But Why Call it Poetry? And Who Would Want to Read it?
July 28, 2007
Noted on Harriet, this quote by Christian Bök:
“Postmodern life has utterly recoded the avant-garde demand for radical newness. Innovation in art no longer differs from the kind of manufactured obsolescence that has come to justify advertisements for “improved” products; nevertheless, we have to find a new way to contribute by generating a “surprise” (a term that almost conforms to the cybernetic definition of “information”). The future of poetry may no longer reside in the standard lyricism of emotional anecdotes, but in other exploratory procedures, some of which may seem entirely unpoetic, because they work, not by expressing subjective thoughts, but by exploiting unthinking machines, by colonizing unfamiliar lexicons, or by simulating unliterary art forms.”
(Emphasis mine, and note the entirely reductive, inaccurate and backhanded description of poetry as it stands today)
Tags:
innovation, poetics, Writing
All me-stream all the time.
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July 29th, 2007 at 7:01 am
I like Bok’s work, and a lot of the avant garde/experimental stuff other poets are writing theses days. But he’s wrong that this is the “future of poetry.” It’s definitely a branch. But not the whole tree.
July 29th, 2007 at 10:48 am
I have only read a bit of Bok’s work and it wasn’t my thing. But that’s not really the point. I am reacting more to his thesis, which reads to me that the future of poetry lies in the unpoetic, the unthinking, the automatic, and the unliterary.
The second half of his paragraph doesn’t inevitably flow from– nor is it necessitated by– the observation in the first half as he implies. There is a future in exploration of the unthinking and unpoetic, of the automatic and the disruptured, fractured space of innovation as opposed to preogressive innovation. The latter is a hallmark of innovation theory, after all. But that disruptive process often results in something that is actually new, and those new things, bearing few or none of the characteristics of their original context, are given new names for a reason.
If it is unpoetic, unthinking and unliterary it’s not poetry at all. It’s something else– and it may or may not be something great. Why co-opt the idea of poetry at all if one is so unhappy with it as an artistic form? It’s like saying the future of painting lies in mechanical engineering, the future of music in baked goods with crispy crusts…
July 29th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I’ve been struggling to figure out for myself what exactly IS poetry? WHat makes a written work a poem? Or does it have to sound poetic? Even then - what does that mean? I wouldn’t consider anything I’ve ever written to be poetry… which rises a new struggle - then what do I call it? So… I’m glad when someone disagrees with another’s definition - at least that helps me sculpt it a bit for myself.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:36 am
Definitions are only as good as they are useful! A poem doesn’t have to *sound* poetic but it does have to *be* (by definition) poetic. People have been arguing about this for centuries; I’m not sure how much it matters. No one has come up with a suitable definition yet…
If it isn’t prose fiction or an essay or journalism, then it might be poetry. You decide. And if someone disagrees– well, who cares as long as it makes sense to you? After all, that’s about the only thing a definition is good for. It’s all just writing and can be called whatever one wants…