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To: Ken Edwards, 100344,2546
Date: Fri, Oct 17, 1997, 5:14 pm
RE: Re: Response to DS Marriott
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Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 07:51:34 +0100
From: Marjorie Perloff <[log in to unmask]>
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To: Ken Edwards <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Response to DS Marriott
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Dear Ken:
I'm writing this on my earthlink email (what I use when I'm not up at
Stanford) and can't seem to send it directly to the List, but perhaps
you can simply forward it for me? Thanks.
I haven't contributed to this List in some time, though I do read it
every day, because it seems so in-house. Half the time I have no idea
what anyone is talking about. But since the issue of Marriot's attack
on language poetry has come up and you cited my letter (which was not in
fragmente, now that I think of it), I just want to say that it's high
time to stop using the term "language poetry" and start reading some
actual language poets. My objection to some of the attackers on
l-poetry in the UK is less substantive than practical: there is no such
thing as "a" language poetry any more than there was such a thing as
"the dada poem" or "the surrealist painting" etc etc. Now that the
original movement is 20 years old and many people have dropped out or
are busy squabbling with one another (see Barrett W's attack on Charles
B in recent Impercipient pamphlet), why sit around carping about
fetishizing in language poetry? As you say, Ken, can anyone say that
Lyn Hejinian is guilty of this? Is Leslie Scalapino? Cole Swensen?
It's always harder to take the time to actual read the poetry than it is
to make whatever comment on "the language poets." I suggest taking it
one step at a time. For example, in my class last spring there was a
spirited discussion of Steve McCaffery's "Catec(h)ism"--Steve has come
in for a good bit of bashing in "Fragmente" so I'll cite him. A woman
grad student who's specialty is Renaissance and had never so much as
heard of McCaffery until last Spring, did the most brilliant analysis of
that particular poem, showing how it dismantles our notions of the
Catechism all the while observing catechistic rules and how this and
related poems in THE CHEAT OF WORDS constitute a complex critique of
current pedagogy. As for the fetish of the signifier, I guess it never
occurred to her or the others NOT to figure out what's actually going on
in the poems which the whole class found wonderfully intriguing.
And, as I believe I wrote to Anthony Mellors, there's a second reason
not to bash language poetry on this list (or anwhere else for that
matter). In the larger world, the movement has never been accepted
anyway. I've just been doing some lecturing at Harvard and let me
assure this list that in the hallowed halls and surrounding bookstores,
the poets of choice discussed are Seamus Heaney, Jorie Graham, and Derek
Walcott. Steve McCaffery?? Who he? Charles Bernstein: let's see,
vaguely known as one of those "language poets.
Given this situation, internicine fights like the ones that seem to be
going on on this list seem curiously counterproductive.
Marjorie Perloff
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