Poetic "Inoculation"

The comment stream to the Precision discussion (below) is continuing with Gary Sullivan around the related and interesting subject of whether poems may attempt to "inoculate themselves" against their receptors' possible reactions, (and whether this is actually important).

Feel free to wade in.

Open Precision, Closed Precision: A Response

I entirely sympathize with Mark Lamoureux’s largely negative emotional and aesthetic reaction to works of art which aim for complete formal or technical “precision”. I think the question is, however, rendered very complex by the presence of what I would see to be both good and bad forms of precision in poetry and art.

Let me first say that Mark’s experience when confronted with precision– in his case, that of Minimalism –is one I have shared. To take just one example: Glenn Gould’s latest, most famous and most utterly perfect 1981 recording of The Goldberg Variations is an ideal case in point. It has been said of this version of the Variations, recorded a year before Gould’s death, that its unrivalled technical perfection makes it sound like the production of a machine. I can never, for example, listen to this version for more than about 40 minutes: there is something disturbing in this formal and technical perfection, which sometimes makes this version seem, for me, at once beautiful and monstrous. It is simply overwhelming. 1

Compare this to Gould’s playful 1955 recording of the same Variations at age 22– a recording which made him famous, moreover –and the difference is startling. It is almost impossible to say, I think, that the 1955 version is better: musically, it isn’t, but as a work of art it is something which seems more open, more giving and more human, as if precision were like a barrier established between the human and the sublime.

This has been, I think, a very common idea. “Our humanity is our fallibility” is even a fairly Judaeo-Christian sentiment, warning against a Babelesque pride which precision seems often to warrant or incite. I don’t want to stress this point, as I know that this isn’t principally what Mark is referring to.

Simply, precision seems to me in our discussion to be meaning a lot of different things at once: a first sense, which comes from the dictionary, and means simply (1) Accurate, Exact; but then, and this is by far the most important thing, a whole host of other things by implication. 2) “Closed” 3) “Formal” 4) “Unemotional” (5) “Inhuman”.

I think that second adjective, “closed”, is very important, and I’m using it I think in an entirely Hejinian sense. As, against this negative type of precision – which Mark posits as being close to “the depersonalized machinery of fascism” –it is possible I think to posit a different type of precision. Because, I wonder if what must be compared to this negative precision – from now on to be called “Closed Precision” – is not a sort of positive, “Open Precision”, a precision which, while “accurate and exact” in the dictionary sense, is also bare, exposed, approachable, amenable, and ajar.

A contradiction in terms? Though this might seem to be the case, I don’t think that it’s necessarily true. I feel, for example, that Lyn Hejinian’s poetry is at once open and very precise. Another example for me is Tom Beckett, and I liked what Ron Silliman said about Tom’s poems, (“the most hard-headed, clear-eyed, unsentimental poetry in America”). Almost any example may be taken as an illustration of this:

I
am explaining
my poetry to

someone
by pointing
to a poem

which
reassembles what
I have written.

A poem at once very precise, but which is aware of its own precision, and strangely seems to open itself up to its audience, as if from the inside.

Precise, but not closed. Precise, but not fascist.

Such a poem can thus neither be said to be lacking in “humanity”, “emotion”, nor in “precision”.

I think I can even, on a very personal and subjective level, create some rather artificial categories outlining these forms of Open and Closed Precision. (This might be more controversial!) For Closed Precision, people like Bach, Jacques-Louis David, Mondrian, Mallarmé, for Open Precision, people like Olson, John Donne, Cezanne, Celan. The division is of course not strict, simply personal and illustrative. And, it goes without saying, Closed Precision is of course not always bad: David and Bach are simply and utterly sublime, and some days I need and adore this: need to leave the fallible earth for the near-irreproachable stars.

Open Precision is not, I think, without its tensions. It is, as a notion, almost paradoxical. As doesn’t “openness” imply “fallibility”? Is “openness” and “precision” not in some ways an antinomy?

What is also interesting is that there is, in Mark’s piece (2), a correlation between precision and what he labels a certain “power dynamic”: no doubt the sense that precision or perfection is often used as a sort of hegemony, a control exerted by the artist over spectator and work. I recognize Mark’s desire to get rid of this hegemony, and let the work live and breathe in its own fallibility, without dissimulating, without pretending to any immortal perfection it neither has nor desires.

But of course, this very worthy aim brings with it dangers. The precise danger is that critics– like me – may, though they recognize this desire present in the writing, feel that fallibility is in itself not a value. Rather, it is what fallibility yields which must be prioritized. This is perhaps the primary distinction between Mark’s and my position on the subject of precision: that Mark feels fallibility is often an a priori positive, where I would rather want to identify its positive effects. (I am very prepared to stand corrected here). Mark is, however, perhaps so committed to the positive side of fallibility, that he is prepared to run this risk of mis-comprehension, which can only be a commendable thing.

Now we get to another fascinating part: about precision implying form over gesture, and Mark’s criticisms of Oulipo and Flarf:

Culpability also lies elsewhere with writing that completely emphasizes form or process over the human gesture (note, I don't say "content" here, because I don't believe in content, only human marks made): the oftentimes hermetically-sealed irony of Flarf can be guilty of this, as can some Oulipo-type writing that entirely foregrounds procedural devices . . .

I am most sympathetic to writing that is self-consciously "flawed" (though not necessarily as relentlessly and pristinely "flawed" as Flarf, which is sometimes like a shelf of identically pre-ripped jeans).

.

Firstly, this is a very cool phrase, and I'm sure if Mark's lucky, Gary Sullivan will dedicate a poem to him called "Mark Lamoureux’s Shelves of Identically Pre-Ripped Jeans”. But the important thing here is to recognize that the "advantage" Flarf has, I think, and the reason its gesture is in a way frustratingly complete, is that you can’t criticize it as I did Mark’s poetry, as it has predicted this criticism and incorporated it into the matter of the poem. It is thus more protected than “Night Season”, and in many ways less brave. We may very well not like this pre-emptive self-defensiveness, but it is very clever and very sealed and very difficult to breach a gap in the wall.

.

Perhaps then, ironically and in spite of appearances, Flarf may represent a type of Closed Precision?

.

But the real question of this little reflection, and the cause of Mark and my differing points of view, remains I think: is fallibility an a priori positive, or positive in a more teleological sense, according to its effects? Is poetic precision too, by extrapolation, an a priori negative, or positive or negative only according to its “state”?

***

1 Thomas Bernhardt’s novel The Loser from 1983 is a fascinating mis en scène of these questions of the division or isolation which may be the result of precision: as the narrator says when he goes to visit Gould in Canada: “[Gould] had barricaded himself in his house. For life. All our lives the three of us have shared the desire to barricade ourselves from the world. All three of us were born barricade fanatics.")

2
Just one point. Mark notes:

Minimalism was, by most reckonings, a reaction to the uber-personalized, gestural aesthetics of the Abstract Expressionists. What the artists were up to was a depersonalization of art and a flattening of affect in order to foreground the idea of art-as-object or art-as-process.

I would probably argue that, in some recent art history, it’s maybe recognized that the term “Expressionism” applied to most of the “Abstract Expressionists” was in fact a serious misnomer. Pollock is of primary interest today for example because of his procedural intelligence, his extraordinarily innovative praxis, which effectively, and literally, distanced the “personal gesture” of the artist (“the hand”) from the surface of the canvas. Pollock’s paintings are thus anything but uber-personalized. They too are, as Mark says of minimalism, a “flattening of affect”, especially because this “flatness” is the famous Greenbergian term to precisely describe these new practices. And Barnett Newman? Where’s the “expression” there?

The Dangers of Poetic Precision?

Fascinating response by Mark Lamoureux to my review of Night Season (Dusie) in the last Galatea.

These are all important questions, and I'd love to get to a discussion of them here in the course of the next few days. For now, check out Mark's cogent side of the story.

The New Shadow Train

Sincerest thanks go to Ian Seed for including some of my poems in this month's issue of Shadow Train.

Always strange, and very humbling, to appear in the same issue as a poet like Leonard Gontarek.

The Irony of Zizek

The most interesting thing about Slavoj Zizek's latest article in the UK's Guardian is not the article itself, but rather the deeply ironic stream of comments which, on the Guardian's website, follow it.

Zizek's article- which simply argues, perhaps in a Dan Hoy sense, that the net is not at all rosily democratic and egalitarian, but in fact a nefarious Id feeder -is, for his standards, fairly tame, and not at all penetrating; in fact one gets the impression that Zizek just whipped it up with a biro while drinking a milk coffee in an airport terminal, only to email it to the Guardian before jetting off on a four-week lecture tour of Buenos Aires.

But here's the interesting part: the article concludes, rather out of the blue and with no argumentative precedents- as the comment stream goes on to laboriously elaborate -that the web's anonymity may, in Zizek's words, "lead to murderous violence"

The phrase is, indeed, a bit bizarre. But more on that in a moment. For now, the ironic part is that The Guardian's readers find this phrase in particular so over the top, so uncalled for, that it may only be labelled "hysterical Marxist technophobia." The net a place of murderous anonymous violence? Never! This Zizek is a nut!!

But then, what do the comment streamers proceed to do? As in any good comments stream, they start to abuse, heckle, bash, taunt, harass, assail, and ad hominem one another. For their nationality ("stupid anti-intellectual brits"), for their politics ("have you forgotten Stalin, Marxists?"), then go on to wittily remark that though Zizek is obviously "stupid" and an "obfuscator", at least he was able to "marry an Argentine model half his age. Nice one!!!".

The comment streamers then, though initially and no doubt validly questioning Zizek's "outrageous" claim of "murderous violence"- which does indeed sound underdeveloped, provocative and out of place -in the end prove Zizek wierdly right, simply by this distasteful comment stream display of Anonymous Mob Mentality.

One begins to wonder then whether Zizek's article wasn't rather more of a joke: willfully provocative, underdeveloped, precisely in order to lead to this ugly flame war, and prove the article's final salient, if disturbing, point.

Thank You Mr Bernstein

I'm delighted: just received an email from Charles Bernstein to say he'd be happy to take part in a long-term interview to be appendixed to my PhD, and in the end published elsewhere.
Such openness and willingness is very appreciated, (especially when one is so often confronted with flat "NO"s).

Now comes the drafting of the questions . . .

Language Without Hearing, Without Sight

“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honey-suckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten, a thrill of returning thought, and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.”

- Helen Keller

Some Critical Principles (or "Where's the Dialectic?")

I've got some bad, quite angry reactions to some reviews I've written of late. Even to reviews I felt were very positive!

I actually quite like, however, receiving these emails; they are true epistolary relics, the response of creativity to the epistemological limits of the evaluative regard. A protective élan which we have probably all, at some times, felt, having all perhaps composed such defenses of true poesy in our heads, though not all of us have pressed, in the end, the 'send' button.

I’m curious though as to why my letter writers, once I respond, don’t seem to want to enter into any argument. So, we disagree. Perhaps I was unfair. Critics often are: let’s talk about it. Tell me why. I’ll tell you my idea. You tell me yours. Yay, let’s move forward! After all, all us good Platonists know that Dialectic is the conflictual progression towards Truth! So why won’t the critics of the critic re-respond to said critic? Is criticism no longer the imperative, decent job it seems to be for Dryden and Dr Johnson? Where’s the clash of hypotheses moving towards some glorious Synthesis! Where’s the Socratic dialogue ending in qualitative transformation!

Anyway, I started thinking about these Letters From Annoyed with Jordan Davis' post on William Logan. As, even though I'm not overly fond of Logan's poems, I’m sympathetic to his recent reaction to his reputation of being that weird bastion of the Poetics Community, the "knee-capper". As Jordan puts it:

"Reading William Logan's All the Rage I noticed what might pass for an apologia pro critica sua:

'Most critics love to share an enthusiasm, and I'm no different; but the critic's responsibility, the king's shilling he accepts, is to the reader -- what reader wants the critic to temper his words to the author's feelings?'

And here I was thinking criticism was beholden neither to the reader who reads the piece, nor the editor who (coff) pays the critic, nor the publisher who sends the book, but to poetry -- that the critic is responsible to say what (if anything) some new instances of poetry are up to, what the experience of reading the work is like, and whether the poems (as Logan puts it elsewhere) will repay rereading. If it's too vague to say that we write criticism for the art itself, then ok count me among the writers for the reader."

This is all very coherent, I think, but it made me reflect a little more about some very tentative principles of my current reviewing practice. These are not normative or dogmatic; they’re just for me:

1) As a sign of respect, to reader and to author, the review should aim to be at least as interesting as the work under review (even though one knows that it will strictly never succeed).

2) To echo and invert a certain known Poundian dictum: "a review should aim to be as well written as prose."

3) Reviews should explicitly try to reveal, and never to hide, the aspect of personal "taste" or "sentiment" - which, though scary terms for postmodernity, are sempiternally relevant - and never pretend that apparent objectivity is more than it is, (namely, precisely this: apparent).

4) A critic is like a translator: an intermediary, who will never be invisible, but should also try not to make his or her visibility a primary preoccupation.

5) Reviews, like other writing, can, perhaps even should, play: with form, structure, imagery, language. As, why not? Why should reviews be left out of the games!

6) A critic should always try to learn something when writing a review.

So, to my recent letter-writers: come on, let’s play!

Poetry is fun!

I’ll show you my fallibility, if you show me yours.

Beyond Villa

Continuing the discussion of rewritings and rethinkings of and on postcoloniality, a very interesting review of a contemporary Trinidad poet by my reviews editor, Mr. Ali Alizadeh, is just up at Cordite. Ali underlines another tension I didn't touch on a week ago, but which is equally evident in The Anchored Angel, and the work of José Garcia Villa generally:

"One of the great challenges facing artists from post-colonial and/or ethnic minority backgrounds is meeting the demands of two potentially conflicting ideals. As surrogate – and often unwilling – cultural ambassadors, such artists are required to be ‘responsible’ and represent the reality of their communities/ethnicities for a mainstream Western audience; but as artists they need to be adequately ‘irresponsible’ in order to produce provocative new works that do not merely replicate but (as Russian Formalists would have it) violate reality."

Dis Manibus Sacrum

Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.
- Jean Baudrillard





The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced.
- Jean Baudrillard

Sense, Image, Motive

"The image is an artifice between sensation and motivation".
- Thomas Basbøll

Something to ruminate on . . .

In a way, I wish more readings were like this . . .

Tom's Letters of Love

Beautiful and very touching Love Letter To My Blog Roll by Mr. Tom Beckett.

Against all poetics of stress, concern and egotisms, comes a veritable Poetic Voice Noise of play, openness, and no-holds-barred sexiness. Tom, how much we appreciate you.

Post-Colonialism and the Spectre of “Cultural Betrayal”

Reading through The Anchored Angel : Selected Writings by José Garcia Villa, which Eileen sent me, and which she gloriously edited. It really is a wonderful book, an overview not just of Villa’s work but really of the whole history of Filipino poetics in the 20th century, of Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and the complex “legacy” of Anglo-American modernism.

The book has also made me reflect on quite a few questions which are usually a little outside my usual inquiries. The main reason I never attempted to get into Postcolonial theory was not due to any real aversion to it, but simply because these questions of literature’s social base, or it’s local orientations inside a nation or language, have always seemed to me so unbelievably complex. As, if talking about aesthetics is often seen as a discussion which takes place on movable, rather unstable ground, talking about the sociality of aesthetics, or the aesthetics of the social, is to me more like the thinnest of quicksands.

Basically, one of the main questions about Villa is probably one of the most common in postcolonial theory, namely: what to do of those writers who, though they greatly furthered and enriched national languages and literatures, felt it necessary to initially conduct this project on foreign soil, by entering into the context of a foreign canon, often, as in this case, that of the colonist or occupier? For Villa, revering above all it seems American poetry and poetics – cummings mainly, but also Whitman, Stein, the whole heritage – left for the States and established his poetic reputation in New York, before returning home to work on the development of a “national canon”, heavily influenced by American modes and models (the colonizer).

My real question about this is I’ve always felt very ambiguous about the criticism that this approach incarnates a sort of cultural “betrayal”. As Jonathan Chua says in this book regarding Villa as a critic, “his critical essays blunted the subversive edge of literature, which in the Philippines had been instrumental in the struggles for sociopolitical control and change.” No doubt they did. Because, you see, Villa wanted literature to be beautiful, rather than political. No doubt he was quite wrong – the mutual-exclusivity of the idea is of course the problem – but this error is for me so understandable, so normal as a reaction, that it pains me to see Villa called “an unwitting accomplice to the colonial enterprise.” I suppose he was, yes, but is this stage of partial, initial complicity, however unpleasant, simply, very unfortunately, “necessary”? Is it the first basis on which everything new may be built?

This is very dangerous territory, of course, and strong feelings are evoked by these questions, but I just feel that the problem of these first-generation writers, writing from this specific colonial environment, is so extremely special and difficult. Yes, afterwards there nearly always arises a literature which eschews the forms and models of this foreign canon, building a free and necessarily local register. But within this first-generation, this intermediary generation, surely the presence of divided cultural feelings is deeply understandable, and represents a stage in the movement towards new literatures, new languages and new expressions?

Another case: at the university a few months ago I had a really excellent young Francophone African student who presented an exposé on the history of the 20th century movement known as French Négritude. The same division basically exists within Négritude too: French African or Caribbean literatures were, at the beginning of the century, pretty much word for word imitations of French Symbolism and the Parnassians. Of course, as Justin, my student outlined, this often lead to simply absurd effects, as most of these poems are perfectly formally correct sonnets, for instance, and the African and Caribbean poets’ vocabularies are filled with all the familiar, fashionable words of the post-symbolist time, like “azur”, “spleen”, “recueillement”, even “des négresses”, as if Baudelaire or Hérédia had simply gone on a trip, and sent some poems home for the NRF.

So, it’s at once hilarious, and not very good, and also extremely sad.

And then, after this, there is a new generation, the first post-colonial generation really, whose major representative is the truly great Senegalase/French poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor (right), a truly extraordinary individual, man of deep literary genius and also the first President of Senegal (1960-1980), who lived an extraordinary life. (During the Second World War for instance, he fought as an officer in the Colonial division of the French Infantery, was captured, then released, then worked as a résistant during the occupation . . . etc.)

But Senghor, for some – and it is of course a very debated question – with his election to the Académie Française etc., represents a stage which comes before that of Aimé Césaire (below) and the development perhaps of a fully-fledged Négritude.

Complicity ? Many think, it seems, that Senghor could have gone further. He certainly went much further than Villa, so the comparison is not in all ways appropriate, but in the end I think it comes down to this : it depends whether one thinks everyone has a certain cultural debt, a cultural obligation.

Some people feel this cultural obligation very strongly : Césaire more than Senghor, but also Senghor more than Villa. And the fact that Villa was not concerned with the « cultural obligation » is in many ways a personal decision. « Yes », one can reply, « but it stops being a personal decision when he becomes the National Poet of the Philippines. »

Perhaps. I just find this feeling of lack of connectedness with a local literature, and this desire to look abroad to find this canon, irrespective of the fact it is the canon of the colonizer, not good, of course, but, to be honest, just “understandable”.

Jonathan Chua and the other essayists in the books, including Eileen, beautifully outline the tensions and complexities of these questions, and that really is, after all, what is needed.