Saturday, March 22, 2008

Ante Room x

And open comment to Maps, Michael Stevens and Comrade Silliman...

http://jacketmagazine.com/35/iv-grenier-ivb-bernstein.shtml


I am reading this (via the link above) so I parked it here (so I can continue tomorrow) - fascinating


If Scott Hamilton or Michael Stevens see this

for Michael

There is value for you at your stage to rad as widely as possible - and this sort of stuff is invaluable...

But of course there is a wider frrame (not only Language poetry or Olson etc but NZ POETRY and many other poetries and poetics... (MAPS is right on that)

We should avoid the jargon of these guys (or any slavish following or BLIND imitation of them perhaps; BUT not reject their fascination with language - anymore than we should reject the N.Y. Poets (various schools) or such poets as say Peter Reading, McDiarmid, Heaney, David Jones, W.G. Sebald (German-English) of Britain and Smithyman and Brunton etc or Jack Ross and many others of N.Z. are building here in Aotearoa and thus we need also to look toward other cultures here and Maoritanga etc as Maps has... as he has also looked 'back" to England and (intellectuals of the thirties and the Spanish Civil War etc) E.P. Thompson, Auden, Marx, Orwell - (when is writing relevant? - should it be? do these historical/political issues matter?) - perhps lets; not just list and parrot formulae and ideas from any school and "work to rule" so so to speak... ... the endless questions... it is good the way Grenier is "questioning" (albeit in a rather rambling ultra-Olsonian way) - although I sense (I may be wrong) something a bit formulaic here )...but his word poems and "distortions" fasicinate...

Catch 22 - (great) book and statement.

For Scott - yes yes yes - we can too much preconceive and preformulate - as someone a said particularly on your Blog i.e. on Reading the Maps.

But let's keep the dialogue on going from our end even if (Sillyman?) Silliman! doesn't! Can he take this irreverance? (Libel????)

Lets be wary of political correctness - or jargon - perhaps even too much theory and a tendency to sound pompous....

The politics of Antin Silliman and Perloff are dodgy at best... (esp. as in part they came from a "Utopian" beginning via the early Soviet innovators and utilised Marxist terminology etc etc as well as French and other "idealist") philosophy.

In NZ too we have the conservative and (British derived) "realism" (but no tall from that country is to be condemned - but there is amongst some a tendency to a "closed offedness" to experimentation in many cases but there is huge body of stuff going on here in N.Z. now ... so need neither any Bloomsian "anxiety of influence" or anxiety that we "come second" to (outside NZ)

We can look in all directions now - Britain the US, NZ - everywhere... Bill Direen's 'Percutio' wil be in French, English and German I think. That is a start...

But despite reservations - Silliman's Blog continues to fascinate (as does Scott's Blog) hence this link but we are also building structures here in Kiwi land - there is for example a site called EYELIGHT!

We have looked at - accepted and or rejected the rejectors. If they cant communicate with us that is their problem.

Once I joked on the Poetics List (run by Bernstein etc) that"too many writers (in the US )) pretend they like jazz (I mostly hate or am indifferent to jazz) and also criticised the "obsession" with cabala or kabbahla (which in fact I feel is indeed a load of cobblers to this day!!) -what an hysterical fuss was made of my joke! (It and some arguments about US invasions etc led to me getting "banned: from there!!) And they wouldn't brook any criticism of Israel! No way! ... (The place is close to being a fascist country for Christ sake! The rulers of Israel, backed by the US are very much like the new Nazis...))

I have a lot of sympathy for Fischer's (a greatly understood chess genius and thinker) statements on chess and elsewhere ("Good job!" -on 9/11 and so on)) -but that can go too far also -but there is a sense of "prescriptiveness" in the whole language school that borders on 'dictation'

That said - let's not throw the baby out with the bath water... but let US read and write just how WE want to not according to any formula...

And THAT said - the link above has some pretty interesting stuff in it....

For now

Richard

PS I am pleased that Richard von Sturmer likes my "Hospital" series in my book "Conversation with a Stone"

3 comments:

Futuristics said...

NICE Blog :)

Richard said...

Thank you futuristics.

Anonymous said...

oh dear it looks like someone has had too many valiums as the writing is very foggy and incorent, stevens cant write at all, and taylor hes had too many meds to be lucid in his writing

Tony Tee Tonga