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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #72 |
1. Grammar
a. a set of forms all of which contain a particular element, especially the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.
b. a display in fixed arrangement of such a set, as boy, boy's, boys, boys'.
2. an example serving as a model; pattern. Synonyms: mold, standard; ideal, paragon, touchstone.
3.a. a framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community.
b. such a cognitive framework shared by members of any discipline or group: the company’s business paradigm.
In "'Kill List': A Bad Poem as Provocation" on the Bark blog, Brett Ortler wrote:
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #74 |
A brief example:
Lanny Jordan Jackson is comfortable.
Jewel is a rich poet.
Josef Kaplan is comfortable.
Justin Katko is a rich poet.
This continues for 58 pages.
The first question: Is it a poem?
Is this a question?
Answer: Sure.
Say what?!?
While much conceptual...
As you know, "ideational" and "conceptual" are fashionable buzzwords among Content Regents.
...poetry wouldn’t be considered poetry by previous generations of poets...
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #69 |
...(could you see Goethe reading a translated version of Josef Kaplan’s "Kill List" and considering it a poem?), this doesn’t mean that "Kill List" isn’t poetry.
Actually, it sort of does. The only audience poetry has ever had has always rejected dull prose with linebreaks posing as poetry. This constant has been more reliable than the speed of light.
A wide swathe of poetry (free verse, prose poems) wouldn’t have been considered poetry, but so what?
My sentiments exactly.
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| Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25 |
"Paradigms!?" Mind-numbingly dull 58 page directories have paradigms?
Notions of what is and is not art change, and I’ve got no problem with that.
Nor do I, unless these changes occur only in the minds of failed artists.
Next question: Is it any good?
Oh, this should be fun.
It’s terrible.
Yes, but terrible what? I would say humor but the closest thing to a punch line is the copyright notice. (Are they really worried about being plagiarized?)
Seriously, I challenge anyone to read this drivel without asking: "Can you imagine not knowing the difference between this and poetry?"
While "Kill List" is getting some attention, I’d argue that it’s only because of its provocative title and the fact that it is essentially a long exercise in name-dropping.
Let me get this straight. An artless, enervating "long exercise in name-dropping" is accepted as poetry (of all things!) but deemed "terrible" because it's "a long exercise in name-dropping"? That makes less sense than saying rhyming verse is poetry but that "The Tay Bridge Disaster" is terrible because it's rhyming verse.
In that respect, the poem seems to be as much a marketing ploy as it [is] a poem.
Yes, much as Chernobyl was a marketing ploy for nuclear energy.
Dear Earl the Squirrel,
ReplyDeleteI actually enjoyed reading this. Oddly enough, I don't entirely disagree with what you wrote. I certainly was being overly generous to Kaplan's piece; I considered it a poem mostly because I don't think the debate about this-is-or-isn't a poem is all that interesting or useful. Of course, I take that position in part because I like hybrid forms (I grew up on prose poems; Edson is one of my heroes), but I also think that the lousy schools of poetry (or pretend poetry, as you might call it) will naturally die off. I hereby look forward to the death of conceptualism and LANGUAGE poetry (or however they spell it these days) and as much as I love Plath, even most confessional poetry. (Narcissism alone is not a selling point; only real talents like Plath could pull it off.)
Even my own brand of free verse might well die out. If it does, then it had it coming, I suppose.
DeleteHi, Brett! Welcome to Commercial Poetry!
A few questions, if I may:
1. Did you accept my challenge and actually read all 58 pages of "Kill List"? This is important because only then can one fully appreciate how tedious and unrewarding the experience really is. Compare it to, say, Michael Ondaatje's "Sweet Like a Crow".
2. Who is defining "poetry"? If it is the producers then, yes, anything goes (as per Rule #74). If producers occupy this role due to the absence of consumers then, yes, I agree that the debate is pointless. Indeed, you've put your finger on our raison d'être: not to deny the death of poetry but to explore ways to reincarnate it--to give these discussions a purpose again.
3. Is narcissism not thriving? It is on every open mic or slam stage I've seen! Print and pixel poetry may intellectualize the navel-gazing somewhat but where are the elegies, dramatic narratives, humor or, for that matter, love poems? I would guess that more than 90% of the poetry that has ever garnered an audience (i.e. when poetry had such a thing) would fit into one of those four categories. Today, oddly, these subjects are tackled only by the very best and very worst poets.
4. Were these "lousy schools of poetry" ever alive? Or were they concoctions in petri dishes attended by functionaries uninterested in recording or learning from the results of their failed "experiments"? Is there really any need to wait for the stillborn to "naturally die off"?
Later on today we hope to post a definition of "alive" as it would pertain to poetry. Please stay tuned, Brett! And thanks for commenting!
Signed,
Earl Gray, Esquirrel
Dear Mr. Squirrel, (I really love typing that, you have no idea),
Delete1. Inconceivably, I did make it all the way through, although I read it quite quickly, and if you asked me to recite a full page or two, I'd certainly fail as I don't recall all of the names. (It's impossible not to read it quickly, as you just want it to be over.) So yes, it is pretty damn tedious. Agreed there. But tediousness itself doesn't disqualify something from being art, yes? (Though KL was terrible, no-good, bad art and is hardly worth mentioning, really.)
2. Regarding the definition of poetry, I think that a poet, like any would-be writer of literature, should be able to attempt to define a work, but it is for the audience to decide whether or not the work. The problem right now, of course, is that the producers of poetry are the audience, so anything is given an automatic pass. (It's an echo chamber or the poetry-world version of grade inflation in the university system.)
Sometimes, this DIY-definition of poetry system works just fine; prose poets like Louis Jenkins and James Tate are good examples. Some of Tate's work probably isn't poetry, they are these weird storyish things (you'd probably call him a proser), but it's still damn good and funny, whatever the hell it is. In a case like that, it doesn't matter.
Of course, I see the pitfalls of this approach. When it comes to big-picture aesthetics, a relative theory is a terrible idea (I believe that Bach will always be > Britney Spears; William Stafford will always be > Rod McKuen), but the question is, is an objective standard (a) possible in poetry and (b) if so, what is it? As you clearly are aware, for nearly all of poetry's history, formal verse was poetry, end of story. But even within formal verse (which I love and occasionally write), much (most?) of the value placed on a piece is done so on an individual basis (often based on the vagaries of one's culture). Longfellow's rollercoaster legacy (I dislike him) is a perfect example of this.
If there is an objective standard of value to differentiate between specific poems (Sonnet 116 vs. Goethe's Third Roman Elegy, for example), I don't pretend to know it.
(Oddly, would you agree that bad poems--formal or otherwise--are easy to spot?)
3. Yes, narcissism is bonkers, but I don't think that our capacity for narcissism is any different than that of previous generations. On the contrary, I think the only difference is that now everyone has an outlet (whether Facebook or blogs or open mics or literary journals or Twitter), and these encourage it. (This is probably an example of the first true democratization of communication.) When everyone talks, it's loud and noisy and narcissistic and a lot of what is said is absurd (chemtrails and antivaxxing, anyone?). Poetry is by no immune to this "more-but-not-merrier" effect, but I'm actually optimistic, as I've written elsewhere (http://thebarking.com/2012/09/too-many-writers-the-best-problem-in-contemporary-poetry/)
Yes, we've got more dregs, but there's a lot of good poetry still out there. Sorting through isn't always fun, but the hunt is. (Unsurprisingly, I also like thrift stores.)
4. I'd actually say no, but that doesn't mean they weren't worthwhile.
Even cadavers are useful, both because one can learn by dissecting them to learn what went wrong and--stretching the dead-person metaphor a bit--because the work itself may still have a positive impact on writers from an entirely different (worthwhile) school. Example: I can't stand most of the Projectivists, especially Charles Olson, but one can't question that his influence has helped many other quality poets, yes?
DeleteHello again, Brett,
Thanks for getting back to us. You offer up a number of thought-provoking points and questions, for which we are always grateful.
1. But tediousness itself doesn't disqualify something from being art, yes?
Actually, yes, it does. I cannot think of a single work of art whose fans regard it as tedious [and unrewarding].
2a. The problem right now, of course, is that the producers of poetry are the audience, so anything is given an automatic pass. (It's an echo chamber or the poetry-world version of grade inflation in the university system.)
That is the problem, in a nutshell, except that even the producers aren't listening to poetry. Or reading it, really. (More on this in today's blog.)
2b. ...the question is, is an objective standard (a) possible in poetry and (b) if so, what is it?
FWIW, the "objective standard" is memory, measured over time. However, a subjective standard--an audience beyond ourselves--could serve at least as well, especially if we can sort it demographically (e.g. does it appeal to sophisticated/educated consumers?).
2c. As you clearly are aware, for nearly all of poetry's history, formal verse was poetry, end of story.
Not true. We forget the longest period: the pre-prosodic era when we developed the crowd-pleasing techniques that constitute effective poetry. This is important because, from all appearances, we seem to have revisited that era.
2d. (Oddly, would you agree that bad poems--formal or otherwise--are easy to spot?)
Painfully so.
3a. Yes, narcissism is bonkers, but I don't think that our capacity for narcissism is any different than that of previous generations.
No, but, as you suggest, our capacity for expressing narcissism has certainly expanded.
3b. Yes, we've got more dregs, but there's a lot of good poetry still out there. Sorting through isn't always fun, but the hunt is.
Well, finding it is fun, at least. :)
4. I can't stand most of the Projectivists, especially Charles Olson, but one can't question that his influence has helped many other quality poets, yes?
None that I can mention. Ask your 10 most literate non-poet friends to cite a single line by Olson or any of these other "quality poets". Even some of your friends who are [non-academic] poets might fail this test.
Spectacular failure is still failure.
Signed,
Earl Gray, Esquirrel
ES: "(Are they really worried about being plagiarized?)"
ReplyDeleteWell, I did note that the individual responsible for "creating" this excrescence (inasmuch as any actual creativity was required) did go so far as to take the trouble to dedicate the book to some confrere in the ignoble art of anti-poetry, on the grounds of repaying him for the fact that he "stole" the form from him.
This imforms us, at minimum, that the writer himself supposes there to be something of a technical nature in the vomiting forth of such stanzas that actually constitutes both a valid formal innovation in itself, and one which is worthy of appropriation by other poet(aster)s.
Exactly what constitutes such an innovation in 4-line stanzas (hardly the most innovative form in itself), which can easily be determined to contain nothing whatsoever in their many words beyond the insistent repetition of the same banal, structureless, aimless, meterless, rhymeless, listless (though indeed not list-less), mindless, witless schlock, I have not yet been able to determine.
I would like to tentatively propose the theory, though, that this new form has possibly been developed as a sort of optimized weapon of literary assault, something that has no other purpose beyond maximalizing the potential of words on a page for inflicting sheer brute violence to the minds of those misguided enough to attempt to read it. Certainly, verse such as this seems like it could be a swifter and surer route to inducing permanent brain injury to the reader (ie victim) than any of the more direct, and therefore illegal, forms of physical assault.
The delivery of violence by this method does have a distinct weakness by comparison to more traditional forms of thuggery, however, inasmuch as it is going to be extremely difficult to persuade anyone to read this in the first place unless their mental state verges on the comatose. Since Mr Kaplan's regular readership (all three of them) can be presumed by their choice in literature to be in such a condition already, the infliction of further mental damage at this stage just seems like an act of mere vindictive overkill, analogous to obliterating an already trapped mouse with a twelve-bore. Perhaps Kaplan just has a deep and abiding hatred of his readers, and having failed to entirely drive them away by other means (of which I would imagine he must have a formidable array at his disposal) he has decided on this method to administer a psychic coup de grace to what remains of their intellects, putting them thereby into a permanent vegetative state.
You have already noted often enough that contemporary poets seem not only uninterested in having a readership, but often seem to be actively trying to drive potential readers away. What if Kaplan and his buddy think they have hit upon a method for driving away or neutralising everyone, even the most hardcore hipster poseurs and intoxicated fellow póets, and are concerned that their more populist mainstream contemporaries (the ones who maintain a regular circle of five, or even six, actual readers) might want to appropriate the method by which they themselves hope to ascend to the very highest, most exclusive echelons of modern poetry's unread elite. There seems to be a perverse relationship between contemporary poetry and its readership whereby the respect given to a poet by their peers actually tends to increase in inverse proportion to the number of genuine readers they can claim (ie readers who are not themselves involved in what you have dubbed the PoBiz). My theory is that if your fellow poets are willing to give you kudos for having very few readers, there must be even more to be gained from having none at all, even other poets, and perhaps it is this rarefied status that Mr Kaplan is aiming at.
I rarely get to say this but you have left me nothing to add other than to thank you for inspiring my next rant on this subject. It's good hearing from you again, Ragashree.
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