A CUBE OF ICE INTO A GLASS OF OUZO
An off-day: some sadness and confusion about friends and friendships, a few long undeliverable letters written, an ankle injury from some over-exuberant exercise, a walk back and forth through the neighborhood, and of course many solitary and unenviable thoughts. Also, I read a few fantastic Sven Birkerts essays on contemporary poetry, which brought up some uncomfortable points even though they were fantastic.
For example, from "The Rage of Caliban," his essay on the deadening effects of media on language (and ultimately, poetry):
"What does the poet, especially the young, media-infected poet, have to draw upon apart from this new lingua franca? What is he to do if every attempt at departure from the homogenized norm sounds arch, mannered, or pretentious? Add to this the fact that the poet needs to believe that he is writing for his culture, his peers and compatriots. How can he address his time and get a hearing without resorting to the familiar blanched sounds and leveled cadences? Only the subject matter is variable--but even here the possibilities are limited, for not everything will 'play.'"
What a pitch-perfect capitulation of the problem! In some ways I think this problem is the most often- and naturally-occurring voiced by the poet company I keep. We want to be recognized as part of culture rather than away from culture, but in order to be "part" in any real way, we have to entertain. (I'm thinking specifically of slam poetry, spoken word, and other genres of poetry that, at their worst, are easily absorbed into commercial culture and television.) Entertainment feels cheap and limited, but the second we try to engage in any other kind of voice, we're socked away for being snooty and elitist.
Reading "The Rage of Caliban" is even more dizzying because it was published in 1989, a point at which our current media saturation was largely theoretical. It is a pre-internet essay. And even without the internet's intensely mediating presence to discuss, Birkerts hits the mark: I, for one, am sufficiently frightened by the way our relationships with media have altered our relationships with language. I am a product of that shift-- "media-infected." It's clear from the incisive paragraph above that Birkerts doesn't have a great deal of hope for me, but he does understand the frustrations perfectly well.
I'm further frustrated with him for presenting such a clear understanding of the problem without suggesting any redemptive measures. Maybe this is because his understanding of the social factors at work outran his ability to offer a cure instead of a diagnosis. Maybe the cure is only visible to the media-infected generation. Maybe (and most likely of all) a cure is the most facile way to cast the shift from attaching language to reality to attaching language to mediated images of reality.
Even though he does not explicitly intend to defend difficulty, Birkerts ends up offering an implicit case for the anti-entertainment poem. I find this encouraging. I spent a lot of time this year trying to teach poetry to middle school kids (who are even more "media-infected that I am!), trying to theorize around my students' resistance or inability to deal with abstract or out-of-the-ordinary language. In some ways this work had a negative effect on my own writing because I wished (as I hunted through books for a poem they might be able to hang onto) that I were writing the exact poems I tried to find. My guilt increases when I think about how many people close to me (parents, family, friends outside of literaria) would find little to grasp in what I write. It's a profoundly alienating feeling, one that doesn't necessarily help me do my job as a teacher or a writer.
So, with Sven's nearly invisible support of difficulty and difference, I am going to forge on. That's the only thing I can imagine at the moment anyway, but a small push can do a lot of good.
An off-day: some sadness and confusion about friends and friendships, a few long undeliverable letters written, an ankle injury from some over-exuberant exercise, a walk back and forth through the neighborhood, and of course many solitary and unenviable thoughts. Also, I read a few fantastic Sven Birkerts essays on contemporary poetry, which brought up some uncomfortable points even though they were fantastic.
For example, from "The Rage of Caliban," his essay on the deadening effects of media on language (and ultimately, poetry):
"What does the poet, especially the young, media-infected poet, have to draw upon apart from this new lingua franca? What is he to do if every attempt at departure from the homogenized norm sounds arch, mannered, or pretentious? Add to this the fact that the poet needs to believe that he is writing for his culture, his peers and compatriots. How can he address his time and get a hearing without resorting to the familiar blanched sounds and leveled cadences? Only the subject matter is variable--but even here the possibilities are limited, for not everything will 'play.'"
What a pitch-perfect capitulation of the problem! In some ways I think this problem is the most often- and naturally-occurring voiced by the poet company I keep. We want to be recognized as part of culture rather than away from culture, but in order to be "part" in any real way, we have to entertain. (I'm thinking specifically of slam poetry, spoken word, and other genres of poetry that, at their worst, are easily absorbed into commercial culture and television.) Entertainment feels cheap and limited, but the second we try to engage in any other kind of voice, we're socked away for being snooty and elitist.
Reading "The Rage of Caliban" is even more dizzying because it was published in 1989, a point at which our current media saturation was largely theoretical. It is a pre-internet essay. And even without the internet's intensely mediating presence to discuss, Birkerts hits the mark: I, for one, am sufficiently frightened by the way our relationships with media have altered our relationships with language. I am a product of that shift-- "media-infected." It's clear from the incisive paragraph above that Birkerts doesn't have a great deal of hope for me, but he does understand the frustrations perfectly well.
I'm further frustrated with him for presenting such a clear understanding of the problem without suggesting any redemptive measures. Maybe this is because his understanding of the social factors at work outran his ability to offer a cure instead of a diagnosis. Maybe the cure is only visible to the media-infected generation. Maybe (and most likely of all) a cure is the most facile way to cast the shift from attaching language to reality to attaching language to mediated images of reality.
Even though he does not explicitly intend to defend difficulty, Birkerts ends up offering an implicit case for the anti-entertainment poem. I find this encouraging. I spent a lot of time this year trying to teach poetry to middle school kids (who are even more "media-infected that I am!), trying to theorize around my students' resistance or inability to deal with abstract or out-of-the-ordinary language. In some ways this work had a negative effect on my own writing because I wished (as I hunted through books for a poem they might be able to hang onto) that I were writing the exact poems I tried to find. My guilt increases when I think about how many people close to me (parents, family, friends outside of literaria) would find little to grasp in what I write. It's a profoundly alienating feeling, one that doesn't necessarily help me do my job as a teacher or a writer.
So, with Sven's nearly invisible support of difficulty and difference, I am going to forge on. That's the only thing I can imagine at the moment anyway, but a small push can do a lot of good.
<< Home