what does you do?
Thanks for the workshop yesterday. Very interesting.. The synchronicity on Ashbery got me reading a Perloff essay on his work today (avoidance of Modern American Poetry Paper), and led me to this quote regarding his use of pronouns:
"The personal pronouns in my work very often seem to be like variables in an equation. 'You' can be myself or it can be another person, someone whom I'm addressing, and so can 'he' and 'she' for that matter and 'we'...my point is also that it doesn't really matter very much, that we are somehow all aspects of a consciousness giving rise to the poem and the fact of addressing someone, myself or someone else, is what's the important thing at that particular moment rather than the particular person involved. I guess I don't have a very strong sense of my own identity and I find it very easy to move from one person in the sense of a pronoun to another and this again helps to produce a kind of polyphony in my poetry which I again feel is a means toward a greater naturalism."
This is an interesting idea & I'd like to claim it as well, but I wonder just how possible it is for the reader to believe it. I also wonder if when he says he doesn't have a strong sense of his own identity how true this is--if the "I" is continuous in tone, does this mean he in fact doesn't have a strong sense of others' identities? Is this problematic?
It seems, however, that no matter how much a poet might argue that the pronouns are destabilized, it might still read like they are fixed. Even if it's difficult to get a logical reading out of his work, you could still make connections.
This is related to Scott's comments about inserting a "you" always making the poem eroticized. Juliana said something similiar, that the I-you is never innocent. And I wonder if that's always true. I wonder if there are ways to use that construction and have it not be read as a love poem or a fixed-identities individually-centered poem. And then I wonder why I'm even asking the question, and why I'm looking for a way to "get away with" it in the first place.
Have I just been brainwashed by a gajillion years of I-you tradition so I feel it has to be there regardless of modern issues attributed to it? Or is there something else to be uncovered? Is it just a way to make the reader feel "addressed" and feel his/her personal stake in the work? Is it a cheap trick?
Is the I-You the most resonant pronoun pair, in these terms? Are we willing to let he-she-we slide, but I-you is always about love?
answering questions with questions
Juliana said love poetry is the easiest to say why it matters, which seems counterintuitive to me. Political poetry sseems to be the easiest to say why it matters. Even if the writing is not strong, it's for a good cause, so it wins. Dan Bellm had this story about publishing a love poem to this guy he knew in high school and twenty years later the guy reads it & contacts him & they have a lovely connection. So this is what Juliana was referring to when saying why love poetry matters (poem had the POWER to Make People Take An Action). But the joke here is, it doesn't matter! Who cares if so-and-so hooks up with old flame? Who cares how so-and-so's relationship is going? Does it matter for any other reason?
Thanks for the workshop yesterday. Very interesting.. The synchronicity on Ashbery got me reading a Perloff essay on his work today (avoidance of Modern American Poetry Paper), and led me to this quote regarding his use of pronouns:
"The personal pronouns in my work very often seem to be like variables in an equation. 'You' can be myself or it can be another person, someone whom I'm addressing, and so can 'he' and 'she' for that matter and 'we'...my point is also that it doesn't really matter very much, that we are somehow all aspects of a consciousness giving rise to the poem and the fact of addressing someone, myself or someone else, is what's the important thing at that particular moment rather than the particular person involved. I guess I don't have a very strong sense of my own identity and I find it very easy to move from one person in the sense of a pronoun to another and this again helps to produce a kind of polyphony in my poetry which I again feel is a means toward a greater naturalism."
This is an interesting idea & I'd like to claim it as well, but I wonder just how possible it is for the reader to believe it. I also wonder if when he says he doesn't have a strong sense of his own identity how true this is--if the "I" is continuous in tone, does this mean he in fact doesn't have a strong sense of others' identities? Is this problematic?
It seems, however, that no matter how much a poet might argue that the pronouns are destabilized, it might still read like they are fixed. Even if it's difficult to get a logical reading out of his work, you could still make connections.
This is related to Scott's comments about inserting a "you" always making the poem eroticized. Juliana said something similiar, that the I-you is never innocent. And I wonder if that's always true. I wonder if there are ways to use that construction and have it not be read as a love poem or a fixed-identities individually-centered poem. And then I wonder why I'm even asking the question, and why I'm looking for a way to "get away with" it in the first place.
Have I just been brainwashed by a gajillion years of I-you tradition so I feel it has to be there regardless of modern issues attributed to it? Or is there something else to be uncovered? Is it just a way to make the reader feel "addressed" and feel his/her personal stake in the work? Is it a cheap trick?
Is the I-You the most resonant pronoun pair, in these terms? Are we willing to let he-she-we slide, but I-you is always about love?
answering questions with questions
Juliana said love poetry is the easiest to say why it matters, which seems counterintuitive to me. Political poetry sseems to be the easiest to say why it matters. Even if the writing is not strong, it's for a good cause, so it wins. Dan Bellm had this story about publishing a love poem to this guy he knew in high school and twenty years later the guy reads it & contacts him & they have a lovely connection. So this is what Juliana was referring to when saying why love poetry matters (poem had the POWER to Make People Take An Action). But the joke here is, it doesn't matter! Who cares if so-and-so hooks up with old flame? Who cares how so-and-so's relationship is going? Does it matter for any other reason?
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