An attempt to be somewhat more specific about what I was talking about with Kathy and what I think we're not doing enough of, even with Reader B.
Basically, I think the easiest thing to talk about with poems is how they are made. The harder part is how they resonate out in the world.
Some examples from real life, outside of classroom...
Example 1:
Lyn Hejinian's My Life. For those who haven't read it, go read it, but this is basically an autobiography that Hejinian wrote in forty-five sections composed of forty-five sentences. The sentences are somewhat disconnected from one another. The content appears to be mainly unsorted, moving through reminiscence and observation and nonsynchronically through the past and the present. But it basically tells the story of a white woman growing up middle class in the U.S. It is not that geographically specific. It is somewhat difficult to map Hejinian's "actual" life onto it (her jobs; her books; etc.) but some critics are starting to do this work. But for years critics wrote about how My Life reconfigured autobiography by breaking down the linear narrative path and replacing it with something that was fractured and GENERIC. What was great about My Life, they argued, was that it was difficult to see Hejinian's life in it and one could imagine it being the life story of many different people. (see Lisa Samuel's article at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/samuels/mylife.html for a discussion of some of these issues.) This seems to be a clear example of what Aimee was talking about, about assuming that something that is dominant is generic. Ok, so questions I would like to be addressing in workshop if someone brought in a poem that did something similar are these: First, is it generic or not (because just because some critic said it was so doesn't mean it is or that it is read that way in most instances)? Are there any markers in the work that demand that we read this as generic? How does a work tell us to read it as generic? How does it tell not let us read it as generic? Are there any markers that instead insist that we read this a specific story? If so, is there critique of something more than the genre of autobiography in it? Where is that? And how far should we/do we cross apply the critique of autobiography to other critiques of privilege? What are the politics of a critique of genre?
Example 2:
This one is anecdotal because I don't have the poem. A few years ago at a big group reading a poet read a poem that he had made by doing a chance procedure on personal ads. He didn't say this when he read the poem (an entirely other issue but one worth talking about--do procedures free you up from responsibility about the content of the poem? Maybe call this the flarf question.). Many in the audience heard this poem as one about the subjugation of women; some said they heard it as a throwback to a time when men would write poems about women and their bodies and get up and read them regularly(?). So related questions... Why did this poem exist? Did it exist to annoy those concerned with gender? Or did it want to say something more complicated about gender but there was no way to hear it? If it wanted to say something more complicated, how could it have made it clear? What sort of things would the text have to have done for the audience to hear the poem as critique?
Example 3:
The argument about Yamanaka's work seems another classic one. For those who haven't read her work, again go read it, but she has a book of short poems written in pidgin that tell the stories mainly of teenage girls and their power struggles--Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre. The book opens with a poem where one teenage girl tells another to be scared of the Filipino man. A long argument has developed about this poem and whether it is racist or not (a debate which continues with her novels). But basically with this poem (and this is different than the argument about her novels), if you find the teenage girl an unreliable narrator then the poem becomes a critique of racism. If you find the teenage girl reliable, then it becomes racist. The sorts of questions about something like this are: What in the text lets the poem tip one way and what in the text lets it tip the other way, but basically why the ambiguity?
Similar example from class, Dillon's collage poem (which I have no desire to take too seriously but I think I had similar questions about it and I figure since he can't be too invested in it he will not mind) has some interesting questions. It opens very clearly with critique (the image of the crying and bloody Iraqi child from the news). But then in the middle it has pieces from an article on the Dutch film maker who was killed the other day. And Dillon took some phrase about raping women which was in the Dutch film maker's film as something that was Muslim and made it a prominent part of the poem. This is the part that interests me because suddenly the critique part of the poem becomes unclear and the poem gets very ambiguous. What does it do to point out such uninnocent language? Why does the critique part of the poem suddenly go out of focus there? And does the author want it to go out of focus there? And what would have kept it in focus?
Maybe the question I'm having is what are the craft issues around a poetry of critique.
Basically, I think the easiest thing to talk about with poems is how they are made. The harder part is how they resonate out in the world.
Some examples from real life, outside of classroom...
Example 1:
Lyn Hejinian's My Life. For those who haven't read it, go read it, but this is basically an autobiography that Hejinian wrote in forty-five sections composed of forty-five sentences. The sentences are somewhat disconnected from one another. The content appears to be mainly unsorted, moving through reminiscence and observation and nonsynchronically through the past and the present. But it basically tells the story of a white woman growing up middle class in the U.S. It is not that geographically specific. It is somewhat difficult to map Hejinian's "actual" life onto it (her jobs; her books; etc.) but some critics are starting to do this work. But for years critics wrote about how My Life reconfigured autobiography by breaking down the linear narrative path and replacing it with something that was fractured and GENERIC. What was great about My Life, they argued, was that it was difficult to see Hejinian's life in it and one could imagine it being the life story of many different people. (see Lisa Samuel's article at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/samuels/mylife.html for a discussion of some of these issues.) This seems to be a clear example of what Aimee was talking about, about assuming that something that is dominant is generic. Ok, so questions I would like to be addressing in workshop if someone brought in a poem that did something similar are these: First, is it generic or not (because just because some critic said it was so doesn't mean it is or that it is read that way in most instances)? Are there any markers in the work that demand that we read this as generic? How does a work tell us to read it as generic? How does it tell not let us read it as generic? Are there any markers that instead insist that we read this a specific story? If so, is there critique of something more than the genre of autobiography in it? Where is that? And how far should we/do we cross apply the critique of autobiography to other critiques of privilege? What are the politics of a critique of genre?
Example 2:
This one is anecdotal because I don't have the poem. A few years ago at a big group reading a poet read a poem that he had made by doing a chance procedure on personal ads. He didn't say this when he read the poem (an entirely other issue but one worth talking about--do procedures free you up from responsibility about the content of the poem? Maybe call this the flarf question.). Many in the audience heard this poem as one about the subjugation of women; some said they heard it as a throwback to a time when men would write poems about women and their bodies and get up and read them regularly(?). So related questions... Why did this poem exist? Did it exist to annoy those concerned with gender? Or did it want to say something more complicated about gender but there was no way to hear it? If it wanted to say something more complicated, how could it have made it clear? What sort of things would the text have to have done for the audience to hear the poem as critique?
Example 3:
The argument about Yamanaka's work seems another classic one. For those who haven't read her work, again go read it, but she has a book of short poems written in pidgin that tell the stories mainly of teenage girls and their power struggles--Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre. The book opens with a poem where one teenage girl tells another to be scared of the Filipino man. A long argument has developed about this poem and whether it is racist or not (a debate which continues with her novels). But basically with this poem (and this is different than the argument about her novels), if you find the teenage girl an unreliable narrator then the poem becomes a critique of racism. If you find the teenage girl reliable, then it becomes racist. The sorts of questions about something like this are: What in the text lets the poem tip one way and what in the text lets it tip the other way, but basically why the ambiguity?
Similar example from class, Dillon's collage poem (which I have no desire to take too seriously but I think I had similar questions about it and I figure since he can't be too invested in it he will not mind) has some interesting questions. It opens very clearly with critique (the image of the crying and bloody Iraqi child from the news). But then in the middle it has pieces from an article on the Dutch film maker who was killed the other day. And Dillon took some phrase about raping women which was in the Dutch film maker's film as something that was Muslim and made it a prominent part of the poem. This is the part that interests me because suddenly the critique part of the poem becomes unclear and the poem gets very ambiguous. What does it do to point out such uninnocent language? Why does the critique part of the poem suddenly go out of focus there? And does the author want it to go out of focus there? And what would have kept it in focus?
Maybe the question I'm having is what are the craft issues around a poetry of critique.
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