14 minutes, give or take
Yesterday I wrote an experience of reading the first page of a chapbook. It was one of those readings that we - as writers and readers - are encouraged to give poetry, or any written text: attentive, close, responsive to the turns of language. Appreciative. I really mean supposed to give when I write encourage. Trashing work, or, more connivally, negative criticism, I never found a teacher who encouraged that. It was always about sending the ball back to the other side of the court, never watching it go sailing out of bounds (or chopping it a brutal ace).
But I imagine that, like me, readers have this brutal, coarse, unforgiving, unresponsive side too - or one that responds differently, a side that recognizes that, while it may be pretty, or have some nice puns, its shit. A side that flips through abook of peotry without reading it, glances at a few pages and thinks, what a fucking run on. Or just - nope (nope takes many forms such as - whats on TV? what's she wearing? what was the name of the river that battle was fought on?. A side that atends poetry readings fully cognicent of what a put on they can be. Especially scathing towards those living off their reputation as poets (teaching positions, anyone?) or desiring some kind of status or identity from their participation in writing. Watching the biggies go "soft"the way I used to watch underground and hardcore bands "sell out" and sign with the majors, unless they're too busy repeating themselves a la the Ramones.
Usually I think we tuck away and bury this unpolite voice. And, the main effect is we diminish our culture because its anger is an energy, as Johnny Rotten sang it. And it is a lively, contagious, contentious energy, an energy that cares about our makings. Politeness is a sign of deadness in our arts culture, a sign it doesnt matter, we are all fat or getting fat, and if you are starving cuz someone else ate your share, dont make too much fuss about it please. By taking all the war out of poetry (and hence nothing to contest, as if the frontier was a constantly expanding manifest destiny with 40 poetic acres for us all) we take the warrior out too. Increasing the drivel factor by what - 10x, 15x? 40x? what's your best guess?
But - perosnally - its very scary and risky not to be polite, and to respond in your face. It also is a license to be an asshole, to pour bitterness and life-destorying crud out on others (which you have hatingly been brewing yourself). Too much criticism gets its bad name from this very poisonousness, or at least a deliberate (if unacknowledged) flirting with it. The dark side. That way there be power.
But Rotten's point is one picked up in Buddhism, where that energy is seen as variable. On the unconscious side, anger becomes blatant hatred: demonic, a selfish tyranny of destroying what is not me, what refuses to conform to (always) my standards. And on the conscious side, anger holds the germ of discriminating wisdom, that which tells shit from gold, that which lets us sever attachments to say reading or understanding a work because it is felt to offer little vitality. So judgment, the ability to judge, is a key perception of our minds - it keeps people alive and thriving (it is the cop policing the boundaries), or lets them fall into sickness and decay (the cop can be negligent, or else corrupt and violent). Destruction itself, and destructive acts, likewise - the Shiva dance varies greatly depending on the world consciousness or self-absorption of the Shiva dancer.
And Dear God may there be more to that last sentence that just another toss off. Sometimes I realize I have all the rhetorical flair of a truly horrid professor. Until I catch myself (which is different than always deleting the unflattering bits - those tip the hand, revealing a crucial energetic dynamic at play here - like the "warnings" posted up in Scooby Doo).
May all poets reclaim an ability to publically say no, so as to be able - when we mean it, when we feel it - to have the option of saying yes. Let me tell you - raising and refining and listening to (rather than berating, hiding, or heaping scorn upon) that "no" voice - for me, as an editor and reader (and writer) is a continual process. Like so many writers I've met, I fall back on the defense of politeness, upon a pose of reasoned listener, upon a default of positive feedback, which eventually makes me lose interest in poetry and its scenes in total (or is en toto, or in toto? Mmm, Toto.). The coirrosive flip of this for me has been an inability to accept - to believe in the honesty and validity of - other's critques and feedback of my own work - as if we are all slaves unable to freely express our minds.
"as if"
But I imagine that, like me, readers have this brutal, coarse, unforgiving, unresponsive side too - or one that responds differently, a side that recognizes that, while it may be pretty, or have some nice puns, its shit. A side that flips through abook of peotry without reading it, glances at a few pages and thinks, what a fucking run on. Or just - nope (nope takes many forms such as - whats on TV? what's she wearing? what was the name of the river that battle was fought on?. A side that atends poetry readings fully cognicent of what a put on they can be. Especially scathing towards those living off their reputation as poets (teaching positions, anyone?) or desiring some kind of status or identity from their participation in writing. Watching the biggies go "soft"the way I used to watch underground and hardcore bands "sell out" and sign with the majors, unless they're too busy repeating themselves a la the Ramones.
Usually I think we tuck away and bury this unpolite voice. And, the main effect is we diminish our culture because its anger is an energy, as Johnny Rotten sang it. And it is a lively, contagious, contentious energy, an energy that cares about our makings. Politeness is a sign of deadness in our arts culture, a sign it doesnt matter, we are all fat or getting fat, and if you are starving cuz someone else ate your share, dont make too much fuss about it please. By taking all the war out of poetry (and hence nothing to contest, as if the frontier was a constantly expanding manifest destiny with 40 poetic acres for us all) we take the warrior out too. Increasing the drivel factor by what - 10x, 15x? 40x? what's your best guess?
But - perosnally - its very scary and risky not to be polite, and to respond in your face. It also is a license to be an asshole, to pour bitterness and life-destorying crud out on others (which you have hatingly been brewing yourself). Too much criticism gets its bad name from this very poisonousness, or at least a deliberate (if unacknowledged) flirting with it. The dark side. That way there be power.
But Rotten's point is one picked up in Buddhism, where that energy is seen as variable. On the unconscious side, anger becomes blatant hatred: demonic, a selfish tyranny of destroying what is not me, what refuses to conform to (always) my standards. And on the conscious side, anger holds the germ of discriminating wisdom, that which tells shit from gold, that which lets us sever attachments to say reading or understanding a work because it is felt to offer little vitality. So judgment, the ability to judge, is a key perception of our minds - it keeps people alive and thriving (it is the cop policing the boundaries), or lets them fall into sickness and decay (the cop can be negligent, or else corrupt and violent). Destruction itself, and destructive acts, likewise - the Shiva dance varies greatly depending on the world consciousness or self-absorption of the Shiva dancer.
And Dear God may there be more to that last sentence that just another toss off. Sometimes I realize I have all the rhetorical flair of a truly horrid professor. Until I catch myself (which is different than always deleting the unflattering bits - those tip the hand, revealing a crucial energetic dynamic at play here - like the "warnings" posted up in Scooby Doo).
May all poets reclaim an ability to publically say no, so as to be able - when we mean it, when we feel it - to have the option of saying yes. Let me tell you - raising and refining and listening to (rather than berating, hiding, or heaping scorn upon) that "no" voice - for me, as an editor and reader (and writer) is a continual process. Like so many writers I've met, I fall back on the defense of politeness, upon a pose of reasoned listener, upon a default of positive feedback, which eventually makes me lose interest in poetry and its scenes in total (or is en toto, or in toto? Mmm, Toto.). The coirrosive flip of this for me has been an inability to accept - to believe in the honesty and validity of - other's critques and feedback of my own work - as if we are all slaves unable to freely express our minds.
"as if"
posted by Kyle at 12:49 PM
8 Comments:
Circa 428 BCE, I said: Imperturbable wisdom is worth everything. To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth. Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions. Neither skill nor wisdom is attainable unless one learns. Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.
Kyle,
There is so much serious thought in this post.
When I get to reading, and things aren’t working, I just put it down. That anger only begins when I am forced to continue to look at, and find worth in, a piece I find totally devoid of anything. It is easy for me to put down a bad poem (why do I want to put quotes around bad?). Why should we have to suffer through? That said, I have put down a bad poem only to come back to it later and find that in fact, the poem is not bad, that I just was not there with it. Other times I’ve come back and nothing has changed. the latter is the usual response on the re-read. Still though, bc I have been able to come back to something later and gain from it, I worry about letting myself get too involved in a poem which is without me. Don’t want to allow myself to get that visceral reaction. don’t want to let myself start hating. Worry then that I will never come back. How to know that yr reading, the reading you are giving at the moment, is the right reading, that you are reacting with a work in the way which is most beneficial? Maybe I don’t trust myself as a reader yet. Seems that I don’t trust that instinct in words the way I do in life. Or maybe, it is just not so final. Or maybe it is just that when I smell shit on a person I am usually forced (or decide) to stay with that person for some time. Maybe we argue. Passion gets up. there is a visceral reaction. that reaction stays and it is difficult to ever change that opinion. A problem with reading for school is that we are not allowed to put down the book. I think my most negative responses are to work we must read. I can’t think of the last work I have hated that I came to of my own accord.
Yes. What are we made of? I always say give me all you got. Give me more. I say this without irony.
i like the concept of unconscious, destroying anger, and conscious constructive anger
one must reserve the right to say 'no' to a given work. but I prefer Senor Borges formula for reading, which is that I failed the book. anger is useful only if to construct a positive alternative. when Mr Lydon sang, "anger is an energy" it is useful to remember that he stopped using the confrontational moniker Johnny Rotten to his birth name of John Lydon, a jump from societal alienation and stagnation of the Sex Pistols to the larger, commercial, culture located in PiL, Ltd. so then the irony of his statement "anger is an energy" is perhaps a bit muted. at any rate, anger works best when the culture is so flat that it needs to be kicked in the balls to get it going again. just last weekend I heard on the radio, for the first time ever, the Angry Somoans song "Right Side of My Mind," an early 80s punk band known for its crassness and love of cussing. great song, and it sure beats the hell outta contemporary pop-punk bands of today because when the Somoans were practicing their art the culture itself was dead, radio was a wasteland, tv sucked and so forth. and the punks of the 80s had no chance in hell to ever hear themselves on fm radio (with a few small exceptions), for example, see X's song "The Unheard Music." now what does it say about society that a song from the underground is given airplay 20 yrs later? I dunno, but I'm sure the Somoans, wherever they are, are probably laughing themselves silly. anyway, writing is large and I find there is so much good stuff to read I rarely feel anger. because there is a great quantity of good writing and writers in the small presses, online and in print, that there is greater cause to celebrate than not. only when poetry becomes so much a pose would I think that the anger Mr Lydon speaks is useful.
One more thought on the anger. So I’ve put down the book. The poem is almost forgotten. I am watching Bay Watch. having all kinds of fun. then some poet walks into my house, picks up the karaoke mike, and wants to talk about why that poem, the poem I put down, is the best poem ever. “Look at how well the lines are crafted. Cant you. Cant you. can’t you see it, Jim?” And now I am back with the poem. I have the poem in hand. Bay Watch is muted. And I am trying. Then I am hating. And I am hating that poet. I am arguing. mostly without a useful vocabulary to explain why the piece is a log of sheet. Just that it doesn’t work. “Cant you see that it doesn’t work?” “Oh, but it does, it is yr lack, yr inability to stick with this difficult/easy/fun/sexy/critical piece. This piece is showing yr flaw. Ha Ha on U.” And so now I am angry at the two (poet and piece) and a bit worried about my own intellectual capacity. Oh Reed I miss you!
Jim - yes. But its our vocabulary that has done this to us. Thats a place to begin - and to see how those words are meshed w/ the emotions, and to find wiggle room in those latches, screws, knots.
Because it is NOT a contest.
Turn The Bay Watch back on -- and up. Give it up/live it up. Kick people in the balls or ask people to kick you in the balls.
Fight this Generation!
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