Contests
Winner of Diana George’s DISCPLINES
Earlier this week there was a giveaway for Diana George’s DISCIPLINES offered to readers and commenters on the new issue of Lamination Colony.
From among them (though there were quite a few that were really smart and interesting), Chris Higgs’s response to Peter Davis’s 4 Poems, as it caught something I think very subtle in the work and drew it out in a way that to me seemed right on:
I would like to coin a neologism for what Peter Davis is doing in his contribution, 4 Poems. The neologism is: NextGen MetaPoetry.
It’s sorta like metafiction, except that it’s poetry. And it’s next generation because instead of the old generation of metatextual self-referencing, he uses the meta device as the entire content of the piece.
This is a brilliant example of what Gertrude Stein meant when she noted, “There is no There there.” You see, there is no poem in Peter Davis’s poems. There is only the metatextual self-referencing. They are “poems” about writing poems, but they aren’t poems themselves. That’s what makes it NexGen (and in my opinion badass): the act of noticing the act of writing is old hat if that act is in service of something greater – but in Davis’s “poems” the act is the end, not the means to anything.
It is the ultimate form of communication because it cuts through all fakeness, all language trickery, all costuming, all putting on makeup and trying to impress everybody at the party with witty metaphors and unlikely similes. These “poems” are like the most pure phone conversation you’ve ever had with anyone. You know what I’m talking about, when you cut the crap and say what’s really on your mind without hiding behind anything.
That’s how Peter Davis’s NextGen MetaPoetry strikes me. & to be honest, I find it delightful and refreshing. There, I said it.
Chris will get a copy of the aforementioned DISCIPLINES from Noemi Press. (Chris please drop me a line with your address so I can mail it out.)
Thanks to all who commented and took time to read, and those who continue to do so. :)
Tags: chris higgs, peter davis
congrats chris. I went and read those poems again after reading your thoughts on it and it does open them up. It makes me think about no artist is ever being honest unless they are in some way addressing their own ego with their art, which is an unavoidable honesty in the artist’s psyche and so we should expect it to be always spilling into their art. The people who should not be creating spillageless art are artists, and the people who should be creating art are a some sort of egoless, not-artist people, driven by some obsession.
congrats chris. I went and read those poems again after reading your thoughts on it and it does open them up. It makes me think about no artist is ever being honest unless they are in some way addressing their own ego with their art, which is an unavoidable honesty in the artist’s psyche and so we should expect it to be always spilling into their art. The people who should not be creating spillageless art are artists, and the people who should be creating art are a some sort of egoless, not-artist people, driven by some obsession.
you should meet peter. talking to him and listening to him talk makes his poems ever better too. yeah, same with basically all poems and things created right. he read a bunch of these poems at a lecture at our university called “radical honesty…” the title was longer, but that’s how it started.
i like what chris wrote. good job.
you should meet peter. talking to him and listening to him talk makes his poems ever better too. yeah, same with basically all poems and things created right. he read a bunch of these poems at a lecture at our university called “radical honesty…” the title was longer, but that’s how it started.
i like what chris wrote. good job.
Fantastic! Thanks for picking me!
Fantastic! Thanks for picking me!