----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher C Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 5:10 AM
Subject: Re: Lyric, Proust and signs
> Doug, I think you are correct in terms of the difficult movements of
> lyric and narrative and this is difficult to write about, so I may have
> to live with that rather then trying to find an easy way. For me, the
> distinction between lyric and narrative gives too much ground to
> Aristotle and I think this is where Language Poetry and the avant-garde
> I am aligned with seem now to differ. Of course, it is needed that
> avant-gardes engage in contestable discourses since this establishes our
> rights to exist. This is very different to the right to life of
> anti-abortionist ideology which is, dishonestly, a claim for mass
> suicide against life instead of the truths of life for which
> avant-gardist writers and artist engage in with contesting discourses.
> The right of women to decide what they do with their bodies and if and
> when they have children is very different to a contestation on the
> rights to life in advant-garde writing formations. It is also not a
> democratic debate in which those who score the highest points are
> decreed the winner against the losing side but rather the very
> contestation itself which gives avant-gardes their respective lives.
>
> So, in quick summary, Language Poetry rests on a misreading of Derrida,
> or a partial reading which is the same thing, which allows them to
> disavow speech and voice in favour of a language writing and in so
> doing, now without voice, are free to find, discover, rediscover and
> create new monologic lyric voices. It appears then that Bakhtin is quite
> correct in claiming that lyric poetry needs a monologic voice and this
> applies as much to Pound's Cantos as it does to the lyric poetry of the
> Language poets. The claims I have read that Pound proves Bakhtin
> incorrect are themselves mistaken. Lyric poetry needs monologic lyric
> voice and Language poetry demonstrates this by disavowing voice and in
> so doing a creation of new lyric voices is indeed possible as a
> monologic lyric.
>
> Given the current horrific international political situation the
> contestations of avant-gardes has now become one of a far more civil
> discussion but it still continues. If I am to follow M Perloff this may
> have shifted to our various theoretical sources in which Benjamin and
> Deleuze seem to be lined up for dispute and given this we would have to
> include Bakhtin. I think it is important not to underestimate the
> violence of Bakhtin's critique of Kant and Aristotle which is done by
> ripping the transcendental out of Kant. Aristotle's categorical grounds
> cannot survive this critique, so it may follow that Bakhtin may still
> have some words in a critical assessment of Language poetry.
>
> Now, onto lyric and novels. While it is true that novels do not need a
> monologic lyric voice, it is a very different thing to say novels need
> more lyric. What is at issue here is the plural nature of lyric(s). More
> lyric is different to a need of lyric verse for monologic lyric. I don't
> think it is by accident or choice that Robert Gluck and Dennis Cooper
> write both lyric poetry and prose novels. (If anyone has "Jack the
> Modernist", Gluck's poetry or Cooper's novel series, I may be able to
> pay for it with paypal or mastercard, btw.)
>
> This also leads onto the carnivalesque creation of characters that begin
> with abstract bodies, that at first may carry only a name, and through a
> spiritual essence the creation of subjectivities. What does it matter if
> one says I or not is a real question and not an anti-subjective and
> anti-humanist rhetorical remark on D&G's behalf. On this rests an entire
> anti-humanist mistaken reading of Deleuze and Guattarri which is alien
> the the very question being posed and as such hostile to D&G and the
> question of subjectivity.
>
> Anyways, perhaps that is an intro to the difficulty??? Maybe someone
> with an investment or knowledge of Language Poetry may be able to
> respond, also? It does get difficult, that is true.
>
> Chris Jones.
>
>
>
Somehow, reading this, I imagine an earnest Sorbonne student of the 13th
century saying, When I've finished all of Aquinas and Abelard, and put them
in exactly the right conjuncture, I'll be able to write wonderful troubadour
poetry.
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