Asketh and ye shall receiveth, Friends. Today we look at two Major Critics Writing for Major Magazines, who are Getting Down With the Young and Indie.
At Boston Review, Stephen Burt discusses and attempts to define an emerging school/movement/moment in contemporary poetry. He traces the [whatever]’s origins/motives/aesthetics back to Oppen, Creeley, and especially W.C. Williams’s famous declaration that there are “no ideas but in things.”
The poets of the New Thing observe scenes and people (not only, but also, themselves) with a self-subordinating concision, so much so that the term “minimalism” comes up in discussions of their work, though the false analogies to earlier movements can make the term misleading. The poets of the New Thing eschew sarcasm and tread lightly with ironies, and when they seem hard to pin down, it is because they leave space for interpretations to fit.
The poets Burt discusses include Jon Woodward, Graham Foust, and my friend Justin Marks, whose first book, A Million in Prizes, just came out this year. It’s a long essay and will give you plenty to think about.
Burt identifies Flood Editions as the preeminent press of the New Thing poets, so it’s sort of interesting that his essay doesn’t mention Jennifer Moxley at all. But Moxley is given plenty of attention by Ange Mlinko, in the Nation Spring Books issue. Mlinko’s review of Moxley’s new book, Clampdown (Flood Editions; and yes, named after the Clash song) is illuminating and persuasive; it also does double-duty as a thorough introduction to Moxley’s whole body of work. Subscribers and/or newstand buyers can also avail themselves of Joshua Clover’s take on a new translation of Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen by Keith Waldrop.
Also noteworthy is the poetry in the issue itself, including poems by Robin Blaser and Adrienne Rich. Also also, a not-poetry-related but Nation-related PS— Remember when my man Deresiewicz wrote this about James Wood? Well it seems to have peeved Vivian Gornick, and she wrote a long letter explaining just how and why. Her letter and Deresiewicz’s response are both here.
Tags: Flood Editions, Jennifer Moxley, Justin Marks, Stephen Burt
addenda:
I woudl argue that there is no emerging school/movement/thing. Or at least not a dominant one. There is only hetrogeneity. There are far to many people doing far to many different things – Flarf, “Conceptual Writing”, post-language, post-confessional, vis-po, restrictive writing, sound poetry, slam poetry, performance work….. you can’t pin down any movement as dominant, because that disingenously subordinates all the others to a lesser level of importance. Though a lot of critics do try an do that (cf Ron Silliman and his tirades against the “school of quietude”, that seem to be getting close to pathological of late).
Is “disingenuous” the word for that? Because i would think that throwing up one’s hands, invoking “heterogeneity” and rattling off a few categories of poetry in order to dismiss a lengthy article which one gives no evidence of having read, is more like what i think of when i hear the word disingenuous.
If criticism can’t think about and make arguments regarding trends in writing, then golly, I’m not sure why we read criticism. There may well be arguments to be made that Burt is way off-base with “The New Thing”; one can also imagine different articles discussing other poets and forms of poetry. But just to declare the whole discussion moot from the outset?
Is “disingenuous” the word for that? Because i would think that throwing up one’s hands, invoking “heterogeneity” and rattling off a few categories of poetry in order to dismiss a lengthy article which one gives no evidence of having read, is more like what i think of when i hear the word disingenuous.
If criticism can’t think about and make arguments regarding trends in writing, then golly, I’m not sure why we read criticism. There may well be arguments to be made that Burt is way off-base with “The New Thing”; one can also imagine different articles discussing other poets and forms of poetry. But just to declare the whole discussion moot from the outset?
maybe what Ross is saying, or maybe what I am saying, but using Ross as a human shield, is that this categorization of poetry is kinda foolish.
See, this is what I don’t get: A publication says they’re interested in various types of poetry, including experimental poetry. You’d think reading heaps of poetry would aide in figuring out what this means. Content, form, punctuation, images? All of the aforementioned? Who knows…
The thing thats always followed my work is its inability, as a whole, to be categorized. I’ll shape a poem in a particular way to reflect the tone and feeling of an old school blues record. Even splitting it up into sections like Side A and B and then a section called AC/DC, where the form shifts, meter speeds up, punctuation ceases, etc.
To me, a poem is a poem. It isn’t a “language” poem, or a “this” poem or a “that” poem…. I find it weird, calling poems these things. Sometimes I feel like categorization things is done for 1 of 2 reasons. To bring things closer, or to push them further away from you.
The impartial critic is a delusional one… A distanced critic is the clear-minded smart elephant in the room. I say it is fine to think/talk/write about trends in writing, but to do it just to create a new movement or category… I dunno…
I fail to see the point…
maybe what Ross is saying, or maybe what I am saying, but using Ross as a human shield, is that this categorization of poetry is kinda foolish.
See, this is what I don’t get: A publication says they’re interested in various types of poetry, including experimental poetry. You’d think reading heaps of poetry would aide in figuring out what this means. Content, form, punctuation, images? All of the aforementioned? Who knows…
The thing thats always followed my work is its inability, as a whole, to be categorized. I’ll shape a poem in a particular way to reflect the tone and feeling of an old school blues record. Even splitting it up into sections like Side A and B and then a section called AC/DC, where the form shifts, meter speeds up, punctuation ceases, etc.
To me, a poem is a poem. It isn’t a “language” poem, or a “this” poem or a “that” poem…. I find it weird, calling poems these things. Sometimes I feel like categorization things is done for 1 of 2 reasons. To bring things closer, or to push them further away from you.
The impartial critic is a delusional one… A distanced critic is the clear-minded smart elephant in the room. I say it is fine to think/talk/write about trends in writing, but to do it just to create a new movement or category… I dunno…
I fail to see the point…
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