tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post8541482097458589663..comments2024-03-05T00:46:39.661-08:00Comments on The Irascible Poet: Obama's America the Death of Irony and MediocrityUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-33450630499581286532008-11-12T19:09:00.000-08:002008-11-12T19:09:00.000-08:00"In Brazil most poets are engaged in a greater dia..."In Brazil most poets are engaged in a greater dialogue with their society."<BR/><BR/>Ray: i agree with you about too many obscurists. I think, though, that they're, for the most part, just little monkeys goofing off.<BR/><BR/>And I'm definitely against directly engaging in any great dialogue, other than with one's own self. Certainly not with a country: whether it be The States, Brazil, Mongolia or Lithuania.<BR/><BR/>(A dialogue with the past is inevitable... but a self-conscious and obvious dialogue with things done and dusted usually just comes off as pretentious. if not obscure)<BR/><BR/>Isn't it obvious that there are bigger stages than the colored scarves of one's own time and country?<BR/><BR/>or i am just lost in a lyric forest?Rauan Klassnikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02747804192744487009noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-70128242631720550562008-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:002008-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:00many poets today have retreated into irony and obs...many poets today have retreated into irony and obscurity creating a closed circle of 'in the know' poetics. <BR/><BR/>Steve Halle's new book from our Cracked Slab Books is a great departure from this weakness and we were proud to publish it...www.crackedslabbooks.com <BR/><BR/>One tendency among poets, especially those of my generation is to seek out obscure topics or interests and instead of engaging the larger world and perhaps writing 'history'but they write poetry for the in the know crowd. i used Peter as an example because his work is pointedly obscure and a good example of this tendency.<BR/><BR/>i enjoyed reading 'david's post I always like poets who froth at the mouth like him....<BR/><BR/>Poetry in the US in many ways has become a clique rather than an artform with friends publishing friends and pretending that innovation is taking place. <BR/><BR/>Sometimes people even publish other poets books just so they can get something from the other poet later like getting their book published by the other's press can you imagine that?Raymond Bianchihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15615084452699116237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-77505429536983398342008-11-12T08:53:00.000-08:002008-11-12T08:53:00.000-08:00I think that the work by John and Peter are both w...I think that the work by John and Peter are both way off mark as examples for your argument. When you say, "Most poets are not in the business of big things and we are woefully low on poets with big projects," what could you mean?<BR/><BR/>Both John and Peter, it seems to me, are in the business of "big things" (and, on the side, some "small things," like John's "tokens"). John's <I>Ajax</I>, as many others have noted (including The Nation), knows its place in "our society" as well as any literary piece, because it negotiates both current, political events (ex. war in Iraq) as well as the transcendental themes (hubris, violence, ambition, etc.). Peter's work is much more than mere "medieval Byzantine monastic tropes" - it moves in an intellectual/psychological/spiritual way, as he says admittedly not for everyone, but it certainly strives for "big things" beyond himself and beyond our time (and well beyond the ambitions of poets who default to simply crazing their syntax or making non sequiturs or throwing around Ashbery's pronouns).<BR/><BR/>I struggle to see how the end of the Bush administration will turn Peter O'Leary into a "a frothing at the mouth lunatic."<BR/><BR/>How, in the view of this lens, was Robert Duncan not "a frothing at the mouth lunatic" during Kennedy's administration? Olson often seemed to me to be a "a frothing at the mouth lunatic." There are recordings that support this thought.<BR/><BR/>Steve H.'s skepticism is well founded. Presidental administrations don't simply negate other societal influences, either. There was excellent poetry during the Kennedy administration; there was all kinds of shit going on in the world despite a youthful, shining Camelot of a president (Bay of Pigs, anyone? Assassinations?).David Pavelichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14924373091432432019noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-65112323695115823452008-11-11T15:58:00.000-08:002008-11-11T15:58:00.000-08:00Ray,First of all, although Obama's election provid...Ray,<BR/><BR/>First of all, although Obama's election provides me with a sense of promise or possibility, he and his regime have done exactly zero to change things thus far (whether he's a Sox fan or not). His election only provides the possibility for change to occur, and that is why it is monumental. I'll reserve judgment on Obama for later, say like eight years from the Inauguration. Obama's synechdochal and symbolic significance notwithstanding, America is still a severely fissured thing with a lame-duck president who is one of the worst leaders in American history.<BR/><BR/>Next, I don't think Pollock's art should be considered chance. Controlled chaos possibly fits, but he has a craft, in the sense of having a way of going about doing his drips paintings. <BR/><BR/>Plus, what about the idea that one can craft chance?<BR/><BR/>Additionally, my assessment of your dis-ease with certain sects of contemporary poetics/poets has more to do with a perceived disjunction between theory and product in a post-LangPo poetic landscape. Another way to say it would be LangPo and Flarf have more resonance because of the theory undergirding what they are trying to do than from the work itself (a contestable point, surely). Whereas Stein, perhaps, engages with her theory, the assertions in her "Poetry and Grammar," say, more successfully in the work, both in craft <I>and</I> content.<BR/><BR/>Lastly, the notion that you "have argued for a long time that poetry needs to reach out to the greater world of poetry for answers" is kind of saddening because it creates a closed poetry circuit, making poetry into its own po-island, as it were. I find looking outside of poetry, generally, whether it's cross-genre, cross-media and/or cross-cultural looking, to be the activity that leads me to my closest encounters with the bigness you seek.<BR/><BR/>I'll be looking forward to the Medeiros in <I>Mandorla</I>. It's a top-notch rag.Steve Hallehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07769771494940856319noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-75047693375048728492008-11-11T10:31:00.000-08:002008-11-11T10:31:00.000-08:00When a 'movement' becomes an orthodoxy it stops be...When a 'movement' becomes an orthodoxy it stops being a movementRaymond Bianchihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15615084452699116237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6583585060396492339.post-88417817310065936122008-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:002008-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00"substitutes chance for craft"... um, no. You obv..."substitutes chance for craft"... um, no. You obviously haven't actually read any of it. Gawd.Nada Gordon: 2 ludic 4 Uhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01448534316756256503noreply@blogger.com