I don't know what rhetorical sidestep you're talking about, Mark.
All I seem to get from you are rhetorical put-downs.  You dismiss
my posts with a flip reply & then demand that I list my contemporary
examples.  I talked about a new relationship with the audience for
poetry based on emotional directness, storytelling and music, old
craft elements of poetry I said were exemplified in Akhmatova, and
downplayed in 20th-cent modern & postmodern poetry by its emphasis
on autonomy and "making strange".  That's all.  It's a wasteland
out there.  - Henry

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Mark wrote...

Irony seems to be lost on you, of all people, on these issues, and I'm not
sure that there's much point in continuing the discussion. The governing
issue, at any rate, is rather less important than you think, I suspect:
theory as advertizing has a very short shelf-life--in the long run the
poems people read are the ones that for whatever reason they enjoy reading,
regardless of the apparatus promoters may erect. And langpo doesn't
exercise a very wide hegemony, however defined.
It might have been interesting, since you insist on polarities, if you had
mentioned anything contemporary, even perhaps in your own language, that
you find useful other than your own poetry. Your rehetorical sidestep was
amusing, but you nonetheless leave the impression that except for some dead
Russians it's all a wasteland--one of the issues I think I was addressing.
OK, I have to retreat into the work at hand.
Mark
02:28 PM 6/23/2001 EDT, Henry wrote:
>The onus of precisely defining the "language" project seems to be on those
>who continue to use it as a publicity tool.  The fact that Rae Armantrout
>& C. Bernstein are very different poets does not, "logically", rule out
>my ability to criticize the techniques that are consistently linked with
>that label.  & why must the Acmeists & the Langpos be contemporaries in
>order to compare them?  In fact, much of langpo theory depends on the
>Russian Formalists and futurists who WERE the Acmeists' contemporaries.
>
>The idea of setting limits to "expressive possibilities" of the current
>moment is just as polemical on your part as my suggestion of alternative
>expressive possibilities: in fact we're doing exactly the same thing.
>Your "limit", I think, is grounded in those matters of style and taste
>which depend on the aesthetic & philosophical positions of the
>tastemakers of the day:  my target, precisely.
>
>As for writing like Keats, no one is suggesting that, though my
>most recent book is full of "traditional" forms, including odes, part of
>one of which appears in the HG/KJ interview in Jacket #10.  They might
>make C. Bernstein laugh, but I think they're ok.  - Henry
>
>
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>Mark wrote:
>
>Float like a butterfly sting like a bee, that's me.
>Just insisting on precision, Henry, where I see precious little.
>Very fond of Akhmatova as I imagine her, which lacking Russian is what I
>must do, with the aid of translations. But the sheer joy in the music of
>language is necessarily lost reading her through others. Even recordings of
>readngs in Russian aren't very helpful in that sense--appreciation,
>emotional reaction to, the way sound and syntax work expressively is
>dependent on a working knowledge of the language.
>By "the rest of us" I meant everyone writing now.
>You do make a couple of leaps into the logical unknown. For one, even
>language poets have a hard time defining "the language project" in a way
>that includes both Bernstein and, for example, Rae Armantrout, and while in
>some cases language theorizing appears to be prescriptive in others it's
>rather more a descriptive framework: after the fact.
>For another, you contrast Akhmatova and Mandelstam to the "language
>project" as if they were contemporary. One could just as easily use any
>poetry of the past as a polemical tool, but one would have to ask oneself
>in that case a bunch of other questions, like why some expressive
>possibilities appear to be less available than they once were. Anyone
>seriously attempting to write like Keats would probably inspire titters.
>But of course the range of possibility is so much wider than what you
>construct as these polar opposites that one wonders (I wonder) why you find
>it necessary to be polemical at all. Your bête noire is a very small part
>of the available fauna.
>Never polemmical myself.
>Mark
>At 10:25 AM 6/23/2001 EDT, Henry wrote:
>>Oh Mark, always at the ready with your little needle.  Tim asked if Charles
>>Bernstein's poetry makes Henry Gould laugh.  The question made me think.
>>I thought about WHY I read so much Akhmatova & Mandelstam rather than the
>>"rest of you".  I think they show how poetry can still integrate the
>>voice of a single person with the concerns of the world at large, which
>>runs somewhat counter to the "constructivist" emphases of the poetry we
>>were talking about.  You could say I'm idealizing them again, but actually
>>I'm just being polemical.  Go & read Akhmatova again, the different scales
>>of public & private address she is able to muster.  In that sense she's a
>>perfect foil to the "language" project.  - Henry
>>
>>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>>Mark wrote:
>>
>>It is a shame that the last and only refuge for poetry is Russia. The rest
>>of us must all be language poets.
>>
>>At 01:59 PM 6/22/2001 EDT, Henry wrote:
>>>Much ink hath been spilt over the question of the "I" in poetry.
>>>Maybe not since Dante wrote his epic of personal spiritual journey has
>>>there been so much interest in the DE-subjective, anonymous, social,
>>>autonomous, objectivist, epic (in Brecht's sense) end of the spectrum.
>>>
>>>This tendency has been allied with the modernist faith in technique.
>>>Technique leads not so much to truth as to the effective autonomy &
>>>beautiful self-sufficiency of the art work.
>>>
>>>Autonomy is all well & good, but the ancient substance of poetry - the
>>>fusion of music and storytelling - was the basis of craft before the
>>>modern era, & that hasn't changed.  To "teach with delight" was the
>>>original role, and if it doesn't delight, it won't teach, and if it
>>>doesn't mean something to an audience it won't do either.
>>>
>>>The question of what poetry is presently DOING in any particular
>>>language or society - how it fits into the larger cultural economy -
>>>always underlies its rhetoric.  What does english-language poetry
>>>mean to whom?
>>>
>>>If you follow Socrates or Cusanus, then the most important thing
>>>anyone can teach is the ability to recognize their own ignorance,
>>>the limitations of bookish authority, the nature of wisdom as
>>>something you can only discover in your own experience and in
>>>your own way.  This was very important to the Italian humanists,
>>>because it meant that truth was "worked out" in dialogue rather
>>>than set down by philosopher-gods.  (Nor, it should be pointed
>>>out, does this necessarily lead to relativism, Macchiavelli, etc:
>>>one way of looking at religion is as a dialogue between & about
>>>divine & human, light & otherness.)  Mandelstam thought the
>>>task of poets was to endure & wait for the "gold coins of
>>>humanism" to ring out across the globe.
>>>
>>>The notion of the dignity of the individual, that the Person is
>>>the beginning and end of the quest for wisdom, that wisdom actually
>>>"cries out in the streets", in the multiplicity of human inventiveness -
>>>I don't think these things are going to go away; and this notion
>>>has implications for the "objectivity" of poetic rhetoric.  The
>>>Language poets, in their critique of lyric "subjectivity", may
>>>have trivialized this notion, emphasizing technique (technique
>>>grounded in a social vision of inter-subjectivity).  The poem
>>>as play-object is one outcome: infinite defamiliarization
>>>equals infinite interest - the poem is an endless riddle only you
>>>can solve (because it has no solution). Only YOU: this is the
>>>bait of reader-created meaning. When there is no self there are
>>>infinite possibilities!  Except for communication, which is an
>>>old-fashioned contract between persons: testimony to experience
>>>and its music. So the bind of "subjectivity" is not so easily
>>>evaded.
>>>
>>>Does the work of Charles Bernstein make me laugh?
>>>I don't know, ask Anna Akhmatova.  That might be a good test for
>>>any poet.  I think I went to the Russians because the exigencies &
>>>solitude taught them something.  But what it taught them was not
>>>to abandon the high old singing, but to hang on to it with a grip
>>>of iron.
>>>
>>>Henry
>>>
>>>btw her way of turning landscape-into-music is masterful.  but it's
>>>also always the site of a drama, a turning-point.
>>>
>>
>