, and many post-avant writers are very quiet).

"Neophobe" admittedly didn't catch on, but "Soft Surrealism" did, and with outcomes that maybe Silliman wouldn't have bargained for, because it was eagerly taken up by Göransson and McSweeney as part of their gleeful onslaught on the unconfessed elitism, US-centricity and high art aspirations of, among others, the Language poets. But this critique wouldn't have worked as well as it did if , in the first instance, Silliman's "soft surrealism" hadn't been such an apt denigration of the poetry of Simic and so many others. That's what allowed G/McS to argue (approximately) that soft surrealism is a perception of impurity from the persepective of purity, an image of the unacceptable, thus to co-opt it as a banner for the gurlesque and its neighbouring swamplands.







>Hi Michael,
  I don't think we're going to agree over this tag of Silliman's, though I have to conceed he knows a great deal more about the US poetry terrain than I do. Or than most people do, for that matter. I dutifully read the posts you listed, and even followed up a hyperlink
         http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/in-recent-years-different-poets.html.
when I saw he'd characterized Simic as the most destructive and negative laureate in recent history, and "bullying" to boot. The chief evidence for this is an NYRB article Simic wrote which seems to be largely in praise of Creeley as a love poet, though it demurs about sections of his work. Silliman, who coins yet another label - "soft surrealism" - to caricature Simic, expends much time and effort being shocked by Simic's lack of enthusiasm for doorstopping Collecteds and his opening claim that most good poets can be well represented by 80 or so poems. It's not like Simic doesn't understand the difference between a Collected and a Selected, so why the indignation? In the course of this long polemic, Silliman makes just a few telling points, of a theoretical kind, but really most of it seems to be venting a fury that Simic has a different set of preferences to his own.
   Siliman sees a corrosive agenda. He operates in a Manichean world divided between "the good guys" (himself obviously included) and the evil Neophobes - another label perhaps he hopes will catch on. In one of the posts he says he only invented the S of Q term to prompt these poets to find a name to call themselves. I won't keep calling you names if you find a name (hopefully a derogatory one) to call yourselves. This is kindergarten stuff. We all have to have names and belong to adjectival schools - with the exception of these bad folk who just think they're writing "poetry". But really what they're doing is trampling on the experimental writers close to Silliman's heart.
    In another he suggests S of Q poets should have more of a sense of their own history and obliges by quoting an ineptly rhymed poem from among the host of now long-forgotten Pullitzer winners. Or perhaps I've misunderstood the argument - I was beginning to nod off.
   I don't think these posts even cut it as polemic - there's almost nothing memorable, forceful or even humorous to light up the experience of trudging through them.
    The blog has a great deal else of interest when it comes within the range of his enthusiasms, so my quarrel is mainly with his insistence on this term of abuse. The tone is of someone doing battle with his oppressors, and yet hardly a week goes by without him advertising a reading he's giving, so it's not as though (Pullitzers and laureateships apart) he's suffering from any crippling neglect.
Jamie

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