Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Ugh, thinking of a big success hated by myself and others, including Alfred, so can’t even type his name again right now. Of course I don’t have an MFA in poetry, far from it, but still.

Poetry's audience is mostly other poets and literary types, yes. This has been true for a long time. It's art, it's not for everyone, and the pressure for art to be "relevant" or "populist" is one that is driven by hegemonic market forces rather than art itself. Ubiquity does not equal profundity, tho it can, and similarly, obscurity does not equal mediocrity, tho it can.

These aren't difficult propositions. The issue that I see is that a lot of poets seem to want to assuage some sense of guilt by deluding themselves into thinking what they're doing is activism that has a profound effect on the world, when it very clearly is not. BUT! What poems do have an effect on are individual readers, and changing/altering the consciousness of an individual reader is a profound thing, whether that reader is a poet or not. The sooner poets get this into their heads, the better.

Here's an example from my own life, because it's what I know: a young person chose to read my last book for a class they were taking in college, and decided to write their term paper on it. They found my website, filled out a form, and sent me some really interesting questions about the book. I responded, and after a few weeks, they sent me an absolutely astonishing term paper. Of course it means little in the larger scheme of things, but that sequence of events shows me that poetry can have an effect on people and change them, and insofar as that is true, poetry changes the world every day.

Poetry is the language of imagination
Poetry is a form of positive creation
Difficult, isn't it? The point? You're missin it
Your face is in front of my hand so I'm dissin it

Amanda Gorman is the best-selling poet in the country -- OK, low bar, but her book really did sell well -- and quite obviously has a foot in slam world and a foot in traditional poetry world.

I don't wanna change the world
I don't want the world to change me

-Ozzy Osbourne

I wouldn't say that Gorman has a foot in the traditional poetry world— she doesn't have any publications outside of a children's book and a book from a major publisher. The traditional poetry world is in small journals and presses operating on shoestring budgets, and has been for a long time. She's part of the commercial establishment, and her poetry is written to prop up that establishment.

Great story a few posts back, table!

Ugh, thinking of a big success hated by myself and others, including Alfred, so can’t even type his name again right now. Of course I don’t have an MFA in poetry, far from it, but still.

has a foot in slam world and a foot in traditional poetry world.

going back to an earlier analogy -- it would be like if John from Wolf Eyes was given a Guggenheim fellowship for music composition -- that's kinda how I see Gorman in re the "traditional poetry world"

Hint: his initials are not AD.

I'd like to thank Aimless for bringing us together to reflect on how much of a dick move it is to 'dear' one of the few female posters left on ILX.

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, September 7, 2021 2:41 PM (yesterday)

thanks for speaking up, Andrew! that post of Aimless' was condescending as fuck, and part of me felt like going off, but honestly, I had work to do IRL and it wasn't worth my time. ... Probably why a lot of people (women esp.) stop posting here.

The traditional poetry world is in small journals and presses operating on shoestring budgets, and has been for a long time.

I consider the traditional poetry world to include the English classes Gorman took at Harvard, which would definitely classify what she does as part of their scope! Like, Jorie Graham would say her poems are poems, right? To me she's part of the traditional poetry world as much as small zero-budget presses but we don't have to use the same nomenclature, just saying what I meant by it.

Thank you for speaking up, sarah. I apologize for the offense given. I thought I was simply playing on the phrase 'oh dear', but apparently I accomplished something more sinister. Andrew's comment was that of a bystander imputing a reaction you had not expressed. Your comment means something.

it was obviously a pun

not to sarah

I didn't see the pun at all, and thought it was a shockingly sexist remark. Going back I can now see where the pun was meant to be, but it was very much not obvious. And the lack of women here is by no means a "canard".

thanks emil.y -- and I appreciate the apology Aimless.

maybe he should have thought about the optics of calling a woman 'dear' but I truly believe it was a good-faith pun gone awkward

and 'that's why all the women have left ilx!' as a response is laughable cmon

I laughed as I temp-banned you from ILAFL for your myopic post

Now do the rest of the site

*cracks knuckles, stretches hamstrings*

so uh who is the big success poet who’s hated by everyone?

"and 'that's why all the women have left ilx!' as a response is laughable cmon" is why all the women have left ilx

referring to james redd’s post

here I thought the main reason given for leaving ilx was "a specific user, suc..." oops! nvm

suc never bothered me

Idk who JR is referencing, I was just thinking of Rupi Kaur-style Instagram poets, lol

Now do the rest of the site

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, September 8, 2021 12:48 PM (one hour ago)

I am but a humble sub-board mod

One can only try

there's an "Admin" menu, that if you have mod powers over a board, you can do things like ban, unban, threadban, and delete ... if you don't have mod powers, you don't get the special things you can click on -- no special things for me in this thread

I wish I had these special things, is all I can say.

so uh who is the big success poet who’s hated by everyone?

Yeats

Cunt

xp to be fair his death did diminish him

The bell tolls for you imago cuz you’re banned!

not "for thee"? tsk.

I want to apologize to imago. Was just trying to riff on donne. Not pick sides in a pile on.

John Ashbery got a lot of hate for a decade or three there, from poets who felt any pressure to imitate him.

I love ashbery

hate ashberry? only hippies!

Ashbery wrote some great poems.

I've read his long book-length poem, FLOW CHART, and after that, I never wanted to read him again. Not because it was bad, but because it sort of sated me for life.

I'm into Ashbery, not knocking him, but Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror was the first book to sweep all the big poetry prizes in a single year, and (in the same way Raymond Carver would soon after for aspiring fiction writers) it divided those who followed him and those who felt marginalized by having an out-of-fashion approach.

One poet told me a story of how Ashbery took the podium once with two folders of poems. After doing the reading from one folder, he realized he had read from his rejected poems--implying that his games made irrelevant a "better" or "worse" one.

I love ashbery but I find some of the more frequent comparisons (to Stevens) puzzling and he makes for more sense to me as an heir of Laura riding and Marianne Moore, both of whom I love and both of whom he spoke of as influences. Particularly Moore's odd mix of looseness and precision, her love of banal language cropped strangely that gives them a common urban folksiness.

"Urban folksiness"! I love it. Sorta reminds me of Marjorie Perloff reacting to a poem by Charles Bernstein in this episode of PoemTalk (starting at around 09:45)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/151679/these-squiggles-a-discussion-of-as-if-the-trees-by-their-very-roots-had-hold-of-us-by-charles-bernstein

Eazy, that story makes sense— Ashbery in his day was an absolutely notorious drunk, a prof of mine had to chaperone him once and left him passed out on the lawn of another poet's house.

as long as he didn't commit sexual assault that's cool

xp table -- I was talking to someone a few weeks back who had second thoughts about the ZH Open Letter incident from 2014 (?) (i forget whether it was 2013 or 2014)

and yes -- that was indeed a Literary Clusterfuck