Speaking of clothes, one standout opportunity for the heralded “blockage” or disruption of capital that seems to have been missed occurred at the site of capitalism’s convergence: the White House. Kenneth Goldsmith was invited to read poetry and accepted. Both Goldsmith and Place report the specifics online at length. Though he notes an opportunity to read unfettered at one point, he chose to stick to the pre-approved script and read poems by Walt Whitman and Hart Crane as well as from one of his own books; Goldsmith obediently performed his role within the institution. But the standout portion that Goldsmith focuses on is the reception of his suit by the president. His suit was the same brand that the president wears but with an exaggerated paisley pattern. The president quipped that he liked Goldsmith’s suit but wouldn’t be permitted to wear it. Goldsmith determines that this was his disruptive or subversive moment, “. . . to take something familiar and recontextualize it to the point of it being ‘wrong,’ which is exactly what I aimed to do with my performance, straddling tradition and radicality, being both and, at the same, being neither; embracing contradiction, keeping them guessing.”
Goldsmith goes on, vis-à-vis a Derrida quote, to align his presentation with the Occupy Wall Street protests and then claims, “What happened in the White House was that radicality was clothed in the nearly identical linguistic garments of normative discourse familiar to the institution.” (Does the radicality of the Occupy movement rub off by invocation alone? When I ask a poet-friend, he replies, “Whether you’re an American President or an avant-garde poet, Brooks Brothers has a suit for you.”) Goldsmith further notes that his so-called radicality went “unnoticed.” Who did he keep in a state of guessing then? Despite attaching himself to an avant-garde that is supposed to destabilize or block capital, it seems Goldsmith merely performed the “eccentric poet” pop culture stereotype for the capitalist media machine, earning the cultural capital of visibility, which is later confirmed as clown-like on the Jon Stewart show. Was there no other option in the Conceptualist box of devices that could have had an impact that registered? Even the two couples that snuck into and attended a White House state dinner in 2009 raised more questions and caused more disruptions than Goldsmith’s suit.
So I look to the premier critic and champion of poetries of the avant-garde, Marjorie Perloff, for clarification. In “A Response to Matvei Yankelevich,” Perloff claims to only “speak of the Establishment: the big-name poets who win the prizes . . . ” in her critical takedown of said Establishment. She advances poetries she believes are capable of dismantling it. Her champions as of late are, of course, the Conceptualists. “Do I believe the Conceptualists are the only game in town? Not for long.” But we can infer that, for now, yes, they are. All other poets are complicit participants in the Establishment, incidental or irrelevant to it. Conceptualism though “is now prominent enough to boast two recent large anthologies and many university courses dedicated to it…” thus Perloff echoes Goldsmith’s signposts of acceptance. So we are, on the one hand, critically advised to be aware of the machinery and techniques that perpetuate and sustain an “Establishment order” poetry while being told another group, the Conceptualists, are also part of the Establishment, upwardly mobile via the same machinery. The prizes and university appointments Goldsmith touts are of the same ilk as the ones Perloff dismisses as the making of the Establishment, signposts required for the machinations of capitalism to proceed with business-as-usual. In other words, the canonization system is on track, and with Perloff’s official endorsement (via reviews and her “Avant-Garde” entry in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics), the Conceptualists will hopefully soon oust and replace “official verse culture.” The hierarchical pecking order of capitalism remains intact.
Further, one group will trump another in Perloff’s equation, thanks to its cover story of a liberatory intervention, “…the lyric is certainly back, even if not in its confessional or oh-I’m-so-sensitive personal form” (“Response”). The Conceptualist group has now schooled those who write these derided “lyrics” on how to use techniques the group itself appropriated from other poets and Conceptual artists, at the cost of reifying the system of capitalism. The “avant-garde” claim to disruption appears to be a front for the competitive advancement of this group in the reductive capitalist embrace. Or as Eileen Myles points out in “Painted Clear, Painted Black,” “But all of it gets compacted in Perloff’s aesthetic … as identity politics or the politically correct. Which is stunning language for a scholar to use. It’s media speak. It’s transparent speech.” The “Other” poetries are, again, reinforced as not liberatory, even while her own champions are not only not disrupting the institution from within or without, they are enacting it while boasting of the rewards it bestows. The only sting apparent is that which requires the denigration of poetries to sustain an intentional group in the service of the business of a poetics in capitalist mode.
Perloff, once again, hierarchically frames and dismisses the poets Matvei Yankelevich suggests might be part of the avant-garde, “… you can’t very well oppose the Penguin canon by bringing up the names of what are, outside of the world of small-press and chapbook publishing, wholly unknown poets.” I wonder if the poetry of the “small press” poet Walt Whitman challenged or opened up the Penguin canon of his day (see Evie Shockley’s “Shifting the Imbalance” for a more nuanced look at the Penguin anthology debate). This sweeping dismissal of all poets-not-Conceptual, not published by big name presses and from outside the institution is as myopic as it is insulting. Perloff’s proclamation speaks more about her own choices as a critic than about the availability of poetries that are disrupting or blocking capitalism. It seems easier to advance and assimilate into the canon a “readymade” marketable group that utilizes the mechanisms of capitalism like sensationalism and appropriation (in this case, imitative applications famous artists have previously used which are recognizable, easy to cite and therefore publically validate your group – i.e. the Surrealists, Andy Warhol, various Conceptual artists, etc.) than to do the more difficult work of locating and identifying disparate poetic practices and engagements, often overlapping and intersecting, that haven’t been neatly packaged for market.
While there seems to be a broad range of often contradictory claims made by the primary Conceptual writers, it’s worth taking a closer at those made most frequently by these two primary proponents, Perloff and Goldsmith, to ascertain exactly what this avant-garde is doing. As mentioned, one way the Conceptualist writers unify is, most tellingly, to define themselves in opposition to two amorphous masses: Perloff has dubbed the first as poets of “Establishment verse,” also known as mainstream or populist verse, and the other group is typified as a kind of failed or weak experimental verse. These two groups are then linked as having fallen prey to replicating the Romantic lyric of “selfhood” or of a narcissistic self, who attempts to express thoughts and feelings. Through these broad strokes premised on an arbitrary split, Conceptual writers imply that they are the ones working to “desubjectify” poetry through procedural writing practices.
This latest vanguard is also defined as undermining the “author function” by unseating claims to “originality” and, presumably, rendering the author unimportant. In Unoriginal Genius, Marjorie Perloff quotes Kenneth Goldsmith at length:
Conceptual writing … employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies … Conceptual writing is more interested in a thinkership rather than a readership. Readability is the last thing on this poetry’s mind. Conceptual writing is good only when the idea is good; often, the idea is much more interesting than the resultant texts. (147)
However, Perloff is compelled to go against Goldsmith’s claim to thinkership, determining to “read Traffic as a book about traffic.” She notes the indeterminate sources of Goldsmith’s selections in his book and is intrigued by such mystery, “From what sources could these disparate and fantastic items have been ‘collected’?” (151).
From there Perloff works through many clues about what holiday weekend the traffic excerpts are referring to, wondering how Goldsmith managed to omit identifying signposts through the use of procedural practices alone, with their ‘sly implications’ and “something surreal about this seemingly ordinary sequence of traffic reports.” At this juncture, I can’t help but think of Gertrude Stein’s own excitement for detective fiction, which certainly has value but was not hailed as avant-garde writing of the day. For several pages, Perloff works to unravel the mystery until she shifts into associative leaps, aligning Traffic with important cultural artifacts such as Jean-Luc Godard’s film, “Weekend,” explaining how the film was a weighty critique of “consumerism in a heartlesss society,” concluding that “here Goldsmith’s Traffic is apposite” (155). Transferring the weight of Godard’s film, via the underscoring of his traffic scene, to Goldsmith’s selection of excerpts from traffic reports rings hollow at best, but Perloff’s associative alignments don’t end there.
Perloff further imbues Traffic with cultural heft by conjuring avant-garde theater, “This radio bulletin, as Goldsmith transcribes it, makes for theater of the absurd” (157). He “has produced a vivid representation of contemporary urban life in all its ritual boredom, nervousness, frustration, fear, apathy–and also its pleasure.” While I know many poets have also explored and represented these aspects of contemporary urban life in a variety of ways, it is the “colorful phrases” that Perloff cites that reminds me that other poets have done so in equally enticing and challenging fashion or more so. She offers evidence, “Traffic is both an existential and linguistic challenge …. by using colorful phrases like ‘what a doozy,’ ‘snail’s pace,’ ‘absolutely crawling,’ ‘stacked up,’ ‘getting clobbered,’ ‘the makings of a rough ride’” (156). I presume Perloff is excited by these “vivid” and “colorful phases,” not just for the “linguistic challenge” they pose, but specifically because they originated in daily detritus, excised from the “bulk of language” already available, whereas she assumes most other poets pretend to make this stuff up. In other words, perhaps these phrases are exciting because Goldsmith didn’t originate them; they are someone else’s words. According to Goldsmith, I’m supposed to be wowed by the idea itself, as part of his thinkership. However you spin it, this idea is not unique or even novel; numerous poets consciously mine high and low sites of culture regularly. Goldsmith’s use of appropriation, even with Perloff’s associations, have not rendered Traffic uniquely or exceptionally avant-garde yet.
But we encounter the split again. Perloff continues her chapter on Goldsmith by researching the traffic anchor he appropriates, discovering twin passions in his biographical sketch, and asserts yet again the reductive ‘Conceptual writers versus everyone else’ dichotomy, “Twin passions: ‘radio and beautiful bridges.’ What makes this little vignette so amusing is its element of genuine surprise–a surprise too often absent in the pages of so-called original writing.” That “genuinely surprised’ response over the anchor’s passion for bridges gives way, again, to Perloff reifying this notion of dumb poets who think they’re executing “original writing.” In the same paragraph, Perloff defines Goldsmith in opposition to “the experimental feminist poet Sina Queyras” (158). She compares Traffic to Queyras’ Expressway by quoting eight lines from her book. Perloff does not explicate Queyras’ poem but, having positioned her as the representative of the experimental group, dismisses the lines in just three words as a means to explain why Goldsmith’s book is “more” worthy, “Perhaps too familiar. The ‘real’ action, when we turn to the minute-by-minute transcriptions in Traffic, is much more variable and surprising” (159). This is a belittling and unnecessary move, executed only to position Goldsmith’s book as valuable somehow in contrast, and it does nothing to acknowledge or explore the girth of poetries written today employing similar techniques to different ends.
One final aligning move of note. Perloff cites the anchor’s declaration that the bridges are clear, giving drivers “One big green light” in Traffic, in order to conjure and explicate the symbolic meanings and implied cultural critique of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s repetitive use of the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock in The Great Gatsby. These attempts to transfer the cultural critiques of prosodic works to Traffic disappoint, but moreover, I am left wondering where the avant-garde elements are that landed him prominence in Perloff’s Princeton Encyclopedia entry. Perloff concludes the chapter by clumping the two groups together again, the “experimental to traditional,” to state that “it must have seemed to Goldsmith … that as in Duchamp’s case, the time had come to do something else. Ergo, poetry that doesn’t look like any poetry we’ve seen, presented as ‘unreadable’ so as to challenge us to read it” (164). Essentially, Perloff points out throughout the chapter that Goldsmith has used repetition, strategic omission, and appropriation in ways that challenge us to read, build suspense and make us ask questions: techniques that even “Establishment poets” use. It’s worth reiterating that these techniques have already been used far more widely than is acknowledged and continue to be available and employed by many poets. Heralding Goldsmith’s work as the avant-garde, premised on the dualistic split of Conceptual writers versus the now-derided poets of “subjective expression” and “too familiar” experimentalists, is reductively misleading. Perloff’s word carries considerable weight of career-building worth. Even in the business world, fair practice is supposed to trump collusion.
Like many poets, I continue to use a number of techniques over which these groups have become proprietary. The techniques themselves are neutral; how one employs them is where poetics begins. Attempting to trademark these techniques (i.e. “Conceptualism,” “Flarf”) is precisely a form of capitalist reification. I’m not out to deny anyone institutional participation or access to resources; rather, I want to call attention to the claim these groups purport to block capitalism while intentionally employing capitalist techniques (i.e. media-style sensationalism to garner notice, sound-bite saturation, prolific self-referencing, reducing all other modes of subjective expression to exchangeable equivalences, etc.) to achieve and secure status within the capitalist structure. That structure rewards for adherence and perpetuation, regardless of proclaimed critique.
One way to achieve such perpetuation is through the divide-and-conquer tact. The reiteration of a ‘Conceptual writers versus everyone else’ mentality is a groove Kenneth Goldsmith also quickly retreats to when faced with substantial criticism, especially as the rewards are immediate in their systematized reductions. He turns critical challenge of his practices into capitalist publicity, in the form of sensational headlines that are easy to remember and dependent on our own elementary fears of not fitting in. Witness Goldsmith’s repeat “tweet” performances when faced with Alan Davies’ “Notes on Conceptualism” and Keston Sutherland’s “Theses on Antisubjectivist Dogma.” On May 2, 2012, Kenneth Goldsmith tweeted, “Alan Davies hates conceptual poetry” and “Keston Sutherland hates conceptual poetry.” In the capitalist scheme, it’s much more desirable to reframe and funnel out a “headline” akin to a reality TV fight, prompting us to choose sides and in the process derail any engagement beyond the superficial, rather than address specifics directly. Apparently, it’s fun to theorize but only in a sanitized, one-sided fashion.
For the most part, Place is also reluctant to enter into such conversation, often citing, “Never apologize, never explain” (“Hanne Darboven”), though she does respond publicly to Johanna Drucker in “Poetry is dead, I killed it.” Declaring both the “author” and “poetry” dead via her appropriative practice, Place capitalizes on the institution in the name of both. In fact despite avoiding most substantive critical engagement directly, the Conceptual writers explicate their practices a good deal in their own essays, through insular referencing of each other, and, to some degree, in friendly interviews – but to meet the queries that might expose the failure of their claims to “block capital” would also be to symbolically take a step down by engaging with the “Other” they have deemed incapable of making up a working avant-garde and therefore in need of the Conceptual writers’ intervention. It would require actually exploring vast poetries in much more informed ways, while resisting the urge to characterize those poetries in pop culture reality TV fashion as so much failed experimentation of a narcissistic selfhood. But to spend time in such engagement can only slow and upset rather than aide and maintain their scheduled ascent. To figure “hate” (as Goldsmith’s tweets do), on the other hand, is to diffuse complex challenges while perpetuating the position of an Other in favor of easier-to-ignore “reactionary hype.” Goldsmith is banking on our sound bite-conditioned minds to forego considering what writers like Johanna Drucker in “Beyond Conceptualisms: Poetics after Critique and the End of the Individual Voice” have pointed out: “As an intellectual product, conceptual writing is as indicative of our thought-forms. In our time as any other-provided the repeated ‘our’ in that statement refers to some higher order, emergent form of culture, rather than a self-selected community of elite practitioners whose careers are bound to its promotion.” No one group owns the various techniques and processes that numerous poets continue to utilize, and even less, the right to lay claim to these — using capitalistic maneuvers — for one’s own career gain. The grab by any self-proclaimed group to own those techniques is a telling one that should raise a red flag for many poets.
Ultimately, these groups are unabashedly vying for central positions of power in order to enjoy the accompanying accesses, attentions and rewards – as the now-christened official verse culture’s “avant-garde” in a supposed attempt to destabilize that system by selling poetic techniques as their trademarked products. What do we call this alleged progress when its advancement requires the denigration of other poetries? Surely there is a plurality of poetries working right now in multiple ways to throw capital off-course –conceptually and materially. Why not acknowledge and explore the intersectionality of those diverse efforts? What purpose is served in trumpeting one intentional group’s position as the heroic liberator over all others? While the primary practitioners increasingly benefit from institutional gain, it might be easy to overlook the denigration and dismissal of whole swaths of poets, but at what cost? A first step to blocking capitalism must be to seek to identify how we are complicit participants in the fragmenting and isolating effects of groups that territorially define poetic practices in opposition to one another and, in the process, repeat the capitalist hierarchy with such defining moves. If every poet were to choose a privatized camp to seek membership in, each clamoring to be the proprietor over practices “owned” by that camp, then we might as well trade in our Brooks Brothers suits now – or refuse to buy them to begin with.
21 responses
This was a wonderfully insightful and eye-opening two-part essay. I thank The Rumpus for publishing it and I thank Amy King for writing it.
I read a lot of poetry and write a little. Thanks for this article. I must say it seemed to be more about politicking and its attendant argy-bargy than poetry. It didn’t encourage me to seek out the poets namechecked.
“Tony Says:
July 16th, 2013 at 4:09 pm
I read a lot of poetry and write a little. Thanks for this article. I must say it seemed to be more about politicking and its attendant argy-bargy than poetry. It didn’t encourage me to seek out the poets namechecked.”
Tony, actually, I used this column to introduce myself, not only to the various poets but to the various schools and sub schools. In the end, I agree, I do not see how any of this moves the art form forward. Tricks are the tools of people who cannot write a poem. I see why Amy used the Emperors New Clothes. as an uneducated life long poet, i have to wonder why anyone would bother collecting pieces to make something, possibly clever, but as often as not, not even clever, and certainly not inspiring or pleasant satisfying in any poetical sense?
years ago, i published a small local arts and literature paper. i had an all volunteer staff. one covered poetry, one covered music, and i tended to write about visual arts, not because i had any skill, but because i liked to look at pretty things and say whatever came into my mind. my music editor tended to cover locally performing live bands with an occasional recent or significant piece of recorded music now and then.
There were a few musical venues in the area that catered to a more refined musical genre, big band and opera and classical music. One of the ladies whse husband had a 23 piece big band (not sure about the exact number but i think it was 23). She called me up one day to tell me my paper was too sophisticated in its other areas to have such shabby musical coverage. As it turned out, one of my favorite parts of the paper was reading my friends musical columns. When she insisted that bar bands have no talent and that it takes real skill to perform big band pieces and i owed it to my readers to cover her husbands work, i told the lady a story i read as a teenager in a car magazine:
seems there was a pinstriping contest, and the person who had done the most amazing job of pinstriping was disqualified, because the judges ruled that he had only managed to paint a black car white with a very small brush, and maybe her husbands big band sounded to some of us like that car, she huffed and went away. my point is, these guys seem to be painting black poems white with a very small brush. what is the point? where is the passion? where is the beauty? what the heck are they trying to say? and why does the one guy have to dress like an idiot to simply read a poem? is the poem so bad he has to distract people? i mean i can appreciate never explain, never apologize in the sense that i am not big on setting up poems, as i think a poem should tell its own story, but really? what gives? why cant i see the fine fabric of the kings robes?
Dorothy Day (Catholic Workers Party) critiqued capitalism, saying something along the lines of “I see little in the American way of life worth preserving.” Its been clear to me that capitalism is deeply and profoundly flawed and unjust since I was maybe in middle school (1970). That’s sort of a preamble to make sure anyone reading this doesn’t assume what I say next is coming from some kind of moral comfort with capitalism.—It seems to me that what doesn’t get questioned, here or in assessments of the work of groups like Language Poetry or Conceptualists, is that “fighting capitalism” is the standard that MUST BE MET, for art to be credible. But, its precisely at that juncture that theory takes over—this is why conceptualism appears logically to be doing the “work that must be done”. The primary means of critiquing capitalism, with its roots in Marx, works with a profoundly flawed and self-limiting “scientific” materialism (and concomittant notion of language and person), and makes disruption of tacit meaning/irruption of some “real” foundation the key to all programs. Personally I’d make something like “successfully bringing up a child” say, the criteria we should test a poem by. Like, can it do that work?
Many thanks for this — I do agree with you.
David Need, I am confused. First, I was a little confused about Amy’s thrust of capitalism in poetry, but i kinda think i get it enough to make my reading of her text workable, but i have become completely lost in your reply. whoever said the minimum standard of poetry is to fight capitalism? while i, too, have my issues with both marxism and capitalism and hold a world view that is more pro worker than pro capital. i find my best poetry (assuming any of it is good) is when i look at an innocuous situation with those labor shaded eyes. if i try to write protest poetry (and i have noticed the same problem with other poets, some famous, some rank amateurs), it is almost always so preachy as to be boring to the true beleivers and unaccessible to the non believers.
Well, the Conceptualists can’t be Language Poets because they have clearly given up on language.
Bravo. As a JFK staff member once said,’Every little Meaning has a Movement all its own’
I am glad this was written. As I mentioned on my Facebook page about it this morning, one of the horrors of some elitist attitudes is that they denigrate a whole lot of poets into a group they designate as insignificant due to publication venue, which is ridiculous to do when contemplating the “avant-guarde,” a cutting edge measure of what’s at the forefront of exciting writing, not a measure of what has the greatest visibility due to being seen promoted by a large press. Anyway, as I said this morning: Any discussion that denigrates one poetics for factors outside of the merit of the work strikes me as both trifling and small-minded. In addition, it seems to sum the thousands of poets participating under less visible millieus as unimportant–their thousands of hours of work, the work of the editors of the small and indie presses, the work of reviewers who review these books. SILENCED. What is technically avant-garde, as avant-garde is defined is the radical, is the new and the experimental and the fresh–is not the canon, but is what may become the canon after it moves through its channels into the higher visibility positions. Usually, the canon as published by huge venues is at least a decade behind what is truly avant-garde. Or, so I posit. Not that literature that is truly great becomes outdated, but that the nature of “avant-garde” is likely best seen long before the high gloss of commercial success–not created by it.
I will leave the rest of the discussion to others–since I know what kinds of poetry light me up (those with original substance and skill in craft) and I don’t disdain the tastes of those with other inclinations. 🙂
I think this is a brave and important piece for Amy to put out there regarding the climate of the modern poetry scene–the inequities.
Cheers to all,
H
Amy King declares that I support no small-press books except those written by Conceptualists. Perhaps before she makes baseless charges, she should consult the account books of the following: Ugly Duckling, Roof, Archipelago, Green Integer, SPD, and numbers of other small presses that, to my knowledge, have published little or no “conceptual” poetry. Shall I indeed put my hateful CAPITAL elsewhere?
Nowhere do I say that you “do not support small-press books”, Marjorie. You do, however, champion the Conceptualists, in your own words, “the Conceptualists are the only game in town” that can “oppose the Penguin canon” even if “not for long.”
While you certainly have supported small-press books, in the context of challenging said Penguin, you state, “… you can’t very well oppose the Penguin canon by bringing up the names of what are, outside of the world of small-press and chapbook publishing, wholly unknown poets.â€
This dismissal is baffling considering that many who have challenged authoritarian models in the past have certainly not always belonged to a group able “to boast two recent large anthologies and many university courses dedicated to it …â€
Are these now the requirements of poetries capable of challenging the canon? That they must boast anthologies and university courses and belong to a group?
Amy King, Congrats…you got ’em going girl. Well said!
OK, here is what I actually say:
Do I believe that Conceptualism is the only game in town? Like any movement—for example, the Language movement that preceded it and also shades into it—today, when Conceptualism is prominent enough to boast two recent large anthologies—Against Expression and I’ll Drown My Book—and when the universities are already offering courses on the topic, the likelihood is that Conceptualism as a movement will soon be over. As I suggested in a discussion of Craig Dworkin’s Motes in “Towards a Conceptual Lyric†(Jacket2, Spring 2011), the lyric is certainly back, even if not in its confessional or oh-I’m-so-sensitive personal form. Found poems can certainly be “lyricâ€: it all depends on what source texts are used and on how the poet uses them. Conceptualism in what Yanklevich calls its “pure†form (which never quite existed) could not, in any case, last any longer than did Dada.
In other words, I specifically SAY THAT CONCEPTUALISM IS NOT THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN!! And I talk about the return of the lyric
And the quote that so offended Amy King follows:
But why, Yanklevich asks, don’t I cast my scrutiny on the “complexly lyrical but conceptually minded work of the younger poets doing interesting in-between work today, poets not fully conceptualist and certainly not conservatively lyrical? This would certainly be the subject for another essay but you can’t very well oppose the Penguin canon by bringing up the names of what are, outside the world of small-press and chapbook publishing, wholly unknown poets.
In this particular essay, I discuss mostly poets that are well known, beginning with John Cage and Susan Howe. Since Dove herself does not include younger poets–there’s an age cut-off–I felt there was no point IN THIS ESSAY to counter her choices with young poets. I specifically say it would be good to do this in another essay–and I certainly have and will continue to do so!!
This is in fact a non-argument. A better argument would have been for Amy King to criticize, from her perspective, the poets I do discuss and make the case that there are others more deserving of discussion. Otherwise there is no debate of any kind–just name-calling.
Hi Marjorie,
While yours is an impressive oeuvre, my blog post is not framed as a review of your work. As detailed in Part 1, the premise of my post is to look at the problematics of intentional groups, in this case, artists who purposefully outline the tenets of their group and identify themselves & their work accordingly – most notably, in an effort to advance themselves (as “The Ugly Truths about Marketing” spells out, “In a crowded market, brands stand out.”).
I invoke you because you play a vital *role* in the institutional and canonical embrace of ConPo. A quick Google search reveals your prolific championing of ConPo & several group members – Goldsmith, Place, & Dworkin – via Unoriginal Genius, conference papers, interviews, the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, your own website, etc.
Some of the problems that arise from their planned ascension are certainly due to the fact that they rely on exclusion and denigration of other poets and poetries in the process – despite their claims to be enacting the contrary (i.e. the democratization of poetry). To say so perhaps touches a nerve, particularly as they’ve been heralded as the game changers.
A few notes & questions:
* Re: Susan Howe – not a member, and resisted the earlier “LangPo” label put upon her too. I make this distinction early on in Part 1 — I’m considering the intentionality of the groups, especially because they have worked together diligently to define their purpose, and because these groups prop and propel themselves on the denigration of other poetries.
If the work has such merit – and some does, debatably – why the need to group together and reductively define vast swaths of poetries? It does not seem fair practice to claim members who do not choose to follow suit. I have not ever heard Susan Howe publicly disparage the lyric in the ways ConPo and their advocates have and cannot imagine her agreeing to be aligned with those statements (Howe, “…I have always been attracted by modernism rather than postmodernism and its anti-Romantic high theory.”)
* Further, attempting to claim others for group membership unfairly limits future readings of their work, as I have pointed out via several female painters laid claim to by Breton himself, even when some were vocally opposed, which has resulted in boxed interpretations of their work (i.e. the works of Kahlo, Fini, and esp Carrington & Varo far surpass the Surrealist lens). Further, the move to claim those associations, despite their resistance as in the case of Susan Howe, suggests a proprietariness that is the essence of capitalism – which again contradicts ConPo’s claim to “block capital” and “reenvision cultural production.”
* Their claims to “block capital” contradict the actions of the group members, who gain actual capital for themselves in the service of supposedly “reenvision[ing’ cultural production” – by effectively using cultural production already in place, instead of confounding it in any capacity. Or as you note in the avant-garde mandate, “‘For, by definition, an ‘avant-garde mandate’ is one that defies the status quo and hence cannot incorporate it.”
That is, are we to go on pretending theorizing a [lack of] self should have no bearing on actualizing the selves of the group? Is “blocking capital” to take place on the theoretical level only, while group members enjoy institutional exclusivity and perpetuate a system that is threatened by the appearance of an anthology that does not strictly uphold the canon-of-yore (see Shockley – http://www.bostonreview.net/poetry/shifting-imbalance)?
APROPOS, you cite in “Poetry on the Brink” the makings of “Establishment verse”:
“So far I have been talking about the dominant poetry culture of our time—the culture of prizes, professorships, and political correctness. To dislodge the dominant paradigm is never easy, but in recent years we have witnessed a lively reaction from a growing group of poets who are rejecting the status quo.”
But then you promote the ConPo members as the avant-garde capable on that very same basis, using those very same markers:
“…the moment of Conceptualism, which is now prominent enough to boast two recent large anthologies and many university courses dedicated to it…”
Claiming that they are now on their way out, that they “never quite existed,” does not in any way inhibit the system in its perpetuation of exclusivity nor do such statements actually erase the very real capital (via the institution, readings, Princeton-tapped avant-garde existence, etc) that the members will continue to enjoy while others remain pushed aside, denigrated, omitted, and reductively defined in order to sustain that system. Is there no contradiction here: the “dominant paradigm” is perpetuated & sustained by the culture of prizes and professorships, but then the supposedly-qualified members, ConPo, who are to dislodge it, are validated as such by the same culture of prizes and professorships as cited…
If anything has caused that dominant paradigm more upset as of late, it has been Rita Dove’s anthology for daring to wear the clothes of canon-making authority while not obediently perpetuating the already-institutionalized and thus sanctioned canon and for daring to include “minor” poets who might be considered minor exactly for having been overlooked in the past by a system that favored publishing and supporting white poets, poets of certain educational backgrounds and associations, etc.
* Finally, why does Goldsmith’s radicality lie in his suit, as he has stressed? Appropriation, and other tools of note, is not specific to ConPo, and is used by numerous poets currently writing as well as in the past, poets who have never heard that Goldsmith ‘kept them guessing’ over his Brooks Brothers suit, with its ‘exaggerated paisley pattern,’ at the White House.
* When did all of the lyric poetries go away so that they now need to come back? Or do these supposedly-faltering lyric poetries now need the Conceptual stamp put upon and harnessing them as one amorphous mass as conveyed by the ConPo snowflake metaphor (i.e. a “Conceptual Lyric”)? Does anyone actually believe that the ConPo group’s techniques – techniques used by numerous poets long before they laid claim to them – are informing this “return”?
Best,
Amy
Amy, It’s difficult to sustain writing against an existing and innovative process. Groups of poets from Lake Poets to Imagist Poets to NY School to Language Writing to Conceptual Poetry exist and contributed to poetry. There are interesting poems both inside groups and by people who don’t want to be categorized. Group formations are sometimes self-proclaimed, sometimes proclaimed by critics and sometimes denied by the “members” of the group. The value of group formations can be used over and against those who want no society, but only individuals; these groups are key to a society of writers and to the society at large. Individual mistakes do not invalidate the entire group effort. The broad reach of poetry and poetics and its expansion today might improve our awareness of ourselves. I would wish that the wonderful insights you have be couched to unmuzzle people with something to say. Can we begin to look away from evaluative hierarchies and toward inclusive ones where we attempt to understand what we mean by what we say and how what we say can be heard. The effectiveness of poetry beyond its current reach might evoke approval; a tentative reach after all.
Though I find Amy King’s critical prose even less readable than her poetry and I suspect she’ll trash any group that excludes her, I do agree with her overall judgment about the Conceptualists. I’d add to Joseph Duemer’s post above, the Conceptualists have given up not just on language but the idea of denotation itself. I think “schools” like the Conceptualists play the avant-garder-than-thou game, exploiting the normal human fear that one is not hip.
Yawn. The canon wars were such a bore. Marjorie is right to declare this a non-argument. Debating the logical fallacies of categorical concepts (school, anti-establishment, avant-whatever-critics-find-newfangled) are endless, and circuitous. Did we not learn anything from the existential crisis in reading arbitrary concepts that was postmodernism?. Less schools, less critical packaging, more critical interrogations of specific texts where the ambivalent pieces, if done well, will more often than not fail to fit.
in the 1960’s (most of them,
anyway)
I went to school …. to many,
many schools
of Poetry
I was there, but, instead of
going in:
I went around
then the noise and the clutter and the
rising tide of Credentialism got to my Me…. and by 1975
I dropped out and into my own sense of
just-what-it-is
now ? after these (what?) 15 years (2013)
of being back
I’d drop out again
but for that his time
whenI’d drop back in –
I’ be dead
and the rest of my every-word-readers
would be likewise ….. dead !
and then …. who would be around to keep my too-busy mind
from going e v e r y w h e r e ?
A brilliant and necessary deconstruction of current canons and canons-on-the-make. In such counter-arguments, it’s always difficult to avoid going too far. I think the author avoided absolutes as much as possible while still stating concisely why careerism might be at play and may also be undermining summations of current poetic contributions. One of the more worthwhile reads at the moment.
I have followed this debate with fascination. I believe, though, that this very issue was succinctly addressed some time back by another gifted writer:
Jabberwocky
T’was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!â€
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!â€
He chortled in his joy.
T’was brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
– Lewis Carroll
Amy,
I’m wanting to respond here not only to your Rumpus commentary but also to your blog posts since then at the Harriet site and prior to then at the VidaWeb site.
Let me start by making some seemingly unrelated assertions.
1. Conceptual poetry–most if not all of it–is conceptual art, not poetry.
2. Conceptual art is an endeavor in which a practicing artist can do utterly banal, often exasperating things. Once in a while conceptual art is great, moving, educational, inspiring, breathtaking, important.
I just got back from seeing a stunning, unforgettable, transformative exhibit of conceptual art by Mona Hatoum, in Paris (at the Pompidou), She’s a Palestinian raised in exile in Lebanon and then London. She is a truly great artist. Whether or not her achievement is such because she cares about aesthetics I’m not going to get into now. Suffice it to say that she cares deeply, which is obvious in her show. Her intelligence, in any case, is profound; and she’s both subtle and complicated. Yet her work is for the most part political—in the most nuanced ways. (I have personal problems with mixing art/poetry and politics, though I know the personal is political and vice versa—and I’ll not take up your querying of the concept of the lyrical/voice here for lack of space, but just to say that that discussion is germane).
I don’t necessarily disagree with Hatoum’s political positions that in some of her art works are explicit, and as expressed are to me utterly human and compassionate. Overall viewers of her work feel it in the gut, however, not in the head, and they don’t feel the exquisitely thin and sharp needle as it goes in. Through dint of her intelligence, through graceful understanding, she conveys both her anguish and whimsy. I am a huge fan of Glenn Ligon, a conceptual artist who is never banal, and of course is often “political.” (I embrace what I take to be his views, btw, and I agree with you in your views about white privilege and a great deal else.)
In any case conceptual art is an unfortunate seduction for would-be artists who have small minds, a paucity of imagination, and who otherwise lack empathy.
3. This spring I attended the national meeting of the AAUP. I felt proud to see a number of scholars rise to advocate the censuring of the U of Illinois for rescinding its hiring of Steven Salaita because of (what I view as) reprehensible public remarks he has made (I don’t necessarily reject most of his antiZionist views, but I was offended). Some of these scholars who were urging censure were Jews and are revered for their work in Jewish studies, and these people are quite opposed to his views. (I too voted to censure the university. The vote was overwhelmingly to censure.)
But of course the AAUP is an academic body, whereas the AWP is about creative writing, art etc.
There was also an AAUP session on “triggering” and the possibly adverse effects the triggering movement may be having on curricula and academic freedom in the classroom.
There was a recent program about triggering and related matters on WNYC. A CUNY prof reported that at her school most complaints about triggering and resultant feelings of trauma have been directed against faculty who are predominantly LGBT, women, adjuncts etc. The radio program featured a guy whose new book is about the harmful effects of curbing speech in universities; he mentioned law schools where students don’t want to discuss rape law.
4. I think your VidaWeb piece analyzing the situation we are all called to attend because of the KG / Brown U event was not merely brilliant. And it was the best of all the commentaries I’ve read about what happened at Brown and its implications.
I’d like to think that “we” who are reading this blog, the Harriet blog etc. are all wanting to do the right thing—not all Americans want to do the right thing—but not everyone of us understands completely, with sufficient nuance, what the situation is. I’m grateful for your analysis was subtle and informed.
(Below I’ll replicate a FB post I made after first learning the details of the KG debacle, before reading your piece others’ comments online but having checked out gringpo.com that I was very taken by—I was later told by someone that the Mongrel Coalition is a white Brazilian male, my friend referring to what he shrewdly described as “identity tourism.”)
5. I understand why you and ES have grouped HV and MP together (amazing how often MP’s same Boston Review piece on Dove is being criticized, at times quite inaccurately and I’d say with shocking sloppiness—not true of either you or ES). Yet such grouping on your part collapses relevant distinctions that set MP apart, and your discussion has to do with conceptualism and Flarf and what she purports to be an avant garde.
6. Similarly, we may be doing a disservice to ourselves when we see KG and VP as having done the same kind of thing, that is, when we see their art and maybe their bad or good faith attempts to speak of racism as the same. I happen to think that a project like her Gone with the Wind tweeting is much more complex and clever, much much more, albeit it’s painful (I don’t know enough about the other works of hers you mention so I can’t comment on them, but this tweeting project is what has been widely attacked of late, including in your posts).
That’s not the point I want to make here. Rather, I wonder if we are not only not doing justice to the questions of art at hand, but also to some artists be they fools or perhaps intellectually and possibly morally invested and well meaning.
* * *
Here’s my FB post from June (it mentions three images that, since I’m not able to upload them here, I’ve put on an unlinked webpage—see burtkimmelman.com/KimmelmanFacebookPost3June2015.html):
Thinking about Conceptualism, Kenny Goldsmith and Michael Brown (and maybe Brown U and the U of Penn):
I’ve been consumed by my reading about the Brown University poetry conference’s disaster (or rather a breakthrough in an American discourse), and am hoping that the completely grounded criticism of Kenny G’s “performance†will eventually do some larger good; for now I, for one, having come late to the conversation, am riveted by it and take it to heart.
Rather than say more in words, I’m posting some photos here, which I took today from inside the Whitney Museum (where Michael Heller and I got to spend some time). I guess it’s silly to speak about coincidence; perhaps I saw the relevance of the art works more than I would have had I not been reading and thinking about what has happened, an event for which I feel ashamed (I was not at the conference).
In the images I’m including with this comment note that the tags on the uniforms of the museum guards say, in one case, “The Whitney Museum.†(The tableau sculpture, “Guarded View,†is by Fred Wilson. The other work, “An Artist Is Not Merely the Slavish Announcer,†is by John Baldessari.)
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