----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 12:15
AM
Subject: Re: "The Conspiracy Against
Poems" by Adam Fieled at The Argotist Online
And that's the least of it. He seems not to lnow much of
anything beyond his resentments.
At 06:07 PM 8/28/2010, you wrote:
Adam Fieled: 'There is no
historical evidence to suggest that during the Romantic era, something
called “Poetics” existed.'
Oh yeah?
http://books.google.com/books?id=uiggAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover
David Latane
http://www.standmagazine.org (Stand Magazine,
Leeds)
--- On Sat, 8/28/10, Jeffrey Side
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
- From: Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]>
- Subject: "The Conspiracy Against Poems" by Adam Fieled at The Argotist
Online
- To: [log in to unmask]
- Date: Saturday, August 28, 2010, 9:46 AM
- "The Conspiracy Against Poems" by Adam Fieled at The Argotist
Online
- http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Fieled%20essay%205.htm
- Excerpts:
- “There is no historical evidence to suggest that during the Romantic
era, something called “Poetics” existed. At the time, Wordsworth and
Coleridge, both identifiable as “Lake” poets, initiated investigations
of a theoretical nature, centered on poetry. These investigations were one
of Coleridge’s métiers; Wordsworth rarely identified himself as
something other than a poet. The controversies that surrounded Wordsworth,
from the publication of Lyrical Ballads forwards, were centered jointly on
his poems and the theories that buttressed them. Why is it that in 2010, a
majority of poets, particularly those toiling in experimental milieus,
seem both more grounded in and more stimulated by theories than by the
poems they bolster? What is this nebulous entity, “poetics,” and how
has it sapped the life out of what it is meant to serve? The chief
weakness of the pursuit of “poetics,” as I see it, is that it puts
premiums on two red herringsnovelties and political correctness.
“Poetics,” as practiced by the bolder American universities, wants to
investigate the newest of the new, anything (striated, of course, within
the taut bounds of political correctness) that has not been done before.
But practicing “poetics” creates and perpetuates its own kind of
romantic ideologyan unthinking and uncritical belief in one’s
sellf-representations as planted firmly in the new, fresh, and
bold.”
- “Poets weaned on poetics never quite reconcile themselves to the
reality that poems spun out of flimsy theoretical material cannot have any
great or striking impact, either in the long or the short term. All this
movement towards theory and concept is mirrored in other art forms; but as
the post-modern impulse ages, it may be seen that when taken to an
extreme, as it has been in experimental poetry, it creates such an aura of
rapid obsolescence around new poetry that one wonders why new poems are
being written at all.”
- “Simply put, poetics is mainly a construct established and put into
propulsive motion by white, middle-class academics; and as
multiculturalism has emerged as a subsidiary branch of post-modernism, a
sense of guilt moves participants not only towards the outré but towards
anything ethnic or deviant. The problem with poetics generally is that
there is little quality control. The conceit of post-modern poetics is
that there is no such thing as “quality”; quality is a teetering
edifice erected by hegemonic white males to reinforce a master narrative
patched up against invasion.”
- “Generations are now beginning to emerge who have been weaned on
these approaches. The upshot is that poets have been formed who respond to
theory first, poems second. If poems are a subsidiary branch of theories,
then poetry as an endeavor has become so bastardized and decadent that it
has ceased to be itself.”
- http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Fieled%20essay%205.htm
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