Anger is our inspiration, terror is our poetry....

[digitaldiscipline]

So, I've resumed listening to NPR on my daily commute, and yesterday evening, I happened to catch a segment on an LSU professor who takes a trio of his poetry students to NOLA, where they walk around, talk to a few locals, and then write about it.


Why are poets so uniformly fucking earnest? The two (of three) poems that were inflicted on listeners both made a point of mentioning the seventeen aticles and one hundred songs the Lucky Dog vendor had released in his previous life.

There's a point at which Creative Lit teachers' insistence on concrete detail becomes bad for poetry in general, and poetry students' work in particular. My own writing prof was this way as well, despite his considerable other merits, and I intentionally put out some grotesquely bad work, ostentatiously laden with sensory details ("dead-set in their ways like their decorative railroad ties after being hammered down by a one-hundred-and-seventeen car freight train going east at twenty-three-point-four miles an hour"), just to shut him up and make a point that images alone don't make for good poetry).

Contemporary creative writing education seems to have become less about concocting an image that jabs through a reader's emotional expectations and turns too much of what is generated by modern poets (young and old alike) into little more than ascetic news briefs from their own emotional frontier. They're -serious.- They're -austere.- They Have Something To Say.

And they all sound the same fucking way when they say it. (But can say it in three languages. [/KMFDM])

My youngest sister is a Master's candidate at the University of Maine, and her area of focus is poetry, and, as far as I can tell, stypistically, her body of work is nearly indistinguishable from that of the cranky feminists of the Beat and pre-Beat period (Mitchell, etc), and much of the drier stuff that's come since (Robert Creely was her mentor at the University of Buffalo, and while Bob's a nice enough guy, his writing exists on a page like so much highly organized dry ink, at least to me). Is it good that she writes her own work with an established (and respected) flavor? I was always under the assumption that the best poetry was unlike anything else.

But two poems, nearly the same, talking about the Lucky Dog man (and nothing about the Burlesquetress)... It makes me think that everyone who's been crying about the death of modern poetry might have been onto something, if this is the kind of flat, uninspired writing that our advanced studies students are churning out like so much overfried chicken - crisp, but uniformly flavorless.

Get messy. Get sweaty. Get involved. Care. Feel. Burn.

If you ask me, composing poetry is an act of fucking the page so well that the reader needs a cigarette.

Light?

Comments

[critus.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Was Geo just too out there to write about??

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I don't know - she was certainly a better poet, riffing on that line from Paglia.

*pokes mistresspaine* Hey! You! Go inspire some poets!

[critus.livejournal.com]

Heh...I found her web site!

http://www.giotalks.com/

[etcet.livejournal.com]

i'm willing to bet that it's NSFW.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Welllll

yeah, probably

It's about her call in show...which is a sex show...so probably not so much with the work safe, no.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

If you ask me, composing poetry is an act of fucking the page so well that the reader needs a cigarette.

THAT is beautiful, man!

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

that's poetry in itself. Pass the lighter.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

thanks, kids. i do try, and it's nice to know i can still succeed occasionally....

Well, that's postmodernism for ya...

[ex-requiella957.livejournal.com]

You know, it's interesting to consider the birth of an artistic movement (such as postmodernism): a few people become reactive to the previous style/movement/way of seeing the world, and voila--a new style is born. Although the new style may serve its purpose at the time (say, during the first decade or two), the unfortunate upshot is that students for decades hence are held to the same standards. Some of these students will become disgruntled and reactionary, and they're the ones who give rise to the next new thing. Ironically (but maybe not), it is ultimately those people who question the system and do their own thing who become trend setters (assuming they're part of a unique Zeitgeist), not the ones who meticulously adopt the stylistic conventions of those who have gone before.

Re: Well, that's postmodernism for ya...

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I was afraid that was what this was, when all I heard was boring, soulless frippery. I had a concentration in Modernism during college simply because I don't enjoy Shakespeare or the Romantics, and it was the least of the available evils.

But as a reaction to Modernism's intentional surreality (and I'll be the first to agree that some Dada was entirely too weird to be enjoyable without a lot more drugs than I can afford, much less consume), this carefully crafted lack of artifice makes Postmodernism read like a press release or corporate earnings statement. Frankly, I think there's more creativity in the Accounting departments of some large corporations than in some college lit classes. ;-)

So, was that a call to me to found a new movement as backlash against the drivel of the postmodern, Req? *laugh*

Re: Well, that's postmodernism for ya...

[ex-requiella957.livejournal.com]

So, was that a call to me to found a new movement as backlash against the drivel of the postmodern, Req? *laugh*

I can't think of a better idea! < eg >

Re: Well, that's postmodernism for ya...

[etcet.livejournal.com]

okay, first, we need a catchy name. . .

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

That's why I stick with the classics. It's pretty hard to top Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wordsworth, & the like. T.S. Eliot is where I draw the line -- he was a borderline Victorianist in the 20th century. After him, it all went downhill fast.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I suppose I should have prefaced this whole thing by saying, "I don't actually like much poetry, but this was really, really bad."

Give me Yeats and Eliot and Frost, and that's about it. Don't care for the pastoral romantics, acutely dislike Shakespeare (the plots are ok, and I respect the craftsmanship; I simply prefer prose), and actively loathe Joyce. Ahh, here it is - http://archive.salon.com/books/letters/2002/05/31/may31/index1.html

everybody has their own familiar grass

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

I walk in the 19th century -- my rebellion against postmoderism is to go back!

Re: everybody has their own familiar grass

[etcet.livejournal.com]

pre-modernism! (almost misstyped that as "pre-moperism" *snerk*)

*ponders* based purely on classifications, it would be logical to assume you like steampunk (as could, i suppose be hypothesized about me). do you? why or why not?

steampunk?

[trystbat.livejournal.com]

Ppl recommend steampunk to me, but I haven't tried read any of the books yet. I like the aesthetic, but I'm a little too much of a classicist to wear the style myself. Maybe I'm proto-steampunk ;-)

Re: steampunk?

[etcet.livejournal.com]

i honestly don't get into it, myself - "The Difference Engine" (Gibson/Sterling) is often heralded as a high example of the genre, and it bored the living fuck out of me. Mieville has some interesting ideas, but his execution is uneven and often frustrating (which I can say about a lot of pure cyberpunk, too).

the motif? well, it did influence my wall plates. . . *grin*

[bynner.livejournal.com]

Not only poetry, but playwriting as well! I have long thought the explicit need to be (act out the motions of being, rather) "deep" (<-- my shorthand for serious and austere and having something to say) has long also plagued student playwriting. 99% of all student plays area about child-abuse or youth-suicide (or are just rampantly absurd to the point of being nonsensical... the idiot's version of Avant-Garde, I figure). It's just easier for most people, especially young people still finding themselves, to imitate the outward form of "serious" and "thought provoking" work. S'okay, I figure it's just part of the learning process. Show me one good, subtle writer who wasn't previously a bad, clumsy writer and I'll be impressed.

And come someone *please* tell me why the public can't distinguish poetry from verse? They are *not* synonymous! lol. :)

Dead Set in My Ways

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

1) I can't tell a freight train going 23.4 miles-an-hour from one going 23.5 miles-an-hour.

2) Incomprehensibility in the service of art is one thing, but not incomprehensibility for its own sake.

3) Try Charles Bukowski. He'll leave enough spilled wine, blood, vomit, and semen on the floor to satisfy even you.

Re: Dead Set in My Ways

[etcet.livejournal.com]

People keep recommending Bukowski to me, and I keep trying to it, and I keep thinking he's the halfway house between some of William Carlos Williams' racier stuff and Marilyn Manson.

Re: Dead Set in My Ways

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

I love that. Feels very accurate.

You should talk to kingmob23 from my f-list about some of this stuff- he's an excellent writer and I think you'd like some of his work. He's also a writing teacher and is a far more articulate ranter/social chronicler than I'd ever aspire to be.