Echoing Ric, I'd like to thank Nate for his writeup of Cork '99.
On the subject of Billy Mills's "objectivism", It might be worth remarking
that, in discussion during Cork '99, Billy firmly distanced his work from
what Ric has called an "objectivist method". This was coupled to Billy's
equally strong rejection of Language writing and a--to my
mind--ill-considered and rather over-hasty dismissal of Wittgenstein. His
reading was powerfully polemical, and contentious. Its mixture of prose
and poetry, critical reflection and "straight" poetry, marked an
interesting development in his writing--which several present at the
reading thought marked a significant advance.
I share Ric's admiration for Geoffrey Squires' "Untitled Poem" in the
latest Shearsman, though I would distinguish more carefully that Ric does
between the ways in which Squires and Mills construct their respective
sequences. As Billy's piece at the conference demonstrated, there is a
quality of collage/montage to his longer works which one does not find in
Geoffrey's work. The latter is fragmentary, yes, but this reflects the
poet's interest in the necessarily perspectival (in both senses) nature of
the perceptual field--which his poems seek to express in linguistic terms.
If there is anything that links the two poets it is perhaps a rejection of
that current commonplace: that langauge "goes all the way down". Their
work, in very different fashions, expresses a belief in pre or
extra--linguistic experience, that langauge maps or attempts to imperfectly
chart.
Alex Davis
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