Conceptual poetry? What in the world is that?

You see, Andrew. These clever guys all know but they won't tell us. I think it's something religious. Like Masons, don't you know.

I just looked up one of Janice's links. Some fellow called Kenneth Goldsmith. He's a long-bearded idiot. So now we know we don't have to know, Andrew.

Don't waste time on excrement of the brain dead. With apologies to my friends who think otherwise, Conceptualism is only a diversion to avoid confronting social ills, so the 1% can continue to screw the rest.

Here is an easy litmus test. Which gives you more food for soul and mind, reading the book-size, one-sided record of a week of utterances from Kenneth Goldsmith (Soliloquy) or this one short triolet?

God?
– Harvey Stanbrough

If you are there, bequeath a gentle snow
to blanket grass and hills and trees and us,
the weary ones who really need to know
if you are there. Bequeath a gentle snow,
and let it drift to comfort us below
these endless marble rows, victorious.
If you are there, bequeath a gentle snow
to blanket grass and hills and trees and us.

(From Beyond the Masks)

To write poetry, you need to live in a real world. Read Anthony Hecht.

Prose realism, anyone? Here are some perspective-giving reading suggestions off the top of my head. Past, present, future settings in no particular order.

The Bonfire of Vanities – Tom Wolfe
Main Street. It Can't Happen Here. Elmer Gantry. – Sinclair Lewis.
The Handmaid's Tale. – Margaret Atwood.
Ship of Fools. – Katerine Anne Porter.
Dickens. Zola. Feel free to add.

I knew a lady once who read Germinal and Eunoia in the same lifetime. She wrote conceptual poems, loved Dickinson, and hated fascism all with one hand and really inexpensive shoes. I suppose she could have been something beyond human, disconnected from the real world. Or all these binaries might be... to quote the blind... Useless.

I'm with Andrew on this. I happen to have disliked most of the conceptual poetry I've read, and some of the pronouncements of those who write it have left me shaking my head. And my fist, on occasion. :) However, I'm willing to believe that I might like some of it; or that if I don't it may be because of something I don't bring to the table.

Will a poem delight me, or move me? That's mostly what I want. I suspect the odds of that happening are longer for conceptual poetry than for formal work, and that affects how I allocate my reading time. But I've got no problem with sincere people using odd methods to tilt at windmills. Maybe they'll hit one someday. My main regret is the time I feel I've wasted trying to look down my nose at one or another school of poetry, instead of tilting at windmills of my own.

Best,

Ed


P.S. But to answer the original question, is conceptual poetry formal? Shrug.

A conceptual poem is one with a concept (an idea) at its crux. It does not have to be formal, though it can be. You do like some conceptual poems, John. Like this one. Finnegans Wake is conceptual, in a way.

The "Hunting of the Snark" is not really conceptual, but it is interesting that you bring it up. The woman who read after you at Sarah Lawrence is a conceptual poet and a well known one at that. She later thanked Joey for being paired with you, because you both push language to the front of your poems, and that itself is a concept, or one way to go about conceptual poetry. This is not to say you are a conceptual poet, John, but some of your poems do head in that direction, whether you realize it or not.

Kenneth Goldsmith goes about conceptualism differently. His book Traffic is literally just a collection of traffic reports he copied from the radio. But I like it. It reminds me of falling asleep in my dad's car as a kid to the sounds of NPR traffic reports.

In Goldsmith's brand of conceptualism, the concept is usually the entire poem, instead of just the most important part. His most famous poem is Day, which takes an issue of the New York Times and reprints it as a book. He's admitted to not having read the whole thing. You don't have to read his type of conceptual poem, you just have to understand or think about the ideas behind it.

I am not a huge fan of Goldsmith's work, and his is probably the most difficult to get into, but he's loud and obnoxious and dresses flamboyantly, so he gets more attention than other, better conceptual poets.

There is one thing that Goldsmith has done that is very, very important to world literature, and I think it will be his lasting legacy. He founded Ubu, an expansive online archive of avant-garde art, mostly literature. One could spend weeks browsing through. It houses every issue of Poor.Old.Tired.Horse, for instance, and has one of the largest collections of Ogden Nash recordings that I've come across.

Great link, Walter. Thanks.

Ah, Walter, the fish. I've written poems like that. They are in 'The Poetical Works of Phoebe Flood'. They go down well with nine year olds. And me. And me.

Sterne. Sterne's your man. Lots of conceptual poetry in Tristram Shandy. I like him a lot better than Finnegans Wake. Never got through Finnegans Wake.

Agreed, John. It ought to be renamed Finnegans Sleep.

As for conceptualism, is it anything to do with Anti-post-modern-re-deconstructualism? Or would that be a childish over-simplification?

"Yes," to answer your last question, Brian.

Nemo