Transparency. Opacity.
These terms of oppostiion exist in a number of discourses regarding
poetry of an experimental nature. At the SubVoicive colloquiium I dealt
with the way that Bruce Andrews was using this binary, and suggested
that it was to set up a straw man Mainstream Poet. This is not very
useful, and I know, from reviewing the stuff, that assumptions abnout
the work are sometimes dashed. Philip Larkin isn't transparent: wasn't it
precisely the artifice that turned many of us off? And going through the
ten draqfts and final text of Anne Sexcton's Wallfalower as a lecture for
my students on the poetic process it is clear that transparency is not an
ideal: the confessional, the purely personal, is expunged in favour of a
knotty set of "images": another problem here, but not one of
transparency. A much more useful term or set is Bernstein's (anti)
aborption because it allows strategic use of both terms, and doesn't set
up oppositions. (not got it here to refer to)
Another worrying trend is that associated with Cambridge poetry to
rubbish LP as the irresponsible play of the signifier, the fetishisation of
semiotic play. There is a straw man language poet, often, in the
discourse of Marrriott (which Ken dealt with admirably the other day in
this virtuality), sometimes in Wilkinson, in one of Denise Riley's Mop Mop
poems, and other places. It's an argument that never quite becoems
articulated (except in Marriott) since it is often an aside. But it seems to
me that this equally misses the specifics of the development of language
writing (which Marjorie is quite right we shouldn't call them anymore -
though we will|).
The straw man or woman approach is politiccally useful (I am not
innocent odf this at all), but ultimately misses the point.
Robert
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