I don't think anything could've prepared me for what I saw in Silliman's Saturday, July 31, 2010 post: the chief American spokesperson for post-avant poetry, writer, critic and blogger whose roots go back to what was probably the most turbulent, anti-authoritarian and iconoclastic era in American literary history, & perhaps one of the few today to have significantly lived the Allen anthology, San Francisco renaissance and Black Mountain movements (or certainly ingested enough of them to form his own equally vital "New Sentence" credo), rightfully enjoying his place as heir to Duncan, Spicer, Creeley: Ron Silliman, the name with which an extremely influential Language Poetry's become virtually synonymous today & whose blog is among the most respected and widely followed for both the quality of his posts and the lively debate that oftentimes center round them, is declaring, astonishingly enough, (and even at the end of a post in which he chronicles a forty-five year history of anti-avant garde literature & its sometimes hostile reactions from the public) that he will turn the "comments stream off altogether" at his own blog and hand-pick only a few of the more intelligently-and discretely-written comments (he'll receive by email only) to appear there from time to time.
Ron Silliman has, in a word, opted for Internet censorship, radically curtailing the reader's right to offer intelligent, constructive criticism because of some anti- Massey comments at his blog that have dampened the spirits of this young poet and even been the cause of self-righteous indignation by blogger Jessica Smith. See her own anti-Silliman rant there. Apparently the more obnoxious comments of some Silliman readers (to be easily discarded, after all) have made the influential experimentalist poet a little queasy: a little down in the mouth, perhaps, about the virtues of freedom of speech in general. Instead of decrying the mistreatment of the younger poets, Silliman might have given them the benefit of some older-poet wisdom, & suggested ways for them to cope with the unavoidable hostile criticisms the particularly sensitive may have to endure. He's chosen to block the channels of open expression in the hope of patching up some potential bad feelings.This sort of coddling and sheltering gesture may have also, of course, made the Masseys out there feel a little embarrassed, a little patronized.
I can scarcely believe it & cannot help the feelings of condemnation. Did not America's greatest public intellectual Noam Chomsky write the introduction to a book written by a Holocaust-denier, Robert Faurisson, though Chomsky finds the man's viewpoint an abhorrent one, and says so? I sometimes wonder if Silliman's poetry doesn't come with a politics of its own. His may be the usual suspect "liberal-tolerant" reaction to tough criticism (or to even competing poetries) we find these days in blog discussions, the position of those who ludicrously want to both set poetic agendas for bold experimentalism of their own and yet decide on the terms of its own proper reception by the public it's bound to incite: to be both post avant and Emily Post. Only so much and no more to be heard from us. He condemns criticism that aims at putting down poets (as if it's never been done before) and yet doesn't see the uninintentional effect his censorship may have on those same poets who send him work precisely in order to get the exposure their work will most assuredly get there.
Here is the entire rationale in Silliman's own words.
I don’t mind debate, even vigorous debate, over fundamental issues. But it does seem clear to me that some people make a point of verbally attacking writers I praise on this blog simply because I’ve praised them. Reading that responses to a positive review on my blog seriously discouraged Jessica Smith about poetry & writing is as depressing a consequence as I can imagine. I want to apologize to her for not doing a better job policing the comments stream, and I want to apologize to Joseph Massey more recently for the same. And to Barbara Jane Reyes and any other poets who feel they may have been unfairly treated in the comments stream.
I have of course read some comments that suggest that poets who feel bruised by such behavior need not to be so fragile. But I think everyone has every right to feel exactly what they feel, and that participating in poetry doesn’t have to mean submitting oneself to hazing by yahoos
Recognizing this leaves me with few options. I could shut up, although I actually don’t think that’s the goal of most of the comment harpies. I think I give them a venue that their own blogs may not, and that this is really what much of this is about. I could reject a lot more comments than I do, not simply those that characterize someone as a “Jewette” or “French cunt.”¹ Which is one more bit of labor for which I don’t have the time or energy. Or I could turn off the comments stream altogether, which is the option I’m taking.
You can still write to me – the address is in the left-hand column – and once in rare while I might republish a note if it seems worthwhile, but I will ask your permission first. If you respond to something here in your own blog, I may well link it to in one of my weekly roundups – I’ve been doing that for years. But I’ve also ignored a lot if I thought they were just being stupid or name calling. That seems like a good thing to continue. And so I shall.I'd like to offer a set of more specific comments by way of reaction to this incredible diminishment of free speech online:
(a) Silliman may be kowtowing to a younger readership than he's been accustomed to (namely, the no-nonsense, seasoned appraisals by his older readers), hoping for a kind of legacy-building in this self-demeaning way. After all, there are tens of thousands of them publishing, marketing and recreating themselves everywhere, and creative writing programs (& academic book markets) have never been more plentiful;
(b) I'd like to ask,What's happened to the "problematic relationship" to mainstream cultural expression of which tough honest criticism is a necessary part? Of course, I'm not referring to overtly sexist, racist and homophobic comments but to well articulated criticism based on a reasonable level of expertise and interest. Since when did the avant-garde/post avant care what anyone thought about their work anyways? I'd also recommend (to both Silliman & his sensitive young poets) that they read "In Praise of Tough Criticism" by Jeffrey R. DiLeo (an article I discovered a little while ago at David Kosub's "Speaking of Poems" blog), making the transition from academic writing to poetry on their own. DiLeo's concluding comments are particularly appropriate here;
We need to grow thicker critical skin. Why? Because critical behavior that always results in a chorus of affirmation is nothing more than conformity; because allowing views to persist that need to be challenged is nothing less than critical mediocrity; and because failure to tell our colleagues what we truly think about their work is simple dishonesty. A reshaped critical culture will help build a more robust, honest, and transparent academy
(c) we may have here a classic example of the autre temps, autres moeurs principle, and by that I mean the depressing way in which erstwhile risk-taking 'radical'-poets (poetries) have become mainstream, almost to the point of becoming academically elitist or (what's worse!) slavishly bourgeois, even afraid to hurt the public's feelings. Americans Silliman and Bernstein and Canada's Frank Davey and Michael Ondaatje come to mind ;
(d) poetry is a "zero-game" (after Žižek), at best: against every literary novelty or acclaim there will always arise an equally strong exertion of force (in the form of disapprobation and unkind criticism) to render the work a type of creative nullity that no amount of literary correctness or defense can fix. Writers live in a black hole that's condemned to be endlessly filled in: for every positive there's bound to be a negative, and on it goes. Trying to right the supposed wrongs of unkind criticism by cutting off the means of making criticisms of any type is an illusion. I wonder 'what' Silliman (who's made it his business to tear down the idols all his life) is hoping to fix by banishing real free speech from his blog. The inconsistency between temperament and practice is astonishing. And I'm sorry to say this glaring discrepancy has caused me to see the man & his poetries a little differently now; and
(e) why does Silliman gives us the Ezra Pound picture at the head of his fateful Saturday, July 31, 2010 post, Pound the madman, anti-Semite & fascist sympathizer, polygamist and most ruthless iconoclast of them all? Would he have been able to take some bruising from this critic? America's most respected post-avant can't see the devastating irony in the fact that Pound lived in the black hole that is Poetry, and he apparently can't.
