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Language of the Power Elite
I can’t believe this bit of brilliance from Keston Sutherland came to me via Harriet, which has been toadying to Con Writers and their Maven-in-Chief Marjorie Perloff for a long while now. I’m thankful to whatever whistleblower at Harriet found it and posted the link to it, though. Here’s a sample: [S]ignificantly for so-called “conceptual” poets, the refusal to give a conceptual account of the “subject” whose rejection defines the schema of their art is a manifest expression of contempt for the very work of conceptual definition itself.Read More
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The Writin’s on the Wall
My previous couple of posts may paint me as a stick-in-the-mud, an opponent of “innovation,” a reactionary sonneteer or lover of Tradition (cue Tevye). No. There is a dimension of the avant-garde I enjoy and admire (the two responses need not align, but it’s best if they do), and I believe one of the best spokesman for this dimension these days is Kent Johnson. I bring Kent up merely to direct Perpetual Birders to his Chicago Review takedown of Marjorie Perloff’s “Avant-Garde Poetics” section in the latest edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.Read More
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Horse Pucky*
The Slipperiness of Academe “Perloff also seems to understand the problematizing act of Hawkey’s project, which manifoldly engages and investigates appropriation, dialogism, the creative act, and the anxiety of influence.” —Some denizen of academia (I’m betting) named Harriet Staff __________________* Regarding horse pucky, it’s a cherished term from my childhood. It means “nonsense,” yes. But nonsense that reeks. That squishes between one’s mental toes. That causes the feet of one’s intellect to fly out and dump one down in the muck.Read More
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Amateurs and Canonizers
Bill Knott demonstrates how to read a poem. Compare his ever-the-amateur reading (amateur in the old sense of someone doing something purely for the love of it) with this reading of Rae Armantrout by professional critic Marjorie Perloff: Knott’s reading is all about discovery, while Perloff’s is all about canonization. The point is not to say we ought to replace Perloff with Knott, but to suggest we ought to replace Perloff’s intentions with Knott’s intentions whenever we read. That is, we ought to read as amateurs, not pros.Read More
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Poetic Anemia
Here’s a thoughtful, if negative, review of Rae Armantrout’s Versed. The author, Tom Holmes, is on target, it seems to me.Read More
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Walking the Doggerel
Today’s Poem-A-Day poem from The Academy of American Poets is Charles Bernstein’s “All the Whiskey in Heaven”. Bernstein is famous for co-founding both the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E back in the ’70s and The Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY-Buffalo in 1995, but for me he’ll always be the Woody Allen of poetry (I’m a big Woody Allen fan, in spite of everything); Bernstein’s funny even when he’s being serious—or especially when—and people find brilliancies in his work that are really just the sparkle of his highly polished shtick.Read More
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A Noiseless Patient Poet
Far be it from me to diss Marjorie Perloff, an often illuminating poetry critic. But when Jerome Rothenberg offered up this extract from her introduction to some German translations of Rae Armantrout‘s poems, a strange feeling crept over me: the sensation that she was slipping, I mean. Perloff, typically precise to a fault, here becomes a slightly vague promoter of a poet she’s a fan of. To wit: [U]nlike Williams (or Levertov), Armantrout was never a poet of concrete particulars: from the first, her minimalist lyrics were breaking the Williams mold.Read More
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For Whom Do Poets Speak?
Linh Dinh is right, of course, in this powerful brief statement on poetics, which takes as its touchstone a powerful stanza by Czeslaw Milosz. The question is why. Why do we (poets, yes, but citizens as well of a system—there are no nations, really, not anymore—designed to maintain the hegemony of a mendacious, thieving elite) … why do we tolerate and even promote poetry that is superficial, trite, and purposely “uncreative,” utterly lacking in scope and depth? Why do we write about what we wish rather than what we know? I’m not talking about politics, per se.Read More
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On Poetic Values
Over on the Harriet blog, Kenneth Goldsmith posted an account of a keynote address by Marjorie Perloff at the recent Conceptual Poetry Conference in Tucson. It’s well worth reading, although it offers up a point of view I disagree with. Here is the response I posted a short while ago: I’m an admirer of Ms. Perloff and am a little reluctant to criticize her based on Kenneth’s summary, but if his characterization is accurate, I have to take issue with her logic.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
