November 2nd, 2009 / 11:38 pm
Excerpts
Christopher Higgs
Excerpts
If poetics does not ask the reader to re-negotiate how one reads, if it does not attempt to cast new light on all that came before it, then why bother? Outmoded “schools” of poetry must be transcended so that we might effectively evaluate what does and what does not alter reality and why and how.
Tags: failures of the imagination, olivia cronk
I can sympathize with an interest in casting “new light on all that came before,” but I don’t really sympathize with the “then” clause. I personally think it’s a shame that poetry and literature in general–indeed art altogether–is not a larger part of our every day lives. Of our national identity in this country. And I think it’s this kind of thinking that is partially to blame. If poetry has to be so deeply transformative, then it’s certainly not something I have time or energy for when I come home from work. I’m not arguing for a poetry of the banal, but I do think a theory of poetics should be large enough to incorporate a wider range of utility and purpose. A holistic poetics. If it’s just something that speaks to, and is written by, a tiny sliver of those with time and interest in “altering reality” all the damn time, why should anyone else bother?
I can sympathize with an interest in casting “new light on all that came before,” but I don’t really sympathize with the “then” clause. I personally think it’s a shame that poetry and literature in general–indeed art altogether–is not a larger part of our every day lives. Of our national identity in this country. And I think it’s this kind of thinking that is partially to blame. If poetry has to be so deeply transformative, then it’s certainly not something I have time or energy for when I come home from work. I’m not arguing for a poetry of the banal, but I do think a theory of poetics should be large enough to incorporate a wider range of utility and purpose. A holistic poetics. If it’s just something that speaks to, and is written by, a tiny sliver of those with time and interest in “altering reality” all the damn time, why should anyone else bother?
Hey Shya,
I think part of my answer to your final question (why should anyone else bother?) is this: they shouldn’t. I know that may sound snarky, but I mean it seriously. I do not believe that art/literature is for everyone. I believe it is for a very select kind of person, a kind of person who would actively seek it out, who would willingly engage in its challenge. Art/literature should be difficult. It should not be easy.
Which is part of the reason why I fundamentally disagree with your notion of integrating literature/art into our daily lives. I don’t want to live in a society where art/literature becomes ubiquitous, becomes everyday, becomes common or easy. I want art/literature to be elite.
Also, when you say: “If poetry has to be so deeply transformative, then it’s certainly not something I have time or energy for when I come home from work.” My question is – why not? Why wouldn’t you want to engage your intellect for pleasure? Why wouldn’t you wish to use your spare time to expand the boundaries of the mundane work-a-day reality? Why would you want something to be less than challenging?
Ultimately, for me, utility and purpose have no place in art or literature, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.
At any rate, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I was hoping to spark a dialogue with this provocative quote from Cronk.
Hey Shya,
I think part of my answer to your final question (why should anyone else bother?) is this: they shouldn’t. I know that may sound snarky, but I mean it seriously. I do not believe that art/literature is for everyone. I believe it is for a very select kind of person, a kind of person who would actively seek it out, who would willingly engage in its challenge. Art/literature should be difficult. It should not be easy.
Which is part of the reason why I fundamentally disagree with your notion of integrating literature/art into our daily lives. I don’t want to live in a society where art/literature becomes ubiquitous, becomes everyday, becomes common or easy. I want art/literature to be elite.
Also, when you say: “If poetry has to be so deeply transformative, then it’s certainly not something I have time or energy for when I come home from work.” My question is – why not? Why wouldn’t you want to engage your intellect for pleasure? Why wouldn’t you wish to use your spare time to expand the boundaries of the mundane work-a-day reality? Why would you want something to be less than challenging?
Ultimately, for me, utility and purpose have no place in art or literature, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.
At any rate, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I was hoping to spark a dialogue with this provocative quote from Cronk.
With all due respect to Chris, whose ideas I often admire despite finding broad swaths of disagreement, I’m with you, Shya.
With all due respect to Chris, whose ideas I often admire despite finding broad swaths of disagreement, I’m with you, Shya.
Chris & Shya–I hope it’s not too late for this dialogue! I hope the two of you keep talking about it so I can better discern and organize my thoughts about this. I’m thinking about how this quote interplays with the Sontag one I posted, especially since I now see that Cronk uses Sontag’s term earlier in her article. Both are concerned with reality, and how art and criticism filters or massages that reality. At first, I thought they were almost saying opposite things, but clearly that isn’t it.
Chris, I love your sentence, “Ultimately, for me, utility and purpose have no place in art or literature, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.” So paradoxical, this idea of power with no aim, or purpose. I think a lot about utility in art. Are we just talking about practical purposes? Because surely the idea of engaging the intellect for pleasure is a certain kind of use, or purpose, for art. Or even the idea that art forces us to confront mortality, or futility. Is it that art can’t be therapy, or that it can’t be a certain conventional, uplifting kind of therapy. There’s also shock therapy, aversion therapy. Maybe I’m quibbling. Sometimes I think that the select kind of person who you refer to is whoever recognizes how hard and dark the world is, and can’t find any real recognition of that except in art. Isn’t that still a kind of haven for that kind of person? I don’t know. Say more.
Chris & Shya–I hope it’s not too late for this dialogue! I hope the two of you keep talking about it so I can better discern and organize my thoughts about this. I’m thinking about how this quote interplays with the Sontag one I posted, especially since I now see that Cronk uses Sontag’s term earlier in her article. Both are concerned with reality, and how art and criticism filters or massages that reality. At first, I thought they were almost saying opposite things, but clearly that isn’t it.
Chris, I love your sentence, “Ultimately, for me, utility and purpose have no place in art or literature, which is exactly what makes them so powerful.” So paradoxical, this idea of power with no aim, or purpose. I think a lot about utility in art. Are we just talking about practical purposes? Because surely the idea of engaging the intellect for pleasure is a certain kind of use, or purpose, for art. Or even the idea that art forces us to confront mortality, or futility. Is it that art can’t be therapy, or that it can’t be a certain conventional, uplifting kind of therapy. There’s also shock therapy, aversion therapy. Maybe I’m quibbling. Sometimes I think that the select kind of person who you refer to is whoever recognizes how hard and dark the world is, and can’t find any real recognition of that except in art. Isn’t that still a kind of haven for that kind of person? I don’t know. Say more.
Amy, as in Nietzsche’s “existence is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon”?
Chris – I must stringently disagree with your contention that art ought to be elite. I think art begins in shared practices–look at bodily adornment, ritual, gamelan, that long predate our modern conception of art. Brian Boyd’s work would trace it back even further to play and pattern-detection in animals. Twentieth century art has leveled the distinction between high and low, from Warhol to Beck to H. Murakami to Radiohead. At the bookends of recorded history, then, art resists–albeit in different ways–elitism. There are plenty of exceptions, but even in difficult works like Ulysses, Joyce zooms in on the most ordinary individuals he can find; Stephen’s no hero.
Amy, as in Nietzsche’s “existence is only justified as an aesthetic phenomenon”?
Chris – I must stringently disagree with your contention that art ought to be elite. I think art begins in shared practices–look at bodily adornment, ritual, gamelan, that long predate our modern conception of art. Brian Boyd’s work would trace it back even further to play and pattern-detection in animals. Twentieth century art has leveled the distinction between high and low, from Warhol to Beck to H. Murakami to Radiohead. At the bookends of recorded history, then, art resists–albeit in different ways–elitism. There are plenty of exceptions, but even in difficult works like Ulysses, Joyce zooms in on the most ordinary individuals he can find; Stephen’s no hero.
Sometimes people confuse elite with irrelevant.
Sometimes people confuse elite with irrelevant.