Buggeryville

So, Lytton Smith wrote an interesting post about negative reviews and the purpose of criticism, centered around a particular very negative review by Michael Schiavo that is maybe getting discussed a bit in the blogs. So maybe, go read it, or read them all; I pick more nits in the comments of that last link. I want to jump on one particular bit that bugged me about it, but I still think it's worth reading. It's actually from the original review, but he quotes it approvingly:

"Name-checking the states of the Republic does not make your poetry Whitmanic. Shoveling pop culture references into sloppy lines does not transform your poems into Frank O’Hara’s."

But, doesn't it? Of course it does. These are specific features that the poetry in question shares with Whitman's and O'Hara's poetry. Because they share features, we can talk about the one in terms of the other. That is how such comparisons work.

So, what's the problem? Well -- and yes, I suspect this is all fantastically obvious -- Whitman's poetry and O'Hara's poetry and the poetry under question all have all these other features. And these other features don't match up. So a reviewer can say "this poetry is Whitmanic" without articulating in what way it's Whitmanic -- which of Whitman's poetry's various features it shares. Because Whitman's poetry has so many various features, saying another poetry is Whitmanic doesn't let you know which features are shared. It becomes an inane comparison.

But, of course, that isn't what Schiavo is complaining about. Schiavo is complaining that for a poem to "be Whitmanic" it must share more than this one feature of Whitman's poetry. It has to share in a significant number of features of Whitman's poetry. Or, what I think is really going on: It has to share in all (or a significant majority) of the features of Whitman's poetry that Schiavo finds salient. I suspect that Schiavo that if he found a poem that shared in a majority of the features of Whitman's poetry that he finds salient, then he could call the poem "Whitmanic" without qualification -- but I might be putting ideas into his head there.

I worry that Schiavo is upset that these reviewers are thinking of Whitman in terms of specific features, rather than appreciating him as a complex whole. But this might be my own resistence and discomfort with the idea of Whitman-as-a-whole. I think Whitman's symptoms are stable enough to merit discussing, but the holistic Whitman is a kairotic assemblage constantly being reformed and discarded. Or, I'd rather push for that, for us to not "decide" upon Whitman-as-a-whole, but to keep him (such as there is a him; to keep the "totality" of his poetry, anyways) as potential, as occasional, as tentative.

Which is to say, I'd prefer for "Whitmanic" to mean "name-dropping American geography" or "writing slobbery poems about young soldiers" or "using a whole lot of exclamation points", rather than trying to point to some totality about Whitman or Leaves of Grass.

And this is what I want from my poetry reviews, as well. I don't want them to try to lay out the totality of a poem, or of a book, or of a poetics. I want them to open a few doors into the tangle, so I can wander indecisively. And I worry that Schiavo's use of "Whitmanic" (which, to be fair, he only sorta uses in that review) is, in fact, more closed than the obviously facile uses found in the reviewers he rants against. After all, the next time they talk about a "Whitmanic poet", they'll probably be referring to something like the length of his beard.

Over at Gary Sullivan's place, there's an excellent post about a historical precedent of sorts for the Issue 1 affair, which involves John Ashbery.

Over at Gary Barwin's place, there are a few excellent comics which remix some election-year Peanuts strips from 1968.

Over at Gary Lemon Hound's place, the excellent ongoing series of guest blogs continues with a post in which Jason Christie talks about Ryan Fitzpatrick's poetry. He writes:

I am uneasy these days about my writing. I’m uneasy about the fact that language is at once a means of liberation from ideology and the mechanism that incarcerates me within it. Language forces me into a binding relationship with ideology that it would be irresponsible to deny. Poems that continue to operate solely on the surface level of discourse, dealing with the results of language, that continue to ignore the reality that we are entirely and thoroughly permeated by capitalist ideology, poems that continue to offer trite observations about the human condition or pithy political slogans tacitly reassure us that our way of delivering language is right without ever questioning what could be lurking in the background of our conversations. In a time defined by data and information, a time where the difference between the words swap and insurance can have drastic consequences, language is the direct route for ideology into our lives. We’re accustomed to ideology being obvious, state sanctioned political ads, marketing approved by lobbyists, down with The Man, but what happens when it is the medium as much as the message that is the delivery system?

Earlier, Frank O'Hara wrote:

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

[Meditations in an Emergency]

Christie's sentiment is pretty common these days, I think, amongst poets of a certain stripe: There is an anxiety about achieving a particularly and politically pure writing which they know to be untenable, and this anxiety is the locus of their writing. So I'm not trying to pick on Christie here. Nor am I saying that I am not anxious in similar ways: Oh ho ho no. But still: I yearn for a poetics that does not totally regret language! And I want a poetry that is not incapacitated by its desire for perfection in an imperfect world, that doesn't try to instantiate that anxiety, but rather shows a way (or, several ways) out of it. I want to get my Wittgensteinian fly out of my Platonic bottle. Christie is "mainly interested by poetry that understands our complicated role as writers at a time when no matter what we are trying to say, we are always demonstrating our culpability with a system that benefits from its enmeshment with language and a lack of investigation of the same"; does the system not benefit just as much from our endless reverberating investigation of the same? I am interested in poetry that offers ways to cope with the system, even if momentarily -- I guess it would be too much to hope to transcend the system.

Which reminds me: I really need to finish writing my review of Maryrose's book for Agora.

I am surprised to find myself in the middle of three books of poetry criticism that I am very excited about. When does that ever happen?

They are:

The Poethical Wager by Joan Retallack.

Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine by bpNichol and Steve McCaffery (this is out of print?! wtf, someone POD this book).

Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of Coterie by Lytle Shaw.

If I were an ambitious blogger, I would write a little something about each of these. I am not an ambitious blogger, however. So we'll see.