Wörgl : Austria

“Pound . . . forces us to interest ourselves in such nonsensical items as the use of stamp-scrip by the citizens of Wörgl, Austria.”
– Marjorie Perloff, "The French Reception of Louis Zukofsky ", Verse

Wörgl *
Austria : there is a red bridge
and many red trees
and know
that a currency does not make
a place . . . what in any
case
is “a currency?” you can’t
measure the moon in piles of silver
as the citizens of Wörgl Austria
found out
O yes :
fugue of all fugal
time of * inherited Autumn !
one day the images * will change
heads appear or go
away
with the advent or disappearance
of some press . . . a simple thing
to amuse myself
is this new currency * of Wörgl Austria
though know my friend that I think
you have not wasted * your time
this year :
nor the next month’s gold leaves
nor the next

"Unusual" Poetry

Well, just got the first collection knocked back from Ugly Duckling Presse, but at least with a nice hand-written note from Mr. Ford. Apparently my poems are "very unusual", and I'm unsure whether this is (a) a compliment, (b) a criticism, (c) both, (d) the reason UDP passed on it.

Do feel free to vote.

Anyway, strike one.

Strange thoughts, while reading Les Bienveillantes . . . Thinking of Celan, struck that in Celan the Shoah is mystic, universal, massive, in its deepest horror. That there is no element of “work to be accomplished”, the “everyday drudgery”, present in Littel, that is part also of this true horror. This, of course, no reason to reproach Celan: that this darkness was for him massive, mystical, universal: this is true. Yet also that it was accomplished in the framework of ordinary days; this tension between such absolutes on the one hand and such “normalcy”.

It is overwhelming.

How is it possible for life to be simultaneously horror on a universal scale – black milk of morning – and also simply getting up, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, and “carrying out one's task”? A derivative question, but . . . Impossible. Where on this strange, infinitely receding line do these two divided points meet? Ridiculous poles. There is dreadful tension and violence between them.

And why then, as is occurring now, and has so often occurred, reproach poetry for its too great “mysticism”, or its too great “everydayness” ? If such history too was in some sense terribly mysterious and yet awfully everyday . . . This tension. Terrible tension, which is the tension of poetry too, which Celan must have understood.

Describing Description: New Criticism or the Meta-Excuse

Coming out of the interesting discussion with a certain Mr. Koeneke are more good questions from a certain Mr. Peterson, re: The New Critics:

TP: To what extent do we feel the need to scrub ourselves and our own work for Poetry 101 syllabi in advance? Do we form explanations for an aesthetic which are really just meta-excuses or meta-descriptions of what a given poem is actually doing? Is inductive reading compatible with manifesto aesthetics?

So, here’s my take. Yes, I think we do, but if we admit Tim’s challenge, and thus want to do away with these pre or post-facto meta-descriptions (a coherent conclusion if, after all, we decide that they do more harm than good), I think we have to then pose a different question regarding this new case scenario, namely: Are we thus happy if we are not in any way able to articulate in any way our poetic? If we have no idea what our poetry is, or is trying to do?

This actually makes me uncomfortable sometimes. Am I too attached to meta-descriptions? Should the object be autonomous?

Let's try to unravel this discomfort. Firstly, it's clear that any explanation of an aesthetic must be situated at some point on the meta-description line. All descriptions are meta-descriptions. It is really the only type of description which exists.

And thus, description describes an object and in turn the object describes its own description.

(Cf. Contemporary philosophy of science).

Aesthetic objects are no different. Now of course it’s true that many, most perhaps, of these meta-descriptions will be wrong-headed or misleading; but because of this very wrong-headedness there will always exist a sort of tension between meta-descriptions and the text they are meant to “describe”.

And it is precisely this tension which is so interesting, that is, as long as one judges to be "interesting" a poet’s ideas about his or her own poems, then the meta-description, despite its flaws, will help us. Even further, the meta-description will help us precisely because of its flaws: the gaps in the structure where the light shines through, illuminating hidden corners.

So, what if it's not a post- application, but a pre-. More simply put, what if one writes with one’s critics in mind? Some poets do give me the strong impression of writing for their future or present Close Readers (Jorie Graham is one). These poems, written with a prefabricated, a priori idea of the criticism which subsequently will be applied to them, aren’t necessarily bad I think: only, if one attempts to jump the gun, pre-empting the critics, and thus giving them things which will “interest them” in advance, the curious thing, I think, is that these pre-fab Lit Crit elements often end up being precisely the contrary to what they aimed at being: namely, interesting.

Although this looks bad then, I wonder if it’s quite as bad as it seems. Because surely it’s simply about the idea of writing for a pre-defined, pre-imagined audience or receptor. I don’t think the problem is with this as such as with the qualities or perceptiveness of this imagined receptor.

Or: how intelligent and perceptive can one make an imagined critic?

The formula is thus much like the old “Better Ideal Reader = Better Poem".

However, the real question for me, which is probably the more central one in Tim’s comment I suspect, is what if these pre or post meta-descriptions are dumbed down, so to speak, in order to fit into certain pre-existing, imagined or pre-supposed reading strategies? (Read: New Criticism, Workshops). The problem with “scrubbing down [a poem] for Poetry 101 syllabi in advance” is thus perhaps not so much a problem of writing for reception per se, by New Critics, Workshops or otherwise, as with the quality of these New or Workshop critics. As might it be possible to imagine an extremely open, dynamic and perceptive Ideal “New Critical” or “Workshop” reader?

You tell me.

I think your intuition is just, Tim: descriptions are of course meta-descriptions, but what of the quality of these meta-descriptions? Musn’t we try not to confuse the idea that "all descriptions of poetry will be to some extent false and misleading", with the idea that "this misleadingness is necessarily a bad thing"?

Put differently, do the theoretical gaps let the sun shine through?

For paradoxically, I feel that I sometimes learn more things about poets when they say dumb things than when they say smart things.

Betrayal of tendencies.

Secrets.

Poem

LIX.

promenading
long still clothes of this last *
century . . . the dry stones bake :
she came round by
the route
of the sea . . . stopping
it was nothing if not contemporary
aetatis suae * which mild portraiture’s past
concaves . . . all the petty concerns !
the faces now illuminated
ignored boughs
stretching
in elaborate ideas . . .
« this is not * my culture » : I lose
intensity focus and depth
of colour
in the thought of it
merely : the wind and usual words
light’s dry lines * of movement
a type * of endless sailing
and is there nothing left
to say
except the saying ?

There's so many things I've been wanting to get to of late, and haven't been able to:

1) A New Critical reading of Clark Coolidge.
2) Response to Tim Peterson's question : "Do we form explanations for an aesthetic which are really just meta-excuses or meta-descriptions of what a given poem is actually doing?" (I largely think 'yes' by the way, but with requisite pesky qualifications.)
3) Writing poems.

I don't know, everything's not that wonderful work-wise at the moment, so the blog, being a symbol of this, gets neglected. Kick the blog. I'm trying to write a first thesis chapter about Mallarmé and he is a deeply troubling, recurrent evil demon for me. Mallarmé. Necessity of chance. All words dissolve. Nobody can write poetry while reading (about) Mallarmé. There, it's said. Maybe others have their own demons.

Which is frightening during dark Parisian nights, but at least it's a beautiful spring day here, one when I don't feel like thinking about images of the world, but rather the light on the building across which hangs with the washing and dries there.

So, under a sky with no words, there's one thing to say: the new issue of Galatea is now live and alive. Some wonderful, interesting things, in particular: excellent appreciations of kari edwards by Ron Silliman and Mark Young; another review of Tom's Unprotected Texts; and Craig Perez's take on Paolo Javier.

I have two reviews in this issue, of which I just wanted to say: to Mark Lamoureux and Jon Leon, if you guys feel like saying anything, something, well . . . critics need to be accountable.

Critics also might need sometimes to be abused.

Upon Rereading "Preface to Lyrical Ballads” and “Upon Epitaphs” For Mine PhD

I like imagining a divergent literary history in which Coleridge wrote the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, thus replacing the most naive, near-sighted, hypocritical and in the long run pernicious literary critic of our last century. For Coleridge, just as eccentric and lacking in just as much dialectic and philosophical rigour as Wormsy, was yet more playful, more adventurous and all the more open in his view of art. There is hardly any emphasis on the simple, “direct line of expression” between Persona on one hand and Art-As-Autonomous-Object on the other, emphasis which haunts our century and which moreover probably caused most of the more absurd modernist overreactions (cf. Eliot, “We are in no way Romantics”). Yes, Wordsworth has a lot to answer for :

“And indeed where the internal evidence proves that the writer was moved, in other words where this charm of sincerity lurks in the language of a tombstone and secretly pervades it, there are no errors in style or manner for which it will not be, in some degree, a recompense” (Upon Epitaphs, II)

O dear . . . Poor Poesy, confined e’er since by the evil and impossible test of True Expression. Yea, what matter how bad one's writing be'est, how rife with errors and mannerings, provided its origin be the Magical Rainbow, under which the enchanted Leprechaun of Truest Feeling squats!

Lyn Hejinian: Opening Closure

Last week I went to perhaps the most wonderful reading I’ve been fortunate enough to attend, outdoing (by a very little bit) Alice Notley’s passionate tirade in a cramped Left Bank art gallery last year. The reading in question was given by Lyn Hejinian here in Paris where I live. I think it was perhaps the biggest event in the Parisian literary scene since Ashbery’s last visit.

Hejinian read to an absolutely packed house in the basement of Le Next in Paris’ second arrondissement. It was the most people I’ve seen at a poetry event: there were twenty or so milling around the entrance way, unable to get in, and my feet were coddled by an American lady and a professor whom I recognized from the Sorbonne. The evening was organized by poets Jennifer Dick and Michelle Noteboom as part of the Parisian Ivy Writers series, of which Dick and Noteboom are the coordinators. (Moreover, if all poetry scenes had such dedicated and extraordinarily active organizers, one wonders what the popularity of poetry-as-urban-night-life might be).

I’ve heard many people here expressing the idea that the Parisian literary scene – especially the Anglo-American scene – seems almost to be undergoing a sort of “renaissance”. The word’s a chestnut, and I too was sceptical the first few times I heard this evaluation; but it is true I think that the vibrancy and dynamism of what is happening here at the moment are something not seen since other, more glorious époques. (It’s not just poetry as well: English author Jonathan Littel's Les Bienveillantes, which took out both the Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix de l’Académie Française, France’s two major literary prizes, is simply extraordinary: I am about 600 pages in, and plan on posting about the book soon, as alongside its glory, it has also received a lot of silly, asinine press).


But back to our story: Hejinian read a series of very beautiful selections from both The Fatalist and Slowly. She was accompanied by her two French translators, Virginie Poitrasson – launching the French translation of Slowly, entitled Lentement – and Martin Richet – currently working on his French rendering of The Fatalist – who interestingly read their translations before Hejinian proceeded with her English originals: something I have never seen at a poetry reading, but which worked remarkably well. A sign of respect for the French public, but also deeply indicative of the autonomy and importance Hejinian gives to translation, evident in her obvious encouragement of these young translators’ ambitious projects.

I admit to being the most deeply impressed and moved by The Fatalist. It is a stunning book. Moreover, the vision of fate presented by Hejinian is so unique and thrilling, at once reflective and deeply liberating: “All that happened is what is happening.” Certain phrases in particular are important to me: “Dog isn’t right, poetry isn’t wrong — words in themselves can’t be right or wrong.”

My biggest thrill was being able to very briefly meet Hejinian after the reading. A large dinner ensued in a café near Odéon, and I was able to ask her to sign my copy of The Language of Inquiry, a book which is special to me: it is one of my touchstones, my models of how poetry should be written about, the vision of a criticism in symbiotic union with production, of a criticism compassionate towards creation, because itself creation. On the title page she wrote:

For Nicholas
“many questions”
from Lyn
with very warm wishes

“Many questions” . . . I adored this. I was thinking later in the evening whether I should ask precisely what this might imply. But of course, “many questions” is itself a question, and should remain so.

“The rejection of closure” as Hejinian might put it.

Opening closure.