Questions [slightly edited] for Ron Silliman (and everyone else too)
Unedited questions are here.
1. What is your sense of the poetic tradition?
A. There’s no poetic tradition apart from the ones we make for ourselves. For example, mine includes much, much more than just poetry. Doesn’t yours? I’m sure it’s Yes.
B. The Poetic Tradition is what a gang of white males have been telling us it is, for a century or two, and the fucking demagogic toadies can keep it, for all we care, right?
How far back does your particular historical sense range?
On a great day, thirteen billion years, give or take. On a good day, Altamira. On a so-so day, The Pyramid Texts. On a bad day, I take a walk or lie in front of the TV and get pissed off or something.
What defines your tradition?
C. The sum total of all of my experiences as a creature on this planet.
Nationality; language; aesthetic posture?
No; no; how dare you!
What aspect of your poetic idiolect [...] most distinguishes you from your closest poetic collaborators?
Well, this question is sort of lost on me, because I have no specific poetic idiolect. I translate constantly, creatively and usually quite well, so I have to be more or less comfortable in a wide variety of poetic idiolects. Speaking very realistically, I’d have to say that my very closest poetic collaborators are all Brasilian or Portuguese. Some of them are dead. That’s gotta be some kind of distinction...
2. How would you define contemporary poetic practice?
Contemporary poetic practice is a desperate yearning for social relevance.
How does this practice relate to the tradition[s] defined above?
A and C: Via powerful ethics in the face of massive contradictions, a raging thirst for justice, and class struggle waged in ordinary creaturely warmth and solidarity. Struggling to comprehend the dialectic can’t hurt!
B: Even when contemporary poetic practice doesn’t yearn desperately for social relevance, it doesn’t really know that it doesn’t, but still it must try to convince us that it really knows what it’s not doing.
Does poetry of the “past” (however you define the past for these purposes) occupy a different corner of your mind?
My mind is a continuum. It has no corners. Richard Crashaw, Lezama Lima and Josely Vianna Baptista are three of my many contemporaries.
3. Whom, among poets you most admire, do you understand least?
William Blake.
Wh[o] is hindering a greater understanding of this poet?
Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
4. Are we over-invested in poetic “hero worship”?
Oh, most assuredly!
Is it necessary to have a poetic “pantheon”?
Oh, most assuredly not!
How does the poetic pantheon relate to the notion of an academic “canon”?
Very, very closely.
Are they mirror opposites, rivals?
They are unimaginably powerful, white, middle-aged twin brothers living in a neighborhood so exclusive that we can’t see it when we walk right through it every second of every day of our lives.
5. Is “total absorption in poetry” benign?
“Total absorption in poetry” is possible only for those lucky few who are economically well-off enough to able to live a life totally absorbed in poetry; or for the even fewer of us who are willing to live and die in poverty for the sake of art.
For now, all the rest of us have to make a living and try to lead decent lives, as best we can, in the shadow of a huge, quasi-invisible mountain of sterilized bullshit.
How about “poetry as a way of life”?
Poetry is a part of the lives of many, many human beings all over the world. To paraphrase Paulo Leminski, poetry serves life, not poetry. To paraphrase him again, some of the best poets never write a single poem.
6. Do you see poetry as a part of a larger “literature,” or is poetry itself the more capacious category?
It all depends on who’s writing. A lot of poetry is pretty stunted, if you ask me.
7. Are humor, irony, and wit (in whatever combination) a sine qua non?
First things first.
1. Being into some reality show or another, while pretending you’re not really into it, or vice versa, is not exactly deep irony.
2. Mina Loy would be just another talented, overwrought poet without her humor, irony and wit. As she is, how can we do anything else but love the elegant middle finger she waves in our faces (yes, comrade S. of the great and holie banner!)?
Or conversely, is humor a defense mechanism that more often than not protects us from what we really want to say?
A sense of humor is essential to my life. Especially a sense of humor about my own myriad and ludicrous failings. Rabelais said it really well.
“Coolness” is the ultimate useless defense mechanism. Pray you, avoid it.
8. Is the poem the thing, or the larger poetic project?
“Project” is a such a technocratic, corporate-sounding word. How about we call it “work” and take it as a given that we mean “labor”? Labor is very important. All creatures need to work. It all comes down to labor.
9. What is the single most significant thing anyone has ever said about poetry?
“Writing poetry is less important than cleaning your own toilet”. I said that, but I doubt I said it first: it’s just too true.
10. Which of these questions asks you to define yourself along lines of division not of your own making, in the most irksome way?
Most of them, though none in an irksome way.
How close do these questions come to the way in which you habitually think about poetry?
Not very close at all.
What other question would you add to this list?
Can we stop pretending that our poetry doesn’t serve the ruling class and start talking about how it does?
1. What is your sense of the poetic tradition?
A. There’s no poetic tradition apart from the ones we make for ourselves. For example, mine includes much, much more than just poetry. Doesn’t yours? I’m sure it’s Yes.
B. The Poetic Tradition is what a gang of white males have been telling us it is, for a century or two, and the fucking demagogic toadies can keep it, for all we care, right?
How far back does your particular historical sense range?
On a great day, thirteen billion years, give or take. On a good day, Altamira. On a so-so day, The Pyramid Texts. On a bad day, I take a walk or lie in front of the TV and get pissed off or something.
What defines your tradition?
C. The sum total of all of my experiences as a creature on this planet.
Nationality; language; aesthetic posture?
No; no; how dare you!
What aspect of your poetic idiolect [...] most distinguishes you from your closest poetic collaborators?
Well, this question is sort of lost on me, because I have no specific poetic idiolect. I translate constantly, creatively and usually quite well, so I have to be more or less comfortable in a wide variety of poetic idiolects. Speaking very realistically, I’d have to say that my very closest poetic collaborators are all Brasilian or Portuguese. Some of them are dead. That’s gotta be some kind of distinction...
2. How would you define contemporary poetic practice?
Contemporary poetic practice is a desperate yearning for social relevance.
How does this practice relate to the tradition[s] defined above?
A and C: Via powerful ethics in the face of massive contradictions, a raging thirst for justice, and class struggle waged in ordinary creaturely warmth and solidarity. Struggling to comprehend the dialectic can’t hurt!
B: Even when contemporary poetic practice doesn’t yearn desperately for social relevance, it doesn’t really know that it doesn’t, but still it must try to convince us that it really knows what it’s not doing.
Does poetry of the “past” (however you define the past for these purposes) occupy a different corner of your mind?
My mind is a continuum. It has no corners. Richard Crashaw, Lezama Lima and Josely Vianna Baptista are three of my many contemporaries.
3. Whom, among poets you most admire, do you understand least?
William Blake.
Wh[o] is hindering a greater understanding of this poet?
Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manly Hopkins.
4. Are we over-invested in poetic “hero worship”?
Oh, most assuredly!
Is it necessary to have a poetic “pantheon”?
Oh, most assuredly not!
How does the poetic pantheon relate to the notion of an academic “canon”?
Very, very closely.
Are they mirror opposites, rivals?
They are unimaginably powerful, white, middle-aged twin brothers living in a neighborhood so exclusive that we can’t see it when we walk right through it every second of every day of our lives.
5. Is “total absorption in poetry” benign?
“Total absorption in poetry” is possible only for those lucky few who are economically well-off enough to able to live a life totally absorbed in poetry; or for the even fewer of us who are willing to live and die in poverty for the sake of art.
For now, all the rest of us have to make a living and try to lead decent lives, as best we can, in the shadow of a huge, quasi-invisible mountain of sterilized bullshit.
How about “poetry as a way of life”?
Poetry is a part of the lives of many, many human beings all over the world. To paraphrase Paulo Leminski, poetry serves life, not poetry. To paraphrase him again, some of the best poets never write a single poem.
6. Do you see poetry as a part of a larger “literature,” or is poetry itself the more capacious category?
It all depends on who’s writing. A lot of poetry is pretty stunted, if you ask me.
7. Are humor, irony, and wit (in whatever combination) a sine qua non?
First things first.
1. Being into some reality show or another, while pretending you’re not really into it, or vice versa, is not exactly deep irony.
2. Mina Loy would be just another talented, overwrought poet without her humor, irony and wit. As she is, how can we do anything else but love the elegant middle finger she waves in our faces (yes, comrade S. of the great and holie banner!)?
Or conversely, is humor a defense mechanism that more often than not protects us from what we really want to say?
A sense of humor is essential to my life. Especially a sense of humor about my own myriad and ludicrous failings. Rabelais said it really well.
“Coolness” is the ultimate useless defense mechanism. Pray you, avoid it.
8. Is the poem the thing, or the larger poetic project?
“Project” is a such a technocratic, corporate-sounding word. How about we call it “work” and take it as a given that we mean “labor”? Labor is very important. All creatures need to work. It all comes down to labor.
9. What is the single most significant thing anyone has ever said about poetry?
“Writing poetry is less important than cleaning your own toilet”. I said that, but I doubt I said it first: it’s just too true.
10. Which of these questions asks you to define yourself along lines of division not of your own making, in the most irksome way?
Most of them, though none in an irksome way.
How close do these questions come to the way in which you habitually think about poetry?
Not very close at all.
What other question would you add to this list?
Can we stop pretending that our poetry doesn’t serve the ruling class and start talking about how it does?
posted by BN-B at 7:52 PM
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