In defense of Christian Bok, I liked parts of his book Enuoia, which took considerable effort to write, I think. And, very much against what Goldsmith says in his manifesto, Bok's lipograms are crafted with readability in mind. He strikes me as more interesting. I have a harder time defending Goldsmith, partly because some of the generating mechanisms he uses are extremely generic and uninteresting, because it would not take an educated person any time to come up with dozens of ideas at least equally as "uncreative" and because I strongly suspect that they wouldn't get published whereas his--because of notoriety alone--will. The sociology of this sort of phenomenon is interesting but discomforting.

Pedro.

And that's just (part of) the morning of the first day!

Ed, if you want to sample some of Goldsmith's oeuvre, it's pretty well all available online. Just go to his Wikipedia page and follow the links under "Works." Soliloquy has some fancy coding that prevents you from seeing the continuous text unless you follow it with your mouse pointer, but you can get around that. Just press Ctrl+A, and the selection highlighting makes the continuous text visible.

The future of poetry. Enjoy!

Thank you, Stephen, for beginning to restore my equanimity. How far is it to 'Om' from 'Meh'?

Ed

Bill, I take it that this particular comment is directed primarily at me, given my response to your demand for 50-word statements of "poetics" from the participants here. I must say I'm intrigued--and rather amused--to learn that my thinking represents nothing more than "a remnant of both Neo-Platonist Christianity and Romanticism with a big R." (Would you care to elaborate?) But then, as I'm sure you must know from reading my workshop threads here, I'm in no way averse to discussing questions of "poetics" when they are relevant to the understanding of a poem--indeed, I'm sometimes accused of going on too much about them. (And incidentally, while we're on the subject . . . no, I don't think that I would "lose an argument about poetics or aesthetics to him [Goldsmith] in under five minutes flat," whether in an "embarrassing" way or any other (post #28). I wouldn't claim the reverse, of course--I've no way of knowing, really, never having met the guy--but I can see no reason whatsoever why I should unquestioningly accept your assumption on that score about myself . . . or anyone else here. Frankly, I'm at a loss as to why you should ever have said such a thing; it's just so much empty bluster, with the added defect of being demeaning towards Eratosphere's membership. Speak for yourself, Bill.)

So no, I don't believe that a poem is perforce a "detached object" that must be taken in isolation from anything anyone--and above all, its author--might have to say about it. At the same time, however, I see absolutely no contradiction between that recognition and the statement "My poetics is my practice as a poet." I could elaborate on that statement, of course, and I sometimes do, if only in an informal way, but that's neither here nor there. The point I was trying to make--obliquely, I confess; I'll make it explicitly now--is just that for the practicing poet, it's the practice that matters. If the "poetics" doesn't lead to a poetry worthy of the name, then it's just so much hot air.

Oh and Bill, by the way, we're still waiting for your statement of poetics here.

.

Hear, hear!

Nemo said (I have added the red boldface.)

Quote:

As far as the "non-producing artist", I am as uncomfortable with the phenomenon as others who I am disagreeing with up here. Yet the vast new world of virtual reality makes such a train of thought inevitable--and we ignore it at our peril. The fracturing of the world order that occurred during WWI led to a parallel refraction in the arts, a huge disruption with what had come before. The era when this so-named conceptualism first took hold of theory was another era of cultural shift, the 1960's. Our present technological revolution likewise seems bound to come with its own violent rifts, no? Art does not exist in a vacuum.

Despite the various sobriquets of shallowness and smugness hurled and despite the reasons for dissent herein fabricated and attributed to dissenters who don't regard KG and his ilk as vanguard artists, I am trying to understand your line of reasoning. I also am trying to figure out why you continue to hold up this dead horse if "are uncomfortable with the phenomenon".

In fairness, I could imagine ways in which conceptual art might serve a purpose but I don't see it being used as anything other than a gigantic fart emitted so the perpetrator can feel better and attract attention.

Suppose, just suppose, that instead of a book of weather reports that isn't intended to be read, the book consisted of excerpts of say,
This is taken completely at random and without analytic thought of how it might be juxtaposed to best effect. Still, I daresay that it is more purposeful and more artistic than a transcribed recording of what KG has said during one week.

There is a reason we have language. Language is not junk.

He doesn't mean beyond his topic sentence.

Actually, Bill did post something like that a while ago, in a thread that mentioned a poem in Now Culture, where they seem to encourage (or require) one to make such a statement:

From Now Culture:

ars poetica
Never make stuff up. Seriously: Never make stuff up. I don't care about the imagination. Look around, at the actual, and try to see clearly. There's plenty of meaning and mystery in what's at hand. Go outside and walk around. Do things. Tell me what happens. A good poem lets us live in the poet's mind for a few moments. It's not 'about' anything, except it's about being a human being, at one exact moment, in one particular place. That's the beauty and mystery of it. It should make us want to live there. That's what happened with "Letter to Susan." I looked outside, and wrote down exactly what I saw.

We walk around, most of the time, not seeing anything, our minds blank, or filled with constant chatter. And yet, every once in a while, we have a transformative experience. Something changes our lives. "I fell in love with her at 1:52 pm. It was a Friday." What did you see at exactly that moment? What did you literally feel? Can I become you for just those two minutes?

Let's forget theory for a moment, and be painfully honest: through her, I have had an experience of something beyond time and space, something infinite and eternal. It changed everything I knew. Now, every poem I write is an attempt to do for the reader what she has done for me. My only goal since then is to write a poem which gives the reader a place to dwell, where the reader may have that same experience. I don't blame people for not believing me. I wouldn't have believed it myself. But I'll keep trying. Remember: I don't make stuff up.

http://nowculture.com/thorns/lantry.htm

I remember because at the time it seemed such a strange, intriguing thing to say, and because I thought it was brave to say it. Or 'post-brave,' perhaps: past the point of bravery. When I look at this singular vision, which really has created wonderful poetry, I don't know how, and I look at Kenneth Goldsmith -- well, it must be a very big sandbox, indeed.

Best,

Ed

What fun! A giddy, nominalist romp – art, because “the artist” says it is.

I can't prove it's not.

So I don’t piss on MoMA’s galleries. But if I owned a Rodin, I wouldn’t put it by the bidet.

I'm probably going to be sorry I got into this. But having gone on record (in TNB) as saying I wanted to try to state a poetics, I now think I have to add that I've found it very hard.

First, doesn't your poetics have to take in more than your own poetic practice? Doesn't it also have to describe what you think works in other poetry? I think it does. I think that's why this thread started; some people looked at a species of poetry and said, Uh, no.

Second, so many statements of poetics seem to rule out some other kind of poetry that I find effective--at least sometimes. Will all respect to Bill, "never make stuff up" rules out way too much other poetry for me, however well it works to produce his poems. Can we imagine Maz living by "Never make stuff up"? Some poets insist that all poems have got to have multiple layers. I'm not persuaded; I think lots of one-layer expository poetry works just fine. Some poets seethe at "prose chopped into short lines," but occasionally there's a piece like this that I find effective. No matter what doctrinaire statement is made, I seem to find exceptions. I grow hesitant to rule out too much; I'd just like to understand it better.

Third, as many times as I've said "I like poetry that does thus and so," I've found books of poems that seem to satisfy all my requirements but that I still don't find satisfying. I happen to be wrestling with one just now. If this happens, obviously the statement of criteria was inadequate.

Fourth, for most of us here it might be too soon to nail ourselves down. I can't find it now, but some time back I once found a personal web page for Amit Majmudar. There was a statement on it to the effect that the poems were all being replaced because the author found that he kept reinventing himself as a poet. If a statement of poetics cut off that process of reinvention, it might not be a good thing.

I'm not equipped to see any value in the KG approach. I've always believe poets should be "makers," and the KG approach is just finding. But I also know there are holes in my theories.

Simply by talking about KG, though, we're probably producing the value he most wants: attention. That's why I think my response to it should be silence.

Yes, let's ignore Kenneth Goldsmith, the little brat. He can stick pigtails in inkwells and make farting noises with his underarms all he wants. Let's talk about poetics! Even though I really don't want to talk about that, I'm very inclined to listen.

I don't have anything as grand as a theory, but there's a line in 'Mercy of the Fallen,' a beautiful song by Dar Williams, that goes: 'There's the weak and the strong and the many stars to guide us. There are some of them inside us.' Here's a star of mine, a poem by Richard Wilbur:


At Moorditch

“Now,” said the voice of lock and window-bar,
“You must confront things as they truly are.
xxxOpen your eyes at last, and see
The desolateness of reality.”

“Things have,” I said, “a pallid, empty look,
Like pictures in an unused coloring book.”

“Now that the scales have fallen from your eyes,”
Said the sad hallways, “you must recognize
xxxHow childishly your former sight
Salted the world with glory and delight.”

“This cannot be the world,” I said. “Nor will it,
Till the heart’s crayon spangle and fulfill it.”

xxx- Richard Wilbur

You know why people like KG piss me off? It's because when they put their stuff across as "poetry", and get attention for doing so, the general public starts to equate that dreck with poetry in general, thus causing people to think, "Well if that's what poetry is, then clearly I don't like poetry."

There's a ridiculously small amount of people who can actually claim to "like" what KG "writes". But those same people somehow manage to maim the credibility of poetry as an art form.

In visual art, someone like Jackson Pollock could get away with splattering a canvas with paint and calling it "art". It was different, it was new, it was a statement. But fortunately for the state of visual art, the next fifty years wasn't full of other artists throwing paint at canvas -- there were some, to be sure, but it got old fast.

I think the dilution of accessibility is what has harmed poetry the most. Goldsmith's work isn't accessible. A lot of free verse poetry isn't accessible. Perhaps I'm a bigoted purist, but I know that when I read most formal poems, at least I know what's going on -- what the point is. So much poetry these days is at odds with that notion.

Shaun, I'm not sure this is as generally true as people fear.

The people who'll see KG's statements, I think, are the people who are already actively interested in poetry and poetics and in the trends, the hot stuff, the buzz. I really doubt that there's much crossover between the Garrison Keillor and Ted Kooser poetry readers (this is not intended as a putdown, just a quick classification) and those who will stumble across KG and be put off. The fact that Keillor and Kooser and YourDailyPoem and the like can come up with such poems every day suggests to me that there's no dearth of accessible poetry.

I like accessible poetry just fine, but I get impatient with rants about the inaccessible kind, because it takes a great deal more than accessibility for me to feel satisfied with a poem. Ed's example from Wilbur says a lot about what I seem to need. There has to be wisdom. And all the symbols have to work for me the same way they work for the poet; the situations and life-elements all have to mean to me what they mean to him. I get this in Wilbur, but I know that not everyone does. There are people who feel he's too privileged, too removed, too far above the grit of their real lives. It seems to be all about the attitude one finds in the poems, and whether or not one likes a person with that attitude.

There doesn't seem to be a clear conclusion here, but I'll stop.

I'm submitting my shopping list to POETRY :D

I was about to do the same thing, Mary, till I realized there was an economy-sized jar of French's mustard on the list. That seems a little provincial, a little blue collar, doesn't it?

I used to have a shopping list from Whole Foods around somewhere; but though it would have more of a healthy, eco-friendly, upscale flair, would it make me seem too bourgeois? If it's too long, would I look pompous, or greedy? If it's too short, would I be derided as lower class? If it didn't contain all the letters of the alphabet, would I be doomed to the status of a minor poet? The rigors of Conceptual Art overwhelmed me in the end. Good luck with it.

Best,

Ed

Dear Maryann,

You're quite right, it's troublesome. What would we do with Stevens? Or with Mallarme? Two of my favorites, and any general theory of poetry that excludes them would be useless.

So I think of this position statement, in spite of the imperative tense I so awkwardly used, as descriptive rather than prescriptive. And as purely pragmatic: it helps me keep moving when I'm stuck in the mud. Mostly... ;)

Now, Steve seems upset, and wants me to explain myself. I certainly didn't mean to upset him. La Fontaine gets credit for "by the work, one knows the workman," but it's a much older idea. It's in Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44, and many other places besides. But there are a few problems with "by their fruit, you shall know them."

The first one is the separation of product and process. That may be fine for scholars and critics, but for practitioners it may be both troublesome and unhelpful. Worse is the problem of impression: if we bite into the apple, we have certain sensations: sweetness, texture, etc. We're not actually thinking about the apple at all, but rather our experience, what we make of it. In other words, by that point, we've slipped all the way from La Fontaine's fables to reader response theory, in three easy steps. And while I hope you'll forgive me most of my sins, I have very little sympathy for "The Dynamics of Literary Response." ;)

But back to Maryann's point. The process *is* incredibly difficult, for all the reasons she stated. It's extremely hard to come up with something both accurate and pragmatic. And once you've done that, there are still three problems. First, it gives people something to aim at, and people always have their crossbows strung. Second there are unintended implications: I'm pretty sure Shaun doesn't mean to sound the way he does with his statements on Jackson Pollock, or imply a theory of painting some may infer from his words. But third, and worst of all, are the echoes.

I thank Ed for posting what he did, and I stand by my words in Now Culture. But look at just this short little snippet:

"through her, I have had an experience of something beyond time and space, something infinite and eternal. It changed everything I knew. Now, every poem I write is an attempt to do for the reader what she has done for me."

Do I believe that? Is it truly part of my core experience? Yes, and yes. But look at the echoes. I want Bergson and Heidegger, but that's not what it sounds like. It sounds like a christian conversion experience, followed by an evangelical fervor. And this coming from someone who thinks Paul fell off his horse because of a migraine, and that Ezekiel's Wheel was the result of a really bad headache. Darn it! :eek:

So maybe people are right to shy away from such statements. One simply cannot win. And yet, I persist in thinking they're useful, or at least the process is useful, and that we're only undefeated because we have gone on trying... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Well slap my thigh and call me Susan:

Onions, eggs, milk, butter, newspaper

I'd defend that as poetry.

(The PDF study guide was the only source I could find for the image. The piece, about an arm span wide, is one of a series of text-photo diptychs by Ken Lum currently on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery).

Am I the only one who thinks that this discussion has veered from critique of conceptual writing (a.k.a. uncreative writing) into the shadow world of gobbledygook?

Crossposted with Brian.

See, there's the problem. I kinda like Ken Lum. Samples here. But check this one out:

http://torontosavvy.files.wordpress....pg?w=560&h=420

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/pictur...5&pictureid=98

Bill Lantry kinda likes Ken Lum!

Janice asked and I agree with her:
Broadly, the thread has ceased to be a productive discourse, assuming it ever was, and now is doing what conceptual writing does best, self-aggrandizement.

Mary, best of luck with your sub to Poetry. That market may be cornered.

Only when you sign it, Janice, and call it art.

I've come back late to say that I actually like some of Kenneth Goldsmith's work. As I said in another thread, Traffic gives off a nostalgic warmth because of all the times I fell asleep listening to traffic reports and talk radio in my dad's car, and Day is just a real Ulysses. Like any form of art, not all of it is going to be good. Shopping lists as poetry? The idea isn't interesting enough to be a successful conceptual piece. But Goldsmith occasionally gets it right, and the results are worthy of study and thought and deserve to be read. Plus, Goldsmith runs Ubu, a wonderful, wonderful archive of modernist and avant-garde art. Sure, he loves the notoriety, but he's also genuinely interested in the history of poetry.

That said, I lost a little bit of respect for Goldsmith when rumors surfaced that the newspaper that supplied the body of Day was run through a scanner, so that he didn't have to type out the entire paper. Machine production (a la Warhol) is nothing new in art, but it makes me question how much time I should spend with Day if the author couldn't be bothered to do so (and it's why I wonder if Goldsmith is truly being tongue-in-cheek when he says there's no reason to buy his books).

Odd. First comes the objection that "[the] idea that we can see everything in the practice" is a retrograde, risible and reactionary one ("O'Hara was making fun of that one in the 50's"). Then, hot on its heels, comes the observation that "the separation of product and process . . . may be fine for scholars and critics, but for practitioners . . . may be both troublesome and unhelpful." But frankly, unless you're confounding "practice" and "product" to the exclusion of "process," it's hard to see how that latter formulation can be taken to contradict the statement that (to generalize from my personal formulation) a poet's poetics is his or her practice as a poet. The process is the practice, and the practice is the product. I make something, and while I am making it, I am making it, and when it is made, it is made. You're finding distinctions, Bill, where none are necessary, or intended.

As for the notion of "by the work, one knows the workman," I confess I fail to see the relevance of its age to its truth value--or if you prefer (since "truth value" is a little question-begging here) to its relevance and usefulness as a rule-of-thumb formula for interpreting experience. And if your citing of the gospels is by way of trying to show that the idea is somehow beholden to "Neo-Platonic Christianity" (and therefore illegitimate?), I'm not sure what basis you have for assuming that it is indeed original, or unique, to that context. Frankly, I rather suspect that the idea is as old as the day the first caveman said he could make a better hand axe than Grog could, and then proceeded to expand on his Theory of Conceptual Poelithics while Grog quietly knapped away in the background. ("Okay, now let's see which one cuts wood . . . ") It's really not that complex--or unusual--an idea. And as for the rest, even at a stretch I don't see the connection between La Fontaine and "Romanticism with a big R" . . . though I may be misreading you there. Is there another source forthcoming?

Finally, on the Apple-of-my-Iser stuff, you've lost me, Bill. If your point is that we have no access to things in themselves--only our sense impressions "of" them--well, that's hardly news. The World is my Idea, and all that. But so what? Unless you want to make a case for solipsism, you have to live with the fact that there is indeed such a thing as intersubjective experience, and that "the thing" (das Ding!) thus experienced, for all that we never have immediate access to it, nonetheless exists as an irreducible datum at the centre of that experience. So yes, the product--the publicly shared end of practice--does matter. But that's no objection to saying that poetics is the practice of the poet in the poetry.

Incidentally, I'm glad Ed posted your "ars poetica" from Now Culture. It's a fine statement, "brave" as Ed puts it (I agree, in the most positive way), and human, and oh-so-refreshingly unlike the naked cynicism of Goldsmith's "anti-expressionist" line:Poetry as communication, poetry as communion. Amen.

Here is my last shopping list:

Gin
Tonic
McVitties Chocolate Digestive Biscuits

Steve said:
Only when you sign it, Janice, and call it art.

Fair enough.

I guess this new upsurge is what is known as the second breath.

Where does Goldsmith normally publish? Maybe, if and when the thread runs its course, I'll print it out, intersperse it with a few shopping lists and some pages from Malraux's Les Voix du Silence (in French - one of my oldest, favorite and most pretentious unread books), and submit it.

Shopping lists and scanned newspaper clippings may have beauty in them, the way that land might have gold in it whether it is mined or not, and flowers on it whether we look at them or not. There's poetry in everything, in that sense, anyway. If I looked up at the passing clouds, I expect I'd see a horsie or a castle after a while, and there's something pleasant about conversations that fade in and out at a diner or on the beach.

There's beauty in every morning and in any rooster crowing, but the sun doesn't come up because of that, and poetry isn't made by standing there taking credit for random beauty moved just a hair sideways. When kids find things like that, it's delightful; and when Lily Tomlin plays Edith Ann, she's funny; but seeking praise, plunder and publicity for random discoveries takes the inner child out of it. In concept, at least. So, from my part of the peanut gallery, 'Meh.'

Best,

Ed

I think you've got something quite interesting there, Whitty.

PS to Ed a few posts back: LOL!

When did we lose the willingness to call BS BS? The person in that interview is lost to himself and to engagiert writers everywhere. Whitworth is correct, though I would choose drawing and quartering. That Cage, DuChamps and other "fartistes" of their ilk make their all too predictable appearances in coffee table art history books merely makes it unmistakably clear how imprisoned by foppish fads the publishers of coffee table art books are. DuChamps is no role model. O'Connor, Dickinson, Dante, Lorca, Mandelstam, Brecht--those are role models. Blood and bones on the line. Or are we just cowards?

Speak for yourself, Lance, drop the royal we.
A word other than coward comes to mind.

Nemo

and

I've come to this thread very late, and I have not given a close reading to all of the posts, but the above two comments did leap out at me as woefully misguided and unsound.

Sometimes making comparisons between art forms (for example, the visual arts and poetry) is an interesting and productive exercise. A problem occurs, however, when the person making the comparison draws a judgment that is simply not accurate.

Duchamp and Pollock are not frauds or charlatans in the art world. Personal taste or opinion may lead someone not to like their work, but that's a far cry from claiming their work is not art or that it lacks value. Some educated and informed readers may not care for Milton's Paradise Lost or Joyce's Ulysses or Virgil's Aeneid or a host of other literary works, but that does not mean that those creations are without value.

One of my favorite paintings is Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase. It's a superb and pioneering work. X. J. Kennedy wrote a famous poem about it with the same title. And as for dismissing Pollock as someone who got away with throwing paint at canvas, such a remark illustrates more about the writer's ignorance of art than it does about Pollock's alleged lack of artistic skill.

Richard

Agreed with Richard on Nude Descending a Staircase and Pollock for that matter. Also, I don't believe either of them said their work didn't need to be looked at, as I suppose Kenneth Goldsmith might have done.

In what sense are any of these people "frauds"? Who has been defrauded, and out of what? Is it that the public has been defrauded of the opportunity to luxuriate in art that satisfies our own personal criteria for art? If so, are the artists we like also defrauding the public out of the opportunity to appreciate the artists we don't?

Artists of all people are the last people on earth one should be calling frauds, since they put their actual work before us in plain sight, hiding no part of it, and allow it to speak for itself. It is what it is. We might hate it, but we are not defrauded by it.

I love the kind of poetry we tend to favor here at Eratosphere, and I admire so much of what our members write and aspire to, but the world of poetry would be a dreary place indeed if every poet in the world wrote the kind of poem that would fit in perfectly here among us. No one has to like everything that's going on, of course, but when push comes to shove, I think it's important to realize that all of us, from conceptualists to formalists, are engaged in the same lofty enterprise and fighting for equal time with the same elusive Muse, and at least to that extent our judgments and discussions should be grounded in respect.

Actually, I never implied that Pollock was a fraud, a charlatan, or even that I dislike his contribution to the art world. Quite the opposite, in fact. Likewise, I admire Cage for introducing a new musical paradigm. And e e cummings for doing what he did for poetry. Those aren't the people I have a problem with. It's their acolytes. Those poseurs who claim they are pushing the boundaries, but are really doing what's been done before, usually for shock value rather than artistic merit.

My perspective is quite possibly bigoted. There's relatively little in terms of any of the art forms that I do like. But it doesn't make me, as you say, ignorant of art. I have my opinion, and I have my tastes, and I stand by my statement that Jackson Pollack "got away with" throwing paint at canvas. He did! A collusion of circumstances allowed him to gradually thrive in the art world, after initial reluctance to accept his splattered canvases as "art".

My opinion is my opinion. "Woefully misguided" or not, I hold to it until I can be convinced otherwise.

Artists of all people are the last people on earth one should be calling frauds. . . . No one has to like everything that's going on, of course, but when push comes to shove, I think it's important to realize that all of us, from conceptualists to formalists, are engaged in the same lofty enterprise and fighting for equal time with the same elusive Muse, and at least to that extent our judgments and discussions should be grounded in respect.

“Fraud” might be the wrong word for it, but of course there are pretentious or affected practitioners in every art form. There always have been. Some of them have been well regarded in their time, although usually mostly forgotten later. And many artists—including major ones—have judged or rejected what other artists do. Ever read William Blake’s words about Joshua Reynolds?

Pound and Eliot rejected what they thought of as the faux poetics of the Victorians, and came up with what came to be called Modernism. Wordsworth and Coleridge thought the Augustan poetics before them were too artificial, and wanted to talk in the “language of men.” And so on.

They perhaps didn’t use the word “fraud,” but they had plenty of harsh things to say about their aesthetic rivals or opponents. In fact, people in the sandbox have often kicked sand at each other, with creative results.

Wups !  There went the whole post-classical space-time continuum...

Oh, good. I got most of it back for us with a secret sauce called 'interpolation from 10 place logarithmic tables'. Show of hands. Is everyone still here?

I'm going to be unoriginal here and although discussing aesthetics is a bit like the task given to the 50 daughters of Danae who attempted to carry water in a sieve, nonetheless, I will cede that Nemo has a point: I shouldn't use the royal "we." And for those on this thread who find some nugget of gold in Mr. Goldsmith's piece, I apologize beforehand.

The IT revolution has made it too easy for poseurs, earlier media-Munchhausens like Warhol, or conceptual artists such as Mr. Goldsmith, whose cynicism has roots so deep no rational critique or dialogue can reach them. Goldsmith doesn't trust reason in the same way that Derrida doesn't trust reason; consequently, you can't reason with either. And when you can't reason you can't communicate. Ivor Winters laid this fallacy to rest in his critique of Finnegan's Wake: you don't depict chaos by writing chaotically. You depict chaos by writing in an orderly way--so that chaos can be shown as a force that challenges that order. Likewise with conceptual art. Conceptual artists have arrived at some perplexing paradoxes and snicker-inducing contradictions. Well and good. Here is where they go wrong. To portray the ideas they are trying to get across requires a traditional aesthetic for the artist to WORK AGAINST. Conceptual writers are like painters without a frame. Without the traditional frameworks in writing, painting and music the artist is forced to create a new aesthetic paradigm, which the listener,reader, will not know or understand and worse, one that will not survive a generation. In a hundred years I suspect John Cage will be a footnote like Robert Burton whose Anatomy of Melancholy was read by all the right people.

Now what I just said gives Mr. Goldsmith the benefit of many doubts. On a more cynical note myself these cultural con artists seem to me lost in a vortex of solipsism; consequently, they disdain the act of communication. Why would they not? Such an act assumes another human consciousness who might blow their cover. The emperor has no clothes, a statement in the tale only a child will make. Tolstoy said it best: Pick the big themes that move all men: Love/betrayal, God/Satan, grace/ judgement, ennui/ the will to live and so on. The rest are nugae. After that there's Danielle Steele.

Caveat lectores: whenever I open my mouth too long a lot of air comes out and a lot of sand gnats fly in. My comments arise from a sadness, really, a sadness that a man like Goldsmith is courted by The Poetry Foundation when we could be reading about John Whitworth or Maryann Corbett or Rick Mullis or Nemo Hill, men and women who want to communicate and who do it so bloody well.

Hear, Hear! ;)

Especially since no-one knows how things will shake out. Especially since our views may change with time. Especially since invective and loaded diction demeans everyone. :eek:

And most especially because personal certainty usually indicates error, often when coupled with defensiveness and assertion. By the way, here's a pretty interesting piece, about Irving Sandler. Those who read it may change their view of Pollock, and many other things besides. I really liked this part:

"You'd think an art world like that would drive a person with Sandler's history into a curmudgeonly redoubt. But with the hugest of grins, Sandler says, "I love the art world." That's why he still trudges to shows and openings, looks at freshly minted art, and talks to young artists. (...) Because of Sandler's radical openness to new art—a principled aesthetic based on being democratic and outward looking, rather than elitist and exclusionary—he finds it easy to look past the art world's underbelly. (...) He cares only about figuring out what's significant in up-and-coming art. Lacking even a trace of cynicism, Sandler believes that it's the nature of art for there always to be something genuinely new and fresh up ahead; the hard part is figuring out what that is."

What a concept! ;)

Thanks,

Bill

The comparison to modern art falters.

Birthe and others have made the point that most conceptual artists intended their work to be looked at, while the purpose of conceptual writing seems to be to that it should be uncreative and ignored.

There may be a point to this--that we are overwhelmed by information and should stop trying to make sense of it (for instance)-- but it seems to me to be a convoluted and misguided way to make that point.

As I said earlier, but perhaps not loudly enough, there was a lot of leg-pulling going on, jokes that later acquired cult status.

and

I really appreciate that statment "worth $16 million".

Whether or not one subscribes to the idea that some of the turn-of-the-century art and succeeding art originated as hoax, there was something tangible to look at and discuss, something more than a text mass purloined and presented as the purloiner's uncreative production with the caveat that it isn't intended to be read.