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22 May 2004. I'm going to be lazy today and just post a few examples of the kind of crap I get hit with at New-Poetry for "my attempts to apply reason to poetics." Barry Spacks quoted that phrase from a post of mine, then went on to say:
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. . . striving for brevity here, may I note that mini-management (irritably reaching after fact and reason) regarding supposed "types" of poetry offered by a self-appointed tox(ic)onomist (excuse: tax(ic)onomist) programmed
to repeated sneer and insult (did I mention repeated?) in order to herd, via mis-labeling, wide-ranging writers into little sneerable boxes (breath) is bad for poetry, bad for criticism, destructive of negative capability, and lethal to a once vital list.
So why should such categorizing undertaken?
Could it be to forward by contrast the tox(ic)onomist's own BLURBNORM poetry? Hmmm. Even the Lakers should give Bob their prize!
I call such onslaught during past months LANG-WEDGE-TERRORISM and what baffles me (and Ted, too, I think, who bravely tried to call a halt to these weapons of mass creative destruction) is the degree of polite collaboration with
an 'umble bully. I don't blame Bob, in fact. Ask Procrustes why he's such a limb-chopper and he'll likely tell you it's just what he does (how else accomplish neat box-fittings?). No, I wonder at those who seem not to realize
that there's no happy future in polite collaboration with LANG-WEDGE TERRORISTS.
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The afore-mentioned Ted had previously written in (from nowhere, as it was his first post to the group, so far as I know):
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Are we all on Candid Camera? I'm waiting for someone to interrupt this episode and assure me Bob Grumman is a hoax. Are you serious Bob? Are you bandying about the phrase "Iowa Plainlay" with a straight face? Sounds like a title for a cut-rate skin flick.
It's abundantly clear your arguing stems in an unrivalled case of sour grapes.
I am 26 year old poet with omnivorous taste; I like conservative stuff, I like edgy stuff, I like the in-between. And I see no reason why one should make one approach seem more legitimate than the other. Mainly what I care about is-- Does it move me? [Note well the me--BG] Plain and simple. Everything else is for hucksters. And for you to insinuate that a poet who's not using brackets, non-sequiturs, staccato incoherences, or mathematical equations is somehow stodgy or not history-worthy is a steaming load of donkey shit.
Yes, we know: 'Making it new' is important. Yes, great. Fine. But it's only part of it. It's much harder to actually move someone, Bob. |
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I'm afraid I responded to the latter with, "Well, not as hard as getting a person not equipped with a full set of brain-cells to think," albeit with a misspelling corrected here. I was strongly tempted to insult Mr. Spacks with equal vigor but have been warned against accurately characterizing morons at New-Poetry by its moderator, so did not.
ON THE OTHER HAND someone wrote me back-channel from New-Poetry urging me to keep "plainlay" because of "plainrune's" connotations of magick. I think he's right. So, for the time being, it's "plainlay" again.
I admit to being a pop-off artist, at times--but not against the innocent. I also admit that I have trouble keeping my resentment against the forces that rule in poetry from making me attack or seem to attack all that they admire, as I've said on these pages. It is also easy, I suppose, for someone to mistake my opinion that people who act as though knownstream poetry is all there is in spite of knowing better are morons as an attack on knownstream poetry. Knownstream poetry became knownstream because it did valuable things. It still does valuable things. I will say more about all this in due course--in my still-in-sort-of-progress essay, I hope.
For the curious, here's a bio that's at Professor Spacks's website: "Life-long freelance editor.
Nine poetry collections (most extensive: SPACKS STREET: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, from Johns Hopkins, 1982, winner of The Commonwealth Club of California's Poetry Medal; most recent: REGARDING WOMEN, WordTech Communications, winner of the Cherry Grove Collections Prize, and THE HOPE OF THE AIR, Michigan State University Press, both 2004).
N.E.A librettist grantee; many poetry readings; poems in 18 anthologies and a multitude of journals, print and cyber; two novels, stories, essays, reviews.
For poems and novels: St. Botolph's Arts Award, Boston.
Singer-songwriter, actor; Literature professor, M.I.T. (1960-1981); persistently Visiting Professor, U.C. Santa Barbara (Distinguished Professor in Humanities & Fine Arts, 1991). Senior Vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism) student of H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche.
A CD , A Private Reading, from WC Studios, contains 42 poems (plus chat) from 50 years of work"
Amusingly, I find some of his poems quite good, and like more than one of the paintings he has copies of at his site a good deal. Too bad he has so deficient a reducticeptual awareness, and/or feels so threatened by attempts to name his sacred art out of the heavens beyond understanding he thinks it occupies.
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