Well, sort of. I don't know how many books it will sell, Fred <g>.
I take your points, & can only respond that I don't have the same
problems, but can see why some would.
I don't have Souls yet, so will have to track it down (I am so far
behind reading the books I do have on hand, although am reading some
that come to me for review etc). They range from a new translation of
Cafavy (which I have read & enjoyed) through various Canucks to some
US poets, & then including Trevor Joyce's What's in Store, which I am
part way through & agree with Stephen is a terrific collection.
Doug
On 23-Sep-08, at 7:43 AM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> Doug - This is just to say that I've recently read Susan Howe's last
> two books, Pierce-Arrow and Souls of the Labadie Tract, and enjoyed
> them. Her technique of having figures across American history -
> Melville, Peirce, Stevens, her beloved Dickinson - morph (on the
> strength of some similar problem or aspect) into each other, seem to
> become each other and speak each other's lines - is highly
> original. And I appreciate her eye for the fragment, the forgotten
> memorial - such as the "Labadie poplar" that is the only relic of a
> fervent utopian-communist community. There's genuine imagination
> here, and passion.
>
> Two points, though. First: She, Howe, is entirely a creature of
> libraries; her swooning before old texts and textuality as such
> strikes me as tedious and self-admiring. And there's a kind of
> scolding, ideological feminism in her Dickinson cult and other
> aspects of her work (I have, as I once mentioned, many of her books).
>
> Second, more important: poetry of whatever style should mean, I
> think, compression. The superimposed, scattered, unreadable phrases
> (there are fewer of these in Pierce-Arrow and Souls than elsewhere)
> strike me pointless. If they are supposed to be visual metaphors of
> the ruins of the past, of communications melded and blurred by
> history, the point isn't particularly subtle and needn't be made
> more than once. Pierce-Arrow and Souls are composed of center-of-
> the-page, punctuationless, only faintly rhythmical blurts. Even
> when these aren't the usual Langpo non sequiturs, they trail off
> and, in tone if not in burden, repeat themselves. Reading her means
> picking out a few salient items from the mass, making a coherent
> picture out of these, and basing one's response on that picture.
> It's an art not of compression but of wastage, and I think that's
> unfortunate.
>
> Nevertheless, these are the only works at all associated with the
> Language style for which I've felt any liking. As oppsed to faint
> amusement (Ashbery), unenthusiastic respect (Prynne), or loathing
> (all the others).
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
Language is sound as sense.
Music is sound as sound.
R. Murray Schafer
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