[R. Nemo Hill]

Well that opens the floodgates for a tide of one-liners!

Nemo

[Janice D. Soderling]

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

There is a current thread for that question. This thread is about aesthetics. I think.

[Shaun J. Russell]

Originally Posted by Brian Watson

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

I think it should be conceptually funded.




(Sorry Nemo -- that one was a lob across the middle of the plate...)

[Ed Shacklee]

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. 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...

I know that you think aesthetic statements are very important, Bill, perhaps essential. If having one and being willing to say it out loud is a star you steer by, that’s fine with me: after all, you’ve written some amazing poetry. Although I’m uncomfortable using a term like that, I personally happen to have strong feelings about what I do and why I do it; so however blinkered or primitive it might sound, and however embarrassed I’d be to do so, I suppose I could make an aesthetic statement.

I don’t, though, because my personal feeling is that they don’t matter. I don’t read statements, I read poetry. If a poem is beautiful, I don’t care if it was typed by a million monkeys taking a holiday from writing Shakespeare. On the other hand, if a poem is terrible, why should I care about the poet’s aesthetics, any more than I would care about the stitching technique used in making the Emperor’s new clothes?

Honestly, I’m not even sure what sandbox we’re talking about. Is it the sandbox of Art, which is vast indeed, or the sandbox of Posing at Being an Artist, that arid wasteland where no birds sing? Has Goldsmith written a single good poem? That’s really how I’ll judge him at the end of the day: poet, or poser.

So: has Goldsmith written good poetry? If so, send in the clowns; I'll go along with the joke. If not, there’s always the 3rd Canto.

Best,

Ed

[Rick Mullin]

One interesting note, for me at least, in the Goldsmith interview is this:

Christain Bök is really almost being a scientist at this point. He's given himself a Ph.D. in Genetics, and he's doing genetic engineering and representing it as poetry.

I have a piece of a headline form the magazine I write for taped to the top of my computer monitor: Amateurs Attack

The whole headline expresses shock and disdain over the public—ie non-Ph.D. chemists—joining in the scientific debate. The stunning arrogance of the science community never disappoints!

So, here is Bök emptying his Accelrys® electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) into a poetry anthology. Are we going to be so stunningly arrogant as to object?

I say no. AMATEURS ATTACK! Vive le Douanier! Vive Jarry!

RM

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Rick Mullin

I say no. AMATEURS ATTACK! Vive le Douanier! Vive Jarry!

Rick,

Your mention of chemists reminds me of Moguchaya kuchka, the Mighty Handful, the Five, who changed Russian Opera and music pretty much on their own. All amateurs: drunkards, gunnery officers, foresters, even a chemist!

But they had goals, and they meant them. They took positions, and they weren't shy about stating them, they were mocked by the Musical Society, but offered open and articulate defiance!

Have to admire that kind of thing...

Thanks,

Bill

[Rose Kelleher]

Originally Posted by Bill

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.

Why is the ability to sum up one's aesthetic in 50 words or less a good thing?

Okay, I just answered my own question: Marketing. If marketability is the ultimate goal, than yes, you have a point.

Originally Posted by Nemo

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.

Yes, that's true for you, but it's not realistic to expect most poets to see it that way. Some of them are trying to make careers, and competing for scarce resources. Some want their poetry to be read after they die, and getting published in Norton anthologies and the New Yorker and all that is an important part of the plan. It's a fight for survival. Only people like you, who have no ego, and people like me, who have no hope, are free to forget about all that.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I think the choice between consciously formulating a personal aesthetic as opposed to proceeding purely on an intuitive level is not all that black and white. Conscious & unconscious all play their part. And as poets I think there is no need to denigrate ideas which can be quite as beautifully formulated as poems--whether we agree with them or not. Sure some are great at talking more about things than doing them, and the opposite is true of others--so what? One is better than the other? I don't think it fair to penalize an artist for trying to think and speak clearly about their motivations; nor do I think it kosher to chastise someone whose praxis does not include such potentially narcissistic theorizing. Rather than criticize those who do things opposite to the way "we" do them, why not take the interdisciplinary approach and learn from them so that we can develop both styles of self-expression.

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. I mean people are playing sports without moving from their chairs now, right--without moving a muscle other than their key punching fingers.

Personally, though I lament the loss of craft in all walks of life (I do make my living importing traditionally hand-loomed silks, after all), I am not comfortable with all this talk about the poem itself as the only important thing: I try to take a broader view of art than that--yes, consciously so--and think of the poem as the end product of another process, the evidence. It seems to me that focusing purely on the poem as object is more the marketing approach than using the poem as one piece of a wider psychological/philosophical mystery--merely the most tangible part of, if you will, a conceptual process. The possibility that it (the poem) is expendable, well, I'll consider it. I don't think I agree, but I'm not horrified by the thought; it doesn't make me angry at the bearer of that message.

And, Ed, it seems a little beside the point to insist on judging a conceptual artist on the basis of the material product he is blatantly rejecting the traditional valuation of. It's like telling a monk that has taken a vow of silence that you don't like his tone of voice. So should KG then not call himself a "poet'? Such a hair-splitting technical point seems moot.

I suppose the competition for resources and attention makes sense, Rose. And such a materialistic view can explain, I suppose, of the virulence of the reaction to KG. I'm not immune to envy, or the feeling that cultural approval is much too far from my own doorstep, ha! But on a deeper level there seems some sort of insecurity at work here as well: as if all our labor is to be proved pointless and not to be rewarded if some one can skirt it with such infuriating cleverness. I do think humility is the liberating answer to that conundrum--but I speak as one struggling with it constantly. If I sound as if accomplishments in this regard are otherwise, that is probably just evidence of my own deep insecurities and frustrations.

I trust I've said too much--%#&?

Nemo

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

I do think humility is the liberating answer to that conundrum

Nemo,

Exactly. This is critical. It's not a bad thing to ask ourselves "What are we doing, and why are we doing it?" I think those are natural questions.

And as much as I don't wish to disagree with Rose, who I think very much deserves to be more hopeful, I don't think it's mere marketing when done honestly and with a sense of humility. I, for one, am constantly feeling my way through the dark, asking myself "Is this the right step? Is that the right direction?" It's the uncertainty that makes me wish to keep trying to answer these questions.

The idea that we can see everything in the practice is essentially a remnant of both Neo-Platonist Christianity and Romanticism with a big R. Even Frank O'Hara was making fun of that one in the 50's. Everything is in the poems, he said, laughing. Seeing the poem as detached object is from the 30's, something from the Fugitives and the New Critics. If we're still supporting those notions, we're as reactionary as we think other people think we are.

I'm firmly convinced that no-one here (especially not here) has an unexamined poetics. I'm persuaded everyone believes the unexamined poem is not worth writing. Otherwise it would all be Howls and Barbaric Yawps.

So really, Nemo, I don't think you've said too much. Maybe this is even the start of a long overdue conversation...

Thanks,

Bill

(ps. Funny, my spell-checker doesn't like the word 'yawp' ...

[Ed Shacklee]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

And, Ed, it seems a little beside the point to insist on judging a conceptual artist on the basis of the material product he is blatantly rejecting the traditional valuation of. It's like telling a monk that has taken a vow of silence that you don't like his tone of voice.

I would say, it is like telling a monk who has taken a vow of silence that, whatever it is he’s doing, he isn’t singing.

If a person who rejects the traditional and innovative ways to actually farm, and lines up beans in interesting ways instead: he can call himself a farmer, for all I care. But I won't call him a farmer unless he farms or tries to farm, or is letting things go fallow for a good reason, even if that reason is wrong in the end.

I don’t mind if someone tries to produce art, and fails. I will champion that effort. But as I see it, this man isn’t trying. He’s like the Hunger Artist. Try anything once: but if you keep doing it over and over for no reason, and know from past efforts nothing will come of it, you’re not trying any more.

I know I have prejudices and blindspots like everyone else, maybe more than most. However, if Goldsmith posted one of his ‘creations’ in Non-Met as a newcomer poet, you know that I would not be harsh, as long as I thought he was trying. That’s not what’s happening here. This is a refusal to try, and an attempt to portray that lack of effort as a quest.

Outrage is too big a word for what I feel when I come across posers like this. On most days, the closest word is ‘Meh.’ I recognize, also, that people like Goldsmith like to be kicked, as John says -- it creates publicity, interest, funding. I do feel frustration, however, when I think of the mischief he’s doing, whatever he may intend. I fear, and I think with good reason, that people will use this and other high-flown loop-de-loop, this non-producing ‘art’ and the theories aggrandizing it, as an excuse to not engage with the beautiful, the terrible, the strange and all else that can be found in poetry. Why look? They will say: it’s clear it’s all fakery. Why, just the other day there was this big bag of wind, this charlatan, Goldsmith: get a load of what he said. . .

This is a small place, and what we say here won't save 'Conceptual Art' from the philistines or topple the golden calf, either one. But, no: I will not call someone an artist when he or she is not producing art, and apparently has absolutely no intention to do so; it just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see a reason to demonize him or start a war, assuming I could even find my way to the battlefield, which is unlikely -- my guess is that Goldsmith is starving for attention, why feed him? But I also don’t see a reason not to call a thing what it is, or isn’t. The man doesn’t write anything that wants to be understood. Nothing he does or talks about seems to lead anywhere except to a portrait of himself with “Look at me!” printed in bold letters underneath. Artist? Poet? You are too generous, I think. But I tend to admire generosity, Nemo, and I do in this case, also, so go ahead; just don't expect me to join in.


Ed