Jennifer Moxley, Imagination Verses
First, le bio: Jennifer Moxley teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Orono. She got her MFA from Brown in 1994, after doing her undergrad work in various locales, including Mesa College, UC San Diego (both in CA), and the University of Rhode Island. She founded and edited The Impercipient, which is now defunct (last issue came out in November 1995) and prominently featured our favorite bilious crank, Scott Bentley. She now (??—I can’t find out if this is still around) edits The Baffler. She was born in 1964 in San Diego.
Imagination Verses was first published in 1996. I picture its release as one of the first pushes of younger “experimental” poets to say hey, the lyric is alright, yo, “giving permission” to everyone else. Several years later, it seems there are lots more poets doing work like this, but I imagine in 1996 there were less.
Moxley is very aware of literary tradition, and explicitly addresses it more than once in this book. There are nods to (in dedications, titles, and asides) Oppen, Crane, Mayakovsky, Wordsworth, Keats, Willis, and Whitman, among others. Indeed, all over this book is a strong sense of “literary-ness,” with its strongest feature that of the lyric "I” telling of its experiences in the world. In her Preface, Moxley explicitly admits this, the poems: “were written out of a desire to engage the universal lyric ‘I,’ as well as the poetic line, with all of its specific formal artifice.” Reading Imagination Verses is following a train of thought through the well-trampled lyric grounds of the lover scorned (“even bored henchmen / would find this outfit tempting / but low and beholden I’m left rolling / in my own digits, 100% silk.”), and reflections on (European) philosophy (addresses to the Greek Muses in “Muse Couplings”). But she also balances this traditional mode with pieces using modern slang (“you can bring along your guitar if you promise me / you won’t start a girl band.”), and much less “accessible” poems, for example “The Ballad of Her rePossession,” which includes the lines:
wait,
and in the leap
privileged peaceable pursuit
“for my God a...
mercenary faith
lays down with reliance (nation)
I would classify the majority of these poems as love poems. However, can’t we always argue that all poems are “about poetry” as well? We can! I can, and I do. Love as a social institution mirroring the institution of Literature. Love reflecting, as all things do, the philosophical discourse of the day. Moxley’s Preface opens up the arena by setting up a dichotomy of Imagination & Verse. She writes, “Our states, whether social or organic, are composed of effects both chosen (verses) and not (Imagination).” So verse, art(ifice), literature are by their nature social creations, akin to law or government or the DMV, as systems for making sense of the world. Imagination is the other thing, the “innate” thing, the ineffable thing, the “natural” thing. The title of the book, then, suggests a move toward uniting these apparent opposites, all the while knowing that the project must fail, must acknowledge its own artifice, but it must still try. But at the same time that “Imagination Verses” claims to unite, to the ear, it is indistinguishable from “Imagination VERSUS ___.” (Diane DiPrima: “THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION.” ) So Moxley has presented us with a confounding little paradox: the way for art to go is to do away with these binaries, but that’s impossible, and in fact, they are at war, but then again, it’s the only way for art to go.
I know I keep coming back to this idea, and maybe it’s applicable for all good poetry written today (big statement!), but I feel that the overriding sense of this work is that of balance. I talked about this a lot with Dennis’ workshop collection. Moxley presents us with the canon, with nods to tradition & the conventional use of the lyric “I,” but in the next move the “I” is destabilized and rootless, slides over to an aesthetic closer to Language poetry. She uses some very archaic diction & classical imagery, but then next throws in a line about Sara Lee Danishes. She acknowledges the “lyric-ness” of her work but then consistently undercuts its own musicality with unexpected line breaks or lack of punctuation which would have given a stronger rhythm. Her forms are all over the place, ranging from conventional left-margin justified to taking up the whole page, letting lines float where they will. The one thing that appears to be out of balance in Imagination Verses is the lack of any cultural references that aren’t Western. She’s got Mozart, Dante, Aristotle, and countless Greek mythological references. I’m not saying she should try to write herself out of her own culture, and this runs somewhat counter to my instincts about the book, but it does feel unbalanced, tilted. And with the rest of the collection so balanced, it’s a little weird.
I definitely felt that this book resonated with my work, so thank you, Juliana, for bringing it to my attention! I do believe that uniting the opposites is important. That’s why I argue pro-lyric in our workshop and pro-Language in Stephen’s. Either that or I’m just a pain in the ass. Even though Imagination Verses was published years ago, it is news to me, and I only feel more justified in that project.
First, le bio: Jennifer Moxley teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Orono. She got her MFA from Brown in 1994, after doing her undergrad work in various locales, including Mesa College, UC San Diego (both in CA), and the University of Rhode Island. She founded and edited The Impercipient, which is now defunct (last issue came out in November 1995) and prominently featured our favorite bilious crank, Scott Bentley. She now (??—I can’t find out if this is still around) edits The Baffler. She was born in 1964 in San Diego.
Imagination Verses was first published in 1996. I picture its release as one of the first pushes of younger “experimental” poets to say hey, the lyric is alright, yo, “giving permission” to everyone else. Several years later, it seems there are lots more poets doing work like this, but I imagine in 1996 there were less.
Moxley is very aware of literary tradition, and explicitly addresses it more than once in this book. There are nods to (in dedications, titles, and asides) Oppen, Crane, Mayakovsky, Wordsworth, Keats, Willis, and Whitman, among others. Indeed, all over this book is a strong sense of “literary-ness,” with its strongest feature that of the lyric "I” telling of its experiences in the world. In her Preface, Moxley explicitly admits this, the poems: “were written out of a desire to engage the universal lyric ‘I,’ as well as the poetic line, with all of its specific formal artifice.” Reading Imagination Verses is following a train of thought through the well-trampled lyric grounds of the lover scorned (“even bored henchmen / would find this outfit tempting / but low and beholden I’m left rolling / in my own digits, 100% silk.”), and reflections on (European) philosophy (addresses to the Greek Muses in “Muse Couplings”). But she also balances this traditional mode with pieces using modern slang (“you can bring along your guitar if you promise me / you won’t start a girl band.”), and much less “accessible” poems, for example “The Ballad of Her rePossession,” which includes the lines:
wait,
and in the leap
privileged peaceable pursuit
“for my God a...
mercenary faith
lays down with reliance (nation)
I would classify the majority of these poems as love poems. However, can’t we always argue that all poems are “about poetry” as well? We can! I can, and I do. Love as a social institution mirroring the institution of Literature. Love reflecting, as all things do, the philosophical discourse of the day. Moxley’s Preface opens up the arena by setting up a dichotomy of Imagination & Verse. She writes, “Our states, whether social or organic, are composed of effects both chosen (verses) and not (Imagination).” So verse, art(ifice), literature are by their nature social creations, akin to law or government or the DMV, as systems for making sense of the world. Imagination is the other thing, the “innate” thing, the ineffable thing, the “natural” thing. The title of the book, then, suggests a move toward uniting these apparent opposites, all the while knowing that the project must fail, must acknowledge its own artifice, but it must still try. But at the same time that “Imagination Verses” claims to unite, to the ear, it is indistinguishable from “Imagination VERSUS ___.” (Diane DiPrima: “THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION.” ) So Moxley has presented us with a confounding little paradox: the way for art to go is to do away with these binaries, but that’s impossible, and in fact, they are at war, but then again, it’s the only way for art to go.
I know I keep coming back to this idea, and maybe it’s applicable for all good poetry written today (big statement!), but I feel that the overriding sense of this work is that of balance. I talked about this a lot with Dennis’ workshop collection. Moxley presents us with the canon, with nods to tradition & the conventional use of the lyric “I,” but in the next move the “I” is destabilized and rootless, slides over to an aesthetic closer to Language poetry. She uses some very archaic diction & classical imagery, but then next throws in a line about Sara Lee Danishes. She acknowledges the “lyric-ness” of her work but then consistently undercuts its own musicality with unexpected line breaks or lack of punctuation which would have given a stronger rhythm. Her forms are all over the place, ranging from conventional left-margin justified to taking up the whole page, letting lines float where they will. The one thing that appears to be out of balance in Imagination Verses is the lack of any cultural references that aren’t Western. She’s got Mozart, Dante, Aristotle, and countless Greek mythological references. I’m not saying she should try to write herself out of her own culture, and this runs somewhat counter to my instincts about the book, but it does feel unbalanced, tilted. And with the rest of the collection so balanced, it’s a little weird.
I definitely felt that this book resonated with my work, so thank you, Juliana, for bringing it to my attention! I do believe that uniting the opposites is important. That’s why I argue pro-lyric in our workshop and pro-Language in Stephen’s. Either that or I’m just a pain in the ass. Even though Imagination Verses was published years ago, it is news to me, and I only feel more justified in that project.
<< Home