[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Ed Shacklee

Rose said much of what I would think, if I were so thoughtful. Even when they make me gag or recoil, I don't find it difficult to forgive a good poet for bad prose or interviews, or even posing, largely because I'll forget all that -- it's the good poems I'll remember; the gold, not the dross. Has Goldsmith written good poems? If not, why is he being interviewed by Poetry?

Ed

I can agree with that.

In most cases, when I read poetry I want to take anything I know about the poet himself out of the equation. Likewise with most art forms. Obviously the artist is worthy of the praise, derision or apathy that his art provokes, but when going in to the experience, I want there to be nothing in my mind but the art. So often does the artist color the perception.

Having said all that, I'm sure I'd think Goldsmith's work was the work of a pretentious, posturing agent provocateur regardless.

[Michael Cantor]

There's another aspect of onceptual poetry - and art - that hasn't been mentioned. It opens the door to any hack who can't write, can't paint, can't be bothered paying the dues to work at it - but wants to pose as a writer/artist/filmmaker/conceptualist because it will get him or her attention/money/fame/laid - and gimmickry requires much less effort or talent than real writing/painting/whatever. It cheapens the currency in which we trade. Goldsmith is not a fool, he appears to be clever and articulate and intelligent, and while I detest the one-trick-pony horseshit he gets away with, I suspect he knows exactly what he is doing, and is having a great time in he process. But for every Goldsmith there are 152 jerks doing the same thing. (Can I prove any of this? Of course not. But that's the point. It's a conceptual argument.)

[Roger Slater]

Ah, but Michael, there's the respect that makes all of conceptual art into one giant piece of Conceptual Art that covers the entire Human Experience, since everyone fakes competence every day -- even if they are competent in one thing or another, everyone fakes the rest, so conceptual art is a microcosm of real life more than the sort of art you like, which can only be done well by a handful of people.

[Michael Cantor]

Personally, Roger, I can't even fake an orgasm. Once I get past that, I'll concentrate on faking competence. In concept, of course.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Rose Kelleher

And is the sandbox really all that big?

Ah, so here's the real question. After all, if there's room for everybody, abundance for everyone, what do we care what's going on in some distant corner? We can look over, say to ourselves 'that's interesting, but I want to do something else,' and be completely untroubled by it.

Now, before we actually get to the point, we should give these people their due. They are actually willing to make an aesthetic statement, to take a position. If we were to ask each other "what are your poetics?" how many of us would have a ready answer? Think about it. Take just a minute now, and describe your aesthetics. What do you write, why do you write it, what does it do, what's the goal? I dare you (not you in particular, Rose, everybody.) Even just fifty words. Less than this paragraph. Heck, use a hundred, if you need them. And if you're reluctant to do that in public, check Inferno, Canto III, lines 30-51...

But back to our point. I was having a friendly discussion with a poet from here last month, over some really cheap wine. Seriously, it was awful stuff, and in plastic glasses. He turned from complaining about the wine to complaining about publications. I suggested he cast a wide net, but he rejected that idea. He said he had a narrow group of targeted venues, each of which meant something to him.

Mostly, they fell into two groups. First were the house journals, those where most of the people reading this would recognize most of the contributors' names: RR, LR, SCR, TT, etc. We all know what the list looks like. The second group contained what he considered aspirational journals, the kind with names people he met at literate cocktail parties would recognize. In fact, he scoffed at my idea of a wider net, suggesting such things were beneath him. And maybe they are, who am I to say?

My only point is that if his sandbox is small, it's because he made it small. For one reason or another, he's narrowed his scope. We all do this, I suppose, for different realms or different reasons. But it's in our power to make it bigger. We just need to take a different approach.

Look what happens every time someone points out an argument about aesthetics here. I can't imagine people whose poetics are further apart than Forché and Goldsmith, and yet they both received exactly the same treatment. I wonder if that doesn't say more about us than it does about them...

Anyway, back to Rose's point. I think the sandbox is huge, and thriving, and there's room for far more than we think! All we need to do is expand our own boundaries...

Thanks,

Bill

[Stephen Collington]

Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry

Now, before we actually get to the point, we should give these people their due. They are actually willing to make an aesthetic statement, to take a position. If we were to ask each other "what are your poetics?" how many of us would have a ready answer? Think about it. Take just a minute now, and describe your aesthetics. What do you write, why do you write it, what does it do, what's the goal? I dare you (not you in particular, Rose, everybody.) Even just fifty words.

My poetics is my practice as a poet.

Eight words, Bill. Easy as pie. Or to requote something you quoted in a different discussion recently, "If you're explaining you're losing."

[Pedro Poitevin]

I happen to sympathize with everyone. I agree that the sandbox is big, and am grateful for it. I wouldn't have a published book (of palindromes) if not for it. On the other hand, I think Oulipo's successors aren't quite as inventive as they think they are, and I don't see the point in making (more than once) poetry not meant to be read. More disturbingly, I think that the fact that someone like Goldsmith can publish his shopping lists as poetry and I can't publish the list of all the words I misspelled last week (kudos, Janice!) says something sociologically disturbing about the relationship between power and aesthetics.

Here's a light (I don't take these things very seriously, really) take.

Conceptual Sonnet

A book-length poem that spins the New York Times,
a list of all the words I spoke one week,
the top ten hits when googling "Google's crimes"
arranged to make the riddle more oblique.

A palindrome not meant to be read twice
nor even once, indeed, a shopping list
selected with a rolling of the dice,
a pamphlet naming poets that I've pissed.

An ars combinatoria in reverse,
Oulipo's games redone without the wit,
a manifesto--verse is junk is verse--
that sees itself as loopy but legit.

My algorithms crank nine poems per hour,
no clearer demonstration of my power.

[Janice D. Soderling]

But it's in our power to make [the sandbox] bigger. We just need to take a different approach.

I play in the pretty well the whole sandbox. I write vers libre as well as formal verse in a variety of received and experimental forms, and am constantly proving new and/or unusual approaches and patterns. I dabble in surreal poetry and light verse, and even, at times, attempt to project deeper meaning in my work. I write political poetry. I write fiction, both flash and longer pieces, and essays. I write in more than one language and I translate.

Whether I do any of this well or badly will be judged differently by different ears/eyes. But I do it.

What I don't do, I hope, is to put up flarfific prefabs and conceptual facades unvaried as the movie set fronts of a wild west main street.

And because I build my castles throughout--and even exterior to--the sandbox, I make the claim that my critique of flarf and conceptual poetry is legitimite and justifiable; it isn't small-minded muttering or because I have an anal-retentive or xenophobic attitude.

It is not because I have no aesthetics, but because I have differing aesthetics. I see no reason to be apologetic about this.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Bill writes: "Ah, so here's the real question. After all, if there's room for everybody, abundance for everyone, what do we care what's going on in some distant corner?"

Actually I think the point is that, were it not for those far flung corners the entire sandbox would suffer. Historically speaking, those far corners have often enough pioneered certain techniques or views which have eventually been absorbed into the more mainstream center of the box. Case in point...Janice writes..."I play in the pretty well the whole sandbox. I write vers libre as well as formal verse in a variety of received and experimental forms, and am constantly proving new and/or unusual approaches and patterns. I dabble in surreal poetry.....". And yet many of those experimental forms that you may "dabble" in you owe to people who at one point or another took a rather theatrically extreme stand in one of the sandbox's far flung corners that earned them the opprobrium of those people playing in the center. "It'll be the death of our art" has been a cry heard throughout the centuries. No wonder it takes a more and more extreme gesture to deal the deathblow these days.

Reaction against tradition is a cyclical thing, and it serves tradition by calling it into question and thus re-fertilizing it with doubt. Radical manifesto is by its nature hyperbolic, so that once its excesses drain away what remains becomes more sand in the box.

I don't think my assessment is as unreasonable as all this outrage at particular renegades. The renegade view re-arises periodically because it is needed. And I didn't see anything in KG's interview that made it seems as if he were claiming to be anything but its latest free agent.

If KG thinks I am an asshole and doesn't not extend the same benefit of the doubt to me that I do to him, Rose, that is of no importance to me. That too is sand for the box.

Nemo

[Brian Watson]

I think the real question is: should conceptual poetry be federally funded?