On Poetic Divisions

January 31, 2008

Responding to this bit on a mailing list:

this is where I think ron silliman has been very
insightful in his critiques of the “school of quietude.” it’s not so
much an aesthetic as it is an unwillingness to see the existence of
other aesthetics. What’s at issue here isn’t equal representation,
but the acknowledgment of diversity and of the validity of the
fringes.

Ron Silliman’s insight would be more productive if he didn’t lump everyone who doesn’t agree with him on which of those diverse groups are personally interesting and compelling into one big group. Most of the time, Silliman’s arguing against a very convenient straw man… by the very virtue of the places that Silliman finds the people he wants to engage it is obvious that they shouldn’t be his target.

I’m quite well aware of the diversity, and I appreciate Ron and Bob [Grumman] and others who have helped me find my way there. I recognize the validity of these forms even if most of them are not compelling to me. But I’m not some outlier amongst those who happen to still find life in the more mainstream and traditional kind of writing and I doubt Collins, Hall, Levine, etc are either.

What bugs me about some of the commentators that adopt the relatively useless SOQ categories is that what underlies their argument seems to be an inability to believe that anyone could really see the art they prefer and just not like it. It has to be that those people are intellectually deficient, unable to appreciate innovation, not reading hard enough, not willing to be up to a challenge, etc… there’s no room for aesthetic diversity in that space… all the air has been sucked out of the room in favor of a political hegemony that’s ultimately no better than the 80s style academic mainstream diversity that may as well not exist anymore considering the lack of vitality in those institutions. That battle was won, the fires have been lit and burn bright in so many other places, why waste so much time and breath repeatedly stamping on the embers and all the bystanders in between?

Tags: poetics