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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Confessionalism a stupid plan?
Any encounter with Walt Whitman immediately raises concerns about the viability or legitimacy of confessional literature, which in America finds continuance in the work of Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, certain New Narrative writers here in San Francisco, and others who resist a purely imagined, fictitious literature. The common danger for poets is that the approach leads either to a private space that no one else is simply able to enter, or that the craft of writing poetry becomes in principle an act of self-catharsis, a therapeutic exorcism, a colonic irrigation of one's own subjectivity.
Michel Houllebecq takes a nicely reasoned, dialectical approach to the same problem as it affects novelists:
I don't have a particular affinity with confessional literature; my problem is that I like almost all forms of literature. I have happily wallowed in the writings of Montaigne and Rousseau, but I still feel a delicious visceral shock when reading Pascal's verdict on Montaigne, the extraordinary insolence of a whip full in the face: "The stupid plan he has to depict himself." I have also taken inordinate delight in the absolute antithesis of confessional literature that is fantasy and science fiction.
And above all I have loved, and finally made my own, the middle way, which is that of the classic novelists. Who borrow from their own lives, or the lives of others, it doesn't matter, or who invent, it's all the same, in order to create their characters. The novelists, those consummate omnivores.
(Bernard Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq, Miriam Frendo, and Frank Wynne. Public enemies: dueling writers take on each other and the world. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011, p 28.)
Michel Houllebecq takes a nicely reasoned, dialectical approach to the same problem as it affects novelists:
I don't have a particular affinity with confessional literature; my problem is that I like almost all forms of literature. I have happily wallowed in the writings of Montaigne and Rousseau, but I still feel a delicious visceral shock when reading Pascal's verdict on Montaigne, the extraordinary insolence of a whip full in the face: "The stupid plan he has to depict himself." I have also taken inordinate delight in the absolute antithesis of confessional literature that is fantasy and science fiction.
And above all I have loved, and finally made my own, the middle way, which is that of the classic novelists. Who borrow from their own lives, or the lives of others, it doesn't matter, or who invent, it's all the same, in order to create their characters. The novelists, those consummate omnivores.
(Bernard Henri Lévy, Michel Houellebecq, Miriam Frendo, and Frank Wynne. Public enemies: dueling writers take on each other and the world. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011, p 28.)
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Whose Voice? Which vision?
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A recent Guardian article which lists the "Ten Best American Poems" puts Walt Whitman's Song of Myself at number one, the important normative criteria for such an evaluation being durability and the ability to "shift the course of poetry in the United States."
I could see durability, in the sense of an ongoing fascination with remarkable poems from the past, as an important standard, but the idea of an established "course of poetry" seems much more problematic. American poetry is better described as a procession of eccentric events, rather than an adherence to poetic forms or schools in the sense of European programs such as symbolism, surrealism, early modernism, and others operative in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If American poetry has ever followed an established track, it certainly isn't obvious to me.
Critics outside the U.S. continually try to find some causality principle or set of defining ideas to come to terms with American poetry. The Guardian reviewer suggests that Song of Myself "reinvents American poetry in... peerless self-performance," which is "keyed to the energy and rhythms of a young nation waking to its own voice and vision."
Such twaddle might be composed by somebody on the outside looking in, who tries to find meaning in a situation which was inherently unstable, not to say chaotic, to begin with. The persistent confusion in a country split apart in the nineteenth century by warfare and the invasion of hordes of mostly non-English-speaking immigrants was not the environment capable of providing the degree of social coherence necessary to engender a unitary national "voice and vision." You need a national history to legitimize such proclamations, and in Whitman's time there was little enough of that around.
Although I'd probably agree to placing him at the top of the nineteenth-century poetical ant-heap, I can never forget how incredibly problematic Whitman is. His admirers have seen him as a visionary pioneer, like William Blake opening the gates to cosmic consciousness (as Richard Bucke defined it). But isn't this hyper-inflation of the ego an advanced case of puerile narcissism? And all the gush about loving everything and everybody, isn't it an early species of New Age intellectual dissipation?
And this adoring strangle-hold Whitman apparently has upon the whole universe, isn't it in reality some kind of inverted power-grab? Whitman as the self-imagined metaphysical Übermensch, an uneducated American Nietzsche?
In any event, surely what rests behind the endless attempts at self-assertion and self-definition is his own demand for recognition as a gay person -- in an era when nobody had any idea of what being gay meant, at least conceptually. How different from the approach taken by Herman Melville, the other great gay writer of the 19th century, who quietly and perceptively analyzed the homoerotic tensions and their transformation into outright sadism among a sailing crew in a work like Billy Budd. No cosmic pretensions here, just the authorial craftsman going about his business.
So I tend to think of Walt Whitman as a metaphysical fraudster, at times big-hearted enough, but not to be taken at face-value, at least by me. It seems indicative that no other writer of his century took such pains to have himself photographed as carefully as he did. The engraving above was made from a whole row of original photos taken along with many others in Whitman's old age, the right one selected for optimum effect. All the familiar iconic pictures of the poet seem to have been the result of similarly careful contemplation, the images of an artist who truly couldn't stop singing about himself.
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A recent Guardian article which lists the "Ten Best American Poems" puts Walt Whitman's Song of Myself at number one, the important normative criteria for such an evaluation being durability and the ability to "shift the course of poetry in the United States."
I could see durability, in the sense of an ongoing fascination with remarkable poems from the past, as an important standard, but the idea of an established "course of poetry" seems much more problematic. American poetry is better described as a procession of eccentric events, rather than an adherence to poetic forms or schools in the sense of European programs such as symbolism, surrealism, early modernism, and others operative in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If American poetry has ever followed an established track, it certainly isn't obvious to me.
Critics outside the U.S. continually try to find some causality principle or set of defining ideas to come to terms with American poetry. The Guardian reviewer suggests that Song of Myself "reinvents American poetry in... peerless self-performance," which is "keyed to the energy and rhythms of a young nation waking to its own voice and vision."
Such twaddle might be composed by somebody on the outside looking in, who tries to find meaning in a situation which was inherently unstable, not to say chaotic, to begin with. The persistent confusion in a country split apart in the nineteenth century by warfare and the invasion of hordes of mostly non-English-speaking immigrants was not the environment capable of providing the degree of social coherence necessary to engender a unitary national "voice and vision." You need a national history to legitimize such proclamations, and in Whitman's time there was little enough of that around.
Although I'd probably agree to placing him at the top of the nineteenth-century poetical ant-heap, I can never forget how incredibly problematic Whitman is. His admirers have seen him as a visionary pioneer, like William Blake opening the gates to cosmic consciousness (as Richard Bucke defined it). But isn't this hyper-inflation of the ego an advanced case of puerile narcissism? And all the gush about loving everything and everybody, isn't it an early species of New Age intellectual dissipation?
And this adoring strangle-hold Whitman apparently has upon the whole universe, isn't it in reality some kind of inverted power-grab? Whitman as the self-imagined metaphysical Übermensch, an uneducated American Nietzsche?
In any event, surely what rests behind the endless attempts at self-assertion and self-definition is his own demand for recognition as a gay person -- in an era when nobody had any idea of what being gay meant, at least conceptually. How different from the approach taken by Herman Melville, the other great gay writer of the 19th century, who quietly and perceptively analyzed the homoerotic tensions and their transformation into outright sadism among a sailing crew in a work like Billy Budd. No cosmic pretensions here, just the authorial craftsman going about his business.
So I tend to think of Walt Whitman as a metaphysical fraudster, at times big-hearted enough, but not to be taken at face-value, at least by me. It seems indicative that no other writer of his century took such pains to have himself photographed as carefully as he did. The engraving above was made from a whole row of original photos taken along with many others in Whitman's old age, the right one selected for optimum effect. All the familiar iconic pictures of the poet seem to have been the result of similarly careful contemplation, the images of an artist who truly couldn't stop singing about himself.
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Monday, March 21, 2011
A prayer of Henry the Sixth
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Copy of a paper in the hand-writing of Dr. Harbin, librarian to 1st and 2nd Viscounts Weymouth: "In an old MS. Missal printed (sic) * in 8vo., in the reign of K. Henri VIII., p. 48. are two Latin Short Prayers made by K. Henri VI. as is affirmed in an index to the said book, p. l55,o. at ye end of y° said Missal. (Notes and queries, Oxford Univ Press, June 1856).
Domine Jesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti et praeordinasti ad hoc, quod sum, tu scis quid de me facere vis: fac de me secundum voluntatem tuam cum misericordia.
Lord Jesus Christ, you have created me, redeemed me and destined me to that which now I am. You know what you will do with me: do with me then according to your will and your mercy.
The choral setting is by Henry Ley, Precentor at Eton College 1926-1945.
thanks: paul ellison
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Sunday, March 20, 2011
Nike of Ephesos
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This Nike from the Artemis Temple in Ephesos is the most complete surviving remnant of at least 36 similar pieces, according to ancient authors. The temple was once one of the largest anywhere, magnificently adorned with relief sculpture and housing the cult statue of Artemis / Diana of the Ephesians. The relief of Nike, goddess of victory, was taken to the British Museum in London upon its discovery in 1869, where it remains today.
thanks flickruser a.m. thomson. click to embiggen.
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Saturday, March 19, 2011
Sebastian Quill -- Fall, 1970
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During my convalescence the past several weeks I've managed to finish scanning and posting the first issue of Sebastian Quill, San Francisco's first explicity gay-male literary magazine which I edited 1970-73. I've added an intro which explains how the publication originated in the underground spirit of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
I'll post the subsequent issues, which featured writing by Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Robert Glück, Bruce Boone, Paul Mariah and Richard Tagett, when I find the time. If the text seems a little fuzzy, it's because what you're looking at is essentially a series of low-resolution photographs of the original pages.
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During my convalescence the past several weeks I've managed to finish scanning and posting the first issue of Sebastian Quill, San Francisco's first explicity gay-male literary magazine which I edited 1970-73. I've added an intro which explains how the publication originated in the underground spirit of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
I'll post the subsequent issues, which featured writing by Allen Ginsberg, Thom Gunn, Robert Glück, Bruce Boone, Paul Mariah and Richard Tagett, when I find the time. If the text seems a little fuzzy, it's because what you're looking at is essentially a series of low-resolution photographs of the original pages.
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Here we are
Rich Tagett sent me a new poem with a final stanza that stabs like a dagger. Unfortunately it didn't make it into his collection Demodulating Angel published earlier this month.
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Monday, March 14, 2011
Signs and wonders
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I’ve been homebound for the past five weeks, recuperating from a badly sprained knee. The constant ingestion of pain-killers, as I discovered, makes it hard to focus on reading and writing, but happily I was able to make good progress with my guitar-playing and with copy-editing two more books queued for publication later this year.
The long hours of convalescence made me much more aware of current events, culminating with last week’s parade of horrors. In the space of only six days,
1. Wisconsin Republicans revoked collective bargaining for public employees—especially infuriating to me personally, since I worked as an AFSCME shop steward for three years.
2. By midweek it appeared that Colonel Shitface Qaddafi had gained control over the rebels in Libya, while the so-called international community continued to dither about intervening, in the usual manner of Rwanda, Darfur and Somalia.
3. McCarthy-style Congressional hearings began with much publicity to investigate the risk of attack by domestic Islamic radicals, thus likely creating many more of them and ignoring the more cogent issue of how our own homegrown, non-Islamic paranoid schizophrenics like McVeigh or Gestedner are able to obtain explosives and automatic rifles as easily as they do.
4. By the end of the week Japan had been devastated by a horrendous tsunami and by a row of incipient nuclear meltdowns, while just yesterday
5. A ten-car train derailed near the Concord BART Station, because, as it was first reported, three or four wheels had fallen off one of the coaches.
In short this was one of the worst weeks in recent history, making one acutely aware how good we have it living our comfy, computer-driven lives here in San Francisco.
I’ve also decided to add a couple more gallons of bottled water to my earthquake emergency supply kit.
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Sunday, March 13, 2011
Demodulating Angel has arrived!
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Ithuriel's Spear is delighted to announce the publication of San Francisco poet Richard Tagett's DEMODULATING ANGEL: Selected Poems 1960-2010.
A preview of Rich's book with a sampling of the poems can be viewed at the Ithuriel's Spear website, and there is even more information to be found here at Small Press Distribution in Berkeley.
The book launch celebration will be held at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco on the 20th of April at 7 p.m.
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Monday, March 7, 2011
The America-is-not-broke speech
Michael Moore's great speech in Madison last weekend has been circulating like wildfire around the Internet. The official version of it, slightly edited and with the original video, appears on his own website at: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/america-is-not-broke.
It reminds me strongly of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and I hope it meets with a similar reception.
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It reminds me strongly of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and I hope it meets with a similar reception.
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Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Suze Rotolo's art books
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susan rotolo: august (2005) -- medialiagallery, nyc
Thanks to a post on Silliman’s Blog today, I found my way to a display of Suze Rotolo’s beautiful art books at a New York gallery. They are self-enclosed little worlds, and they remind of the movie Prospero's Books.
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Talking about Jesus with Little Richard
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I basically detest poems that are longer than a dozen lines or so, but I am always willing to make an exception for David Kirby, whose brilliant poem about Little Richard and Jesus showed up this morning on Poetry Today.
Kirby’s style of writing wittily combines stand-up comedy with real insight and irresistible imagery, for example in his genial and totally accurate description of Little Richard’s onstage appearance:
in his flowing tresses and spangled blue suit,
he looks like a sea god who has been clipped by a passing
motorboat
Little Richard’s place in 1950’s rock history is assured because his Good-Golly-Miss-Molly boogie style assaulted the final limits of musical tolerability, simultaneously wedded as it was to the crazy vanity of his own semi-hysterical presence.
Kirby’s discursive poem however eventually turns eerily serious, probably reflecting Little Richard’s career as a born-again Christian preacher, and the poem ends with personal ruminations on dying in the midnight hour—“When the Lord of Night holds out his claw.”
I can't imagine when my turn comes that I will be thinking about Little Richard, but, well, I suppose there are less stimulating possibilities.
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I basically detest poems that are longer than a dozen lines or so, but I am always willing to make an exception for David Kirby, whose brilliant poem about Little Richard and Jesus showed up this morning on Poetry Today.
Kirby’s style of writing wittily combines stand-up comedy with real insight and irresistible imagery, for example in his genial and totally accurate description of Little Richard’s onstage appearance:
in his flowing tresses and spangled blue suit,
he looks like a sea god who has been clipped by a passing
motorboat
Little Richard’s place in 1950’s rock history is assured because his Good-Golly-Miss-Molly boogie style assaulted the final limits of musical tolerability, simultaneously wedded as it was to the crazy vanity of his own semi-hysterical presence.
Kirby’s discursive poem however eventually turns eerily serious, probably reflecting Little Richard’s career as a born-again Christian preacher, and the poem ends with personal ruminations on dying in the midnight hour—“When the Lord of Night holds out his claw.”
I can't imagine when my turn comes that I will be thinking about Little Richard, but, well, I suppose there are less stimulating possibilities.
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