To revive the theme of a critical separation or disparity of interests
between US Language poets and poets associated with Cambridge: here's a
section of a poem by Bruce Andrews just published on Peter Ganick's
e-zine.
"Words
were
what
were
whole
what
wasted
words
want
waiting
whose
travel
there"
I think it is fair to say that no writer associated with those living and
working in Cambridge, howsoever he might reprehend that association or
wish to affirm it, would have produced this piece of writing for public
consumption. I would contend that the writers grouped together in Nate's
post would all of them react individually to this piece, but that their
reactions might seem in each case to be characterized by the belief that
this writing is decadent, indulgent, makes a virtue of resolute failure to
be circumspect, toyish in its comfortable anticipation that a reader will
find her own interests available for subscription to its arcade-game
aesthetics, and devoid of artisanal labour without registering any
conflict of relinquishment of or objection to the prospect or reality of
that labour. Beckett stripped this writing of its pertinence and capacity
for respresenting any militant engagement or withdrawal, long before its
author perched over Barthes. This is the jet stream of a cruise missile,
pretty, slick, to say pastiched grace by. Making a trend of dodging
conscience, the issue of this is to create one final and gross fetish: the
fetish for play and unaviodable evasion. Nietzsche of course instigated
this attitude not because -play- is a telos of intellectual labour, but
because the contingencies of his own period made that gesture
-circumstantially- critical; to maintain the opposite is to misunderstand
Nietzsche entirely. Of course, the more circumstantial the relevance of a
gesture, the more intransigently it ought to be made. This gesture, here,
Bruce Andrews's, is a flagrant abuse of present circumstances which after
all might be 0.02% slippage of signification (stocks in Vaseline up two
cents), but are a lot more to do with (eg) Mozambique and IMF policy, the
continued bombing of Iraq, the brutalization of Sudan etc., all of which
his poetry is intimately involved with yet spurns through an archaic,
playful rejection of Totality.
k
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