Tag Archives: post-avant

More on the Beats/Outsiders

I wrote last week about Outsiders and Beats. This week, Ron Silliman posted a list of styles that fall under the list of post-avant. In his defining, he includes the Beats in his long list of p-a card-carrying members. I was surprised by this, and I think it’s ludricous. According to Wikipedia, “Central elements of “Beat” culture include a rejection of mainstream American values, experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality, and an interest in Eastern spirituality.” I suppose it’s possible that the combination of these values within American literature could be considered new, but in the bigger picture of humanity this is old news.

Rejection of mainstream American values

I’m sorry if the beats want to take claim of this (typical baby boomer behavior), but it’s nothing new in American history. James Fenimore Cooper tried to fight against growing materialism (weak example, and I’m not sure it started here, but this is early 1800s). Emerson and Thoreau were disgusted with the social herd that manipulated and strangled the individual. Emily Dickinson thumbed her nose at the puritanical tradition (like it or not, that tradition is a part of American history and literature). Other authors criticized mainstream values (Twain and Fitzgerald) but didn’t necesarily make a life change to truly reject the social standards of the time. I understand how Whitman and Dickinson can be a part of the p-a clique, but does following in their tradition constitute admission into the p-a country club? Isn’t imitation and copying merely quiet, old, and dead?

Experimentation with drugs

Uh…Kubla Kahn? So Coleridge wasn’t an American, but according to Ron’s post the p-a must include writers outside the American sequence. If this were the case, again, there’s nothing new or experimental here. Unless I’m at fault for misunderstanding experimental. If experimentation isn’t limited to poetry and poetics, then Bill Clinton and Marie Curie could join the club.

Alternate forms of Sexuality

This is a silly label. It should be “Exploring all forms of sexuality” but oh well. Ancient Greece had this whole sex-religion thing going on, and Aristotle claimed that Greek drama tied deeply to religion. Therefore, can it be said that exploring sexuality was ingrained in the literature? If so, then again, there’s nothing new or envelope-busting going on with the Beats. They are merely lassoing in on a past (passed?) tradition.

Interest in Eastern Religion

Again, I’ll bring up the transcendentalists. This idea of incorporating Eastern mysticism into American literature/culture is over a hundred years old. So in the name of originality and newness, this can’t suggest being a part of the p-a crowd can it?

*

Maybe, just maybe, the synthesis of all these elements could suggest relation to the post-avant because the combination of them under the American umbrella is revolutionary. But Silliman writes, “Post-avant poetics involves literally thousands of American writers. It would be very easy for me to do nothing but focus on just this portion of English-language poetry in my blog, as tho nothing else existed. But that’s the fundamental move Quietism makes that I would challenge, so I don’t.” With this thought in mind, I don’t think one can use the justification of synthesis to label the Beats as purely post-avant.

Finally, is post-avant a lifestyle or a poetry? Silliman is a language poet, but his prose writing uses language traditionally. So is the theory of language poetry a lifestyle or a form? I would assert that it’s a form. In this same train of thought, is Beat “poetry” a lifestyle or a form? From what I’ve read, it’s a lifestyle that is recorded and replayed via literature. So the label of p-a becomes muddy and contradictory. Is this what makes the Beats p-a?

Now, I do think that the Beats revolutionized American literature, and in a sense they were pioneers (this is easy to see if we wear our “America Only” glasses that Silliman accuses the Quietists of), but in the larger scope of literary canon I see nothing truly “new.” So, despite our attempt to break out of the bubble of the old and rocket into new forms, languages, and ideas, I wonder if it is even possible for us to do. If so, is the p-a crowd simply a large historical slingshot hoping that the faster we are launched into the blur of poetry the more creative we think we are?

Shanxing Wang, Updike, and Whitman

I recently purchased Mad Science in Imperial City by Shanxing Wang. An interesting interview that helps explain some things in the collection is here. (Thanks, Joe for the links and suggestion!) I am currently working on putting together my capstone project exploring the behavior of light. Wang’s work of poems and prose definitely pushes the limits on form and originality. The voice throughout is completely scientific, and Wang, a native Chinese speaker, is free to play with the English language and word associations that sound similar but mean something different (ex: birch and bitch, he and she, is and it, is and si, etc.). This leads to a playful reading experience amongst a very formal, acedmic voice. I admire Wang for incorporating scientific attiributes to his poetry, using variable for people and places, and equations for situations. I connect with this because I see so many things as equations–not always in the sense of solving but in the sense of representations, replacements, and bridges to other ideas.

The collection starts (seemingly) as a poetic expression of reading an academic paper at a conference. The room is divided into quadraints and we see rotations in the speakers eyes and mind. Before long, we realize that this is not just about reading an academic paper, but talking about poetry, the learning of, the expression of, the interaction with, and the insuing (mis)understanding. By the time the reader concludes the first section, the question seems to be offered: What is poetry? If I stop and listen, can I hear it?

I have been mulling over this work for a month now. At first I was astonished at the newness of this type of writing–freshness. But alas, nothing is new under the sun. I came across a John Updike poem this week, with just as much scientific language and equationary wordings. “Midpoint” is divided into 5 sections, with each section beginning with an Argument. The first section is written in three line stanzas, with a rhyme scheme (loosely) of aba bcb cdc etc.  The second section is mostly photographs, and the third section hammer home the science. The first few stanzas:

All things are Atoms: Earth and Water, Air
And Fire, all, Democritus foretold.
Swiss Paracelsus, in’s alchemic lair,
Saw Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury unfold
Amid MIllenial hopes of faking Gold.
Lavoisier dethroned Phlogiston; then
Molecular Analysis made bold
Foray into the gases: Hydrogen
Stood naked in the dazzled sight of Learned Men.

The Solid State, however, kept its grains
Of Microstructure coarsely veiled until
X-ray diffraction pierced the Crystal Planes
That roofed the giddy dance, the taut Quadrille
Where Silicon and Carbon Atoms will
Link Valencies, four-figured, hand in hand
With common Ions and Rare Earths to fill
The lattices of Matter, Salt or Sand,
With tiny Excitations, quantitively grand.

Later in that same section, Updike turns to equationary language with “T=3Nk is much too neat; / A rigid Crystal’s not a fluid Gas.”

The final stanza is all about Atoms and magnetism. The fourth section dives into the complete abondonment of traditional form and uses diagrams, arrows, text pictures, indentations, and side thoughts. Much like Wang’s Mad Science! Still, Updike provides a further link into history by quoting Whitman in the final two sections.

Wang pushes the limits of questioning form and word choice, thus bringing pleasure to the p-a crowd. But the irony is it isn’t new, as Updike (and I’m sure numerous others) accomplished the same thing. I’m struck that this ties back to Whitman, a seemingly unending source of inspiring newness. So maybe it is impossible to be truly post-avante, truly new, truly original. Maybe that’s a chink in the p-a armor, but it’s a good reminder to simply write; write the best and the most creative work possible. Experiment. Grow. Create. Ah, my poetic dream!

Whitman and the Post-Avant

In Ron Silliman’s explanation of how to teach poetry, he made a comment about Whitman and the P-A movement:

Anyone – anyone! – who argues that either Dickinson or Whitman leads you to the School of Quietude (tho they won’t call it that) is a fraud. Tho it is worth noting that Dickinson & Whitman will lead you to very different parts of the post-avant spectrum.

I already linked to Joseph Hutchison’s response that this type of statement creates a “you vs. me” sentimentality where “me” is always right. I would assert that while Whitman was writing things in a completely new way (another element of P-A: newness, pushing the envelope, etc.), he does not point the attitude often presented by the P-A crowd. Whitman himself tried to imitate the long line structure of the Psalms, so that wasn’t entirely new. He wrote very openly about his sexuality, which was new in America but not necessarily in literature. He wrote about the self (not just sexuality) with complete openness, which was a bit risque for the time and culture. Maybe combining all of these into one explosion of lawn snippings is one reason for his revolutionary style of writing. However, Whitman’s poetry does not maintain or condone the attitude presented by many P-As.

Some examples:

Song of Myself

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you….

21
…
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.
…

31
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,…

44
…
I do not call one greater and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any
…

52
…
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

This doesn’t include “One Self I Sing” or “I Hear America Singing.”

Whitman was P-A in his time because of his “newness” and his controversial statements (What? Men and women can be equal???). However, time and time again his poetry suggests the unity of things, each profession, each poet, each artist playing his/her part in the greater song. There wasn’t a voice too quiet, a job too old fashioned, a poem too new that couldn’t fit into the impending symphony.

Finally, this quote from John Gallaher in the comment section of the same article:

“Ultimately the poems you or anyone will write will be the poems you (or anyone) needs.”

Well, I posit that there are some poems are not poems anyone needs, and actually block what poetry can do. I’ll go way out there and say an easy example of that would be the poetry (and theory) of Ted Kooser. The less said the better.

And from Whitman’s Song of Myself 16:

…
I resist any thing better than my own diversity,
Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place,
the palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

I wonder if this whole discussion of these parties is simply a microcosm, a separate peace.

Schools of Thought and Mine

Joseph Hutchison posted a blog about theory versus experience.  There’s actually quite a debate going on between all these different poets/voices/schools. Each is passionate and right (just ask them!). This blog probably has the best collection of links if you’re interested in the exchange.  You can see my muddled thoughts in the comment stream of the first link.  Joe asks a great question: Why describe with theory when you can embody with experience?

My initial response was to along the lines of there’s some pretty bizarre poetry, weak poetry, that exists only because some theory justifies its existence.  Everything went south from there (why don’t things ever go north?) in my attempt to justify my stance on justification. I now realize that I’m barking up the wrong tree because I lost sight of the true question: Why would anyone want to begin with theory?

So I started reading up on various poetic theories (or schools or camps or whatever)–I actually started with the Language poets, fell into the rabbit hole, drank the potion, and am now rather small and insignificant–and am quickly coming to the conclusion that theories are/can be/should a prism for the experience/image rather than the origin. For example, here is an informative article by Adam Fieled outlining some of the post-avant theory, specifically the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. Excerpts from the article that are especially worthwhile for me (emphasis mine):

Post-avant poetry is distinguished from other forms of “po-mo” by its deliberate shying away from the directly “personal” (despite a generally held respect for the New York School & Frank O’Hara’s “Personism”), as well as its engagement with “morally motivated abstraction”. That is, post-avant poets are engaged with a struggle against the “epiphanic I” (poet-as-bearer-of-universal-truth, as expressed in the “language of epiphany”) that predominates in the milieu of Centrist poetics (for example, in the work of Billy Collins, Ted Kooser or Mary Oliver).

Post-avant poets are adamant that for a poet to take a simultaneously personal and authoritative stance in a literary context is not morally defensible in our complex, relative, dynamically unpredictable world. The question of the poet’s “place” becomes urgent, and post-avant becomes a struggle for appropriate “contextual” stances. If the poet’s “I” is not to be authoritative, what is it to be?

The answer seems to be that the poet’s “I” must act as a verb, rather than a noun; the “I” must be a searching-for-a-self, rather than an assumed constant. The self is perceived as “dynamic” rather than “essential” (Hejinian, 203), a process rather than a stabilized, identifiable element. As such, post-avant poets look to poetry for a way to question the established values of socially constructed identities; poetry becomes a means whereby complacence is transmuted into a quest for moral, social, aesthetic, & personal justification.

The theory determining this method is that by taking out the “I”, the post-avant poet can develop a more comprehensive view of the human condition as it exists in the world: in politics, art, social groups, countries & histories of art, politics, social groups and so on. In addition, by eschewing the epiphanic “I” (who usually has a sermon of some kind to deliver), the post-avant poet is free to cultivate a unique relationship to language, which often takes the form of a kind of interrogation.

In this process, language itself, and the manner in which it determines our lives, becomes the focus of scrutiny.

So the P-A crowd avoids preachyness and cannot be both personal and authoritative because of all the uncertainty in the world. “I” is okay if it is searching-for-a-self (What if the poet find that self? Can he/she/it no longer be post-avant? Or would that morph into post-post-avant? Or is it simply impossible in a post-modern sort of way?), but the quest is for justification through language. All this with forced abstraction. Okay. Sounds like post-modernism to me. Which post-avant is. But if I were to be a post-avant poet, this theory seems to define my approach to poetry, or the prism through which the poem escapes the ethereal and breaks into pieces of reality.

Reginald Shepherd’s attempts to define the post-avant “school” here. He quotes, “People who follow the arts like to talk about schools; often they prefer talking about schools and trends to talking about individual poets and their poems.” I want to talk about poems and poets, but I need to understand this “school” first so I can maybe figure out the “poems” themselves. He quotes Rebecca Wolffe, that P-A writing “intentionally blurs the distinction between ‘difficulty’ and ‘accessibility,’ preferring instead to address a continuum of utterance.” Ron Silliman suggests that people can learn all sorts of things and never take sides, thus avoiding the preachiness mentioned above. So, if I have this right, the P-A camp is supposed to explore our world’s disjointedness without getting too personal, but never land on a side which I equate with a conclusion. Why bother exploring chaos merely for the sake of being chaotic? I can’t wrap my mind around this.

It appears I’m merely scratching the surface of this P-A thing, but it already doesn’t seem to be an appealing way to build a poem. I keep going back to this word prism, but Joe asked about beginnings, or origins. So what begins a P-A poem? A bunch of abstract, intentional confusions portrayed through words that may or may not represent what they mean for the sake of putting order to the chaos resulting in more chaos. I don’t even know how to start a poem with just those thoughts. But here’s my attempt using “metonymy, synecdoche and paratactical structures”:

Power
the roof
collection
paused; 3
feet of social
security cards
shredded,
died green.

I’m not sure this is much of poem in terms of changing the world, but it isn’t preachy, there is no “I”, no resolution, nothing personal, and it was fun to write. Take a guess, leave a comment–how does this poem mean?