I'd like to thank John Bloomberg-Rissman for agreeing to talk to me about 'conceptual poetry' via Google+ 'hangout'. Below is the YouTube video of our discussion. I would like to post 'hangout' discussions from time to time. If the "medium is the message" there can be no doubt that Net technology conditions the very terms (and tone) of poetry discussion. It's quite remarkable to me that this two-person symposium could never have happened in the "paper" regime where space, means of production and meaning itself are governed by the powerful few.
The YouTube video can also be seen here.
47 comments:
Why is conceptual writing continually referred to as "gibberish", a kind of word rubble? You don't seem to have read much - if any - conceptual writing per se, and seem to be confusing it with language poetry. Whereas Language Poetry worked with disjunction, fragmentation, etc, Conceptual writing does NOT, in the main, blast apart syntax. Rather, it appropriates texts whole. See Place's "Statement of Facts"and Goldsmith's "Seven American Deaths and Disasters", to pick just two characteristic examples. Also, the whole idea that this work is "swallowed up by capital" is mistaken. These works engage with, and comment on/critique, the machinations of capital by MIRRORING IT DIRECTLY. For many of these works, that is the whole point. On this topic, you should really read Place and Fitterman's "Notes on Conceptualisms." Also have a problem with the lyric as some kind of fundamental poetry baseline. I like the way John tries to historicise it, because lyric poetry IS an historical form, and is only one way, among many others, of 'doing' poetry. Satire and epic aren't personal either, but would you dismiss them in the same way that you do conceptual poetry?
Mark,
thank you for your comment. I have read my fair share of "conceptual writing" and do, in fact, agree that conceptual writing "per se" and language poetry are different. Indeed. I'm perhaps making the claim--which you'll dislike even more--that in their own ways of grabbing the "market share" of poetry publicity they've almost become one and the same thing, with perhaps the "conceptual poets" forming an even more radical "post-avant" hybrid of contemporary avant-garde in general. I can't say for sure because there are so many types of experimental poetries out there.
Conceptual writing has only been around for about 15 years anyways. It hasn't really had a chance to grow up. I mean, let's face it: they're all in a sense doing the same thing (everybody from Steve McCaffery to derek beaulieu to Goldsmith to Dworkin to Susan Steudel, etc) and in Canada usually on the taxpayers' dime. I also will characterize it in general as primarily an academic activity: fostered, published and promoted by mainly academic communities.
My Negri-Hardt claim that "global capitalism" has swallowed culture whole stands. No better example exists of this (in Canada) than the Bok-Starnino "cage match" or perhaps even the almost laughable interdisciplinary model of current writings in which poets pretend to be biogeneticists.
Conceptual poetry and language poetry are very different things. You say they both "grab the market share of poetry publicity" but, even accepting this, it doesn't follow from this that they are "one and the same thing." They're both good a publicity is all. And as John points out, its a mistake to judge or evaluate something on the basis of publicity and hype alone.
I must also take issue with the idea that conceptual poets are all "doing the same thing." This is just not the case. Place's appropriations of her own legal documents treating violent sex offenders are radically different from Bok's constraint-based, playful oulipo inspired work, for instance. Or again, the chiseled, punning word-games and anagrams in Dworkin's "Motes" are vastly different to, say, a project like Goldsmith's mammoth "Day", where he (in)famously reproduced a copy the the NY Times. Formally and theorically, these works are very, very different. Indeed, there is much debate among the conceptualists themselves - they all have a different view about what exactly it is they are doing. Again, it seems you haven't read much conceptual writing.
As for the whole academia thing: not all conceptual writers are academics. Some are, some aren't. I doen't see what the big deal is. Would the poetry somehow be more "vital" or "real" or "authentic" if it was written by mechanics and plumbers? In todays world, poetry is utterly marginalized out of existence; it only really lives on in academia. Besides, what's wrong with an overtly intellectual style of writing?
Mark,
your point's well taken but I'm not convinced that anything a Bok or beaulieu or Place does is uniquely different: each is a variation on a common conceptualist project to make art subserve mad technique. I'd rather call these types of visual art, perhaps,packaged for distribution and sale. Poets and marketing executives have a lot in common.
Ed,
I'd love a return back to the days when art was being bought as 'art'. It was precisely against that 'bourgeois' ideal of art that a Duchamp railed in his day. There was something to talk about. These days 'art' is bought the way foreign currencies are traded: as a measurement really of one single governing World-Capital. Conceptual poetry has been reduced to logo-brand dynamics.
"You pays your money and you takes your picks" (Huxley??)
Hi Conrad,
I must reiterate that the conceptual writers are all engaged in very, very different projects. I gave some specific examples to demonstrate this (which you have not yet addressed), and many more could be provided. You seem to want to lump all conceptual projects together by alluding vaguely to them in extremely broad and generalized terms - that is, they all, apparently, try to make art "subserve mad technique." This is just too abstract and generalized, and again, doesn't describe all - or even most - conceptual works. Place's reproductions of her own legal documents aren't born from "mad technique", neither is Dworkin's minimalist, lyrical "Motes". It seems you wrongly conflate conceptual writing as a whole with Bok's admittedly extreme "Xenotext Experiment", without actually bothering to read the main works of the genre. (The works I mentioned, moreover, have little, if anything, in common with visual art).
You say, negatively, that "Conceptual poetry has been reduced to logo-brand dynamics." YES. That is the whole point of some of these works!! Again, to reiterate, they critique, and comment on, the machinations of capital by mirroring it directly, deliberately turning their works in allegories of the commodification process. Place and Fitterman's book "Notes on Conceptualisms" (which you really should read if you are going to discuss CP) address precisely this tactic. To see the "logo-brand dynamics" of some conceptual writing as a failing, as some kind of naive capitulation to capital, is to miss the point entirely.
Mark,
as I've said in other posts, Capitalism and fringe art cultures are no longer (as they used to be) mutually hostile ideologies since the materials, methodology & presentation of work have been assimilated to the complex networks of global capital. And if they're not, the avant-garde longer have a right to that title. In my view, the complete homogenization of global capital characterizes artistic newness as much as it does the fashion industry & social media. In fact, the latter have taken almost the same trajectories as the experimentalist poetries. If you grant me this (and it seems you do), your claim of the uniqueness of production and presentation of work falls by the wayside.
It's all the same project: only the materials, means and conceptual parameters are different (whether they be legal documents, lyrical "Motes", the NY Times) The language of art & fashion are practically indistinguishable. The illusion of both individualism & choice don't try to disguise, as they used to, the real retail market forces that underlie their success: both buyer and store actually revel in them & have become one and the same "replicable" entity.
Rob Horning has labelled 'post-brands'any artifacts that follow the "protocols of new capitalism—flexibility, globalization, technology-enabled logistical micromanaging, consumer co-creation". Any of the poets you've listed fall nicely under this rubric.
Conrad, I'm coming late to this discussion. (Your email arrived two days after you sent it! Where did it go?) But let me respond indirectly by responding to Mark.
(1) "[Conceptual writings] engage with, and comment on/critique, the machinations of capital by MIRRORING IT DIRECTLY."
But a mirror does not engage or comment or critique. It merely reflects. Appropriation is no more nor less than the positioning of a mirror. It is a gesture of imaginative exhaustion and really tells us nothing of value. Porchia: "The eye is not an eye because you see it; it is an eye because it sees you."
(2) "Satire and epic aren't personal." True epics aren't created by individuals; they flow from many hands over long periods of time. They are personal but collective. And satire? Nothing is more personal than satire! Do you really think Swift would have written "A Modest Proposal" if he had not been Irish?
(3) "Would the poetry somehow be more 'vital' or 'real' or 'authentic' if it was written by mechanics and plumbers? In todays [sic] world, poetry is utterly marginalized out of existence; it only really lives on in academia."
Only in academia could something as vapid as conceptual writing be taken seriously. Would poetry be more vital, real, and authentic if it came from outside academia? Not necessarily. And all writing done within academia isn't vapid. But what academia has done is to embrace the postmodern distrust of the very concept of value. (Not just in the arts, either. Take a look at Christopher Beckwith's introduction to his excellent history Empires of the Silk Road, where he rightly attacks the impact modernism/postmodernism in the History field. Needless to say, he doesn't argue that history should be written by plumbers.) The question is whether the notion that poetry should engage the lives and concerns of the larger public is a value worth preserving.
Joseph,
it seems Google+ 'hangout' is an imperfect medium: I'm sorry you received the invitation two days later. I'm sure it was just a glitch. We'll try it again soon and continue the discussion with John and others.
Thank you for posting comments in response to Mark's very interesting observations. Since I'm entirely in your corner, I'll let Mark respond to them.
Thanks for understanding, Conrad. I've had some back and forth with Google, and evidently the problem may come down to the fact that I don't have Gmail integrated into my Apple Mail. I've done that now, so Gmail shows up with my other mail accounts. Hopefully that will soft the problem in the future!
Ahhh, Apple
I might have known:)) I'm a Google guy and will soon be the proud owner of Chromebook. There will be more 'hangouts'. You know, it's one thing to write it down but conversation 'on air' with a real person is a whole different experience. I'll even go so far as to say that John could only have presented a more favourable view (to me) of Goldsmith because of the medium in which it was done. Tone, voice pitch, pacing and even facial expression can be great conveyors of thought.
First, I'll reply to Conrad.
While I appreciate your comment, it does not, in fact, address what I said, but rather merely offers some rather broad generalizations concerning capital, which I agree with. I understand, of course, that capital has colonized all areas of life. Of course. Now, some conceptual poetry (not all) critiques and questions the commodification process by offering itself up as an allegory of this process. (This is particularly pronounced in the work of Vanessa Place). Of course everything is ineluctably implicated in the machinations of capital (including traditional lyric poetry). Its this situation that much conceptual writing addresses. This is pretty basic stuff to be honest. To reiterate, conceptual writing does not unwittingly or naively capitulate to capital, but works to critique and comment on it from within. To not understand this is to completey misunderstand a pretty basic tactic of conceptual writing.
As for your repeated assertion (made without concrete examples or having actually read any conceptual writing at all), that all conceptual writing is "doing the same thing" - this is manifestly wrong. Again, you are willfully trying to lump all conceptual projects together by alluding vaguely to them in extremely broad and generalized terms. You write that "It's all the same project: only the materials, means and conceptual parameters are different". OK, so the materials are different. The means are different. And the conceptual parameters are different. But they are all the same??!! No. The different means, materials, and conceptual parameters make different conceptual projects, er, DIFFERENT projects. Your claim, made without having read any conceptual writing and with no clear idea about what it is, lacks any insight or nuance. It's so abstract, superficial, and generalized as to be virtually meaningless.
Hi Joseph,
1.) Conceptual writing is often allegorical writing that reflects the culture industry and the machinations of capital from within (for what other position is there?). Through acts of mirroring, to serves to highlight, and cordone off for comment/critique, proccesses of commodification. Much conceptual writing pretty obviously critiques and comments on capital. This is pretty basic stuff.
2.) I'm not really interested in getting into a big discussion about what satire and epic are. My point was simply that the lyric is an historical form, and that there are, and always have been, a wide range of ways to "do" poetry. Conceptual writing is one contemporary form.
3.) Like I said, I don't understand the big deal about academia. Some conceptual writers are academics, many aren't. And academia doesn't universally worship conceptual writing! That's ridiculous. The vast, vast, majority of courses and poetry workshops still churn out the same old traditional curriculum. Conceptual writing is tiny (albeit its seems a big fish because poetry is, in the end, such a small pond.)
PS.
To avoid any confusion, and to move the discussion fuitfully forward, could you both please tell me exactly which conceptual works you have read? That way we can ground the discssion in some concrete examples.
Mark,
your assertion that I haven't read enough conceptual poetry is getting tiresome. The ad hominems are growing stale. Let's dispel that myth right now. Though I don't read 'conceptual poetry' every day and haven't lately--and I'm not sure either what 'conceptual poetry' really means or whether any of the authors listed below are 'conceptual poets'except by some editorial fiat-- these are some authors (and their works), by no means exhaustive, I've read in the past and occasionally dip into today when I'm confronted by my critics: Bok, beaulieu, Huth,Gary Barwin, Bloomberg-Rissman, Coolidge, Goldsmith, Place, Steve Mccaffery (Toronto Research Group),bpNichol of the "Martyrology" Bergval, Mac Low, Saroyan, and the Kootenay stable of writers like Kathryn MacLeod, Deanna Ferguson with a smattering of Dada, Oulipo, Fluxus and poetry generated from Google web crawlers; some UbuWeb stuff back in the day; and how about some early TISH, the godfathers of the avant-garde in Canada; and L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets Silliman, Watten; and the early "media poetics" (the people who were the first to pierce the conceptual borders (in media and emergent Net technologies) like Jim Rosenberg, Stephanie Strickland, John Cayley; and hey! what about the real avant gardists Tzara, Apollinaire, Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein....blah blah blah
Now let's a little Marxist scaffolding to all of this and look at two pivotal books (which I recommend you read: "Empire" by Hardt and Negri and "The End of History and the Last Man" by Francis Fukuyama)from which I've derived my view that global capitalism has obliterated even the old 'base' and 'superstructure' distinctions (within which it was possible to offer art as mirroring bourgeois capitalist sensibilities)and subjected EVERYTHING to a new Capital regime from which nothing escapes (not even so-called post-avant theory)"Productive forces merge" Hardt and Negri say "with relations of production...in the brains, bodies and cooperation of productive subjects."And throw in a little Jameson while you're at it.
Now, Mark, put the two together and hey presto! there I am. If you'd like to work at a particular work, and take the conversation from there, name your work: perhaps we can thrash it out in a 'hangout'.
Cheers!
Mark,
how about beaulieu's "How to Write"??
And, Mark, do you now see why Goldsmith, in his latest ventureis really a servant of the new global Empire?
Thanks to Joseph for making us aware of this latest conceptualist idiocy.
Hi Conrad,
OK, so the list you provided clears one thing up: whereas I’m actually talking about conceptual writing per se, (by which I mean the self-described, emergent 21st century poetry movement spearheaded by people like Robert Fitterman, Vanessa Place, Kenneth Goldsmith, Kim Rosenfield, Craig Dworkins, Simon Morris, etc), you seem to use the term as a catch-all phrase for any-and-all 20th century experimental poetry (including, oddly enough, whole other schools of poetry, such as “Dada, Oulipo, Fluxus […] L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets” etc.) As you yourself admit: “I'm not sure either what 'conceptual poetry' really means or whether any of the authors listed below are 'conceptual poets'.” Most of them aren’t. Indeed, besides merely listing other, non-conceptual schools of poetry, 90% of the poets you mentioned are not conceptual writers at all, self-identified or otherwise (Huth, Gary Barwin, Bloomberg-Rissman, Coolidge, Steve Mccaffery, bpNichol, Saroyan, the Kootenay stable, Silliman, Watten [Watten hates conceptual writing by the way!]; Jim Rosenberg, Stephanie Strickland, John Cayley; Tzara, Apollinaire, Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein). When I use the term conceptual writing, I’m actually referring to a specific contemporary school of poetry by that name. Place, however, IS part of this school. Since you claim to have read her, I’d like to discuss her work. Which Vanessa Place books, specifically, have you read?
Secondly, I must note that, once again, you’ve ignored my point, which I seem to keep having to rephrase and reiterate. Initially, you dismissed CP on the grounds that it is naively "swallowed up by capital". Such a position is, of course, indefensible, as even an entry-level understanding of conceptual poetry recognizes the fact that much of this poetry interrogates and questions just such fraught issues as the relation between art production (in this case, poetry) and capital, and the ineluctable and ubiquitous process of commodification. (John’s example in the video – Place’s book “$20” that is made up of twenty $1 notes and sold for fifty dollars – clearly exemplifies this concern).
(Cont.)
So, conceptual poetry engages and critiques capital. This point is obvious, and it clearly has sunk in, as you then quickly shifted the terms of the argument. You no longer see conceptual poetry as naively capitulating to capital, but you still want to dismiss it, now on the grounds that yes, while it does engage and critique capital, its critique is toothless since, in your view, capital has undermined all positions from which one may launch such a critique. I do not hold this view, and neither, in fact, do Hardt and Negri. Their book “Empire” being itself, of course, an analysis and critique of capital, and their political activities (particularly that of Negri) demonstrate an ongoing belief or hope that some kind of resistance is possible, even if it to is ultimately compromised. And conceptual writing is well aware of how hard it is to occupy a position from which to question capital, a problem specifically addressed in “Notes on Conceptualisms”:
“Allegorical writing (particularly in the form of appropriated conceptual writing) does not aim to critique the culture industry from afar, but to mirror it directly. […] The critique is in the reframing. The critique of the critique is in the echoing.”
Note that final line “the critique of the critique is in the echoing.” Conceptual writing recognizes that its critique is compromised, that it is in implicated in the machinations of capital – in fact, AND THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT, it acknowledges its own complicity as part of its critique – indeed, as the CRITIQUE ITSELF. As it must, because as you righty point out, there is no position now that wholly escapes capital.
Besides, you can’t have it both ways. You cannot both assert that the machinations of capital have overrun everything, and then go on and judge conceptual poetries critique of capital as a failure because it is implicated. If everything is - always and already - spoilt by capital, or implicated in capital, if this is, in fact “the new order of things”, then conceptual writings inability to fully extricate itself from, or transcend, the machinations of capital, is a wholly unfair and unrealistic expectation. That is to say, you set conceptual writing what is in your view an impossible task, then dismiss it out of hand for not achieving the impossible task you set it. But conceptual writing can only “fail” as such to critique capital if you allow that such a position is possible. But you don’t, meaning conceptual writing is doomed from the start. But as I explained above, just because everything is implicated (I agree with you) does not mean that local, contingent, and yes, compromised critiques cannot and are not made FROM WITHIN (like “Empire” does as a intervention into a particular theoretical/philosophical circuit). Conceptual often does this by accelerating and exacerbating the very machinations of capital itself. You view this tactic as indicating that conceptual poets, such as Goldsmith, are "servant[s] of the new global Empire." But this reading obviously misses the point entirely.
Mark,
thanks again for keeping the discussion going. I greatly appreciate it.
I was wondering, however, if you'd be interested in continuing the discussion in a 'hangout' with me, Joseph, John or anyone else in a week's time or so when we could look at any one particular 'conceptual' work. I've suggested beaulieu's "How to Write". I'm open to suggestions, however. We could look at Place or anyone you'd like. Blog posts are fine but discussion can tend to be too general and rambling & I think you and I both need to do a 'closer' reading of a particular conceptual poet's work.
In the meantime I'll just say that your points, though well taken, essentially miss the point of the crucial Hardt and Negri thesis. It's rather the conceptualists who can't have it both ways: or at least it's too easy for a Silliman (with his Bury text festival neon installation) and Goldsmith (with his recent plan to "print out the Internet") to pose as clever post-theorists/avants who on the one hand knowingly wink at the machinations of capital and on the other play its game for effect. Of course, they're every bit as aware as we are: every bit as aware of the fake tensions between a baseline of artistic integrity and the market forces that exploit them for profit. Every bit as aware as advertisers who offer consumers the illusion of choice. When practice trumps (albeit purposely, as you claim) awareness it's not the case any more that the clever culture-entrepreneur (that Goldsmith is) has one over bourgeois capitalism. Perhaps Goldsmith is really a new breed of neo-Liberal artist.
I've said in a recent post that Silliman's praises of Christian Bök’s Xenotext project disclose an avant-garde in crisis mode. Capitalism and fringe art cultures are no longer (as they used to be) mutually hostile ideologies. In Empire they work together.
I wouldn't say exactly, as Lyotard has, that capital and art conspire to say (and do) the same thing. It's just that traditional cultures have now been underwritten by global capitalism. Barriers and identities that served once to keep arts separate from competing disciplines have collapsed but if they've done so it hasn't been due to the success of any strong-armed postmodernist theory.Time was when a John Cage could decry the selling of Duchamp's ready-mades as a gross concession to vulgar bourgeois taste. I suppose there was a sense in Cage's day that art and business were borders becoming increasingly porous. In the face of globalization significant differences like these, however, fade into nothingness: ironically, Derridean differánce has turned into radical sameness. Now writing class instructors can pretend to be biogeneticists and L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E theorists, neon sign artists without really upsetting any established order of things.
Ed, Corman saw right through them in the early 80s: even mentions by name a young Charles Bernstein. He called them the 'Lang gang', seeing them for the intellectuall bullies they are. I'm astonished at the man's prescience.
Conrad,
Nice suggestion, I'll get back to you soon on that. As for your comment ... I agree. I understand and agree with all your comments re: capital! (Excerpt maybe for the generelization that "Capitalism and fringe art cultures are no longer (as they used to be) mutually hostile ideologies." Some fringe art cultures are certainly anti-capitalist, although they, like us all, must operate within a capitalist context).
So I gather that the issue now is that, while you now acknowledge the political tactics of conceptual, you find these "too easy". That is, its "too easy" for "Goldsmith to pose as clever post-theorists/avants who on the one hand knowingly wink at the machinations of capital and on the other play its game for effect." You seem to suggest here that any critique of capital one may find in Goldsmith’s work is invalid because he is not “genuine” about it, that is, he’s just an attention seeker, a clown. But this is, ultimately, just another superficial, off-hand dismissal (“Oh, he’s only joking around, he’s only looking for attention.”) If we are to discuss Goldsmith seriously, we can’t just dismiss him in this way. Or, if you think he’s just a clown, you need to justify and illustrate this in a considered fashion, with reference to both his creative and his critical work.
(Also, Goldsmith’s position is “too easy” compared to what? Being another lyric poet? Writing the ten-trillionth lyric poem? Is poetry to be judged on how “hard” it is to bring about? Might this not also be something that conceptual poetry – with its use of appropriation – might be asking us to ponder?)
Certainly, by highlighting, accelerating, and exacerbating processes of commodification in this way, conceptual writers such as Goldsmith are opening themselves up to the misunderstanding of being labeled good neo-liberalist capitalists themselves (witness this whole conversation we’re having!). But, as I’ve been at pains to show, this is only the most shallow surface engagement with such work. Goldsmith's not an idiot! His work’s performance and embrace of capital IS A PART OF its critique. His work, and his larger-than-life performative persona, are aimed at provoking and interrogating just such questions as you raise about his work. Its also important to note that Goldsmith does NOT claim to have "one over bourgeois capitalism." No conceptualist has claimed instant victory of capital!
Ed,
I'd love a list. We've talked about Elsa before and the women avant gardists who got ripped off. I guess those guys weren't 'hip' enough to include the women
Mark,
agreed: Goldsmith's not an idiot. He's quite the clever culture neo-Liberal 'entrepreneur' but certainly not traditional avant gardist. Did you know he used to be in advertising himself? Capital has swallowed ("appropriated")the avant garde whole. There's no difference any more between the Picasso of art museums and the Picasso mural designs on office buildings in Spain. I remembered thinking how much Gaudi's park in Barcelona looked like a Disney set. Even the street graffiti there seem to be there for the delectation of passing tourists. It's no wonder Lorca hated them!
There's a self-reflexivity at play in guys like Goldsmith (think particularly of his open avowal patch writing and plagiarism) that's equal to a bikini-clad Paris Hilton condemning John McCain's economic and domestic policies during the first Obama presidential election. Empire is Hardt-Negri's term for precisely that almost frightening assimilation of consciousness to capitalist design: there's no longer any dividing line between artistry and even the most guileful feigning of it (for the sort of effect Goldsmith is playing for) They're both of a piece.
Let's perhaps agree to look at beaulieu's "What is writing" in a hangout. Please do get back to me on that and I'll invite some others for our online chat (Part II) on conceptual writing.
Mark,
I meant to say beaulieu's "How to Write".
OK, that sounds good.
In your comments on Goldsmith though, I find that you are not really engaging with what I'm saying. So, to be clear, YES - capital has swallowed everything (including, I might add, lyric poetry - but thats another topic). You write: “There's no difference any more between the Picasso of art museums and the Picasso mural designs on office buildings in Spain. I remembered thinking how much Gaudi's park in Barcelona looked like a Disney set. Even the street graffiti there seem to be there for the delectation of passing tourists.” YES. We agree! As I’ve said, there is now no position that is not compromised, or that hasn't been colonized by, capital. It the world we live in, this situation is a GIVEN. And it is PRECISELY this situation that conceptual poetry address!
Now, many of us (you, for example, and many conceptual poets) are not happy about this situation (why would we be?). How, then, to critique capital when one is, ineluctably, implicated in its processes, which have penetrated every area of our lives? With no position left from which to transcend capital so has to objectively critique it, conceptual writing must do so from within. For the conceptual poets, this means highlighting, accelerating, and exacerbating processes of commodification in their work. That is, conceptual writing deliberately exaggerates and embraces processes of commodification IN ORDER TO PROVOKE JUST THE KIND OF CONVERSATION WE ARE HAVING NOW. To force people to SEE the insidious processes that are eating away and colonizing everything around us - including, most alarmingly, art and culture. Hardt and Negri do this by writing a book about it, Goldsmith does this by making art that exaggerates and mimics it. Conceptual writing throws the process of commodification into sharp relief in order to make us SEE and THINK. And this THINKING is the prerequisite to ACTION. Whatever form that action may take and as impossible as that may be.
This is why dismissing Goldsmith as a “neo-Liberal 'entrepreneur'” misses the point entirely. Goldsmith makes his points thru provocation! As a neo-Warholian artist, Goldsmith assumes this role as part of his CRITICAL PERFORMANCE of capital. This has nothing to do with the idiocy and hypocrisy of a Paris Hilton. And again, any critique of Goldsmith must proceed from a close consideration of his art and his creative and critical texts. (After all, you wouldn’t want someone to dismiss your work without first seriously engaging it.)
I don't actually care whether Goldsmith is avant-garde in the traditional sense or not – this isn't important to my argument (a justification of conceptual poetics). I can accept that avant-garde art in the old sense is no longer possible (just as the traditional romantic lyric is also outdated). But that doesn't mean that radical art doesn't exist any longer. Its just looks and behaves differently now.
One more thing quickly. You write: "there's no longer any dividing line between artistry and even the most guileful feigning of it [...] They're both of a piece." But aren't you still trying to distinguish between "guileful feigning" (Goldsmith) and true "artistry" (what you deem Goldsmith to NOT be)? You wounldn't claim that there is no distinction between, say, your poetry and liberal, capitalist poetry would you?
But lets put that to one side and agree: art and capital are, as you say, "both of a piece." YES. THIS IS PRECISELY WHY WE HAVE CONCEPTUAL WRITING. Conceptual writing exacerbates and explodes this connection through mimicy and performance. And, to be honest, this is in fact one of the most basic and simple things that can be said about conceptual writing.
Mark,
if you leave me your gmail address I can invite you to our 'How to Write' (derek beaulieu) hangout on air. I'll get back to you with a day and time. ok?
had to look up this "derek bealieu" guy...
don't invite me as, he is, as far as I can see/feel/glean/sense
a
lower-case publisher, poet as per this interview with him:
http://www.canadiancontent.ca/interviews/022000derek.html
and do, please, use my sdf.lonestar email address for anything other than this blogou as I don't trust google..
( why his affectation/cuteness of his using lower-case for his and others' names? tricks and gimmicks are a bore...)
Ed,
I'd love to have ya in a hangout with the conceptualist crowd: it'd be fun. If you change your mind, let me know
Conrads
I'll let you
tell the jokes
as
I am amiss and be-
side my self's Window of Operationings
&
besides that I never, ever, seldom, if I do
pretensiley define things afore they are
con-ceptualized or
con-createized
or in any other way
conned ..
In Ii Parts:
Conrad:
Your discussion with Rissman really isn’t about Conceptualism as much as it is about the disruptive reactionary artistic gestures which characterize early Modernism, which began out of a sense of frustration and outrage and boredom with the big events of its time: Industrialism, World War I, the birth of psychology and sociology, the comprehensive study of other cultures, social and political revolutions, and the development of new media. Pound and Eliot and Apollinaire and Duchamp and Picasso and Stravinsky and Le Corbusier and so forth. These sweeping changes all fed into a sudden loss of confidence in the established traditions in writing, art, music, design.
Modernism as evidenced in works like Duchamp’s Large Glass, Eliot’s Waste Land, Zukofsky’s A, Williams’s Spring & All, Cobusier’s Villa Savoye, The Rite of Spring, Joyce’s Ulysses, presented the case of an habitual challenge to the idea of fixed formal approaches in the arts generally. The thrust of Modernism was moderated after the Second World War, and the reaction which occurred then set the stage for the raw and cooked debate which Silliman has often characterized as Quiet and non-Quiet, but which had its clearest demonstration in the clean split between the competing Allen and Hall-Pack-Simpson anthologies of 1960, in which the political lines were graphically drawn (no single poet was included in both collections).
The tradition of “the New” is a phenomenon of Modernism, and that “tradition” is now as powerful as the old “tradition” of 1905 was when Pound appeared on the scene, complaining about “stale creampuffs” and doddering old fools mending doilies and needlepoint Whitman samplers.
Conceptualism, seen within this avant garde “tradition of the New” (“make it new” – Pound), is nothing more than a replication of the demonstration projects Duchamp played with early on. Each “ready-made” was unique, but they all had as their underlying intent the undermining (or questioning) of accepted paradigms or formal presumptions.
With respect to the significance of Modernism and Post-Modernism, it bears saying that the most popular poetry books of our day are clearly pre-Modern in approach and intent: Rumi, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Billy Collins, Robeert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Neruda, Dylan Thomas, Poe Shakespeare, etc. The general public is completely unaware of the books of writing which purport to be conceptual or experimental.
It’s true that post-Modernism took the academy by storm in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but it’s always been true that the academies invariably are conservative in their tastes. Experimental poetry of the Modernist period no sooner became the canonical textual focus than it was supplanted by cultural relativism and the deconstruction of the text. All of a sudden, Milton and Keats and Tennyson and even Shakespeare had become irrelevant, but so had Yeats and Eliot and Stevens and Robert Lowell—all victims of the politically incorrect past.
Part II
It’s important to see works like Coolidge’s The Maintains or Polaroid, or Michael Palmer’s or Grenier’s work within the context of the Tradition of the New, i.e., of the familiar attempt to fashion competing versions of the formality of approach. Silliman fronts the progressive view of history and art, which is Hegelian (and Marxist) in its interpretation of the conflict and resolution in the dialectic of artistic struggle. What I often see is that poets who embark on a conceptual program are often those who ironically do have a superior lyrical aptitude, but who disdain it in favor of a more challenging alternative. I resist lumping all conceptual kinds of literary production into a single category, and I also feel it’s important to rank them; i.e., there can be good or bad conceptual poems or poets, just as there are good and bad lyrical poems.
Conrad’s idea that there is an “ideal” lyrical poetry “of the heart” which all poets should aspire to strikes me as very narrow and unsubstantiated. The greatest danger, in our mass cultural milieu, is falling into the trap of thinking that popularity or naively “committed” poetry is somehow more “serious” or “natural” or valid than other kinds. Personally, I like parody and protest and camp art and verse as legitimate forms of protest and animadversion and relief.
Why can’t all these kinds of competing efforts co-exist with freedom and acceptance?
Silliman wants to outlaw Lowell. I’d like to outlaw Billy Collins. As one who rejects government support of the arts, I’m all for having writers teach in institutions, as long as they don’t “teach” writing. Workshops have gotten completely out of hand. All you need to write is paper and a pencil, and this can be done in the evenings, if you have to work for a living.
P.S. I like Joseph’s post above, despite the fact he thinks I’m a racist on immigration.
Curtis,
thank you for the important Modern/post-Modern distinction, elegantly adumbrated. Perhaps Mark and I should have defined our terms better. I particularly appreciate the characterization of the Modernist period as one that grew increasingly impatient with "established traditions" since it serves as the lauch of the argument (marxists critics such as Jameson, Hardt & Negri, and myself make)that the post-industrial world, notwithstanding sanguine efforts of the best avant-gardists of the day to decry the materialization of artistic work,actually seemed to adapt itself (and profit by)the then fashionable divide between artistic production and an inherently bourgeois society.
No less a personage than Lyotard has claimed that capitalism and the arts seem in cahoots, divvying up market share equally between them. I'll go a step further and make the claim that global capitalism ("Empire") has co-opted the arts entirely, making the distinction itself a serviceable tool of Capital. I give you Goldsmith's recent proposal to ship the entire paper Internet to Mexico to be displayed as some sort of huge installation art; I give you Bok's "Xenotext"; I give you Silliman's Bury neon installation; I give you Vanessa Place's legal reportage as poetry project, etc. etc. Examples nowadays are too numerous to mention.
There is nothing "disruptive" about postmodern artistic practice. In my discussion with John I was trying to show that there's nothing really anything that's at stake in so-called wild-eyed 'conceptual' poetries (nor a poetry in any of its other experimental varieties) It is one nodal point in an increasingly expanding global "Empire" whose forces are so dominant that it's no longer possible to trace it to any one dominating economy (as in old Modernist paradigms). "Empire" has become a strangling "abstraction" to which materials of artistic production everywhere--and I do mean everywhere--are servilely obedient.
Nothing reveals that assimilation of art to Capital than the trend among avant-gardists to cross disciplinary borders (law, biogenetics, journalism, etc), stupidly (and perhaps even ironically) arrogating unto themselves a kind of Renaissance sapience that's as transparent as their work.
And, of course, that Place is a lawyer using legal documents doesn't make her work any more legitimate than if she were a physician. To raise that objection, as I fear it probably might, would be obtuse.
Curtis,
I will go to my grave defending the primacy of the "lyrical heart" in poetry. In a published discussion with Ed and John on precisely this topic I offered an Arnoldian justification of poetry that I believe stands the test of time and, if written skillfully enough, can never be historicized:a poetry, qua poetry,that transcends history, enjoying a uniquely privileged position as the chronicle in verse of the human condition. I believe it's precisely history that "historicizes" in the case of poetries that can't keep alive the "lyrical heart" that's always been, after all, the test of their greatness. Nothing grows irrelevant faster than experimental poetries of the Silliman, Goldsmith kind precisely through the way in which they must subserve uniquely temporal conditions of work. By my Arnoldian strictures, if Silliman had possessed a "superior lyrical aptitude" to begin with he couldn't have discarded it in favour of a style that (a)apes Zukofsky in methodology and content and (b) purposely opts for purposeful ambiguity and polysemy. Hardly indicators these of a superior poetics. The sort of poetry tradition I uphold is very elegantly stated, for example, in Timothy Steele's "Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter".
Conrad:
Let's not conflate too many things.
Silliman doesn't eschew meaning in favor of something that has less significance. Silliman, in fact, is wholly syntactical and not in the least non-.
The thing to remember about some experimental post-Modern verse, and this would apply to someone like Ashbery as much as it would to Coolidge, for instance, is the possibilities opened up by the detachment of the signifier from the signified.
Treating language as a "thing" in itself, instead of merely as a worn-out "tool" for accomplishing other ends, is a quintessentially post-Modern program. This has nothing to do with reprinting the New York Times, or creating, for instance, fragmentary narratives by deleting parts of a pre-existing text (like Berrigan's Clear the Range). A conceptual act would be like Saroyan's blank ream of typing paper.
You have to get over this idea that there is "sensible" writing and "gibberish." Gibberish can only be produced through self-generating means, i.e., by a machine or chance operations. Even the worst Hip-Hop artist is creating complex and dense structures of meaning.
I also don't quite see how Ashbery's Tennis Court Oath or Coolidge's American Ones or Quartz Hearts have any meaningful relation to "world capital" since they have no register in the marketplace. Capital co-opts commodities which produce profit, and so a writer like Bukowski is vastly more important to the world, than a writer, say, like William Stafford. Stafford is a much more sophisticated mind and writer than Bukowski, but Bukowski's audience dwarfs the Oregon regionalist.
Academics may find interest and fascination in experimental writers, but they have little or no influence over the marketplace. There's no consensus about which writers should be elevated and which demoted. What we do know is that post-Modern critical positions have come to dominate much of the academic machinery, which may indeed legitimate some of the kinds of writing we've been seeing, but that's mostly in the ethnic "world" poetries area, not in experimental verse.
Coolidge has no more legitimacy in the academy than Robert Bly or Jack Gilbert. I think you're setting up false dichotomies in condemning this imaginary academic bugaboo to account for the supposed prevalence of conceptual writings.
We're all free to like who we want. I personally find Mary Oliver and Sharon Olds boring and trite. And I can read very little of Coolidge before I bog down. But there's no question that in the larger scheme of things, Oliver and Olds and the recent American poet laureates are vastly more influential than any conceptual poets you could name. It may all be ephemeral and thin, eventually, but in the present, they're the news.
Curtis,
you might be interested in what Andreas Gripp has just posted today on the deplorable state of mainstream art in Canada, the "wine-and-cheese crowd" as he calls them. I'm offering this as an offshot of the more general globalization of artistic production that has made art indistinguishable from advertising, etc.
well.now. & the game has reached down into:
just which part of speech to use ? which color
crayon to strike with ...... precisely..... and
adequately
in order to separate the signified from the signifier
as though it mattered that it's all become in the larger scheme of things
so trite AND
boring and, seemingly, continuous ?
when we get beyond all posturings
and the needs/demands to so
do
just what is it that one is left with to mine/make
from memory and from a position of a nearly
complete isolation in self (selfness?)
to replicate the sound of a long-since-gone
(action)
even the Gripp reaction/essay/attitude is a
standard-through-the-ages boring reply.
well. here. we are in the process of brewing 10 gallons of beer (Dry Irish Stout). It is still in the jars fermenting.... not yet ready for the kegs ...
so
in order for me to self-medicate
before I begin another painting and/or poem
will do a beer run.... sit and sip until a nut her vision of "her" comes & "she" enables me to flee, willy-nilly, into my other realm;
it's not much.... but .... it's what I amd sure I've got.
Common sense would tell you the world is pretty simple, but you'd be wrong.
The things we know the least about are probably the most important to a true understanding of the universe, and ourselves.
"That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." --Ludwig Wittgenstein
"The world is greater than our dreams." --Frederick Sommer
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