Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism (Modern Contemporary Poetics) - Hardcover

Benjamin Friedlander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0817311661 ISBN 13: 9780817311667

Publisher: University of Alabama Press, 2003

Synopsis

This study offers an overview of avant-garde American poetry of the latter 20th century - a flourishing movement in American letters. The four ""experiments"" in literary criticism vary in style and viewpoint. Taken together, they reassess the fundamental relationship between poetry and criticism.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Friedlander is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maine and author of the books of poetry A Knot Is Not a Tangle and Time Rations.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

SIMULCAST

Four Experiments in CriticismBy Benjamin Friedlander

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2004 Benjamin Friedlander
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-1166-7

Contents

Acknowledgments...................................................viiIntroduction: Criticism as Applied Poetry.........................1The Cultural Work of Plagiarism...................................5Descriptions of an Imaginary Universe.............................16From Satire to Criticism..........................................35Simulcast.........................................................51The Anti-Hegemony Project.........................................69The AHP by "Edgar Allen Poe"......................................71An AHP Dossier....................................................82Poe's Poetics and Selected Essays.................................119Letter to B-.....................................................121The Poetic Principle..............................................128Gertrude Stein: A Retrospective Criticism.........................145Mr. Rasula's History..............................................159Blockage, Breakdown, Baffle.......................................170Mr. Daly's Polemic................................................185The Literati of San Francisco.....................................197Bob Perelman......................................................202Andrew Schelling..................................................205Robert Grenier....................................................207Eileen Corder.....................................................209Michael Palmer....................................................213Nathaniel Mackey..................................................215Beverly Dahlen....................................................217Ted Pearson.......................................................223David Melnick.....................................................225Stephen Rodefer...................................................226Robert Duncan.....................................................231Carla Harryman....................................................237Ron Silliman......................................................238Benjamin Friedlander..............................................240Tom Mandel........................................................242Steve Benson......................................................243Lyn Hejinian......................................................247Barrett Watten....................................................253Norma Cole........................................................255Kathleen Fraser...................................................261Pat Reed..........................................................262Kit Robinson......................................................266A Short History of Language Poetry................................269Clark Coolidge....................................................273Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten and Lyn Hejinian.....................276Charles Bernstein.................................................289Critique of Language Poetry.......................................293Roundtable Discussion of Language Poetry..........................295Notes.............................................................309Index.............................................................341

Chapter One

THE ANTI-HEGEMONY PROJECT

The AHP by "Edgar Allen Poe"

A satire, pointedly such, at the present day, and especially by American poets, is a welcome novelty, indeed. We have really done very little in the line upon this side of the Atlantic-nothing, certainly, of importance-Kenneth Koch's cheerful poems and the doggerel verse of Ogden Nash and Dorothy Parker to the contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Poems, plays, fictions, essays, epigrams, and memoirs, written by poets and possessed of this unintentional excellence, we would have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; but, in the matter of directly meant and genuine satire, especially in or concerning verse, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. And yet, let it be said, while we are not, as a literary people, exactly equal to "The Dunciad"-while we have no pretensions to adopting a Popish cadence-in short, while we are no satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire.

We repeat that we were glad to see this work of Mr. Funkhouser and company abroad on the Internet; first, because it was something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many respects, it was well executed; and, thirdly, because, in the universal corruption and rigmarole amid which we gasp for breath, it was really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of the unadulterated air of truth.

A brief history is sufficient to give the satire's overall dimensions. In February of 1995, a series of news briefs, modeled in style and format on those of the "clari. news hierarchy," began to appear on Charles Bernstein's "Poetics List," which originates out of SUNY Buffalo. The contents varied, but inevitably reflected current goings-on in the "poetry world." Many of the items were surreal, but some had an almost prosaic verisimilitude. In one, the loquacious Tom Mandel became an affable retiree; in another, Ken Sherwood and Loss Glazier were called "Poetics Police"; in another, language poetry was blamed on tainted baby formula; in another, a "Save the NEA" effort was termed a cross-dressing fashion show. All of these interventions were identified as products of the "bleari. nooz hierarchy," and further attributed to "The Anti-Hegemony Project." With surprisingly little distortion, the various jargons of politics, fashion, crime, sports, and economics were used to explain the social and aesthetic workings of the Art of the Muse-and quite adequately. The point, as soon became clear, was simple: to show that poetry's sublime particularity is no such thing at all.

More remarkable than the AHP itself, however, was the utter silence that greeted the sudden broadcast of these stories. Indeed, until an item appeared transforming Barrett Watten into a killer whale-adapted from an item on the film "Free Willy"-there was no public comment of any sort. And even in this instance, in the chivalrous outcry of James Sherry, response was focused on the matter of authorship, the AHP's mysterious provenance having become a focal point for counter-critique. We emphasize that authorship and not source became the focal point, for while the stories had been posted from identifiable "accounts," the stories themselves were unsigned, and rumors began to circulate privately that the true author-if such there was-kept himself hid. Chris Funkhouser, from whose account many of the stories had been sent, quickly came forward to make a public statement to the effect that the "AHP" was a cooperative project. And soon enough, discussion died down again-or at least appeared to. Inevitably, however, the rumors themselves became subjects for AHP satire. In one, a tapeworm named "Benji" was said to have burrowed deeply into Charles Bernstein's personal computer; in another, attributed to CNN (the Co-Poetry News Network), AHP activity was blamed on a sentient robot gone mad on too much literature.

For the record, the AHP's interventions originated from the following persons' accounts, at the following institutions: Carla Billitteri, Nick Lawrence, and Martin Spinelli (SUNY Buffalo), Don Byrd, Christopher Funkhouser, and Belle Gironda (SUNY Albany), Sandy Baldwin (NY U), Stephen Cope (U.C. Santa Cruz), Greg Keith (unaffiliated), Nada Gordon (unaffiliated). A few other accounts were also utilized, but as of yet we are unable to identify the owners.

But this was not the end. In a final hurrah, the AHP, after 12 days of relative silence, produced en masse a blitz of items of a different sort altogether. These appeared on the last day of February and the first day of March, 1995. No longer taking the form of fake news items, these final messages were modeled on the adolescent chitchat of the Internet's many Newsgroups-the Internet's discourse of choice. Presented as postings to an imaginary group called "alt.fan.silliman" (the model, we believe, was alt.fan.madonna), this later set of AHP posts used a mixture of real and superficially disguised names, and again satirized the goings-on on the Poetics List and in the poetry world. But where the "bleari" stories had adopted a sober language, and had appeared at discreet intervals, the "alt.fan.silliman" items flirted with incomprehensibility, and were so voluminous as to overwhelm altogether the Poetics List's normal flow of activity. (In a mere two days, there were 24 "alt.fan" messages. By contrast, across a period of 25 days, about 30 "bleari" messages had been generated.) This last onslaught, unlike the prior intervention, met with immediate outcry-an outcry that took two basic forms. First, it was said that the focus on Ron Silliman amounted to a smear campaign-in Internet lingo, "a flame"; second, that the sheer volume transformed the AHP's satire into a theft of the airwaves. In response, the AHP's defenders pointed out that the satires were in many ways a tribute. (The aggrieved poet himself weighed in with a bemused admission that he was, all in all, tickled by the attention-indeed, he responded to many of the "alt.fan" posts as if they had truly been the outpourings of fandom.) The second critique-that the volume of postings inherently prohibited a fair exchange of ideas-was never directly countered, but in retrospect this too seems debatable. To be sure, the swelling of traffic was sizable, but such swelling was also within the bounds of predictable occurrence. Moreover, even when such swells had drawn heated critique in the past, it was usually on account of their content-but this, precisely, was what the Poetics List proceeded to ignore. The real source of ire was more probably something else-something never stated directly. The "bleari" satires, for all their vehemence, treated poetry and the Poetics List as a matter of some importance. The "alt.fan" items treated these same affairs as adolescent twaddle. Could it be that the "alt.fan" postings-unlike the "bleari" items-wounded the vanity of the List as a whole, and not merely the figures named directly?

So much, in any event, for history.

As a work of the imagination and otherwise, the AHP had many defects, and though Mr. Funkhouser is a personal friend of ours, and we are happy and proud to say so, these we shall have no scruple in pointing out. However, the AHP also had many remarkable merits-merits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved by the satire-quite useless for any clique, or set of cliques, to attempt to frown down, or to affect not to see, or to feel, or to understand.

Its prevalent blemishes were referable chiefly to the leading sin of appropriation. Had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase of the whole manner of our culture's self-satirizing discourse, we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful thing of the kind upon record. So close is the copy, that it extends to the most trivial points-for example, the use of fancy, personalized "sig. files" in Newsgroup postings. The turns of phraseology, the forms of allusion, the use of the screen, the general conduct of the satire-everything-all-are the property of the culture as a whole. We cannot deny, it is true, that the self-satiric model of the discourse in question is unsusceptible of improvement, and that the contemporary satirist who deviates therefrom must necessarily sacrifice something of merit at the shrine of originality. Neither can we shut our eyes to the fact that the appropriation, in the present case, has conveyed, in full spirit, the subliminal critical qualities, as well as, in rigid letter, the inadvertent elegances of the journalistic and chit-chat modes of the day. We have in the AHP the bold, vigorous, and semi-lucid prose, the biting sarcasm, the pungent opinionation, and the unscrupulous directness of the world beyond poetry. Yet it will not do to forget that Mr. Funkhouser et al. have been shown how to achieve these virtues. They are thus only entitled to the praise of close observers and thoughtful, skilful copyists. The analyses are, to be sure, their own. They are neither clari's, nor alt.fan.madonna's-but they are molded in the identical mold used by these uncredited agencies of meaning.

Such servility of appropriation has seduced our authors into errors that their better sense should have avoided. They sometimes mistake intention; at other times they copy faults, confounding them with beauties. In the opening salvo, we find the lines: "The palace dispatched Crown Prince Gizzi and Crown Princess Willis on a Southern California tour three days after the quake. Following oblique criticism, the pair cut short their trip and returned to Rhode Island."

The royal attributions are here adopted from a clari story about the imperial family of Japan, frequent subjects of news stories; but it should have been remembered that Prince and Princess enjoy very different meaning when applied to the ordinary citizens of a modern democracy than they do when applied to a royal family.

We are also sure that the gross vulgarity, the slander-we can use no gentler name-that disgraces the "AHP," cannot be the result of innate cruelty in the mind of the writers. It is part of the slavish and undiscriminating imitation of a culture inured to such sins. This slander has done the AHP an irreparable injury, both in a moral and intellectual view, without effecting anything whatever on the score of sarcasm, vigor or wit. "Let what is to be said, be said plainly." True; but let nothing cruel be ever said or conceived.

In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued itself with the full spirit of the polish and pungency of non- or even anti-literary language, we have already awarded it high praise. But there remains to be mentioned the far loftier merit of speaking the truth fearlessly in an epoch when truth is out of fashion and under circumstances of social position which would have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar Quixotism. For the dissemination of the AHP-an undertaking which brought under review, by name, most of our prominent literati, and treated them, generally, as they deserved (what treatment could be more bitter?)-for the dissemination of this attack, Mr. Funkhouser, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has little to look for apart from the silent respect of those at once honest and timid but the most malignant open or covert persecution. For this reason, and because it is the truth which he and his companions have spoken, do we say to him from the bottom of our hearts, "God speed!"

We repeat it: it is the truth that he and his committee have spoken, and who shall contradict us? They have said unscrupulously what every reasonable person among us has long known to be "as true as the tabloids"-that, as a poetic people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. They have asserted that we are clique-ridden, and who does not smile at the obvious truism of that assertion? They maintain that chicanery is, with us, a far surer road than talent to distinction in letters. Who gainsays this? The corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism has become notorious. Our own arm has prostrated its powers. The collusion between government funding agency and publisher, publisher and critic, critic and poet, poet and academy, academy and government agency, constitutes at once the most unbreakable ring of corruption and the most vicious circle of ideological contamination yet to become manifest in our letters. But to keep our comments focused on a single link in this Chain: the intercourse between publisher and author, author and critic, as it now almost universally stands, is comprised either in the paying and pocketing of blackmail, as the price of a simple forbearance, or in a direct system of petty and contemptible tit for tat, properly so called-a system even more injurious than the former to the true interests of the public, and more degrading to the buyers and sellers of good opinion, on account of the more positive character of the service here rendered for the consideration received. We laugh at the idea of any denial of our assertions upon this topic; they are infamously true. In the charge of general corruption, there are undoubtedly many noble exceptions to be made. There are, indeed, some very few magazine editors, who, maintaining an entire independence, will accept no unsolicited manuscripts at all, or who receive them with perfect understanding, on the part of these latter, that an unbiased critique will be given. There are even some publishers who refuse backing from the Federal government (or any other granting agency) as well. But these cases are insufficient to have much effect on the popular mistrust: a mistrust heightened by late exposure of the machinations of coteries in New York, San Francisco, and now all cyberspace-coteries which, at the bidding of leading small press publishers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little hanger-on of the party, or well-"Fed" protector of the firm.

We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. It is unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost every issue of a book. It is needless to call to mind the desperate case of Messerli-a case where the pertinacity of the effort to gull-where the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgment-where the woefully overdone sun-and-mooning of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is supererogatory to dwell upon "The American Book Awards," or other similar follies, when we have, before our eyes, hourly instances of the machinations in question. The grossness of these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant rebuke from the more honorable portions of the community; and we hail these symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled ignorance and quackery (strong only in combination) as the harbinger of a better era for the interests of real merit, and of American poetry as a whole.

It has become, indeed, the plain duty of each individual connected with our poetry, heartily to give whatever influence he possesses to the good cause of integrity and the truth. The results attained will be worth his closest attention, for we shall thus frown down all conspiracies to foist inanity upon the public consideration at the obvious expense of every person of talent who is not a member of a clique in power. We may even arrive, in time, at that desirable point from which a distinct view of our persons of letters may be obtained, and their respective pretensions adjusted, by the standard of a rigorous and self-sustaining criticism alone. That their several positions are properly settled; that the positions which a vast number now hold are maintained by any better tenure than chicanery, will be asserted by none but the ignorant. We do not advance this fact as a new discovery. Its truth, on the contrary, is the subject, and has long been so, of everyday witticism and mirth.

Surely there can be few things more ridiculous than the general character and assumptions of the ordinary critical notices of new books! An editor, sometimes without the shadow of the commonest attainment-often without brains, always without time-does not scruple to give the world to understand that he is in the daily habit of critically reading and passing judgment over a flood of publications, one tenth of whose title-pages he may possibly have turned over, three-fourths of whose contents would be Hebrew to his most desperate efforts at comprehension, and whose entire mass and amount, as might be mathematically demonstrated, would be sufficient to occupy, in the most cursory perusal, the attention of some ten or twenty readers for a month! What he wants in plausibility, however, is made up in obsequiousness; what he lacks in time is supplied in temper. Such an editor is the most easily pleased person in the world. He admires everything, from the fat anthology of Little Boy Blue to the thinnest chapbook of How Now Brown Cow. Indeed, such editor's sole difficulty is in finding tongue to express his delight. Every saddle-stitched pamphlet is a miracle-every perfect-bound book is an epoch in letters.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from SIMULCASTby Benjamin Friedlander Copyright © 2004 by Benjamin Friedlander. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0817311661
• ISBN 13: 9780817311667
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360