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Further, Regarding The Postmodern Poetry Post

Sean Bonney, in comments on the Eyewear post about the ambiguous status of "postmodern" poetry and poetics in Britain, suggests the "divide" between poets cannot be bridged by rainbow coalition, as it were, because genuine, even radical, politics divides those who work in "the mainstream" and those who work in the "late modernist" traditions. This reply, which was rather knee-jerk, instantly glossed over precisely the key point of my post, that, at least in America, a 21st century poetics is being developed which is less divisive, and, indeed, interested in various forms and styles of poetic process, and utterance. Bonney does little but reiterate entrenched, and, frankly, late-20th century grievances - grievances that are, indeed, grounded in historical debates over poetry in the UK.

However, he remains, to my mind, unconvincing - because he has yet to establish how and why he finds a link between Modernist and experimental poetic forms, and the practice of a socialist, or even Marxist politics. As he should know, most of the poets of the modernist moment were right-wing, or fascist; and, on the other hand, poets who were actively, even radically, left-wing, such as Auden, or later, Ginsberg, often wrote poems in either stylish, traditional forms, or rather lucid, discursive ways that were, indeed, often a transparent recording (supposedly) of the interior self (much of Ginsberg's poetry, when not surrealist, emerges from this Williams style, which can be quite empirical, and hardly fragmentary).

Indeed, it is precisely the failure of (some) poet-critics in the UK, to acknowledge the ambiguous, even indeterminate, relationship between poetics and politics (or ideologies), that complicates the ostensible divide that Olsen identifies in her essay. Of course, there is an apprehended divide (Don Paterson and Rod Mengham have very different ideas about poetics); yet, across this divide is a curious bridge: neither "side" resists the idea of the seriousness of poetry. It is simply, they each ground their seriousness in different aspects of the Modernist/ New Critical tradition, and how they select to reread, and often oppose, that (Eliotic/Leavisite) tradition.

On Bonney's point about cocktails - anti-capitalism takes many forms - some Stalinist, others agrarian (and arguably racist), some fascist or aristocratic: Yeats and Pound despised low culture and capitalism as much or more than Bonney, or Prynne ever would. I am sure Peter Porter finds Madonna as trivial and anti-poetic as Drew Milne.

I think there's an interesting aporia here - or at least a knot in the texture of thinking about contemporary British poetics - that can't simply be swept under a carpet of mutual animosity. The question remains: how is it that (most) contemporary British poetry refuses to directly engage with the entertainment products of late capitalism? It is possible, as American postmodern poetry shows (as Ashbery shows) to speak through and of such (frivolous?) discourses, and moments - and not always entirely dismissively. Some Hollywood films - A Night At The Opera, for instance, or Touch of Evil - are glorious, anarchic, and in many ways antecedents for the punk agenda, and late dadaist resurgences, that Bonney(I think rightly) thinks of interest.

In British writing on poetry, there is often a shorthand. One wants to say, for example, Peter Riley is as good or better a poet than Andrew Motion - and instead, broader schools and arguments are set in motion. Not all "mainstream" poetry, for example, is "monolinear" or assumes a transparent link between the speaking I and the poet; indeed, as Tate and Ransom and others infamously noted, the texture of much 20th century poetry is precisly divided due to the ironic and creative tension between its form, and content; and then again, many "traditional" poets employ persona, or the dramatic monologue, often rather brilliantly.

It is true, I think, that when Grigson observed that Heaney was hardly "postmodern" in any meaningful sense (as Olsen states in her essay), this does not then render his work simply uninteresting, or void of complex engagement with language. In fact, even Alvarez objected to Heaney's complex, ornate engagement with language; nor is Heaney's use of myth much less intense than an Ur-modernist such as James Joyce. There is an argument that would say the truer heirs of Modernism are, in fact, Heaney, Tony Harrison and Sean O'Brien (among others), who veer between the demotic and the mythic, much as Pound did.

This is not to "take sides" (I am researching 20th century British poetry, not presiding over a divorce case), but to argue for a constant problematisation of too-easy categorisations, despite underlying class and cultural conflicts that have (yes) gone on for too long, often been supressed by those in power, and which tend to "naturalise" critical positions that are, instead, usually merely lazy empiricism or provincialism (though to what extent the current British avant-garde is truly interested in internationalism or the global remains up for debate; despite the best efforts of Salt and a few other presses and little (often online) magazines to try and represent alternative poetries from "around the world": the British, post-Suez are often fixated on their own trajectories).

Most poetry written in the UK, today, resists easy consumption, by the reader, no matter how stylishly it is packaged. More poetic forms, or styles, I would argue, are resistant to commodification, than might be often assumed, in articles such as those by Olsen. However, finally, I very much appreciate the underlying tendency of Olsen's, and Bonney's comments, insofar as they would argue for a poetry that questions the canon, that is resistant to mere complacency, and that asks questions of language. But this poetry may not always be precisely in the ideological key of extreme anti-capitalism that Bonney seeks, nor may it necessarily be as removed from the world of media and multimedia as he might wish. It might still - or is this evaluative ideal now impossible - be "good" poetry. Or rather, poetry worth taking time to engage with.

I offer these comments in a collegial spirit. I happen to believe (it may be the Canadian in me) that dialogue even across zones of difference can be mutually interesting, and even lead to new work, and developments. I realise that the history of 20th century poetics and poetry has been embedded in a rhetoric of confrontation, violence, and aggression (on the avant-garde as well as "Movement" side of things), which, it may be, was grounded in patriarchal, militaristic, and even hierarchical perspectives that should now be outmoded. We need to locate more ethical forms of communication - even across poetic divides. I see this as an eco-poetic position - all poetic texts are part of the same wider environment, though there may be different eco-systems.

Comments

Sean Bonney said…
Dear Todd,

Where is this non-divisive American poetry? It is more accurate to say that the antagonism is not as pronounced (tho it does exist) in America because the situation is different: here, poets have to put up with the dominance of a defensive, aggressive and regressive literary mainstream, something that you yourself have compained about quite a few times. The most interesting and advanced poets are ignored, or when not ignored, abused and misrepresented. It would be fair to dismiss my comments as ‘late twentieth century grievances’ (as if at the turn of a century we could all forget what we’d been doing and what we cared about, and promise to be friends instead) if this was no longer the case, but it isn’t.

But anyway, thats not quite my position. I just think that attempts to ‘bridge the gap’ between different forms of poetry reduce everything to an indistinguishable mush: as bland as liking ‘music’, or ‘art’, instead of specific things that excite you and that you think actually matter. Ed Dorn has a quip somewhere, that ‘tolerance’ all too often is shorthand for not really believing in anything at all. I am passionate about the artworks that I believe in, and I see them as forms of discourse that help me come to understandings about current realities, rather than simply ‘entertainment products’ served up by capitalism to help me fill up my leisure hours.

I don’t have to ‘establish’ a connection between radical artistic practice and radical poetics and/or art, because I was using that as a metaphor: some antagonisms are too real and meaningful for friendly relations. In any case, as you should also know, the relationship between left politics and modernism was extremely complex: this probably isn’t the place to reiterate the old (and on-going) arguments about socialist realism versus radical modernism, but it is certainly simplistic to try and close the argument by pointing out that there was such a thing as fascist modernism. There was, but the list of committed leftists was longer. And such arguments are red herrings anyway, in that the actual use of an artwork has only a tenuous connection to the politics of its maker (Mark E Smith’s a tory, but his music is hardly an advert for Boris Johnson).

Finally, I didn’t say anywhere that I despise pop culture: I love it, what I don’t like is the cynical corporate culture that seems only to be there to increase our alienation and make us buy more stuff to compensate. Its possible to read Adorno (and know how much he still matters) and dance around the room to stoopid rock n roll, you know.

love from Sean
Steven Waling said…
One thing that Sean Bonney has got right is that new innovative poetry is not austere in the old way. If it ever was... If I sometimes find some of the Cambridge School a bit humourless, there's always Bill Griffiths and Geraldine Monk to liven things up. Chris MacCabe can hardly be described as austere...

There does at times seem to be an air of Roundhead vs Cavalier about the debate; and some of us are stuck in the middle, not able to take sides because, well heck, we don't see any problem with liking Madonna and the Fall at the same time. Fuck art, let's dance as the punks used to say.

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